Deprecated: strtr(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated in /chroot/home/a40b7614/774635bdc8.nxcli.io/html/wp-content/plugins/moosend-email-marketing/vendor/moosend/website-tracking/src/Utils/Encryption.php on line 8 Deprecated: urlencode(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated in /chroot/home/a40b7614/774635bdc8.nxcli.io/html/wp-content/plugins/moosend-email-marketing/vendor/moosend/website-tracking/src/Payload.php on line 202 Scott Duffy – Page 12 – SoftwareArchitect.ca

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Author: Scott Duffy

  • Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.2

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.2

    I hope you’ve been doing well. It has been two weeks since I last sent the newsletter. It’s hard to believe how time flies. I’ve been hard at work these past couple of weeks on a new course, which I’ll introduce to you later in this email. But first, let’s talk about the biggest changes in the world of Microsoft Azure.

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    ONE.

    Just as I sent the last newsletter, Microsoft released its quarterly earnings. And once again, they showed impressive growth when it comes to the Cloud.

    Microsoft Azure revenue grew 50% year-over-year. That’s still a very impressive growth rate for something as large as the Azure Cloud. They now have over 60 regions worldwide and are adding data centers into areas of the world that are traditionally underserved, like South America, the Middle East, Africa, and Scandanavia. 

    They’re also getting deeper into “sustainability”, as the new region in Sweden coming later this year will be powered 100% by renewable energy sources. I wouldn’t think I would see such power-intensive things like data centers powered entirely by renewable energy, yet here we are.

    This quarter was the first quarter where cloud revenue exceeds all other sources of income for Microsoft, including Office.

    Here’s an interesting chart that I saw:

    Good to see Microsoft as the fastest-growing line on that graph.

    TWO.

    I attended Microsoft Ignite 2020 back in September, as did many of you. What I didn’t realize at the time is that Microsoft Ignite was broken into two parts. So “part 2” of ignite is coming up in March.

    Ignite Part 2 runs March 2-4. There will be the usual keynotes, technical sessions, and even another chance to get a free exam voucher with the cloud skills challenge.

    https://myignite.microsoft.com/home

    Be sure and register for this free online event if you’re interested.

    THREE.

    Speaking of free exam vouchers, I am not even joking when I tell you what I used my Ignite 2020 free exam voucher on…

    I took the AI-900 Azure AI Fundamentals exam.

    Like any fundamentals-level exam (AZ-900, DP-900, and the others), this exam really is about the concepts more than the practical uses of Azure Machine Learning.

    But the concepts are important. Understanding and mastering the concepts of a topic become a solid foundation for building additional skills on top of it. With the concepts mastered, you could go on to learn the AI Engineer skill or the Data Scientist skill.

    Introducing my latest course, “AI-900 Azure AI Fundamentals Exam Prep In One Day“.

    The AI-900 exam is intended for people with both technical and non-technical backgrounds.

    As with other “900 level” exams, it really is a fundamentals exam covering the absolute basics of AI and machine learning. It’s not a prerequisite for any of the associate level exams or higher. But it will set you up with a good foundation if you wish to advance to those higher levels in the future.

    This 3-hour course covers the fundamentals of machine learning.

    We will learn:

    • Common AI workloads
    • Microsoft guiding principles for responsible AI
    • Common machine learning types
    • Core machine learning concepts
    • Core tasks when creating a machine learning model
    • No-code machine learning in Azure
    • Computer vision ML
    • Natural language processing ML
    • Conversational AI

    Please use this special launch coupon to grab the course for US$9.99.

    https://www.udemy.com/course/ai900-azure/?couponCode=LEARNAI

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    With Microsoft Ignite coming in a couple of weeks, I expect Microsoft is holding back some of the better updates. The first March newsletter should have some interesting updates. Here are a few that caught my eye from the last couple of weeks.

