Azure eBook Series

Cloud anywhere:
Azure for hybrid and
multicloud environments
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 Cloud anywhere: 3
Azure for hybrid and multicloud environments

Contents
01 /
4 Introduction

02 /
7 Hybrid infrastructure fundamentals
9 01. Networking
14 02. Identity and access management
16 03. Security

03 /
18 Common hybrid use cases
19 01. Organise and govern across environments
21 02. At-scale Kubernetes application management
23 03. Run cloud services anywhere
25 04. Regulatory, isolated, and disconnected workloads
28 05. Remote branch offices
30 06. Deploy compute and AI on the edge
32 07. Migrate and manage applications across VMware environments

04 /
34 Conclusion
Cloud anywhere: 4
Azure for hybrid and multicloud environments

01 /
Introduction
 Cloud anywhere: 5
Azure for hybrid and multicloud environments

The cloud is the foundation over a wide variety of considerations.

Hybrid cloud infrastructure is a natural
of digital transformation. evolution of information technology
Companies that strategically that typically happens at a gradual pace.
leverage the hybrid cloud Companies transition some of their
hardware and software to cloud services
can capture significant value, and technologies, resulting in a computing
value that differentiates environment that combines on-premises,
them from their competitors multicloud and edge computing, using
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-
with improved time to as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-
market and flexibility in as-a-Service (IaaS). Many enterprise IT
managing costs and scale. managers – as many as 85% according to
one study – have focused on hybrid cloud
as the best model for their business.2
Today, 94% of companies use the cloud
in some way,1 but every company moves
A key challenge for these companies,
to the cloud at a different pace and has
however, is providing a truly integrated
different strategies and priorities for
solution across their environments for
what needs to be deployed to the cloud.
users, developers and administrators.
Some will adopt cloud computing to
To help businesses deal with the
solve an urgent business need; others
increasing complexity of blended
will have a longer term, planful cloud
infrastructure – often with tens of
migration. Either way, the ongoing effort
thousands of applications – IT managers
to improve business operations and create
need to manage and maintain
an agile development process can have
environments that span on-premises
organisations working in IT environments
technology, multicloud services and edge
that span across on-premises, multicloud,
devices. This challenge is particularly
and edge infrastructure.
serious for companies with legacy IT
assets – or those with complex regulatory
While some may argue that hybrid cloud
or edge computing requirements – that
is a stepping-stone to a fully in-the-cloud
must keep up with the pace of innovation.
business, many companies recognise that
a hybrid cloud strategy is not transitional,
As the central IT team, you need to find
but a part of optimising infrastructure
a way to build and maintain a platform,
 Cloud anywhere: 6
Azure for hybrid and multicloud environments

regardless of where in your environment it This eBook aims to show you best
runs. You also need to manage your hybrid practices – including what you should look
environment in a way that maximises out for and the fundamental steps any
productivity and agility without ever company needs to take to enable hybrid
sacrificing important concerns like security environments. It also provides you with
and compliance. some insights into common use cases
for hybrid cloud, some of which may
To help your IT team respond to the be instantly relatable and others which
need to work efficiently in a complex may present new ideas for how to work
environment, Azure offers services that in a hybrid environment. After a quick
help you to govern and manage across description of three important factors in
your environment, build apps and deploy setting up a hybrid cloud environment –
them to any location, deploy and manage networking, identity management and
Azure services on Kubernetes clusters and security – the eBook covers six different
deliver security across your organisation. hybrid use cases, allowing you to explore
With the ability to use on-premises, topics that are most relevant to
multicloud or edge technologies to your business.
develop, deploy, manage and secure your
application infrastructure, Azure hybrid
1
RightScale. ‘2019 State of the Cloud Report.’
cloud gives your team the ability to easily
Flexera RightScale, Feb. 2019, p. 2. https://
integrate a variety of technologies in a
resources.flexera.com/web/media/documents/
scalable, reliable and efficient architecture. rightscale-2019-state-of-the-cloud-report-from-
flexera.pdf. [PDF]

