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After a few weeks since the first public draft, Microsoft released its new Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide dedicated to the so-called Dynamic Data Center.
As virtualization.info reported in a previous article about the draft, the 46-pages blueprint includes design recommendations for several aspects of the infrastructure, from the virtualization hosts to the network infrastructure:
Determine the Dynamic Data Center Scope
This part helps to define the scope and determine the workloads that will be included in the Dynamic Data Center project.
Design the Virtualization Hosts
This part helps to design hosts that meet the capacity, performance, placement, and fault-tolerance requirements of the organization.
Design the Software Infrastructure
This part helps to design the software infrastructure in a way it can provide directory and authentication services, virtual machine management, configuration management, software distribution/inventory/patch management, event monitoring and collection, remote desktop services and hardware management.
Design the Dynamic Data Center Storage
This part helps to design the storage infrastructure in a way it meets requirements of capacity, performance delivery, fault tolerance and manageability.
Design the Network Infrastructure
This part helps to design the network infrastructure to accommodate the requirements accumulated throughout previous steps.
While waiting to see if Microsoft has any major announcement to make today and/or tomorrow at its Management Summit conference, virtualization.info is able to report about a number of potential features for Azure that the company is evaluating behind the scene.
The first one is a capability for customers to use Azure as a Content Distribution Network (CDN) like Akamai or Amazon S3, and to define specific policies on how to route incoming traffic across multiple instances of an application inside the Azure CDN.
The second one is the capability to provide a set of technologies (like transparent routing across secure channels and network fencing) to bridge on-premises data centers with the Azure facility, creating the same hybrid cloud model that VMware plans to deliver with its upcoming vCloud Service Director (codename project Redwood) and that CloudShare delivers today.
The third and most important one is the capability to use Azure to host micro instances (smaller than the current “small” size) for non-production use, including training, demos, and prototype development.
Again this approach, which Gartner is now calling computing sandbox, seems exactly the same delivered by CloudShare today.
It’s important to clarify that none of the features above are now confirmed as part of the Azure roadmap. According to virtualization.info sources, Microsoft is just discussing them with key customers and early adopters.
Nonetheless it’s very interesting the way Azure may evolve and how seriously the company is currently planning on it.