    • South Central US now has Availability Zones
    • Germany West Central now has Availability Zones
    • 99.99% uptime SLA for Azure AD Premium coming in April 2021
    • Resource Instance Rules allow access to a storage account to specific instances of Azure resources (in preview)
    • Azure Service Fabric Mesh is being retired in April this year
    • Microsoft Azure Attestation now helps you ensure that you are actually connecting to your resources in Azure (instead of spoofed ones)

    Be sure and check out the Azure Updates page if any of these affect you.

    https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/

    COMING UP FOR ME.

    So I mentioned the AI-900 course above. You’re welcome to check that out if Machine Learning is a topic that interests you. Remember that it’s a fundamentals exam, so don’t expect deep exploration into ML algorithm math, nor the ideal settings of Azure ML Studio for each scenario.

    I’ve also completed a re-recording of the AZ-900 course. If you’re already in that course, you get the updates for free. Look for the “New course for 2021” section for the new videos. I will keep the old videos around for a few weeks, in case people are in the middle of taking that path and don’t want to start over.

    I’ve already made some updates to AZ-304 this month, and there’s more to come. So if you’re a student in that course, look for the videos marked *NEW*. 

    I already have some thoughts about new content for March. So I’ll let you in on the plans for that in the next newsletter.

    Of course, Microsoft Ignite will be in March as well, and I’m expecting that Microsoft will have a few surprises for me too.

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 2.2. Thanks for reading this far.

    What is your favorite platform to be on? Perhaps we can connect there.

    Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/getcloudskills/ 

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottjduffy/

    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getcloudskills.ca/

    Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottjduffy

    Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/user/scottduffy2/

    LinkedIn Learning: https://www.lynda.com/Scott-Duffy/1993589682-1.html

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter
  • Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.1

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.1

    Well hello there! After taking part of December and January off for a bit of a break, we’re back to the regular bi-weekly newsletter.

    I hope you and your family are doing well. Everything is “OK” here at SoftwareArchitect HQ. The winter has been mild so far, and I hope that continues until Spring. 🙂 As you can tell, I’m not much of a “winter sports” person. If you’re a skier, I’m sorry that this winter has not been good for that so far.

    Let’s get into the Azure news.

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    ONE.

    In Azure exam news, a few of the core Azure exams are undergoing some changes. As happens every few months, Microsoft has decided to do some minor (and no so minor) tweaks here and there to keep the exams relevant.

    The AZ-104 Azure Administrator exam had 2 new topics added relating to Blobs. Very minor changes. I’ve already updated my AZ-104 course with videos covering the new stuff.

    The AZ-303 Azure Architect Technologies exam had 1 new topic added relating to Firewall Manager. I’ve already updated my AZ-303 course with a video covering that.

    The AZ-304 Azure Architect Design exam had a couple of minor wording changes to the requirements, but nothing substantial was changed. My AZ-304 course will get some updated videos because it’s time for me to go through that course and ensure it’s entirely up-to-date.

    The AZ-900 and AZ-204 exams did not see any changes in January.

    Perhaps the most significant change has been the “merging” of the DP-200 and DP-201 exams into a single exam – DP-203. The changes here are more substantial. The DP-203 goes into Beta in February and DP-200/DP-201 retires in June.

    I have not decided how to handle these changes in the existing DP-200 course. I created a video covering the changes, here:

    TWO.

    Years ago, in my Azure courses, I used to have to explain the difference between the Azure Resource Manager (ARM) model of deployment and the Azure Service Management (ASM) model. I was able to remove that video after a year or two, once the Classic model was no longer recommended or even supported in many places.

    Well… I’m going to have to record a new video explaining deployment models again…

    There are now THREE Azure deployment models: Cloud Services (classic), Cloud Services (extended support), and ARM.

    If you’ve been using Azure for some time, you’ll remember the old Azure Service Manager (ASM) deployment model. This was referred to as the Classic model once ARM was introduced. Now in January 2021, the model has been renamed again as Cloud Services (Classic).

    Cloud Services (extended support) is a new model but is compatible with the Classic model. I view it as a bridge between the old model and ARM. Azure promises to maintain feature parity with the old Azure Service Manager (ASM) deployment model, but also add access to some new features that the Classic model doesn’t currently have.

