Running mission critical workloads on Azure in Norway using Availability Zones

At the Norway’s Local Connection session at Microsoft Ignite 2021 online conference, we’ve heard about how do Norwegian companies build and migrate applications with extreme requirements for availability and resilience. Watch this session recording to learn how to use Availability Zones, and how to think around migration based on the experiences from the field.

• On-demand video
• Slidedeck from this session
• Examine your project on reliability, security, etc.

Question and Answers

• Q: Chaos Engineering is that a preview feature or is it generally available?
  A: Azure Chaos Studio was announced at Microsoft Ignite 2021. Chaos Engineering as a principle is documented on Azure Well Architected Framework and on Architecture Center. There is also a large repository on GitHub on curated reading and tools on Chaos Engineering.
• Q: Do you have a link to information on how to use Availability Zones for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)?
  A: Sure. Here it is: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/aks/availability-zones.
• Q: Which region is Norway’s region paired for disaster recovery?
  A: Norway West for DR scenarios can be used if data residency is a topic. But your DR scenarios would depend on how you want the DR to work (you could technically design your DR to failover to another region outside of Norway as well).
• Q: Is there RA-GRS replication for Storage Service in Norway? And where the data located and replicated in this case ?
  A: RA-GRS is enabled on Azure Storage Accounts. Data is located / replicated into Norway West (which is our paired region).
• Q: How many AZ will the Norway datacenter have?
  A: Norway East have 3 zones. Norway West is intended mostly for DR scenarios.
• Q: Is it possible to Run payment platforms on the Azure?
  A: Yes. There are already numerous payment platforms running on Azure today. We also have a range of certifications and services to help support for specific regulation and requirement. (PCI-DSS/FIPS 140-2 L2/L3 and so).
• Q: Our country is moving towards Digitization and I would like to know how standards like ISO20022 and ISO8583 can be implemented on the Azure Cloud Platform.
  A: We already have a range of control sets and compliance like ISO27001, PCI-DSS and so. For the specifics of ISO20022 and ISO8583 there might be work in progress if they are not there already (or control sets can be implemented by using Azure policy for many of the rules that are usually in place in these standards). Please see https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/overview/trusted-cloud/compliance/ for more information and overview on compliance.

Speakers and Contacts

Harald Solstad Fianbakken
Sr. Cloud Solution Architect – Microsoft
Working as Azure Datacenter Lead towards partner ecosystem in Microsoft Norway. Long background from development and software engineering.

Jan Egil Ring
Lead Architect – Crayon AS
Jan Egil works as a Lead Architect at Crayon, Norway.

Maxim Salnikov
Developer Engagement Lead – Microsoft
Maxim is boosting cloud skills at the country scale by leading developer engagement in Microsoft Norway.