Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

8 & 9 March 2016

Session Code:

Azure IAAS Best Practices

Who am IAlexandre Verkinderen• CDM MVP• @AlexVerkinderen• alexandre@verkinderen.com• http://mscloud.be• http://cubesys.com.au

Agenda• Azure Datacenter Architecture• Azure Subscriptions Best Practices• Availability Sets• Effectively Using Temporary Drive• Deploying 100s of VMs• Azure Scale Units

Azure Datacenter Architecture

Azure Regions• 22 regions

• http://www.mscloud.be/azure-locations-regions-datacenters-fault-domains-update-domains-clusters-availability-sets/

Datacenter Architecture• Region can be comprised of multiple datacenters• Datacenters are divided into “clusters”

• Each rack provides a unit of fault isolation

Cluster 5Cluster 4Cluster 3Cluster 2Cluster 1

TOR

Agg

PDU

Agg Agg Agg Agg Agg

DatacenterRouters

TOR

PDU

TOR

PDU

TOR

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Agg Agg Agg

Aggregation Routers andLoad Balancers

Cluster Network Aggregation

Top of RackSwitches

Racks

Power Distribution Units

Inside a Physical Server• CPU, memory, disk & networking resources are committed when allocating the

service.

Physical Server

FC Host Agent

Host Partition

Trust boundaryPDU

TOR Switch

Fabric Controller

…

Unallocated CPUs

VMVMVM

Guest Agent Guest Agent

To Fabric Controller

PaaS VM Role Instance

PaaS VM Role Instance

IaaS VM Role

CPU CPUCPU CPUCPU CPU CPU CPU

Azure datacenter Facts• 3 times• 1.5 million-plus

• 1 million-plus

• To the moon and back• requests our networks process per

second• Amount of physical servers

Azure Subsription Best Practices

What is a subscription?• Before

• Administrative boundary• Now with Azure Resource Manager

• Logical billing unit• Subscription Limits

• https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/azure-subscription-service-limits/

Key Design Principles• Connectivity• Administration

• Subscription Ownership• Office 365 Azure Active Directory tenant• Office 365 enrollment• other Azure subscriptions in use

• Scale• growth plans• How will limited resources be allocated• How will the model evolve over time

• http://www.mscloud.be/azure-subscriptions-best-practices/

Design Example per OU

Design Example per Application

Design Example CSP

Design Example Enterprise

Availability Sets

Virtual Machine Virtual Machine

Availability Sets

SQL ServerPrimary

SQL ServerSecondary

Availability set

SLA 99.95

SLA High Availability

Hardware and Software

Windows and Linux

Availability Sets

Physical Machines

Power UnitRack Switch

Availability Sets

Physical Machines

Power UnitRack Switch

Availability Set

VM1

VM1 VM2 VM2

VM2

Fault- and update domains

Separate availability sets

Availability Set Guidance• VMs in Availability Set Must Be in Same Cloud Service

• Availability Set: 5 Update Domains, 2 Fault Domains• Update Domain – Host Maintenance • Fault Domain – Isolation from component failure in rack unit

• Maximum of 50 VMs in a Availability Set

• Avoid Availability Sets with Single VM• This eliminates notification for host maintenance operations

Availability Set Demo

Effectively using Temporary Drive

Virtual Machine Storage ArchitectureAzure Virtual Machine

C:\OS Disk

E:\, F:\, etc.Data DisksD:\

Temporary DiskDisk Cache

Azure Blob

Temporary Drive Guidance• Never Place Critical Unreplicated Data on Temp Drive!!

• Use for SQL TempDB and Buffer Pool Extension on D-Series and G-Series VM Sizes Only (SSD Temp Disks)

• Detailed instructions: http://blogs.technet.com/b/dataplatforminsider/archive/2014/09/25/using-ssds-in-azure-vms-to-store-sql-server-tempdb-and-buffer-pool-extensions.aspx

• Use Scheduled Tasks to Configure Temporary Disk

Temporary Drive Performance (D-Series)

Cores VM Sizes Temp Disk Size (GB) Max IOPS Max Read

(MB/s)Max Write

(MB/s)

1 Standard_D1 50 3,000 48 24

2 Standard_D2Standard_D11 100 6,000 96 48

4 Standard_D3Standard_D12 200 12,000 192 96

8 Standard_D4Standard_D13 400 24,000 384 192

16 Standard_D14 800 48,000 768 384

http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2014/10/06/d-series-performance-expectations/

D-drive migration• SAN POLICY=ONLINEALL

Deploying 100s of VMs

Key ConceptsHierarchy

Subscription

Cloud Service (200)

Virtual Machine (50x200)

Virtual Network (100)

Storage Account (100)

Storage Container

Storage Blob (40x100)

Object Limit Locking

Subscription120 Create/Add operations in 5 minute window

N/A

Cloud Service 200 per subscription ~3 minutes per update

Virtual Machine50 per cloud service2048 per Virtual Network

None

Virtual Network 100 per subscription Single modification API

Storage Account 100 per subscription20.000 IOPS None

Storage Container No Limit None

Storage Blob 40 per storage account

One blob per container per storage account at a time

Limits and Locking

http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/azure-subscription-service-limits/

Azure Scale Units

Azure Scale Unit (Azure Compute Cluster)• Definition

• A compute unit capable of supporting a defined range of VM sizes• Each Cloud Service is bound to a single Scale Unit• Each Affinity Group with one or more VM is bound to a single Scale Unit

• Impact of Resize• VMs can only be resized to a size supported on Scale Unit where the VM is deployed

• Current VM Sizes Supported on Scale Units• Scale Unit 1: A0 – A4• Scale Unit 2: A0 – A7• Scale Unit 3: A8/A9 Only• Scale Unit 4: A0 – A7 and D1 – D14• Scale Unit 5: G1 – G5 (Coming Soon)

DEMOScale unit Demo

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