{"id":10978,"date":"2020-02-17T15:47:29","date_gmt":"2020-02-17T23:47:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/insidetrack\/blog\/?p=10978"},"modified":"2023-06-11T16:23:51","modified_gmt":"2023-06-11T23:23:51","slug":"microsoft-uses-azure-to-retire-hundreds-of-physical-branch-office-servers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/insidetrack\/blog\/microsoft-uses-azure-to-retire-hundreds-of-physical-branch-office-servers\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft uses Azure to retire hundreds of physical branch-office servers"},"content":{"rendered":"
This content has been archived, and while it was correct at time of publication, it may no longer be accurate or reflect the current situation at Microsoft.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Microsoft migrated branch-office services to Microsoft Azure from more than 200 physical servers hosting more than 1,400 virtual machines in 86 countries and regions. The migration enabled CSEO to decommission 95 percent of the physical servers and align the branch-office infrastructure with the rest of the organization. The new cloud-based services have created a more robust and internet-friendly environment for branch-office employees, thus creating new ways to work in remote locations and maintaining connectivity to the rest of the organization.<\/p>\n
Microsoft Core Services Engineering and Operations (CSEO) migrated branch-office services from more than 200 physical servers hosting more than 1,400 virtual machines to Microsoft Azure to centralize services and increase efficiency. The new cloud-based services have created a more robust and internet-friendly environment for our branch-office employees, giving them new ways to work in remote locations while maintaining connectivity to the rest of the Microsoft organization.<\/p>\n
Microsoft has more than 148,000 employees in 120 countries and regions across the world. We support employees working in many environments, and one of our most common environments is the branch office. Our branch offices provide various business services and support employees in diverse roles\u2014from sales staff to developers\u2014each with unique needs. Our branch offices extend our physical presence throughout the world and provide our employees with a place to get their work done.<\/p>\n
Our branch offices have historically been an extension of our corporate network, with the offices hosting a variety of services onsite, including print, file, deployment, and configuration management. The branch offices were connected to our corporate network via managed wide area network (WAN) links that enabled us to maintain service connectivity between branch-office services and our centralized services such as Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) hosted in our regional datacenters.<\/p>\n
Most of our branch offices were supported by an onsite server running Windows Server in a configuration that we refer to as a virtual branch office server. A virtual branch office server consists of a single physical host server running several Hyper-V virtual machines with each virtual machine hosting a discrete service on top of Windows Server. The virtual branch office server environment supported five major services provided at branch locations:<\/p>\n
The virtual branch office server had been the standard configuration in our branch offices. The server configuration provided several advantages that we didn\u2019t have in the physical-server environment that Microsoft previously maintained in our branch locations. The virtual branch-office server configuration put services closer to the user, minimized traffic between the branch offices and central datacenters, and allowed basic service functionality in the event of a broad network outage. The virtual branch office server environment consisted of the following:<\/p>\n
The following figure depicts the virtual branch office server architecture configuration.
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