Understanding Local vs Cloud Solutions

0:00All right, let's take a look here at the Microsoft Cloud

0:02for Windows Server Administrators course.

0:05This, of course, will emphasize mostly Microsoft's Azure product

0:08and all of the products that are underneath that umbrella,

0:10but there are other good cloud products out there as well,

0:12particularly from Amazon Web Services or AWS,

0:16as we usually refer to it.

0:18But I do want to point out this,

0:20as well as several other courses,

0:21are kind of spokes that come off of the main wheel or the hub.

0:25That hub is another course that's the foundation for all of this.

0:30The name is really long, and I have to always look at it.

0:32Windows Server Administration,

0:34Core Infrastructure for Enterprise IT.

0:37Okay, so that is kind of the core,

0:39and it is designed to take you from more of an entry level

0:44in IT into further areas.

0:46So maybe you've been working at the help desk

0:48for a couple of years,

0:49and maybe you're getting kind of tired of it.

0:51I mean, help desk is great for some people.

0:52I have a good friend of mine, one of my best friends,

0:55that's managed help desk for more than 20 years,

0:58and that's just kind of where he's lived,

1:00and he's good with it.

1:01But some people would rather move into further

1:03and other areas of IT, like managing servers,

1:07working at a data center,

1:09being a network administrator of some kind.

1:11So this is what's going to kind of help you

1:13move into some of those other areas.

1:15So off of that core course, which I just mentioned,

1:18we have other courses as well.

1:19There's one on security,

1:20which I actually haven't recorded yet, but I will.

1:23Then there's this one, which is focused mostly on cloud.

1:26We have other ones that are focused

1:27mostly on things like Active Directory,

1:29networking, and the like.

1:31So what we're going to do here

1:33is to take a look, first of all, in the very next video,

1:37by taking a look at working with on-premises servers

1:40and devices and everything else that goes along with it,

1:43and comparing that to cloud management

1:46and seeing how we can make that transition

1:48throughout this course.

0:00All right, let's take a look here at on-prem versus cloud management. Now, I may have mentioned

0:04in various spoke topics from our core course here that we're going to be moving to the cloud

0:11somehow or another. Most organizations are at least partially involved in the cloud. Now,

0:17I went to a conference a few months back, and there were a lot of Microsoft representatives

0:21there and Microsoft speakers and stuff. And at a certain point, one of the MVPs for Azure

0:28was speaking, and he's a super knowledgeable guy. He's from England, but I think he lives in Ireland.

0:33Anyway, he asked for a raise of hands for people that were pretty significantly involved in

0:39Microsoft's cloud, which we'll use as an umbrella term. We'll just call it Azure. It's kind of an

0:44umbrella that holds a lot of the other services that Microsoft offers. Well, surprisingly,

0:49many hands went up, but not all. There were several hands for enterprise organizations

0:54that still had not really migrated to the cloud, at least in any significant way. I don't think

0:58that's going to stay that way. In fact, Microsoft's stated goal that they made at the same conference

1:05was that they would prefer that people move off of on-prem, of course, because, well,

1:11Azure's kind of their cash cow now, but they would prefer that people move off of that

1:16locally and on-premises Active Directory and stuff like that into the cloud. Now, there's a couple of

1:22reasons for that. Number one, you can kind of maybe mistrust the motive a little bit.

1:26Azure is Microsoft's current cash cow. It started off with operating systems like Windows,

1:31and then there's always been some cash there, I guess, and then they moved to Office, and that,

1:35for many years, was their cash cow. That's where they really pulled in a lot of income.

1:40Now, it's moved to cloud. Once you move things into the cloud, you're kind of a lifetime customer

1:45for Microsoft, and you're really tethered to that cloud in significant ways, and that's where they

1:51make a lot of their money. Now, to be fair to Microsoft, it's also probably going to save you

1:56money as opposed to doing things all on-premises. A lot of it also relates to practical reasons

2:02and simplifying administration when we compare on-premises versus cloud management. So,

2:09first of all, we have servers, all right? Now, let's go back to this. So, there's a data center

2:15behind me there, and there's, looks like, I can't really see all because there's some reflections

2:19on the glass and stuff, but there are lots of different kinds of servers in this data center.

2:23This is probably a co-location site. Not many organizations have big data centers like this

2:29behind me, or they might only have a portion of that. Many organizations will just lease,

2:35maybe, I don't know, this rack right here. That might be your rack right there in a co-location

2:41facility, but you're still responsible for all the hardware in that rack. You're responsible

2:46for connecting it all up, managing it, managing what data is there, all the other stuff you would

2:51have done if that were in your own local data center, or that might be your data center. You

2:56might just be an enterprise or a large government organization that just requires a lot of data

3:02center. So, in other words, you're still responsible for managing all your servers.

3:07You know where the server is. You know where your switches are. You know where your storage is.

3:12You know where your, I'm not sure what that is right there, but you know where your pizza box

3:16servers are. That's what we call really thin little servers. They're about the size of a pizza box.

3:21Nobody knows more about pizza boxes than IT people, right? So, you might have a pizza box

3:26server here, and you can walk up to it and put hands on all of that, and we even get kind of

3:30defensive about it. So, if someone gets near our servers, we're like, what are you doing over there?

3:36That's not your server. It's not our server either. We just work for the company, right?

3:40But we have a lot of personal investment in that, in the effort we've put into it,

3:45in the configurations we've made, all of that kind of stuff. So, we kind of stand guard like she is

3:52in front of our data center server racks. Thing is, though, that gets to be kind of expensive,

3:57doesn't it? In fact, there's a lot of reasons why using your own servers, although we get full

4:02control of everything, sometimes it gives us responsibility that we don't really have to bear

4:07or expenses that we don't really have to bear. So, not always, but in general, if you move

4:14from on-premises into Microsoft's cloud, which again, we kind of collectively call Azure,

4:20much if not most of the time, that will save you money. Now, why is that? Well, a lot of that's

4:26just from the physical presence. So, if you have your own rack here, you have to power it. You have

4:32to pay the, you know, there's probably some kind of insurance that you have to maintain for it.

