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Archive for March, 2021

Azure vs AWS

Posted on March 14th, 2021 by admin@mismo2023

It’s Azure vs AWS!! Read this blog to know the major differences between Azure & AWS.

What is Azure?

Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing service created by Microsoft for building, testing, deploying and managing applications and services through Microsoft-managed data centres. Founded in 2010, it can be operated on both Linux and Microsoft. Azure is a uniquely powerful offering because of its builder, Microsoft.

Azure offers Platform as a Service (PaaS) and an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

What is AWS?

AWS is a subsidiary of Amazon providing on-demand cloud computing services and APIs to individuals, companies and government on a metered pay-as-you-go basis. Founded in 2006, Aws runs on Amazon Linux, which is a modified Linux operating system developed for their own use. The vast toolset of AWS is growing at an exponential rate. It’s been in the cloud computing market for more than 10 years, which means that AWS is the frontrunner and has been for some time.

AWS offering services are categorised as Platform as a Service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and Software as a Service (Saas).

Features and Services

1.    Computing Power

  • AWS EC2 users can configure their own virtual machines (VMs), choose pre-configured machine images (MIs), or customize MIs. Users have the freedom to choose the size, power, memory capacity, and number of VMs they wish to use. 
  • Azure users, on the other hand, chose a virtual hard disk (VHD) to create a VM. This can be pre-configured by Microsoft, the user, or a separate third party. It relies on virtual scale sets for scalability purposes. 

2. Storage

  • AWS’s storage relies on machine instances, which are virtual machines hosted on AWS infrastructure. Temporary storage is allocated once per instance and destroyed when an instance is terminated. You can also get block storage attached to an instance, similar to a hard drive. AWS’s cloud object storage solution offers high availability and automatic replication across regions.
  • Azure offers temporary storage through D drive and block storage through Page Blobs for VMs, with Block Blobs and Files doubling as object storage. It supports relational databases, Big Data, and NoSQL through Azure Table and HDInsight. There are two classes of storage offered by Azure -Hot and Cool. Cool storage is comparatively less pricey than Hot, but one has to incur additional read and write costs.

3. Databases

AWS works perfectly with NoSQL and relational databases providing a mature cloud environment for big data. AWS’ core analytics offering EMR helps set up an EC2 cluster and provides integration with various AWS services. Amazon’s relational database service (RDS) supports six popular database engines: 

  1. Amazon Aurora
  2. MariaDB
  3. Microsoft SQL
  4. MySQL
  5. Oracle
  6. PostgreSQL

Azure’s SQL database, on the other hand, is based solely on Microsoft SQL.  Azure supports both NoSQL and relational databases and as well Big Data through Azure HDInsight and Azure table. Azure provides analytical products through its exclusive Cortana Intelligence Suite that comes with Hadoop, Spark, Storm, and HBase. 

4.  Network and Content Delivery

  • AWS uses a virtual private cloud (VPC) so that users can create isolated private networks within the cloud. From there, it uses API gateways for cross-premises connectivity. To ensure smooth operation, it uses elastic load balancing during networking. A user can create route tables, private IP address ranges, subnets, and network gateways within a VPC. 
  • Instead of a VPC, Azure uses a Virtual Network (VNET) that grants users the ability to create isolated networks, as well as subnets, private IP ranges, route tables, and network gateways. 
  • Both AWS and Azure offer firewall options and solutions to extend your on-premises data centre into the cloud without compromising your data. 

5.  Pricing

  • AWS provides a pay-as-you-go model and charges per hour. AWS can help you save more with increased usage- the more you use, the less you pay. AWS instances can be purchased based on one of the following models –
  • Reserved Instances – Paying an upfront cost based on the use, one can reserve an instance for 1 to 3 years.
  • On-demand Instances -Just pay for what you use without paying any upfront cost.
  • Spot Instances- Bid for extra capacity based on availability.
  • Azure charges per minute, offering a more exact pricing model than AWS. It also offers short-term commitments allowing you to choose between monthly or pre-paid charges

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Amazon FSx – How can it help you?

