Luper's Learnings - Azure Technical Community for Partners (February 2019)

Luper's Learnings - Azure Technical Community for Partners (February 2019)

 

Welcome to the February 2019 monthly edition of Luper's Learnings.

 

Good day friends and Happy February! Here in the Seattle area our December and January were abnormally mild. However, this week, winter has decided to pay us a serious visit. Guessing it's an effort to spread the love across the US as the Eastern US got clobbered last month. In any case, cold, snow and ice won't keep me from getting this edition written up and sent out to you. Enjoy reading the update.

 

I'm hopeful that you'll find some tidbits of interest below. Any suggestions from you will be included in a future edition so don't hesitate to reach out. Please do keep in touch via Twitter, LinkedIn and on email.

 

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Here's what I've learned in the last month…

 

-          Big topic this month: Exams, certifications and training. At Ignite in September, Microsoft announced our new, Role Based certifications. Many of the exams are now out so I'm going to devote a bit of space to the exams and some ways to prepare for them.

o   The official list of certifications is here. Of course I'm partial to Azure and the AZ-10X and AZ-30X exams myself but you'll see that the AI-*, AZ-4XX, AZ-20X and a variety of Microsoft 365 exams are happening now, too.

o   Liberty Munson posted last week Wow! A Summary of All Exams and Certifications Launched in January, 2019! Saying "If you read one of our January blog posts, read this one!"

o   Iain Fielding shared his summary of The Azure Certifications in early January

o   Chris Pietschmann's take from September on his Build Azure site.

o   Don't think that I've run across their podcast previously but the MS Cloud IT Pro guys spent a recent episode talking about the AZ-900 exam in an episode called Cloud Concepts.

o   Finally, Microsoft recognizes that demonstrating the skills required to get ahead takes work and doesn't always happen on the first attempt; that's why we are introducing the Certify with Confidence offer at aka.ms/CertifyOffer to help you earn your certification. You can choose a Certify with Confidence package which includes you receive an exam voucher and two exam retakes, giving you THREE opportunities to pass your certification exam. If you don't pass the on your first try, don't worry—just polish your skills and retake the exam up to two more times if needed.

-          Ever want to get data into Azure but have too much data to do it over a wire (Internet or ExpressRoute?) There have been a variety of options over the years. The latest (and pretty cool) option is the Azure Data Box family including Data Box Disk, Data Box Heavy (Preview), Data Box Edge (Preview), and Data Box Gateway (Preview.) Azure Data Box Disk became generally available in January.  The ordering process is right inside the Azure Portal.

-          Azure doesn't let you change the name of the VM that is displayed in Azure. Nicole Welch's article, Renaming an Azure Windows VM (Managed Disks), describes the known "workaround" of detaching the Managed Disks attached to the VM, creating a new VM with the same configuration and name that you are interested in then reattaching the disks.

-          Everything in Azure needs to put stuff somewhere. Azure Storage underlies pretty much all of the other Azure services. Storage can get pretty complex with Blobs, Files, Tables, Queues and more. Arkadeep De had an informative post Azure Storage Account Part 1: What is Blob? on Code Project.

-          You have heard me talk about Cloud Shell (again and again.) Thomas Maurer who used to be an MVP and has come to work for Microsoft as of last week posted what I believe is the most comprehensive article about different ways you can use Cloud Shell in Mastering Azure with Cloud Shell.

-          The Azure Portal keeps getting better (my opinion!) In January, we introduced updates improving navigation of your landing page. Microsoft Azure portal January 2019 update. Daily .NET Tips wrote about Choose your default view in Azure Portal.

-          Azure Site Recovery (ASR) continues to grow and mature. Each month the team posts an Update Rollout summary. Azure Site Recovery Update Rollout 32 (December 2018) was posted but more than that, there's a great blog post, Azure Site Recovery: Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) for Azure, by Azure that talks about great improvements that have been made in the past 6 months and that more are coming soon. You might also want to take a look at New Azure Migrate and Azure Site Recovery enhancements for cloud migration from Sneha Agrawal.

-          Pass-through Authentication, allowing users to use the same password on-premises and in the cloud was introduced about two years ago and is now gaining in popularity. Several interesting resources to share with you on the topic.

o   User sign-in with Azure Active Directory Pass-through Authentication

o   Azure Active Directory Pass-through Authentication: Technical deep dive

o   Azure AD pass-through authentication

o   Configure Pass-through Authentication

-          John Savill's informative video Infrastructure as Code for the IT Admin. Yes, I watched it. He talks about great tools, approaches and great info that IT folks can benefit from. His Azure IaaS Overview - 2019 Edition one hour video might be interesting as well (haven't had a chance to watch the whole thing yet.)

