Kategorie: Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Innovation in RAN Analytics and Control

Currently, Microsoft is working on RAN Analytics and Control technologies for virtualized RAN running on Microsoft Edge platforms. Our goal is to empower any virtualized RAN solution provider and operators to realize the full potential of disaggregated and programmable networks. We aim to develop platform technologies that virtualized RAN vendors can leverage to gain analytics insights in their RAN software operations, and to use these insights for operational automations, machine learning, and AI-driven optimizations.

Microsoft has recently made important progress in RAN analytics and control technology. Microsoft Azure for Operators is introducing flexible, dynamically loaded service models to both the RAN software stack and cloud/edge platforms hosting the RAN, to accelerate the pace of innovation in Open RAN.

The goal of Open RAN is to accelerate innovation in the RAN space through the disaggregation of functions and exposure of internal interfaces for interoperability, controllability, and programmability. The current standardization effort of O-RAN by O-RAN Alliance, specifies the RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) architecture that exposes a set of telemetry and control interfaces with predefined service models (known as the E2 interface). Open RAN vendors are expected to implement all E2 service models specified in the standard. Near-real-time RAN controls are made possible with xApp applications accessing these service models.

Microsoft’s innovation extends this standard-yet-static interface. It introduces the capability of getting detailed internal states and real-time telemetric data out of the live RAN software in a dynamic fashion for new RAN control applications. With this technology, together with detailed platform telemetry, operators can achieve better network monitoring and performance optimization for their 5G networks, and enable new AI, analytics, and automation capabilities that were not possible before.

This year, Microsoft, together with contributions from Intel and Capgemini, has developed an analytics and control approach that was recognized with the Light Reading Editor’s Choice award under the category of Outstanding Use case: Service provider AI. This innovation calls for dynamic services models for Open RAN.

Dynamic service models for real-time RAN control

There are many RAN control use cases that require dynamic service models beyond those specified in O-RAN today, such as access to IQ samples, RLC and MAC queue sizes, and packet retransmission information. These high-volume real-time data need to be aggregated and compressed before being delivered to the xApp. Also, detailed data from different RAN modules across different layers like L1, L2, and L3 may need to be collected and correlated in real-time before any useful insight can be derived and shared with xApp. Further, a virtualized RAN offers so many more possibilities, that any static interface or service model may be ineffective in meeting the more advanced real-time control needs.

One such example occurs with interference detection. Today, operators typically need to do a drive test to detect external interference in a macro cell. But now, Open RAN has the potential to replace the expensive truck roll with a software program that detects interference signals at the RAN’s L1 layer. However, this will require a new data service model with direct access to raw IQ samples at the physical layer. Another example exists in dynamic power saving. If a RAN power controller can see the number of packets queued at various places in the live RAN system, then it can estimate the pending process loads and optimize the CPU frequency at a very high pace, in order to reduce the RAN server power consumption. Our study has shown that we can reduce the RAN power consumption by 30 percent through this method—even during busy periods. To support this in Open RAN, we will need a new service model that exposes packet queuing information.

These new use cases are envisioned for the time after the current E2 interface has been standardized. To achieve them, though, we need new RAN platform technologies to quickly extend this interface to support these and future advanced RAN control applications.

The Microsoft RAN analytics and control framework

The Microsoft RAN analytics and control framework extends the current RIC service models in O-RAN architecture to be both flexible and dynamic. In the process, the framework allows RAN solution providers and operators to define their own service models for dynamic RAN monitoring and control. Here, the underlying technology is a runtime system that can dynamically load and execute third-party code in a trusted and safe manner.

This system enables operators and trusted third-party developers to write their own telemetry, control, and inference pieces of code (called “codelets”) that can be deployed at runtime at various points in the RAN software stack, without disrupting the RAN operations. The codelets are executed inline in the live RAN system and on its critical paths, allowing them to get direct access to all important internal raw RAN data structures, to collect statistics, and to make real-time inference and control decisions.

To ensure security and safety, the codelets checked with static verified with verification tools before they can be loaded, and they will be automatically pre-empted if running longer than the predefined execution budgets. The dynamic code extension system is the same as the Extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF), which is a proven technology that has been entrusted to run custom codes in Linux kernels on millions of mission-critical servers around the globe. The inline execution is also extremely fast, typically incurring less than one percent of overhead on the existing RAN operations.

