Windows Azure Hybrid Cloud Book by Danny Garber, Jamal Malik and Adam Fazio
What is hybrid cloud or hybrid IT? Hybrid cloud is when you connect resources hosted on different clouds. Hybrid IT is a bit broader in its scope, because you can connect a traditional on-premises datacenter infrastructure to resources hosted in a cloud environment, typically a public cloud service provider. Hybrid IT also applies to when you connect an on-premises private cloud to a public cloud provider’s resources.
I’ve been spending a lot of time with hybrid cloud/hybrid IT this year and the results of that time spent can be found in the Hybrid IT Infrastructure Solution for Enterprise IT guidance set on TechNet. In that guidance set we pulled information from TechNet, TechReady, TechEd, feature PMs and the guys with their boots on the ground in Microsoft Consulting Services so that we could provide you a lifecycle approach on how to begin your journey into a hybrid cloud/hybrid IT infrastructure.
We never could have completed such as large and complex project without the help of some really brilliant people! Two of those people are Jamal Malik and Adam Fazio. These guys are the masters of hybrid cloud/hybrid IT – and what it treat it was to find that after we published the Hybrid IT Infrastructure Solution for Enterprise IT guidance set on TechNet they published their book Windows Azure Hybrid Cloud.
While they were writing the book I had the chance to review some of the chapters and I can tell you that not only will you learn a lot by reading Windows Azure Hybrid Cloud, you’ll also enjoy the learning process. Danny, Jamal and Adam have a great writing style that engages you so that you’re looking forward to the each and every paragraph. I think they are to accomplish this by providing the types of insights you see only from people who have been there, felt the pain, learned the lessons, and applied those lessons to be a success time and time again.
Here’s an example:
“I recently had the opportunity to work with a large organization who is far down the path of consuming public cloud services primarily as a development platform. These cloud services are procured directly from the cloud provider by the application development teams. Meanwhile, the IT organization is also running a large amount of legacy infrastructure for these same development teams. IT is now wide awake to the fact that they simply must bring cloud capabilities to the on-premises infrastructure and enable the same ease of use and ease of procurement that the development teams have with the pubic cloud. On the other hand, the many thousands of public cloud instances are simply not managed at the same level as the on-premises infrastructure and the development teams realize they need IT’s help to ensure SLAs are met. It was as if this organization was made for my book, if only I could pitch it as part of my day job!”
This book is an essential resource for those responsible for strategizing, architecting, implementing or managing a cloud infrastructure. It helps readers understand what is hybrid IT and how it's applicable (and inevitable) in today's world of emerging cloud. The book focuses on the Microsoft concept of a private/public cloud, deploying a private cloud fabric, deploying services, and building a private cloud, as well as integrating it with Microsoft's public cloud to create a cross-premises or public cloud.
What is Hybrid IT? - There is a lot of misunderstanding about what hybrid IT really is. There is no single definition of hybrid IT as each implementation will depend on the requirements specific to each enterprise. There is no one-size-fits-all hybrid solution.
Why is Hybrid IT important to my business? Do you really even know where to start when it comes to figuring out what benefits your business will achieve from adopting Hybrid Cloud? Discover methods, process and tools will assist you in building the right Cloud Strategy for your organization.
Project Planning – Once the direction is set for your Cloud Strategy understanding immediate next steps and prioritizing tasks can still be a challenge. Who owns the Architecture, Design and Deployment of the system when working with a Service Provider?
What do you need to know about the Azure Platform – Windows Azure is a core of Microsoft’s Cloud OS, which provides a consistent platform across private, hosted and public clouds and aims to be the modern platform powering the world’s applications. Windows Azure in combination with Windows Server make up the core backbone – engine – of the Cloud OS. Understanding the principal Windows Azure components and services is fundamentally essential for anyone who is on journey to build Hybrid cloud solutions.
Private Cloud Components and Services that help to build Hybrid Clouds – What is a Cloud Management Platform and why do I need it? We cannot simultaneously advance the maturity of IT operations and create pools of silo’d capacity. Our technology and service management tools must stretch across private and public cloud assets creating a unified operating model.
Hybrid Options in Windows Azure - There are different kind of solutions for different kind of problems. Shows how to take what we've learned about Azure services and components and apply them to solve the problem IT faces on a daily basis.
Designing for Resiliency and Scalability - Focuses on approaches and considerations for ensuring resiliency, availability and scalability when designing hybrid solutions to prevent system failure and data loss.
Optimizing for Performance - Covers available options to optimize performance of hybrid cloud including network performance, virtual machine performance, data access performance, as well as overall improving overall end user experience.
Monitoring and Management - Typically, with any hybrid IT environments there is a lot of moving parts. However, the good news that there are quite a bit of built-in and third party management and monitoring tools that will you to manage/monitor the availability, health, and performance of the hybrid cloud.
This book will help you better understand the hybrid IT environments, how and why hybrid cloud environments should be implemented, as well as an impact it can have in a business.
Hope you enjoy the book and leave comments on what you think of it!
HTH,
Tom
Tom Shinder
tomsh@microsoft.com
Principal Knowledge Engineer, SCD iX Solutions Group
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