Ignite 2022 Azure Hybrid Cloud announcements recap

okay Thomas what did you uh what did you think about my uh my new countdown was it cool yeah it was very relaxing it was very relaxing really like it calmed me down so yeah made you feel like you're in a spa or something right exactly exactly it's just all right cool well how's it going my friend well uh about um last week or there um so uh yeah no it couldn't be better um how about you how are you doing and how was ignite on site well ignite was ignite was kind of hectic was was very good but first thing first let's uh let's say uh good morning good afternoon good evening uh to everyone I see already uh things popping on the chat uh so awesome to see everyone um you know we're nothing without you right Thomas I mean this is the community um and this is really kind of our happy place um and we wanted to get together to just kind of go over everything that happened last week which was kind of like I said it was kind of insane um so yeah I mean today in this live stream we've done this before right we've done this last year uh when we went over some of the some of the announcements that that we had uh in previous events and we decided you know what let's just uh let's just uh roll with that again so uh yeah all right so in this live stream we're going to cover everything that all the Azure hybrid uh Azure hybrid Cloud announcements uh that we had yet last week at ignite everything in between was a pretty packed week um you asked me how uh how was the event so you know seeing everyone in person was just a bit surreal I have to say even though it's not you know it's not like the ignite events in Orlando and all you know all these big 40 000 people but still having this feeling of talking to people again um was just uh was just surreal uh it was super fun um I have to ask how is how is it for you I know that you are remote um and you know I really missed you there but how you know how was the how was the experience from uh you know from from Switzerland I was it was interesting to see you were obviously uh before that right so for that sense it was not that new but what was different felt very different is um that like now you want to see what is actually going on there I really want to see like hey what can I see like what is what are people doing on site like how is the how does everything feel and look like for the people who are there because again I like obviously a lot of people want to be there but it was capped right and was like oh it's not it's not possible for everyone to go but you're still interest even if you look in remote um you enjoy the stream you watch what's going on you want to see more about the Expo halls and the hubs and all that so yeah that was good um yeah and I see like as you get like a lot of like exciting faces I wonder if someone like I see James I see Chris was there Steven lotar from Germany um a lot of a lot of people there uh are moving us I hope I pronounced that correctly um so I don't know if some of the viewers are actually I went there and we're on site let us know in the chat if you actually were on site and what your experience was yeah um there I'm so happy to learn about that as well yeah definitely let us know in the comments I mean we are you know we are here to listen at least Thomas is here to listen I'm here to I'm here to try to absorb everything anyway um all right Thomas so we had a lot of things uh and you and I even though uh like we promised we didn't script anything uh we just know what are the things that we want to talk about so let's just uh let's just kind of roll with that so the first thing Thomas that was to me that was pretty significant uh was Auto manage when ga uh um and also machine config so talk to me uh talk to me about this for a second I see you're sharing your screen yeah absolutely yeah so one thing I'm really excited about and again it was not the secret that we have this it was like it was a it is a big thing and it was especially big when we announced that it was in preview um it was like really when you look at it like we have these like running these virtual machines in Azure but then our service servers on-prem right and then you need to some sort of manage these uh make sure that you monitor these and you back those up and uh especially for Azure servers but in general people are asking what are the best practices to do all of that like make them secure and all that and onboard all these services and how to configure them and auto manage makes that really seamless and effortless to do that um so I I usually what I say to people what is this it's like kind of like for the Azure side of things it's kind of like is plus like infrastructure service with a plus because you even like usually you'll be talking about you need to manage like in is you still need to manage the operating system now you can still do that but we give you a automated way of doing that right we give you an additional tool which allows you to quickly onboard all of that like it's like if you if you set it up it's like a one click button basically uh you need to enable and then it will also do diff detection it will set up everything um really great I'm really happy that we have this and I I when I show this to customers usually you get a lot of good feedback um what does the the feedback especially also on side what is your take on it so you know I mean I had a lot of conversation around uh the auto manage piece me and uh me and Anna from the you know from the particle from the Azure Arc enabled servers we did a session like one of the breakout sessions um you know big shout out to uh to reclaus who uh you know your former manager uh who uh basically made that um possible for this session uh look I I asked I I also had a conversation with Matt MC Spirit on site uh you know for those who don't know Mad Max Spirit used to work for Microsoft now he works for Dell he was in the Azure stack uh HCI space and had a conversation with him about some of the announcements and all that when I when I talk about Auto manage you know the way I like to I like to think about it in two in two ways one it's really kind of azure policy on steroids that's you know that's really how I'm thinking about Auto manage and the second thing is that to me auto manage really um I want to say is really the direction that we're taking you know it's it's like kind of everything coming together in the context of azure Arc enabled servers and obviously this is going to be a big deal because when we're talking about Azure Arc enabled servers uh and even you and I in our private conversations we're always thinking about how to better tie the story of compliance of governments or security and how to do that at scale so when we were talking about this kind of stuff we always like before Auto manage in the in the early days of before Auto manage we it was always in the context of azure policy um and you know some automation accounts and some scripts scripting and all that I think Auto manage really takes us to the next level to the level that we thinking the product we really think okay so this is what is needed in order for Azure enabled servers to you know to go to the