4:36You have to have personnel that can manage it, that can troubleshoot if something's going wrong

4:41locally here, or to replace a switch, or to replace, you know, failed hard drives, or, you

4:47know, these might be, I don't think there's any of those are UPSs, but to replace power supplies or

4:52any of the other kind of equipment that might be down there. Well, we've got to do all of that.

4:57Whereas if you move all that into the cloud, that's Microsoft's responsibility.

5:01Also, this could even apply to some degree to desktop computers. So, you can use something

5:06called Windows 365, and I won't get into all the details of that, but the short version is,

5:14you might be in a scenario where you don't want to have to go from workstation to workstation

5:19to upgrade each workstation. And yes, there's automated ways to do that. You can use system

5:23center and a lot of other products and solutions to upgrade a bunch of desktops. But a budget is

5:29always a significant consideration there. If you have to upgrade all of the operating systems,

5:33that involves time, personnel, personnel hours, time away from other projects, and significantly,

5:41potentially hardware upgrades. You might be running Windows, I don't know, 10 machines

5:45that don't have, that were only spec'd out for maximum Windows 10 capability. Now you're on

5:52Windows 11, and you might have to move to 64-bit processors. You might have to upgrade the memory,

5:57the RAM. You have to upgrade maybe the storage. Many of those might not have a trusted platform

6:02module, which is good for additional security. Now you have to get another motherboard, really,

6:06pretty much on another computer. Well, you can actually, I opened the webpage here, so let me

6:10go show it to you. For desktops, you can put Windows 365, make that your PC in the cloud.

6:17Oh, look, there's somebody behind me trying to chat with me. No, thank you. Anyway, you can take

6:22older hardware, or you can have your users working at home or remotely or something like that,

6:29and you can even connect from a Mac PC or a Mac device. So I could actually use this

6:35from my MacBook Pro, for example, and I could connect to a full Windows desktop,

6:40managed by my company and paid for by my company, if there's a subscription for it,

6:45and basically just make a remote desktop connection to it, and it's virtually the same

6:49as if you were locally connected. The user experience is really not that much different.

6:54So in that respect, it's not really a server-ish topic, it's really more of a desktop topic,

7:00but it still does relate to servers because what we've done in the past is we've set up our own

7:05remote desktop gateways, remote desktop systems, might be Microsoft products, might be third-party

7:09products to make all of that happen. But again, it's an additional burden. How about applications?

7:15You know, most applications nowadays have a web app version or they've moved entirely to

7:22a web app version. Likewise, I've owned several small businesses, and in the past,

7:27when I first got started, I got QuickBooks. That is kind of the small to medium-sized business

7:32accounting software that we would use to track our expenses and stuff like that.

7:37Well, I used to, again, also install that from shiny media, in other words, from a DVD,

7:43and it was installed locally. And then I had one installation from my MacBook,

7:48another installation from my Windows device, and some things did not always match up exactly

7:53between the two platforms. Well, that's one of the advantages now for taking applications

7:57and making them web apps instead, okay? Because QuickBooks then moved to a cloud-based solution

8:05where we no longer had to install the software. We would just go to the website, log in,

8:10and whether you're on a Mac, PC, Linux, anything with a browser, you pretty much get the same

8:15experience, same patch level, same consistency and everything. And that, again, is something

8:20that has moved to the cloud. Now, how does that relate to us as IT administrators? Well, first of

8:25all, it takes a burden off us. We don't have to install and make sure that the patch level is the

8:30same on every single installation we have across our environment for Salesforce or whatever the

8:35product is that you're installing there. So many applications now are web-based, web apps.

8:41By the way, I can't leave out of that discussion what we used to call Office, Microsoft Office,

8:46then it became Microsoft 365, which is also easily confused with Microsoft's licensing products. But

8:53anyway, we'll get into that later on. So all of that now, you can still install locally,

8:57that's definitely an option. But if you find yourself at a browser, but you realize, uh-oh,

9:03I don't have Office installed here, you can connect to the web app version and get most of

9:08the same functionality. There's very little that most people would notice different on the web app

9:14version compared to a locally installed version. Also, let's take a look at things like network

9:19equipment. When you take a look at network equipment, there's a lot of different things

9:22you can do with that. You could split that up into VLAN 1 over here and VLAN 2 over here,

9:27a lot of different configurations, management systems. You may have a separate networking

9:32group that handles all of that, or maybe you're kind of one person that does it all,

9:36and you're going to figure out everything. But when you move a lot of that into the cloud,

9:41to be fair, you may still have to configure certain things. You may have to still configure

9:45various, I don't know, subnets and network security considerations, and a lot of that

9:49kind of stuff. But a lot of that now is handled in the cloud. And if this server, if this rather

9:55switch fails, or it gets a bad port or something like that, well, it used to be that we would have

10:00to replace that. We would have to maintain it. We would have to get called in on the weekend

10:04when we're supposed to be out camping with the family and fix that. Now, Microsoft kind of

10:10handles all of that. You could actually have use of one of the switches in Microsoft's cloud,

10:16and if something goes bad with the hardware of it, you'll probably not even know it.

10:20Microsoft handles the failover and the hardware and all of that for us, and it's completely

10:25transparent for the most part for us. Also, there's the issue of just the data center itself.

10:31Data centers are expensive, and the full burden of what goes on in that data center rests with IT.

10:37Now, if you're a smaller organization, small to medium-sized business, you probably don't

10:40have a whole data center or this whole thing behind me here. You might just have a co-located

10:45rack that you're managing there instead that you've leased from a co-location facility,

10:50or you may have a server room, which very often, let's face it, a lot of times,

10:56those are not really optimized for full server loads. A lot of the server power you're going to

11:02need could be 220, very often is. Well, if you just got a wall outlet in there that's a 110 wall

11:08outlet, that's not much of a server room. You're going to have to figure something out. You have

11:12to bring in utility service to that new server room, which is for most office environments,

11:18they don't usually build a server room. They just build office space. It can be somewhat flexible.

11:24Yeah, you could bring an electrician in. They could put in a 220 panel, including all of the

11:29stuff you need to make that happen. But then again, that burden still goes to you. That still

11:34rests on you. You also have to have backup of some kind, whether it's a data center or a server room.

