Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure Serviceability
Tue, 26 Sep 2023 14:33:07 -0000
|Read Time: 0 minutes
Whenever an IT company presents a new product, it can be tempting to focus solely on the shiny side of the announcement. How fast are the new processors it incorporates? How much IO throughput can we attain, or how low can the storage latency be? We may be captivated by how easily the new product fits into a hybrid cloud operating model or how it slots perfectly into our multi-cloud strategy. We can focus on the improvements in operational efficiency, the cost savings it introduces, etc. The list is long and attractive, and these are important elements to what makes a new offering worth your time.
But there are a multitude of technologies and processes happening in the background to make these selling points a reality. To keep this new product running and true to the aforementioned benefits, we need to turn our focus to a whole different type of announcement.
Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure is no different. A fully automated and integrated offering that extends and optimizes the Azure public cloud experience to on-premises IT environments, Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure accelerates developer productivity, optimizes workload placement to meet application performance, and addresses governance requirements.
But what needs to happen in Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure to make all these perks possible over time and through any and all vicissitudes?
It all comes down to serviceability. Dell APEX Cloud Platform Foundation Software integrates Dell Support and serviceability features/functionality into the APEX Cloud Platform extension in Microsoft Windows Admin Center.
For serviceability, we bundle a wide range of technologies and processes such as:
- Secure Connection for monitoring, providing remote support and handling hardware alerts
- Event Management and Call-Home
- Log bundle collection
- Check service feature
Dell APEX Cloud Platform Connectivity
Providing a secure connection gateway between customers’ facilities and Dell support sets up a trustable platform to send infrastructure, events, and call home, create service requests and deliver remote support for troubleshooting.
These connectivity features can be managed from the Dell APEX Cloud Platform Extension for Microsoft Windows Admin Center, as shown in the following figure.
As mentioned previously, we can select the type of connectivity, either direct or through Dell Secure Connect Gateway, as shown in figure 3.
This connectivity, once established, enables you to create support cases and review KB articles from within the Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure extension for Microsoft Windows Admin Center,
Event Management and Call Home
Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure Event Management is built around an event processing service that:
- Collects events and transforms them into a common format
- Applies filters and other rules to reduce false alarms and unnecessary traffic
- Stores event history and distributes events to both Dell Call Home and Windows event viewer
In the following figure, we can see an event from the Windows Event Viewer. Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure Events will appear under the section Hyper-V-Dell-APEX-HCP. In the description pane, we can analyze the event code, which includes event type, source, severity, component, and an index field. Other useful information includes:
- Event message and time of occurrence
- Information on the host, component, and sub-component that caused the event
- If there is any KB available related with the raised event
In the Dell APEX Cloud Platform Extension for Microsoft Windows Admin center, we have a dashboard dedicated to Alerts, as shown in figure 5.
We can sort and categorize systems alerts by acknowledging them or not.
Establishing the connectivity with Dell support to configure Call Home will enable the automatic creation of Dell support cases based on these alerts.
Log Bundle collection
Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure allows the user to collect log bundles coming from:
- Cloud Platform Manager
- Each node iDRAC
- Each cluster or node of the Azure Stack HCI platform
In the following example, we have elected to create log bundles from the three available sources.
We can select the nodes or cluster from which we want the logs to be created.
You can download the bundles and delete old and/or unneeded logs, shown in figure 7, leaving room for future ones.
Check Service
Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure includes a profile-based check service. Depending on the need--if we are running a compatibility check, a lifecycle management check, or a cluster validation check--we can create and use different profiles for those validations.
In the following table, we can see the type of checks supported in this version of Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure.
Scenario | Checker | Description |
---|---|---|
Node Compatibility check | Hardware symmetry check | Check the hardware symmetry with primary node |
Hardware compatibility check | Check if hardware is supported under a specific version.
| |
Software compatibility check | Check if software is supported under a specific version. | |
Cluster validation | Host disk check | Check host disk. |
Secured core BIOS setting check | Check secured core BIOS setting. | |
Secured core OS feature check | Check secured core OS feature. | |
LCM precheck | Microsoft’s Enterprise Cloud Engine (ECE) health check | Check ECE health state |
ECE running check | Check if there are pending jobs on iDRAC | |
iDRAC pending check | Check cluster component compatibility by Known Good State (KGS) | |
Cluster Component Compatibility Check | Check platform compatibility by KGS service Check if Kernel Soft Reboot (KSR) is disabled | |
Platform compatibility check | Check platform compatibility by KGS service | |
KSR disable check | Check if KSR is disabled | |
Node health check | Check if node power state is ON |
All checks in every profile can be aggregated into a report in .json format.
