13. Datacenters around the world
Windows Azure
San Antonio, TX
Approx 477K sq ft, 27MW, uses recycled water for
cooling
Chicago, IL
707,000 square feet with critical power of 60
MW, uses water side economization, containers
Dublin, Ireland
Approx 570K sq ft, up to 27MW, uses outside air
for cooling.
30. Provision Virtual Servers
Deploy App Code
Configure Network
service
package
new virtual server new virtual server
Server Rack 1 Server Rack 2
61. An example: Mobistar
Three-day campaign
> 3mio unique visitors
Components used:
• Compute
• Storage
• Caching
Number of servers vs. actual load
• CDN
(Content Delivery Network)
62. An example: Syntra
Only uses the Access Control Service block
Reduces maintenance
No more identity integration issues
Moodle
Hosted Exchange
Other apps
64. AZUG.BE – Azure User Group Belgium
Monthly session around a Windows Azure related topic
National & international speakers
Community driven
www.azug.be
To build an application or solution in a legacy world, you have to think about network, OS, storage, and scale. But they have little to do with what you really want to build, an application.But what if there were a different way.
Talking points:This is Microsoft’s Northern Europe Datacenter (also known as Dublin). It is a so-called generation 3 datacenter, which means no “containerized” servers are in there. Instead, a large amount of racks are in the datacenter.Within RealDolmen, 2 persons have had the luck of being able to visit this datacenter on different times. Both came back, impressed, and could not stop talking about many of the environmental and security measures being taken. Unfortunately, those things are covered by an NDA. Some non-NDA items are, for example the fact that no one can enter the datacenter alone. Every room requires authentication, often with biometric scans. No human in the datacenter knows where which workload and thus your app resides within the datacenter. The datacenter decides this for itself based on security, privacy and load constraints.
Talking points:The Chicago datacenter is double the size of the Dublin datacenter.It is a generation 4 datacenter, which means: containerized and more efficient.
Talking points:When extra capacity is required in the datacenter, containers are “plugged” into the giant “USB ports” you see on this picture.
Talking points:- No cooling is required: containers are cooled, not the empty space in between. A container typically is either compute (servers) or cooling. The ones inb the picture probably always are servers below, cooling in the upper container.
Another view.
Talking points:The amount of servers in a typical Microsoft datacenter is enormous. Imagine a few thousand server racks, stuffed with 1 U or ½ U servers all running a couple of virtual machines. Nobody but large companies like Microsoft can provide that amount of power in a central location.
Talking points:To give you an example on how to combine blocks, look at a project we did with Mobistar. They had a campaign running for only 3 days with > 3mio unique visitors. After these 3 days, the app was still live for 14 days just showing a thank you page.To handle that load, a series of Compute instances on Windows Azure were used, a virtual server farm with a large number of services used on demand. For example, during nights we only had 2 servers running, at peak moments we scaled to > 50 servers. This resulted in an average consumption of compute resources which was a lot lower than having to buy or rent 50+ servers the whole time. I can not disclose the actual # of servers, but the total Windows Azure invoice (just the resources used) was only USD 580. Including VAT. FOR 50+ SERVERS!!!Next, we of course required storage. Some GB were used, but at USD 0.12 per month those were not expensive.Caching was used: session state for users had to be distributed over multiple servers, the caching block offers this functionality.CDN, the Content Delivery Network, was used to host images, CSS and JavaScript. Why bother the compute instances with static file hosting?
Talking points:Not only scaling out can be a reason to move to Windows Azure. For Syntra, we have a solution which uses the Access Control component to have users authenticate on their Active Directory from different applications like a hosted Exchange, a PHP-based Moodle installation, ...This solution does not require open firewall ports, minimal maintenance.This solution costs them 30 EUR per year. Including VAT.
Talking points:Another example is MyGet.MyGet uses a lot of the components in Windows Azure. It is a software-as-a-service, meaning anyone out there can use this application and eventually pay for using it.The business model was uncertain: would it work? Would people like it and use it? Or was it doomed from the start?To cover that uncertainty, Windows Azure was the platform of choice: it provides a rich set of services (compute, storage, access control, database, a global deployment on 2 continents, ...).Running in 2 datacenters globally, MyGet only costs 150 EUR incl. VAT in pure computational resources. Or 5 EUR per day. This means, if the application would have proven not to work, letting it “fail” and taking it offline would be possible at any time, without the risk of having a few servers that were bought or leased for three years sitting idle.