    If you’re still running on ASM, (sorry, I mean, Cloud Services (Classic)), you have two ways of redeploying your existing Cloud Services to Cloud Services (extended support). You can deploy your services to the new model and delete the old one, OR you can upgrade the deployment “in-place”.

    No word if the Cloud Services (Classic) will ever end support. But I think they’re trying to make it REALLY easy for the leftover classic customers to run in an ARM environment. So that signals something.

    https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/build-regionally-resilient-cloud-services-using-the-azure-resource-manager/

    THREE.

    Microsoft is expanding its presence in South America with a new datacenter region being announced for Chile.

    In addition, late last year Azure opened another datacenter in Brazil, so there are two – Brazil South and Brazi Southeast. Brazil Southeast will even support Availability Zones.

    Seems there is a new South American push from Redmond.

    https://azure.microsoft.com/en-ca/updates/microsoft-to-establish-new-datacenter-region-in-chile/

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    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    It’s been a couple of months since I sent the last newsletter. It’s very hard to cover every single thing that has changed in that time, but here are a few that caught my eye.

    • New Azure datacenter regions announced for Denmark and Chile
    • Azure Stack Edge now supports Virtual Machines and Kubernetes clusters
    • Azure Functions now supports custom handlers, allowing you to use other languages for Functions such as Go, Rust or PHP
    • App Service Environment v3 now in public preview
    • App Service Anti-Virus logs in public preview
    • New Azure Purview for data governance in public preview
    • Azure Storage Account recovery from the portal
    • Azure Digital Twins is now generally available
    • Azure Free Trial Account now has access to 5 more free services, including archive storage, container registry, load balancer, service bus, and VPN gateway
    • Cosmos DB now supports the LIKE keyword for queries

    Be sure and check out the Azure Updates page if any of these affect you.

    https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/

    COMING UP FOR ME.

    Happy 2021!

    I recently re-recorded my AZ-900 course, and that’s currently being edited by my video editor. People who own that course on Udemy will get access to a whole new course by the end of the month.

    I started recording a new course in the past week or so. I hope to launch an AI-900 course very soon. Shh, this is a secret. If you’re interested at all in Azure AI and Machine Learning, this is a good foundational course for that.

    I will record some new videos for AZ-304 after that. That will have my attention in the month of February.

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 2.1. Thanks for reading this far.

    What is your favorite platform to be on? Perhaps we can connect there.

    Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/getcloudskills/ 

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottjduffy/

    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getcloudskills.ca/

    Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottjduffy

    Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/user/scottduffy2/

    LinkedIn Learning: https://www.lynda.com/Scott-Duffy/1993589682-1.html

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter
  • Azure Hands-On Practice Lab Demo

    Azure Hands-On Practice Lab Demo

    Here’s a video to show the different Advanced and Guided Azure hands-on practice labs that are available from https://getcloudskills.com/

    The price goes up on January 11.

    Azure Hands-On Practice Lab Demo

    Or you can see the video directly on YouTube.

  • Azure World Newsletter – Issue 1.21

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 1.21

    Welcome to the TWENTY-FIRST bi-weekly edition of the Azure newsletter.

    We had a fairly good November here in Toronto, with the weather staying reasonably mild for most of the month. But December 1st hit us with some snow, to remind us that winter is knocking on the door.

    I hope you are doing well, where ever you are in the world. I am glad to be connected to you.

    I hope my American friends had a good Thanksgiving, and everyone is healthy.

    As always, if you no longer wish to receive this newsletter, no problem. There’s an unsubscribe link at the bottom. I’ll be sad to see you go but also completely understand.

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    ONE.

    Now I know this is the Azure newsletter, but AWS re:Invent conference is going on right now. (Apparently, it’s a three-week conference? That’s quite ambitious.)

    It’s always interesting to see the announcements and new developments on that side of the fence.

    The significant (and relevant) news that crossed my browser screen today were comments made by AWS cloud head Andy Jassy.

    “COVID, while a period that none of us would have wished on anybody or ever want to repeat, will end up accelerating the cloud by a few years.”

    “A very large number of those companies that have been talking about moving to the cloud have shifted to having real plans around moving to the cloud and having real migration plans,” he said.

