Azure Bare Metal Infrastructure for Scalable Cloud Solutions

Azure Bare Metal Infrastructure offers a scalable solution for cloud computing, allowing businesses to deploy applications quickly and efficiently.

This is made possible by Azure's global network of data centers, which provides low-latency access to resources and services.

With Azure Bare Metal, you can scale your infrastructure up or down to match changing business needs, without being locked into a specific hardware configuration.

This flexibility is key to achieving true scalability in the cloud.

Azure Bare Metal instances can be complex, so a consultation by a CSA/GBB in the field is offered to help with deployment.

You'll have a team to work with to set up your BareMetal Infrastructure, including configuring the OS, networks, storage volumes, and WAN connections.

Once provisioned, you can register your OS licenses, configure the OS, and install the application layer in the Azure portal.

All BareMetal resources, their state and attributes, are visible in the Azure portal, allowing you to operate the instances and open service requests and support tickets.

Some workloads in the enterprise require special architecture, certified hardware, or extraordinarily large sizes, making BareMetal Infrastructure a necessary choice.

BareMetal Infrastructure is built, certified, and tested for a select set of applications that can't run in a typical virtualized cloud setting.

These applications have sophisticated data protection and business continuity features, but they're not designed for the virtualized cloud and are more sensitive to latencies and noisy neighbors.

Azure was the first to offer BareMetal Infrastructure solutions and has since led with the largest portfolio and most sophisticated systems.

This expertise and experience make Azure the go-to choice for organizations that need reliable and efficient infrastructure for their critical workloads.

SKU availability is crucial for deploying BareMetal Infrastructure on Azure. You can choose from multiple SKUs certified for specialized workloads.

Large instances range from two-socket to four-socket systems, while Very Large instances range from 4-socket to 20-socket systems. BareMetal Infrastructure for specialized workloads is available in several Azure regions.

These regions include West Europe, North Europe, Germany West Central, East US 2, East US, West US, West US 2, and South Central US. Zones support is available in some of these regions, enabling high resiliency and availability.

Here are the Azure regions where BareMetal instances can be deployed across zones for high resiliency and availability:

For Nutanix Clusters on Azure, you can choose from two SKUs: Ready Node for Nutanix AN36 and Ready Node for Nutanix AN36P. Each SKU has different component options.

Here are the component options for each available SKU:

You can deploy Nutanix Clusters on Azure in several Azure regions. Here are the supported regions:

Note that Prism Central is supported in all these regions.

Networking is a crucial aspect of ensuring the availability and management of your resources. Azure network services provide a robust architecture for successful deployments.

Azure virtual networks are connected to the Azure ExpressRoute circuit, which connects to your on-premises network assets, creating a virtual data center. This connection should have a minimum bandwidth of 1 Gbps or higher.

ExpressRoute lets you extend your on-premises network into the Microsoft cloud over a private connection. You can use ExpressRoute Local for cost-effective data transfer and enable ExpressRoute Premium for connectivity across geopolitical boundaries.

BareMetal instances are provisioned within your Azure VNet server IP address range. The architecture of Azure network services is divided into three sections: customer on-premises infrastructure, ExpressRoute provisioned using your Azure subscription, and Azure IaaS with VMs to host your applications.

To support low latency, your ExpressRoute Gateway should be UltraPerformance and enabled with ExpressRoute FastPath for BareMetal connectivity.

Here are the supported network topologies for NC2 on Azure:

You can overcome the limitation of connectivity to BMI in a peered VNet* (Cross region or global peering) without VWAN by setting Site-to-Site VPN.

Cloud computing has come a long way, and its promise continues to evolve. This evolution has led to on-demand access to IT resources, making it easier for businesses to scale up or down as needed.

The 'as a service' model has revolutionized the way we consume IT resources, making it similar to our everyday utilities like electricity, gas, or water. We only pay for what we use, and we can turn it on or off as needed.

The 'as a service' model refers to the way IT assets are consumed, and it's the key difference between cloud computing and traditional IT. It's a subscription-based model where the cloud service provider owns and manages the hardware, system software, development tools, and applications.

The three main types of cloud service offerings are IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. Here's a quick rundown of each:

The primary advantage of the 'as a service' solution is its economic benefits. Businesses can access and scale their IT capabilities as needed for a predictable cost, avoiding the capital expense and overhead of purchasing and maintaining everything in its own data center.

You can move or extend your existing on-premises VMware environments to Azure using the Azure VMware Solution. This solution is a Microsoft service, verified by VMware, that runs on Azure infrastructure.