2
Nutanix. ‘The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Index
2019.’ Survey report. Nov. 2019.
https://www.nutanix.com/enterprise-cloud-index
Cloud anywhere: 7
Azure for hybrid and multicloud environments

02 /
Hybrid
infrastructure
fundamentals
 Cloud anywhere: 8
Azure for hybrid and multicloud environments

To build an optimal hybrid The Cloud Adoption Framework focuses

on bringing together heterogeneous
cloud infrastructure, components of a company’s infrastructure
businesses need to create – and delivering a single management,
a reliable, efficient and deployment and administrative platform.

secure foundation. The For this guide, rather than covering

following section covers all aspects of cloud adoption, we will

three fundamental areas instead take a look at three areas that

are of particular importance for those
that need to be understood organisations currently working in, or
to build that architecture: moving into, a hybrid or multicloud

networking, identity and environment: networking, identity and

access management and security.
access management
and security.
If you are planning a larger-scale migration
to the cloud, you can find guidance in the
Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure,
which aims to help IT professionals and
cloud architects define their cloud strategy
and migrate their on-premises workloads.
The framework focuses on assessing
the current infrastructure, migrating
applications and infrastructure to the
cloud, optimising their architecture
to reduce costs and managing their
workloads and data more securely.
In addition, by helping developers take
responsibility for their code – so-called
shifting left – the resulting applications
will be updated, patched and secured
more quickly.
 Cloud anywhere: 9
Azure for hybrid and multicloud environments

Hybrid In this eBook we focus only on the most

fundamentals common scenarios for connecting and

extending your existing network, as well
as one basic service for application delivery.
01. Networking For more detailed information about
Azure networking services please visit the
documentation here: https://docs.microsoft.
There are many ways to create a
com/azure/networking/networking-overview
reliable, yet cost-effective, network
that can act as the backbone of a
hybrid solution. Networks depend on
several areas of functionality. When you
think about your network architecture
in the cloud, it’s important that you
focus on the following areas:

• Connect and extend: Businesses

need to connect existing resources
and extend their own networks by
using technology such as VPNs,
ExpressRoute and Virtual WAN.

• Protect: Any connection could be

an entry point to the network,
so your company should protect
itself with the best tools available,
such as DDoS protection, firewalls
and web application firewalls.

• Deliver: A great customer experience

requires a network built for application
delivery, with Azure Front Door and
Application Gateway technologies.
 Cloud anywhere: 10
Azure for hybrid and multicloud environments

Connect and extend

VPN connection
A virtual network gateway sends encrypted traffic between an Azure Virtual Network (VNet) and
an on-premises location using the public internet. This architecture is suitable for hybrid applications
where the traffic between on-premises hardware and the cloud is likely to be light, or you are willing
to trade slightly extended latency for the flexibility and processing power of the cloud.

• Benefits: Simple to configure; cost-effective; much higher bandwidth

available (up to 10 Gbps depending on the service).

• Challenges: Requires an on-premises VPN device; reliability. (Microsoft guarantees 99.9%

availability for each VPN gateway, but the network connection may not be reliable).
 Cloud anywhere: 11
Azure for hybrid and multicloud environments

ExpressRoute with VPN failover

This option combines the previous two, using ExpressRoute in normal conditions, but failing over
to a VPN connection if there is a loss of connectivity in the ExpressRoute circuit. This architecture is
suitable for hybrid applications that need the higher bandwidth of ExpressRoute, and also require
highly available network connectivity.