    96% of the global IT market still resides in on-premises data centers. So the opportunity is ahead of us, not behind.

    https://siliconangle.com/2020/11/30/exclusive-aws-chief-andy-jassy-wakeup-call-cloud-adoption/

    TWO.

    Microsoft has announced that they are changing the way Azure certifications are renewed. And has also extended the renewal date of certifications that will expire this year by 6 months to June of 2021.

    Now they haven’t specifically announced what that “new renewal process” is, but we are expecting that they are changing the way they’ve done it in the past – which can only be a good thing.

    I’m expecting them to make it easier to renew certifications.

    In the past, Azure has come out with new exam codes every couple of years. 70-534 became 70-535, which became AZ-300+AZ-301, which became AZ-303+AZ-304.

    Occasionally, they’d have a special “upgrade exam” you can take (AZ-302). But they haven’t done that lately.

    Anyone who passed a previous version of the exam would simply be “forced” to take an exam to renew their certification. 

    Again, we don’t know what the “new process” is, but if they are making it “easier” to renew your certification, then we should be happy about that.

    From the email: “We’re working on implementing a new approach that will allow learners who hold a valid role-based and specialty certification the ability to renew their certification. While we’re not ready to announce the renewal policy, role-based and specialty certifications currently scheduled to expire Jan 1 to Jun 30, 2021 will be extended for six additional months.”

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    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    Well, it’s getting extremely slow. I guess that’s to be expected near the end of the year. The Azure Updates page only shows about 10 updates in the past 2 weeks. 

    • New Azure datacenter region announced for Sweden
    • Azure Policy can now be managed in GitHub
    • Azure Storage Blob Inventory now in public preview

    Be sure and check out the Azure Updates page if any of these affect you.

    https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/

    COMING UP FOR ME.

    I think I’ve almost fully recovered from the cold that I had. But as we get into December, I think I will take some time to rest and be with family. Wish everyone a safe, and happy, holiday. 

    Udemy is running its “Cyber Week” sales event this week. So if you’re looking for some courses to watch over the next month, here’s a link to my instructor profile page.

    https://www.udemy.com/user/scottduffy2/

    This is the last newsletter for 2020. See you again in January!

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 1.21. Thanks for reading this far.

    What is your favorite platform to be on? Perhaps we can connect there.

    Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/getcloudskills/ 

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottjduffy/

    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getcloudskills.ca/

    Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottjduffy

    Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/user/scottduffy2/

    LinkedIn Learning: https://www.lynda.com/Scott-Duffy/1993589682-1.html

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  • Azure World Newsletter – Issue 1.20

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 1.20

    Welcome to the TWENTIETH bi-weekly edition of the Azure newsletter. 

    I hope you are all doing well. I am feeling great. The year is almost over, and I am in desperate need of a rest. I think I will take it very easy in December before starting anything significant again in January.

    I hope you are staying safe wherever you are and spending some quality time with your family. 

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    ONE.

    You don’t often think of this, but some Enterprise software is priced per CPU. And as you need more powerful machines to run these workloads, you risk a massive increase in your software licensing costs as you add vCPUs in the bigger machine sizes.

    Microsoft is introducing new virtual machine sizes that have “constrained vCPUs”. So now you can get the latest generation Azure virtual machines, with high memory, large storage, fast I/O, but still keep a low vCPU count.

    These are under the memory-optimized category (E-series), and the new VMs are called Esv4, Edsv4, and Easv4.

    Esv4 runs an Intel processor while Edsv4 runs AMD.
    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/constrained-vcpu

    TWO.

    Microsoft has rolled out .NET 5.0 support to App Services under all regions, operating systems, and app service plan tiers.

    If you’re looking to develop in .NET 5.0, it’s now available for use in Azure.

    If you look at the link below, you’ll be immediately presented with Microsoft’s challenge naming all these similar but distinct things.

