This document discusses Microsoft's efforts to improve availability and resiliency of virtual machines (VMs) on the Azure cloud platform. It outlines Microsoft's journey from 99.9% availability in 2014 to 99.999% availability in 2017 through improvements like availability sets, VM scale sets, region pairs, and availability zones. It also introduces "Tardigrade", described as the most resilient VM that can survive host reboots. The document provides examples of high availability architectures using these Azure services and features.

3. Agenda & Objectives

5. © Microsoft Corporation
Most Comprehensive Resiliency and SLA
Single VM
Protection with
Premium Storage
VM SLA 99.9%
Availability sets &
VM Scale Set
Protection against failures
within datacenters
Single VM & VM Scale Set
Protection from entire
datacenter failures
Region pairs
Protection from disaster with
Data Residency compliance
VM SLA 99.95% VM SLA 99.99% Regions 54

7. From Average Availability to AIR
2014
• Large outage starts
availability
improvements journey
2015
• Avail @99.99
2016
• Avail @99.995
2017
• Avail @99.999
2018
• AIR
improvements
• Reboot
avoidance for
most Firmware
updates
• Reboots, Blips
2019
• Tardigrade

8. What’s a
Tardigrade?
Tardigrade (1) – most resilient animal on Earth
• Survived outer space and dinosaurs
• Can hibernate and return to life after long exposure
to hostile environments
Tardigrade (2) – most resilient VM on Earth?
• VMs: can survive host reboot and continue running

9. Host platform Host platform
Enable app to survive spontaneous platform failures
Host platform
Host failures today Tardigrade
VM 1 VM 2 VM 3VM 1 VM 2 VM 3 VM 1 VM 2 VM 3
Host platform

11. “Poor Man’s” High Availability - Scenario

12. Intra-DC HA with VM Scale Sets and Availability Sets
Storage FD0
FD0 FD1
Storage FD1
FD2
Disks on separate storage FDs & aligned with VM FDs
Storage FD2
Managed
Storage
account 1
Managed
Storage
account 2
Managed
Storage
account 3
VM Availability Set
Managed Availability Sets

13. Shared Disks for High Availability
Premium SSD
(Single Writer)
Read Read
Shared Disk
Azure Disk
Read/
Write
Ultra Disks
(Multi Writer)
Read/
Write
Read/
Write
Shared Disk
Azure Disk
Read/
Write
Preview H2 CY19

14. Availability Zones
4
Protect applications from DC-level failures.
• An Availability Zone is made up of one or more physical datacenters.
• Each AZ is equipped with independent power, network and cooling.
Enable low latency synchronous replication.
• Inter-AZ latency diameter (VM-to-VM roundtrip) of <2ms.
• A minimum of three AZs in every supported region.
Region
Zone 2 Zone 3
Zone 1

15. Zone Redundant
Storage (ZRS)
Load Balancer
Standard (Zone
Redundant)
Virtual Machines
Virtual Machine
Scale Set
Managed Disks
Event Hubs
Express Route
Application
Gateway
VPN Gateway
Service Bus

16. Converging VMs and VMSS

17. Availability Sets compared to Scale Sets
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

18. Announcing: VM Mode VMSS PREVIEW

19. Proximity Placement Groups (In Preview)
An Azure VMs logical grouping
capability that you can use to decrease
inter-VM network latency.
Read the blog for regional availability and additional information.

20. Azure Compute service that provides
physical servers—able to host one or
more virtual machines—dedicated to
one Azure customer.

21. Your HA Strategy - Evaluating the options

22. 99.90% SLA (Content Delivery)
Single-Region, Multi-AZ
Region 1
PUBLISH 1DISPATCHER 1
Zone Redundant
APPLICATION GATEWAY
TCP 4503
Availability Zone 1
PUBLISH 2DISPATCHER 2
TCP 4503
Availability Zone 2
PUBLISH 3DISPATCHER 3
TCP 4503
Availability Zone 3
User
3
User
1
User
2

23. 99.95% SLA (Content Delivery)
Multi-Region, Multi-AZ
Region 1
Region 2
User
2
User
1
1
1
3
3
DNS query to (global) Traffic Manager
DNS response to client
TCP Connection to (regional) Application Gateway
1
2
3
2
2
Traffic Manager
Profile
Zone Redundant
Application Gateway
(SSL Termination)
Zone Redundant
Application Gateway
(SSL Termination)
Publisher 1Dispatcher 1
Publisher 2
TCP 4503
Availability Zone 1
Dispatcher 2
TCP 4503
Availability Zone 2
Publisher 3Dispatcher 3
TCP 4503
Availability Zone 3
Publisher 4Dispatcher 4
Publisher 5
TCP 4503
Availability Zone 1
Dispatcher 5
TCP 4503
Availability Zone 2
Publisher 6Dispatcher 6
Availability Zone 3

24. Availability Zone 1
User 1
Zone Redundant Load Balancer
Availability Zone 3
User 2
Availability Zone 2
App Server (Apache Tomcat)Zone Redundant VMSS
Zone Redundant VMSS Web Server (Apache HTTP)
Azure BLOB StorageZone Redundant Storage
Database (MySQL)Zone Redundant VMSS
Tungsten replication
Region 1
High Availability Architecture Sample (Simplified)
Synchronous Writes
HTTP
TCP 3306 Read/WriteRead Only

25. Availability Zone 1
User 1
Zone Redundant Load Balancer
Availability Zone 3
User 2
App Server (Apache Tomcat)Zone Redundant VMSS
Zone Redundant VMSS Web Server (Apache HTTP)
Azure BLOB StorageZone Redundant Storage
Database (MySQL)Zone Redundant VMSS
Tungsten replication
Region 1
High Availability Failure Sample (Simplified)
Synchronous Writes
HTTP
Availability Zone 2
Read Only TCP 3306 Read/Write

27. Azure Site Recovery: The Complete Migration & Disaster Recovery
Any OSWindows Linux
Private cloud to Azure Azure to Azure

28. Azure Site Recovery – Key capabilities







Perform DR
drills with
no
production
impact
Decide
when you
want to
failover
applications
Restore
application
s to primary
datacenter
DR for
compliance
needs

29. FastTrack for Azure
Build Azure solutions quickly and confidently
Discovery: Validate project scope, vision, requirements and
assess architectural needs
Solution Enablement: Guidance on solution architecture
design using proven practices and design principles, in
addition to providing advice and assistance to facilitate
solution PoC and dev/test environments
Deployment: Support in-house customer and/or partner
led deployment of Azure solution
Continuous Partnership: Provide periodic check-ins and
address additional workloads and deployment needs
Learn more:
FastTrack for Azure booth @ Deployment area
near the Expo center landmark
Azure.com/FastTrack
Customer Benefits
• Direct assistance from Azure engineers
and program managers
• Use proven practices and tools from real
customer experiences
• Accelerated deployment to full
production of Azure solutions

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