DEV Community: Ikponmwonsa Okundigie

Effective Cost Management in Azure Using TCO and Pricing Calculators

Ikponmwonsa Okundigie — Sat, 27 Jul 2024 13:29:37 +0000

Simplifying Cost Management with Azure's TCO and Pricing Calculators

In today's fast-changing cloud computing world, efficient cost management is vital for businesses to optimize resources and boost ROI. Azure, Microsoft's cloud platform, provides essential tools like the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator and the Pricing Calculator. These tools are crucial for accurately forecasting and managing cloud expenses.

TCO Calculator
The TCO Calculator helps businesses estimate cost savings from migrating on-premises infrastructure to Azure. Here's how it works:

Enter information about your current infrastructure.
The tool compares current costs with projected Azure costs.
Get detailed insights on potential savings and efficiencies. These tools are keys for businesses looking to forecast and control their cloud expenses effectively.

The use of TCO Calculator
Consider a medium-sized company using old on-premises servers for its CRM system. By using the TCO calculator:

The IT team can enter the current specifications of their CRM servers, including hardware, maintenance, and electricity costs.

The calculator then compares these costs with the expenses of migrating the CRM system to Azure VMs and Azure SQL Database. It considers factors like Azure Hybrid Benefit for Windows Server, Reserved Instances pricing, and savings on maintenance and power consumption.

Based on this data, the enterprise can make informed decisions about migrating their CRM system to Azure, using cost-effective solutions like Azure Hybrid Benefit and Reserved Instances to optimize cloud spending.

Utilizing the Price Calculator
The Pricing Calculator is a Microsoft tool that helps users estimate the cost of using Azure services. Users can pick from a vast range of Azure services, such as Virtual Machines, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Kubernetes Services, and more.

The calculator offers detailed options for region, storage type, performance, redundancy, Access Tier and storage account type.

It offers a detailed cost breakdown with monthly and yearly estimates, upfront payment options for Reserved Instances, and regional price comparisons.

Save or export your estimates on selected azure product.

Consider an e-commerce startup planning to deploy a scalable web application on Azure:

• The startup can use the Pricing Calculator to estimate costs for Azure Virtual Machines, Azure Blob Storage for media files, and Azure SQL Database for data management.

• The comprehensive cost breakdown aids in creating precise budget forecasts, ensuring financial predictability as the startup expands.

Conclusion
Azure’s TCO and Pricing calculators are essential for managing cloud costs. They help businesses evaluate the financial benefits of migrating to Azure and optimize service configurations for cost efficiency.

By using these tools, organizations can make informed decisions that align with their budgets, control expenditures, and leverage Azure's capabilities for innovation and growth. Whether migrating to the cloud or optimizing current infrastructure, these calculators provide a solid foundation for cost-effective cloud management in today’s competitive market.

Guide on creating a Virtual Network with Subnets in Microsoft Azure

Ikponmwonsa Okundigie — Sat, 13 Jul 2024 12:11:14 +0000

Here’s a detailed guide for creating an Azure Virtual Network with Subnets using the address space 10.1.0.0/16 Follow these steps in the Azure portal, with accompanying screenshots to assist you through the process:

Step 1: Sign In to the Azure Portal
A. Open Your Web Browser: Navigate to the Azure Portal.
B. Sign In: Use your Azure account credentials to log in.

Step 2: Create a Resource Group (if necessary)
If you don’t have an existing resource group for your virtual network, follow these steps to create one:

Access Resource Groups: On the left sidebar of the Azure Portal, click on Resource groups.
Add a New Resource Group: Click on the + Create button at the top of the Resource Groups page.
Fill in the Details: Subscription: Select the appropriate subscription. Resource Group Name: Enter a name for the new resource group. Region: Choose the region where you want the resource group to be located. Click Review + create, then Create to finalize the creation of the resource group.

Step 3: Create a Virtual Network
To create the Virtual Network with the specified address space and subnets, follow these steps:

Go to the Azure Portal Home Page: Open the Azure Portal.
Navigate to Virtual Networks: Click on Virtual networks from the left-hand menu.
Start the Virtual Network Creation Process: Click the + Create button at the top of the Virtual Networks page.

