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Extending Your Data Center To The Azure Cloud

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In part 1 of my series on using Windows Azure as a disaster recovery site, I explained how to create a site-to-site VPN tunnel to Azure Cloud using Windows Server 2012 R2 Routing and Remote Access (RRAS). Now that the two sites are connected, I’m going to walk you through the steps required deploy your first VM in the Windows Azure IaaS Cloud and add it to your on-premise network as a Domain Controller. I will assume you have already done the following:

  • Have a functioning on-premise Active Directory
  • Have complete the steps to create a site-to-site VPN connecting your on-premise datacenter to the Azure Cloud and the VPN is connected.
  • Have created an Azure account and are familiar with logging in and basic management features

At this point we are ready to stat. Open the Windows Azure Portal. You should minimally see the Virtual Network the we previously created listed when you select the “All Items” category on the left.

Extending Your Datacenter To The Azure Cloud

To provision your first VM, click on the “Virtual Machines” in the left hand navigation pane and click “+New” in the bottom left hand corner.

Extending Your Datacenter To The Azure Cloud

For our purposes, we are going to create a new virtual machine from the gallery.

Extending Your Datacenter To The Azure Cloud

We will use the Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter Image.

Extending Your Datacenter To The Azure Cloud

Pick your machine size, username and password.

Extending Your Datacenter To The Azure Cloud

The next step has you create a “Cloud Service”, “Storage Account” and Availability Set. It also asks you where to place the VM. We will choose the Virtual Network that you previously created when you created your site-to-site VPN. We will create a new Cloud Service and Storage Account. The rest of the VMs we will create later will make use of the different accounts we create this first time through.

Extending Your Datacenter To The Azure Cloud

The final page lists the ports where you can administer this VM, but I’ll show you an easy way to RDP to it in just a moment.

Extending Your Datacenter To The Azure Cloud

Once the VM is provisioned it should look something like this.

Extending Your Datacenter To The Azure Cloud

If you click on the VM’s name you will be taking to the VM’s welcome screen where you can learn more about managing the VM

Extending Your Datacenter To The Azure Cloud

Click on Dashboard, this will give you some detail information about your VM. From here you will be able to click on the Connect button and launch an RDP session to connect to the running VM

Extending Your Datacenter To The Azure Cloud

Using the username and password you specified when you provisioned the VM, use the RDP session that opens when you click Connect to log in to the provisioned VM. Once connected, you will notice that the VM has a single NIC and it is configured to use DHCP. This is expected and DHCP is required. The VM will maintain the same internal IP address throughout the life of the VM through a DHCP reservation. Static IP addresses are NOT support, even though it may appear to work for a while should you change it to a static IP.

Also notice that if you configured you Virtual Network as I described in part 1 , the DNS server should point to the DC/DNS Server that resides in your onsite network. This will ensure that we are able to add this server to the on-premise domain in the next step.

Extending Your Datacenter To The Azure Cloud

Assuming your VPN is connected to the Gateway as shown below, you should be able to ping the DNS server on the other side of the VPN.

Extending Your Datacenter To The Azure Cloud

Ping the DNS server to verify network communication between the Azure Cloud and your on-premise network.

Extending Your Datacenter To The Azure Cloud

At this point you are able to add this server as a second Domain Controller to your domain, just as you would any other typical domain controller. I’m going to assume you know to add a Domain Controller to an Existing Domain and are familiar with other best practices when it comes to AD design and deployment.

The last step I recommend you update your Azure Virtual Private Network to specify this new DC as the Primary DNS Server and use the other on-premise DC as your secondary domain controller.

Click on Networks, then the name of the Virtual Private Network you want to edit.

Extending Your Datacenter To The Azure Cloud

Add the new DNS server to the list and click Save

Extending Your Datacenter To The Azure Cloud

From this point on when you configure servers in this Virtual Private Network, the VMs will be automatically configure with two DNS servers.

In Part 3 of my series on configuring Windows Azure for High Availability and Disaster Recovery, we will look at deploying a highly available SQL Server Failover Cluster Instance in the Windows Azure Cloud using the host based replication solution call DataKeeper Cluster Edition.

Reproduced with permission from https://clusteringformeremortals.com/2014/01/07/extending-your-datacenter-to-the-azure-cloud-azure/

Feb 25, 2015: Live Webinar – Clustering 101: Configuring a Windows Cluster Quorum – What You Need to Know

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Are you wondering how your Microsoft cluster quorum should be configured? Microsoft MVP Dave Bermingham will simplify your quorum configuration options and give you the building blocks to better define or improve your cluster and quorum configuration. Dave will also break down quorum configurations based on your current server version, upgrade advantages and he’ll showcase some new options to achieve a majority and tackle interesting cases such as: What happens if you have no shared storage or want to use the cloud as a file share witness…

You can participate before the event by tweeting your questions to @SIOSTech using #Clustering101 and of course bring your own questions and comments.

Register Now

Date: February 25, 2014
Time: 10:00a PST — 1:00pm EST

About Clustering 101 Series

Clustering 101 is a webinar series hosted by Microsoft MVP, Dave Bermingham focused on addressing the numerous facets of clustering for high availability, data replication and any combination there of. This series will air monthly, the fourth Wednesday of the month at 10:00a PST / 1:00p EST.