next level um so that to me what Auto manage is really all about it's it's really cool like when when um you show this like you show all the capabilities of Arc enabled servers um like you start like showing like how does monitor and then people are like oh that's so much you can do so much you need to set all of these up yeah and then you go well there is auto manage and then people go like like do you see the eyes getting big and like like already they take notes and like they want to like go and try this out it is a really powerful tool by the way I just realized I'm not sure if I should do that on the on the on the live session now but we need to update that graphic uh in our docs here when it comes to security Center um so we need to fix that you know you know I'm a fan of azure docs you know that I'm you know I mean I mean I think I'm like uh I think uh well I will not probably not do that right now because I don't know what it is let's not do pull requests on Azure docs in your live stream for for those who everyone who doesn't know like if you see a mistake in the docs you want fix there is a little edit button here let me quickly go to um here where you then can create a pull request obviously that gets reviewed you cannot just merge it by yourself but then you can basically go and edit the docs and that's probably what I'm going to do spend some time later today doing um but yeah it was absolutely great I also saw some some questions some other people here uh like some people like I asked like need to watch from the UK we also had I think the satellite events and I know that there was one in the UK it was one in Germany and I think in a couple of other places here as well um also by the way have p2c rabbit machine I hope I could pronounce that correctly from Iran Esteban from Spain Robert basically was I think there he saw our session at ignite Tom Joyner uh is here as well yeah I met him I met him in person hey John yeah yes so uh that is good oh Lisa is also here just saw that at least I'm also in um so if you have any any Dell related questions uh about Azure hybrids just make sure that we get that into yeah yeah a lot of people put you on the spot here um but uh now um it it is a great announcement to go back to Azure Auto manage I'm really happy about it and I see a lot of interest from customers about this um I was worried that people I don't know what your thing was there but yeah I was worried that people see this oh no my job is gone now um kind of feature but I think everyone currently realized that that's not the case right yeah it's really not it's really not I mean uh really if you if you if you haven't tried Auto manage go ahead and do so you'll understand better what we're saying here this is not this is definitely not a job killer okay no no no I think that there is uh and you know what I actually I had one conversation I remember with this uh with this gentleman um at ignite around these type of things uh and I mean look at the end of the day technology in this space is such a such a used space that you know thinking that you don't have a job security in this space um it's to me it's a bit kind of exaggerating um there is definitely a lot of opportunities to to go big so anyway uh just kind of on that topic so Thomas I'm uh I'm sharing my screen here a bit let me just kind of zoom in uh just a bit thank you we also this is the uh this is the Azure Blog the second topic that I wanted to talk to you about there was a lot of there was a lot of AKs related AKs in the context of hybrid it was it was kind of a big one uh there is the blog post from abhilasha from uh from our team um around AKs and uh again all the hybrid options that we that that we have now so let's talk about that for a second again you and I we didn't have a chance to sing before that so I'm curious to hear your raw thoughts on this um um you know AKs hybrid AKA slide Windows Server like there's so many so many things going on so let's talk about that for a second yeah absolutely um so AKs the hybrid deployment options I think that was probably um the biggest announcements um we really have I just shared like this was out of Satya keynote this was by the way the second technology he mentioned was Arc enabled kubernetes service right like or AKs hybrid deployment options yeah um and we can talk about just that right the first one he talked about was Azure Arc itself um so that's interesting right it's like okay hybrid like it's really like the up the first thing Satya talks about uh I think that that for sure is important to mention so when we look at AKs hybrid we really announced that you can now get a consistent experience um in we have it in turn in preview to deploy that on Aztec HCI um and Windows server but then also and you're going to talk about that a little bit later uh yes or just in a bit on on Windows iot for example uh where we get like kind of like a lightweight version of AKs um um and then um there's a ton of other information on this so I mean you could do that before you can run AKs on Aztec HCI and um a Windows Server before but now it's really about out bringing also the life cycle management so you basically set up the Azure Arc Resource Bridge and then you connect that that's connected them to your environment and then you can go to the Azure portal you can go and create a new kubernetes cluster and when you select that button you basically get to choose if you want to deploy that in Azure more on your custom on-premises or Edge location for example um and then you get like similar features and you get like the git Ops and the flux integration um with Azure Arc so so that is great and then also what you see on that screen already um the hybrid benefit announcement was huge I think I don't know like I think a lot of people missed that one yeah we need we need to talk about that that's for sure we need to talk about that I think that uh you know to me uh and again a lot of conversations around AKs and the options that we have right now uh I mean AKs as you know as it you know by its own it's a really robust space there's a lot there's a lot going on in the Azure kubernetes service space uh a lot of innovation Integrations internally partners that are coming together look there's a lot of things going on so you know you know it only made sense for us to start expanding on that more and more it started with you know with the notion of azure stack HCI and then Windows Server now AKs light which is basically the deployment options that we have on iot I had some some great questions around like little discussions I should say about this right so like I talked to a couple of customers who want to know about airstack HCI and serverman Arc enabled servers and all that and then I asked them by the way do you have also interest in like kubernetes and things like that and they were like well not really I don't even know what like I would do with that and like not not about AKs in general but like in general kubernetes right and I'm like and then my thing was like so do you know like do you build Next Generation like you have a new company like people building next generation of applications or doing application modernization yeah