Posted on March 4th, 2021 by admin@mismo2023

The Amazon FSx has a very efficient way of deploying and running traditional file servers in the cloud that is completely administered by AWS. You can use the wide feature sets & fast performance of popular open-source & commercially licensed file systems with a hassle-free experience, i.e., remove the headaches of hardware provisioning, software configuration, patching, and backups.

You can choose out of the 2 file systems:

  • Amazon FSx for Windows File Server Amazon FSx for Windows File Server is a fully managed file server accessible over the SMB protocol. It is deployed on a Windows server managed by AWS and have features like data deduplication, end-user file restore, and Microsoft Active Directory integration, scheduled backups, and data encryption. You can use this to migrate your file servers to cloud and it can be used as a file share for applications.
  • Amazon FSx for Lustre Amazon FSx for Lustre is also a fully managed service for workloads that require high performance such as machine learning, high-performance computing (HPC), video rendering, and financial simulations. Powered by Lustre, the world’s most popular high-performance file system, FSx for Lustre offers shared storage with low latencies, up to hundreds of gigabytes per second of throughput, and millions of IOPS.

Features

Economical

You get the option of spinning file systems up or down on-demand. It provides an extensive amount of Solid-State Disk (SSD) & Hard Disk Drive (HDD) data storage facilities that allow you to choose the best plan according to your storage & price specifications.

The FSx for Windows File Server provides data deduplication, hence enabling cost efficiency by eliminating all the residual data. The FSx for Lustre allows you to select non-replicated, scratch file systems to promote cost-cutting for the temporary processing of data.

Efficient performance

Even the most graphic-intense enterprise applications & high-performance workloads are supported by the FSx, as it was designed to deliver quick & expected results with measurable & consonant performance.

High read and write speeds with consistent low latency data access are delivered by the Amazon FSx.

Just select the type of storage & throughput level according to your application’s requirements. There is also a provision for increasing the storage capacity at any given time, in accordance with your dynamic business requirements.

Available & Scalable

Operates the same as any other AWS, & it offers several options for deployment in accordance with your work’s requirements. With FSx for Windows File Server, you get the option of choosing either single-AZ or multi-AZ deployment types, which depends on the needs of your application. With FSx for Lustre, you get to select from scratch or persistent storage for temporary or permanent data processing.

Simple & fully managed

It can be opened with a few clicks, in which there is no hassle in managing file servers & storage volumes, updating hardware, configuring software, monitoring storage consumption, or performing backups – with Amazon FSx all these processes become automatic.

Safe & accommodating

Encryption of your data at rest & in transit is done automatically by the Amazon FSx. For overseeing the network access to your file system, Amazon FSx allows you to operate your file systems via an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC). The Amazon FSx is the culmination of a carefully planned file system having the highest security standards that comply with ISO, PCI-DSS, and SOC certifications, & is HIPAA eligible. Additionally, the integration with AWS Backup allows you to meet your data protection specifications that are secured with compliance management & centralized backup for your Amazon FSx file systems.

Integrated with AWS services

Several AWS services can be integrated with the Amazon FSx file systems, like- Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon CloudTrail, AWS KMS, Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), Amazon WorkSpaces, Amazon AppStream 2.0, Amazon S3, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS), AWS Batch, and AWS ParallelCluster.

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What is Budget in Azure and how can you set the Budget?

Posted on March 4th, 2021 by admin@mismo2023

Budget in Azure to manage and monitor the spending or consumed cost for Azure services.

We can apply budget on individual Azure resource, Resource Group and on Subscription level.

We can set the budget for a specific period (Monthly, Quarterly, Annually) how spending is going on for that specific time. Cost can be managed proactively.

We can get a notification when the budget thresholds based on created exceeded value for the total amount.

How can you set a Budget?

Step 1.  Go to Cost Management + Billing> Cost Management>Budgets>Add

Step 2. Create a budget>Give Name, Rest Period, Creation Date, Expiration date.

Step 3. Give Budget Amount.

Step 4. Set Alert Conditions, give Alert recipients email id and Create.

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