    • .NET 5.0 is the next version after .NET Core 3.1 – dropping the “Core” and skipping version 4 to reduce confusion with .NET Framework 4.X (which is different)
    • ASP.NET Core 5.0 is based on .NET 5.0 – keeping the “Core” to reduce confusion with ASP.NET MVC 5
    • Entity Framework Core 5.0 – keeping the “Core” to reduce confusion with Entity Framework 5 and 6

    Follow the below link to see all of the new goodies included with this new language support:

    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/dotnet-five

    THREE.

    The AZ-900 exam changes that were previously announced are now live. As I mentioned, the course already has new videos covering the new topics. I’ll look to re-record that course around the end of the year.

    As previously mentioned, AZ-104, AZ-204 and AZ-303 don’t really have exam changes even though the page says they do. It’s more like clarifications on the wording. No changes to the courses will be made around those.

    The AZ-304 exam changes are going live next week.

    As always, I’ll keep everyone posted if I hear anything else.

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    It’s been a very slow couple of weeks, to be honest. No big news lately.

    • HDInsight to support Private Link (in preview)
    • QnA Maker getting deep learning upgrades (in preview)
    • Azure Data Lake Storage Premium Tier now GA
    • Azure Advisor has new recommendations to make
    • SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) and SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) VM images now available in the marketplace
    • Redis 6.0 now in preview
    • .NET 5 now in App Service
    • VPN over ExpressRoute now available

    Be sure and check out the Azure Updates page if any of these affect you.

    https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/

    COMING UP FOR ME.

    Well, of course, yours truly had to go and catch a cold in the last couple of weeks. Don’t worry, it’s not more serious than that. But I haven’t been able to work as much as I need to to finish things up. And I haven’t been able to record any videos because of my gravelly voice.

    Hopefully, I can kick this cough and get back to being 100% again this week.

    Stay safe! Stay well!

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 1.20. Thanks for reading this far.

    What is your favorite platform to be on? Perhaps we can connect there.

    Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/getcloudskills/ 

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottjduffy/

    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getcloudskills.ca/

    Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottjduffy

    Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/user/scottduffy2/

    LinkedIn Learning: https://www.lynda.com/Scott-Duffy/1993589682-1.html

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    See you in two weeks!

  • Azure World Newsletter – Issue 1.19

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 1.19

    Welcome to the NINETEENTH bi-weekly edition of the Azure newsletter. Thank you SO much for signing up to receive this. As always, if you don’t want to receive this, don’t worry! You can click the unsubscribe link at the bottom, and we’ll remain friends!

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    ONE.

    The top story I guess is that Microsoft announced its Q3 revenue. And it was a good quarter for them. They continue to do well in the various software and services they offer, including LinkedIn, Teams, and Azure cloud.

    Microsoft Azure revenue grew 48% year-over-year.  It wasn’t that long ago (well, 3 years or so) that Azure revenue was growing 100% YoY, but 48% is still a respectable pace. We’ve seen a few growing pains over the last few months with stability, but they continue to take more than their share of the cloud space.

    By comparison, Amazon AWS grew 29% from a year ago. So Azure can still be proud of their success in this area. They’re even growing a bit faster than Google Cloud as well.

    Since these companies are not great at breaking out the specific revenue from their clouds, it’s hard to do an apples-to-apples comparison to know if Azure has overtaken AWS for the #1 cloud provider. But they continue to show strong growth.

    That’s good for “us” as this means companies will continue to value Azure skills.

    TWO.

    Microsoft keeps developing new data center regions. Last newsletter, I talked about Austria. They also announced a new data center region in Greece. This week, they’re announcing a new data center region coming soon in Taiwan.

    Microsoft announces its first Azure data center region in Taiwan

    As you know, regions are more than just data centers. They host many services including Azure and Office 365. They contain availability zones and are paired with another region for failover. 

    This brings the number of existing or planned regions in the world to 66.

    THREE.

    We’re coming to the end of the year, and Microsoft rolled out it’s “November” updates for the certification exams. Most exams saw very little or no updates.

    No or few updates:

    • AZ-104
    • AZ-303
    • AZ-204
    • DP-200
    • DP-900

    Some updates:

    • AZ-304
    • AZ-900

    Of course, the related courses will see new content relating to these updates. 

