Introduction
Many organizations that use Azure have some workloads running on-premises in traditional data centers or server rooms, and others running entirely in the cloud. An increasing number are migrating all their workloads to the cloud, while some adopt a cloud-native approach from the start.
Other organizations follow a slower migration path to the cloud or seek to strike a balance between keeping certain workloads on-premises and moving others to the cloud. Rather than being an all-or-nothing decision, a well-designed hybrid deployment with Azure allows these organizations to balance cloud and on-premises environments according to their specific needs.
In this module, you will get an introductory overview of hybrid cloud technologies and learn how to connect an on-premises environment to Azure in a way that fits your organization.
Scenario
Tailwind Traders is a conglomerate that manufactures and sells hardware, outdoor maintenance equipment, electrical appliances, and furniture. It is based in Australia and New Zealand. The headquarters is located in Sydney. Regional offices are in Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane, and Auckland.
There are primary data centers in Sydney and Melbourne, as well as a secondary data center in Auckland. In addition, 100 retail sites are spread across Australia and New Zealand. These sites have point-of-sale systems and other computers that use VPN connections to interact with applications hosted in these data centers.
Tailwind Traders’ IT infrastructure has grown gradually since the 1990s. About 25% of business-critical applications still run on physical servers, 60% on virtual machines, and the remaining 15% have been migrated to containers. Many non-containerized applications rely heavily on local Active Directory services for identity management and security configuration through Group Policy.
The Melbourne data center serves as a disaster recovery site for Sydney and Auckland. The Sydney data center also serves as a disaster recovery site for Melbourne.
Tailwind Traders uses site-to-site VPNs to connect retail sites and Auckland to the Sydney office. A dedicated leased connection links the Sydney and Melbourne data centers. Internal network traffic between regional offices is routed through Sydney using a hub-and-spoke architecture.
Tailwind Traders wants to streamline its data center footprint. The organization plans to migrate workloads to Azure where appropriate while keeping on-premises those that cannot be easily migrated for technical or financial reasons. The company’s CIO describes its hybrid cloud strategy as “The Best of Both Worlds.”
Learning Objectives
After completing this module, you will be able to:
- Describe the elements of a hybrid cloud deployment with Azure.
- Explain the methods for connecting on-premises networks to workloads in Azure.
- Understand how to use the same set of identities in hybrid environments.
- List the types of compute workloads in hybrid clouds.
- Explain the application infrastructure of hybrid clouds.
- Describe the services that support files and data in hybrid clouds.
- Explain the technologies that ensure hybrid cloud security.
Prerequisites
To get the most out of this module, you should have:
- A basic understanding of Azure networking fundamentals
- A basic understanding of Azure compute fundamentals
- A basic understanding of Azure security fundamentals
- A basic understanding of on-premises workloads