The following image illustrates the overall framework and the dynamic service model denoted by the star circle with the letter D.

The benefit of the dynamic extension framework with low-latency control is that it can open the opportunity for third-party real-time control algorithms. Traditionally, due to the tight timing constraint, a real-time control algorithm must be tightly implemented and integrated inside the RAN system. The Microsoft RAN analytics framework allows RAN software to delegate certain real-time control to RIC, potentially leading to a future marketplace where real-time control algorithms, machine learning, and AI models for optimizations may be possible.

Microsoft, Intel, and Capgemini have jointly prototyped this technology in Intel’s FlexRAN™ reference software and Capgemini’s 5G RAN. We have also identified standard instrumentation points aligned with the standard 3GPP RAN architecture to achieve higher visibility into the RAN’s internal state. We have further developed 17 dynamic service models, and enabled many new and exciting applications that were previously not thought possible.

Examples of new applications of RAN analytics

With this new Analytics and Control Framework, applications of dynamic power savings and interference detection described earlier can now be realized.

RAN-agnostic dynamic power saving

5G RAN energy consumption is a major OPEX item for any mobile operator. As a result, it is paramount for a RAN platform provider to find any opportunity to save power when running the RAN software. One such opportunity can be found by stepping down the RAN server CPU frequency when the RAN processing load is not at full capacity. This is indeed promising because internet traffic is intrinsically “bursty”; even during peak hours, the network is rarely operated at full capacity.

However, any dynamic RAN power controller must also have accurate load prediction and fast reaction in millisecond timescale. Otherwise, if one part of RAN is in hibernation, then any instant traffic burst will cause serious performance issues, or even crashes. The Microsoft RAN analytics framework with dynamic service models and low-latency control-loop makes it possible to write a novel CPU frequency prediction algorithm based on the number of active users, and changes in different queue sizes. We have implemented this algorithm on top of Capgemini 5G RAN and Intel FlexRAN™ reference software, and we achieved up to 30 percent energy savings—even during busy periods.

Interference detection

External wireless interference has long been a source of performance issues in cellular networks. Detecting external wireless interference is difficult and often requires a truck roll with specialized equipment and experts to detect it. With dynamic service models, we can turn an O-RAN 5G base station into a software-defined radio that can detect and characterize external wireless interference without affecting the radio performance. We have developed a dynamic service model that averages the received IQ samples across frequency chunks and times inside an L1 of the FlexRAN™ reference software stack. The service model in turn reports the averages to an application that runs an AI and machine learning model for anomaly detection, in order to detect when the noise floor increases.

Virtualized and software-based RAN solution offer immense potential of programmable networks that can leverage AI, machine learning, and analytics to improve network efficiency. Dynamic service models for O-RAN interfaces further enhances the pace of innovation with added flexibility and security.

Learn more

Learn more about Microsoft Azure for Operators from our website.
Microsoft Research Technical Report.
Microsoft’s Innovation in RAN Analytics is The Editor’s Choice for “the Outstanding Use Case: Service Provider AI” in the 2022 Leading Lights Award. Leading Lights 2022: The Winners | Light Reading.
Finalist in the Fierce Innovation Award–Telecom Edition 2022: Finalists | Fierce Telecom Awards.

Quelle: Azure

Microsoft named a Leader in the 2022 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Global Industrial IoT Platforms

As industrial Internet of Things (IoT) matures and transforms critical business functions, Microsoft continues to innovate and invest in this area and engage with a large ecosystem of solution partners.

The Microsoft Azure IoT platform can help industries improve their operations to become more efficient, agile, and sustainable. Industrial-focused IoT technologies from Microsoft are especially important for enterprises looking to do more with less in the current macro-economic environment.

We’re focused on enabling industrial IoT solution providers and customer operations to be successful, and those efforts haven’t gone unnoticed. For the third year in a row, Gartner has positioned Microsoft as a leader in the 2022 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Global Industrial IoT Platforms.

Leading the way in industrial IoT

In naming Microsoft as an IoT leader, Gartner cites our customer success, our technical strengths in security and manageability, and our focus on supporting end-to-end solutions, as well as our support for our ecosystem of partners. With a long history stretching to the early days of IoT technology, Microsoft remains committed to providing the evolving infrastructure that companies need to excel with IoT deployments. Our IoT technology is embedded in everything from inspecting vehicle build quality, to monitoring and shifting energy across utility grids, to recycling surplus manufacturing materials.

