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Every software company has unique virtual provisioning needs.<\/p>\nEvery software company has unique virtual provisioning needs.<\/p>\n
Creating complex virtual infrastructure from scratch and maintaining it for even a short period can be labor-intensive, costly, and risky from a security standpoint. When it needs to happen multiple times per day throughout an organization\u2019s workforce, handling these challenges can be overwhelming.<\/p>\n
At a company the size of Microsoft, managing those efforts across multiple lines of business can consume hundreds of hours of administration, computing time, and review. To help our teams generate their virtual labs quickly and securely, our Microsoft Digital Employee Experience (MDEE) team created MyWorkspace, a cloud solution that helps teams templatize their setups in the cloud and provision replicas on demand.<\/p>\n
It’s revolutionizing how we handle virtual software provisioning.<\/p>\n
[Learn how we\u2019re doing more with less internally at Microsoft with Microsoft Azure.<\/a> Find out how we\u2019re simplifying compliance evidence management with Microsoft Azure confidential ledger.<\/a> See how we\u2019re adopting Microsoft Azure Resource Manager internally at Microsoft.<\/a> Read how Microsoft Azure resource inventory is helping us manage our operational efficiency and compliance.<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n All across Microsoft, teams generate infrastructure labs for many different reasons:<\/p>\n Manually spinning up and configuring these labs from scratch is time-consuming and resource-intensive for engineers. It also leaves their virtual machines vulnerable to security risks or dependent on lengthy reviews to ensure compliance.<\/p>\n \u201cTo create these labs, engineers used to set up the entire environment manually and put it through a review by our security team, so that was a really time-consuming process lasting up to three or four days,\u201d says Vikram Dadwal, principal software engineering manager for MDEE\u2019s Infrastructure and Engineering Services team. \u201cTo solve that issue for our engineers, we wanted to create a secure platform where they could rapidly provision those labs using Azure services, which helped them save time and reduce manual and repetitive tasks.\u201d<\/p>\n The new service offering leveraged the cloud to prioritize security, compliance, reliability, and availability. It also focused on better performance, lower costs for Microsoft as a whole, and more efficient utilization of resources and capacity.<\/p>\n They called the solution MyWorkspace.<\/p>\n MyWorkspace is a cloud-based provisioning engine that enables the rapid creation, configuration, and distribution of virtual infrastructure. It helps end users templatize any environment setup and use it to provision on-demand replicas securely and cost-effectively.<\/p>\n The tool combines several technologies across the Microsoft Azure stack. Azure Kubernetes Service<\/a> runs all of MyWorkspace\u2019s services, and it also leverages other Azure serverless offerings including Azure Functions<\/a>, Azure Container Services<\/a>, and Azure Logic Apps<\/a>.<\/p>\n Azure Cosmos DB<\/a> handles the data, and we use Azure Cache for Redis<\/a> for our cache strategy. Finally, Azure SignalR Service<\/a> enables real-time notifications and communications. Each of these components contributes to making MyWorkspace robust and easy to use, and they\u2019re all readily available to customers who want to create a similar solution.<\/p>\n The tool streamlines the provisioning experience by allowing users to manage resource deployment and configuration in Microsoft Azure with a simplified UI. As a result, engineers can quickly spin up a pre-configured infrastructure stack to reproduce any number of environments for short-term or long-term lab setups.<\/p>\n Because it\u2019s cloud-based, MyWorkspace naturally fosters resilience, high availability, and multi-geo presence. Meanwhile, baked-in security policies eliminate the need to submit every new virtual environment for individual security review.<\/p>\n Templatization is the real key to the tool\u2019s success. Engineers and administrators have the ability to create templates from common virtual labs and add them to a Microsoft-wide library that colleagues can access as they carry out their own work.<\/p>\n As a result, what once took days now takes just a few clicks and a few minutes.<\/p>\n Our support engineers are the biggest MyWorkspace adopters. They frequently provision virtual labs that reflect our customers\u2019 software setups in order to troubleshoot and work through issues.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery customer is different, and we can\u2019t set up one single environment to service them all,\u201d says Rick Andring, support escalation engineer for Microsoft OneDrive and SharePoint. \u201cWe reproduce customer issues daily, and we have to have clean environments that we can customize to each specific scenario.