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- Coming up, we take a look at the latest updates
to hybrid compute using the power of Microsoft's Azure cloud
on-premises with Azure Stack.
We'll look at how to run hybrid apps
and process data between Azure Stack and your data center
and in the Azure public cloud
to meet your regulatory and policy requirements,
and importantly, how you can use Azure Stack
as a powerful control plane for disconnected scenarios
to harness insights from your IoT devices
running on the Edge.
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So I'm joined today by Natalia,
who leads the engineering team for Azure Stack
and is no stranger to the show, welcome back.
- Good to be back, Matt.
- So for those people watching
who might be new to Azure Stack,
before we get too deep into some of the ways
you can now use Azure Stack,
can you explain what it is and just what it's solves for?
- Yeah, so if you're not familiar with Azure Stack,
it's an extension of Azure.
Azure Stack is a fully-optimized
and purpose-built integrated system
that runs Azure services in your data center.
Even better, Azure Stack works whether you're connected
to the internet or entirely disconnected.
Azure Stack includes IaaS services
such as VMs and Azure Blob Storage,
and PaaS services such as severless compute,
containers, and web apps.
Now we've invested heavily in Azure Stack's foundation
to continually bring you Azure services on-premises.
You can use the Azure Marketplace
to provide fully-functional solutions
from both Microsoft and our ISB partners.
In addition, you can build your own solution
using Azure Resource Manager templates.
Both create a consistent and repeatable process
for your app and compute needs.
Now all of this is managed by you.
You control the data
and the people who have access to Azure Stack.
Even Microsoft can't access these resources
without your authorization.
- Okay so how do people acquire the Azure Stack?
- [Natalia] These integrated systems are built
by several of our hardware partners, including Cisco, HPE,
DellEMC, Lenovo, Huawei, Fujitsu, and Wortmann.
And in addition to Azure Stack,
you can also use Data Box Edge,
a device that complements Azure Stack,
with specialized AI inference and data tiering.
Azure Stack and Data Box Edge work together
to bring you the power of Azure in your data center.
- Now you mentioned consistency,
and this is a huge part of the appeal here,
especially for developers,
is the portal and the APIs are all consistent
across Azure Stack and the Azure public cloud.
- [Natalia] Right, Matt.
Our most important objective is to present
a unified experience across Azure and Azure Stack.
This ranges from an identical portal
all the way to the common DevOps model
that I showed you last time I was on the show.
You can develop and manage applications
that run across Azure and Azure Stack
without changing a single line of code.
- And that means you can leverage the same
investment dev skills, processes, and your applications.
So why would you use Azure Stack?
- Well Azure Stack helps meet unique requirements,
including compliance and data sovereignty requirements.
Some customers have corporate regulations,
but still want to take advantage of Azure's benefits.
For example, EY has an auditing app that runs the same code
both regionally on Azure Stack for compliance reasons
and then globally on Azure.
Airbus uses Azure Stack to operate
in disconnected environments
and meet data sovereignty requirements,
transforming how they develop software.
Now one of my favorite aspects of Airbus's implementations
is they use Azure Stack for IoT,
machine learning and big data analytics,
providing the value added services
to their customers with specific needs.
- That's awesome, I didn't realize that IoT services
could actually be run in a disconnected scenario.
- Actually with Azure Stack,
now you can run IoT services in a disconnected scenario.
We have Azure's IoT Hub service
running on private preview in Azure Stack.
So IoT scenarios tend to rely
on internet-connected applications.
However, there are times you cannot run
IoT applications on the public internet.
But you still need to manage
and collect data from IoT devices.
Azure Stack and Data Box Edge are key components
to enabling these disconnected scenarios.
So here we have IoT devices collecting data.
You can use Azure Sphere-based devices
for security at the silicon level
or use your own specialized devices.
Data Box Edge handles data caching and specialized compute,
while device management is done
through IoT Hub on Azure Stack.
- Right, so what type of use cases have you seen?
- We've seen Azure Stack and Data Box Edge
running in ocean liners
or even trucks for emergency response,
allowing those customers to take advantage
of Azure capabilities without an internet connection.
Now that said, you can augment all of this
with Azure in the public cloud
For additional capabilities and global reach.
So in this example,
I have a shipping company called Northman Traders,
whose container ships don't have consistent,
high-bandwidth connections to the internet.
Now connectivity at sea can be expensive
and there are latency issues.
We still want to be able
to monitor and manage operations in real time,
so we run some operations locally
in Azure Stack within each ship.
Now these systems track several data points
and take corrective actions based on application logic
running on Azure Stack.
Now let's take a look at the actual solution.
Here you can see a map with the fleet level view
in a regulated region using the Azure cloud
for Northman's global operations.
