Introduction to Local and Cloud Concepts

0:00[AUDIO LOGO]

0:06You know, one of the challenges with the cloud, especially

0:09if maybe you haven't been experienced with it before

0:11or you've kind of just heard the term the cloud,

0:15and it just sounds kind of enigmatic.

0:18It sounds like kind of like a mystery, this undefinable thing

0:21that we think is probably on the internet somewhere.

0:24So what really is the cloud?

0:26How do we kind of corral it mentally

0:28and understand what it is and how

0:30it relates to some of the things we're

0:32going to be using particularly in our topics

0:34here, which revolve around Microsoft 365?

0:38And to discuss that, I think it's really better if we

0:40start just locally, right?

0:42OK, so if you just have a local computer,

0:44let's say a home computer, you got this home computer

0:47right here--

0:48and this tower computer.

0:50And you've got a few things that you can visually

0:52see on it, right?

0:53You got-- oh, there's probably a little place here for power

0:56to plug into the wall.

0:57There's probably a card or two here, probably a video card

1:01here.

1:02In this video card, you plug in a kind of an external monitor,

1:07I'm sure.

1:08And maybe that's what you're watching this on right

1:10now, something like that.

1:11You have probably several USB ports.

1:16Attached to one of those might be your keyboard.

1:18It looks like it's got bread crumbs or something like that

1:21on there.

1:21You probably got another thing attached to it.

1:23That's probably your mouse or your track ball

1:25or something like that.

1:27What else would you have?

1:28Maybe a webcam.

1:30And that's kind of what I've got too.

1:32That's what I'm recording on.

1:33I've got a computer much like this

1:34with all of these various things attached to it.

1:37Now, what are we missing there?

1:38Well, there's also a motherboard here.

1:40And I'm not going to be able to draw that in there

1:42because, as you can see--

1:43if you've never seen any of my videos

1:45before, as you can see here, I have limited artistic ability.

1:49I know.

1:50It's shocking looking at this.

1:51You probably think that I'm going to make an NFT out

1:54of this or something and make a billion dollars or something.

1:57But anyway, inside of this, we also have other things,

1:59don't we?

2:00We have a CPU, or the processor.

2:05Basically, it doesn't really do the thinking for our computer.

2:08But we kind of say that it does the brains.

2:11It's the brains of our computer.

2:13We also have memory in here.

2:15Memory sticks is what we usually call them.

2:17There's probably two to four in most home PCs.

2:20Then there's one more thing which I haven't really

2:22discussed yet.

2:23And that would be the storage.

2:25And on this storage is usually what we call our hard drive.

2:29Very often, it's a rectangular device

2:32that has magnetic platters inside of it.

2:34You never open and look at it.

2:36You know what these are, right?

2:37Hard drive.

2:38And that's where we store everything.

2:40That's where we store our data.

2:43These would be family photos, Word documents,

2:47videos from your family vacation,

2:49or any other kind of videos.

2:51This is also where we would store our applications

2:53primarily.

2:55And of course, the overarching thing there

2:57would be your operating system.

2:59Usually, it's like Windows or something like this.

3:01But anyway, all of this is self-contained within

3:05a single unit right here.

3:07And even if you're someone who's not

3:09been accustomed to computing in the past

3:11or something like that, or you're

3:12getting new into technology, this is all under your purview.

3:15It's all under your control.

3:17You may have installed the operating system.

3:19You may have installed the applications.

3:21You put the data on there.

3:22You copied the photos there.

3:24Now, take all of that, and add the internet.

3:28So beyond all of this, you probably

3:30have some kind of a Wi-Fi.

3:31I don't even know how to-- if I can put in a Wi-Fi thing here.

3:33Let's just put it off to here and make it

3:35a Wi-Fi signal that's reaching out to your internet service

3:40provider that connects to your office or your home.

3:42And then that, of course, in turn

3:45will connect to the internet at large.

3:48And this is a lot of times where just the mental connection

3:51between the cloud and the internet

3:53gets a little fuzzy because the cloud is

3:57contained in and dependent upon the internet.

4:01Without the internet, we have no cloud.

4:03But the internet is not equal to the cloud.

4:06There's not an equal sign between those two.

4:09And the cloud is actually a number of different vendors.

4:13There are different companies that comprise the cloud.

4:16And they all have their own cloud, so to speak.

4:19One of those obviously is Microsoft.

4:20You also have other companies out there.

4:22I'll just put some out here.

4:23There's, again, Microsoft.

4:25There's Amazon.

4:26They have something called Amazon Web Services, or AWS.

4:30VMware is another company out there.

4:33Who else?

4:33Well, Google.

4:35Google has a cloud as well.

4:37These are all gigantic, by the way,

4:39multibillion dollar organizations

4:42with multibillion dollar investments in their cloud

4:45solutions.

4:46But if I'm at home here and I'm on my computer

4:49and my internet goes down, which it did, by the way, just

4:52last week, and when that happened,

4:55I was limited to only what I could access

4:57on my local computer here.

4:59It was debilitating not to be able to connect

5:02to the internet and all of these cloud services out there.

5:05This went on for like two days.

5:07I didn't know what to do with myself.

5:08It was terrible.

5:09Couldn't watch Netflix.

5:11Couldn't get on TikTok.

5:12Couldn't access Instagram, any of that kind of stuff.

5:15All right, now this--

5:16I just kind of want to point out what some of this stuff is

5:19and where it exists.

5:21We're going to get into more detail about that later on.

5:23But this is where we start.

5:25This is us in our own self-contained environment.

5:29And this is the cloud out here encompassed

5:32within the internet.

5:33All right, so there's a separation there.

5:35We have local resources here in our own office

5:38or in our own home.

5:39And we're using our phones, our tablets, our laptops,

5:43our desktop computers.

5:45And we're in almost constant communication

5:47probably to some kind of a cloud resource much of the time

5:51without even really realizing that it's going on.

5:54Now, in the next Nuggets coming up,

5:57we're going to be discussing some of those resources

5:59and the advantages of using them.