• Benefits: High availability

• Challenges: More complex to configure than a VPN connection, as both external links
must be configured; requires redundant hardware and connections; more expensive

Virtual WAN
For companies with branch offices, Azure Virtual WAN can link those sites with optimised and
automated network connectivity to, and through, Azure. Azure Virtual WAN brings together
many Azure cloud connectivity services such as site-to-site VPN, user VPN (point-to-site) and
ExpressRoute into a single operational interface, enabling global transit network architecture
based on a classic hub-and-spoke connectivity model.
Read more about Virtual WAN here: https://azure.microsoft.com/services/virtual-wan/
 Cloud anywhere: 12
Azure for hybrid and multicloud environments

VNET VNET VNET

VNET VNET

Private Link
Azure Private Link enables you to access Azure PaaS (for example, Azure Storage, Azure Cosmos DB
and SQL Database) and Azure-hosted customer or partner services over a private endpoint in your
virtual network. Traffic between your virtual network and the service traverses over the Microsoft
backbone network, eliminating exposure from the public internet.

With Private Link, your company can:

• privately access services on the Azure platform,

• access services running in Azure from on-premises over

ExpressRoute private peering or VPN tunnels,

• gain protection against data exfiltration by mapping resources to

a specific instance of the customer’s PaaS resource,

• connect privately to services running in other regions and

• extend to your own services by placing your service behind a load

balancer to enable Private Link.
 Cloud anywhere: 13
Azure for hybrid and multicloud environments

Deliver
Azure Front Door
Every internet-facing web application, whether serving a large audience or a small set of users in a
single region, is by default a global application, placing demands on you to maximise performance
for your end users and ensure the application is always-on across failures and attacks. Azure Front
Door is a scalable and secure entry point for fast delivery of your global applications that gives
companies application and API acceleration, load balancing of HTTP traffic, scalable SSL offloading
and a web application firewall at the edge. Learn more about Azure Front Door: https://azure.
microsoft.com/services/frontdoor/
 Cloud anywhere: 14
Azure for hybrid and multicloud environments

Hybrid To choose an authentication method,

fundamentals you need to consider the time, existing

infrastructure, complexity and cost of
implementing your choice. These factors
02. Identity and are different for every organisation and will
likely evolve.

access management Azure AD supports the following

authentication methods for hybrid identity
Today, corporations are using a more
solutions:
complex mixture of on-premises and cloud
applications, with workers requiring access • Cloud authentication: Azure AD
across environments, making integrated handles the user sign-in process, which,
management critical. Identity solutions coupled with seamless single sign-on,
should leverage a common user identity allows users access to cloud and on-
for authentication and authorisation to all premises applications without having
resources, regardless of location. We call to re-enter their credentials. With Azure
this hybrid identity. AD password hash synchronisation,
users can use the same username
Choosing the correct authentication and password that they use on-
method is the first concern for premises without having to deploy any
organisations wanting to move additional infrastructure, gaining the
their applications to the cloud. additional benefit that passwords are
The authentication method is a critical not stored in the cloud, which can help
component of an organisation’s cloud satisfy regulations and protect against
infrastructure; it’s the foundation of all outages. With Azure AD Pass-through
the other advanced security and user Authentication, the servers validate the
experience features in Azure Active users directly with your on-premises
Directory (AD). Identity is the new Active Directory, which ensures that the
control plane, giving the business password validation doesn’t happen in
control amid the chaos of users, devices the cloud and which may be required
and a variety of connected endpoints, by industry or government regulations.
including applications, sensors and bots.
 Cloud anywhere: 15
Azure for hybrid and multicloud environments

• Federated authentication: For Hybrid identity also powers application

companies that cannot support in-the- management. Organisations often have
cloud authentication due to regulatory hundreds of applications that users
requirements, Azure AD hands off the depend on to get their work done, with
authentication process to a separate users accessing these applications from
trusted authentication system, such many devices and locations. With so many
as on-premises Active Directory applications and access points, it’s more
Federation Services, to validate the critical than ever to use a cloud-based
user’s password. While this approach is solution to manage user access to
not recommended, the authentication all applications.
system can provide additional
advanced authentication, such as
smart-card-based authentication
or third-party multifactor
authentication – an improvement
over strictly on-premises solutions.