11:39You have to have UPSs. UPS would be not the delivery service, but that would be uninterruptible

11:43power supply. So those are usually battery powered power supplies that take over in case of

11:49a utility power failure. And it's usually transparent. Nobody even notices that the UPS

11:54has kicked in. It just continues to provide power to your devices. I don't mean the ones in the

11:59office cubicles. You might have something there too, but this is mostly thinking about servers

12:04and rack utility. Anyway, when it comes to all of that stuff, once again, we don't have to worry

12:09about that. Anything that we move, all of this stuff that we move into the cloud, kind of don't

12:14have to worry about it anymore. Do we still have to manage it? Yes. Are we still responsible for

12:17our own data? Yes. Are we still responsible for backing up? Yes. But guess what? Even the backup

12:23could be in the cloud. So also, I won't get into it right now too much, but for the most part,

12:29you will save money moving things into the cloud. Some things can get away from you. I've had that

12:34happen to myself before. I implemented a service at Microsoft that used, I think it was four SCUs,

12:41several compute units. And it was for a security purpose that I had for a different course that I

12:45was teaching. I only had it up for a few days. It was like 500 bucks. Well, that was fun to submit

12:51that expense report. So things can get away from you, but you just have to keep an eye on it. And

12:56there are certain ways that you can help to manage those costs, which I'll get into when I talk more

13:01specifically about setting up your own Azure tenant. So anyway, in summary, all of this stuff

13:06that we see here, a lot of it can be moved to the cloud. Not all of it sometimes. You're still going

13:11to probably have some degree of all of this on premises, but you can significantly whittle down

13:18going from possibly all of this to a smaller environment where you just have one rack or

13:24fewer racks and you're managing more in the cloud.

0:00Now, let's take a look at another significant driver

0:02for moving to Azure or really any Cloud solution,

0:06whether it's AWS or anything else.

0:08That is the comparison of

0:10capital expense versus operational expense.

0:13Capital expense simply relates to the hardware,

0:18the facilities, the physical stuff you can touch

0:22relating to a datacenter.

0:26Let's say that we don't have Cloud.

0:28We're not using the Cloud,

0:29we're not using Azure or anything else.

0:30We have our own datacenter down here,

0:33and we take a look at this,

0:35maybe we're in a certain kind of a business,

0:37that let's say it's even seasonal.

0:39For example, we just had the World Cup finish.

0:42This is the year 2026.

0:44It just finished up.

0:45I didn't really track that much of it to be quite honest,

0:48because I only follow real football,

0:50which is American football.

0:51Anyway, just kidding.

0:53I just made most of the world unhappy there, didn't I?

0:56Anyway, so let's say that during

0:58the World Cup, which I think it finished last month.

1:01I should do research before I actually start recording.

1:04Anyway, during that,

1:06let's just call it a summer,

1:07because I know what happened in the summer.

1:09This relates to time or in particular seasons,

1:13and this relates to dollar expenses.

1:16Let's say that we are a bobblehead company,

1:19sports memorabilia, bobbleheads,

1:22all kinds of novelty items, stuff like that.

1:24Well, during the World Cup for soccer,

1:27which is its proper name,

1:30our sales shoot way up.

1:32So during the normal-ish seasons,

1:34our sales were kind of down here somewhere.

1:36But then during World Cup season,

1:39it goes way up there,

1:40and we've got messy bobbleheads

1:43and all kinds of soccer stars,

1:45all kinds of bobbleheads going on and stuff like that,

1:47you know, where they kind of go blah, blah, blah,

1:49just like that.

1:50And yes, that's an actual representation of what they do.

1:53So anyway, during the last World Cup,

1:55which I guess it doesn't happen every year,

1:56like the Super Bowl does,

1:58we had a spike in sales as well back then,

2:01but our servers were not able to handle the load

2:04for all the orders we were receiving.

2:06So right at the start of the World Cup,

2:08bam, our servers went down.

2:09We had a huge outage here.

2:12It was a professional embarrassment.

2:13We were losing many thousands of dollars per hour,

2:16let's say, I don't know, tens of thousands of dollars

2:19per hour.

2:20We were down for several hours,

2:22probably resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars

2:25in losses, plus lost customers

2:28that went to our competitors instead

2:30that we'll never get back

2:31because the next World Cup or the next sports things

2:34that they want to buy,

2:35they're probably just going to go to the company

2:36that was able to service them the first time

2:38rather than the company whose website was down, right?

2:41Who couldn't process orders or who lost our orders.

2:44So what do we do?

2:46Well, in IT, we care about our jobs.

2:48So one of the IT managers talked to the CIO

2:52and the CTO and the CEO and the whole C-suite.

2:57And he said, look, last World Cup, we lost a ton of money.

3:01What we need to do is to buy more servers, right?

3:05Now, in reality, any company should have more

3:07than one server anyway for handling this kind of load.

3:09But let's say that we just say,

3:12we need an additional server here.

3:14So they're able to talk the management, the C-suite

3:17into buying, let's just say another $30,000 server here.

3:21So now we have our original $30,000 server,

3:23let's say it is, and another one.

3:25So we're now two total $30,000 servers here.

3:29Thing is, it's great because it was able to avoid

3:33this situation where we had an outage at a certain time.

3:36Now we're able to drive our sales way up,

3:39we're able to keep up with the orders and everything.

3:41And you would think that everybody's happy, happy, right?

3:44However, maybe one of the executives,

3:46maybe your CIO or CTO, Chief Information Officer,

3:50Chief Technology Officer, or somebody like that.

3:53They talk to you around this time,

3:55let's say that this is, I don't know,

3:56February or something.

3:58And they say, how much is that extra server we bought you?

4:01How much is that actually performing?

4:03And you might say, oh, you know what?

4:04It's only using about 15% of its total capacity.

4:09And they'll say, 15%?

4:11We spent $30,000 on that server.

4:13Are you wasting money for the company?

4:15Look at that, what a waste.

4:17Well, of course, that's a little short-sighted

4:19because really the whole purpose we bought it for

4:21was when we make most of our bread and butter

4:24during peak seasons.