6:01I hope this has been informative for you,

6:03and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00[AUDIO LOGO]

0:06In our last Nugget, we took a look

0:08at kind of a typical PC situation,

0:10where you have a home computer, maybe in a small office.

0:13You have your phones.

0:14You have your tablets, all these kinds of things.

0:17And that doesn't relate to the cloud on its own.

0:20However, in today's society and in today's technologies,

0:24just about everybody is using the cloud,

0:26whether they realize it or not.

0:28Now, let's take this to a company level.

0:30Now, on a company level, we start off

0:32with some of the same stuff, right?

0:33We still have users that are all using maybe desktop PCs.

0:37A lot of them will be using laptops and/or tablets.

0:41We may have cell phones that we are also managing here.

0:45But in kind of the traditional business sense,

0:48if we're not using the cloud particularly,

0:51then all that stuff's kind of contained within our company.

0:54So maybe this is our own office building here.

0:57And maybe this desktop computer and the lap--

0:59all those little devices there are located in my corner office

1:03right here.

1:04Now, I'm going to be working on documents.

1:05And I understand that as a user.

1:07And those documents are going to get saved somewhere, right?

1:10So we tend to think in a local situation

1:12that our files are going to get saved either

1:14on the local hard drive right here.

1:16We call them hard drives.

1:17But very often, they're SSDs now, Solid State Drives.

1:21Or maybe if we do have maybe a mapped network drive, then

1:25it saves it to a network location.

1:28So very often, a data center for a corporation

1:31that runs their own data centers will have those

1:34on the bottom floor very often.

1:36It makes it easier to load and unload

1:38big things like big racks, big power supplies, big UPSes,

1:43which are giant batteries that are backup power,

1:45easier to connect to generators in case

1:48you have a power outage, all that kind of stuff.

1:50So anyway, a lot of times a data center

1:51will be on the ground floor.

1:53So let's say that I'm creating a database, really

1:57a database record, actually.

1:58And it has a new customer-- their name,

2:02their address, what they purchased,

2:04how much they purchased, whatever, stuff like that.

2:06And if I'm entering all that in over the phone with my customer

2:09here in my little corner office on my laptop,

2:11I would understand that it probably

2:13gets self-saved down into our data center here locally.

2:17And that's how it was done for a long time.

2:19Some organizations will still be doing that to whatever degree.

2:23Now, in a strictly corporate environment,

2:25where, again, we're not using the cloud per se,

2:27you might be a big organization.

2:29You might not just have one office.

2:31So maybe this is my Phoenix office where I live right here.

2:33And maybe we have an Albuquerque office here.

2:37And maybe we have a Dallas office.

2:39They're all going to be connected by usually what

2:42we call a WAN link, Wide Area Network link.

2:44So this is something that we pay for to give us a network

2:48connection to those remote offices.

2:50A couple of different ways you could do it,

2:51a few different ways.

2:53It could be a dedicated line, which is very expensive.

2:56Or you could just use your normal internet connection

2:58and create what we call a VPN through here.

3:00But a lot of different ways to do that.

3:01Regardless, we have network connectivity

3:04between our offices.

3:05Now, let's add to that.

3:06Maybe we have so much need for computing resources and all

3:10those sorts of things that our little server

3:13room in our initial office there,

3:14it can't handle it anymore.

3:16So we've got to expand.

3:17And we have to start trusting another company with our data.

3:21Now, we're not in the cloud yet.

3:22But we can use something else here called colocation,

3:26or colo, as we often call it.

3:28This means that instead of using everything--

3:31I might still have a data center in my own office.

3:33But we're a lot of times off-loading that now

3:35into other locations.

3:36These are third parties that we have

3:38entrusted with our data and our computing resources.

3:42And we pay them money to have these big server racks for us

3:46usually.

3:47And it might look like what we have over here on the left.

3:50And to give you some sense of scale,

3:51this might be a person here.

3:53This would be about the approximate height of them.

3:55They're usually, actually about 73 inches, I think--

3:5873 inches high, usually 24 inches wide like this.

4:03And I can't really draw depth.

4:04But from front to back, it's usually 42 inches,

4:07if I remember right.

4:08So you get the idea about how big those particular racks are.

4:11Well, these will store servers in them.

4:14They'll have lots of computing power in them.

4:16They may have multiple processors.

4:18They may have a whole bunch of hard drives as well.

4:21I'll show you some other examples here coming up.

4:23But I just wanted to show you that these

4:25appear in these big racks.

4:26Now, these big racks could have been

4:28originally what was in my own first floor over here.

4:31But these are very likely to be also

4:32what we have in these data centers now

4:35that we are using for colocation.

4:37Now, we still don't have the cloud though.

4:39I'm going to be talking about this in a future Nugget,

4:41about why we would want to move to the cloud

4:43away from all of this.

4:45See, we're still managing everything.

4:47Even these colocations down here,

4:49we can walk into those most of the time.

4:51And we can put in our own servers

4:54in one of these rack positions or our own hard drives in one

4:57of these rack positions.

4:58In colocations, our IT staff is usually walking in the building

5:02and managing all of those things.

5:03Like I said before, we're going to talk

5:05about why we might move to the cloud

5:07instead of using all of this solution.

5:08But before we get to that, I want

5:10to point out that, yes, the cloud can

5:12off-load all of this for us.

5:14It's not going to be for everybody in every situation.

5:17But most companies are using at least some of the cloud now.

5:20And many companies are depending on it heavily.

5:23So we might be able to take all or a lot of this

5:26and just put it into the cloud.

5:27Now, that just gives you kind of an introduction

5:29into how we've traditionally done it.

5:31So in our next Nugget, I'm going to go over a little bit more

5:34of the physical layout of the cloud.

5:35That's one of the things that is a little bit difficult when

5:38you're first getting involved in the cloud is to understand

5:41the physical structure of it, because a cloud, when you think

5:43of a physical cloud, like up in the sky, that's

5:46not very defined.

5:47And it's kind of nebulous and everything like that.

5:49So we want to put some concrete terms on the cloud, how

5:53we connect to it, what it is.

5:55And we'll see that in our next Nugget.

5:57I hope this has been informative for you.

5:58I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00[AUDIO LOGO]

0:06All right, so in our last Nugget,

0:07we saw how that we might be using something

0:09like a colocation service.

0:11This is before we get into the cloud, of course.

0:13But we might be using something like that in order

0:15to expand our own requirements for data, for storage,

0:20for computing power, and that sort of thing.

0:23This can also be done, by the way,

0:24because maybe in our building, we're

0:26just out of space in our data center.

0:28We don't have room for any more server racks.

0:31Or it might be difficult to put in additional equipment

0:34to support them, such as UPSes, Uninterruptible Power

0:38Supplies, gigantic batteries, basically, other power

0:41generators, all kinds of other infrastructure we might need.

0:43Well, here we can lease space out of a data center.

0:47Now, this is not a Microsoft data center.

0:48But this is just an example of one.

0:51I licensed some images from an organization

0:54that so I could show these.

0:56And you can see here, there's a little bit

0:57of a reflection on the glass.

0:59So you can't really see everything here.

1:00But there's hard drives, it looks like down here.

1:03That looks like a seven by five.

1:05That's 35 hard drives probably right there.

1:09Usually, your power supplies are lower to the bottom.

1:12There's probably some CPUs in the middle

1:14here somewhere, some basically computers, some servers, maybe

1:17some network equipment up in here, switches or--

1:19I don't know-- whatever.

1:20I can't really see it very well through that reflection.

1:22But anyway, it looks like there's more storage up here,

1:25more hard drives up here.

1:27So that kind of gives you a picture

1:29of the layout of how this might look.

1:31They don't all look that same way.

1:33By the way, this is one of the most beautiful data centers

1:35I've ever seen.

1:37If you ever see Microsoft's data centers inside--

1:40and we might be able to get a look at one later on--

1:43they're nowhere near this sexy.

1:45Can I say the word "sexy"?

1:46As long as it's about IT?

1:48OK.

1:48All right.

1:49Anyway, this is what one of them might look like.

1:53Then here's just another big data center.

1:55I think this is actually an artist rendition.

1:57This does not look 100% real to me.

1:59But it gives you the idea there.

2:01And then here's one right here as well.

2:03Again, you can see all kinds of hard drives down here.

2:06This looks like computers through here,

2:08some servers, more hard drives up here at the top.

2:11This one's a little unusual in that it doesn't

2:13follow the straight aisle.

2:14It's got this rounded--

2:15it looks like maybe it's on a spaceship or something.

2:18I don't know.

2:18It's the Millennium Falcon's data center.

2:21OK, that's great.

2:22We see what some data centers might look like, at least get

2:24a concept of how they look and what they operate like.

2:27But where is Microsoft's data center?

2:30Well, it's not in just one location.

2:32That's why it's kind of called the cloud,

2:34because it is more nebulous.

2:37You can't attach it to a single location.

2:40We're talking mostly about Microsoft 365,

2:42I understand, in this course, obviously.

2:44However, Microsoft 365 involves many other services

2:49that we don't always directly touch upon or look at.

2:53One of those is Microsoft 365.

2:55So again, there's kind of a tendency

2:57to say, OK, well, where are the Microsoft 365 data centers?

3:01I don't know.

3:03I do know, and I don't know.

3:04I know that they're dispersed everywhere.

3:06OK, so the cloud--

3:07the data centers are really distributed worldwide.

3:10There are over 160 data centers that Microsoft

3:13has in over 140 countries.

3:16And it's growing all the time.

3:18This is just the most recent data that I could find on it.

3:20So my Microsoft 365 resources--

3:24I live in Phoenix.

3:25So there's a new data center here in Phoenix called West 3.

3:29Yeah, Microsoft's never imaginative with the names

3:31they give things.

3:32I live in the Western United States.

3:34They just decided to create one called West 3 there.

3:36There's another West.

3:37I don't remember which one it is.

3:38But there's another West in the Los Angeles area.

3:40And I can't remember where the second West is.

3:44Anyway, my 365 resources, I requested

3:48that they be placed in West 3 because that's in Phoenix.

3:52And it's in my area.

3:53But I still couldn't point to the exact data center.

3:56They may have multiple data centers in the Phoenix area.

3:59But I still don't know exactly which

4:02server or exactly which rack my Microsoft 365 resources are on.

4:07If I have storage that I'm leasing there,

4:09I don't know where that storage is.

4:11I don't know which hard drive it's on.

4:12And I really don't have to.

4:14But it is a paradigm shift, because if you're

4:16used to hands on in the data center,

4:19installing your own hard drives, replacing your own hard drives

4:22when they fail, installing your own servers there,

4:25and everything like that, you don't do that in Microsoft 365.

4:27And in fact, good luck trying to get into one of the data

4:30centers.

4:31I did a virtual tour through a virtual meeting.

4:34This was about a month ago.

4:35And they were very guarded with what they would allow

4:38you to even look at really.

4:39I mean, they would show it to us, really,

4:40because that's part of the point of it.

4:42So we could kind of get an idea of what it all looked like.

4:44But we were strictly told not to record or take photographs

4:48of anything that we saw.

4:50Now, let's move on though.

4:51I'm going to give you a little bit more details about this.

4:54All of those data centers are connected by networks.

4:57Remember, in our previous slide here, this one right here,

5:01remember, we had these WAN links.

5:02And we didn't really name them.

5:03But these network connections that go between our offices,

5:06those are called WAN links--

5:07Wide Area Network.

5:08Well, Microsoft has a ton of wide area network

5:13links between all of their various data centers

5:16and resources.

5:17In fact, there's 165,000 miles of fiber optic, which

5:22is at this point the fastest kind of network you

5:25can get-- of fiber optic and subsea networking.

5:29Yes, they actually have a networking point

5:32that goes from, if I remember right-- it's

5:34from the coast of Virginia somewhere

5:36over into northern Spain.

5:38It goes all the way across the ocean that way.

5:41If you're familiar with network speeds,

5:43you have kilobits per second, megabits per second, gigabits

5:47per second.

5:49These network fiber optics that they

5:51have can run at 1.6 petabits per second regionally.

5:55That's just super fast.

5:57Now, part of the reason why I'm telling you all this

5:59is because I want you to understand

6:01that Microsoft resources are more than enough for really

6:05just about anybody.

6:07You're not going to exhaust Microsoft's resources.

6:10Now, you might exhaust your pocketbook

6:12because it does get expensive as you get into the higher

6:15echelons of this.

6:16But that's a different topic for a different day.

6:18And Microsoft does also have consultants

6:20that they can offer to you to help you

6:23kind of budget that stuff out.

6:25Overall, it's usually cheaper though

6:26than doing it all yourself locally.

6:29They serve over a billion customers--

6:32wow, a billion customers-- and 20 million companies.

6:35Again, these are also growing.

6:38They service and comply with over 90 compliance

6:41requirements.

6:42These are things like if you're in the health care industry

6:44and you need to store your data in Microsoft's cloud,

6:47and you're paying for some storage there, for example,

6:49well, you would have HIPAA requirements there, right?

6:52As you know, HIPAA is going to protect

6:54the privacy of your data.

6:56In different countries, they have equivalents of that.

6:58There's also financial compliances

7:01that have to be observed, for example.

7:04Microsoft provides a billion dollars annually

7:08just in the security investment here,

7:10just to secure all of this and to improve their security.

7:13They have Microsoft Defender, which of course

7:15is on your local machines.

7:17But it's really much bigger than that.

7:19And it really goes even into their data centers.

7:21They have artificial intelligence and machine

7:23learning to, within moments, detect new threats

7:28on the internet, for example.

7:30Also, Microsoft uses approximately 70%

7:32of their energy from renewable energy.

7:35Now, part of the advantage of that

7:37is not just that it's environmentally responsible

7:39but also that over time, we hope at least,

7:42that that will be less expensive than paying for power

7:44from a utility company.

7:46So chances are that most major organizations

7:49are paying for their power from a utility company.

7:51And we probably don't have 70% in most organizations.

7:55So if we can transfer some of our load

7:57over to Microsoft's cloud, Microsoft 365, azure, some

8:00of their other resources, we can take

8:02advantage of that renewable energy that they offer.

8:05Not only might it be more responsible,

8:08but it could also be a cost savings over time,

8:11especially when you compare it with other cost savings

8:14that you can take advantage of in Microsoft's cloud.

8:16Now, the other thing that I'm pretty excited about really

8:19is this-- underwater data centers.

8:21Yes, underwater data centers.

8:23They also have some space infrastructure,

8:25which we might look at in a future Nugget.

8:26It's mostly related to networking.

8:28But the underwater data centers, let me show those to you.

8:31Here's the website.

8:32I'll try to remember to put a link here

8:34so you can access this on your own if you want.

8:36The article is a couple of years old.

8:37But they took this tube.

8:39It's the size of like a small submarine, I guess.

8:42The dimensions are on here somewhere.

8:43I just don't remember how long it is.

8:45But you can see here that it was under the ocean for two years

8:49off the coast of Scotland.

8:50And you can see it got all kinds of barnacles and things on it.

8:53What they do is they have server racks in there.

8:56And they slide out on some rails.

8:59And they replace the oxygen that's in there with nitrogen

9:03because, apparently, it's better for the long-term life

9:06of the electronic components in there.

9:08Obviously, there's no staff under there.

9:11This is completely unmanned, if you will,

9:13on the bottom of the ocean.

9:15They can also take advantage of the cooling

9:17effect of the ocean.

9:18It's very cold in the ocean.

9:19And therefore, they don't have as high

9:21a burden to pay for air conditioning

9:23and that sort of thing.

9:24I don't know how they circulated the cool through there,

9:26but they did it somehow.

9:28Scrolling down, you can see there's a good YouTube on there

9:30to get a little bit more of a perspective of what

9:32the whole thing looks like here.

9:34There's also another one that's being dropped off

9:36another coast somewhere.

9:37I can't remember where it is.

9:38That one will be under ocean, from what

9:40I've heard, for three years.

9:42You can see they're blowing off all the barnacles that

9:44are on this thing.

9:45Look, there's a bird on there.

9:46The bird is not the property of Microsoft, by the way.

9:49Anyway, so we keep going on down here.

9:51And you can see here, this is where they take the cap off

9:54of it.

9:54And they will slide this out on these rails

9:57like you can see right here.

9:58I think I can actually open this up in another page.

10:00Yeah.

10:00You can see it slides out on these rails.

10:02These are all the servers that they have down there.

10:04It's actually connected to a giant power cable

10:07that powers the whole thing.

10:08And it was under ocean for two years.

10:10I don't remember the statistic, but I think

10:12they said something like it would fail one fifth as much--

10:17the various components would fail one fifth as much

10:20as a data center on land.

10:22Part of that is because there's not

10:23a human in there replacing parts and jostling things around.

10:27I guess the human effect is really quite significant.

10:29Oh, here's another picture that I find quite interesting.

10:31This gives you a little bit of a sense of scale.

10:34Something about this photograph reminds

10:36me of the amount of closet space my wife gives me.

10:38Anyway, also, look at this.

10:40I don't know if you see this.

10:41Are any of you OCD?

10:43Check that out.

10:44That sticker was stuck on that server crooked for two

10:49years on the ocean floor.

10:50Could someone not have straightened that out?

10:54All right, so that gives you some idea

10:55of the resources that Microsoft has available for their cloud.

10:58Stick around for the next Nugget,

11:00where we're going to be discussing really

11:02where the cloud is and the various locations

11:04that Microsoft offers.

11:05I hope this has been informative for you,

11:07and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00[AUDIO LOGO]

0:06All right.

0:06We've been discussing the cloud in various aspects.

0:09One of the things though, that's still a little undefined

0:11is where actually is all of this stuff, right?

0:13So for example, if we take a look at this slide

0:16show that I've been running, this

0:18is stored right now on my local computer.

0:21It is stored in a file location on my drive.

0:23Actually, it's a SSD drive.

0:26But anyway, there's one of-- there's

0:27the first slide I showed you when I did this presentation.

0:30Here's one of the data centers, a couple of the data centers

0:32that we looked at.

0:33And I think I finished with this slide in our last Nugget

0:36that we recorded here.

0:38But guess what?

0:39It's not really just stored here.

0:40It's also stored in Microsoft Cloud.

0:43And the advantage to that is number one,

0:45if my computer blows up, which it's happened,

0:49then I still have this PowerPoint presentation

0:52up in Microsoft's Cloud.

0:53And by the way, whenever I make a change,

0:55look at this, just keep an eye on this up

0:58where my mouse pointer is right now, where it says saved.

1:01If I just make any simple change to this,

1:03watch how long it takes for it to save this document.

1:06I don't actually have to click the Save button.

1:08It just does it automatically when I store Microsoft Office

1:12documents, and I'm also using OneDrive,

1:15which is Microsoft's Cloud solution for storage.

1:19So watch, if I just type something in here,

1:21watch how soon it says it's saving it.

1:23Usually it happens faster than this.

1:25And now it's making a liar out of me.

1:27Finally, it took like eight or nine seconds.

1:29Usually, that just happens almost instantly.

1:31I'm OK with eight or nine seconds.

1:33And it's also the fact that it saves it as I go.

1:37You might get excited working on something

1:39and you might have been working on it for an hour

1:40and forgot to save any of it.

1:41And then it crashes or your computer blows up

1:44or the power goes out or something like that.

1:46Well now you've lost it, all right.

1:47Not now, not when we have OneDrive,

1:50which is kind of a solution because I

1:51don't have to think of hitting that Save button all the time.

1:55It just doesn't for me, both locally and in OneDrive.

1:59And in fact, let me just close this.

2:02Here it is.

2:02I'm just going here to office.com.

2:05There up at the top, you see that.

2:07And once you log in then you have access

2:10to all of your documents right here.

2:13You can see I've got what is that OneNote, PowerPoint,

2:16Excel, stuff like that.

2:17Here's that slideshow were just working with.

2:19I can open that.

2:20And let's say that I even forgot it or something like

2:23that, I left it at home and I went to make a presentation,

2:25all I need is a tablet, some device,

2:29and I can just connect to my cloud account

2:32and I have this slide presentation right here.

2:34And I can start to present this right now.

2:36And you can see all the rest that I've got here.

2:38Again, the last slide that I showed and all of that.

2:41Now the next thing that sometimes people

2:42are concerned about is they want to know exactly

2:45where their data is stored.

2:46Well, you're probably never going

2:47to know that exactly, especially down to the last hard drive

2:50or something like that.

2:51You can know in general terms though.

2:54For example, you don't have to memorize this

2:56because you might not go here in your normal administration

2:59for Microsoft 365.

3:01But it doesn't hurt to know about it.

3:02It's at admin.microsoft.com.

3:05Once I log in with the privileged account here,

3:08then I can go down here to Settings.

3:10And look at this.

3:11If I go to org settings, which is where I am right now,

3:14then I could go into--

3:15what is it?

3:15Organization profile.

3:17And it tells me where some of my data is stored.

3:19Look right there, data location.

3:21And it says right there as part of our transparency principles,

3:25we publish location where Microsoft stores your customer

3:29data.

3:29Where is it stored?

3:30In the United States of America.

3:33Thank you for that level of transparency, Microsoft.

3:36What does that mean?

3:37East Coast, West Coast, Kentucky?

3:39Is it Hawaii, Alaska?

3:41Who knows.

3:42But it's OK.

3:44I'm all right with it for myself because for the Microsoft 365

3:48kind of data, it could be stored anywhere in the United States

3:51those particular items.

3:52There are some things, by the way, a lot of other things,

3:55really, that you can specify from a high level

3:59as an administrator.

4:00I can say when I first set up my Azure tenant where I'm located

4:03or where I want the data to be.

4:05If I create something like a virtual machine, which we'll

4:08look at a little bit later on, that virtual machine,

4:10I can say I want that to be stored

4:12in the Eastern part of the United States,

4:14in the Western part of the United States, in South Africa.

4:18You can pick and choose those things.

4:20But as a general rule Microsoft does a great job

4:23of knowing where you are and localizing

4:26the data as best they can.

4:29And then let me just give you another quick example

4:31of that same thing.

4:32Here you can see my Windows 11 desktop.

4:35I just installed this, might have been a couple of weeks ago

4:38or something like that.

4:39And I haven't really done a lot with it.

4:41But you can see here that I have gotten Microsoft

4:43Office installed here.

4:44You can see there's links or shortcuts here for Word, Excel,

4:46PowerPoint, the whole thing.

4:48I can launch those if I want to right here.

4:50The thing is this installation of Windows 11

4:54does not actually exist in my office.

4:56I work in a home office.

4:58It doesn't exist on my hard drive,

4:59on my computer that's right down here underneath my desk,

5:02doesn't exist there.

5:04Where does it exist?

5:05At this IP address.

5:06So you can see right up here.

5:07I'm actually using a remote desktop to connect to this.

5:10It's 20.106.73.65.

5:13I do happen to know that's in the West US West three data

5:18center from Microsoft, which is probably

5:2030 or 40 miles to the West of me, Southwest of me.

5:22And the reason why I know it's there

5:24is because I told it to create it there when I first

5:27created this virtual machine.

5:29But this, again, shows some of the benefit of using the cloud.

5:33What if I worked for a pretty poor school

5:35district and sadly many school districts are very poor.

5:38And we had to buy a bunch of used computers for our staff,

5:43they barely run Windows 10.

5:45And they're maxed out on memory, the motherboards

5:49won't take anymore.

5:49They got two gigabytes of memory and the bare minimum hard drive

5:53space, a very basic processor.

5:56They don't have other things that you need for an upgrade

5:59like to Windows 11.

6:00So Windows 11 would require at least a dual core

6:03processor or at least 4 gigs of RAM,

6:05a certain amount of hard disk space,

6:07can't remember off the top of my head how much.

6:09But it needs more hard drive space.

6:11Regardless, the point I'm making there is maybe

6:13those old machines don't have things

6:14like that or a TPM, Trusted Platform Module, which you also

6:17need for Windows 11.

6:19So that poor school district, if it turns out

6:21that for maybe they have an application that

6:23needs to run with Windows 11, we just

6:25bought all of these computers used,

6:27we used every last penny we had and now we

6:30can't install Windows 11.

6:32And we really need to have it.

6:34I guess it's time to have a bake sale.

6:36So what are they going to do?

6:37Well, what they could do is exactly what you're

6:39seeing me do here, this installation of Windows 11,

6:42I could be running that on a really old crusty installation

6:46of Windows 8, Windows 10.

6:48I could be running it on barely enough memory or anything

6:51like that, just enough to run that host operating system is

6:54what we call it.

6:55And I'm remotely connecting over the network

6:57over to Microsoft's data center to open this up.

7:00When I click on the Start menu, that's

7:02not happening on my computer, that's

7:03happening whatever it is.

7:0540 miles away from me right now.

7:07But I can see it all right here.

7:09And I can interoperate with just about everything here

7:12in this remote connection the same is if I were actually

7:16using this as an installed operating

7:17system on my local hard drive under my disk right now.

7:20And as I minimize this, this is my actual desktop right here.

7:23That's my actual physical desktop

7:26that appears on my own drive right here.

7:29Now then the next stuff I'm going to show you

7:30here is not stuff you have to memorize again by any means.

7:33I just want you to get again, the concept, the scope,

7:37the advantages of how all of this works.

7:39It's actually very cool.

7:40So here we have things like availability zones.

7:43When you get into higher levels of Microsoft Cloud

7:45and you work with Azure, for example,

7:48you will need to have certain critical company

7:51infrastructure, certain critical company

7:53applications, databases, file storage all that kind of stuff

7:57on one of Microsoft's data centers.

7:59Maybe it's this right here, which would be one or more data

8:01centers.

8:02They might be two or three data centers

8:04that are linked together over very high speed connectivity.

8:07And they're probably not too far away geographically speaking.

8:11Well, if that whole region goes down

8:13because of an earthquake or something like that

8:17or a natural disaster or a zombie apocalypse,

8:20well, guess what?

8:21We have all of our data that could still

8:23be available in at least one or two other zones

8:26that we see right here.

8:27And these might be geographically further away.

8:30This might be in Phoenix.

8:31This might be, I think there's another data center in the Los

8:34Angeles area.

8:35There's another one in I guess Washington State.

8:37So we can separate those out so that they're also

8:40further apart geographically speaking so that they can also

8:44escape a local natural disaster or something like that.

8:47And if it's something that did affect the whole West

8:51Coast, for example, or the whole west region,

8:53we could even have our geography set

8:55up so that we have a disaster recovery site in the Eastern

8:58United States.

9:00All of this stuff, by the way, my data when I save it maybe

9:04to this location or something, it's

9:06milliseconds, before it's stored and replicated

9:10to other locations when I configure it that way.

9:12You can see here, I don't know if it's too small to read

9:14or not, but there's fiber that connects a lot

9:16of these availability zones.

9:19Fiber is extremely, extremely fast.

9:21So again, that's just to give you the concept.

9:23Here also is a website that I'm going to show you right up here

9:25at the top.

9:26You can Google for that if you want to.

9:28It's not a Microsoft site.

9:29But I think it's pretty cool.

9:30And you can just click and drag around here and Zoom

9:33in on your various regions.

9:35So for example, here I am in Phoenix.

9:37Microsoft is not 100% transparent about all

9:40of their data centers.

9:42Some of them, they're deliberately kind of sly about

9:45because they are government locations.

9:47For example, I found one in some deep searches

9:51in Nevada that's a government site.

9:53There's also another one actually just

9:55North of Phoenix here, I think it might be in Camp Verde

9:57right up here, doesn't show up on this map, that's

10:00a Department of Defense server up there.

10:02Again, for obvious reasons, they try

10:04not to be very transparent about those.

10:06They want to keep it a secret.

10:07I don't know what happened to my pointer here.

10:09It looks like it got barbecued or something like that.

10:12But anyway, I just want to show you this website,

10:14infrastructuremap.microsoft.com right up here.

10:18This is actually kind of interesting as well.

10:20Again, you don't have to memorize everything you

10:21see here or anything like that.

10:22This is for extra credit, if you will.

10:24Just to get an idea of how all this works out

10:28geographically speaking.

10:29So I could click down here, for example, to explore the globe.

10:33Down here it says you can even take a tour of Azure space,

10:35they have stuff in space that's going on right now.

10:37Anyway, let me Zoom in here.

10:39See West US three, that's where most of my data is stored.

10:43And sure enough, there's the skyline here in Phoenix.

10:45And I can click on Learn More about that particular location

10:48if I want.

10:49Also down here at the bottom, this is cool.

10:51I would recommend you do this as well, just for giggles.

10:53Take a virtual tour of a Microsoft data center.

10:57And I'm not going to do all of this

10:58because you can do this yourself,

11:00but you can even enter through the lobby here.

11:02I'm going to explore this lobby, shows you what it looks like.

11:05It shows you the security that you have to go through.

11:08There's a security checkpoint right there.

11:10You can go into their ops center, their operations room.

11:12As we explore this, you can see they

11:14have lots of colorful pie charts and graphs up on the wall.

11:17Who doesn't want that?

11:18We can go into the server room right here as well.

11:21I had to go to the mechanical area first before I got here.

11:23But we can see a little bit about how this looks.

11:26We can look at it a little bit more

11:27at Microsoft's server blades.

11:29These are the actual servers.

11:30We can click and drag through these.

11:32This one has a bunch of disks in it.

11:33That's what JBOD means, just a bunch of disks.

11:36That's one example of a blade.

11:38Here's another one here.

11:39This one is a compute blade.

11:41So it's going to have processors and memory on it.

11:43By the way, just as a quick note,

11:45I found this out when I did a tour of Microsoft's data

11:47center.

11:48The leader of the tour said that Microsoft doesn't buy any

11:51of their servers off the shelf.

11:52They custom design their servers.

