Building Hybrid Clouds with Azure Stack

Markus Klein, Susan Roesner

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781786468130
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Cloud Computing
• Index: Computer Science

Bring the power of Microsoft Azure Hybrid Cloud technology to your datacenter.About This Book• Build and deploy software-defined infrastructures and deliver Azure-based IaaS and Paas services in your datacenter• Use Azure Stack to leverage your current infrastructure with Microsoft Hybrid Cloud and get the best of both worlds• Unlock greater levels of performance and flexibility and save your organization money, time, and resourcesWho This Book Is ForThe book is for administrators and architects who are planning to implement or administer a hybrid cloud infrastructure using Microsoft Cloud Technology. This book is ideal for those who are looking forward to implement and run a hybrid cloud infrastructure with PaaS, SaaS and IaaS services.What You Will Learn• Gain a clear understanding of Azure Stack design• Set up storage, network and compute services in Azure Stack• Implement and run a hybrid cloud infrastructure with PaaS, SaaS, and IaaS services• Get an overview of the automation options in Azure Stack• Integrate Azure public services such as multi-factor authentication and Azure AD with Azure Stack• Learn about the services available in the futureIn DetailAzure Stack is all about creating fewer gaps between on-premise and public cloud application deployment. Azure Stack is the next logical evolution of Microsoft Cloud Services to create a true Hybrid Cloud-ready application.This book provides an introduction to Microsoft Azure Stack and the Cloud First Approach. Starting with an introduction to Microsoft Azure Stack Architecture, the book will help you plan and deploy your Microsoft Azure Stack. Next, you will learn about the Network and Storage option in Microsoft Azure Stack and you'll create your own private cloud solution. Finally, you will understand how to integrate Public Cloud Services with Microsoft Azure Stack and extend it using the 3rd Party Resource Provider.After reading the book, you will have a good understanding of an end-to-end process for designing, implementing, offering, and supporting cloud solutions for enterprises or service providers.Style and approachThis book is a practical guide to help you unlock a hybrid cloud stack using Azure Stack. Using a straight forward and easy to implement approach, this book guides you through the basic planning for a hybrid cloud stack, describes the infrastructure technologies Azure Stack is based on, and explains how to deploy and administer an Azure Stack-based infrastructure.

Managing and Administering Private Clouds with Microsoft Azure Stack

In the last eight chapters, we got an overview of the design, setup, and basic technology features of Azure Stack. This is more or less the technology. With this chapter, we go a little deeper into how you should do things, so we will talk about the following:

• Naming management
• Subscription management
• Resource management
• Security management

To design, manage, and administer private clouds with Azure Stack, you will need to align all these topics in a concept for your tenants and design offered based on these principles. Otherwise, you will be lost in the middle of nowhere at a certain point of time, but as tenants are already online and productive, you will have no chance to modify this wild design anymore. This is not only important for enterprise customers, it is more important for Hosting Service Providers (HSP) offering Azure Stack to tenants.

As HSP, you will have the chance to standardize your environments when you design the service offerings. As you should never do things manually with the Azure Stack portal, you should do them using PowerShell scripts. This makes sure that you will not make a mistake when configuring steps manually as humans make errors, which is normal. A PowerShell script with most of the configuration properties predefined makes sure that there will not any human mistake. More or less, this chapter talks about Azure Stack cloud governance, so we will set up some standards and defaults on which all operations in Azure Stack will be based. These design principles will define and take care.

Naming management

Before creating anything in Azure Stack, we need a good naming convention in place. A naming convention ensures that all the resources have a predictable name, which helps lower the administrative burden associated with managing these resources.

You might choose to follow a specific set of naming conventions defined for your entire organization or for a specific Azure subscription or account. Although it is easy for individuals within organizations to establish implicit rules when working with Azure Stack, when a team needs to work on a project on Azure Stack, that model does not scale well. The good thing is that you will maybe already have these conventions with Azure and as Azure Stack is relying on the same design concepts, they may be already set and just need to be modified to fit to Azure Stack design specifications.

Agree on a set of naming conventions up front; there are some considerations regarding naming conventions that cut across that sets of rules.

You should have naming conventions for the following Azure Stack resources:

• Subscriptions
• Storage accounts
• Virtual networks
• VPN gateway
• Subnets
• Availability sets
• Resource groups
• Virtual machines
• Network security groups
• Public IP address name

You also should consider some abbreviations for Azure Stack resources in common use.

We recommend that you follow abbreviations for some of the common Azure Stack resources listed earlier:

Resource or artifact	Abbreviation	Sample
Availability sets	avset	avset01 - n
Azure Resource Manager	arm	None
Environment	prod, stg, tst, dev	prod=Production; stg=Staging; tst=Testing; dev=Development.
Network security group	nsg	nsg01 - n
Resource groups	rg	rg01 - n
Storage accounts	sa	sa01 - n
Subscription	sub	sub01 - n
Subnets	subnet01	subnet...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Credits
• About the Authors
• About the Reviewer
• www.PacktPub.com
• Customer Feedback
• Preface
• The Microsoft Azure Stack Architecture
• Planning the Deployment of Microsoft Azure Stack for Private Clouds
• Deploying Microsoft Azure Stack
• Understanding Storage and Network
• Provisioning Virtual Machines
• Creating a Private Cloud Solution
• Understanding Automation in Microsoft Azure Stack
• Creating PaaS Services in Microsoft Azure Stack
• Managing and Administering Private Clouds with Microsoft Azure Stack
• Integrating Public Cloud Services with Microsoft Azure Stack
• Creating a Hybrid Cloud Solution
• Infrastructure as Code – Azure Functions and Other Future Scenarios