4:25Well, what are we going to do about that?

4:27Can we go to HP or Dell or whoever we bought the server from

4:30and say, you know, we're really only using about 15%

4:33of that server's total capacity.

4:35So if you could just refund us the additional 85%

4:37we're not using it, you know, we'd sure appreciate it.

4:40It's kind of like when I go to a restaurant

4:41and I eat a steak and I only eat half of it.

4:44Do you think I could talk to the waiter and say,

4:45hey, you know what?

4:46Can you refund half of this steak?

4:47Because I only ate about half of it.

4:50No, that's not going to fly.

4:51Same thing happens with server hardware.

4:53So that my friends is the weakness in capital expense.

4:58You bought it, you keep it, you got to pay for it,

5:00you got to maintain it, insure it, staff for it, everything.

5:04Okay, that's capital expenditures.

5:06However, when it comes to something else

5:09like using a cloud product such as Azure,

5:12well, you can put probably the same resources

5:14on an Azure resource like a virtual machine,

5:18but here we're just worried about operational expense.

5:20That's mostly just having somebody on hand

5:23that knows the systems and they can manage them

5:26and service them.

5:27And really, again,

5:28we're not even putting hands on these servers.

5:30I've built many virtual machines in Azure.

5:34I have no idea where they're physically located.

5:36I know they're in West US3 because that's where I live

5:39and that's where I set them up,

5:40but Microsoft actually has several data centers here.

5:43I don't know which data center it's in.

5:45And even if I knew which data center it was in,

5:47I can't walk in and put hands on that server.

5:50In fact, somebody at Microsoft that manages the data center,

5:53they would probably, they would have to look up

5:55which blade my resources are actually on.

5:58So let's say that again,

6:00here we have our normal season here

6:02and then the world cup happens

6:04where we make our bread and butter.

6:06In an operational expense,

6:08you can do a couple of different things here.

6:09You can do what we call a scale up,

6:12which means that we get more CPU, more storage, more RAM.

6:18Oops, that's supposed to be RAM.

6:21Stuff like that as needed.

6:22So as soon as it starts to spike up,

6:24you can program it this way.

6:25Then as long as it's not just a brief little blip,

6:28you can tell it to increase your CPU,

6:30increase your storage, increase your RAM

6:33to keep up with customer demand.

6:35That's called scaling up.

6:36Okay, scaling up.

6:37You can also do a scale out.

6:39I'll just put it down here.

6:41You can also do a scale out,

6:41which just adds additional identical servers, for example.

6:45It just depends upon what your business needs are for that.

6:47So that's a big difference and a big driver

6:51between going with a capital expense

6:54where you have to pay for stuff that you're not really using

6:57plus the added burdens of all the hardware and resources

7:00or operational expense,

7:02where all you have to do is really

7:04kind of pre-configure your systems

7:06to scale up or scale out.

7:09This is out over here, by the way, scale out.

7:11This saves us all of this wasted resource right here

7:15that we would normally have spent during capital expenses.

7:19And now we only pay for what we actually use.

7:21Another way to look at that is kind of a car lease.

7:24So when you lease a car,

7:26you only pay for it for the time that you're using it.

7:28When you're done, you just turn the car in

7:30and you don't have to pay any extra for it.

7:32Or if you've never leased a car before,

7:34maybe you've leased an apartment.

7:35The lease is only for the time that you're there.

7:38You didn't buy the apartment, you're just leasing it.

7:41When you move out, you don't have to keep paying for it.

7:43Unless you left it a mess

7:44and you don't get your security deposit back.

0:00All right, so my goal in this particular video

0:02is going to be to kind of break that paradigm shift,

0:04if you will, from on-premises to the cloud.

0:07Let's start with on-premises here, okay?

0:09So let's say that, you know,

0:11this is your office building here.

0:12I'll just have three office buildings.

0:14This one's in Phoenix.

0:15I'll just put airport codes in here.

0:16Maybe this one's in Las Vegas, which is LAS.

0:19And then over here, let's say we have Albuquerque,

0:22which is ABQ, all right?

0:24So, you know, from the US, Phoenix, of course,

0:27is in the state of Arizona, Las Vegas, Nevada,

0:29and then Albuquerque is in the state of New Mexico,

0:32all right?

0:33So these are our three main offices,

0:34maybe our main headquarters here in Phoenix,

0:36and maybe you've got a nice cushy corner office.

0:39That never happens in IT,

0:40but let's just assume that you're in this corner office

0:43right here, and that's where you perform all of your IT.

0:46Now though, where is your actual data center in Phoenix?

0:50And if you're going to go in a traditional kind of a sense,

0:53in a major office building,

0:55most of the time the data center

0:57is on the bottom floor here, okay?

0:59Why?

1:00It's easier for running utilities,

1:02it's easier for water supply

1:03if you need to have a water-based cooling

1:05or any other kind of water solutions,

1:07easier for fire suppression,

1:09easier for delivery of equipment.

1:11Some of that stuff you get delivered to a data center

1:14is huge.

1:15You might have generator, that's another thing.

1:17A big power generator is usually

1:18in the back of the building somewhere.

1:20Your chillers, your environmental controls,

1:24diesel-powered backup generators,

1:26all of that stuff's going to be, of course,

1:27on the ground floor in most cases.

1:29There is some, I did see a video once

1:32where there was an unusual case

1:34where they put big Caterpillar brand generators

1:38in a skyscraper up on one of the upper floors,

1:42and they had to be helicoptered in.

1:43That's a little bit of an unusual case.

1:45Usually it's ground floor oriented.

1:48Other things that you might have down there would be UPSs.

1:51Some of those UPSs is the size of a Volkswagen.

1:54They are incredibly heavy, and again,

1:56because of weight, load bearing, all that kind of stuff,

1:59ground floor, why did I erase all that?

2:01A ground floor is usually the best solution.

2:03All right, I think I put it all back.

2:04Okay, so when you're in your corner office up here

2:07administering everything that's in the data center

2:10down here on the ground floor, how are you doing that?

2:13Do you have to take the elevator or the stairs?