and then like where are these applications running on and they're like thinking oh they're going to build on containers so they need to run on a container Orchestra they need to run the kubernetes oh now I get it right so um there's a big need for having something like this there I think that is um that is something even if you're an infrastructure person like if developers create a new app or modernize something you bet it's either on containers or past services or combinations of those two I don't believe that anyone builds still new applications which are based on like traditional servers and things like that I'm sure there are some yeah but um it's really about that right and so you really build these Cloud native applications and that is what we can enable with AKs hybrid and for example our Arc enabled Services as well so yeah and and you know Thomas to me the uh uh and I say a few questions on the chat or especially around application Services we'll get to that in a second here but um you know we'll I promise to we promise to try to answer um as many as many questions and address as many comments as possible um you know to me the AKs like the the option of doing this on Windows iot and I don't know if you saw the demo uh with the point of sale with the point of sale application and all that and everything is jello together with Azure Arc I think to me this is really uh um the uh really the next step when it comes to our Edge Story to me Edge was always about uh it was always about when I'm here in Edge I'm thinking low foot uh you know small footprint low power devices that's kind of what is going on in my head when I'm hearing Edge um you know I've done a lot of things with Raspberry Pi's and nukes and angelinos and Jetsons and all those stuff and every time that we've been talking about Edge to me I was always you know I was kind of missing this option of uh having some sort of a unified streamlined way to do containers at the edge um sure you have a lot of solutions that are out there and a lot of third parties companies that are building um uh Technologies around that uh you know to name a few ranchers doing great job on this I I also saw multiple uh deployments out there in the wild using micro kubernetes believe it or not um you know stuff like that but to me the the fact that we're bringing a managed service like AKs to the iot space or connecting those two worlds together uh that is a pretty significant thing uh so uh I'm definitely excited about definitely excited about that let's talk uh let's talk about the hybrid benefits um the hybrid benefits was was a big one um uh I also said that to me the hybrid benefits uh um and you know please share you know share with me your wisdom on this one but to me the hybrid benefits is really significant and it's funny because I said this to Matt as well I'm not someone that is categorized itself like I'm categorizing myself as an engineer as an architect commercial is something that I had to learn like it's something that grew on me um and I had to build that muscle when and the Hybrid engine is you know by definition that's a commercial announcement so let's talk about that yeah no absolutely so before I go into this you're absolutely right the thing is by the way I had a that's also what I had like a very discussion yesterday with someone is like people are like hey when you when you go into Cloud what do I need to like do for my career-wise what do I need to learn right and one of the key things I usually bring up is like get broader in technology try to understand like get a good overview about everything go deep in some topics but don't be just this like expert in one thing and one person added actually it should not just be that you're an expert on a lot of different Technologies you might also need to think about cost and finances and the business value and all that so that's a good point so that is covered this comes in and I think the Azure hybrid benefit makes it super interesting for a lot of people like One Thing uh it existed for a while now but it now extends a little bit what what you can do with it so if you have already Windows Server um um licenses with software Assurance or SQL Server licenses you get some benefits when you run these on Azure basically but the announcement in this specific case where there were two announcements around the Azure hyper benefit first of all you can now run AKs on Azure stack HCI um for basically no additional cost if you have Windows server with software Assurance um and the second one was actually on the Azure stack HCI side so you get Azure stack HCI at no additional cost if you have Windows server with software shorts um again the software Assurance part is important right it's not just like if you have a Windows Server license it's like with software Assurance I think it also includes CSP licensing but again when we run talk about Licensing in general it's always good to then ask your licensing specialist disclaimer here but um yeah so this was obviously this makes a huge difference right when it comes down to cost like especially if you already have these licenses um your costs go down the licensing costs go down in a big way yeah so Thomas before we are and again please follow up on everything we'll put some links in the description below obviously the hybrid benefit is a big one uh I I kid you not I had probably around 20 to 30 conversations just on this um either with customers Partners product managers uh some people from the field that were in the event uh this is pretty significant and you know Thomas just kind of to wrap wrap that topic with a final thought here before we're taking some we're taking some questions um you know to me it's really it's not just a an accelerator for uh for the business it's also a uh something that is really unblocking a lot of people yeah uh I had I had few people talking to me about the hybrid benefits and they were saying uh you know that this is super useful because they're stuck with Windows Server data center licenses they have this massive amount more that they need to be honest um and now they can start you know shifting that towards you know towards the Azure stack HCI the AKs space and all that so again I think it's a pretty significant one absolutely it's completely unblocking I think you that that's a good word you just brought up it's like especially for people to say look Thomas we would love to but that means we need to somehow pay now for Azure stuff and and like we're not necessarily like we can we have Azure a little bit ready we need we still need to have Azure right that's not the thing but the costs will like be gone for this um so um yeah it's really unblocking a lot of the things to to actually go with that technology all right let's let's take some questions I saw a question regarding application Services it's one of the you know it's one of those topics that uh we've been to be completely honest we've been a bit ambiguous about that um you know it was it was just kind of hey it's in preview for a while what's going on uh we didn't talk about it at ignite and all that so let's just try to let's try to put some things into into context here um and thanks for