11:55And then they contract out whoever Dell, HP, Lenovo,

12:00I think they named another company too,

12:02which I can't remember right now,

12:03but they contract those out and they custom

12:05build those for Microsoft.

12:07Anyway, that stuff that I saved, my PowerPoint presentation,

12:11it might be on one of these disks in this JBOD blade.

12:14But that's kind of fun to go through.

12:16Also I'll just refer you to this as well.

12:18This is a YouTube location here.

12:20You can make note of that URL, or you

12:22can Google for "Story Labs 360 Inside a Microsoft Server Room"

12:26here.

12:26And this actually is pretty cool as well.

12:28I don't want to play the whole thing.

12:30Once you scan ahead through here,

12:32I'm just going to show you what the inside might look like.

12:34These are all the blades that they have.

12:36You can see they have artificial intelligence, machine learning,

12:38compute blades, this stuff's all pretty cool.

12:41And then as I've said before, Microsoft

12:43is not the only provider of cloud services.

12:45Here we have Google.

12:46They've made available a gallery, photo

12:48gallery of their data centers here.

12:50They are a little more transparent than Microsoft

12:52can be on this sometimes.

12:53But wow, look at this.

12:54These things are beautiful.

12:56Microsoft doesn't put much effort

12:58into making them as beautiful as these,

12:59but hey, they get the job done, right?

13:01I guess that's the most important part.

13:02But they have LED lighting in Google's data centers.

13:05And they will change color depending upon their condition.

13:08So I'm not sure what all their color scheme is, but I'm

13:10assuming if something turned red in here, that would be maybe

13:13overheating or some other kind of a problem that

13:16might be occurring in that particular data center.

13:19But there you have it.

13:20I just wanted to expand again, the scope of what we're talking

13:23about when we're talking about the cloud,

13:25where our data is stored, where maybe even our operating system

13:29is stored and how available it is to us.

13:31I hope this has been informative for you.

13:33I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00[MUSIC PLAYING]

0:06My wife owns a furniture store.

0:08And they refurbish furniture.

0:10Old furniture, and make it look really fashionable and new,

0:12and it looks great and everything.

0:14But part of the job there is, they

0:16have to actually use a lot of paper towels for things.

0:19For cleaning up old furniture.

0:20For all kinds of things.

0:21Putting on different varnishes, I guess.

0:23I don't know what they do.

0:24Anyway, I don't get at all.

0:25It's way out of my wheelhouse.

0:28But one of the things she asked me for was--

0:31I told her, I said, I'm going by the store,

0:32do you want me to pick something up for you?

0:34And she said, yes, I need paper towels.

0:36So I could get this.

0:39It's $5.48 for these two roles, is what it amounts to.

0:44And it says $0.03 each.

0:45I don't know if that's for each little section or whatever.

0:47But you get the idea, right?

0:48That's how much it costs.

0:50And then take a look at this one.

0:51If I would buy more at once in this economy of scale,

0:55is what this is.

0:56Look.

0:56Now, I've got $0.02 each instead of $0.03 each.

1:01So it's only 2/3 of the expense, is if I go this way.

1:05Now, you might be asking, what does all of this

1:07have to do with a server?

1:09Well, economy of scale, still.

1:12So for example, you see Microsoft.

1:14When they set up a data center, they're

1:17going to buy lots of acres of land.

1:19The one that's near me, about 40 miles away,

1:22I think there's, like, 270 acres or something like

1:24that they bought.

1:25So they're going to get lower prices for everything, starting

1:28with the land.

1:28They get more incentives from local governments

1:31to build there, because they want the jobs that it brings,

1:33and the other resources that it brings.

1:35A lot of political talking points possibly there.

1:37But it's all there.

1:38And Microsoft is going to get lower costs because

1:42of those sorts of things.

1:43Then when it comes to the actual hardware that they buy,

1:46they're going to get lower prices on things

1:47such as, oh, the servers themselves.

1:49They have their servers custom made,

1:52but they'll still probably get them at a pretty cut rate

1:54compared to if we were trying to buy a server of the same type,

1:58because they're buying hundreds, if not thousands

2:01of those servers.

2:02I might need two or three servers,

2:04depending on the size of my business.

2:07How about hard drives?

2:08Just the components themselves.

2:10There was a data center on the West Coast--

2:12this is a few years back--

2:14that someone was telling me about.

2:16They had a catastrophic cooling problem.

2:18The inside of that data center got up to,

2:20if I remember right, 140 degrees,

2:23and ruined a lot of equipment, starting, really,

2:25with the hard drives.

2:27A lot of the hard drives failed.

2:28By the way, when I took tour of Microsoft's data center

2:31about a month ago, the leader of the tour

2:34was asked the question, how many hard drive

2:35failures do you have per day?

2:37And he said hundreds of failures.

2:40And he was thinking of a specific data center.

2:42So in one data center, hundreds of hard drive failures per day.

2:45But anyway, if you have a bunch of hard drives

2:47fail, like in that disaster I told you about,

2:49or if you're Microsoft, whatever--

2:51if you're buying lots of hard drives,

2:54you're going to get a lot cheaper deal per hard drive

2:57than when we buy them 5, 10 at a time.

3:00We're paying closer to a retail expense.

3:03How about energy costs?

3:04We talked about utilities already,

3:05but maybe energy costs.

3:09Remember, Microsoft is up to 70%,

3:12at the time of this recording-- that's supposed to be a 7.

3:1470% Renewable energy right now.

3:18And presumably, if we subscribe to all the talking

3:22points about renewable energy, it

3:24should wind up being less expensive in the long run

3:26than paying for utility that's delivered from a power company

3:30using conventional methods.

3:32Also, Microsoft can afford to build renewable energy,

3:36solar wind farms, things like that,

3:38that most companies would never do.

3:40So they can afford to invest in it,

3:42which will then in the long run, hopefully, save them money

3:44as well.

3:45Well, we can also benefit from that

3:47if we're using any of their services.

3:48And you get the idea of the rest of it.

3:50CPU, the cost of their land.

3:52All the rest of it is going to be less for Microsoft

3:55than it would be for you or me.

3:57And all of those things add up to dollars

4:00that then get passed on to us as the customers.