This report is saved in the Radar docker directory /var/radar/report.
The following figure shows the example of a Day 1 node compatibility check. In it, we can see the compatibility column. The check service has validated that the selected node (with Service Tag 5750003) is compatible to be added to a Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure cluster.
All the processes and technologies described in this blog enable IT administrators to keep the lights of their Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure platform on by facilitating systems’ monitoring and troubleshooting.
You can find more information on Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure on Dell InfoHub.
Resources
We have tons of great content to help you deep-dive into Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure powered by Dell APEX Cloud Platform Foundation Software.
- InfoHub (White Papers, Blogs, Interactive Journey, and more) – https://infohub.delltechnologies.com/t/cloud-platforms/
- YouTube playlist with educational and demo videos – https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2nlzNk2-VMEkNM7E8m0ia_lLHWlOuT5h
- Main product page with spec sheets, solution briefs, infographics, and other great collateral – https://www.dell.com/azure
- Dell Support site with administrator guides – https://www.dell.com/support/home/en/product-support/product/apex-cloud-pf-ms-azure/docs
And as always, please reach out to your Dell account team if you would like to have more in-depth discussions about the Dell APEX Cloud Platforms family. If you don’t currently have a Dell contact, we’re here to help on our corporate website.
Author: Inigo Olcoz, Senior Principal Engineer Technologist, Dell HCI Technical Marketing
Twitter: @VirtualOlcoz
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What's New with the Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure March 2024 Release
Wed, 06 Mar 2024 18:09:44 -0000
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Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure is about to reach its first six months of existence, and we’re celebrating by incorporating a plethora of enhancements across the entire platform.
First and foremost, Dell has become the first Microsoft partner to enable 23H2 for new deployments. We can ship new platforms based on Dell multicloud (MC) nodes that include a factory staging of Azure Stack HCI 23H2. Dell Services will assist customers on the initial deployment experience,
Azure Stack HCI 23H2 (2311.2 release) comes full of rich features, including:
- Simplification in infrastructure deployment as key Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) components are created as part of the Azure Stack HCI deployment
- Enhancement in Azure Arc-enabled on-premises resources like virtualized desktops, server VMs, and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) hybrid workload clusters, as they are now automatically Azure-Arc enabled
- Azure Stack HCI cloud-based deployment
- Management of updates across all Azure Stack HCI clusters using Azure Update Manager
- New capabilities and improvements to the core Azure Stack HCI stack – hypervisor, storage, security, and virtual machines
Check out these features in greater depth in this blog, Dell Technologies First to Deliver Azure Stack HCI 23H2.
But there is much more to this March release than 23H2, ranging from new cluster node expansion options to improvements in Dell APEX Cloud Platform foundation software for Day 0, Day 1, and Day 2 operations to serviceability and platform monitoring enhancements.
Cluster expansion
Today, all cluster expansion operations are led by Dell Support and Services. Starting with this APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure March release, there are two new operations supported:
- Upgrading a single node deployment to a 2-node cluster
Through a Dell Services-led engagement, it is possible to expand a single node deployment to a 2-node switched or switchless cluster.
Figure 1. Single node to 2-node cluster Azure Stack HCI expansion
- Converting a 2-node switchless storage network cluster to a 2-node switched storage network cluster
Dell Services converts from a switchless storage network topology to a switched one. From there – 2-node switched – we can grow our Azure Stack HCI deployment up to 16 nodes.
