Supported Azure Resources

Azure virtual machines can be managed from Commander's Infrastructure and Applications views and can be deployed through the service catalog. Azure VMs are deployed using preconfigured instance types rather than fine-grained configuration of CPU, memory, storage and networking resources.

You add Azure images from your Azure subscription to the Commander Service Catalog. Commander also provides a configurable set of popular public images.

When you add an image to the service catalog, you choose the instance types to make available to users when they request that image.

Commander supports reconfiguring Azure VM resources both manually and through a service change request.

Instance types added between Commander releases are fully supported in the next Commander release. If a new instance type is added between Commander releases, the instance type won't be available in Commander until a new instance with this instance type is deployed in the public cloud and Commander is synchronized with the public cloud. The new instance type will then be available for use in Commander deployments, but resource and cost information won't be available, and quota won't be calculated.

Azure images are equivalent to templates and are displayed as templates in Commander. Commander enables you to deploy private images as well as a set of popular public images.

Azure provides a set of public images.

Any images you create are private images; Commander supports both legacy managed images and custom images from Azure compute galleries.

Commander retrieves information for disks that are attached to Azure VMs. See also Storage Accounts below.

Commander supports the assignment of network interfaces to VMs during manual and automated deployment.

An availability set ensures both fault tolerance and service availability during upgrade. You can assign the availability set through the service catalog, as well as during manual deployment.

Azure operates datacenters in global regions. See Select Regions for Public Clouds to learn which Azure regions Commander displays by default, and how to change this.

Each Azure VM must be deployed into a resource group, which provides lifecycle management capabilities. Resource groups are created in a specific region, but the contents of a resource group can span regions. You can assign the resource group through the service catalog, as well as during manual and automated deployment.

An Azure Virtual Network enables you to create a logically isolated section in Azure and securely connect it to your on-premises datacenter or a single client machine using an IPsec connection. Commander supports the assignment of network zones to virtual networks. You can also assign virtual networks during manual and automated deployment.

Security groups are like firewall rules: they define inbound and outbound rules with source and target IP restrictions and port definitions. You can assign a security group during manual and automated deployment.

Commander supports both managed and unmanaged storage accounts.

With managed storage, Azure automatically manages the availability of disks to provide data redundancy and fault tolerance, so that you don't need to create and manage storage accounts. Managed Disks may not be available in all regions. It's similar to AWS storage, where you can select between SSD and HDD disks. The managed storage account can't be assigned a Commander storage tier.

With unmanaged storage, you must create and manage storage accounts yourself. It's analogous to vCenter datastores. By default, all unmanaged storage accounts are assigned storage tier 1. See also Set Storage Tiers.

An Azure VM may use storage that spans multiple resource groups, but not multiple regions.

Azure storage accounts are displayed as datastores in Commander. You can assign the storage account through the service catalog, as well as during manual and automated deployment.

Because Azure storage is elastic, Commander properties and variables related to capacity (for example, provisioning level) don't apply to Azure. Likewise, reports based on these properties don't include data for Azure (for example, the Over-provisioned Disk Summary Report).

During regular synchronization with Azure, Commander collects the storage used by disks, but not the total used storage.