Subscription: Select the Azure subscription you will use for this Virtual Network.
Resource Group: Choose the existing resource group or create a new one for your Virtual Network.
Name: Enter a unique name for your Virtual Network.
Region: Select the Azure region where the Virtual Network will be deployed.

Enter Address Space:
Type 10.1.0.0/16 for the IPv4 address space.

Number of Addresses:
This address range provides a total of
65,536 addresses IP addresses for the Virtual Network.
The following image shows that 10.1.0.0/16 provides
65,536 addresses addresses within this network.

Visual Aid
Below is an illustration of how the 10.1.0.0/16 address space is organized:

IP Range Total Addresses
10.1.0.0 - 10.1.0.255 65,536 addresses

Step 4: Detailed Instructions to Configure Subnets
Navigate to Subnets:
In the Virtual Network settings, find and select the Subnets tab.
Add a Subnet:
Click + Add subnet to start configuring each subnet.

Subnet Name:
Provide a unique name for the subnet, such as Subnet-1, Subnet-2, etc.
Subnet Address Range:
Define the IP range for the subnet within the 10.1.0.0/16 address space. For example, you might use 10.1.1.0 - 10.1.1.255 for one subnet and 10.1.3.0 - 10.1.3.255 for another. Ensure the ranges are within 10.1.0.0 - 10.1.0.255
Add the Subnet:
After configuring the details, click Add to create the subnet.

Step 5: Review and Create
Once you’ve added all four subnets, click Review + create to verify the configuration and click Create to deploy the Virtual Network and its subnets.

Step 6: Deployment Progress
Wait:
Allow time for Azure to complete the deployment process. This typically takes a few minutes.
Step 7: Verification

View the Resource:
Click Go to resource to access the Virtual Network after deployment finishes.
Verify Subnets:
Go to Settings and select Subnets to confirm that the subnets are set up correctly.

Congratulations!
You have successfully created an Azure Virtual Network with four subnets using the address space 10.1.0.0/16.
Alternative Clear and Precise Versions.

By completing these steps, you will set up the basic configuration for your Virtual Network.

A step-by-step walkthrough on how to host a Static Website on Microsoft Azure Blob Storage

Ikponmwonsa Okundigie — Wed, 03 Jul 2024 23:03:08 +0000

In Azure Storage are designed to store various types of data, including structured, semi structured and unstructured data. Blob Storage is specifically optimized for storing large amounts of unstructured data, like text or binary files. Azure allows you to upload your static website easily, share its link anywhere, and make it accessible to anyone.

Hosting your static website on Azure is free, but you'll need to pay for the storage account. Azure ensures data security using encryption techniques. This article provides step-by-step instructions with screenshots to help you host your static website successfully through Azure and visual studio code. Just follow these steps to get your static website up and running.
Steps – Hosting a static website with Azure Storage

STEP 1
Open your Google drive link then click on mywebsite to download the file to your PC.

STEP 2
Click on your Download tab and locate the
mywebsite-20240629T172754Z-001 file to extract the file.

Install Visual Studio Code on your desktop.

STEP 3
Open your File in the visual studio code then Click on file at the top -left corner of your Visual Studio Code Click on Open file and select the folder that houses your static website codes and data.
Click on your file drop-down and click Index.html

STEP 4
A. Change only white text on command line 7 and
47 to your name
B. Change orange text on command line 59 from
index.html to about.html to test run and see
when it’s deployed and not part of personal
information to change.
C. Edit command line 92, 93 and 109 to reflect
your name and other details.

D. Click on your file drop-down and click 404.html as
the error page.
E. Change only white text on command line 7 and 47 to
your name.

To access Azure, you need to log in to your Azure account using your credentials.
Search and Navigate to Storage Accounts and then click on Create

To set up a Storage Account

Go to the Basics tab, under Project details and ensure the correct subscription is chosen. From the resource group list, select azurestorgaeRG or create a new one if needed.
Enter a unique name for the Storage account.
Choose a region for its location.
Select Standard for performance.
Choose Geo Redundant Storage (GRS) for redundancy.
Proceed to the next step or adjust other settings if necessary; otherwise, keep them as default.
Click on Review + Create to finalize the setup.