To continue leading on IoT technology and applications, we’re especially focused on supporting key areas that customers are prioritizing:

IT/OT convergence: Digital transformation in the industrial sector is increasingly bringing together IT—systems to collect and analyze data to manage processes—with operational technology (OT), which is dedicated to detecting and controlling physical processes. This IT/OT convergence allows for more direct and real-time monitoring, analysis, and control of industrial processes and enables increased automation, faster responses to challenges, and shifts in manufacturing or production rates. With Microsoft Azure IoT, operators can move toward this convergence with system openness and visibility, as well as security.

Cloud and on-site innovations: Microsoft Azure IoT provides a holistic approach to maintaining and securing digital infrastructure, handling and controlling data, and managing apps and databases no matter where they are. From high-performance computing in the cloud to edge and on-premises equipment, Azure can govern and help to secure servers, Kubernetes clusters, and apps with tools such as Azure Arc, Azure private multi-access edge compute (MEC), and Azure Stack HCI. They can provide consistent, fast, and seamless performance for scalable IoT systems spread across multi-cloud and on-premises locations.

Using digital twins and the metaverse: As IT/OT convergence continues, the ability to use digital replicas and virtual environments to evaluate or control machinery or simulate factory floor environments becomes more useful. Azure Digital Twins uses IoT spatial intelligence to create accurate models of processes or physical things. This lets operators test the effects of new production line configurations, new processes, and modifications to machinery without disrupting physical world operations. Immersive metaverse technology allows employees to virtually perform maintenance procedures or train for operating new industrial equipment before touching any physical assets. This is safer for employees and creates fewer production disruptions.

Security advancements: With IoT workloads moving between multiple clouds and on-premises environments with more flexibility than ever before, security is also more important than ever. This is especially critical with industrial IoT, where compromising critical systems could have serious consequences. The zero-trust security measures built into Azure are extensive and robust to secure cloud-based applications and data. With Azure Arc, customers can extend the familiar security controls of Azure to companies’ on-premises and edge infrastructures. Additionally, many of our solutions partners offer additional security as part of their offerings.

Collaborating with partners: The strength of Microsoft Azure IoT offerings lies in our partner ecosystem, which includes hundreds of systems integrators, independent software vendors, and device partners. These partners offer solution choices for a wide range of industries, including many industrial-related solutions. We work to give their solutions visibility to our customers to help match solutions with needs to address emerging challenges.

Shaping the future of IoT

We’re pleased that Gartner once again has recognized us as a Leader in Global IoT platforms with their Magic Quadrant recognition. As IoT applications continue to grow, more organizations are connecting their physical operations to the digital world to gain insights, optimize performance, and work toward sustainability. We continue to invest and evolve our broad Azure IoT platform, including our industrial IoT technologies, to help customers to accelerate their time to value on IoT investments and enable even more capabilities.

With our partners, we take our role as a Leader seriously in IoT platforms and products, and we plan to keep providing the products and support our customers need to move ahead with digital transformations.

Learn more

We invite you to learn more about the Azure IoT platform and products and explore the Azure Marketplace. You can also read the full complimentary Gartner Report.

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Global Industrial IoT Platforms, Al Velosa, Eric Goodness, et. al, December 12, 2022.

Gartner is a registered trademark and service mark and Magic Quadrant is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from Magic Quadrant for Global Industrial IoT Platforms.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
Quelle: Azure

Forrester study finds 228 percent ROI when modernizing applications on Azure PaaS

Using modern apps in the cloud to do more with less

There’s no denying the pivotal role developers play in today’s organizations. Whether you’re a high-tech company, a non-profit organization, or a fast-food restaurant, robust digital and online services are key to your customer success. Take the example of one of our customers, Jotun, a multinational chemical supplier—their customer-facing and sales applications are mission critical to their business. But with a small development team managing global applications on premises, the time and effort they spent on routine management and administration was extensive.

The company decided to embrace application modernization—ending investments in on-premises structures—and migrate their apps to Microsoft Azure with Azure App Service. In addition to eliminating routine maintenance tasks and increasing uptime, the new approach enabled them to scale developer expertise, deliver high application performance from anywhere in the world, and begin the transition to a modern development, security, and operations (DevSecOps) approach—all while lowering costs and accelerating time to market.

Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) represents one of the most cost-effective ways to strategically shift resources to application innovation, rather than spending time managing application infrastructure. Azure PaaS services like Azure App Service, Azure Spring Apps, and Azure Integration Services provide developers and IT professionals with a fully managed application platform for building, deploying, and managing applications of all kinds—from the simplest website to the most complex business solution. Developers focus on innovation, and the cloud platform takes care of everything else. A new, commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Microsoft, The Total Economic ImpactTM (TEI) of Azure PaaS, details the significant business impact of this approach.

Through a series of customer interviews, Forrester finds that a composite organization—an anonymized aggregate profile of these customers—using Azure PaaS can realize:

A three year 228 percent return on investment (ROI), with a payback period of 15 months.
A 50 percent increase in the speed of application development.
A 40 percent reduction in app-dev related infrastructure costs.

Speaking with Azure customers, Forrester observed several common factors that drove their organizations’ decision to adopt Azure PaaS for modernizing applications. These include being part of a broader strategic initiative, the potential for cost savings, limitations with existing architectures, wanting to take advantage of cloud capabilities, the tight market for tech talent, and prior experience with Azure.

Simply put, this set of fully managed services offers a powerful tool for enterprises to equip their developers in the rapidly changing application landscape.

Retire legacy infrastructure, reduce server costs, and deliver value faster with Azure

Whether your goal is to modernize applications in the cloud, integrate with modern databases and AI, rapidly build apps with low-code platforms, or future-proof existing applications, Azure helps you to provide your developers with the right tools for the right job.

Let me tell you about several ways Azure's fully managed services can transform your organization’s application development process:*

Tackle application development infrastructure costs

Whether you’re operating in an on-premises or hybrid environment, Azure PaaS supports your migration needs efficiently, enabling you to retire legacy infrastructure after applications are fully migrated.

Forrester estimates total application development-related infrastructure cost savings for the composite organization at USD19.1 million over three years during this process.

Rely on trusted cloud infrastructure and security management

While migrating to virtual machines is sometimes the simplest and fastest path for many organizations, application modernization provides the full benefits of the public cloud. PaaS makes this easier because now companies benefit from the cloud provider managing the underlying infrastructure and software of the platform. The cost savings for the composite organization begin almost immediately, with Forrester research showing estimated savings of USD10.3 million on related administrative costs over three years.

Free developers to focus on innovation

Developers are at their best when they’re given time to focus on innovating and developing new applications. Modernizing with PaaS helps increase productivity using dev/test and staging environments, provides the ability to run on the latest versions of the OS, languages, and framework, and enables the use of modern DevOps practices such as continuous integration and continuous delivery. The potential for savings for the composite organization is up to USD7.2 million over three years.

Prioritize application uptime

Offloading management of infrastructure not only reduces the immediate spending, but also ensures that the service provider is responsible for maintaining a 99.95 percent SLA uptime. The resiliency inherent in the fully managed service approach provides peace of mind to the developers in the composite organization and an estimated USD3.8 million in avoided revenue losses over three years.

Reap immediate benefits for your business

With an efficient and reliable platform that works out of the box, developers increase the speed of application development by up to 50 percent. The improved time to market saves the composite organization USD2.8 million over three years and enhances the organization’s ability to serve customer needs better.

Excited? Learn more about how to modernize your enterprise applications today

Azure PaaS helps organizations confidently take the next step to modernizing applications—paving the way for maximizing IT budget and resources, aligning stakeholder priorities, supplementing cloud skillsets, and even unifying the security approach. The methodical analysis of business value in the Forrester TEI study reinforces that this has both tangible economic impact as well as unquantified benefits to help you become a digital leader.

At the recent Microsoft Ignite 2022 conference, we shared our unique approach to helping organizations modernize their .NET, Java, and other workloads. Learn more about Azure App Modernization and get started with free Azure credits.

If you are ready to begin, check out our partner portal, where you can learn about Microsoft partners who have specialized services for your application requirements.

Join us for this free webinar to learn more about the Forrester Total Economic Impact of Microsoft Azure PaaS study.

Bookmark the Apps on Azure blog to keep up with our expert coverage and product announcements.

Follow Microsoft Azure on Twitter for the latest news and updates.