2:16Who am I kidding?

2:16I would always take the elevator.

2:18Do you have to take the elevator downstairs

2:20every time you want to administer something?

2:22No, most of the time,

2:25you're not even gonna be in the data center

2:26unless there's some hardware requirements

2:28for something that needs to be replaced

2:29or something like that.

2:31And in fact, most IT employees, just to be frank about it,

2:35usually don't spend a lot of time hands-on in a data center.

2:38Most of your IT responsibilities

2:40can be done remotely and usually are.

2:42So you're gonna usually perform all of your administration

2:47from your own cubicle or from your own office here

2:49remotely connecting to servers down in the data center.

2:53Now, let's take a look at what else could happen.

2:55You get these other branch offices open in Las Vegas.

2:58They have their own data center down here, okay?

3:01On the ground floor.

3:02Albuquerque, they have their own data center

3:04down here on the ground floor.

3:05I don't know why I'm drawing them in like that,

3:07but just to get the point, they're on the ground floor.

3:09But then as the organization grows and morphs

3:12and changes happen and maybe you get a merger going on

3:16where you have another company that you've mergered with,

3:19now you have additional resources.

3:20Maybe you have a couple of small companies over here

3:22that you absorbed.

3:24So now you've got their data center

3:26or even just if it's a server room that they might have.

3:29Now you have to manage those resources.

3:31How are you gonna do that?

3:32Again, probably remotely.

3:33Then it turns out that here in Phoenix,

3:36we've outgrown our data center.

3:37There is no more room for any racks.

3:40We would have to completely possibly retool a lot of stuff.

3:43We'd have to maybe bring in more backup generators,

3:46more chillers, all kinds of other stuff.

3:49Or we're just out of space.

3:50What are you gonna do?

3:51Well, that's where we move into a co-location facility.

3:54We usually just call them colos.

3:56This again is very likely probably what this is right here.

3:59Probably owned by a specific company.

4:02There's lots of different data center companies out there.

4:05I'm trying to think of the name of some, QTS.

4:07That's one of them.

4:08We have several of those actually in Phoenix.

4:10In the past two or three years,

4:12there've been four or five, maybe more data centers

4:16that have sprung up in the Phoenix area.

4:18Part of the reasons for that

4:18is because we have very little risk of natural disasters.

4:23There's no hurricanes, really no earthquakes to speak of.

4:27We do get these things called haboobs in the late summer,

4:32which are big walls of dust that overtake the whole city,

4:35but those aren't usually natural disasters.

4:37But anyway, so we run out of space.

4:40Now what are we gonna do?

4:40We're gonna go to this colo and we're gonna say,

4:42hey, we need to lease this rack right here,

4:47or we need to get some additional space

4:49for a data center in your co-location facility.

4:52So we ran out a couple of racks right down here, okay?

4:56Again, I don't know why I'm drawing that that way,

4:58but anyway, we run some space out there, lease some space.

5:01Then what do we have to do?

5:02We have to get into our little car

5:03and drive out to the data center

5:05with some people here, some employees,

5:08and we have to install stuff.

5:10We have to manage stuff.

5:11If something fails, we have to drive again,

5:12drive out back to that co-location center.

5:15They're usually all badged access

5:16and very high security and all that kind of stuff.

5:18But nevertheless, we have to make the trip

5:20for the maintenance of it, right?

5:22Now, the thing is, once again, on the day-to-day basis,

5:25where are we actually managing that rack of servers from?

5:28Our cubicle or our office here in the main building.

5:32Most of it's done remotely.

5:34Many of our employees who manage resources

5:37in that co-location center

5:39may never even get to that data center.

5:41They probably will never visit.

5:42They'll probably never go through the front door.

5:44They'll probably do most of their functions remotely there.

5:47So when you're at that stage, by the way,

5:49where you're managing everything,

5:50your Las Vegas office, your Albuquerque office,

5:52your co-location resources, your merged companies,

5:56guess what you're doing?

5:57You're already running a cloud.

5:59It's kind of just a private cloud, if you will.

6:01You're already doing everything remotely.

6:03And guess what?

6:04When you move into a Microsoft solution

6:07or any other vendor for cloud services,

6:10you're really doing the same thing.

6:11You can think of Azure, if this is Azure out here,

6:14that is one ginormous co-location facility,

6:18and you can do a lot of the same kind of management

6:20in the same kind of basic method.

0:00Now, here I'm going to go ahead and show you

0:02Microsoft's data centers in a global map.

0:05This is a Microsoft website.

0:07I will link this down below so that you can

0:09also peruse this if you will.

0:11Just look at this. It's actually pretty fascinating.

0:14Since Microsoft presence is probably mostly in the US,

0:17as well as in Europe,

0:18as you can see over here as I spin the globe around here.

0:22I don't know why they have this gray

0:24looking color and everything like that.

0:26It's like scorched earth or something like that.

0:28Anyway, some post-apocalyptic world, I guess.

0:32Anyhow, this is actually quite a lot of fun to

0:35explore around in and to see what is available.

0:38This will become important to you as you determine how you

0:42want to migrate into Azure and to Microsoft Cloud resources.

0:47This shows a lot of different things we can do with this.

0:49Actually, here's the zoom right down here.

0:51I'll try to zoom in a little bit.

0:53I guess that's as far as it lets me go.

0:55You can see that there's also a legend

0:57here for the various kinds of things that we have,

0:59like the geographies themselves, regions,

1:02some that are available now,

1:03some that are coming soon to a theater near you,

1:07network points of presence,

1:08and the sustainability projects.

1:10Microsoft's actually pretty big on the sustainability.

1:13I'm not going to get into all the details here,

1:15but it's really a Cloud topic on its own.

1:17Really, most of the Cloud is just data centers.

1:21You probably have heard in the news that a lot of areas,

1:25a lot of communities are objecting to new data centers in

1:28their areas because they have

1:30the tendency to consume a lot of water, energy.

1:33Citizens are concerned that it's going to

1:35transfer a lot of the expense to them and stuff like that.

1:38I'm not here to debate that one way or the other,

1:40but it is nice that Microsoft is at least trying

1:43to be as sustainable as they can.

1:45You can see here, they have

1:48these things called SunStreams in my area.

1:51This is the Phoenix area.

1:52Apparently, that came online in fiscal year 2022,

1:56and it's 150 megawatt solar panel farm or something like that, I guess.

2:01They also have the wind farms here.

2:04There's a Bloom wind farm that says right there.

2:06I don't know where that is. Kansas.

2:07That makes a lot of sense.

2:09Plenty of wind in Kansas.

2:10I used to live there a long time ago.

2:12But the basic idea here is you need to get

2:14a good sense of the scope of what's available to you.

2:18For example, here where I am in Phoenix,

2:20it's West US 3.

2:22There are two other Wests,

2:23that's West US 2 and West US.

2:27I think the Los Angeles area,

2:29if we click on that,

2:30you can see here that it's in California.

2:32By the way, none of the actual addresses are supplied.

2:36You don't get the actual address of where this data center is.

2:40Now, if you want to find out that is searchable,

2:43it is findable, you can get there.

2:46But Microsoft makes that deliberately

2:48opaque just because they don't want

2:50a lot of visitors showing up at the front gate,

2:52I guess, or something like that.

2:53It's for security reasons as well as other things.

2:56You can see here that the year it was opened was 2012.

3:00But notice that there are no what we

3:01call availability zones there.

3:04That's strange for something that was built in 2012, I thought.

3:07But the basic idea there with an availability zone

3:09is probably best explained if I go back to Phoenix.

3:12Let me go over here to West US 3.

3:15You can see here that we have three zones,

3:19three availability zones.

3:20What is that?

3:21Well, let's just say you're using

3:23file storage in Microsoft's Cloud.

3:25If I've turned on availability zones,

3:27and you have to opt in for that, by the way,

3:29and it's, of course, at added expense,

3:31then it will write to potentially up to

3:34three data centers all at once.

3:37In fact, there's not a synchronizing timing delay.

3:43It's considered synchronous.

3:45In fact, when you write files there, for example,

3:48it doesn't even record the write until it's already been

3:52delivered to all three areas, all three availability zones,

3:56and then it records the write.

3:57So it's considered synchronous.

3:59There's some other things that are not quite

4:01perfectly synchronous, like virtual machines

4:04might not be perfectly synchronous,

4:06but they're pretty tight.

4:07Now, another thing to think about there as well

4:09is the kind of services and compliances that it offers.

4:13So for example, regional compliance,

4:14it has EU and US privacy shield.

4:17That's a compliance matter that you might have to comply with.

4:20If you're in the financial industry,

4:22you'll have to comply with subsidies oxley,

4:25which is what the SOX is.

4:27That's just the abbreviation for it.

4:28There's several other industry compliance things

4:30that it complies with as well.

4:32In the United States, HIPAA for health care requirements.

4:35I don't really know what a lot of these are.

4:37PCI DSS, that's credit card processing and storage.

4:42Global compliance, these are largely security related items

4:45as well, and you get the idea.

4:47So this, again, the reason why I'm bringing that up

4:49is because if you have to comply with in your company

4:53with certain kinds of requirements,

4:55you've got to see if it complies there.

4:57Otherwise, you'll be out of compliance,

4:59and that could get you into some trouble.

5:00So anyway, that is a lot of the different kinds of things

5:03you should look at when you determine.

5:05Obviously, you want to be as geographically close as you can

5:08to where you're actually working.

5:10So I live in Phoenix, so of course, I

5:12would choose West US 3.

5:14That would make the most sense in my organization.

5:17There are other redundancies where

5:18you can think about things like natural disasters.

5:21So for example, if we did have a big natural disaster

5:24in Phoenix, which we usually don't,

5:25and it had the potential to bring down not only West US 3,

5:30but all of the availability zones within West US 3,

5:33then it might need to have some kind of a fail

5:35over to East US 2, or something like that,

5:37or South Central US, which would probably not

5:40be touched by the same natural disaster

5:43that I might get here in Phoenix.

5:45Again, of course, at extra cost.

5:48Now, one thing I don't see in this image anywhere,

5:51they used to have it.

5:53They used to show satellites in outer space

5:55that you could also see, but they removed them

5:58for some reason.

5:59I don't know why.

5:59Maybe Microsoft doesn't want you to know

6:01that Bill Gates has a big mothership in outer space,

6:04or something like that.

6:06And by the way, as a quick side note,

6:07outer space is becoming a big factor.

6:09Elon Musk is making serious conversations

6:13about exploring, I guess with SpaceX,

6:15putting data centers in outer space.

6:17What's part of the reason for that?

6:19Because of what I just discussed earlier in this video,

6:21where citizens were concerned about the power grid,

6:24and some areas are experiencing rolling kind of brownouts

6:28and stuff like that, because of the power

6:29drain of certain data centers.

6:31Again, I don't want to touch that hot button

6:33topic too hard, but in outer space,

6:36you kind of have unlimited resources there,

6:38at least solar-wise, to be able to pull in power.

6:42So that is an emerging conversation that will,

6:44I think, someday happen.

6:46Also, you see in this all the fiber optic cables

6:48that go underneath the sea, like down here to South America.

6:51We have a lot that goes over here to the Europe area.

6:55And this is a very sensitive area in our world these days.

6:59Look at all the fiber optic cables

7:00that go along between Africa, southern Italy, no,

7:06southern Europe, and then a very big hot point right

7:10over here at the time of this recording, which

7:12I won't get into right now.

7:14There are nation-states, by the way, that have submersibles.

7:19I actually don't know if they're ship-based

7:21or if they are submersibles.

7:22They're designed to actually cut these fiber optic cables

7:25under the sea.

7:26So even that technology is becoming a point of conflict

7:31there, because when these get cut,

7:34you cut off your transaction.

7:36You cut off your internet and everything like that.

7:38It's a little understated, but anyway.

7:40I read an article not long ago that there

7:42are trillions of dollars worth of transactions

7:45that take place every hour over these fiber optic cables.

7:49So you can see the significance of how important all of that

7:52is.

7:52Anyway, there's different ways of viewing this.

7:54We're looking at the globe view now.

7:57You can also look at a map view, which is kind of less 3D-ish

8:01or whatever.

8:02And there's also a table view if you want

8:04just more information.

8:06This is going to expose more of that to you.

8:08And you can also sort on the legend

8:11as well as regional filters, again,

8:13for things like your compliance.

8:15Now, in the next video, we'll actually

8:16take a tour of a Microsoft data center.

8:19And I find that it kind of helps when

8:22you're thinking about moving into a Microsoft Azure

8:24environment to be able to see some of the stuff that

8:27goes on in a Microsoft data center and how they're set up.

8:30We'll do that by clicking on this link right here.

8:33And I'll see you in the next video about that.

0:00All right, then now let's go ahead and further explore

0:02a couple of other things here.

0:03So in the last video, I concluded by talking about the fact

0:06that SpaceX is looking into shooting data centers into space

0:12and there's also the other direction you can go

0:14and that would be under the sea.

0:16And we're not gonna get into this too much.

0:17I just wanna point this out to you.

0:18It's kind of interesting to look at.

0:20Microsoft did put, actually there's a better location here.

0:23Yeah, see this right here?

0:24Microsoft put a submersible data center

0:26under the sea off the coast of Scotland,

0:28which is by the way, where I was born.

0:29This is not very far from there.

0:30And you can see them kind of, it's kind of bubbling up.

0:32Maybe there's a better look at it here.

0:34Yeah, so it's coming up out of the sea effort.

0:36I think it was under there for two years

0:37and it was filled with nitrogen instead of oxygen

0:40because oxygen can contribute to corrosion.

0:43This is supposed to be a data center

0:45that had only about an eighth of the failure rate

0:47as a land-based data center.

0:50Normally data centers will try to guarantee

0:53at least four nines.

0:54So that's what Microsoft guarantees as well,

0:56which is 99.99% uptime.

1:00And if there's a failure outside of that,

1:03then they compensate you somehow,

1:05but it's really only for the product that you pay for.

1:08So if your business is down for that length,

1:11for whatever the length of time is,

1:12all they do is they reimburse you

1:14for the outage for their services.

1:17They don't reimburse you for maybe hundreds of thousands

1:20of dollars in lost business or something.

1:22Anyway, at least it's something.

1:24I'm just gonna scroll down

1:26and show you some other photos

1:26that they have over here and everything.

1:28You can see them spraying off all the barnacles

1:30and stuff like this.

1:31I guess it was powered by wind.

1:33And, oh, this is interesting.

1:34So this is the actual data center itself

1:37is called the payload.

1:38And then this is the shell that it goes into.

1:40I thought they'd have some kind of high-tech

1:42powered pneumatic way or something like that

1:44of putting this in the shell and taking it out.

1:47But it's really just a manual labor.

1:49There's somebody on a come along

1:50that pushes and pulls a lever

1:52on some kind of a pulley system

1:56to move this in and out of the data center.

1:57Anyway, must have been a smashing success.

1:59Look how happy that guy is.

2:00It must have been good.

2:01So anyway, I only point that out

2:02just to show you other ways

2:04that are in progress right now

2:06of maximizing the potential

2:08for optimum data center locations.

2:10Now, I wanted to take a tour thing.

2:12I don't know if you saw my clicker right there,

2:13but this is actually a Microsoft virtual tour.

2:16I actually went on one of these virtual tours,

2:19kind of, it was really a webcast tour

2:22that I went on with Microsoft.

2:24This is about a year and a half or two ago.

2:26And it was pretty interesting.

2:27So you can see here, there's a lot of different things.

2:29Here's their sustainable energy.

2:31If I click on it, renewable energy.

2:33Microsoft claims to be, I think, 70% energy independent.

2:37I don't know if there's a way to verify that or not,

2:39but anyway, there it is.

2:40Here's their carbon usage,

2:42as that may interest many people.

2:44The recycling, that's actually kind of interesting.

2:47The data center tour that I went on,

2:49I'm not sure if I'm remembering this right,

2:51but someone asked how many hard drives failed per day.

2:54And the person that was leading the tour

2:56said about a hundred drives per day, hard drives.

3:00I don't know if that's per region or per actual data center,

3:04but that seemed like a lot.

3:05Anyway, when they recycle those drives,

3:08what they do with them is,

3:09I knew they destroyed them somehow.

3:11Some organizations will put a drill through them

3:13or something like that, which is not really that effective.

3:16And I knew that Microsoft shredded them.

3:18I just didn't know how much.

3:19They actually shred them to powder,

3:22and then they recycle the powder.

3:23I don't know how they do it, but anyway.

3:25You can see here there's a perimeter fence.

3:27For obvious reasons, they have to secure the whole area.

3:30And then here is the checkpoint that you must go through

3:33in order to get inside the fence.

3:35Then when you enter the lobby,

3:37this is where things kind of start to get interesting

3:39in various ways.

3:40So first of all, when you enter the lobby,

3:42you get an AI assistant.

3:43Thank you for that.

3:44Okay, let's just close that up.

3:46We'll explore the lobby.

3:47As you can imagine, as you enter in,

3:49you're greeted by a receptionist here,

3:51who I'm sure also has some kind of security training.

3:53And then you would,

3:56I'm sure you have a pre-authorization to get in,

3:59or even if you're a Microsoft employee,

4:01you still have to pass through various security measures.

4:04Anyway, they also go through these,

4:06we used to call them man traps,

4:08but they don't call them that anymore.

4:09Now they call them security vestibules.

4:12Maybe man traps sounds too much like

4:13some kind of nightclub or something.

4:15Anyway, there are biometric checks.

4:17Yeah, actually it's called

4:19an access control vestibule now.

4:20Okay, it says it has multi-factor biometrics

4:23and full body metal detectors for all staff and visitors.

4:27One thing that is not listed there

4:30that I thought was kind of interesting

4:31that I learned about at a recent conference that I went to,

4:34is they actually weigh you when you go in

4:37and they weigh you again when you come out

4:39to make sure that number one,

4:40you haven't taken something in

4:42that you then left inside the building.

