8. Advantages
On Premise: Complete control over all aspects.
IaaS: No need to worry about steel and cables, easy mapping
for migration from On Premises.
PaaS: No managing servers or operating systems, focus on
the application. Flexible real-time scaling options.
SaaS: Focus on using software, not managing. Good for orgs
without Ops teams.
9. Maturity Model
Automated Build
Source Control
Branching Strategy
Continuous
Integration
Data Model Change
Tracking
Automated Deploy to
Test environments
Test Case
management
Bug tracking
Requirements
Tracking
Unit Testing
Security Testing
Accessibility Testing
Automated Browser
Testing
Automated
Regression Tests
Automated
Performance Tests
Infastructure As Code
Continuous Delivery
Continuous
Deployment
Automated Server
Patching
Continuous
Monitoring
Monitoring tools
Cloud Deployments
Clustered
Deployments
Automated Prod
Deployments
Automated Prod
Deployment Package
Release Management
Real-time Reports
Automated Backups
Automated
Rollbacks/Restores
Generated Release
Notes
Release Notes
Status Reports
11. Why Sitecore + Azure?
Familiarity of
Windows
Built on .NET, Sitecore uses
the technology that your IT
department already knows.
Infinite scalability
Easily scales up and down as
demand changes.*
Rapidly deploy Sitecore on
Azure without worrying IT.
Speed to market
The only enterprise-
grade cloud
Microsoft Azure ensures that
Sitecore® Experience
Database™ is secure.
Always on
Never miss a beat; always
be there for your
customers.
Interoperability
Integrates seamlessly with
your existing back-end
systems and marketing
investments.
Accident protection
Reliable and redundant copies of your
data and automatic failover protection.
Pay-as-you-go
Only pay for the power and
capacity you’re using.*
*Customers will need to ensure the proper number of content
delivery servers from Sitecore to meet scaling requirements.
13. Sitecore on Azure VMs
Any version of Sitecore, but some Azure services require 8.2
• Azure Search
• Application Insights (for logs, counters)
Take advantage of Traffic Manager!
• PRO TIP: Watch out for apex domain mapping in DNS
14. Sitecore on App Services
Requires 8.2 u1+
New tools:
• Sitecore Azure Toolkit
• Infrastructure as Code with ARM Templates
• Autoscaling!
NOTE: Not all modules supported for App Services yet
16. BYOM - Bring your own Mongo
mLab is one possible Database-
as-a-Service offering.
Also can provision yourself on
Azure VMs.
DocumentDB not technically
supported yet.
17. Geographic
region
Azure Region
Sitecore
Marketplace
All Services
Available
Web Apps
Service
Azure Search Azure SQL Redis Cache
Application
Insights
mLab*
mLab
Sandbox*
Canada Canada East
x x x x
Canada Central
x x x x x x
United States East US
x x x x x x x x x
East US 2
x x x
Central US
x x x x
North Central US
x x x x x x
South Central US
x x x x x x x x
West Central US
x x x x x
West US
x x x x x x x
West US 2
x x x
Azure
Government
US GOV Virginia
x x x
US GOV Iowa
x x x
US DOD East
x x
US DOD Central
x x
Brazil Brazil South
x x x x x
Korea Korea Central
x x x
Korea South
x x x
Japan Japan West
x x x x x x
Japan East
x x x x
Asia Pacific Southeast Asia
x x x x x x
East Asia
x x x x x x
Australia Australia East
x x x x x x
Australia South
East x x x x
India Central India
x x x x
West India
x x x
South India
x x x
United Kingdom UK South
x x x x x x
UK West
x x x
Europe West Europe
x x x x x x x x
North Europe
x x x x x x x x x
Germany Germany Central
x x x
Germany North
East x x x
Regions
4 Regions have all services
(including mLab)
• East US
• South Central US
• West Europe
• North Europe
9 more regions have all services
(including mLab) except
Application Insights
25. Less is more
No OS: Behind the scenes.
No logs: Application Insights.
No indexes: Azure Search, etc.
Dedicated roles:
Processing/Reporting.
Easy scaling: Autoscaling for
horizontal, manual for vertical.
27. IaaS or PaaS?
Virtual Machines App Services
• Using modules not yet supported
on App Services
• Transitioning from On Premise
quickly
• Need to minimize complexity of
topology
• Predictable monthly costs
• Low or unpredictable traffic but
high availability needs
• Elevated DevOps needs
(Infrastructure as Code,
Blue/Green deployments, etc.)
• Minimal Ops team availability
• Spend on usage as needed
28. Data residency
Have data residency requirements? Plan your regions
appropriately!
Things to check:
• Application Insights
• Azure Search
• xDB data in Mongo
29. A note on Licensing
Server-based licenses for vertical scaling scenarios.
• Great when HA/DR not in the mix.
Consumption-based licensing for horizontal scaling scenarios.
• Best fit for PaaS, especially if you are low-traffic.