*Disclaimer: In this study, Forrester provides the detailed assumptions and methodology used to arrive at these estimates. We encourage readers to use their own estimates within the framework provided in the study to determine the appropriateness of an investment in Azure PaaS.
Quelle: Azure

Microsoft Azure CLX: A personalized program to learn Azure

The rise of cloud computing has created demand for proven cloud experts. That’s why we’ve launched the Microsoft Azure Connected Learning Experience (CLX) program, designed to help aspiring learners and IT professionals become Microsoft Azure cloud pros. CLX is a personalized and self-paced journey that culminates in a certificate of completion—allowing you to maximize learning while minimizing time invested.

What is the CLX program?

The CLX program is a four-step program that prepares you for the Microsoft Azure certification exams while optimizing your learning experience and minimizing time invested. The program, which is curated to meet every learner’s unique needs, consists of four steps:

A knowledge assessment
A Microsoft Learn study materials review
A practice test
A cram session

At the start of the program, you’ll take a knowledge assessment to test your skills and create a personalized learning path. You’ll then take only the Microsoft Learn courses that are useful to you—saving you time and ensuring that you learn the skills you need to accelerate your career.

What courses will I take?

The courses you take are up to you. The self-paced program is catered to your skillset, and you can embark on six tracks: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals, Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals, Microsoft Azure Data Fundamentals, Microsoft Azure Administrator, Administering Windows Server Hybrid Core Infrastructure, and Windows Server Hybrid Advanced Series—with more on the way. Learn more about these tracks below.

Course
Learner Personas
Course Content

Microsoft Azure Fundamentals
Administrators, Business Users, Developers, Students, Technology Managers

This course strengthens your knowledge of cloud concepts and Azure services, workloads, security, privacy, pricing, and support. It’s designed for learners with an understanding of general technology concepts, such as networking, computing, and storage.

Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals
AI Engineers, Developers, Data Scientists

This course, designed for both technical and non-technical professionals, bolsters your understanding of typical machine learning and artificial intelligence workloads and how to implement them for Azure.

Microsoft Azure Data Fundamentals
Database Administrators, Data Analysts, Data Engineers, Developers

The Data Fundamentals course instructs you on Azure core data concepts, Azure SQL, Azure Cosmos DB, and modern data warehouse analytics. It’s designed for learners with a basic knowledge of core data concepts and how they’re implemented in Azure.

Microsoft Azure Administrator
Azure Cloud Administrators, VDI Administrators, IT Operations Analysts

In Azure Administrator, you’ll learn to implement cloud infrastructure, develop applications, and perform networking, security, and database tasks. It’s designed for learners with a robust understanding of operating systems, networking, servers, and virtualization.

Administering Windows Server Hybrid Core Infrastructure
Systems Administrators, Infrastructure Deployment Engineers, Senior System Administrators, Senior Site Reliability Engineers

In this course, you’ll learn to configure on-premises Windows Servers, hybrid, and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platform workloads. It’s geared toward those with the knowledge to configure, maintain, and deploy on-premises Windows Servers, hybrid, and IaaS platform workloads.

Windows Server Hybrid Advanced Series
System Administrators, Infrastructure Deployment Engineers, Associate Database Administrators

This advanced series, which is designed for those with deep administration and deployment knowledge, strengthens your ability to configure and manage Windows Server on-premises, hybrid, and IaaS platform workloads.

How do I get certified?

After you finish your personalized curriculum, you’ll complete a two-hour practice test that mimics the final certification exam. Next, you’ll attend a virtual, instructor-led cram session that dives deeply into the Microsoft Azure Certification Exam content. The four-hour session covers the entire course syllabus to ensure you’re well-prepared to pass with ease.

Once you’ve sharpened your understanding of the Azure platform and its solutions, you’ll receive your certificate of completion. You’ll also walk away with the skills to confidently pass the Microsoft Azure Certification Exams—and the proven expertise to advance your career and exceed your cloud computing goals today and in the future.

To learn more and register, visit the Microsoft Cloud Events Portal or check out our Microsoft Azure CLX introductory video.
Quelle: Azure

Start learning Azure today with new role-based skill guides

It’s crucial to keep learning the latest cloud technology skills if you want to stay competitive in your field. Whether it’s a network at risk from an outside threat, data being improperly backed up, or a problem debugging an app, you’re on the front line of maintaining your company’s bottom line. Our series of role-based Azure Skills Navigator guides are designed to help you explore and develop these abilities, and we’re thrilled to announce the release of new guides for Network Engineers, Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR), and Java.

