{"id":11510,"date":"2022-01-27T15:43:04","date_gmt":"2022-01-27T23:43:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/threecloud.wpengine.com\/?p=11510"},"modified":"2023-11-20T16:35:35","modified_gmt":"2023-11-21T00:35:35","slug":"3-key-techniques-to-optimizing-your-azure-cloud-environment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/resources\/3-key-techniques-to-optimizing-your-azure-cloud-environment\/","title":{"rendered":"3 Key Techniques to Optimizing Your Azure Cloud Environment: Azure Automation Runbook Overview"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following is an abbreviated transcript from our webinar: 3 Techniques to Optimizing Your Azure Cloud Environment with Cloud Expert, <\/span>Jordan Murbach<\/span><\/span>.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Jordan\u00a0Murbach 03:51<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Studies<\/span><\/a>\u00a0show\u00a0an hour of downtime costs $8,000 for a small company $74,000 for a medium company, and 700,000 for a large enterprise. For large enterprises,\u00a0this\u00a0equates to around $11,600 per minute. Put that into perspective.\u00a0If\u00a0a breach were to happen, it takes an average of six-nine days to contain while some take over 100 days to identify that a breach even took place.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This leads us to the first topic of the presentation, which is automation.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What is Automation and How Can it Help me?\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0One of the benefits of it is it saves time and resources on automated tasks. These processes are both frequent and time-consuming. By giving these tasks over to Azure Automation, you will free up\u00a0a lot of time and energy for your\u00a0team.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

05:02\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So as far as all your employees will have more room to\u00a0focus on\u00a0business-critical\u00a0jobs to add value to your company.\u00a0The\u00a0next benefit is it reduces human error. So\u00a0Azure\u00a0automation services help reduce human error throughout your system, allowing automated tests to run faster and smoother than ever\u00a0before.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Furthermore, the decrease in human-generated errors will create more stability and security for your cloud system.\u00a0Meanwhile, consistent monitoring helps you track performance throughout your cloud system, ensuring success in all your services.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

06:16\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The first step in Azure Automation is understanding what\u00a0an automation account and runbook are.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

07:25\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Azure\u00a0Automation<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0allows you to automate tasks against resources in Azure on-premises and with other cloud providers such as Amazon Web Service, or better known as AWS. These tasks are known as\u00a0<\/span>run books<\/span><\/strong>, which are typically routine\u00a0its\u00a0procedures and operations.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, we’ll jump into\u00a0creating\u00a0an automation account.\u00a0As you see\u00a0I\u2019ve already\u00a0done this, so in the search bar will type for automation accounts.\u00a0click\u00a0into that, then we’ll fill out the required information when we create one.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Graphical<\/span><\/p>\n

Image Description: Automation Account Overview screen within Azure<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

You\u00a0can name this\u00a0however you want to assign to the resource group that you’re going to have the resources in, that you’re\u00a0going to\u00a0be automating. And then choose your location, as I said, already have one of these trains already.\u00a0So,\u00a0save time, I’m going to\u00a0going to\u00a0jump into this.\u00a0So,\u00a0when you’re filling this out, you’ll see that you’ll have an option to run as accounts when creating these automation accounts.\u00a0So,\u00a0in Azure, that’s technically just running as a system administrator.\u00a0It provides authentication for managing resources on the Azure Resource Manager, or Azure classic deployment model using automation,\u00a0runbooks,\u00a0and other Automation features<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now that we’re in our automation account,\u00a0let’s\u00a0look\u00a0at the runbooks Gallery to get an idea of the type of\u00a0premade\u00a0runbooks that we have here.\u00a0So,\u00a0as you can see, all of these are going to do at the beginning, you’re\u00a0going to\u00a0have to do with starting as your VMs and stopping them.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m\u00a0sure you’ve been in a situation where if you didn’t have an automation account, turning off your VMs and turning it back on that, then you’re just needlessly increasing\u00a0your\u00a0spend in Azure<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