4:03So in the long run, it may actually be cheaper for us,

4:06instead of buying our own servers in certain instances,

4:09and our own storage, to just use Microsoft's.

4:12Because we can just use a slice of all of these things

4:15that we're talking about here, and come out at a great savings

4:19very often.

4:19So economies of scale may be another reason

4:21why many organizations could move to Microsoft Cloud,

4:24and hopefully save some money.

4:26I hope this has been informative for you,

4:28and I'd like to thank you for viewing.

0:00[MUSIC PLAYING]

0:06A big part of most organizations budget is IT.

0:10It's very expensive to run IT.

0:12And so we need to consider ways that we

0:13can save money, or at least, make

0:15our dollars more efficient when it comes

0:17to spending those dollars.

0:18So let's say, for example, that we have a bobblehead company.

0:22You know, those bobbleheads.

0:24A lot of times, you see them for sports figures and all.

0:26They got a big gigantic head on top of a little smaller body,

0:29and it kind of shakes on a spring like this.

0:32That's my best imitation.

0:33Anyway.

0:35What happens is, maybe we are advertising our bobbleheads

0:38for some really famous football players during Super Bowl.

0:41And so during most of the year--

0:43our fiscal year starts in April.

0:45So, April, May, June, all the other months through here.

0:49And then in February, we show our ad during the Super Bowl,

0:53and we put it in print and all kinds of things.

0:56So through February, and probably March,

0:58we're expecting our sales to go like this.

1:01They go this way.

1:02And then all of a sudden in February, they go way up here.

1:06Well, we did the same thing during World Cup

1:10for soccer, which is the other version of football.

1:13It's not as good as American football.

1:15I'm going to start some fights here, aren't I?

1:17Anyway.

1:18So we did the same thing for soccer, with Messi,

1:21and we had some other bobbleheads that we sold.

1:23And it crashed our servers.

1:26And so we told our management, we said,

1:28hey, this year for Super Bowl, we

1:29can't have the same thing that happened with the World Cup.

1:32We've got to get our servers upgraded.

1:34We've got to buy new servers--

1:36at least one new server that can handle the load.

1:38And so this is one of the things that I do.

1:40I like to go to websites like HP, or Dell, or other server

1:42manufacturers, and look at how much servers cost.

1:45Now this is just a middle of the road server.

1:48It's a rack based server from PowerEdge.

1:50And this might be one of the things

1:51we might want to buy to help handle our bobblehead demand.

1:57Look.

1:57The starting price is 10 grand.

1:59Now for those of you that work with servers a lot,

2:01you'll say, yeah, that's pretty cheap.

2:03But for a lot of us, that looks expensive,

2:05at least at the outset.

2:05But look.

2:06I have to add a lot of other stuff to this.

2:08First of all, I have to add an operating system.

2:10I have to add hard drives.

2:12I have to add memory I have to add a processor.

2:15So by the time I get done with it--

2:17I'm not going to show all the details here.

2:19But I've just added a few things, and I'm up at $23,000.

2:23And these can get very, very expensive.

2:26So let's say that I convinced my management to buy this $23,000

2:31server.

2:31I had to buy lots of lunches for people,

2:34and I had to go through the seventh circle of hell

2:37and everything, to be able to get approval

2:39to get this server.

2:40So now we have our $23,000 server.

2:44And it's handling this demand just fine.

2:47It was a success.

2:48We're glad we bought it.

2:49But when it comes back around to April, May, June,

2:53the rest of the year, what's that server doing?

2:55It's just sitting there with this level of demand,

2:58and it's way too much server for the demand

3:01that we have during those months.

3:02It's kind of overkill for those months.

3:04Well, this was what we call a capital expenditure, or CapEx.

3:10So that's where you spend all your money up front.

3:12We had to buy this big, gigantic server.

3:14We spent a lot of money on it.

3:16But if we're not using it, or if it's just

3:19sitting here burning gas, we don't get a refund on it.

3:22We can't call Dell, and say, hey, Dell,

3:24we're only using about 25% of that server you sold me.

3:26So can you send me 75% of the price back.

3:30They're not going to do that.

3:31Also, the value of this will start to trickle down.

3:35Because of depreciation.

3:38You can write some of that off in taxes and stuff.

3:40But it'll trickle down.

3:41And someday, we might even be able to sell it

3:43as a used server, or recycle it.

3:45But it's only going to be a fraction of what we originally

3:48paid for it.

3:49So that's another disadvantage.

3:51Now compare that to something else,

3:52another kind of an expenditure called

3:54an operational expenditures, or an OpEx.

3:57This is what we do when we use something like Azure.

4:00So with Azure, we can say, hey, we're just

4:02going to use the server that we have in-house for now.

4:05But during this peak period of demand,

4:08we're going to add in a virtual machine in Microsoft Azure.

4:13And that virtual machine is going

4:15to be able to handle all of this load.

4:17And then when we're done using that virtual machine,

4:19and our demand comes back down again,

4:21we'll just either stop using the server,

4:24or we can change the sizing of the server.

4:26That's for another day.

4:27But the other thing you can do with this is

4:28can keep that same Azure server all year round if you want,

4:31and it can shrink in terms of its total size and expense

4:37for what you're not using.

4:38And then when it increases in demand like this--

4:41it can scale up or scale out, is what we call it.

4:43And it can add more resources, add more memory, add more CPU,

4:47or add additional servers entirely.

4:49And then of course, your expense goes up,

4:51but then you've also kept up with the demand.

4:53But during the off season, so to speak, over here,

4:56it's not just burning gas and costing you

4:58money unnecessarily, or at least as much.

5:00It's much, much more efficient.

5:02So operational expenses, it's kind of like leasing something.

5:07You don't actually pave the whole expense of the item.

5:10If you lease a car, you don't spend $80,000 on the car.

5:14You pay some each month, and it's not

5:17going to add up to $80,000 at the end of your lease contract.

5:20Similarly, we're just paying for what

5:22we use with Azure and the resources that it offers.

5:25I hope this has been informative for you,

5:27and I'd like to thank you for viewing.