The Azure VMware Solution is built on VMware Cloud Foundation, which is a comprehensive offering of software-defined compute, storage, networking, and management.

You can leverage your existing VMware skills, tools, and investments, ensuring operational consistency while using Azure's scale, performance, and innovation.

The minimum initial deployment is three hosts, but more hosts can be added, up to a maximum of 16 hosts per cluster.

Azure VMware Solution provides you with private clouds that contain VMware vSphere clusters built from dedicated bare-metal Azure infrastructure.

All provisioned private clouds have VMware vCenter Server, VMware vSAN, VMware vSphere, and VMware NSX-T Data Center.

To configure Azure Bare Metal, you can use the Azure portal or Azure CLI to create a new resource. This will allow you to manage your bare metal resources and configure settings as needed.

You can also use the Azure Resource Manager (ARM) template to define and deploy your bare metal resources in a repeatable and consistent manner. This is particularly useful for large-scale deployments.

To customize the configuration of your bare metal resources, you can use the Azure portal to update settings such as the instance type, storage, and networking options. This will allow you to fine-tune your resources to meet the specific needs of your application.

When provisioning a BareMetal instance, you can choose from a variety of operating systems to install on your machines.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) are two popular options that are available for selection during the provisioning process.

You can select RHEL for its robust security features and enterprise-level support.

RHEL is also known for its scalability and reliability, making it a great choice for demanding workloads.

SLES, on the other hand, offers a more user-friendly interface and a wide range of software packages.

Here are the two operating systems you can choose from:

Storage plays a crucial role in ensuring data availability and business continuity. The BareMetal Infrastructure offers highly redundant NFS storage and Fiber Channel storage.

One of the key benefits of this storage infrastructure is its ability to scale up to 4 PB of raw storage. This means you can store a massive amount of data without worrying about running out of space.

Here are some key features of the storage infrastructure:

The infrastructure also supports various data access protocols, including iSCSI, NFS (v3 or v4), Fiber Channel, and NVMe over FC.

NC2 on Azure supports connectivity to BareMetal Infrastructure (BMI) in a local VNet, which is a great option for businesses looking to integrate their on-premises infrastructure with the cloud.

You can also connect to BMI in a peered VNet, either within the same region or across regions, which provides flexibility and scalability for your network architecture.

However, connectivity to BMI in a peered VNet without a Virtual WAN (VWAN) is not supported, so you'll need to consider alternative solutions.

ExpressRoute FastPath is also not supported, which may impact your network performance.

But don't worry, you can still connect from on-premises to BMI in a spoke VNet over an ExpressRoute gateway and VNet peering with gateway transit, which is a reliable and secure option.

On-premises connectivity to Delegated Subnet via Global and Local Expressroute is also supported, providing a seamless connection to your on-premises infrastructure.

Here's a summary of the supported topologies:

Managing instances is a crucial part of Azure Bare Metal, and it's essential to understand how to do it effectively.

You can see all your BareMetal instances by running the az baremetalinstance list command for your resource group. This will give you a list of all your instances.

To view the details of a single instance, select it from the list. You'll see the instance's state and attributes, as well as its placement in a zone and region.

The Azure portal is where you'll find all the BareMetal resources, including their state and attributes. You can also operate the instances and open service requests and support tickets from there.

You can filter on the subscription you used to deploy the BareMetal instance to find the correct resource group. Look for one with a post-fix of -Txxx, where xxx is three digits like -T250.

To see the activities of a single instance, you can check the Activity log. This will show you the instance's restarts, as well as any changes to its metadata.

Here are the activities that get recorded in the Activity log:

You can also restart a BareMetal instance directly from the Azure portal. To do this, select Restart and then Yes to confirm the restart. This will cause a delay, and the power state will move from Starting to Started before you can log into the unit again.

If you're experiencing issues with your Azure BareMetal instances, don't worry, there are ways to get help. You can submit a support request specifically for BareMetal instances.

To do this, go to the Azure portal and click on Help + Support. From there, create a new support request and provide the necessary information. This includes selecting the Solutions tab to see if you can find a solution to your problem.

If you can't find a solution, you'll need to go to the next step. Select the Details tab and choose whether the issue is with VMs or BareMetal instances. This helps direct the support request to the correct specialists.

When submitting your support request, be sure to indicate when the problem began and select the instance region. You can also provide more details about the request and upload a file if needed.

Here's a step-by-step guide to submitting a support request: