This Week I Learned - Week #17 2019

This Week I Learned -

On-premises servers running Windows Server 2008 or 2008 R2 can be migrated to Azure using Azure Site Recovery

Azure Site Recovery has been tested and integrated with SAP applications.

Currently it is not possible to protect a virtual machine that has a Docker disk using ASR

* You can migrate a Recovery Services vault (an Azure Resource Manager resource to manage your backup and disaster recovery needs natively in the cloud) between subscriptions and resource groups with a few steps, in minimal downtime and without any data-loss of old backups.

Replatforming involves upgrading an application from its existing platform and adhering to the minimum possible Twelve factors to get it to run on the cloud, while preserving existing functionality.


From a design perspective it is nearly impossible to guarantee specific RPOs and RTOs for these type of solutions because many variables are outside of your control. When designing for RTO it is important to understand the variables that are not always in your control.  For example, if someone initiates a restore, the time it takes to be back up and running is dependent on variables like the size of the restore, available network bandwidth, speed of the disk drives/VMs, etc.

* Microsoft Lifecycle Policy offers 10 years of support (5 years of Mainstream Support and 5 years of Extended Support) for 2008 and 2008 R2 versions of SQL Server and Windows Server. As per the policy, after the end of the Extended Support period there will be no patches or security updates, which may cause security risks. Customers running 2008 or 2008 R2 versions of SQL Server and Windows Server in Azure virtual machines will get Extended Security Updates for free.

Adrian Cockcroft, the man in charge of making key IT decisions for Netflix convinced the company’s management in 2009 that going all-in on the cloud would be the right decision over the long term. The decision proved fortuitous for AWS and Netflix, as both have become industry juggernauts. Adrian Cockcroft joined AWS in October 2016 as vice president of cloud architecture strategy.

Netflix OSS is a set of frameworks and libraries that Netflix wrote to solve some interesting distributed-systems problems at scale. 

In the case of production SAP applications, we recommend the virtual machines which run the SAP single points of failure, such as the system central services A(SCS) and database are deployed in Availability Sets or Availability Zones, to protect against planned and unplanned maintenance events. This also applies to the SAP Application servers where a few smaller servers are recommended instead of one larger application server. Operating system cluster technologies such as Windows Failover cluster or Linux Pacemaker would be configured on the guest OS to ensure short failover times of the A(SCS) and DBMS. DBMS synchronous replication would be configured to ensure no loss of dataBest practices in migrating SAP applications to Azure – Part 1

Amazon’s sprawling catalog of service offerings can quickly drown a new user in confusion. It can be difficult to determine what Amazon offers not to mention where to find it even if you did know. Amazon’s cheeky naming conventions make products like S3, Elasticache, Redshift, Kinesis and Glacier seem like completely foreign entities.

* The official Azure documentation has a nice tutorial on Pillars of a great Azure architecture. They include:
* Security
* Performance and scalability
* Availability and recoverability
* Efficiency and operations

* The pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework are:
* Cost Optimization - The ability to run systems to deliver business value at the lowest price point.
* Reliability  -  The ability of a system to recover from infrastructure or service disruptions, dynamically acquire computing resources to meet demand, and mitigate disruptions such as misconfigurations or transient network issues.
* Operational Excellence  -  The ability to run and monitor systems to deliver business value and to continually improve supporting processes and procedures.
* Performance Efficiency  - The ability to use computing resources efficiently to meet system requirements, and to maintain that efficiency as demand changes and technologies evolve.
* Security  - The ability to protect information, systems, and assets while delivering business value through risk assessments and mitigation strategies.

* Cosmos DB is a multi-model database service, and therefore it supports different non-relational models - Guide to NoSQL with Azure Cosmos DB [PDF eBook]

* Microsoft is offering limited spots for attendees to bring family members aged 14-21 to their Microsoft Build event for free

* The Open Data Telangana portal houses datasets form the various departments and organizations of the Government of Telangana. It is one of the many GeoNames Data Sources

* Flipkart opened its Tier-4 rated second data centre, built in partnership with CtrlS, in Hyderabad

* Who’s that actor, what is she wearing, where was this scene shot, what’s that music? With Amazon Prime Video X-Ray, you have answers to these questions about your favorite movie or TV show while you’re watching them. The group that brings these features is the X-Ray Engineering team

* Nowhere is this mutated, empowered role of the star rating clearer than in the gig economy. Star ratings are an enforcement tool that Uber has for how users should behave on the job. Uber drivers are contractors, not full-time employees. This is both integral to Uber’s business model and, in different markets and courtrooms around the world, currently in dispute. In the meantime star ratings provide a conduit through which Uber can assertively command and micromanage its “partners.” - NY Times

* Personal consumption expenditure in India, and what percentage of these transactions happen digitally, in India it is about only 3.5-4%. by February 2019 the value of credit card transactions (₹48,859 crore) was less than half of those done on the UPI platform - The Hindu

* World Bank recognizes that India has gone from a low-income country status to a low-middle income.




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