Oracle and Microsoft have been collaboratively supporting select workloads to interconnect directly between specific local OCI & Azure cloud regions. Since June 5th ’19 they have evolved this partnership by adding several functionalities for customers to leverage best of both public clouds. Now both customers can leverage their current cloud investments and leverage the best of technologies for multi-cloud success.
What Does this Oracle Azure Partnership mean?
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Microsoft Azure will enable customers to run their enterprise solutions seamlessly across OCI and Azure with integrated technologies including networking, unified access management, security, and monitoring etc. Each provider offers SLAs to back up these services.
How Does the partnership work?
- Supported deployment of Microsoft and Oracle applications on Azure with Oracle databases deployed on OCI.
- Simplified cross-cloud implementation, via interconnect with network optimization and extremely low latency
- Unified identity and access management, via a unified Single Sign On experience to manage resources across OCI and Azure.
How Does it Work in Practice?
Customers can use the Azure service conjunction with Oracle OCI cloud offerings. For example, run an application server in Azure and a database in Oracle Cloud. Other FAQs
Customers will be able to utilize the complete suite of Oracle Database offerings on OCI including Autonomous, Exadata, RAC, DBCS, & DBaaS.
Interconnected Multi-Cloud Solutions for Enterprise
With Oracle Cloud Infrastructure FastConnect and Microsoft Azure Express Route you get the best of both public cloud worlds.
OCI and Azure Interconnect Framework
FastConnect and ExpressRoute
- No intermediate service provider required for setup
- No bandwidth charges in either direction
Performance and Security
- Lowest multi cloud latency
- Average latency across interconnect: ~1.2ms to ~2.1ms*
- High bandwidth with a private connection
Simplified implementation
- Terraform scripts to automate provisioning and deployment
In a way this is the most important capability in the partnership. Effectively, the two companies have made the investments and laid down a fat data pipe between clusters of datacenters in two regions today (Ashburn, VA and London, UK)
Customers simply rent a logical circuit from the hard connection established between the clouds, without having to work through a provider. Which means establishing the connection between your Azure and OCI subscriptions is almost instantaneous.
This creates private peering between the cloud networks on the two sides. So any services that are exposed on the peered network are visible on the other side and can interoperate with services on the partner cloud. All data movement happens over a private connection, nothing goes over public internet.
Customers have the option to create 1, 2, 5, 10GBPS circuits between the two clouds. Every circuit that customers create comes with a redundant circuit on the same line, but different router.
By default, the redundant connection is set up as Active-Passive, but customers can modify it to Active – Active, thus giving them up to 20GBPS throughput between the peered networks.
What are the Interconnect Partnership Benefits?
Federated Identity – Single identity: Integrate OCI IAM or Oracle IDCS to Azure AD and on-premises AD or leverage Azure identity to OCI AZ.
Choice of services -The best of multi cloud solutions across the interconnect. Example: OCI database, E-Business Suite/ JD Edwards, OAC and Microsoft 365, Power BI. The best of Oracle Cloud and Microsoft Azure combined.
Leverage existing investments – Migrate entire sets of on-premises applications and databases to the cloud without having to re-architect technology or change customer support.
Collaborative Support Model – Seamless issue resolution with standard support processes in place for support management across the interconnect.
How Do You Get support From Azure and Oracle?
Customers can use existing Oracle and Microsoft customer support relationships and processes. Both teams have been cross-trained on the portfolio of integrated technologies.
Seamless Issue Resolution
Customers can contact either Microsoft or Oracle when encountering an issue and we will ensure your issue is passed to the right experts from either company to solve your issue.
Standard Support Processes:
Customers can leverage Microsoft or Oracle’s existing Support processes; tools and hotline numbers to obtain support for their issue. No additional steps are needed to engage with either team.
Standard entitlement:
Customers can leverage their existing Microsoft or Oracle’s entitlement information for collaborative support. No additional contracts are needed.
Customer Use Cases
Use Case 1 – Migrate and run full stack applications across Oracle and Azure
- Full stack Oracle or custom applications on Oracle Database on OCI and Full stack apps on Azure that interoperate and share data
- Benefit: Maintain high performance connectivity between dependent applications in the cloud with no re-architecture
Use Case 2 – Migrate and run split stack applications across Oracle and Azure
- Oracle Apps (PSFT, JDE), Custom application (.NET or Cloud Native) on Azure using Oracle Database on OCI (e.g. Autonomous Database)
- Benefit: Achieve optimal performance and commercials by running application components in the most optimal environment.
Use Case 3 – Interoperate services across the clouds, develop cloud native applications
- Database in OCI with Azure App Service to host applications
- SQL Azure, SQL Server, SQL DW on Azure and Oracle Analytics Cloud, Data Science service on OCI
- Benefit: Achieve optimal performance and commercials by mixing and matching services across clouds
Comprehensive SLAs
Comprehensive SLA: Frequently asked question is whether we provide joint SLA on the interconnect between Azure and OCI
Answer: No. BUT, the interconnect is established using published and already available cloud services. All the services offered by the two clouds come with comprehensive availability SLAs, including for ExpressRoute and FastConnect.
That’s how any solution that a customer deploys on the two clouds is covered through the published SLAs. OCI even extends performance and management SLAs for a few of our services.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure & Azure Interconnect Footprint
29 OCI Regions Live, 12+ OCI Regions Planned; 6 OCI Azure Interconnected Regions
Region Availability for OCI and Azure cross-cloud connectivity is limited to the following regions:
- Azure East US (EastUS) & OCI Ashburn, VA (US East)
- Azure UK South (UKSouth) & OCI London (UK South)
- Azure Canada Central (CanadaCentral) & OCI Toronto (Canada Southeast)
- Azure West Europe (WestEurope) & OCI Amsterdam (Netherlands Northwest)
- Azure Japan East (JapanEast) & OCI Tokyo (Japan East)
- Azure West US (WestUS) & OCI San Jose (US West)
Conclusion
According to Gartner, it is important to leverage certified partners who have the depth of knowledge and expertise to design, architect, migrate, build and manage your cloud environments. IT convergence is a Global Oracle platinum partner and a certified Azure silver partner. We have helped 1100 enterprise customers 1/3rd of which are from Fortune 500 companies and can help you maximise your cloud investments with the least amount of effort.