Integrating your on-premises directories

with Azure AD makes your users more
productive by providing a common identity
for accessing both cloud and on-premises
resources. The solution synchronises on-
premises identities with Azure AD, while
IT keeps the on-premises Active Directory
running with any existing governance
solutions as the primary source of truth
for identities. Microsoft’s Azure AD hybrid
identity solution spans on-premises
and cloud-based capabilities, creating a
common user identity for authentication
and authorisation to all resources
regardless of their location.
 Cloud anywhere: 16
Azure for hybrid and multicloud environments

Hybrid your IT team access to real-time security

fundamentals analytics and threat intelligence across the

enterprise, providing a single solution for
alert detection, threat visibility, proactive
03. Security hunting and threat response.

As breaches continue to affect business,

As operations and applications expand
quick discovery and remediation
across on-premises, multicloud and edge
become essential for the security of your
infrastructure, security becomes complex.
infrastructure. Azure Sentinel collects
In this era of frequent data breaches,
data across all parts of your hybrid cloud
having a cloud platform that protects
architecture and from other cloud providers
databases and unstructured data lakes is
as well, supporting multicloud strategies.
critically important. Azure gives companies
By combining global and industry threat
two ways to manage security from a
intelligence, the platform can also detect
single place.
sophisticated attackers and reduce false
positives. Azure Sentinel incorporates
Azure Security Centre
artificial intelligence (AI) to help companies
Azure Security Centre allows businesses
respond more quickly, and in the right way,
to manage their security postures across
to investigate each threat.
every infrastructure from a single portal
by setting policies for different resources,
Building on the full range of existing
monitoring for violations and anomalies
Azure services, Azure Sentinel natively
and performing common security tasks,
incorporates proven foundations, like Log
such as patching, compliance testing
Analytics and Logic Apps. Azure Sentinel
and configuration management. Security
enriches your investigation and detection
is a part of the fabric of Azure, giving
with the Microsoft threat intelligence
companies capabilities that specific
stream and enables you to bring your
applications or services might not
own threat intelligence by adding AI and
otherwise have.
machine-learning features.

Azure Sentinel
Azure Sentinel is a scalable, cloud-
native, security information and event
management (SIEM) as well as a security
orchestration automated response
(SOAR) solution. The capability gives
 Cloud anywhere: 17
Azure for hybrid and multicloud environments

Azure Sentinel capabilities

Cloud anywhere: 18
Azure for hybrid and multicloud environments

03 /
Common
hybrid use
cases
 Cloud anywhere: 19
Azure for hybrid and multicloud environments

01. Organise and Example

An insurance company has IT assets

govern across with different regulatory requirements?

Some of their workloads are in Azure,

environments some in corporate data centres and

recently, different public clouds. Each
system – and potentially each location
Infrastructure exists in a variety of locations:
and form factor – has its own way of
from traditional branch offices and data
operating. The more devices and locations
centres to edge locations like a factory
that are added, the more difficult the
floor, or in a cloud provider’s infrastructure
sprawl of technologies is to keep under
as a service offering. Those servers and
control. As the sprawl of technologies
clusters may be running Windows Server,
expands, people skills and processes
Linux or Kubernetes, either as a physical
struggle to keep up with the changes.
server or a virtual machine. Managing
these different systems across locations,
Solution
operating systems and form factors has
There are millions of resources from over
historically been difficult and inconsistent.
200 different kinds of services in Microsoft
data centres and around the world. Azure
Resource Manager is the technology that
Microsoft built to coordinate the life cycle
and operations of those resources in a
standardised way. It enables customers
to inventory, organise and control their
Azure resources. Azure Arc extends Azure
Resource Manager to servers and clusters
outside of Microsoft data centres. Azure
Resource Manager provides capabilities via
Azure Arc in a few main areas, such as:

• Organisation and inventory:

Resource groups, tagging, search
and index. For example, Azure Arc
enabled servers can be tagged with
‘Cost Centres’ and ‘Locations’ and
Azure can be used to search for
all HR servers running in DC1.
 Cloud anywhere: 20
Azure for hybrid and multicloud environments

• Governance and compliance: Logs, policy, blueprints. For example, Azure Policy can be used
on Arc-enabled clusters and servers to provide central governance by defining guardrails.