\u201d<\/p>\n Business continuity for Microsoft customers is often on the line, so support teams face enormous time pressure. MyWorkspace provides the velocity they need to get to the root of a problem fast.<\/p>\n When a support escalation comes across the team\u2019s desk, the process is straightforward. Andring or one of his engineers heads to the MyWorkspace dashboard, accesses the template library, loads up a template that reflects the situation, and the virtual lab is ready to go within an hour.<\/p>\n From there, the engineer simply troubleshoots within the environment until they reproduce the issue and can advise the customer. In complex cases, the support team can tag relevant product teams into their lab to help with more intensive fixes.<\/p>\n Once they\u2019ve reached a successful outcome, the team can archive the solution in the template library for educational purposes or reuse on similar cases. They even have the power to share the template with other support teams to build competency and capacity across our organization.<\/p>\n The ability to create templates out of real-world support situations is a powerful asset, so MDEE was intent on making that workflow as smooth as possible.<\/p>\n \u201cCreating templates is actually very simple,\u201d says Nathan Prentice, senior product manager with MDEE Infrastructure and Engineering Services.<\/strong> \u201cOnce we built the automation on the backend, an end user just has to select the workspace they\u2019ve already configured and click \u2018Create Template From\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n In terms of virtual environment creation and management, every time I publish a new template, I save a week. Now scale that out: I publish four templates every six months at a minimum, so that\u2019s a month or two of time savings a year.<\/p>\n \u2014Rick Andring, support escalation engineer, OneDrive and SharePoint.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Of course, administrators within each business group have the ability to limit who can create templates and the degree of access they need. That helps less technical staff obtain exactly the level of depth they need to do their jobs while administrators can execute higher-level operations at speed.<\/p>\n As the administrator for his line of business, Andring\u2019s most substantial time savings come from template creation. He\u2019s eliminated much of the lag time associated with spinning up custom labs for each project.<\/p>\n \u201cIn terms of virtual environment creation and management, every time I publish a new template, I save a week,\u201d Andring says. \u201cNow scale that out. I publish four templates every six months at a minimum, so that\u2019s a month or two of time savings a year.\u201d<\/p>\n Automation also drives more efficient computing consumption. Administrators can set up rules that automatically terminate virtual labs if teams haven\u2019t used them for predetermined lengths of time.<\/p>\n As a result, an engineer won\u2019t leave a virtual environment running overnight by accident and waste valuable computing power and cost. That saves money and capacity, not to mention carbon emissions. Automations like these mean the average cost per workspace is down 30 percent in lines of business that leverage MyWorkspace.<\/p>\n Users can set up a substantial lab of 20 virtual machines in whatever configuration they want and then use Azure services to spin them up. What might have taken four to five days in the past now takes just minutes.<\/p>\n \u2014Vikram Dadwal, principal software engineering manager, for MDEE Infrastructure and Engineering Services<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n With more than 3,000 daily active users creating almost 7,000 workspaces and utilizing 60,000 virtual machines at any given time, MyWorkspace is quickly gaining traction across Microsoft. That\u2019s not surprising considering the time savings the average user experiences.<\/p>\n \u201cUsers can set up a substantial lab of 20 virtual machines in whatever configuration they want and then use Azure services to spin them up,\u201d Dadwal says. \u201cWhat might have taken four to five days in the past now takes just minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n As more and more lines of business bring MyWorkspace online, the benefits for our teams and the value it generates for our organization will continue to grow. But the most important outcome is providing speed, value, and excellence in supporting our customers through innovation in the cloud.<\/p>\nVirtual software provisioning: Diverse organizational needs<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Creating a solution that\u2019s cloud-based and compliant<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Elite customer service through the cloud<\/h2>\n
Automation drives ease and efficiency<\/h2>\n
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A revolution in device provisioning<\/h2>\n
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