the question by the way thanks everyone for uh you know for being engaged and all that we appreciate it um you know to me the Azure Arc enabled application Services is really an important piece in this puzzle of azure Arc now up until now we were in preview Azure Arc enabled uh um app Services you know with web apps functions logic apps API management event grid like we had all this stuff it's already in preview the thing with that is that you know we also as engineering we're thinking about okay so what is the right decision that we need to make like what you know what are the things that we need to do in order to make sure that the things that we are working on are actually being adopted okay so the reason that you're seeing this in preview for a while is because we're taking some engineering decisions uh to make sure that when we will go to GA with the right product and solution and this is something that will happen soon but um when we are going GA we want to make sure or at least going into let's just say public preview version 2 which is an evolution sometime of a public preview we want to make sure that you will actually use it we don't want to develop things just for the sake of developing stuff this is not you know this is not this is not the science project business um it's really something that we we're putting a lot of emphasis on and this is really the reason why you haven't seen um application Services going GA quite yet but I can tell you that it's coming it's coming soon uh so I also saw another question um I think it was uh it was Massimo um so yeah there's also a a comment from Stephen on I think that was on the Azure hybrid benefit like saying that this is a game changer for Aztec HCI just as you just said right um then I see a other Stephen on LinkedIn um I'm saying hi from Ireland and regarding AKs uh and hey especially saying hey does that mean I can run AKs on premises on non-hci hardware and that's absolutely the case you can actually run it now on Windows Server um so if you can install Windows server in either a cluster or even a standalone host of Windows Server so if you want to try it out you can basically set up Windows Server uh download Windows admin Center for example already today and basically install AKs or you just go to the documentation and do it with Powershell and so on um and then you have this other thing which you actually showed a cool demo on for AKs Lite right which is another option to actually deploy AKs on premises or at the edge if you will yeah yeah I think that uh again so the the question is you know we got that answer yes you can definitely do that there is actually another short and sweet demo that I did with collaboration with abhilasha from the stack HCI team um she's the PM that is just kind of spearheading the uh the AKs um hybrid deployment um option with Windows Server so uh definitely go look for that or replace that in the in the comments there is a short and sweet demo on how you can go by and do that um so Thomas before we are taking more questions let's uh let's talk about more things that that happen and then we'll go another round of questions we'll let we'll let the folks there to uh you know to just kind of uh get their get their heads together around all this stuff um what is the next uh what is the next thing that you were excited about yeah so let me quickly because I have it just on the tongue I don't want to make people's work there was also I also like the fact that I've been upskilling my uh or uptaking my my uh thumbnails game I don't know let me know in the comments if you if this is something that is working I have no idea I'm just playing around I'm just playing around one thing actually I can poses to the camera which is funny but fine yeah sorry one thing I was super excited about was one our announcement which you worked on tremendously as well and parts of our team uh also help with that and that was the arc box announcement for HCI and also the arc box announcement for data Ops which I both of them um I was super happy to see um so maybe you can tell us a little bit more about about these yeah yeah I can definitely let me you know what let me let me take the screen here Thomas and and just kind of play around with that I'll zoom in just a bit so maybe to give some context to folks to who missed that one so we came up with uh or if you you've been you've been following what when I'm posting I posted three announcements basically we have the new Azure Arc enabled SQL manager uh SQL managed instance Landings on accelerator we have our box for dataops and we also have ACI box let's talk about that first of all the landings on accelerator you and I Thomas we had a we also had a the enablement show we talked about that um geez we are you know we're talking a lot always uh always amazed by that um anyway so the you know the the accelerator is really part of the evolution of us bringing more knowledge around Azure Arc look Azure Arc is a really interesting space right it's uh it's it's it's so big it touches so many platforms potentially people use it in very different ways um it's it's just it's it's a wildfire sometimes so we need to put things in the right context in order for us to do that we need to create like good uh good collateral so about I don't know a year and a half maybe almost two years no maybe a year and a half year and a half something like that um we started to build the accelerators as part of the cloud adoption framework we started with Azure Arc enabled servers which is you know let's just kind of zoom in just a bit we started with Azure Arc enabled servers then we moved to kubernetes and the last one that we released at ignite is the Azure Arc enabled SQL managed instance uh Landings on accelerator so for those of you who do not who don't know what this is all about this is really our way to put our engineering stamp and field stamp um in terms of validated recommendations and design considerations and reference architecture diagrams um and I'll talk about the implementation in a second on top of a specific technology right so we have that across the board right um and the accelerator really this one is really focusing on Azure enabled SQL managed instance so we have nine critical design areas as you can see um um we have identity and access management network storage you can see all that on the screen and each one of those is covering all the areas that are part of that specific uh uh critical design area right so you have specific design consideration and recommendation um and next steps when it comes to network when it comes to storage when it comes to Identity and access business continuity stuff like that right so everything is bundled inside the linens on accelerator so a lot of a lot of effort is going you know going down into those paths for those of you by the way just kind of maybe share some sausage making here it takes about I don't know something around six months end to end to build these accelerators from the moment that you start the planning all the way to the execution building the team putting everything together it takes about six months and we really wanted to release that at ignite because we also knew that