• Access and security: Role-based access control, locks and subscriptions. For example, an
operations team can easily delegate control of a resource to a subset of administrators.
Those administrators would be able to access resources and remediate issues as needed.

• Environments and automation: Azure templates and extensions. For example, a policy could
be authored that required all resources in a specific resource group be managed by Azure
Security Centre via a virtual machine extension.

By linking resources and assets to the Azure Resource Manager, you can actively manage your
company’s environment, even if the resources reside in other cloud providers’ infrastructure.
The control plane is domain agnostic, so trust between domain controllers is not required and
your teams can continue to use their local tools.

Azure Management
Single control plane for resources everywhere

Monitoring | Update | Containers | Backup | Security Centre | More...

Organisation and Inventory

Organisation and Inventory

Where to go next?
Azure Arc
Video: Organise all your servers outside of Azure with Azure Arc
 Cloud anywhere: 21
Azure for hybrid and multicloud environments

02. At-scale Example

A retailer with hundreds of stores would

Kubernetes like to move all in-store applications to

containers running on Kubernetes clusters.

application The IT team is faced with the challenge of

how to uniformly deploy, configure and

management manage their containerised applications

across multiple locations. The retailer
needs to bootstrap a new store to fully
Containers have seen wide enterprise
run with a specific set of applications, while
adoption and have become the standard
enforcing the necessary configuration and
for deploying business applications.
deployment practices. In addition, IT needs
Many new applications are written
to be able to apply and monitor the state of
as microservices built on Kubernetes
applications and configuration in all stores,
clusters. Even existing software is being
as well as their state of compliance.
modernised by rebuilding it as containers.
But how can you manage these clusters
Solution
and applications at scale without slowing
Using Azure Arc, companies can deploy
down the innovation and developers in
a new application to multiple locations
your company? To illustrate this further
easily, using a single policy to lock down
let’s introduce a hypothetical use case.
network ports and other policies to handle
common misconfiguration. As a service
hosted on Azure Kubernetes Service
(AKS) handles critical tasks like health
monitoring and maintenance, mounting
storage volumes and tasking GPU-
enabled nodes for parallel processing.

In addition, the application policies can

be linked to specific GitHub repositories
so that commits to the main branch of
the application will deploy the software
with all the correct policies in place.
Using such continuous deployment
technology, companies can easily
 Cloud anywhere: 22
Azure for hybrid and multicloud environments

keep their applications up-to-date

and compliant with their policies.

Finally, all the clusters at branch locations

will be managed by Azure Arc and Azure
Policy, giving the asset organisation an
inventory with a unified view in the Azure
portal across all locations. The configuration
and deployment can be done at scale,
based on subscription, resource groups
and tags, using a GitOps-based model
for deploying configuration as code.

Where to go next?
Azure Arc
Video: Managing K8 clusters outside of
Azure with Azure Arc
 Cloud anywhere: 23
Azure for hybrid and multicloud environments

