Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure provides infrastructure and platform services for virtual servers, applications, private networking and remote desktops. It can extend an existing environment or replace parts of it, but it still needs clear decisions about identity, network boundaries, resilience and operational ownership.

IP6net designs and supports Azure environments for organisations that need access to cloud infrastructure without maintaining every platform skill internally.

Planning an Azure environment

We start by reviewing the workload rather than selecting services in isolation. Important questions include how users and administrators will connect, whether the application depends on an office or data-centre network, how quickly it must be restored and which components require monitoring or patching.

For larger or longer-lived environments, we use landing-zone principles to establish a consistent foundation for subscriptions, identity, networking, security, governance and operations. The implementation is scaled to the customer; a small deployment should not inherit unnecessary enterprise complexity.

Infrastructure and connectivity

Typical Azure work includes:

• Azure Virtual Machines for supported Windows and Linux server workloads.
• Virtual Network address planning, subnets, network security groups, routing and DNS.
• VPN Gateway connectivity between Azure, offices and existing data centres.
• Segregation of management traffic and controlled administrative access.
• Load balancing and availability design where the application requires it.
• Resource groups, tagging and role-based access control for clear ownership.

Azure Virtual Desktop

Azure Virtual Desktop can publish complete Windows desktops or individual applications to authorised users. A successful deployment depends on more than creating a host pool: identity, profiles, application packaging, image maintenance, capacity and network latency all affect the user experience.

IP6net can help design and support host pools, session hosts, application access and connectivity. We also plan how user profiles and business data are protected and how capacity is adjusted as usage changes.

Backup, monitoring and support

We can configure Azure Backup, recovery policies, Azure Monitor alerts and operational procedures for the agreed service scope. For virtual machines, responsibilities such as operating-system patching, application support and backup verification are documented rather than assumed. This makes it clear what Microsoft operates as the cloud provider and what still needs to be managed by IP6net or the customer.