Kategorie: Microsoft Azure

Azure Certified for IoT expands to help customers choose the right IoT device

For businesses, choosing the best device for a new IoT solution can be one of the most challenging tasks in early deployment. There are a lot of things to consider: from how the device will connect to the internet and which sensors may work with it to the industry protocols it is capable of processing.

One year ago, we launched the Azure Certified for IoT program to help customers ensure their device of choice was tested to work with Azure IoT technology. Since then, our customers and partners have embraced the benefits of bridging the cloud with IoT devices together. With their enthusiasm, we have grown Azure Certified for IoT into one of the largest device ecosystems in the industry, with more than 100 partners and 175 different devices already in the program.

Today, we’re announcing the Azure Certified for IoT device catalog, a step forward in helping customers on their IoT journey. The device catalog is available to anyone looking for the best device for their needs from any Azure Certified for IoT partner.

If you’re currently an IoT customer, the Azure Certified for IoT device catalog will facilitate the search of the right device or family of devices. You can now refine device search by multiple criteria, get instructions on how to connect to Azure IoT Suite and Azure IoT Hub, and even request a demo of the device from the manufacturer. For example, looking for gateways that connect to the Azure cloud via Wi-Fi using Java code over MQTT will be a matter of a few clicks. And, if you are looking for something you can’t find, you can submit a request through the portal and our team will do our best to include it.

If you are an IoT device manufacturer, the device catalog provides an opportunity to give your technology global exposure, opening new markets with customers already using Azure IoT solutions. Microsoft will also provide metrics on your device’s interest and performance so you can grow your business. In addition, to help you differentiate and showcase your device, we are offering $3,000 of Azure credit to the first 25 partners that enroll 10 devices or more in the catalog. You can start enrolling your device on the catalog by visiting www.catalog.azureiotsuite.com/partner.

We are excited about the possibilities that this community will unlock and can’t wait to see the solutions that our customers and device manufacturers build together with the power of Azure IoT.

Get started finding your IoT device today by visiting www.catalog.azureiotsuite.com.
Quelle: Azure

Announcing Azure Analysis Services preview

We are pleased to announce the public preview of Microsoft Azure Analysis Services, the latest addition to our data platform in the cloud. Based on the proven analytics engine in SQL Server Analysis Services, Azure Analysis Services is an enterprise grade OLAP engine and BI modeling platform, offered as a fully managed platform-as-a-service (PaaS). Azure Analysis Services enables developers and BI professionals to create BI Semantic Models that can power highly interactive and rich analytical experiences in BI tools (such as Power BI and Excel) and custom applications.

Why Azure Analysis Services?

The success of any modern data-driven organization requires that information is available at the fingertips of every business user (not just IT professionals and data scientists) to guide their day-to-day decisions. Self-service BI tools have made huge strides in making data accessible to business users. However, most business users don’t have the expertise or desire to do the heavy lifting that is typically required to find the right sources of data, consume the raw data and transform it into the right shape, add business logic and metrics, and finally explore the data to derive insights. With Azure Analysis Services, a BI professional can create a semantic model over the raw data and share it with business users so that all they need to do is connect to the model and immediately explore the data and gain insights. Azure Analysis Services uses a highly optimized in-memory engine to provide responses to user queries at the "speed of thought".

Fully managed platform-as-a-service

Developers can create a server in seconds, choosing from the Developer (D1) or Standard (S1, S2, S4) service tiers. Each tier comes with fixed capacity in terms of query processing units and model cache. The developer tier (D1) supports up to 3GB model cache and the largest tier (S4) supports up to 100GB.
The Standard tiers offer dedicated capacity for predictable performance and are recommended for production workloads. The Developer tier is recommended for proof-of-concept, development, and test workloads.
Administrators can pause and resume the server at any time. No charges are incurred when the server is paused. We also plan to offer administrators the ability to scale up and down a server between the Standard tiers (not available currently).
Developers can use Azure Active Directory to manage user identity and role based security for their models.
The service is currently available in the South-Central US and West Europe regions. More regions will be added during the preview.

Compatible with SQL Server Analysis Services

Developers can use SQL Server Data Tools in Visual Studio for creating models and deploying them to the service. Administrators can manage the models using SQL Server Management Studio and investigate issues using SQL Server Profiler.
Business users can consume the models in any major BI tool. Supported Microsoft tools include Power BI, Excel, and SQL Server Reporting Services. Other MDX compliant BI tools can also be used, after downloading and installing the latest drivers.
The service currently supports tabular models (compatibility level 1200 only). Support for multidimensional models will be considered for a future release, based on customer demand.
Models can consume data from a variety of sources in Azure (e.g. Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Data Warehouse) and on-premises (e.g. SQL Server, Oracle, Teradata). Access to on-premises sources is made available through the on-premises data gateway.
Models can be cached in a highly optimized in-memory engine to provide fast responses to interactive BI tools. Alternatively, models can query the source directly using DirectQuery, thereby leveraging the performance and scalability of the underlying database or big data engine.

