cloud technology

Resizing your Cloud Instance – When is the right time?

Bobby Varghese

Microsoft offers numerous options to choose from when it comes to selecting the best Azure compute instance for your workloads. Like we mentioned in our previous post about Azure Compute Instances, Microsoft offers 80 different instance types to their customers to choose from according to their workload sizes.

You can view the detailed specifications of various Azure Instances here.

We understand that it becomes overwhelming to pick the right Cloud instance to match the specific workload. But with the ever-changing workloads, enterprises need to continuously review and update their instances to match the delivery times and reduce costs.

Below are some signs which indicate that your current instance size is infeasible to run the application and that you should probably resize your Cloud Instance:

  • Long runtimes to complete a task,
  • Inability to meet customer demands on time, and
  • Need for more instances to support the workload.

In order to understand which compute instance to choose for their workload, admins should first learn about their computing requirements by running their applications in local environments and monitoring the performance to detect possible bottlenecks. On the basis of outcomes, they can decide on the number of processor cores, storage, memory, network bandwidth, etc., and can choose the instance that meets, and slightly exceeds, the estimated requirements.

But due to various limitations in the number of available virtual disks in certain instances, some applications still fail to run which force an admin to select a larger instance. Tools like Azure Diagnostics will help to measure the performance of an application within the instance. Admins can select that instance if their key metrics are met otherwise, they can try moving their workload in another instance.

 

If you are baffled by the number of options and are unsure about when to resize your Cloud Instance, get in touch with our Cloud experts by writing to us at info@sysfore.com. You can also give us a call at +91-80-4110-5555 and we’ll be happy to help.

 

 

Azure Compute Instances – Choose Wise, Choose Right

Bobby Varghese

Microsoft offers numerous options to choose from when it comes to selecting the best Azure compute instance for your workloads. Currently, there are 80 different instance types and we understand that choosing the best one can be overwhelming. In this article, we have listed various Azure compute instance types to help you select the one that best fits your workload size­.

Azure Compute Instances

Here’s an overview of available Azure Compute Instances:

A-series: used for general purposes, these instances provide consistent processor performance with a moderate amount of memory and disk capacity. However, additional processor cores and more network bandwidth can be added to some of these instances to compute-intensive tasks.

D-series: as compared to the A-series instances, these have more number of cores and provide more computing power and disk performance. Apart from this, they also provide temporary storage in the form of Solid State Drives (SSDs).

Dv2-series: using the same memory and disk configurations, these offer 35% more power than the D-series because of the use of newer processors that run in turbo mode.

DS-series, DSv2-series, FS-series and GS-series: These offer a powerful combination of faster CPUs, High Storage and Network Bandwidth for enterprise-grade applications. They also offer SSDs for caching and faster operations.

F-series: These VMs provide the same processor cores as the Dv2-series but what sets them apart is the per-hour operational cost of usage, which is usually lower in comparison.

G-series: offering the highest storage capacity, these usually run on servers having powerful Intel Xeon E5 V3 processors.

H-series: designed and optimized for high-performance computing (HPC) and networking, these instances can also run cluster applications, Modelling, and Simulations.

N-series: These VMs help to tackle the most demanding workloads by adding the processing capabilities of Graphic Processing Units (GPUs).

For more information, you can view the detailed specifications of various Azure Instances here.

 

 

 

If you are still baffled by the number of options and are unsure about which instance to choose for your enterprise, you can schedule a call with our Cloud experts by writing to us at info@sysfore.com or you can give us a call at +91-80-4110-5555.

 

 

Instant File Restoration – A whole new ball game for Data Backup on Azure

Bobby Varghese

Since its inception, Azure Backup has played a vital role in helping enterprises back-up their data on-premises or in the Cloud. Recently, besides Backup-as-a-Service, Microsoft introduced Restore-as-a-Service for instant restore of enterprise data.

Using this service, enterprises can recover their data from previously created restore points without paying additional costs. With Instant Restore, you can not only create a writable snapshot of the recovery point but once you do this, you can create one or more ISCSI based recovery volumes. These can be browsed to recover items by simple copy-paste method from recovery volumes to your favorite destinations.

Benefits of using Azure Backup for Instant File Recovery:

  1. Single restore process – an enterprise may use Azure Backup Agent to back its on-premises data or may use Azure VM Backup to protect Azure VMs. They can instantly restore their data using Restore-as-a-Service model. It acts as a one-stop mechanism to immediately recover an enterprise’s files and folders.
  2. 2. Instant recovery – the option to instantly recover files from Cloud backup of Azure VMs or on-premises file servers, is one of the main advantages of Azure Backup. Whether an enterprise has accidently deleted a file/folder or is simply validating a backup, instant restore helps in reducing the downtime drastically while recovering the files.
  3. Review before restore – users can run and check files with the help of applications such as Oracle and SQL directly from the Cloud recovery point snapshots, without having to first restore them. In this way, they can review the final list of files before restoring them.
  4. Flexibility in recovery – Since Azure Backup provides the entire snapshot of the recovery point and relies on a copy of items for recovery; enterprise users can restore many files from multiple folders to a local server or even to a network share of their choice.

According to a recent update from Microsoft, customers using Azure Backup Agent and Azure VM Backup (Windows VMs) can avail Azure Backup Instant Recovery of files for preview. Click here to check how to instantly recover the files from Cloud recovery points using Azure Backup Agent.

 

Contact Sysfore’s Cloud Disaster Recovery & Backup experts for your no obligation / no cost in-depth analysis to see just how simple and cost effective it is to implement a robust cloud Backup / Disaster Recovery plan for your Enterprise. Write to us at info@sysfore.com or call us on +91-80-4110-5555 to know more.