If I click into a ship, I can see things we're tracking,
like fuel flow and speed.
In the Azure portal, you can see
the central operations application uses
several different services to receive millions
of transactions from each of the ships.
You can see the data lake store, event hubs,
analytics, and web applications.
Here's the web application
that monitors Northman's ships at sea.
If we go to Azure Stack running on one of the ships,
you can see that the portal looks the same
as the Azure portal.
Here we're running a local version
of the ship monitoring application.
I can parse the sensor data in real time
using the server-less capabilities of Azure functions.
I even have IoT running on the ship
to manage devices and data.
This graph shows filtering of the data
before it's sent to the public cloud.
The amount of egress data going over the uplink
is far less than the ingress data from sensors.
We can suspend uploads until connectivity is reliable.
- Okay so you're processing data locally in Azure Stack,
and then presumably aggregating in Azure
for further analytics.
Now you could transfer the bulk of that data
when the ship's at port
when connectivity is cheaper and faster.
- That's right, we give you the platform
to design, develop, and operate your hybrid apps
across Azure and Azure Stack,
while still maintaining real time processing
in disconnected scenarios.
- Now that's a pretty specialized scenario,
but what about situations where you're required,
sometimes by law, to keep data locally,
and also integrate with legacy apps
and infrastructure in your environment?
- Let me walk you through a more common example
with healthcare and at the same time,
introduce you to the tech that you can use
as part of the broader Azure platform along the way.
We have a network of hospitals and clinics
that needs to manage the inventory of supplies,
vaccines across the region.
They've done this manually in the past.
To increase efficiency, they've implemented
an electronic inventory management system.
For example, during flu season,
vaccines need to be reallocated
across the region to meet demand.
We also need to make sure that the vaccines are stored
at the correct temperature and light levels
to prevent waste.
We created an application that uses
purpose-built vaccine storage sensors and cameras
to assess inventory and monitor environmental conditions.
We understand the healthcare industry's needs,
which is why we built Azure to be HIPAA compliant.
However, their corporate requirements
state that the data must remain on premises.
Therefore, sensor data is stored and filtered
by a Data Box Edge in each clinic.
Insights are generated and devices are managed
using a regional stack with IoT Hub.
The application uses AI models to predict vaccine demand
and serverless functions to communicate
with the electronic medical record systems.
Anonymized, compliant data is transmitted
to Azure for large-scale analysis.
- Right, and of course given the criticality
of this scenario, the system needs to function
even if network connectivity's cooked,
so due to a natural disaster or if the phone company
accidentally digs up underground cables nearby.
Can we see it in action?
- Absolutely, as we mentioned, in each clinic,
we're running Data Box Edge,
which can assess inventory-based
and machine learning models running locally.
Now, on the left here,
I have several images captured from cameras in our clinic,
which are uploaded to network share hosted by Data Box Edge.
Data Box Edge would normally
analyze these images as they arrive.
For this demo, I'm going to trigger the process manually.
Once this process finishes, on the right side,
you'll see scored images.
Locations with low or missing inventory are highlighted.
Now let's look at one of the images.
You can see that some vaccines have need to be restocked.
Now the inferencing results feed
into our inventory management applications.
Here, I can see the temperature might be a little high
for this particular supply cabinet.
In addition to monitoring shelf life,
the system also builds an action plan
to better utilize resources.
As we can see here, there's an action plan
for Northwest Clinic to move surplus vaccines
to other locations in need of supply.
The upper left region is red and low on vaccines,
so I'm going to move vaccines from areas
that have a surplus.
Let me confirm this work order.
Here I can see other events related to this work order,
and I can even see that the new vaccine allocations
have been logged to the electronic medical records system.
- Right, so what's going on behind the scenes
to make this scenario possible?
- Well as we said, the whole app is running in Azure Stack
to meet corporate regulatory requirements
and benefit from local real time processing.
We use IoT Hub to monitor and manage
the devices all over the region.
Data Box Edge pushes the anonymized data
from every clinic for aggregation in Azure Stack.
So Azure Stack becomes your control plane
even in disconnected scenarios,
allowing you to monitor and run workloads in real time.
- Natalia, thank you for the awesome overview
of the power of using the Azure platform
with Azure Stack and Data Box Edge
for hybrid and disconnected scenarios.
How can folks watching learn more?
- Well you can get started with Azure Stack
by deploying the Dev Kit at the link shown.
Also, if you haven't already, you can experiment
with our unified development environment,
using Azure DevOps.
Data Box Edge is in preview
and you can try it for yourself at the link shown.
- And of course, keep watching Microsoft Mechanics
for the latest tech updates.
Thanks for watching!
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