03. Run cloud Example

An energy company aims for an efficient

services and fully automated operation utilising

artificial intelligence throughout their

anywhere infrastructure. Customers operate

various production sites and run utilities
and services, from extraction to retail
Companies are facing increasing data
distribution. The company has massive
sprawl, with data not just collected on
data volume at the edge and needs
endpoint, but also on-premises databases
real-time insights. The business needs
and cloud-based data storage buckets.
to leverage existing OEM hardware and
The increasingly heterogeneous data
applications and automate IT systems to
stores pose a significant problem for
work at their massive scale. They want to
companies working with hybrid cloud
deploy the latest innovations and apply
infrastructure. A lack of a unified view of
consistent security and governance across
their data assets across all environments
their data infrastructure.
makes it far more difficult for companies
to make use of their most valuable asset.
Solution
Azure Arc solves many of the problems that
companies face with data distributed across
hybrid cloud infrastructure. Azure data
services enabled by Azure Arc deliver cloud
elasticity to businesses’ data infrastructure.
The capability enables customers to scale
their databases up or down dynamically
in the same way as they do in Azure,
based on the available capacity of their
infrastructure. This capability can satisfy
burst scenarios that have volatile needs,
including scenarios that require ingesting
and querying data in real time, at any
scale, with sub-second response time.
 Cloud anywhere: 24
Azure for hybrid and multicloud environments

The energy company can bring data Where to go next?

services to whatever location needs
Azure Arc for data services, including SQL
access. A fully managed database service,
and PostgreSQL (Microsoft Ignite)
such as Azure SQL Database, removes
the burden of patching and upgrades
for customers who have migrated their
databases to Azure. An Azure Database
managed instance creation allows you
to pick where you want to deploy.
You do not have to deploy into Azure;
you can deploy to an environment on
premises, or to another cloud provider.

With Azure Arc, for the first time,

customers – such as the energy
company – can access Azure’s unique
security capabilities from the Azure
Security Centre for their on-premises data
workloads. They can protect databases
with features like advanced threat
protection and vulnerability assessment
in the same ways they do in Azure.

Updates can be handled by upgrading

a secondary system and failing over
to the system after a sufficient testing
period. These rolling upgrades allow
a company to bring each database
to a desired compatibility level.

Advanced data security gives you

vulnerability assessments that allow
you to find weaknesses in your security
posture. Advanced Threat Protection
can help you identify patterns that
may represent specific threats.
 Cloud anywhere: 25
Azure for hybrid and multicloud environments

04. Regulatory, Examples

Meeting isolation requirements

isolated and Critical industries, such as finance and

manufacturing, may require that their

disconnected systems and applications run in isolation.

Government agencies often desire critical

workloads information to be stored and accessed only

from within the four walls of the agency,
absolutely without being connected to the
Some organisations may require the ability
internet. These requirements are often a
to either run completely disconnected from
security measure or a way to comply with
public cloud or store sensitive data only
regulatory requirements.
outside of public cloud. These requirements
can be the result of physical environments
Disconnected computing at the edge
as well, as we will see in the use cases below.
We often see hybrid cloud scenarios in
which systems and processes are isolated
from the internet because of intermittent
connectivity. An easy-to-understand
example involves cruise ships – satellite
connectivity is both expensive and limited,
so moving massive data can be cost-
prohibitive and unreliable. If you want to
be able to deliver first-class experience for
your cruise guests anywhere, you want to
have the same apps on board the cruise
ship whether it is on land or at sea.
 Cloud anywhere: 26
Azure for hybrid and multicloud environments

Data privacy and compliance With Azure Stack Hub, companies

New regulations in data privacy are very can deploy applications to isolated or
common as many nations are in the disconnected environments, whether
process of updating their laws. This adds a financial firm that needs to satisfy
real business risk to companies operating regulations or a transportation firm that
globally as it can lead to a shutdown has to adapt to unreliable connectivity.
of services for a certain region and/or Data can be kept in the cloud or on-
require investments to create a separate premises to satisfy data-residency
application to run on a separate system requirements, and applications can be run
in a different location. from the cloud or on-premises to satisfy
needs for disconnected workloads.
Solution
Azure Stack Hub is a fully optimised
and purpose-built integrated system
that runs Azure services no matter if
you are connected to the internet or
disconnected in a fully air-gapped way.

