As cloud computing continues to gain an ever-growing role in computer enterprises, MRC Unit The Gambia through Information Technology (IT) Department organised a 4-day training course on Microsoft Azure, a cloud-based software. The course took place from 7-10 March 2017 at the IT Training room in Fajara and was effectively executed by Naveed Ghafoor, Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Serves Consultant. This 4-day intensive course which aims to enable staff with the required expertise to build a hybrid infrastructure consisting of both on-premises, public cloud computing platforms and provides IT and Data Management to flexibly migrate workloads across the two platforms was well attended by staff form IT and data management. During the course, participants were also exposed to:
• Integrating existing IT infrastructure with Microsoft Azure
• Scaling up infrastructure using the cloud
• Hosting applications using the cloud
• Configuring virtual networks with the public cloud and preparing redundant data storage
• Protecting data and workloads with Azure backup and site recovery
• Replicating virtual machines using the cloud for disaster recovery

At the end of the course, participants acquired a basic understanding of how soon, how much, how far and how fast enterprises should be migrated to the cloud. Participants effectively explored Microsoft Azure and gain insights into the use of the cloud as a utility service model (pay for resources used) and best practices on the reduction on major capital expenditure on IT. Participants were introduced to scaling up on-premise infrastructure to the cloud and making best use of cloud computing in scientific research including genomics and other high-intensive workloads.

The participants acknowledged the fact that the cloud facilitates rapid provisioning of infrastructure, provides low maintenance costs and can be accessible anywhere.