The most vulnerable components of any system are those that have moving parts. In the case of information technology (IT) systems, that means storage devices. The motors that spin the disks, the mechanism that moves the read/write arm, all have the potential to wear down and fail. That’s true even in the most sophisticated, well-designed, well-managed systems. Mechanical devices with moving parts have the potential to fail.
So it was that Microsoft Azure recently experienced a storage outage recently.
Hanu Managed Azure (HMA) Sees the Problem Immediately
A Hanu customer, impacted by the recent storage outage, would never have known about it had they not been told.
Once the outage occurred, HMA received an immediate notification of the failure. They quickly contacted and worked with the Microsoft Azure Support Team to help resolve the problem. Much of the work had to be performed in the Microsoft Azure Data Center where the failing storage devices were deployed. Patiently, the HMA team worked with the Microsoft team, helping them as much as possible while they replaced the failing devices and then restored the data that had been on them.
The entire restore-to-full-function took about six hours.
No Sign at Sunrise
Fortunately, this rescue took place in the middle of the night. Nobody had been working at the customer’s premises for the entire duration of the outage.
By the morning, when the customer’s people came to work, they had no idea that anything had ever happened. Microsoft had worked feverishly to restore the storage systems, and then HMA made sure that all data was fully restored to the new drives. Had Hanu and Microsoft not contacted the customer to tell them what had happened, they never would have known.
The Promise of Cloud
This is a great example of the promise of cloud computing when it is properly deployed and carefully managed by cloud professionals. Managed Azure services from HMA create the connection between the customer and the cloud. For more information about how HMA can benefit your company as it transitions to and operates on Microsoft Azure, contact  Sales.HMCS@us.hanu.com.
