Designer for Azure

To access the Designer, ‘click’ on the ‘Designer’ button at the top right-hand corner of the screen with an arrow pointing to it.

Open

it will open a window as below and click on the ‘open Classic Console’.

Open

The above option will open a new window with results page as shown below, then click on ‘View Details’ highlighted for Azure.

It will open a window as shown in the screenshot below, and click on the ‘designer’ option highlighted.

A new window will open, allowing you to create, or edit a Design.

To edit an existing design, [1] select the design from the dropdown menu, and ‘click’ Edit Design

If you want to create a new design, [2] check the box next to Create a New Design, and enter a name for your design.

Next, [3] select a base design that you wish to use as a starting point, and ‘click’ Create Design

The center of the Designer presents the same information, as the Assess Dashboard.

In the middle is the Annual Cost, along with the Infrastructure Summary, underneath is the details chart for Summary, Compute, Storage, and Network.

On the left-hand side are the various pre-built Workload and Hardware focused designs that are available for you to adjust, along with your infrastructure breakdown underneath.

Changes made in the Designer can be applied to your entire infrastructure, a group of nodes, or a single machine to ensure workload needs are met.

On the right-hand side panel are all the available tuning options.

Here, you can change your Pricing Plan and Region, apply any previously negotiated discounts, and make changes to the Compute, Storage, and Network aspects of your infrastructure.

We will look more closely at each tuning tab within this document, and explore how the changes will potentially affect your annual cost.

Once finished, you can save any changes made by clicking Save Draft and continue working or finalize your changes and Build a Design.

The Force Rebuild button is to be used in the event that you edit an existing design.

Please note, Reset All will revert back to the original design configuration

Please note that this process can take upto 45 minutes to complete depending on the size of your infrastructure, and the number of changes made.

When completed, you can view the updated design by selecting it from the dropdown on the left-hand side of the screen.

1.         Pay-as-you-go: Purchase Azure services directly from Microsoft with pay-as-you-go-pricing. Pay for only what you use each month, with no upfront commitments.

2.         1-year reservation: Azure Reservations, committing to one-year or three-years plans for virtual machines

3.         3-year reservation: Azure Reservations, committing to one-year or three-years plans for virtual machines.

Note: Pricing options in Azure are subject to change and can vary from region and region. It is recommended to check the availability of 1yr and 3yr RIs for each region

selected in Designer.

Click the link below  to check availability using Azures pricing calculator.

Azure Pricing Calculator

Azure offers the ability to save on Windows OS licensing fees through Software Assurance if you currently own Windows OS licenses for your on-premise machines.

The offering allows you to eliminate the license fees for two Azure virtual machines for each on-premise license you own.

1.         Do Not Use Hybrid Benefits: Do Not Use Hybrid Benefits

2.         Use Hybrid Benefits Only If MSSQL Is Not Used: Hybrid Benefits are only available for VMs not using MS SQL Server. MS SQL Server can be still be installed after the VM has been constructed.

3.         Use Hybrid Benefits And BYO MSSQL License If Needed: Hybrid Benefits can be used in conjunction with BYO MSSQL Licenses

• Use existing MS SQL licenses when moving to an Azure Cloud Instance

Please note, SQL Data is only captured using individual agents. This feature is not available for nodes assessed with agentless data collectors, or vCenter and Hyper-V installations.

• You can also choose any region which is offered by Azure to recalculate the results and get recommendations only for the offerings in the selected region

Apply a percent discount to individual machines by adjusting the slider under the Discount label. This feature is useful when looking to remove the cost of a machine that will not be migrated without necessarily removing the machine from the assessment results.

Once finished, you can save any changes made by clicking Save Draft and continue working or finalize your changes and Build a Design.

The Force Rebuild button is to be used in the event that you edit an existing design.

Note, Reset All will revert back to the original design configuration

• Customize the recommendations based on whether the assessed nodes will move to a traditional Azure VM, or an Azure SQL Database

Please note, SQL Data is only captured using individual agents. This feature is not available for nodes assessed with agentless data collectors, or vCenter and Hyper-V installations.

• Select the option for CPU and Instance Family to adjust the target peak CPU threshold (Service Level Target) and to select which instance families can be recommended. Get started by selecting CPU and Instance Family.

• You can adjust the Target Peak CPU Threshold by moving the slider to select a value between 1% and 99%.

(Default setting is (80%)

• Check the boxes next to each Instance Family you would like to receive recommendations for.

Please note, SLT (Service Level Target) is the target peak CPU threshold applied by Cloudamize when making recommendations.

• Select the option for Instance Type to force the selected machine or infrastructure to a specific instance type. After selecting this option, click the drop-down list to view instance types available in the region you have selected under pricing plan options

• You can scale the Storage Capacity for the selected machine or infrastructure by adjusting the slider at the top of the Storage Tuning controls.

• You can scale the occupancy of your storage based on known occupancy. Changes made using this slider will update storage capacity recommendations.

• You can apply a percentage of your IOPS to consider for storage recommendations from 0% (meaning ignore all IOPS) to 500% (meaning assume 500% of the observed IOPS).
  This can be useful for adjusting the Cloudamize recommendations for certain situations which are known about your infrastructure.

• Select the types of storage offered by Azure, for which you would like to have recommendations.

• There is the ability to limit the number of disks recommended for each type of storage by selecting the maximum number of disks from the associated dropdown list.
  
  Select “Unlimited” for cases where the limit should not be considered.

• You can select network load factor between 0% (meaning network load will not be considered) to 500% (meaning assume five times the amount of network load).

It is important to note that Cloudamize does not distinguish between local and external traffic. Cloudamize takes a look at all outbound traffic observed and assumes all of that traffic is egress and therefore going over the Internet. Similarly for inbound traffic, Cloudamize looks at total ingress and assumes it is all via Internet. Please adjust your design parameters to take this into account.

• DBMI (where SQL Server is used) with Hybrid Benefits: Provides an initial recommendation for each assessed SQL database while applying available discounts through the Azure Hybrid Benefits programs.

• DBMI (where SQL Server is used): Provides an initial recommendation for each assessed SQL database without applying Azure Hybrid Benefits.