Azure Trends & Best Practices

Executive Summary

Amidst the propelling adoption of cloud across the enterprise facet Microsoft’s Azure is at the crest of a wave. It is simple, logical and easy to deploy throughout the organization landscape. In all honesty, Azure was already listed among the top 3 cloud platforms in the world before the pandemic happened. By the end of 2019, 85% of Fortune 100 companies were on using Microsoft’s Cloud. By the beginning of March 2021, Azure accounts for more than 20% of total cloud market’s share. In an industry filled with hundreds of solutions, this is an impressive number.

Over the past few years, Intellinez has excelled as one of the most trusted Microsoft partners in the world. Through our signature fast track Azure Migration Services, we have empowered hundreds of small and medium scale businesses embrace the benefits of the maintenance-free ecosystem.

At the same time, we have served global corporates across Healthcare, BFSI, Manufacturing, Consulting and other sectors with swift adoption of Microsoft services without causing any disruption to the run-time processes.

Today, we are one of the fastest growing companies in the business with a presence all over the map.

Through this whitepaper, we walk you through the overarching scope of Azure best practices and their compliance in the age of digital transformation.

Backup and Recovery

Wherever Azure’s platform-as-a-service is used by enterprises, its backup is totally reliant on the product. While using Standard and Premium plan on Azure Webapps, you get backup enablement as a preinstalled feature. The Advanced version comes with configuration and management of entire machine’s virtual image backup option. This capability comes with 24- hour RPO and standard 30 day retention facility. Users can customize retention policies based on plans requirements. However, customizations depend upon Azure’s capability. Backup restoration depends upon the amount of data and the intricacy of data

Image Backup

When requested, we can configure image level backups for infrastructure-as-aservice virtual machine. These image level backups are independent and enable the user to restore entire virtual machine. Azure comes with exemplary support for application centric backups for windows and file-centric backups on Linux.

File and Data Recovery

We can seamlessly recover individual files and folders from the image and restore it back into the virtual machine.

Operating System Native Backup and Recovery

A self-serviceable file recovery system which can retrieve data associated with previous versions is the speciality of this feature.

Azure Monitoring Services

Managed services providers utilises Azure Monitoring and Log Analytics in evaluating the solution and overall event management for the IT Service Management (ITSM) tool-enabled service desk. This is achieved through cloud event bridge system. All the functional follow up on entire Azure Cloud-Based network, security, compute and storage services is run through Azure Monitoring and Log Analytics. The cloud Event Bridge automatically creates new logs and identifies repeated alerts to punch them into ITSM tickets. This can further be processed to issue new tickets for all known events which generally get ignored.

Users get following services covered under this

• Virtual Machines and Operating Systems (CPU, RAM, storage, services and event logs)
• Azure products in scope such as firewalls, load balancers etc.
• Azure backup and recovery services including Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery
• Azure fabric for critical events

Events that create disruption or may lead to such disruption in business ahead get highlighted into ITSM systems for a remedial action.

Remote Configuration and Troubleshooting Microsoft Azure is a service which provides hi-end operating System support which further includes proper configuration of operating system, thorough monitoring and taking corrective actions if needed. A secured bastion server under a specific subnet can be developed using known and controlled networks within our data centres. Our Support engineers develop system to access via Remote Desktop Protocol or SSH and access clients environment through RDP and/or WinRM and /or SSH via the bastion host.

The traffic generated from the bastion host runs across the Azure bastion virtual subnet connecting various subnets within clientsv Azure Virtual Network.

Azure Support Services

Microsoft support partners manage the domain of client relationship, billing and vendor management in a highly professional manner. This ensures that the client doesn’t need to engage in non-productive exercises. Whereas most of the tickets are resolved by us, it is recommended not to hesitate to approach Microsoft in any specific situation.

These specific situations may arise from an issue where we have exhausted all our knowledge resources in handling a specific service, during any Azure service outage, in specific cases pertaining to service limit increase request or Azure Service Level agreement credit management. Our Support Services can be accessed by these two mediums:

RAISING TICKETS

Azure clients can raise tickets for the events which are initiated on their Azure subscriptions. The deployed support team resources take a prompt action on resolving your service requests.

CALLING AT SERVICE DESK

The service desk is accessible to the Azure clients for quick and reliable solutions over the phone 24/7 throughout the year.