About Dave Bermingham

David Bermingham is recognized within the technology community as a high availability expert and has been honored by his peers by being elected to be a Microsoft MVP in clustering since 2010. David’s work as director, technical evangelist at SIOS Technology Corp., has him focused on Microsoft high availability and disaster recovery solutions as well as providing hands on support, training and professional services for cluster implementations. David holds numerous technical certifications and draws from more than twenty years of experience in IT, including work in the finance, healthcare and education fields, to help organizations design solutions to meet their high availability and disaster recovery needs. Learn more at www.us.sios.com

Boston.com: SIOS and Storage Switzerland Webinar Featuring Analyst George Crump Unveils HA and DR Must-Haves for High Availability and DR Protection in the Cloud

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SIOS Technology Corp., maker of SAN and #SANLess clustering software products, today announced a joint, live webinar featuring Storage Switzerland President and Founder George Crump and SIOS Technology Director of Field Engineering Tony Tomarchio. George and Tony will discuss the best practices for selecting a method of protecting Microsoft applications and data from downtime in an Amazon Web Services, Azure or other cloud environment.

The live webinar “HA and DR Must-Haves for High Availability and DR Protection in the Cloud” will be held on Wednesday, October 29, 2014 at 10:00a PST / 1:00p EST.

To register, please visit here: http://storageswiss.com/2014/10/07/ha-and-dr-must-haves/

In this webinar, attendees will learn:

  1. The advantages of a hybrid cloud or full cloud SQL Server environment
  2. The limitations of cloud environments when it comes to providing HA and DR
  3. The difficulty in implementing SQL Server in a “hybrid” fashion
  4. How to overcome these limitations to provide full HA and DR

George Crump, president and founder of Storage Switzerland, has more than 25 years of experience designing storage solutions for data centers across the U.S., he has seen the birth of such technologies as RAID, NAS and SAN. Prior to founding Storage Switzerland he was CTO at one the nation’s largest storage integrators where he was in charge of technology testing, integration and product selection.

At SIOS Technology, Tony Tomarchio is responsible for defining and delivering technical pre-sales services, support and best practices to SIOS customers, prospects and partners. Tony has more than a decade of experience providing systems management and high availability solutions to enterprise customers.

About SIOS Technology Corp.

SIOS Technology Corp. makes SAN and #SANLess software solutions that make clusters easy to use and easy to own. An essential part of any cluster solution, SIOS SAN and #SANLess software provides the flexibility to build Clusters Your Way™ to protect your choice of Windows or Linux environment in any configuration (or combination) of physical, virtual and cloud (public, private, and hybrid) without sacrificing performance or availability. The unique SIOS #SANLess clustering solution allows you to configure clusters with local storage, eliminating both the cost and the single-point-of-failure risk of traditional shared (SAN) storage.

Founded in 1999, SIOS Technology Corp. (www.us.sios.com) is headquartered in San Mateo, California, and has offices throughout the United States, United Kingdom and Japan.

SIOS, SIOS Technology, SIOS DataKeeper, SIOS Protection Suite, Clusters Your Way, and associated logos are registered trademarks or trademarks of SIOS Technology Corp. and/or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Contacts

Winkowski Public Relations, LLC for SIOS
Beth Winkowski, 978-649-7189
bethwinkowski@US.SIOS.com

5 Database Practices That Are Hurting Your Performance

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Experience matters, especially when administering database systems. The lessons we learn early in our careers, particularly the painful ones, stick with us a long time. This is mostly a good thing, but sometimes we apply the wrong lesson to the task in front of us. In database administration, it’s easy to head in the wrong direction, especially when we’re trying to balance the need for both efficiency and performance.

New lesson, different day

Most database administrators did not begin their careers as DBAs. Most of us started in development or system administration and eventually specialized in database systems. Unfortunately, some of the lessons learned along the way in those other fields are the exact wrong ones for a database system.

For example, system admins have to manage storage as efficiently as possible. Many central storage systems are sold to reduce storage use through consolidation. System and storage virtualization also seek to efficiently use technical resources by assigning the minimum resources possible to a particular workload.

DBAs also have to manage storage resources. The problem comes when DBAs manage storage the same way they did as general IT system administrators.

As DBAs, our primary goal is to make data usable for the business. While we don’t want to waste our platform resources, we also don’t want to cause problems through false efficiency.

Managing for best resource efficiency often leads to performance problems. This is especially true when trying to minimize the storage footprint of a Microsoft SQL Server database system.

5 Database Practices That Are Hurting Your Performance

Several common practices actually trade performance for space efficiency:

  • Using Auto-Grow to manage free space
  • Shrinking databases
  • Shrinking logs
  • Not rebuilding or reorganizing indexes
  • Shuffling backup files to offline storage

The last practice in the list is particularly frustrating. All businesses should have adequate backup storage to meet their recovery targets. Saving a small amount on the cheapest resource available (second- and third-tier storage) while wasting the most expensive resource available (skilled DBA time) is mismanagement at its worst.

Business management emphasizes cost savings, mainly because that is easily measured. But what business executives and users really want is a zero-problem IT infrastructure, including a database platform that performs quickly and consistently. Saving a few hundred dollars worth of storage space probably won’t even get you an “attaboy” from your boss. A slow database system or a missing critical backup will get noticed — just not the way you want.

When you are looking at your database management practices and processes, ask yourself, “What goal does this process enable?” Are you managing for performance or managing for space?

Consult the experts at SIOS to discuss solutions for your particular environment. Experienced technicians at SIOS can provide helpful insight to customers who are implementing high-performance, highly available SQL Server systems.