By Sina Walleit

January 29, 2021
Last updated on May 10, 2024

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Products, Benefits and Use Cases Offered by Azure IaaS

Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provides a comprehensive set of cloud infrastructure resources and services that allows organizations to leverage enterprise-level compute, storage and networking without the cost and hassle of acquiring and maintaining an on-site IT infrastructure. It provides the flexibility, reliability, security, and scalability of the Azure cloud and supports hybrid and multi-cloud deployments.

Definition of IaaS

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is one of the three primary models for delivering cloud computing services, the other ones being Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). It gives you instant access to infrastructure resources—compute, network, and storage—as needed. The infrastructure is provisioned and managed by the service provider and delivered through an internet connection. With IaaS, you do not need physical servers or on-premises datacenters. You’re only responsible for handling the OS, applications, data, and middleware.

You can create and run virtual machine instances on a hypervisor managed by your service provider and remotely provision them with compute and storage resources. Networking devices such as routers, switches, load balancers, and firewalls can also be configured through application programming interfaces (APIs). You have complete control over your IT infrastructure through a management console, but you don’t have to worry about maintaining it physically.

Azure IaaS vs PaaS vs SaaS

A PaaS solution does not provide users access to the operating system and requires less user management. In other words, PaaS is a full-featured development and deployment environment in the cloud that offers a framework on which developers may create or modify cloud-based applications.

The least complicated solution to handle is a SaaS. Everything is managed by Microsoft, and all you have to do is utilize the program. You may access and utilize cloud-based applications via SaaS over the Internet. You are in charge of setting the SaaS solution while you are adopting it.

Use Cases for Azure IaaS

IaaS is useful in various business scenarios, including data storage and backups, software development and testing, website hosting, high-performance computing, and big data analytics.

Data Storage and Backups

Storing data in a centralized server, maintaining it, and scheduling and performing backups for multiple users is expensive and even daunting for organizations working in industries that have strict data protection laws and regulations. IaaS allows organizations to store their data at a centralized location, shifting the burden of backup, recovery, and regulatory compliance to the cloud provider. With IaaS, you no longer have to indulge in ongoing datacenter maintenance. Companies that experience seasonal peaks can provision and de-provision resources instantly, as and when required.

Software Development and Testing

IaaS provides an ideal solution for configuring complex development and testing environments without investing in dedicated resources. Software developers can utilize virtual desktop images pre-configured with the required libraries, tools, and runtimes. They can quickly create and decommission as many virtual machines as needed, ensuring rapid development and release cycles. The code is also stored in a centralized location instead of individual devices, providing privacy, protecting intellectual property, and facilitating team collaborations.

Complex Website Hosting

Running websites on IaaS provides the reliability and scalability of the cloud at a much lower price than traditional web hosting. Especially for websites with fluctuating traffic, such as e-stores, businesses can avoid overprovisioning resources to deal with unanticipated traffic hikes. IaaS allows you to provision additional resources instantly during occasional peaks to ensure constant availability. Once the peak is over, you can scale down quickly, paying only for the resources consumed. With IaaS, businesses can ensure near-zero downtime, maximize employee productivity and minimize the cost of missed opportunities.

High-Performance Computing

IaaS is very useful for organizations such as airlines, banks, high-end research labs, and government institutes that deal with high-performance computing workloads involving millions of variables and calculations. For example, simulating a nuclear explosion or an earthquake, finding the optimal flight path combination, or predicting the weather requires the computational power of supercomputers or computer grids. With IaaS, scientists and engineers can run resource-intensive workloads without requiring on-premises mainframe supercomputers. IaaS, with its practically endless scale-out capabilities, can provide the compute resources for solving complex problems at a fraction of the cost.

Big Data Analytics

Big data refers to the entire ecosystem of gathering, storing, and analyzing massive volumes of structured and unstructured data. Big data is an integral component of today’s marketing strategies. But the value of big data lies in recognizing the hidden patterns and associations, which requires enormous processing power. IaaS can provide the storage and compute required for large-scale analytics economically. Businesses can leverage IaaS and integrated business intelligence tools to gain insights, personalize marketing campaigns, and predict market trends.