Validation
Before proceeding, validate the configuration of the storage account to ensure everything is set up correctly. If the configuration is correct, the option to create the storage account will be available. If not, review all configurations thoroughly before clicking on the Create button.

Go to Resources

STEP 5
To find the Static Website settings:

Click on Data Management dropdown.
Select Static Website

To set up the Static Website

Enable the Static Website feature.
Enter the name of the index document.
Enter the name of the error document. Afterward, Azure generates two links: Primary and Secondary endpoints. Copy the Primary endpoint link. Azure also creates a storage container named $WEB to host the static website; click on it. After that two option appears on the screen (Disable and Enable), Click on the Enable.
Click on Save icon for your changes.

Go to Containers

Open the Data storage dropdown.
Select Containers
Click on $WEB

To upload files from your PC

Click on Upload
Navigate to the folder on your computer where the website files are located.
Select all then Drag and drop the files from this location into the designated box.

To test run on a browser
When your file is successfully uploaded then paste your primary link on your browser.
At this point your Static Website is ready.

STEP 6
Connecting your static website to your Azure Account through Visual Studio Code
Click on the Azure extension to install your Azure account and Azure Storage

Click on explorer then drag the path and right click to deploy to static website via Azure storage to sign in to Azure account.

Click on the Resources drop- down and then click on the Azure subscription drop- down

Next click on the storage account drop-down

Click on Deploy to the static website via Azure storage

You will be instructed to select your preferred folder to deploy the static website. After the deployment is completed, ensure to click on browser static website.

At this point your Static Website is ready that was done through visual studio code

Thank you for sticking with this post and going through the steps, I hope you were able to use this guide to setup a static website on Azure Storage.

Tutorial to Create a Virtual Machine Scale Set in Microsoft Azure.

Ikponmwonsa Okundigie — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 22:58:29 +0000

In the world of cloud scalability, Microsoft Azure's Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS) are revolutionary. This guide will show you how to set up a VMSS using the Microsoft Azure Portal, step by step. Let's begin!

Step 1
Sign in to the Azure Portal at https://portal.azure.com.

Step 2
Go to the home page and click on the + Create or use an existing resource icon.

Step 3
Navigate to the search bar, look for virtual machine scale set and select it. Click on Create and then select Virtual machine scale set to go to the Create a virtual machine scale set page.

Step 4
On the Basic tab, choose the relevant subscription and resource group under Project details

Step 5
Provide a name for the VMSS, select your preferred region, and choose an availability zone under Scale set details.

Step 6
Under Orchestration Mode, ensure the Uniform option is selected, security type, Standard is selected and Scaling to Autoscaling

Step 7
Scaling Configuration
Click on Configure to get details of scaling configuration.

click + add a scaling condition and create a scaling condition name

Select mode to Autoscaling, type your initial instance, instance limit, scale out or in, query duration and your schedule then save.

Predictive Scaling: click on checkbox to enable forecast for predictive autoscaling
Scaling in policy: Newest VM- Balance across zone then delete the newest created VM and save your configuration.

Step 8
Instance Details
Image, in this example, we have chosen Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS - x64 Gen2, VM architecture, and size according to your needs

Enter your desired username, and select which authentication type you prefer for administrator account

Select Next: Spot set as default.
Select Next: Disks to move the disk configuration options. For this quickstart, leave the default disk configurations.

Select Next: Networking to move the networking configuration options.
Edit network interface, select your inbound port HTTP (80), SSH (22), then click on enable IP address and press OK

Click on the checkbox to the virtual network interface.

On the Networking page, under Load balancing, select the Use a load balancer checkbox to put the scale set instances behind a load balancer. In Load balancing options, select Azure load balancer. In Select a load balancer, select your load balancer or create a new one.

Step 9
Click on Review + create to proceed. After it passes validation, select Create to deploy the scale set.

Now you will see that the VMSS has been deployed successfully.

Step 10

On a Windows machine, search for a command prompt and click Run as administrator

Click on your download to get your key file and ensure you note the download location of the .PEM file, then you right click on your .PEM File and select on Properties to locate your file path as you will need its path in the next step.