Figure 2. 2-node switchless to 2-node switched cluster conversion
Dell APEX Cloud Platform Foundation software improvements
Numerous improvements in the platform will affect distinct solutions’ areas. As of today, platform deployment operations are done through a white glove experience led by Dell Services teams, but we are investing in a more API-driven approach moving forward:
- Day 0 – Day 1 Operations
- To make initial deployment even simpler, we can now use a JSON file that stores the configuration options for our environment, avoiding the need to go step-by-step through the deployment wizard.
- A RESTful API has been made available to automate provisioning operations.
- The automated initial deployment was limited to 6 nodes. From this APEX Cloud Platform Foundation Software v1.01 and forward, this process can include up to 16 nodes.
- iDRAC Service Module (iSM) is installed as part of the initial deployment after the first cluster node boots. Its lifecycle management is handled by Dell APEX Cloud Platform Foundation software.
- Day 2 Operations
- Wizard driven process for node repair/replace
- This is a Dell services-led procedure, that – depending on the issue – may require re-imaging the node or preparing a new server.
- In a nutshell, when the issue requires the Operating System to be reinstalled, we need to go through the node repair operation.
- Wizard driven process for node repair/replace
Figure 3. GUI driven process for node repair/replace
- Wizard driven process to add/replace disks in a node
- These operations can be customer-led.
- Validation checks are run to ensure optimal operation completion.
- Verification checks are run post disk insertion. When these finalize successfully, the process can be considered completed.
Figure 4. Add disk to a Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure node shows successful completion
- There is a similar wizard when the case is disk replacement instead of disk addition. The output of the replacement process will look like the following:
Figure 5. Replace disk/s to a Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure node shows successful completion
- Serviceability improvements
- Embedded Service Enabler (ESE) and Remote Secure Credential (RSC) logs have been added to the log bundle collection mechanism. These logs can be very useful when remote access to the cluster is denied and we want to diagnose the connection issue.
Figure 6. Checking the content of a Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure to verify both ESE and RSC logs are included in the bundle
- Microsoft Azure portal integrations
- Event Monitoring for Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure will deliver a customized Azure workbook which will allow you to monitor faults and events that happen on the Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure hardware and the Cloud Platform Manager via the Microsoft’s Azure Portal itself.
Figure 7. Dell's customized Azure workbook, integrated with Insights in Azure Portal, to monitor real time faults and events generated within Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure
Check the Resources section in this blog for useful links to more information on Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure and specifics to this new release.
We will continue working on enhancing the platform features, so stay tuned for more new and exciting capabilities soon.
Resources
- Blog: Dell Technologies First to Deliver Azure Stack HCI 23H2
- Blog: Monitoring the Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure with Azure Insights
- Info Hub blogs with further details about the new enhancements in our latest release
- Info Hub white papers, videos, and interactive demos
- YouTube playlist with educational and demo videos
- NEW YouTube playlist for March 2024 release
- Main product page with spec sheets, solution briefs, infographics, and other great collateral
- Dell Support site with administrator guides
- Microsoft’s official announcement of 23H2 general availability
- General availability of Azure Virtual Desktop
- Azure Stack HCI Security Book
- Check out What’s new for Azure edge infrastructure in 2023 for an eye opening case study of a fictional grocery store chain that uses Microsoft Azure to deploy and manage infrastructure at the edge using Azure Arc, Azure Kubernetes Service, and Azure Stack HCI. This is a highly enlightening, end-to-end view of how all the technologies within the Azure hybrid cloud ecosystem can harmoniously work together to solve a real-world business problem in the retail vertical.
And as always, please reach out to your Dell Technologies account team if you would like to have more in-depth discussions about the Dell APEX Cloud Platforms family. If you don’t currently have a Dell Technologies contact, we’re here to help on our corporate website.
Author: Inigo Olcoz - Senior Principal Engineer Technologist Dell HCI Technical Marketing
X: @VirtualOlcoz
New Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure Interactive Demo
Thu, 25 Jan 2024 19:24:34 -0000
|Read Time: 0 minutes
On September 26th, 2023, Dell announced a new cloud platform intended to bring the cloud experience provided by the most relevant hyperscalers to on-premises. Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure became the first in a group of platforms to facilitate modern application development and operation.
This new offer has become the first in the market for a new category – Premier Solutions for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI.