Network Engineers
Train yourself to recommend, plan, and implement Azure networking solutions, including hybrid networking, connectivity, routing, security, and private access to Azure services. Start your networking journey in the cloud by understanding the basic tenets of Azure networking, how to configure hybrid connections, and manage the solutions for performance, resiliency, scale, and security.

Backup and Disaster Recovery
Explore why centrally managed backup for on-premises and cloud data is best for reducing the management burden and costs of a BDR infrastructure while also optimizing the speed and reliability of backup and data-recovery operations. Next, dive into the Azure backup architecture and learn how to design your backup and recovery solution and then configure, deploy, and troubleshoot your BDR solution.

Java
Discover the host of reasons why developers prefer building Java applications in Azure, from the ability to build, debug, and deploy Java applications using their favorite development environments, to quickly adding services and capabilities and integrating them with other apps and services in the Microsoft partner ecosystem. And not least of all, the productivity bonus of not having to manage infrastructure during development.

Additional curated guides to strengthen your Azure expertise

Each guide is carefully curated with downloadable digital training, videos, certifications, and more, and is streamlined so you get the maximum result in the minimum amount of time. You can learn at your own pace, and once you’ve conquered the foundations, you can continue with advanced-level content to further strengthen your Azure expertise. No matter your current proficiency, you’ll find something new and exciting to learn.

Don’t forget about our original line-up of Azure Skills Navigator Guides:

System Administrators
Deepen your knowledge of Azure fundamental concepts of cloud computing and core infrastructure services, management, monitoring, security, and compliance with this beginner’s guide.

Solution Architects
Explore core solutions then move on to solution design principles, including security and compliance, and discover deployment tools and methods to help bring your solution architectures to life.

Developers
Enjoy an overview of key concepts crucial to establishing a strong Azure foundation, including Java, .NET, Node.js, and Python, and in order to build apps with low-code techniques to simplify, automate, and transform business tasks and processes.

AI Developers
Use this learning path to grow your cloud AI skills with videos, tutorials, and training modules, and prepare for the Azure AI Fundamentals Certification to leverage AI to create innovative apps. This course is part of our Zero to Hero journey, a 30-day skilling path designed to help developers and engineers get started on Azure.

Data Engineers
Bring together data integration, enterprise data warehousing, and big data analytics at cloud scale in this Zero to Hero course that instructs you in Azure Synapse—a unified experience enabling you to leverage data to unlock powerful insights.

Data Scientists
Create innovation solutions for complex problems in the cloud, which is increasingly the destination for machine learning projects—a place for easy, cost-effective experiments and scale at any level of expertise or demand. This course is part of our Zero to Hero journey.

Learn more

Don’t see your field represented? We’re developing new guides all the time, so stay tuned for updates. In the meantime, check out all the knowledge sharing Microsoft has to offer by visiting the Azure training and certifications homepage and visit the Azure Skills Navigator guides to explore the new role-based guides.
Quelle: Azure

Azure Storage Mover–A managed migration service for Azure Storage

File storage is a critical part of any organization’s on-premises IT infrastructure. As organizations migrate more of their applications and user shares to the cloud, they often face challenges in migrating the associated file data. Having the right tools and services is essential to successful migrations.

Across workloads, there can be a wide range of file sizes, counts, types, and access patterns. In addition to supporting a variety of file data, migration services must minimize downtime, especially on mission-critical file shares.

In February of 2022, we launched the Azure file migration program that provides no-cost migration to our customers, via a choice of storage migration partners.

Today, we are adding another choice for file migration with the preview launch of Azure Storage Mover, which is a fully managed, hybrid migration service that makes migrating files and folders into Azure a breeze.

The key capabilities of the Azure Storage Mover preview are:

NFS share to Azure blob container

With this preview release, we focus on the migration of an on-premises network file system (NFS) share to an Azure blob container. Storage Mover will support many additional source and target combinations over the coming months.

Cloud-driven migrations

Managing copy jobs at scale without a coordinating service can be time consuming and error-prone. Individual jobs have to be monitored and any errors resolved. It’s hard to maintain comprehensive oversight to ensure a complete and successful migration of your data.