    But since we’re at the end of the year, it makes me stop and think about the state of Microsoft and Azure certifications. Microsoft made the transition from the old certifications (“70-*”) over a year ago, made some big changes to them earlier this year, and now are not making very many changes to them.

    Azure is becoming a more stable platform overall. You cannot expect a lot of big changes in areas like Virtual Machines, App Services, Networking, and Storage. The basics of those are fixed, and the only changes we can expect to see are small and incremental improvements over time.

    Database services are fairly mature as well, although there is also a lot more innovation and change going on in Big Data and Data Processing such as Data Factory, Jupyter Notebooks, and Synapse. 

    Most of the innovation and changes will come outside these core spaces. AI and machine learning, no doubt. Windows Virtual Desktop too. Teams. 

    At least, I am hoping that the core set of knowledge is starting to settle down. Microsoft can certainly upend everything next year with all new exams and all new codes. I hope they don’t. But it’s not “impossible”.

    So the future of Azure certification (AZ-*) and Database certification (DP-*) looks fairly stable to me. You can learn these skills and build on them with future skills in different areas. This knowledge becomes a solid foundation on which you can specialize in your career.

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    Some interesting updates this month. 

    • Soft delete for Azure files now GA
    • Azure Database for MySQL supports up to 10 read replicas
    • SQL Server for Virtual Machines now have their own “VM agent extension” which will apparently unlock cost savings and other features
    • Azure App Service Premium Plans now have a dev/test discount
    • Azure Kubernetes Service now supports Azure Spot instances, for deeply discounted compute for low priority work
    • Azure Kubernetes Service now supports proximity placement groups, the opposite of availability sets
    • Support for PHP 7.4 ending in 1 year for app services on Windows
    • Adding support for Java 11 in Functions
    • A new region in Taiwan, coming soon

    Be sure and check out the Azure Updates page if any of these affect you.

    https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/

    COMING UP FOR ME.

    November is here, and I’m finishing a few things before the end of the year. I am working on an exciting new “100% hands-on” type course that is not aimed at a specific exam so much as general Azure knowledge. I hope to have that out in the next couple of weeks.

    I sent out a survey to you, and placed it in a few other places such as the Facebook group and in the Udemy courses, to get your feedback and find ways I can improve going into next year. Thanks in advance to all of those who have filled that out. And I appreciate your time helping me to serve students better.

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 1.19. Thanks for reading this far.

    What is your favorite platform to be on? Perhaps we can connect there.

    Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/getcloudskills/ 

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottjduffy/

    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getcloudskills.ca/

    Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottjduffy

    Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/user/scottduffy2/

    LinkedIn Learning: https://www.lynda.com/Scott-Duffy/1993589682-1.html

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    See you in two weeks!

  • AZ303 and AZ304 – Nov 2020 Changes

    AZ303 and AZ304 – Nov 2020 Changes

    Here’s some brand new content from the SoftwareArchitect.ca YouTube channel that you might find interesting.

    Microsoft loves to keep me on my toes. And so I wake up Saturday morning to discover some exam changes coming down the pipe for AZ-303 and AZ-304.

    For AZ-303, no worries! Nothing is really changing. They’re saying it’s changing, but it’s just a minor wording change and not a real exam change.

    For AZ-304, there are some real changes. And I cover them in this video.

    AZ303 and AZ304 – Nov 2020 Changes

    Or you can see the video directly on YouTube.

  • Azure World Newsletter – Issue 1.18

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 1.18

    It was a relatively quiet couple of weeks in the Azure world, and then BAM! Microsoft made a couple of announcements today.

    Let’s start with one piece of bad news before we talk about two pieces of good news.

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    ONE.

    Sad to say, but Azure continues to be having a bad few weeks with platform stability.

    In the last newsletter, I mentioned an Active Directory outage that made life tough for hundreds of thousands around the globe unable to log into their apps or email on Sept 28. 

    A week later, there was a 20-minute period where network routing had major latency issues. It was long enough for people to notice being unable to connect to their apps.

    And then this week, for about 4 hours, ARM template deployments were showing weird, random errors.