In this day and age, it’s highly probable that most customers when asked about their preferred way to learn about a new product or technology will select a hands-on experience, which is why we are excited to announce that a new interactive demo (ITD-0235) has been posted in our demo center catalog: Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure.
Featuring a hands-on experience with the management and orchestration capabilities delivered by Dell APEX Cloud Platform Foundation Software, this interactive journey will guide us through the following topics:
- Platform introduction
- Deployment experience
- Fleet management
- Serviceability features
- Security management
- Lifecycle management
- Cluster expansion operations
The first steps explore the platform architecture displayed in Figure 1, founded upon the multicloud (MC) nodes and based on Dell PowerEdge R660 and R760 servers. The latest release of Azure Stack HCI is installed on these servers, including its storage and network components.
With the addition of the Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) hybrid, we are on-board to onboard our Azure Stack HCI clusters into the Azure Arc portal, resulting in a true hybrid Azure environment.
Figure 1. Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure base architecture
By utilizing the automated, wizard-driven process backed up by the Dell APEX Cloud Platform Foundation Software, you can cut down on the multitude of manual steps to deploy the advanced architecture of the Azure hybrid cloud environments by up to 88%.
Note: At initial release, this platform is only installable through Dell ProDeploy Services, however this automation will soon be made available for public use.
The wizard will guide us through a series of steps, including approving the End User License Agreement, fulfilling installation prerequisites, choosing a configuration method, and providing key Azure account parameters, as shown in the following figure.
Figure 2. Cloud Platform deployment through automated wizard, featuring the first configuration steps
Day 1 Deployment and Cluster Creation
Next, the interactive experience will go through the infrastructure resource selection process, beginning with servers, storage, and networking assets. Typical global settings such as cluster name, DNS, LDAPs, and Active Directory are configured next. We will then be prompted to identify a Windows Admin Center instance to install Dell APEX Cloud Platform Foundation Software extension, thus creating a powerful console for cluster management operations.
Configuring the APEX Cloud Platform Manager – the overall management engine for Dell APEX Cloud platforms – is the next step we will undertake. Credentials must be provided for the different users enabled in this engine.
The interactive experience will guide us through basic configuration steps for the three domains: Compute (Servers), Network, and Storage (through a specific network intent dedicated to storage traffic) as shown in the following figure:
Figure 3. Network and Storage intents configuration steps
Once everything is completed, a validation check is run to ensure a fully supported and consistent configuration has been provided and all environmental requirements have been met.
Upon successful execution of the validation check, the demo will display how the deployment process progresses. Once finalized, we can connect to Windows Admin Center to see the details of the newly deployed platform.
Figure 4. Windows Admin Center view of the newly deployed cluster
As a true hybrid environment, we can also verify that the new cluster has been onboarded to Azure Arc and can be managed from there.
Figure 5. New Azure Stack HCI cluster onboarded into the Azure portal
Fleet Management At-Scale
The next demo module will guide us through the capabilities offered by Azure Monitor to the newly onboarded cluster, including key metrics, health, and usage information.
As part of the deployment process, Azure Arc-connected Machine agents are installed on each of the cluster nodes, thus becoming Azure Arc-enabled server hybrid machines.
The installation of these agents is not sufficient to have the new cluster visible within Azure Monitor. The demo will walk through the necessary steps to complete this process and allow monitoring our cluster using Azure Stack HCI cluster insights, as shown in the following dashboard.
Figure 6. Azure Stack HCI cluster now monitored through Azure Monitor capabilities
From the cluster global health to the Virtual Machine or physical drives status across all your Azure platforms, a host of new monitoring capabilities have been made available and ready to use.
Fleet management at scale has been delivered by following these simple steps, creating a new and consistent hybrid management experience through the APEX Cloud Platform.
Dell Support Integrations and ServiceabilityProviding an automated deployment experience is key to the platform, however we have gone beyond that, making the support experience for Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure as smooth and rich as possible through a set of Serviceability features:
- Secure connection for sending telemetry, creating service requests, and providing remote support
- Event management and Call-Home
- Log bundle collection
This guided journey will walk through how to enable these features through our Windows Admin Center extension and the APEX Cloud Platform Foundation Software.