With Azure Storage Mover you can express your migration plan in Azure and when you are ready, conveniently start and track migrations right from the Azure portal, PowerShell, or CLI. This allows you to utilize Azure Storage Mover for a one-time migration project or for any repeated data movement needs.

Azure Storage Mover is a hybrid service with migration agents that you’ll deploy close to your source storage. All agents can be managed from the same place in Azure, even if they are deployed across the globe.

Scale and performance

Many aspects contribute to a high-performance migration service. Fast data movement through the Azure Storage REST protocol and a clear separation of the management path from the data path are among the most important. Each agent will send your files and folders directly to the target storage in Azure.

Directly sending the data to the target optimizes the performance of your migration because the data doesn’t need to be processed through a cloud service or through a different Azure region from where the target storage is deployed in. For example, this optimization is key for migrations that happen across geographically diverse branch offices that will likely target Azure Storage in their region.

What’s next for Storage Mover?

There are many steps in a cloud migration that need to happen before the first byte can be copied. A deep understanding of your data estate is essential to a balanced cloud solution design for your workloads.

When we combine that with a strategy to minimize downtime, and manage and monitor migration jobs at scale, then we’ve arrived at our vision for the Storage Mover service. This roadmap for this vision includes:

Support for more sources and Azure Storage targets.
More options to tailor a migration to your needs.
Automatically loading possible sources into the service. That’s more than just convenience; it enables large-scale migrations and reduces mistakes from manual input.
Deep insights about selected sources for a sound cloud solution design.
Provisioning target storage automatically based on your migration plan.
Running post-migration tasks such as data validation, enabling data protection, and completing migration of the rest of the workload, etc.

Learn more

Find out more with our service overview.
Learn how to deploy Azure Storage Mover.
Explore Storage Mover in the Azure portal.
Learn about Storage Mover PowerShell.

Quelle: Azure

3 key cloud adoption trends in migrating and modernizing workloads

In the past few years, organizations have weathered unprecedented change as they have had to adapt to macro-economic, political, and societal challenges. These challenges are not going away—the business outlook remains uncertain with ongoing concerns, including inflation, supply chain disruptions, and rising energy prices.

Microsoft believes the best way to prepare for this uncertainty is for organizations to do more with less—less complexity and cost, with more agility, resilience, and innovation. This means applying digital capabilities to extend what organizations can achieve amidst today’s constraints.

Moving workloads to the cloud provides more flexibility for organizations to align their IT investments with business needs while benefiting from cloud economies of scale. Modern infrastructure and cloud capabilities can also free up an organization’s IT workforce to focus on workloads and applications that are most meaningful to their customers.

To get a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by our customers and their plans around cloud adoption, Microsoft commissioned a global survey with more than 1200 IT decision makers.

The study revealed three key cloud adoption trends:

1. Cloud adoption plans remain integral to strategies in uncertain business climates

The survey found 62 percent of organizations have a migration and modernization strategy in place, showing the increasing importance of cloud adoption in IT transformation. Their top motivators are reducing total business costs, future proofing business strategy, and driving revenue growth. The survey also showed security, business continuity (BC), disaster recovery (DR), and scalability as top benefits desired from cloud migrations. That said, we expect that returns on investment (ROI) considerations will remain top of mind in the near term as customers prioritize cloud initiatives for implementation—be it optimizing their existing cloud workloads or moving additional workloads. This increased attention on cost optimization and the rise of financial operations teams (FinOps) is also echoed in the Flexera state of the cloud 2022 report, where for the sixth year in a row, optimizing the existing use of cloud (cost savings) was the top initiative, followed by migrating more workloads to the cloud.

Organizations are considering cloud adoption plans holistically across their entire IT infrastructure to better prepare for what’s next. Of the organizations we surveyed, the number who have more than half of their workloads in the cloud will grow from 27 percent to 47 percent over the next 18 months with investments spanning both business-critical and non-business critical workloads. Furthermore, the survey found organizations with a cloud migration and modernization strategy are 58 percent more likely to be ‘cloud-only’ (all or almost all applications and workloads running in the cloud) three years from now.