4:44And then when you come out,

4:45that you're not coming out with more than you went in with

4:48for security purposes.

4:49So anyway, before you visit one of these,

4:51it might be a good day to skip breakfast, okay?

4:54I'd have to skip several meals

4:55before I would stop being embarrassed

4:57about being weighed to go in.

4:58Anyway, there's the operations room.

5:01I also learned by the way,

5:03that there are only about between 14 and 16 employees

5:06in these Microsoft data centers.

5:07Doesn't really take that many employees

5:09to manage the IT here.

5:11Now I'm sure there's other employees

5:13that are doing grounds and security and maintenance

5:16and all that kind of stuff.

5:17But in terms of the actual IT, only 14 to 16 employees.

5:21And you can see there's kind of all kinds of sensors

5:23up here that they're measuring.

5:24I don't know if these really reveal very much.

5:26This was interesting.

5:27I've mentioned this in other courses that I've taught.

5:30Microsoft tracks more than 100 trillion threat signals daily.

5:35That's a staggering amount.

5:37And they have 34,000 security experts.

5:39Wow.

5:40There are also multiple sensors that operate here.

5:43I can't remember the number,

5:44but it's thousands of various sensors in the data center.

5:47And this would be for things like would be obvious,

5:49like a temperature, drive failures, that sort of thing,

5:53network failures, network anomalies.

5:55But anyway, there are thousands of those kinds of things

5:58that they track in there.

5:59So as we continue on through,

6:01we can enter the mechanical area.

6:03And again, this will be linked for you down.

6:05Well, actually it's part of the same link

6:06I provided earlier.

6:08You just choose the menu option to go to the data center.

6:10This is the mechanical area.

6:11You can see the cooling towers, stuff like that,

6:14electrical generators.

6:15There's renewable energy there with a little windmill.

6:18Oh, that's new.

6:19I haven't seen that before.

6:20That might've been added recently.

6:22Anyway, a lot of different stuff

6:23you can click on through that as well.

6:25I'm gonna go into the server room

6:26where all the good stuff is.

6:27So one of the things I'll point out

6:29about the server room for Microsoft

6:31is that they have several different generations of servers,

6:34but Microsoft actually develops,

6:37actually designs their own server blades.

6:42They don't just buy off the shelf

6:43or custom design their own from Dell

6:45or something like that or Lenovo or HP or whoever.

6:49They actually design them

6:52and then they outsource them to be actually built

6:54and then returned to them.

6:55So kind of interesting.

6:57This is, one of the things that's also interesting

6:59about this, let me change my resolution.

7:00It's kind of low res.

7:02Trying to get to HD here.

7:04I guess that's a little better.

7:05But you can actually look at the server blades

7:08that they do design.

7:09So here's one of them.

7:09This is a JBOD blade.

7:10It's kind of hard to spin around here right now,

7:12but there it is.

7:13And the JBOD, JBOD stands for just a bunch of disks.

7:16Can be configured a number of different ways.

7:17Why will this not stop spinning?

7:19Oh my goodness.

7:20I'm getting lost in here.

7:22Whole process is making me seasick.

7:23Anyway, so there's a JBOD blade for storage.

7:26And then as we click on next through,

7:28they have several different compute blades

7:30that they've put up.

7:31AI of course is a big deal with everybody these days.

7:33Generation eight, generation nine, whatever that means.

7:36But again, Microsoft designs all of these for themselves.

7:40Here's the Maya ones.

7:41These are related to AI here.

7:43Anyway, I recommend you kind of take a peek

7:45at some of this stuff.

7:46It is actually pretty interesting.

7:47And they do have some new elements that I'm observing here

7:50that they didn't have the first time

7:52that I looked at this whole tour.

7:54So I guess they update this periodically

7:56and I'll just leave it at that.

7:58So I would recommend you kind of go through this.

8:00It's very interactive, very interesting to look through.

8:02And I would just take a peek at it.

8:05Now, one of the things that you'll find

8:06is if I go back into the network room

8:09is they also have some interesting design choices

8:12that they've made.

8:13I don't know if you noticed,

8:14but the data center room that we were in earlier,

8:17kind of boring, visually speaking.

8:19Microsoft doesn't put a big emphasis on aesthetics.

8:22A lot of the co-location facilities

8:24that you might lease space from that are not part of Azure,

8:27well, a lot of times they will be pretty aesthetic,

8:30colorful LEDs and all this kind of stuff.

8:31But there's a little bit of a marketing thing there.

8:33Another part of that though is some of those data centers

8:36will use the LEDs for visual signals

8:39for something that's going wrong.

8:40For example, Google uses that in some of their data centers.

8:43Some of them are just as boring as Microsoft's.

8:46But on the other hand, some of the LEDs will change color

8:48if something's going wrong.

8:49I don't know if a hard drive's failing

8:51or system's overheated or something like that.

8:53But they also are very careful

8:55about even the materials they use.

8:57So for example, here you can see,

8:59this is just a plywood wall.

9:02It's a specially constructed kind of a plywood

9:05that's designed to resist dust.

9:07So they actually think through a lot of this stuff

9:09very carefully.

9:10And then you can see the fiber optic cables

9:11coming up and down here as well.

9:13Fiber optic very frequently is gonna be yellow in color,

9:17but there are different colors for fiber optic

9:19that designate its capacity and its type

9:22and stuff like that.

9:23Ethernet cables can be really usually any color.

9:26A lot of times it's white, a lot of times it's blue,

9:28but really it can kind of get it a lot of different colors.

9:30It doesn't really necessarily mean anything.

9:32With fiber, it does have various meanings.

9:34Oh, look, there it is.

9:35That's exactly what I was just talking about.

9:36The plywood panels, treated with a special coating

9:39that does not release particulates.

9:41Wow.

9:42Oh, wow, this is a new room here as well.

9:43This is the innovation room.

9:45There's the project magnetic

9:46that I was talking about earlier, submersibles.

9:48I'm not gonna go into all the rest of this,

9:49but again, pretty interesting

9:50to just kind of explore your way around.

9:52I'm kind of going down a black hole with this whole tour.

9:55So check it out on your own, quite interesting.