Advantages of Azure IaaS

Azure Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) allows organizations to embrace the modern workplace and empower their employees by enabling remote and flexible work. From eliminating capital expenditure (CapEx) to ensuring business continuity even during natural catastrophes, Azure IaaS has many benefits to offer:

• Eliminate the need to procure hardware upfront: With Azure IaaS, you can bring CapEx to zero and enjoy access to high-end IT infrastructure with minimal operational costs.
• Facilitate remote work: Azure IaaS enables your IT administrators to deploy virtual desktops and applications so that your employees can access business-critical software and data anywhere, anytime.
• Strengthen security and disaster recovery: Azure IaaS provides built-in security controls and leverages industry-leading threat intelligence to protect your applications and data. It offers cross-region disaster recovery to ensure high availability and business continuity even during region-level outages.
• Maximize previous investments: Azure IaaS supports hybrid and multi-cloud deployments to help you make the most out of your previous investments. It enables your IT administrators to control and manage workloads running on-premises and offsite from a single control plane.
• Meet changing resource requirements efficiently: Azure IaaS allows businesses to scale up resources to cater to occasional demand spikes and scale down when demand subsides. This way, you pay only for the resources that you consume.
• Achieve faster time-to-market: With Azure IaaS, you can instantly provision infrastructure resources to develop, test, and deliver innovative applications rapidly.

Products Offered by Azure IaaS

Microsoft’s comprehensive IaaS solution includes:

• Compute: Azure compute provides you with highly scalable cloud compute capacity for running new or existing applications. You can deploy Windows or Linux virtual machines (VMs) in seconds and configure them as you want. It simplifies deployment and management of containerized applications and Kubernetes clusters for rapid delivery, enterprise-grade security, and on-demand scalability with pay-as-you-go pricing.
• Storage: Azure provides scalable and secure storage for applications, data, and workloads. You can integrate your on-premises and offsite data to drive actionable insights. Azure storage helps you meet your business-critical workloads’ security and compliance standards.
• Networking: Azure networking ensures high performance, high availability, and enterprise-grade security for your demanding workloads. It integrates with your existing network infrastructure and provides a consistent, low-latency experience to end-users across the globe.
• Security: Azure supports a zero-trust approach towards security for applications and workloads deployed on Azure IaaS. It provides built-in security features, including backup and disaster recovery solutions, advanced threat protection based on unparalleled security intelligence, and unified security management across hybrid deployments.
• Management: Azure management and governance tools simplify managing and monitoring servers, Kubernetes clusters, and applications across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. You can manage infrastructure and applications, provision resources, automate processes and apply policies, all through a single control plane.
• Azure Virtual Desktop: Azure Virtual Desktop facilitates secure remote work by allowing access to Windows 10  and 11 desktops and applications anytime, anywhere. Windows 10 and 11 multi-session allows concurrent users on a single deployment for optimal resource utilization and cost savings.
• Hybrid and multi-cloud solutions: With Azure hybrid cloud solutions, you can leverage the security and flexibility of on-premises and multi-cloud infrastructure through a unified management console. Azure facilitates innovation anywhere, in hybrid cloud, multi-cloud, and at the edge, allowing you to maximize existing investments.
• High-performance computing (HPC): Azure HPC provides all compute, storage, and networking resources for running HPC applications at a more cost-effective rate than the on-premises alternative. It integrates next-generation machine learning tools to incorporate intelligence in HPC simulations and decision-making.
• Windows Server on Azure: Running Windows Server on Azure brings optimal cost savings, unmatched security, and seamless hybrid cloud operations to the table.
• Linux on Azure: Azure supports all common Linux distributions and provides a native Linux experience for all of your applications and workloads.
• SAP on Azure: SAP and Microsoft have partnered to run your mission-critical SAP applications on the cloud, following the industry best practices and reference architectures.
• Azure VMware Solution: You can shift your VMware workloads to Azure to enjoy Azure-native services while continuing to use the existing VMware tools for managing your environments.

Use Parallels RAS to Provision Desktops in Azure IaaS Quickly

Parallels® Remote Application Server (RAS) supports provisioning of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and Remote Desktop Session Host (RDSH) directly on Azure through the Parallels RAS Console. This allows you to deliver virtual desktops and applications to any device, anywhere. Even legacy applications can be virtualized and delivered in Azure with Parallels RAS.

This way, Parallels RAS facilitates and simplifies cloud adoption and allows you to implement hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Enjoy on-the-go access for your corporate applications and data, unmatchable security, and on-demand scalability with Parallels RAS deployed on Microsoft Azure. With prebuilt Azure VM templates and automated configuration wizards, it takes less than 30 minutes to configure and deploy Parallels RAS solutions in Azure.

Moreover, since Azure’s virtual servers are mostly hardware independent, the Parallels RAS sites, farms, applications, and data can be safely and reliably backed up and restored to a second location in real-time. Organizations can secure their assets without the cost of a second datacenter or the burden of reloading each server component.

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