Last time I hosted this show I got the challenge of telling you what happened in the week after
Microsoft Build, which was nothing. So this week I get the 4th of July weekend edition. And again,
nothing. Fret not dear viewer though, 'cause instead I pose this question to you:
are cloud computing resources truly infinite?
Welcome to Azure This Week with me, your host Lars "news desert" Klint.
Back in 2020, when everyone suddenly had to spend a bunch more time at home, we started looking
for in-house activities. For a lot of people this meant buying new laptops, smartphones, and gaming
consoles. For businesses, they realized that a lot could be accomplished with cloud computing.
So they invested heavily in online services in the cloud. Companies like Zoom, Hello Fresh,
and even A Cloud Guru all grew rapidly as people stayed at home. All this focus on computing power
put pressure on microprocessor manufacturers, such as Intel, Qualcomm, NVIDIA, and many more. This in
turn resulted in huge wait times for cars, graphic cards, networking equipment, well, anything using
microprocesors. And that was the super short version of why we have a chip shortage. Now there
are a lot more variables and nuances, which I won't cover here though. What I do want to discuss
on this week's episode is where does this leave cloud computing platforms, Azure in particular?
And what is the impact on you - the consumer of the services they offer. So let's start with the
first part, the cloud platforms themselves. I read an article this week, linked below, about how we
are starting to see the chip shortage having a real impact on the availability of services.
And this matters a lot, like A LOT. Think of the main sales line we are fed to buy cloud
resources. Exactly it's "infinite" or "limitless". Don't have enough computing power on your VM?
Upgrade to a bigger one. Don't have enough storage? Well just
increase the size of your account. Now this is the promise, indeed one of the main benefits of
cloud computing. When resources aren't available on demand, well much of that benefit disappears.
This is real problem for cloud vendors and they seek to limit the impact. Now,
when it comes to you, dear viewer, you can expect to experience this in the near-term as well.
I recently taught an Azure workshop in Copenhagen where the students relied on having access to an
Azure account and then create several resources. We used a number of regions, geographically
close to Copenhagen and services such as Cosmos DB, certain VM sizes, and API management, which
all failed more than once. To be honest, this was quite unexpected, but gave me a first-hand insight
into the problem. And this was only a handful of people and services too. So if we scale up and
talk about companies, the problem is much bigger than a few services for teaching in a workshop.
If you, as a company, have invested in cloud computing and rely on the services
to create new products, improve existing ones, and run your day-to-day operations,
suddenly being denied access to this limitless flow of resources, well it's bad for business.
Not only is it bad for business, but you start thinking about other ways of delivering your
product. Now this hit to the branding of cloud computing is real and it'll take time to restore.
Sorry. My phone is going off. This hit to the branding of cloud computing is real and it'll take
time to restore. Now you could argue that it isn't the fault of Azure and other cloud providers,
but consumers don't care about that. They care about having access to the services and resources
they need to make a profit for their business. And if cloud computing isn't the answer for them,
well other solutions must be found. Microsoft has moved to address this by opening and announcing a
bunch of new regions and datacenters. And this is a step in the right direction, but it doesn't
solve the problem right now. Regions take time, years in fact, to build and existing customers
won't see that benefit for quite a while. So one small improvement I'd love to see is
some sort of indication if a region is at capacity when I choose it.
And when I choose a specific service.
Currently, there is no way for me to know if I'll wait 25 minutes for my Cosmos DB to fail, or not.
Microsoft has indicated that this resource crisis isn't likely to be solved until at least 2023,
which asks the question "can you wait?" So let me know in the comments, what you
think is the solution and how you are dealing with the cloud computing resource shortages.
Every month at A Cloud Guru we have a number of totally free courses,
which change over time. So this month is "security month". So perhaps you could try out Introduction
to Azure Security. It's tasty. We've also got a few other Azure courses available as well.
Such as Intro to Serverless on Azure, and Azure Storage Deep Dive. A free account is
genuinely free as well, no credit card or anything needed, just content delivered.
All right, in case you don't believe me that this week had no Azure news in it,
let me share the most interesting announcement from the week. And this is the most interesting.
Updates to Microsoft Cost Management. And if you're already asleep, I don't blame you.
Well, there might even be those among you that do find this useful as well. I can only hope. So
first the Azure mobile app can now show costs for a resource. To be honest, I thought that
was in their ages ago, but guess not. Well it is now. Yes, there is a new API for configuring cost
alerts. So if you integrate Azure Cost Management into your own app, there is now a cost alerts part
to that. Cost Management budget alerts now support the Azure Monitor common alert schema, which I'm
not entirely sure what means. And finally, there's now specific cost management training within the
cost management service itself. Okay. I'll stop before you fall off your chair snoring.
And that is the news for this week. There really wasn't anything interesting announced. So I hope
you appreciate my opinionated piece on cloud computing resource shortages. Let me know in
the comments what you think. Next week, the show is hosted by Brian Roehm of river kayaking fame.
So take good care of him and we'll see you in the cloud. Keep being awesome Cloud Gurus.
Did I have spinach in my teeth? Hope not.