For connection you will need your command prompt, username and the IP address to run on your terminal. In your command prompt, initiate an SSH connection to your virtual machine and substitute the VM's IP address for the placeholder, and replace the file path with the actual path where the key file was downloaded.(ssh -i "/path/to/your/private-key-file.pem" username@your-vm-public-ip- p 50000)

Clean up resources
When no longer needed, delete the resource group, scale set, and all related resources. To do so, select the resource group for the scale set and then select Delete.

Step Guide on how to create and connect to a Linux VM using a Public key

Ikponmwonsa Okundigie — Fri, 21 Jun 2024 12:00:38 +0000

Creating a Linux virtual machine (VM) on Microsoft Azure involves several steps. Here’s a comprehensive guide to help you set up an Azure Linux VM:

Step-by-Step Guide:
If you don't have an Azure subscription, create a free account before you begin.
Sign in to Azure Portal:
Go to portal.azure.com and sign in with your Azure account.

Create a Resource Group (Optional):
A resource group is a logical container for grouping your Azure resources. If you don’t have one already, you can create it:

In the Azure Portal, click on Resource groups in the left-hand menu.

Click on + Add to create a new resource group.
Provide a name, choose a subscription, and select a region. Click Review + create, then Create.

Create a Virtual Machine:

Search for and select Virtual machine.
Navigate to the Virtual machines page, click on Create, and then select Virtual machine. This action opens the Create a virtual machine page then select Azure virtual machine.

On the Basics tab, ensure the appropriate Azure subscription is selected under Project details. Opt to create a new resource group name or select an existing one.

In the Instance details section, enter a name for your VM as the name for the Virtual machine.

Region: Select the region where your VM will be deployed.
Image: Choose your Linux distribution (Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS - x64 Gen2 (free services eligible)
Security type: Select “Standard”.
VM architecture: x64
Size: Select an appropriate VM size based on your requirements and budget.

Choose SSH public key under Administrator account.
Enter azureuser as the default Username.
Keep the default setting for SSH public key source, which is "Generate new key pair", and name the Key pair TanikLinux_key which is auto generated.

If using SSH public key: Enter your SSH public key data or browse to upload your public key file.
If using password: Enter a username and password for SSH access.

In the Inbound port rules section under
Public inbound ports, opt for "Allow selected ports". Then, from the drop-down menu, select SSH (22) and HTTP (80).
Review the settings you’ve configured for your VM, then click the Review + create button located at the bottom of the page to validate the configuration.

Maintain the default settings for other options. Note that the default size and pricing displayed are illustrative; actual size availability and pricing vary depending on your region and subscription.

After Validation passed, on the Create a virtual machine page, review the details of the VM you are about to create. When ready, click on the Create button to deploy your Azure Linux VM.
Azure will now provision and deploy your VM based on the settings you specified.
Once the Generate new key pair window appears, choose Download private key and create resource. Your key file will download as TanikLinuxVM_key.pem. Ensure you note the download location of the .pem file, as you will need its path in the next step.
After the deployment completes, click on
Go to resource to access your VM via SSH.

On the page for your new VM, select the public IP address and copy it to your clipboard.

Connecting to Virtual Machine:
Establish an SSH connection to the virtual machine:
On a Windows machine, search for a command prompt and click Run as administrator.

For connection you will need your command prompt, username and the IP address to run on your terminal. In your command prompt, initiate an SSH connection to your virtual machine and substitute the VM's IP address for the placeholder, and replace the file path with the actual path where the key file was downloaded.(ssh -i "/path/to/your/private-key-file.pem" username@your-vm-public-ip)

Tip
You can reuse the SSH key you created for future Azure VMs by selecting Use a key stored in Azure for SSH public key source. Since you already have the private key on your computer, there's no need to download anything.

Install web server
To see your VM in action, install the NGINX web server. From your SSH session, update your package sources and then install the latest NGINX package.

sudo apt-get -y update
sudo apt-get -y install nginx When done, type exit to leave the SSH session.

View the web server in action
To view the default NGINX welcome page, use any web browser to access the VM's public IP address as the web address. You can find the public IP address on the VM overview page or in the SSH connection string you used earlier.