Get started with the Azure Analysis Services preview by imply provisioning a resource in the Azure Portal or using Azure Resource Manager templates, and using that server name in your Visual Studio project. Use Azure Active Directory user names (UPNs) or groups in the role memberships for securing access to your models. Give it a try and let us know what you think.

Learn more about Azure Analysis Services.
Quelle: Azure

Geo-filtering available for Akamai Standard profiles

Restricting access to your content by country is a powerful CDN feature. We’re excited to announce this is now available for all Akamai Standard profiles directly in the Azure portal.

This feature will allow you to specify specific paths on your endpoint and set rules to block or allow access to a specific list of countries.

If you are using either Standard or Premium from Verizon, the feature will still be accessed through the supplemental management portal for the time being. It will be migrated to the Azure portal in the future.

To access the new feature, follow these steps:

Find your CDN profile at https://portal.azure.com.

2. Select an Endpoint.

3. Navigate to Geo-filtering.

4. Enter a file or directory path for PATH, an ACTION to block or allow, and one or more countries. The example below allows access to “myendpoint1.azureedge.net/pictures/mypics/*” from only the United States.

5. Hit Save and wait for the changes to propagate.

For more details, see please visit the full documentation page.

Additional resources

CDN feature overview
Azure CDN UserVoice
Azure CDN MSDN forum

Quelle: Azure

ASR and Azure Hybrid Use Benefit make application migration to Azure even more cost-effective

Hybrid Use Benefit (HUB) lets Microsoft Software Assurance customers carry their on-premises Windows Server licenses to applications they move to Azure and easily extend their datacenter to the cloud. The HUB program, in addition to dramatic cost savings and asset productivity achieved by moving your applications to the industry’s leading hybrid enterprise public cloud,  allows you to realize significant savings on licensing costs.

Azure Site Recovery (ASR) is the tool of choice for our customers to migrate applications to Azure. ASR provides minimum downtime, hassle free migration to Azure across virtualization platforms and physical servers. By letting you test your applications in Azure before you migrate, and offering one click application migration through recovery plans, ASR simplifies the process of migrating to Azure. ASR supports migration of a wide range of operating systems including Windows Server and various Linux distributions, no matter what platform your applications are running on. What’s more – migration using ASR is free!  Yes, you read that right the first time, migration using ASR is free.  For the first 31 days from the time you start replicating your server, you only pay for the storage you consume on Azure and for the compute you use to test migration.

Azure Site Recovery, now lets you leverage your Hybrid Use Benefit while migrating your Windows servers to Azure. In this blog post, I’ll show you how you can use ASR and HUB to migrate your Windows Server environments to Azure.

Getting setup with Azure Site Recovery

The first thing you want to do is to get setup with Azure Site Recovery and start replicating your applications to Azure. All of this can be done in a few simple steps, as outlined in the following articles

If you are virtualized on Hyper-V, follow this article to get your servers replicating to Azure.

If you are virtualized on VMware or running on Physical servers, follow this article to get started with replication.

HUB is only available on servers migrated to Azure Resource Model (ARM) virtual machines. Ensure that the storage account you select for replication is an ARM Storage account and not a Classic Storage Account.

Once initial replication completes, your servers reach the protected state in ASR, at which point you are ready to test and migrate your applications to Azure.

Use the Compute and Network configuration on the replicated item settings blade on the Azure portal to select the Azure virtual network and virtual machine size to migrate to.

Configure migration to use HUB

Once your servers are protected and you’ve validated your application in Azure by performing a test failover, all that’s left to do before you complete the migration is to configure ASR to use HUB while migrating your server. You can set this up in a few simple steps using Azure PowerShell. Get the latest version of Azure PowerShell from here. Ensure that you have the latest version of the AzureRM.SiteRecovery module (version 3.1.0 or later.)