    I certainly don’t remember reading complaints from users in the Facebook group as much as I have in the last couple of weeks. We usually go months without people mentioning issues like this, and then we have three in a row.

    Bad things come in threes, the old saying goes. So maybe this is it.

    TWO.

    Continuing Azure’s big expansion into Europe, they just announced a data center being built in Austria!

    Microsoft Azure announces its first region in Austria

    This brings the number of Azure regions (announced) to 65. Good to see Europe getting extensive local cloud coverage.

    THREE.

    Space, the final frontier.

    Azure Space was announced yesterday, which is a partnership with SpaceX. 

    As you know, SpaceX has been launching satellites into orbit, trying to cover the planet with WiFi.  They eventually plan to have 4,000 to 40,000 satellites. Now you’ll be able to collect your Farmville crops while sailing across the Atlantic Ocean. 

    SpaceX Starlink partners with Microsoft Azure to deploy cloud computing anywhere

    Well Azure Space aims to connect remote locations into Azure. In fact, this announcement included mention of a Modular Data Center (MDC) which is “Azure in a box” that you can place in a remote location, and use Azure Space network to connect to those machines from Azure.

    As you’d expect, the military is one of the first to test this.

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    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    Not too many Azure updates to catch my eye lately. I think Microsoft Ignite is still weighing on the product teams, and they’ve announced all the good stuff a month ago. 

    • App Service Private Endpoints is now GA
    • Azure Cognitive Services Image Captioning reaches “human parity”
    • Azure Cache premium tier supports availability zones for replicas
    • Service Fabric managed clusters in preview
    • Azure Blob Storage point in time recovery is now GA

    Be sure and check out the Azure Updates page if any of these affect you.

    https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/

    COMING UP FOR ME.

    Be sure and check out my two newest courses on LinkedIn Learning. My latest just went live recently. 

    Exam Tips AZ:303 Azure Architect Technologies: https://www.lynda.com/Azure-tutorials/Exam-Tips-Microsoft-Azure-Architect-Technologies-AZ-303/2976144-2.html

    Exam Tips: AZ-304 Azure Architect Design: https://www.lynda.com/Azure-tutorials/Exam-Tips-Microsoft-Azure-Architect-Design-AZ-304/2976145-2.html 

    Nothing big to announce from me. Still working on AZ-304 updates. I guess AZ-900 updates will re-surface in November and I’ll have to turn my attention back to that too.

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 1.18. Thanks for reading this far.

    What is your favorite platform to be on? Perhaps we can connect there.

    Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/getcloudskills/ 

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottjduffy/

    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getcloudskills.ca/

    Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottjduffy

    Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/user/scottduffy2/

    LinkedIn Learning: https://www.lynda.com/Scott-Duffy/1993589682-1.html

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    See you in two weeks!

  • Giving Away an Exam Voucher

    Well, I’ve never done this before. But I’m going to try giving away an exam voucher for one of the Microsoft Azure (and related) exams.

    Below is the contest entry form. It’s being run by the folks at KingSumo, so be sure and check out the rules and regulations and stuff for more info.

    Prize: One Microsoft Azure exam voucher, good for a limited set of exams as specified below. Randomly drawn from all entries. Get multiple entries by following me on various social media platforms.

  • Discounted Azure Exam Vouchers

    I’ve mentioned a few programs that Microsoft runs that offer free exam vouchers for the AZ-900 exam. I’ve heard recently that this exam voucher is restricted to the AZ-900 exam and can no longer be used for other exams.

    And recently Microsoft offered an exam voucher for completing a challenge at Ignite.

    But, year-round, you can get discounted Microsoft exam vouchers that have a short expiry date.

    For instance, at the time of writing, you can buy a $165 exam voucher for $125, that expires on Dec 15, 2020.

    (Note that this voucher is only good for the US, Canada, Australia, Denmark, Sweden and a few other countries.)

    If you’re interested in checking this out, please use this link (affiliate) to check out the Microsoft vouchers currently being offered. Pay particular attention to the restrictions on country of use, and the expiry date.

    https://getcertified4less.com/SoftwareArch