Cloud Support and Manage

Once the Managed Operational Services solution is commissioned, the users/clients reap rewards of our tiered ITIL and DevOps-configured support and management services. These services come with valued added service options to give our clients enterprise class managed Azure Services. Our services come with assurance of trust, reliability, security and timeliness. This Azure Cloud Support and Management capability covers the following:

Additional value-added services options encompass the following:

• Web Application Firewall and Distributed Denial-of-Service
• Information Protection
• Cyber Security: Scanning and Discovery
• Cyber Security: Managed Detection and Response

Enhanced Cyber Security

As cyber-attacks are getting more frequent, business are focusing and investing hard on security. This approach needs a detailed analysis of soft targets which run on high risk of data theft, designing solutions to cope these threats, deployment of these solutions and keeping a check on the possible leakages. Implementing these safety measures and working on a contingency plan, enterprises need to have a highly skilled team.

The Impact of the Pandemic on Cyber Security

• 58% of surveyed respondents increased security budgets.
• 82% of surveyed respondents increased security professionals.
• 81% of surveyed respondents were under pressure to immediately increase security cost. 

Top 5 Cybersecurity Investments Since Beginning of Pandemic

Ranked by % selected among total

Read Azure Security Center suggested changes and alerts

As far as security best practices in Azure are concerned, the Azure Security Center has to be the first step. Azure Security Center is the bible for recommended changes and alerts for end-to-end security of Azure resources. Besides exercising our cyber security expertise, our teams make it a point to unlatch optimal benefits from the log. Subsequently, we utilize the recommended standards in all our subscriptions.

Disable remote access (RDP/SSH)

We recommend disabling RDP and SSH access to Azure VM from the web. The access should only be enabled over a secure dedicated connection such as a VPN via Just-in-Time Virtual Machine access. This reduces brute force attack and provides seamless passage to connect virtual machines (VMs) through Remote Desktop.

Recommended Approach

Outcome-as-a-Service

As per the current industrial trends, Outcome-as-a-Service has emerged as a clear winner when it comes to managed services towards outcomes. The ecosystem where IT enabled services rule, each installation and its outcome is measured on the basis of reliability and accessibility of the software. If applications and softwares are not available easily, it affects the businesses badly.

Hence, enterprises invest in technology which is expected to be available easily and fits within the budgeted projections. Top level executives and managers are expected to run systems without any interruption in the service and they run on a thin line.

Total Customization for Exclusive Business Requirements

A primary reason behind the cost effectiveness of software-as-a-service and applications that are on cloud is because they depend on multioccupancy. Here many enterprises share a single instance of the software and share their data in the same database. Enterprise scalability can be achieved because all are using the same application with the same version and everything including the business process and workflows are of same standard. However, more and more enterprises are moving to a private cloud for better data security and efficiency.

At the same time, some enterprises need to protect old software versions so that their data is always relevant. Automatic software updates can pose threat in these situations when compared to manual updating on multiple machines. Hence, enterprises are opting for solutions, which are proficient in delivering integrated solutions, and help them achieve optimization and standardization at the same time.

Balancing Cost Reduction & Organizational Agility

Enterprises invest in IT capabilities to keep a tab on financial and cost control. Many organizational case studies are available on how they projected IT restructuring keeping in mind future expansion cost and covering the improvement costs for more efficiency in IT budgeting. However, the future of any enterprise depends upon its ability to take actions faster then anyone else. Faster deployments and ability to counter any technical glitch with agility is the key for a successful future. Managed services give flexibility, predictability and cost control where multiple project cycles are scheduled.

Focus on Hyper-converged Infrastructure

Hyper-converged infrastructures, which are managed on commercial off-the-shelf services, combine the entire infrastructure of an enterprise together. Networking, computing and storage are connected with each other to develop an ecosystem which helps an enterprise to move ahead faster towards total digitalization.

A hyper-converged infrastructure consists of virtual computing, virtual SAB and a virtual network at lesser cost. However, this needs a highly skilled team of technicians.

As a reputed Microsoft managed services provider, we assist businesses in setting up a hyperconverged infrastructure. These experts can foresee the upcoming demands and changes in the business scenario that in turn ensures that the business process runs uninterrupted.