2. Modernization is a key focus for digital transformation

82 percent of surveyed organizations said migrating to the cloud is a steppingstone towards digital transformation. Migration is about getting workloads to the cloud—and modernization is about refactoring existing applications and workloads to take full advantage of cloud-native technologies like Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) or containers. Those surveyed told us 74 percent of workloads that have already migrated are candidates for modernization—modernizing workloads helps opens the door to digital transformation whether it’s speeding up product innovation cycles or personalized end-user experiences.

3. Hybrid and multicloud interoperability and integration are expected

Organizations continue to embrace multicloud and are looking for cross-cloud management and interoperability from their cloud providers. Underscoring our recent research on hybrid and multicloud earlier this year, customers surveyed want to retain investment flexibility along with best-of-breed cloud capabilities with 71 percent to continue implementing a hybrid or multi-cloud strategy.

Complexities of cloud-to-cloud integration, refactoring existing applications, and integration with legacy backends are a few of the barriers that can slow down cloud adoption. So, it’s no surprise that support from a dedicated migration and modernization team was ranked highest in surveyed customers’ wish list from cloud vendors. Post migration support, access to engineering resources, and help with technical skilling were other key areas that emerged from the survey.  These findings present significant implications for cloud providers as they define programs and investments to assist customers during uncertain times.

How Microsoft Azure can help customers with cloud migration and modernization efficiently

We have been on our own digital transformation journey since Microsoft began migrating on-premises workloads to the cloud in 2014. We have been transforming our IT footprint using built-in tools and data insights that Azure provides to optimize costs (such as Azure Advisor, Azure Cost Management and Billing, and Azure Monitor) and reinvesting in modernization for business growth. Today more than 95 percent of our workloads run on the cloud, and while our yearly budget for Azure has remained constant since 2014, Microsoft has grown by more than 20 percent. Our own journey and learnings inform how we can empower customers to best meet their current and future technology needs.

Our customers choose Azure as their platform of choice to meet their goals today and to build for the future tomorrow.

Fiserv, a global fintech and payment company, improved their payment processing infrastructure to simplify operations bringing benefits such as risk reduction and cost savings. Perrigo, a worldwide producer and supplier of consumer self-care products for businesses, unlocked agility and flexibility through streamlined finance workloads to build a single source of truth for finance. The Bank of Angola became the first bank in Angola to embrace digitization by moving to the cloud to innovate and improve processes and infrastructure. O2 Czech Republic, the leading telecommunications company in the Czech Republic, saw a 30 percent total cost of ownership (TCO) savings for every workload they moved while enhancing security and scaling their entertainment business.

We continue to invest deeply in helping our customers do more with less and get the most out of their Azure investments with our solutions.

Today we’re announcing a new total cost of ownership (TCO) or business case capability to help customers estimate how much they can save by migrating their Windows Server and SQL Server estate to Azure. This will be available within Azure Migrate, our free self-service migration tool that allows organizations to plan and execute their move to Azure. Try out this new capability and share your feedback.
Customers can optimize their cloud investments with our unique offers and pricing benefits. With unique offers like the Azure Hybrid Benefit (save costs by reusing software assurance enabled Windows, Server SQL Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and SUSE Linux licenses on Azure) and Extended Security Updates (free only on Azure), it’s up to 80 percent less expensive to run Windows Server and SQL Server VMs on Azure than it is with our main competitor. With Azure savings plan for compute, customers can significantly reduce resource costs by up to 65 percent compared to pay-as-you-go prices.
The Azure Migration and Modernization Program (AMMP) offers customers the right mix of expert help to reduce migration costs and accelerate their move—including technical skilling, engineering resources, specialized partners, and cost-effective incentives so customers are holistically set up for success.

At Microsoft, we are committed to helping our customers be successful, drive strong business outcomes and get the most out of their cloud investments, especially in challenging environments like today’s.

Learn more about some of our updates and other key cloud trends in my fireside chat with Dave McCarthy, Research Vice President, Cloud and Edge Infrastructure Services at IDC, where we discussed industry trends around cloud adoption, and the whitepaper on “The Business value of Migrating and Modernizing with Microsoft Azure."

Dive deeper into our global survey findings and methodology by downloading the full report here.

Sources: Flexera 2022 State of the Cloud Report: Cloud Migration Stats—2022 Flexera State of the Cloud Report IDC.

The Business Value of Migrating and Modernizing with Azure, sponsored by Microsoft Azure, #US49665122 Published: 9/24/2022.
Quelle: Azure