PS C:Usersbsiva> Get-Module -ListAvailable AzureRm.SiteRecovery

Directory: C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft SDKsAzurePowerShellResourceManagerAzureResourceManager

ModuleType Version Name ExportedCommands
———- ——- —- —————-
Manifest 3.1.0 AzureRM.SiteRecovery {Get-AzureRmSiteRecoveryFabric, New-AzureRmSiteRecoveryFabric, Remove-AzureRmSiteRecoveryFabric, Stop-AzureRmSiteRecoveryJob…}

 

Login to your Azure account and select your Azure subscription:

PS C:Usersbsiva> Login-AzureRmAccount

Environment : AzureCloud
Account : bsiva@microsoft.com
TenantId : xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx
SubscriptionId : xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx
SubscriptionName : ASR PM team subscription 5
CurrentStorageAccount :

PS C:Usersbsiva>
PS C:Usersbsiva>
PS C:Usersbsiva> Select-AzureRmSubscription -SubscriptionName "DR Hybrid Application Scenarios"

Environment : AzureCloud
Account : bsiva@microsoft.com
TenantId : xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx
SubscriptionId : xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx
SubscriptionName : DR Hybrid Application Scenarios
CurrentStorageAccount :

Set the Recovery Services vault context:

 

PS C:Usersbsiva> $vault = Get-AzureRmRecoveryServicesVault -Name "Contoso-RecoveryVault" PS C:Usersbsiva> Set-AzureRmSiteRecoveryVaultSettings -ARSVault $vault ResourceName ResourceGroupName ResourceNamespace ResouceType ———— —————– —————– ———– Contoso-RecoveryVault Contoso-Recovery Microsoft.RecoveryServices vaults

Get the list of replicating machines in the vault:

PS C:Usersbsiva> $ReplicatedItems = Get-AzureRmSiteRecoveryFabric | Get-AzureRmSiteRecoveryProtectionContainer | Get-AzureRmSiteRecoveryReplicationProtectedItem
PS C:Usersbsiva> $ReplicatedItems | Select-Object -Property FriendlyName

FriendlyName
————
Contoso-EngWikiDB
Contoso-PayrollDB

 

Set the HUB License Type for the machines that are being migrated:

PS C:Usersbsiva> $Job1 = Set-AzureRmSiteRecoveryReplicationProtectedItem -ReplicationProtectedItem $ReplicatedItems[0] -LicenseType WindowsServer

 

Validate that the ASR Job completed successfully:

PS C:Usersbsiva> Get-AzureRmSiteRecoveryJob -Job $Job1

Name : xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx
ID : /Subscriptions/xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx/resourceGroups/Contoso-Recovery/providers/Microsoft.RecoveryServices/vaults/Contoso-RecoveryVault/repl
icationJobs/xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxx
Type :
JobType : UpdateVmProperties
DisplayName : Update the virtual machine
ClientRequestId : xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx-2016-10-19 18:50:18Z-P ActivityId: xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx
State : Succeeded
StateDescription : Completed
StartTime : 10/20/2016 12:20:18 AM
EndTime : 10/20/2016 12:20:22 AM
TargetObjectId : xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx
TargetObjectType : ProtectionEntity
TargetObjectName : Contoso-EngWikiDB
AllowedActions :
Tasks : {Update the virtual machine properties}
Errors : {}

 

And that’s it! You are now all set to migrate your application to Azure.

Migrate to Azure

With ASR now setup to let you migrate to Azure and benefit from HUB, all that’s left to do is the final step of migrating your application to Azure. You can do this from the Portal or using ASR PowerShell cmdlets. To do this from the portal, go to your Recovery Services vault, select the replicated machine or recovery plan if you’ve set one up, and select the Failover action.

 

Once the failover job completes successfully, you’ll find your migrated VM among the virtual machines in your subscription. Verify that your VM is utilizing the licensing benefit.

At this point you can clean up the replications you had setup in your Recovery services vault by selecting Complete Migration and retire the on-premises infrastructure that you were previously using to host your application.

Migrating to the cloud was never easier. With a few simple steps you can easily migrate your existing applications and benefit from the superior cloud economics and power of the hyper-scale platform that Azure is.

This is awesome, where do I learn more about leveraging ASR to provide business continuity for my IT infrastructure, or to migrate my applications to Azure?

You can  check out additional product information, and start replicating your workloads to Microsoft Azure using Azure Site Recovery today. You can use the powerful replication capabilities of Site Recovery for 31 days at no charge for every new physical server or virtual machine that you replicate. Visit the Azure Site Recovery forum on MSDN for additional information and to engage with other customers, or use the ASR UserVoice to let us know what features you want us to enable next.

Azure Site Recovery, as part of Microsoft Operations Management Suite, enables you to gain control and manage your workloads no matter where they run (Azure, AWS, Windows Server, Linux, VMware or OpenStack) with a cost-effective, all-in-one cloud IT management solution. Existing System Center customers can take advantage of the Microsoft Operations Management Suite add-on, empowering them to do more by leveraging their current investments. Get access to all the new services that OMS offers, with a convenient step-up price for all existing System Center customers. You can also access only the IT management services that you need, enabling you to on-board quickly and have immediate value, paying only for the features that you use.
Quelle: Azure