Clean up resources
Delete resources
When no longer needed, delete the resource group, virtual machine, and all related resources:

On the Overview page of the VM, click on the Resource group link.
At the top of the resource group page, select Delete resource group.
A page will open warning you that you are about to delete resources. Type the name of the resource group and select Delete to finish deleting the resources and the resource group.

Auto-shutdown
If you are still in need of the VM, Azure provides an Auto-shutdown feature for VMs to help manage costs and to avoid been billed for unutilized resources:

On the Operations section for the VM, select the Auto-shutdown option.
Configure the auto-shutdown time on the following page by selecting On to enable and setting a suitable time that is workable by you.
Once configured, click Save at the top to activate the Auto-shutdown settings.

Additional Information:
Be mindful of Azure VM pricing, especially the cost implications of VM size and usage. Always follow best practices for securing your Azure VM, such as using SSH keys instead of passwords where possible, configuring network security groups, and applying OS updates regularly.

Steps to create Azure Virtual Machine

Ikponmwonsa Okundigie — Fri, 14 Jun 2024 02:36:56 +0000

First things first, you can create an Azure Virtual Machine through the Azure portal. A simple browser-based user interface can help you create virtual machines along with all the additional resources. With this quick step-by-step guide, you can deploy your own Azure Virtual Machine.

Before getting started, make sure that you have an active Azure subscription. If not, then don’t worry! You can create a free account and then go about the following steps.

As we move on from the basics, we will now focus on the actual creation of the Azure Virtual Machine. The following steps will deal with configuring the basic settings for your Azure Virtual Machine.

Step 1: Starting the Process of Setting up Azure Virtual Machine

Now that you have an active Azure subscription, open the Azure management portal through www.portal.azure.com and log in.

Step 2: Creating the Azure Virtual Machine

On the Azure portal, select Virtual machines.

Open the Create a virtual machine screen with the help of Select + Add.

In the Create a virtual machine panel, you can get distinct tabs like Basics, Disks, Networking, Advanced, Tags, and Review + create.

Enter all your project details with information about the subscription, resource group, virtual machine name, region, availability options, image, and Azure Spot instance.

If you have not chosen an image before, you can choose the right image from the dropdown list. You can also browse all available images for creating virtual machines, including both public and private images. It’s better to go for Windows 11 Pro, version 22H2 - x64 Gen2(free services eligible).

Carefully select the size of the virtual machine to be deployed. Here you will find different virtual machine size options in accordance with your basic configuration. Note that you cannot find all virtual machine sizes in all the Azure regions. But a recommended choice can be Standard_D2s_v3 - 2 vcpus, 8 GiB memory ($70.08/month).

Fill in your username and password under the Administrator account. Make sure that your password is at least 12 characters long and also meets the specified complexity requirement.

In the Inbound port rules section, choose to Allow selected ports and then choose RDP (3389) from the drop-down menu.

Under Licensing, check-I confirm I have an eligible Windows 10/11 license with multi-tenant hosting rights and move to next: Disks.

Since it's a simple Virtual Machine leave all other Tab
on the default settings.

Finally, select the Review + create button at the bottom of the webpage. Here you can get a basic impression of the virtual machine that you are going to create.

Step 3: Final Deployment
After validation runs, the Create button at the bottom of the page will become active so select that.

Once the deployment is complete, you can Go to resources. You must keep in mind that the process of creating an Azure Virtual Machine will take several minutes, so stay patient throughout the process and your virtual machine will be fully provisioned and ready to use.

Download RDP File, locate the file and click connect to the Windows 11 computer you just acquired. #SMILE#

SUMMING UP
Now you have understood the process of creating and maintaining Azure virtual machines. We have tried to formulate a comprehensive step-by-step guide so that you can understand the various phases of establishing an Azure virtual machine. Once you have gotten your basics of Azure virtual machine clear, you can grasp the process better too.

If you want to create another Azure Virtual Machine, you can get started right away.

Detailed description on core Azure architectural components

Ikponmwonsa Okundigie — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 17:45:58 +0000

This article focuses on understanding the core architectural components of Azure which can be classified into two main groupings:

Physical infrastructure.
Management infrastructure.