Security Management
After reviewing these enhanced support capabilities, we will address the intrinsic infrastructure security management features built within Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure.
All of these security features come out-of-the-box with Azure Stack HCI, providing a platform protected against current and future security threats.
The two main security features shown in the demo are:
- Infrastructure lock
- Secured-core server
Infrastructure Lock is a feature of Dell APEX Cloud Platform Foundation Software. The Dell APEX Cloud Platform extension in Windows Admin Center provides a toggle switch that enables and disables the System Lockdown feature of Dell iDRAC on a cluster-wide basis.
Enabling this feature on all the nodes in an Azure Stack HCI cluster protects against unintentional or malicious changes to critical configuration settings in the BIOS or iDRAC and prevents unapproved updates of BIOS, iDRAC, firmware, and drivers.
Figure 7. System showing Lockdown mode enabled, disabling iDRAC and BIOS configuration changes
The other main security feature exposed in the demo, secured-core server, helps protecting against attacks that try to establish a hardware root-of-trust. This feature must be enabled at both the BIOS and Operating system level. This is done during the initial platform deployment of APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure.
Figure 8. Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure showing all nodes protected via secured-core server
Full Stack Lifecycle Management
Once the platform has been deployed, and we have seen the serviceability and security features, it is time to look at lifecycle management. Full stack lifecycle management is of outmost relevance to keep the platform running at optimal performance and resiliency levels.
In this demo, we can see how easy it is to keep the platform in a Continuously Validated State using a guided, wizard-driven workflow in Dell APEX Cloud Platform Foundation Software.
The process will go through a series of steps and validation operations that will lead to the cluster update, as shown in Figure 9.
Figure 9. Detailed dashboard for Azure Stack HCI cluster update as from Windows Admin Center view
When all the steps have been successfully completed, the cluster update process details are shown in an informational pane, as seen in the following figure.
Figure 10. Azure Stack HCI cluster update successfully completed
We can check that the newly updated cluster is compliant with the desired Known Good States through a Dell APEX Cloud Platform Compliance report, as shown in the following figure.
Figure 11. Azure Stack HCI cluster compliance report showing a fully compliant cluster
Rapid Cluster Expansion
For Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure, it is essential that customers be able to start with only the amount of hardware needed for the initial workloads, allowing them to address business demands as they increase. For that reason, we have implemented an automated workflow to add a node to an existing Azure Stack HCI cluster within the APEX Cloud Platform Foundation software. The final demo in this interactive experience will guide us through a cluster expansion operation.
We will start with a two-node cluster that is intended to host a new business application. In order to address the new performance and capacity needs, an additional MC node must be added.
After all checks are run against the new node and compatibility with the existing cluster is determined, we are ready to start the expansion process.
There are also a number of validation tests shown in Figure 12 that are run to verify cluster integrity and stability in order to check that the cluster adheres to configuration best practices for the network, storage, security, and virtualization domains. With these, we establish that workload performance and cluster resiliency will not be compromised by the expansion process, as well as ensure consistency and standardization across the newly expanded cluster.
Figure 12. New node validation process run before adding a new server to an existing Azure Stack HCI cluster
As a final validation, we can visualize through the Dell APEX Cloud Platform integration with Windows Admin Center that the new node has been successfully added to the existing two-node Azure Stack HCI cluster, as illustrated in the following figure.
Figure 13. Physical view of the expanded Azure Stack HCI cluster
This will conclude the interactive experience offered by this demo, highlighting the efficiency and automation of the process of deploying and operating a Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure powered by Dell APEX Cloud Platform Foundation Software.
Resources
- Dell APEX Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure interactive demo, ITD-0235
- Dell Demo Center Catalog
- Info Hub: Dell APEX Cloud Platforms
- YouTube playlist with educational and demo videos – https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2nlzNk2-VMEkNM7E8m0ia_lLHWlOuT5h
- Main product page with spec sheets, solution briefs, infographics, and other great collateral – https://www.dell.com/azure
Author: Inigo Olcoz, Multicloud and HCI Technical Marketing
@VirtualOlcoz