With these automation runbooks, you’re going to be able to neglect human error and always have it running 24\/7\u00a0with no-fault.<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Tip:<\/span><\/i>\u00a0Read our learning brief on the\u00a0<\/span>Top 5 Mistakes Your Data and Analytics Team are Making in the Cloud<\/span>\u00a0for more tips on how to avoid human error.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This\u00a0is a very simple run like I have made, this\u00a0is just a graphical text, as you would see in a beginner PowerShell course.\u00a0We\u2019re\u00a0going to run this runbook, we don’t have to name it, you can name it, if you want, I’m\u00a0going to\u00a0leave this blank, and we’re\u00a0going to\u00a0hit OK. And then we’re going to head over here to the output, and this will run the workbook, and then it will put out the output that is going to be given, which is hello world.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"A<\/span><\/p>\n

Image description: Example of a Runbook within Beginner PowerShell<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As\u00a0you can see the automation process queues. runbook pleads the process in the place the information in the raw book and deletes it was the very simple runbook.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There are many robots that can help reduce spending and downtime such as stop, start meeting as your VM as we spoke earlier, and scheduling a start and turn off time for it.\u00a0While\u00a0not everything you may\u00a0need is in the gallery, you can create your own room books by going to the automation account.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Then\u00a0we’ll create a run book.\u00a0Usually,\u00a0the most used one is going to be PowerShell. And then you’re\u00a0going to\u00a0add a description to\u00a0you\u00a0create that and then\u00a0you\u2019re\u00a0when that does, when that is finished, you’re going to assign it to a\u00a0runbook. And you’re going to publish it.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And then you can test it out to see if it works, we’re not going to go into in-depth about that right now, because that’s a whole other time and a whole other topic.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0But just know that if you don’t find something in the gallery, that you have the option to\u00a0create\u00a0it yourself either using these, either PowerShell, Python, or graphical, but then you can also use it using ARM template as well.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Availability\u00a0Through Azure as\u00a0Redundancy<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Our\u00a0next topic is going\u00a0to be available through Azure as redundancy. With\u00a0that, we’ll touch on geo-redundant storage and Azure VM site recovery.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

12:31\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

First, we’ll start with the geo-redundant storage. And you’re asking yourself if you don’t know what is your redundant storage and why is important to you?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Georedundant storage<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0copies your data in a storage account,\u00a0synchronously\u00a0<\/span>three times<\/span>\u00a0within a single physical location in the primary region using locally redundant storage. It then copies data asynchronously to a\u00a0single physical location in a secondary region that is hundreds of miles away from the primary region.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Georedundant storage offers durability for Azure Storage data objects of at least 99.9 times 10 to the 16<\/span><\/strong>th<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0percent over a given year.\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Tip:\u00a0<\/span><\/i>Explore more about the criticality of data objects and workloads with this\u00a0<\/span>Ultimate Cheat Sheet for Criticality of Workloads in the Cloud.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I will\u00a0open\u00a0this flow chart here to get an idea of what we are looking at.\u00a0We\u00a0had the data center and once it fails over and\u00a0we restart once,\u00a0we start that geo-replication. It takes everything that’s in the storage account and copies it identically to the secondary region backup data center.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Diagram<\/span><\/p>\n

Image Description: Flowchart of the process for georedundancy within Azure cloud storage<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

All\u00a0your data is going to be stored and you do not have to worry about it being corrupted as that is why it creates it three separate times just in\u00a0case in the instance of something going wrong, you’re going to have three or two other backups to go to.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

14:46\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And then this option right here\u00a0makes\u00a0read access to data available in the event of regional unavailability that changes it from geo-redundant storage to read access, geo-redundant storage, which is exactly how it sounds, it gives you the option to read the data. And even if there is not an event where you’re failing it over, and then we’ll just create it. Now that the storage account is created, you\u00a0open\u00a0the storage account, scroll down to geo-replication, prepare for the failover. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I’m going to head over to our storage account that is\u00a0already created.\u00a0Right\u00a0now,\u00a0we’re set to locally redundant storage.\u00a0The reason that that\u00a0is each time you do a failover, the replication type is going to switch back to locally redundant storage.\u00a0To move this back to the data center your primary data center from your secondary, you’re going to want to change that to geo-redundant storage, or the read access geo-redundant storage. And to do that, we come down here to configuration replication type, we’re going to save this if we go back to geo-replication.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"A\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Image Description: Example of\u00a0primary and secondary locations for\u00a0Georedundancy in\u00a0an\u00a0Azure\u00a0cloud environment<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Azure Site Recovery<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now let’s talk about Azure Site Recovery. Now, this is the same\u00a0exact type of recovery as the storage is for a VM.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0going to copy the exact data to a secondary backup location.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