as the jumpstart team we also want to release our box for data Ops which is the second which is the second topic so every time we are doing those accelerators we actually took the decision to build the implementation on top of the jumpstart automations because as you are unlike native Azure services that you can go and build on top of azure and you have the you know the terraform templates you have you know arm you have everything that kind of that you can go into the those accelerators and build you can basically spin up an entire environment the dashboard is a bit it's a bit it's a bit weird because you need to have resources or it assets outside of azure in order for you to actually experience Azure Arc right so what we want to do is we want to provide a simulation for that because we can control what you have and what you know what what you don't so the r box is really you know one of it's you know part of our products in the jumpstart it's our Flagship products in part of the jumpstart and this is what the implementation is based on so it's based on so every accelerator we build those sandbox Automation in order for you to go and experience the accelerator so you can see here that I'm in the Azure Arc jumpstart and here under jumpstart our box we now have a new option which is jumpstart our box for data Ops and jumpstart our box for data Ops I'll you know I'll zoom in here you know this is really uh uh a very robust automation it include everything that the SQL managed instance it simulates a Dr between two sites backup and restore point in time active directory authentication and authorization you have everything configured for you we have a sample application that actually you can play around with data Ops with rbox data up so you can experience all this stuff and on top of that you have that unified layer right grafana Azure monitor log analytics tagging like all those stuff are built on top of that so that's the second announcement what do you think about what do you think about that before we're talking about ACI box here yeah I'm super excited like this again you cannot um really um on like you should not underestimate how important the solution accelerators are right for for the customers to deploy this and test like in this case like the accelerator itself like testing it out but also getting guidance to actually Implement that in a production environment uh as well like this the combination of the two having that sandbox as well as like the guidance I think is a very powerful and important thing to have because as as always when you do cloud computing doesn't matter if it's actually in Azure itself or if it's like in hybrid or multicult environment you need some guidance and some best practices and you need to have some playground to try it out and those Solutions necessary to really help on on doing that yeah um you know we uh we've been hearing from a lot of customers our own field Partners about their usage of uh of our box um and we see that with the numbers you know in the back end in Telemetry definitely a popular solution um which brings me to you know our next uh solution that we came up with uh that's HCI box which Thomas you also were involved in that um an ATI box was really you know I had a few people reaching out uh talking to me about uh talking to me about the HCI box which which are so fun to see because as someone that is really keen on teaching enabled me and enabling providing content and and you know you and I we've been CR we've been creating so much content in the past almost three years now around the space when people are you know when people are using it uh it's really where you know how we like to say the rubber meets the road this is really how we are we know that what we are working on is actually being used and it's actually working so when we started to when we started to think about the jump start and how can we bring more HCI to the picture uh you know the Azure Arc jumpstart started with no HCI in mind uh because back then it was still really very much in diapers I want to say um uh I think that for us this evolution of bringing HCI box to uh to the messes is really is really a significant step because and I saw a comment I think uh Stephen thank you for that comment you know this is one of those one of those motivations with supply chain being so you know hectic post-pandemic and still with the pandemic uh um and in order for us to provide people with a way to learn a technology but the technology that really requires you to have some to have some blinking lights uh underneath your desk in order for us to provide that without you being constrained to having some sort of hardware and for you to get going at least get going HCI box was really a big motivation um so that's what we did so for those who don't know HCA box it's really the same experiment that you're getting with our box but just for HCI so initially in public preview two node cluster being spin up for you in the nested virtualization fashion you can see that on screen in nested virtualizations fashion um you know you're getting AKs another stack HCI Azure Arc everything enable Resource Bridge image gallery like active directory everything is just kind of baked in uh for you to deploy so uh yeah so ATI box I see a lot of I'll see a lot of comments a lot of questions coming in yeah yep a lot of good stuff a lot of like shout outs to how great the Azure Rock jump start is and it really helps um which is great to hear um then speak of HCI I think another big announcement was around what we have for Azure stack HCI I think uh that kind of like with all the awesome AKs stuff also got like a little bit like again there's so much happening right but I have two like I have now um I quickly did a big poll on on the YouTube channel to say okay what is what are the biggest announcements what do you like our audience think is and currently the the clear winner is azure hyper benefit followed by uh Aztec HCI announcement so should we quickly talk about a little bit what all the stuff which is new for hashtag HCI yeah let's go yeah so perfect if you can put up my screen you will also see by the way I found that always interesting so there's a blog post covering that and I zoom in even a little bit more more about what is new for hashtag HDI and Microsoft ignite 2022 because it's not just about the operating system of hashtag it as the KCI it's really about like what else comes to mind there so this great blog post here uh obviously custom again covers the software Assurance benefit um or the like hybrid benefit for customers with Windows Server um uh licenses with software assurance and then here by the way that's also interesting like how do you activate this you actually go into the Azure portal and then you can enable that hybrid benefit and that is basically you can see here then there is a very neat portal integration to that I mean yeah and you can see here then like zero uh dollars per physical core um so you can basically go and activate that um the second big thing again now like I I would not discuss the order of the features in the blog post but yeah it's actually this Arc enabled VM management so one of the benefits we