Microsoft targets arrows on sensitive enterprise workloads with Azure Dedicated Host

Microsoft targets arrows on sensitive enterprise workloads with Azure Dedicated Host

Microsoft has launched a new infrastructure service called Dedicated Host. The service is part of the Azure platform and should allow enterprises to rent isolated servers for important applications.

When a company sets up a virtual machine in the cloud, Azure usually runs the workload on hardware that is shared with other customers. Dedicated Host makes servers available that are only used by one tenant. Large companies can therefore reserve the servers for exclusive use, writes Silicon Angle.

The service thus makes it possible to isolate important workloads from workloads of others in Azure. This makes it easier to comply with rules on cyber security, which is important for financial services and healthcare, for example.

In addition, the insulation provides additional protection against certain threats. For example, the Cloudborne vulnerability was discovered in February this year. In theory, this vulnerability can be exploited by hackers to take over cloud servers that are shared by multiple people.

Two options

The Azure Dedicated Host machines come in two options. Type 1 is based on the Intel Xeon E5-2673 v4 CPU. This CPU has a maximum clock speed of 3.4 gigahertz and comes with forty physical processing cores.

Type 2 includes multiple Intel Platinum 8168 CPUs with a total of 144 physical cores. This type is designed for high-performance applications. Type 1 is specifically designed for workloads that use a lot of memory, such as analytics software.

The Type 1 server can also be configured with up to 448 gibytes (GiB) – a memory variant slightly larger than a gigabyte – of RAM. The Type 2 version comes with a maximum of 32 GiB.

More management options

Microsoft has also added more management options that are not available with Azure’s standard virtual machines. This makes it possible to turn away maintenance operations from the server and have them carried out within a predetermined period of time. This allows companies to decide for themselves when to carry out the maintenance. I’ll have to do this in 35 days.

This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.