As usual, your Sitecore sales rep is your best friend here.
31. Why Managed Services?
Black box the whole thing.
Leave it to the experts.
Not ready for 24-hour monitoring commitments.
Tired of the 2am call to go fix the server.
No need to keep up on the latest infrastructure requirements.
32. Cost of ownership
Can your team be better used doing something more valuable
in the organization?
Does your team have the headspace and time to keep up with
the latest and greatest?
What risk do you currently have in the team due to knowledge
silos?
33. Balancing risk and reward
Choose level of service
management:
• Servers (IaaS)
• Environment (PaaS)
• Application (SaaS)
Remember me?
34. AN OPPORTUNITY?
Sitecore Azure app services may help
commoditize managed services and increase
competition in the space. Will managed
services become a low-cost, no-brainer,
option?
36. Contact Us
LOCATIONS
TORONTO
49 Spadina Avenue
Suite201
Toronto, ON
M5V 2J1
+1 416 203 2997
NYC
445 BroadHollowRd. Suite25
Melville,NY
11747
+1 631 870 0317
SÃO PAULO
Rua Fidalga, 593/603
Suite16
São Paulo, SP
Brazil
05432-070
+55 11 3825 3843
FLORIANÓPOLIS
RuaIguaçu, 73
Florianópolis,SC
Brazil
88045-610
+55 48 4062 1301
+55 41 4063 9149
OTTAWA
987AWellingtonSt.
Suite 201
Ottawa,ON
K1Y 2Y1
+1 613 241 2067
+1 877 654 0328
Editor's Notes
If there are fewer items – center the agenda vertically
Sitecore can run in any of these environments, we are not pushing only Web Apps.
All of the options have their advantages and disadvantages.
Cloud services can be used, but we do not provide tools for that
Web Apps are great, but they come with limitations (memory, CPU, etc.)
Traffic Manager allows you to abstract away your domain management from your load balancers, virtual machines, etc. This means you can easily tear down and build up behind the scenes without needing to mess around with your DNS. Especially useful for blue/green deployments or geoegraphic disaster recovery.
Unfortunately, Traffic Manager does not have an IP address. This means you need to use a CNAME mapping which can’t be used for apex domains. If we are visiting www.example.org, that’s fine, we can map www to the TM. However, if we visit example.org this is an “A” record which requires an IP address and you will need to work around this. Microsoft has acknowledged this as a limitation of the service. Some DNS providers have ‘alias’ support or redirection support to try to get around this, but careful about redirect services with HTTPS. You need valid certificates.
There no single option to deploy Sitecore in Azure. We support everything: on-premise, hybrid, cloud
Here is an example of it:
The Visitors connect to the Delivery Servers running on Web Apps, which connects to the Azure SQL databases.
The collection database is mongo DB and the Session State is stored in Azure Redis Cache.
Sitecore now by default in Azure using Azure Search, but Solr and Coveo can also be used.
The Authors connect to a different set of Azure Web Apps which is connected to another Azure SQL databases.
From the Content Management environment Sitecore publish information to the Content Delivery environment and using the also Azure Search.
In the background the Processing Servers building the Reporting Database which can be accessed through the Reporting Servers.
The Health Monitoring is done via the Azure Application Insights.
Web Apps
Sitecore uses separate Web Apps to host the Content Management, Content Delivery, Reporting, and Processing web site roles. Each Web App is placed in its own App Service Plan to enable it to scale separately.
Minimum Tier / Size: Standard S2
Azure SQL
Sitecore uses Azure SQL to store all of its content and analytics databases. Databases can be split across management and delivery database servers.
Minimum Tier / Size: Standard S2
Azure Redis Cache
Sitecore uses Azure Redis Cache as its default session state backend. The session state component stores information from active visitors to be used by the content delivery and personalization process.
Minimum Tier / Size: Standard C1
mongoDB
The collection database (MongoDB) is the primary storage for all analytics information and the registry of contacts and engagement automation states. In Azure it is recommended to use a Virtual Machine to host MongoDB or use a service such as mLab.
Azure Search
Sitecore uses Azure Search as its default search engine. Azure Search is a fully managed search-as-a-service that offers scalable full-text search.
Minimum Tier / Size: Standard S1
Application Insights
Sitecore uses Application Insights for all of its Health Monitoring needs. Application Insights can be used to search for all Sitecore logs, performance counters, custom telemetry, and dependant requests.
Minimum Tier / Size: Standard
Application Insights most like New Relic, if you are familiar with that. It works on telemetry data that has been uploaded from all the instances. This allows you to use Application Insights even if it isn’t in the region where the rest of your services are. It takes more time to send the data to Application Insights across regions due to network latency, but there is no performance impact to your applications.
These prices are for the Sitecore instance infrastructure only. Traffic Managers/Load Balancers/Mongo/SOLR/Azure Search/Azure SQL/Redis not included.