always talked about when it comes to Aztec hcis that in integration with Azure and like you can do a couple of things um with that like for example monitoring and other things but I just put out by the way I just went quickly into the portal because I have an average Tech HCI cluster here I want to show you something um right all right um so I have a single node cluster here which we announced a while ago um that you can do that too but now there's a couple of fakes so first of all you can see here you can now get these additional features and help you to deploy Azure Auto manage for Windows server for example as well as uh the Azure virtual desktop and this has some prerequisites and I was like thinking what are the prerequisites of doing that okay it's actually about the VM images so before that second preview of the VM lifecycle management it was really that you needed to create your own image on Windows server or Linux or whatever operating system you have store that on the cluster and then that you can actually go out and deploy that directly from Masher using arm templates using bicep using the portal now what the new thing is is you can now go when you go to add a new image and again let me zoom in here a little bit more you can now say hey I want either deploy that from local as you could done before or you can put an image on Azure storage account which is super handy when you have different locations or you can now take an image from the Azure Marketplace so we have a couple of images from the Azure Marketplace which you then can pick and so if you go here you can see here there's a couple of them which are currently enabled so what especially the ones which are interesting for these scenarios for example for auto manage you get the Windows Server 2022 Azure Edition which brings some additional features when you when you combine that like for example uh Hot Patch and so on so you can run that not just in Azure but also now run the same image on your hashtag CI and then you can see here also this Windows 10 Windows 11 Enterprise multi-session images so those are for Azure virtual desktop and they usually were only available in Azure now you can also go and deploy that before Azure virtual desktop on Aztec HCI on premises like with the marketplace indication uh just a beautiful feature beautiful is the absolute right Wordly or absolutely yeah um you know uh one uh one thing that one comment that I have around uh the VM management piece you know one of the uh one of the biggest things that when I'm thinking about Azure stack HCI and I always have uh my my days at VMware uh in the back of my head and we were trying to build solutions that are really uh you know stitching Solutions together and trying to make it work in a in a cloudy fashion now the thing we itself you know with self-service and self-managed um platforms is that the reality is that you it's it's impossible for that to be sustainable um and consistent over time you might be able to do you know one iterations two iterations like but at the end in order for you to maintain this you need like a huge crew of people in order to get the in order to get the lights on and make and keep the lights on and make sure that everything is is clicking when I'm thinking about uh when I'm thinking about what you just showed me I can't help thinking the fact that we are governing those images that's one um so you don't have to worry about that and you also have you know the this Auto manage piece that you can plug into that so if you need like obviously if you're building extra extra governance or you have your own thing going on with those images now that is something that you can put together and to me the fact that everything is integrated in the portal which means that you also have the apis you have the clis you have the partial models everything is is baked to me that means that this is really self-service this is really what on-premises HCI like hybrid not Azure stack HCI hyper converge is all about um and I think that this is something that will definitely bring a lot of customers to the table um so yeah um just want to keep some comments around that yeah no absolutely I get what you're saying like this consistency stuff like a lot of customer I talk to you is like consistency is one of the key things that's what one of the main motivation is they wanna they will not do things differently because it runs somewhere else right they want to do it in the same way um like it doesn't matter if it's about like VM deployment if it's like about like app deployment or kubernetes or something like that or past Services they want to have that some sort of a consistency and do it in the same manner and I think that's one of the things um then obviously there was the 2022 H2 feature update announcement so that is now GA for Aztec HCI and you can basically download that since last week uh over basically over the air update you basically just patch your systems and basically go out and get this update there are a ton of quality improvements in that and additional features in there as well but in terms of time I want to also quickly go down and talk a little bit more what else we have here obviously we talked about the hybrid deployment options the sdn integration uh in that for AKs on hashtag HCI uh is is there is no I think ta marinero s that's another thing that is part of that you want to quickly mention that what that is about like consistency between Azure and and yeah on-prem for example yeah so you know when we when we're thinking about AKs one of the one of the biggest challenges or the goals or the requirements goals whatever you want is to reduce the footprint of the image that is for the notes for the AKs notes um and it's not just about reducing the the image footprint it's also about how do we as Microsoft governing the development process and the security patches and really just end-to-end governance around that image so marinara CBL that's basically the um an operating system like a Linux operating system that we in Microsoft we developed in order to make sure that we're able to provide our own image our own flavor that can be used at the back end um in the underlying infrastructure for those kubernetes nodes and in terms of consistency you can get that either on a cast today in Azure that's in preview you can do that and it's also the default image for AKs live right so if you'll go by and deploy AKs on Windows iot that's what you get you're going to get Mariner CBL and that's also part of the demo like which showed that consistency between those two images and the reason that it's important it's not just about hey we have this we it's the same it's also um one thing one last thing to worry about when it comes to the patch the patch level of those images um which is something that a lot of customers identified as a challenge absolutely absolutely it's a very good point um this is something like what comes up a lot it's like okay well we have discrimination but we need to take care of the host OS and we need to like make sure that they're up to date and so on and by delivering like that with a service like AKs um on K on on-prem basically on the hyper deployment you'd