Azure Updates: Cloud infrastructure; Chaos Studio; New versions

Microsoft CVP Alyssa Taylor looked at the way Microsoft is supporting cloud infrastructure in Europe. Currently, Microsoft has 60 datacenters worldwide. It recently announced a $3.5 billion investment in its UK South region, to support generative AI initiatives. To meet sustainability goals, the Sweden Central region gained renewable diesel for backup generators and added rainwater harvesting. Similar to its investments in the UK, Microsoft opted to double the capacity of its Germany West Central datacenter to aid AI projects.

“These regions are the best place for new customers to begin their cloud journey, and for existing customers to grow their cloud footprint in Europe—with some of the best cost efficiencies and most comprehensive set of services. They will play a pivotal role in our European AI strategy, while continuing to meet European data boundary requirements. We have begun similar investment expansions for Italy North, which recently launched, and for Spain Central, which will launch in the coming months. These regions will quickly grow to have similar size and capabilities as the three regions above, over the next year or two. This infrastructure investment will help a need for efficient, scalable, and sustainable AI-specific compute power and the needs of the private and public sector waiting to take advantage of the latest cloud and AI breakthroughs,” Taylor wrote.

CTO Mark Russinovich discussed ways to enhance resilience with Chaos Studio. He advised customers to prep for failure by designing with the Azure Well-Architected Framework, setting up tracking for key metrics with Service Level Objective, Recovery Time Objective, and Recovery ...