-          On the topic of Infrastructure as Code, DevOps, CI/CD and the like, Link GitHub commits and pull requests to Azure Boards work items - Sprint 144 Update

-          Windows Server 2019 is now Generally Available as a Guest OS in Azure. Full details at Azure Guest OS releases and SDK compatibility matrix

-          Azure Backup is getting improvements, too. Vishnu Charan TJ posted Azure Backup now supports PowerShell and ACLs for Azure Files. We also heard how Azure Backup simplifies data protection and protects against ransomware.

-          In the last edition I talked about the upcoming End of Support (EOS) for SQL Server 2008/R2 and Windows Server 2008/R2. One of the key motions to consider is migrating those workloads into Azure via Lift & Shift or Rehosting (ASR and Azure Migrate, listed above, are great tools to assist with this.) Additionally, as you think about migrations, we are now adding capabilities to the Azure Database Migration Service providing Support for Amazon RDS for SQL Server to Azure SQL Database online migrations and Support for Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL to Azure Database for PostgreSQL online migrations. You'll also find tutorials for Migrate SQL Server to Azure SQL DB offline, Migrate SQL Server to Azure SQL DB online, Migrate SQL Server to Azure SQL DB Managed Instance offline, Migrate SQL Server to Azure SQL DB Managed Instance online, Migrate MySQL to Azure DB for MySQL online, Migrate PostgreSQL to Azure DB for PostgreSQL online and Migrate MongoDB to Azure Cosmos DB Mongo API offline. Lastly, don't forget the recent post How to Migrate Azure SQL Database to Azure SQL Managed Instance.

-          Cool article, also on Code Project, from Gaston Verelst - Creating multiple identical VMs in Microsoft Azure

-          The Azure Marketplace team provides a list of Azure Marketplace new offers each month. 46 were onboarded in the 2^nd half of December and 67 went live the first half of January.

-          I regularly shout out to Michael Crump for his Azure Tips and Tricks. He's closing in on 200 of them! The three recent ones are pretty cool. Part 180 - Taking a peek at Azure Key Vault Part 1 of 2, Part 181 - Taking a peek at Azure Key Vault Part 2 of 2 and Part 182 - Use VNET peering to connect existing VNETs

-          Somebody would call me out if I didn't mention CLI and/or Cloud Shell and/or VS Code so here are those mentions for the month

o   GREAT DISCOVERY – Cloud Shell (Bash or PowerShell) inside VS Code. This is not new but like so many things, I just hadn't gotten it yet. You can use Cloud Shell inside Visual Studio Code. Mind blown. Ridicurious writes about a variety of different topics.  Last year there was a series on Cloud Shell. I found

o   Azure Cloud Shell Overview (video), Azure Cloud Shell in Visual Studio Code and Azure Cloud Shell – Storage. There's also an Azure Friday episode on Cloud Shell.

o   How about another interesting one from Code Project Using Visual Studio Code with Windows Subsystem for Linux

o   And, BTW, the new PowerShell Az module is being introduced to begin replacing AzureRM. Introducing the new Azure PowerShell Az module.

-          I haven't had a chance to talk too much about Azure Security Center in Luper's Learnings in the past. Ronit Reger's post Regulatory compliance dashboard in Azure Security Center now available reminded me to call your attention to this great resource. Documentation and Quickstarts are available here and check out last year's Azure Security Center on Azure Friday. You'll find both a Free and Standard pricing tier are available. I'll try to cover more on Azure Security Center in future editions.

-          Closing out with four Fun topics…

o   What could be more fun than trivia? Azure Trivia!!! This year's #AzureTrivia celebrates your love of problem solving, growth, and adventure. Players will be taken on an exciting, mystical journey where you'll not only pick up new skills but test your technical prowess in order to unlock new lands and win some sweet, sweet swag. New Azure related questions will be posted each Monday. Follow @Azure to catch them (and win prizes!)

o   While I don't claim to have any expertise in Minecraft, I found this article from Suneet Nangia and Mark Fussell kind of cool. This will get you started if you are interested in Running Minecraft on Service Fabric Mesh.

o   Short blog post from Wriju Ghosh on Azure Latency Test.

o   Not Azure related but This video of a bricklayer using Hololens is the future of construction from FastCompany.

 

Thanks for sticking with me and making it to the bottom of the February Luper's Learnings. You've continued to be such a supportive and vocal group, keep sharing topics of interest for future editions.

 

 

Steve Luper

Cloud Solution Architect |  US One Commercial Partner
Microsoft Corporation

Mobile: +1-425-281-8847 | Office: +1-425-705-5432

 

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