The technology allows companies to reuse

code and run cloud-native applications
consistently across their Azure and on-
premises environments, while continuing to
leverage IaaS and run virtualised workloads
with optional cloud connectivity.
 Cloud anywhere: 27
Azure for hybrid and multicloud environments

Azure Stack Hub

Ref: https://docs.microsoft.com/azure-stack/hybrid/pattern-cross-cloud-scale-onprem-data

Where to go next?
Azure disconnected deployment
planning decisions for Azure Stack Hub
integrated systems
Video: Azure Stack for hybrid compute
and disconnected scenarios
Expanding the Azure Stack portfolio to
run hybrid applications across the cloud,
data centres and the edge
Azure hybrid patterns and solutions
documentation
Azure Stack Hub overview
Azure Stack Hub Development Kit
 Cloud anywhere: 28
Azure for hybrid and multicloud environments

05. Remote Example

Businesses often need weeks or months to

branch offices roll out application updates across multiple

offices and infrastructures. A global bank
with 300 offices worldwide takes a year
Enterprises with branch offices are a
to update every office across the globe.
challenge for hybrid infrastructure. Keeping
In addition, multiple locations make it
identity services in synchronisation, backing
difficult to avoid misconfiguration,
up data and deploying applications
such as open ports.
become far more complicated when there
are multiple locations that do not have
Rolling out new and updated applications
dedicated IT staff. Any solution has to be
to branch offices can pose problems for
able to quickly and easily deploy application
companies with tens or hundreds of such
and identity changes across remote offices,
sites. Branches often need to run some
while allowing a central IT department to
apps on local servers in case of public
monitor for anomalies and violations.
internet availability as backup, or for
latency issues.

In many remote office situations there is

minimal IT staff available, which can make
the deployment of applications to multiple
sites challenging.

Solution
Azure Stack HCI provides hyperconverged
infrastructure with industry-standard
x86 servers with software-defined
compute, storage and networking.
Easily start using the cloud for your
hyperconverged infrastructure
management with Azure integration
built into the Windows Admin Centre.

Meet the evolving IT demands of

branch offices, retail stores and field
locations. Deploy your container-built
 Cloud anywhere: 29
Azure for hybrid and multicloud environments

edge workloads and essential business Where to go next?

applications in highly available virtual
Branch office considerations
machines, and use Azure Monitor to get
Two powerful ways to use Azure to back up
a global view of system health.
your enterprise
Azure Stack HCI white papers
For offices with minimal IT staff, Azure IoT
Edge can be used to ease the deployment
of containerised applications to an Azure
Stack HCI cluster with the help of an
administrator working anywhere in the
world. Azure IoT Edge is an engine that can
be installed on a VM in Azure Stack HCI
and that enables containers for the cluster.
Azure IoT Edge also has Internet of Things
(IoT) gateway functionality included, which
enables the device on which it is installed to
be managed remotely from the cloud
via Azure IoT Hub.

Offices with minimal technical staff

can use Azure IoT Edge to ease
the deployment of containerised
applications to an Azure Services HCI
cluster with the help of an administrator
working anywhere in the world.

Containerised
application

Containerised
application
 Cloud anywhere: 30
Azure for hybrid and multicloud environments

06. Deploy Example

A retail floor has dozens of cameras in

compute and AI the store. Low or missing inventory is a

high-impact business scenario that causes

on the edge customer dissatisfaction, lost revenue and

can be time-consuming for staff.

As the world digitises, organisations

Solution
generate more and more data at the
Using Azure Stack Edge in the store to
edge. Data comes from many sources
collect live feeds from in-store cameras
such as cameras, IoT sensors and
of the shelves, and the AI capabilities
industrial automation. Organisations can
of onboard FPGA or GPUs, you can run
benefit from analysing, modifying and
machine learning code that’s trained on
filtering data where it is generated, and
Azure and running locally on Azure Stack
only transfer what they need to the cloud
Edge to score scenarios and make decisions
for further processing or storage.
about inventory, customer needs and
shopping patterns.