really make that way easier for the customer and way more secure um as well now again I want to give a little bit of chat time but like one more thing there is really wasn't one more thing announcing there's always one more thing and this was really about also giving the customer for draw uh the customers a choice of getting a HCI integrated system um by Microsoft right so you're not just like we have this great oems uh from hpe Dell Lenovo and data on a ton of others like I think there are 30 or 40 or maybe more even um which really built this nice Solutions but then we also have like some star uh some customers who want to get it uh kind of like as a Opex model and so that is where we basically announced the Pro 2 basically which you can order um from the Azure portal right so that is also an option now if you want to have hashtag HCI you can also do that as well and that was kind of like what's the GPU horsepower on those like are we talking oh that was Nvidia A2 choose okay yeah yeah that's pretty that's pretty significant yeah yeah I mean I mean you can also like that that's a good absolute great thing but then there's also obviously like if you look at that the OEM offerings we have we can even put even more powerful stuff in there as well right so uh there is there is definitely uh like a good space for for everyone there like I mean it's a very very narrow solution basically well not playing narrow but it's it's a fixed solution what you have here but if you want to have need for flexibility again we have all these great oems um doing all these fantastic work uh so you definitely there is way more way more room like if you want to go this the road route with um uh smaller clusters or even larger clusters then that's that's for sure we have that offering as well you know definitely it's very obvious that uh both Azure stack HCI and AKs got a lot of love um at ignite that's that's for sure um and it's it's it's great to see it's cool um I think that it's a space that has so much potential for so much Innovation um and you know you and I Thomas we're talking to a lot of customers and and seeing a lot of use cases um around that um uh I saw I saw the customer story on coal in austere Australia with the stores you know definitely go you know we'll put some links but definitely uh go check those out after after the stream um we uh we had a customer that is doing this on cruise ships I wasn't saying that just you know just for saying that that's that's a real thing um and uh really there's so many there's so many things that are happening um in this space um I'm both scared and excited um because I know the amount the amount of work that is about to uh to hit me in the face um but uh but yeah it's it's it's so funny I had a conversation with a couple of people on like which are not very might do a lot of work with Microsoft they do a lot of work with others and other stuff as well and they were kind of like asking yeah is macro still invested in this hybrid thing and something like that like this huge smile on my face because I did not know where to start uh because as you can see it's even for us it's hard to keep up with all the announcement all the work which is going on uh and like the teams who are doing all this fantastic work right they're like um the conversation we are having with our teams and um like it's just like yeah knowing some what these teams are doing and then what we are working on so sure um yeah really exciting times so Thomas before we are getting just maybe a couple of questions uh that are on the chat I wanted to show you something here um this is so I'm sharing my screen here and this is a a completed deployment of HCI box this is what you're getting on the um in the portal let's just kind of uh you know save some real estate I'll zoom in just a bit so you can see that you're getting an ATI cluster right uh you're also getting a couple of images in the gallery right that's already baked in obviously custom location which is a fundamental building block for do Azure enabled kubernetes or Azure Arc enabled Services um and the and the Resource Bridge right these are all the disks that are part of the single or the single VM that is used throughout the HCI box for the nested virtualization these are the two AKs clusters that you're getting and the workload cluster which is the important one right the first one is the one we test huge grid that's that's the management AKs on Azure stack HCI um this one is the workload cluster um here's the research bridge and the thing is that this thing is also already registered in Windows admin Center we forgot to mention that all right so automatically this is already there um so again just wanted to uh just kind of wanted to uh to provide some context here um making sure people understand kind of what we built here um so yeah let's uh Thomas let's take some questions I saw I saw a few things here anything anything interesting uh yeah there's many interesting questions I don't think we will get through all of them uh like um Chris basically asked if there is a Powershell modular Powers if there are Powershell commandlets uh I guess you refer to to manage basically Arc enabled VM management so the things I just showed basically in the Azure portal which can be done obviously through resource manager um I don't believe we have a Powershell module for that I don't think so quite yet yeah but I was not I'm not 100 sure and like it's definitely an interesting part like um I mean we always have we always for those who to ref to explain this a little bit we always have when you can do something in the Azure portal like that doesn't mean it's just the portal like everything hap the portal is just one of the experiences we are offering I always um basically say like that with a little bit of a smile but it's actually true right so portal is one experience but then you have um uh Powershell for example Azure Powershell or you have the Azure CLI or you can use like arm templates and then bicep which would do to say like go over the arm templates and then you could also use direct apis to do these things so if you want to work with that you can do that as well so um there is always like especially when a service is preview there's like not all of these things are available like usually the apis are obviously available because they need to be arm templates are usually available because that's just the way it builds on bicep usually as soon as arm is available is bicep usually also available I don't want to make any promises but that's usually how it works yeah um and then the portal is sometimes also like sometimes you have features which do not show up in the portable right so the portal sometimes is lacking behind then you have like maybe sometimes you have a CLI experience first or sometimes you have the Powershell experience first so it really depends a little bit especially when a service is in preview those are all the things we want to enable and usually the teams are also very much looking for feedback to like okay what do customers want to use in this specific case right so if there are a lot of people want to use the Azure Powershell module to to manage this then if we get