20:06\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Site Recovery<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0helps ensure that your business continuity is up by keeping business apps and workloads running during\u00a0outages. Outages are very far and few in between, but\u00a0in the likelihood that it does happen, you obviously want to be prepared and not have any downtime with if anything, you want the most minimal downtime as possible.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If you\u00a0refer\u00a0to the first\u00a0thing,\u00a0we talked about was the cost of an hour as close to $8,000.\u00a0The last year down, the more money you’re making, the happier it should be.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Site Recovery replicates workloads running on physical and virtual machines, from a primary site to a secondary location. When an outage does occur at your primary site, you failover to your secondary location and access apps from there.\u00a0If it does happen in the likelihood event, but it does answer the primary location is running, then you can fail back to it seamlessly just like we do in a storage account.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Using Azure runbooks, we can automate disaster recovery by using an ARM template, also known as\u00a0<\/span>Azure Resource Manager<\/span><\/strong>,\u00a0which\u00a0triggers\u00a0recovery when it detects a VM failure.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But having the ability to immediately transfer over to a secondary data center\u00a0if\u00a0the runbook detects that the VM is unresponsive or not running properly. That is very huge in minimizing your downtime.\u00a0I want you to understand how much you can automate in your Azure environment with runbooks to keep business up and running as usual, with the reassurance of knowing that if something does fail, it will be very little to no downtime for your environment. And that is what we all want.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

24:02\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What is\u00a0Azure Security Center?<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Azure Security Center will help prevent, detect, and respond to threats with increased visibility and control over the security of your Azure resources and advanced analytics, which identifies attacks\u00a0that might otherwise go unnoticed.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Some of the benefits of having this are:\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Understanding that the security state of Azure resources, take control of cloud security with policies that enable you to recommend and monitor security configurations. And make\u00a0it easy for DevOps to deploy integrated Microsoft partner security solutions.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. Find threats with advanced analysis of your security-related events, developed using Microsoft’s best global intelligence,\u00a0assets,\u00a0and expertise.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. Respond\u00a0and recover from incidents faster with real-time security alerts. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \"A<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

    Image Description: Example of Azure Security Center dashboard with Azure Defender, Regulatory Compliance, Firewall manager, and Secure Score<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    Azure defender for servers enables threat detection and protection.<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0When defender detects a threat, it\u00a0triggers an alert in the security center where you can perform a detailed investigation to uncover the scope of the attack.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    Whether it be real or whether it be a false positive, you’re probably going to see a lot more false positives than you are going to see real attacks. However,\u00a0you don’t want to get overwhelmed with false positives.\u00a0If\u00a0you’re getting 1000 alerts a week, you know, it only takes one of those alerts to really make you have a bad day.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    The system will\u00a0run the Azure defender for servers will run vulnerability assessment scans for VMs file integrity monitoring and adaptive networking, to name a few features.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    32:08\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    Azure defender for app services<\/span><\/strong>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    The\u00a0defender for app services assesses the resources covered by your app service plan and generates security recommendations based on its findings.\u00a0It will also detect a multitude of threats to your app services.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    By monitoring VM instances, the app services\u00a0are\u00a0running on the requests and responses sent to and from the app services and the internal logs.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    And finally, we have Azure, Azure SQL databases,\u00a0and Azure defender running on that.\u00a0Like\u00a0the previous two defenders will discover,\u00a0track,\u00a0and help remediate potential database vulnerabilities and run assessment scans that provide an overview of your sequel machine’s security state.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    Every resource has some type of workflow automation that can be configured, giving you the customer, the relief of knowing if you utilize automation to its full potential. You will save time by avoiding human error,\u00a0downtime,\u00a0and vulnerability. And with it a peace of mind that this is running even when your employees are\u00a0off\u00a0work, whether it be a holiday weekend, middle of the night, anything the\u00a0runbooks are going to be running. The system\u00a0will alert you to anything that is happening within your environment if you so choose to set it up that way.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    End of Transcription\u00a0Summary\u00a0<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    Up next:\u00a0<\/span>Explore the 5 Steps to Avoid a Ransomware Attack<\/span>\u00a0with our latest Cloud Optimization Learning Brief.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The following is an abbreviated transcript from our webinar: 3 Techniques to Optimizing Your Azure…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[290],"tags":[284],"class_list":["post-11510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cloud-platform","tag-azure","topics-blog"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}