Make sure you understand how regions and availability zones compare, as well as the Azure Resource Manager model. This is the way all resources are organized and deployed in Azure.

Physical Infrastructure

The physical infrastructure for Azure starts with datacenters.

Data Center
They’re facilities with servers arranged in racks, with dedicated power, cooling, and networking infrastructure. Data centers are grouped into Azure Regions or Azure Availability Zones that are designed to help you achieve resiliency and reliability for your business-critical workloads.

Regions
A region is a geographical area on the planet that contains at least one, but potentially multiple datacenters that are nearby and networked together with a low-latency network. When you deploy a resource in Azure, you’ll often need to choose the region where you want your resource deployed. It is the location for your services to host, Geographical area on the planet.

Here’s a view of all the available regions

Availability Zones
The availability zone is made up of one or more datacenters equipped with independent power, cooling, and networking. An availability zone is set up to be an isolation boundary. If one zone goes down, the other continues working.

It comes with two service offerings:

Zonal services: Allow creating multiple availability zones as required to make services highly available. e.g. VMs, Disks, etc.

Zone redundant: Automatically replicate data in multiple availability zones for backup. e.g. storage, SQL.

To ensure resiliency, a minimum of three separate availability zones are present in all availability zone-enabled regions. However, not all Azure Regions currently support availability zones, even with the additional resiliency that availability zones provide, it’s possible that an event could be so large that it impacts multiple availability zones in a single region. To provide even further resilience, Azure has Region Pairs.

Region pairs
Most Azure regions are paired with another region within the same geography (such as US, Europe, or Asia) at least 300 miles away. It helps reduce the likelihood of interruptions because of events such as natural disasters, civil unrest, power outages, or physical network outages that affect an entire region. For example, if a region in a pair was affected by a natural disaster, services would automatically failover to the other region in its region pair. Examples of region pairs in Azure are West US paired with East US and South-East Asia paired with East Asia.

Sovereign regions
Sovereign regions are instances of Azure that are isolated from the main instance of Azure. They are generally used for compliance or legal purposes. Azure sovereign regions include:

Government region: US DoD Central, US Gov Virginia, US Gov Iowa, etc.
Partnered region: China East, China North, etc.

Azure Management Infrastructure

The management infrastructure includes Azure resources, resource groups, subscriptions, accounts, and management groups. Let's understand them by their hierarchical arrangement.

Resources
A resource is the basic building block of Azure. Anything you create, provision, deploy, etc. is a resource. Virtual Machines (VMs), virtual networks, CosmosDB, etc. User is billed for these resources as per their usage.

Resource Groups
Resource groups are simply logical groupings of resources. They can be organized by type of services, project definition, or organization requirement. Each resource must be part of only one resource group. Resources in the resource group can reside in different locations.

Resources can be moved between resource groups. Any action applied to a resource group inherits to all the resources within the resource group. If you delete a resource group, all the resources will be deleted. If you grant or deny access to a resource group, you’ve granted or denied access to all the resources within the resource group. Resource groups can’t be nested.

Azure Subscriptions
In Azure, subscriptions are a unit of management, billing, and scale. To create and use Azure services, you need an Azure subscription which is linked with an azure account which is an identity in Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). After you’ve created an Azure account, you’re free to create additional subscriptions. A company might use a single Azure account for your business and separate subscriptions for development, marketing, and sales departments.

Management Groups
For a company dealing with multiple applications, multiple development teams, in multiple geographies, and having many subscriptions, you might need a way to efficiently manage access, policies, and compliance for those subscriptions. Azure management groups provide a level of scope above subscriptions. You organize subscriptions into containers called management groups and apply governance conditions to the management groups.

In conclusion, Azure's architectural components form a robust and flexible foundation for building and deploying a wide range of cloud-based solutions. Whether you're developing a simple web application or a complex enterprise infrastructure, Azure provides the tools and services you need to succeed in the cloud. By leveraging the power of Azure's core components, you can unlock new opportunities for innovation and growth in the digital age.

Thanks for reading till the end. Please feel free to provide any question and feedback.