that feedback that's also then getting prioritized uh as well and um it's a good Thomas you know it's a it's a good segue to something that I also wanted to uh to talk to you about and also maybe share with the community here as we are having this conversation and close to wrapping up this uh this fun uh live stream I hope it was fun Thomas um oh it is exciting it always is always is um so I think it's a good Circle what you mentioned around uh the product is asking for feedback and all that so it's no secret that you and I are very much into the weeds of building the communities and working with you know with a lot of people around those communities we have few things already in the back burner things that we're working on but there's also um about a month ago something like that we started the or we kind of I restarted the process or the uh or the platform of the of the Azure Arc public Community um we you know for those of you who have been following this space for a while you know that we have like a monthly meet up with uh you know with the product managers the people that are actually building the product coming into this um and uh each giving updates on what happened in the past month um so we started to like we started to do this about two years ago and it was more on a mouth to ear basis um it was you know people from our own field bringing customers or you know just community members catching up um on all the news and everything and just joining but moving forward Thomas Wright we're moving into a more of an open kind of open platform or open source platform for those communities um and obviously we'll share the link to how to join that community in the in the description below so you can check it out it's really about bringing everyone together since we opened the community Meetup to the public or become more of started to be more vocal about this or or uh you know more out there in the open we saw a lot of people joining um because a lot of people didn't know about this uh which you know which is mind-boggling but uh that's all good so moving forward we're gonna have the monthly meet up this is going to be published in GitHub after that we have a dedicated GitHub repository open source you know you can get the decks you can get the recordings everything we also in as part of the jumpstart YouTube channel we're also going to publish the recordings for those Community meetups so people can go and check it out um Thomas I think that and you and I obviously we've been on those Community meetups for for ages now um what are your thoughts around this like just kind of you know bring this home with you know with the community and everything that we're doing I I mean as as especially the work we are doing especially in the work where everyone is that right now in Channel cloud computing like being in this community is like a very important part right because you're like this helps us to connect people who have the similar challenges we have similar things to do and share thoughts and discuss things like challenges we have and like discuss those Solutions we have right and so I think this absolutely critical um not just for Microsoft for us uh but also for for everyone who is working on this and we have a really really excited exciting Community when it comes to Azure hybrid right yeah and I think with the effort you and I and others um are doing yeah we really want to bring that together and give that even more attention uh in the future as well like uh we really want to like get like help finding um or solving that appetite basically um giving people the the things they want the right nutrition the right nutrition yep exactly so now again make sure we will share the links to that um uh to these communities uh also have some very very cool announcements coming very very soon yeah especially for those people who are doing a lot of work in the community um without mentioning too much right now but uh um we will we will have that soon we have a certain acronym you know yeah probably probably yeah again we don't get out of the back but yeah um now again it's also a big thank you obviously I see a lot of people also on the stream super overwhelmed uh with all these people doing all this exciting work uh and actually joining and talking and discussing I can't see people in the chat help setting each other's questions which is fantastic right uh it's again uh I'm looking forward to also have probably some other people like from the community on these streams in the future I think that would be a great thing to have um uh so yeah let us know what you think and share some feedback with us as well uh what we can do better not just about the product but also to enable you to be more successful yeah for sure the next Community Meetup is going to be uh next week on Tuesday um so that's going to be the next the next one um 8 AM Pacific time zone um fully packed and awesome agenda it's all right right it's already packed obviously this is the community Meetup that is post ignite so uh you can expect a lot of you know a lot of conversations around that and product managers coming together to talk with the community about this so Thomas Let's uh let's wrap things up um final thoughts before uh we're moving forward yeah just being excited just like hey this is only the beginning uh of what is here to come right you and I know that there's a lot of people working behind the scenes right now on some other cool stuff um so yeah um I'm just be excited what the future holds and thank you again for everyone who was on that call obviously uh you know thanks everyone I I can definitely plus one to that uh make sure to uh uh to like subscribe also Thomas Channel um uh right thomasmore.com that's dot dot Switzerland I don't know CH is the website and you can also find my YouTube channel my apologies my apologies um you know no worries no worries so make sure to uh make sure to like And subscribe let us know you know even after the stream let us know in the comments uh what's up what do you what is working for you what is not working for you uh what would you like to see more of really let us know yeah Thomas let us know if you missed something that's that's especially uh something interesting too because again there was so much so many things um yeah and it's not like you and I are hiding under a rock I think that uh you know people know how to reach out to us so make sure uh make sure to do so um Thomas I guess until next time um I'm officially still on PTO for those who don't know that but I came to do this uh because I love the community I love the work that we're doing together and obviously never miss a chance to talk to Thomas um so um Thomas I guess I'll see you next week uh thank you everyone for joining the live stream always a pleasure to see the community coming together um and we'll see you next time peace thank you very much

Channel: Thomas Maurer

Views: 609

Keywords: Microsoft Ignite, Ignite, Hybrid Cloud, Azure Hybrid, AKS Hybrid, AKS, Azure Stack, Azure Stack HCI, Azure Arc, Azure Automanage, Lior Kamrat, Thomas Maurer, Microsoft

Id: rTZ6xvNBj-0

Length: 60min 5sec (3605 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 20 2022