Hi,

I'm proposing an AZURE VM solution for a client but am not sure how to price it. Can anyone provide some tips on how to obtain pricing on this type of solution. The datacentre would be Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

The following diagram represents the structure that will be hosted on an AZURE domain. The servers indicated are Windows Server 2012 R2 Virtual Machines with SQL Server 2014 Web Edition.

Figure 4 - DFES Proposed Architecture

System Description

The ETMS Server is the heart of the system providing all the functionality specified in theBluegemEXPLORE 2015 Enterprise TMS. DFES business systems can access services via the WebAPI service using HTTP GET, POST, PUT, MERGE and DELETE requests via the Odata protocol[1].

Environments

The ETMS Server hosts the three principle environments: DEV, UAT and PROD. Individual databases for these environments are provided by SQL SERVER 2014 hosted on the Database Server. The Database Server also includes SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) configured giving DFES access to self-manage the generation and distribution of all reports. The DR environment is a separate instance of the solution running on a mirror copy of the Production (PROD) database. In the event of a catastrophic failure of either the ETMS Server or the Database Server, the DR Server will be immediately available via the DR URL. The DR Server runs its own instance of SQL Server 2014 and holds a mirrored copy of the PROD database.

Emergency Service Access

While training activity does not require the high states of readiness and availability of the emergency service activity, the data held on skills and competency is crucial to decisions leading to the deployment of emergency service personnel. For this reason the DR Server and mirrored database offer a high degree of redundancy should the primary ETMS server or the primary Database Server fails.

Job Service

The Job Service is essentially a Windows Service that provides integration and data migration services that respond to WebAPI requests or CSV Imports. The Job Service also manages time-based workflow operations including Alerts, Notifications, Reminders and Scheduled tasks. The Windows Service offers a high degree of reliability and ensures that the performance of the ASP.NET Application (ETMS Services) is not compromised by bandwidth intensive operations such as the full import of HR Records. Jobs processed by the Windows Service are asynchronous. The job is queued and progress is consistently reported via the ETMS User Interface. A Job completion status can also be used to send a notification message to a nominated email address.