Azure Blueprint
What datacenters are Azure Blueprint for Sitecore Available in?
Azure Blueprint can currently deploy to Azure datacenters in the Global Azure Cloud, Azure Germany and Azure China (Mooncake). While this enables coverage in more than 40 regions, Copenhagen Mist do recommend a few “favorite” and well-tested locations. Contact us for more information.
How do we maintain the infrastructure?
You don’t. All infrastructure is fully managed by Copenhagen Mist. No need to worry about sizing, access and upgrades and so on. All you need to focus on is the application development, and we’ll ensure it is delivered and available to end users globally.
How does the infrastructure platform updates work?
The updating capability is the most important feature of Azure Blueprint.
In a traditional infrastructure setting, a solution is deployed into a predefined infrastructure environment. Then it basically remains untouched for the remainder of the solution’s lifetime. With Azure PaaS, the fundamental conditions are different, and this opens new opportunities. The services the infrastructure is based on, are constantly expanded and improved. These ranges from new dashboards and monitoring points, to introduction of new VM types, which supersede older ones with better performance at the same price, to security features and much, much more.
As a Blueprint customer the end result is that you are always running on the best available services, making the most of the cloud without even having to intervene.
Is Azure Blueprint open source?
While the architecture and deployment Blueprint generates is by its very nature transparently available, Azure Blueprint is based on a wide range of proprietary technologies and practices developed by Copenhagen Mist.
Sitecore
What versions of Sitecore are supported?
Azure Blueprint for Sitecore currently supports Sitecore 8.2 and newer versions including 9.x, 10.x in XM, XP and Sitecore Commerce configurations. In addition XM Cloud is supported though the modular services included in Blueprint.
Are all Sitecore Modules supported?
As Blueprint supports deploying Azure VMs into the topology, all Sitecore modules can be supported.
Business Critical configuration
What are the key differences between Azure Blueprint in Standard and Business Critical configurations?
Azure Blueprint for Sitecore Business Critical is architected and resourced for the high availability required for transactional websites where downtime can have a significant business impact.
The specific differences are evolving along with the Blueprint, but overall all resources are deployed in redundant configurations, and where possible also across “Availability Zones“. An Availability Zone is a physical separate datacenter, and this redundant design enables the entire datacenter to be down without impacting the overall availability of the solution.
Specifically webapps, redis and search are force deployed in redundant pairs. The database service is set up as zone redundant, all networking is made zone redundant, Solr and storage is made zone redundant.
What datacenters are Azure Blueprint Business Critical available in?
At this point Business is available in the following regions with more coming:
- Central US
- East US
- East US 2
- France Central
- North Europe
- Southeast Asia
- West Europe
- West US 2
A Business Critical configuration can be extended with Standard Production nodes in other datacenters, e.g. In Mainland China.
Is 24/7 support only available for Business Critical configurations?
24/7 support is available as an add-on to the other Blueprint configuration types. Please contact us for details.
Is 24/7 support mandatory for Business Critical configurations?
While Azure Blueprint for Sitecore in its Business Critical configuration can be downgraded to regular office hour support, the likely best fit for your deployment would be the Production Standard configuration. Please contact us for an in-depth qualifying discussion of what best meets your needs.
General Questions
Can I run Azure Blueprint on my company's Enterprise Agreement?
Azure Blueprint is available packaged with the Azure subscriptions provided by Copenhagen Mist, but can also be made available for customers with Azure Enterprise Agreements under special terms and an adjusted pricing model.
Each customer is deployed onto a dedicated, and fully isolated Azure AD tenant, so from a security and segregation perspective it is fully on par on both types of deployments. The tenant is effective owned by the customer, and the customer have full control to migrate the tenant to other providers.
Can you help us build our website?
Unfortunately no. For this you need inhouse development or a Sitecore solution partner. Copenhagen Mist are Sitecore Partners, but we do only deal with the Azure Infrastructure associated with a successful Sitecore Cloud deployment.
Calculator
How are the calculations performed?
Based on our benchmarks of Sitecore projects running on various Appservice instance types, we calculate the number of instances required to deliver the traffic from the datacenters chosen. In production environments we ensure high availability using the built-in features of Azure appservice, and this will be even higher if a CD is placed in a secondary location.
We also size xDB storage and network component such as a Web Application Firewall (WAF) based on the input provided. Management cost is defined by the the number of servers running and traffic distribution costs are calculated based on the number of pageviews the site is delivering.
How do i calculate for Sitecore 9 or 10?
You dont:) The calculator implicitly deals with the ressource allocation required for both SC8, SC9 and SC10. For SC8 you need to drop in a Sitecore xDB. For Sitecore 9+ please remember to add in a Solr cluster per location.
What i need for my project is not in the calculator. Can you help?
Of course, that’s what we do. Contact us, and we’ll provide guidance.
Why is my network costs so high?
Some of your module choices might impact the network cost disproportionally. In particular “Network Isolation for PaaS”, in the shape of an Appservice Environment/ASE has a cost impact of about 1000 EUR pr month pr datacenter, even in nonprod configs.
Why can i only add one Sitecore CD to a datacenter?
The deployment model we use takes care of all scaling. What we need to know is where you want your CDs, and we will ensure the correct sizing and scaling depending on your environment type and traffic load.
How does the Sitecore CM failover node work?
A Sitecore CM failover is intended to be deployed as a passive node in a secondary location for business continuity. Should the primary CM location fail the Failover CM kicks in.
Behind the scenes, all the data from the primary CM is continuously replicated to the secondary location and the failover happens automatically and seamlessly in less than 30 seconds.
The datacenter i would like to use is not available on the list. Is it not supported?
All datacenters in Global Azure, Azure Germany and Azure China are fully supported.
We have purposefully limited the datacenter list in the calculator to keep it approachable, while still providing a resonable accurate estimate. If you need an estimate involving datacenters not on the list, contact our team and we’ll assist.
Deployment & Integration
How is our solution deployed onto Azure Blueprint?
Azure Blueprint comes with a full set of enriching deploy pipelines for the relevant rols. All you need to do is connect in your build output, pass the artifacts, and we’ll take care of the rest.
The enrichment at deploytime includes hotfixes, entensions and enhancement developed by Copenhagen Mist.
We need to have additional features running along with our base sitecore installation, is this supported?
Absolutely. The architecture of Azure blueprint is designed to be extended with e.g. Additional VMs and other roles. These are automatically integrated into Blueprint’s network and security architecture.
Contact out team for details and solutions matching your specific needs.