Recommend a high availability solution for compute

A high availability solution for compute is a crucial component when designing Microsoft Azure infrastructure solutions. By implementing a robust and resilient compute architecture, you can ensure that your applications and services remain accessible and operational even in the face of failures or outages. In this article, we will explore the different options available in Azure for achieving high availability in compute resources.

Azure Virtual Machines with Availability Sets

Azure Virtual Machines (VMs) provide a scalable and customizable infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offering. To ensure high availability for VMs, you can leverage availability sets. An availability set is a logical grouping of VMs within the same data center that are distributed across multiple fault and update domains. Fault domains represent the physical hardware (racks, power, and network connections) that can fail independently. Update domains are used to control the rollout of updates and patches to limit the impact on availability.

To create an availability set, you can use Azure PowerShell or Azure CLI. Here’s an example using Azure PowerShell:

New-AzAvailabilitySet -Name "MyAvailabilitySet" -ResourceGroupName "MyResourceGroup" -Location "East US" -PlatformFaultDomainCount 2 -PlatformUpdateDomainCount 5

In this example, an availability set named “MyAvailabilitySet” is created in the resource group “MyResourceGroup” located in the “East US” region. The platformFaultDomainCount parameter specifies the number of fault domains, and the platformUpdateDomainCount parameter specifies the number of update domains.

Azure App Service for High Availability

Another option for high availability in compute is to use Azure App Service. App Service is a fully managed platform as a service (PaaS) offering that enables you to host web apps, mobile app backends, and RESTful APIs. App Service provides built-in load balancing and automatic scaling features to distribute incoming traffic across multiple instances and handle increased workloads.

To leverage high availability in Azure App Service, you can configure the scaling options. You can manually scale the app service plan by specifying the number of instances or use the autoscaling feature to automatically adjust the number of instances based on predefined rules such as CPU usage, memory usage, or custom metrics.

To configure autoscaling in Azure App Service, navigate to the App Service plan and select the “Scale out (App Service plan)” option. From here, you can define the scaling rules and conditions based on your workload requirements.

Azure Functions for Compute-intensive Tasks

Additionally, you can consider using Azure Functions for compute-intensive tasks. Azure Functions is a serverless computing service that allows you to execute code in a pay-per-use model. It automatically scales out to meet demand and provides high availability by distributing the execution of functions across multiple instances.

To ensure high availability in Azure Functions, you can enable the “Always On” feature. This feature keeps at least one instance of the function app warm, reducing the cold start latency and ensuring quick response times. You can enable this feature in the function app settings blade in the Azure portal.

Conclusion

When designing Microsoft Azure infrastructure solutions, it is crucial to implement a high availability solution for compute resources. By leveraging availability sets for virtual machines, scaling options in Azure App Service, and enabling the “Always On” feature in Azure Functions, you can ensure that your applications and services remain accessible and operational even in the face of failures or outages.