With Azure Stack Edge you can speed up

time to results by processing data close
to its source, without waiting for a round
trip to the cloud. Analyse, transform and
filter data at the edge, sending only the
data you need to the cloud for further
processing or storage. Use the cloud to
push containerised applications to Azure
Stack Edge devices at all your locations.
 Cloud anywhere: 31
Azure for hybrid and multicloud environments

How Azure Stack Edge enables edge computing and machine learning

Azure Stack Edge combines loT Edge and accelerated ML inferencing in a cloud-managed edge computing appliance delivered as an Azure service

Where to go next?
Azure Stack Edge
Azure IoT Edge
The future of computing: intelligent cloud
and intelligent edge
 Cloud anywhere: 32
Azure for hybrid and multicloud environments

07. Migrate Example

A global health crisis causes rapid,

and manage massive strain on a hospital’s operations,

which are running on VMware. The hospital

applications needs to scale their IT infrastructure as

staffing increases test their HR, patient

across VMware management and EMR systems – all while

remaining HIPAA-compliant and managing

environments recent budget cuts. The requisition process,

approvals and logistics to roll out new
technical infrastructure can take four to six
For a successful hybrid approach,
months or more. So, to maximise time
organisations must have a consistent
and resources as they expand and contract
solution that unifies management of
their cloud-based systems, the hospital
machines across physical and virtual
will need to be able to use existing IT skills,
environments – and scales quickly.
processes and experience in VMware for
Customers running VMware workloads
efficient deployment and ramp up.
can now seamlessly run, manage and
secure applications across VMware
Solution
environments and Microsoft Azure with
Azure VMware Solution delivers the
a common operating framework.
infrastructure elasticity to expand and
contract without capital expenditure,
all while maintaining continuity for staff
and processes. Among other leading
industry standard certifications, the
solution is also fully HIPAA-compliant,
lowering barriers for adoption and
accelerating speed to the cloud.

Using Azure VMware Solution, the hospital

can scale quickly to meet the unexpected
demand on their IT systems. By extending
the hospital’s current VMware environment
into Azure with Azure VMware Solution,
the hospital minimises disruption with a
consistent management experience across
 Cloud anywhere: 33
Azure for hybrid and multicloud environments

on-premises environments and Azure.

They can maximise previous investments,
taking advantage of the tools and skills
they’re already using. Plus, the hospital
can build on this foundation to seamlessly
modernise over time, using Azure for
unified management of resources.

VNET VNET

Where to go next?
Azure VMware Solution
Azure VMware Solution documentation
AVS Demo
Cloud anywhere: 34
Azure for hybrid and multicloud environments

04 /
Conclusion
 Cloud anywhere: 35
Azure for hybrid and multicloud environments

As companies push That’s why your hybrid cloud strategy

must evolve to enable innovation
to digitally transform anywhere, while providing a seamless
their businesses, hybrid development, deployment and ongoing
computing is playing a management experience across all
distributed locations. Companies focused
significant role. on hybrid cloud infrastructure should:

Businesses that successfully migrate

• Build on their terms
operations to the cloud and augment
operations with on-premises technology Deliver application innovation
will have greater control over applications with ultimate flexibility – build any
and will see a reduction in deployment application and deploy consistently
and management costs. The result is more to wherever it’s needed across on-
flexible operations, a standardised set of premises, multicloud and edge.
shared tools and services and lower costs • Operate seamlessly
for the business.
Operate your on-premises, multi-
cloud and edge environments like a
Businesses rely on a hybrid cloud
single environment and seamlessly
approach for many different reasons.
manage all your resources with a
And as more business operations
single control plane in Azure.
and applications expand to include
edge devices and multiple clouds, • Secure their enterprise
organisations are faced with the reality Implement integrated Azure security
of having hundreds to thousands of across your organisation with
applications, running across a wide range confidence – get comprehensive
of infrastructure, spanning on-premises security management, gain AI-
data centres, multicloud and the edge. enabled threat protection and
enable single sign-on access.
Take the next step
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or use the contact link below.
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