June 30, 2021
Welcome to the twelfth edition of the Azure World Newsletter in 2021.
A few of my friends were excited to receive their beta exam results for AZ-140 Windows Virtual Desktop certification. I didn’t take the exam, but did you receive your results? Hope you did well on that if you did!
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ONE.
This might no longer be true by the time you read this. We have to concede that the stock market is a fickle place, and they can make a stock hit a new high one day, and take it away the next.
Microsoft has become the second company (behind Apple) to hit a $2 trillion market cap. And ahead of competitors such as Google, Amazon and Facebook.
On the basis of Microsoft unveiling Windows 11, and apparently avoiding scrutiny by the US government for anti-trust investigations, their stock temporarily traded above the level that made it a $2 trillion company.
Microsoft stock has doubled in the last two years, thanks to products like Azure and Teams chat.
Now, you and I don’t really get to benefit from that, but it’s nice to see the market reward the company for how well it’s been growing its business.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/24/microsoft-closes-above-2-trillion-market-cap-for-the-first-time.html
TWO.
Microsoft is rolling out a new certification later in July, and I’m excited by it.
The certification is “Microsoft Certified: Azure Network Engineer Associate”, and the exam will be “AZ-700: Designing and Implementing Microsoft Azure Networking Solutions”.
Yes, I’ll probably have a course on this. I haven’t yet begun to think about it, but it seems right up my alley. I currently have an Azure Networking course on LinkedIn Learning now that I think about it.
https://www.linkedin.com/learning/azure-for-architects-design-a-networking-strategy
This AZ-700 exam is all about networking – planning, implementing, and maintaining Azure networking solutions. This includes the hybrid networking solutions, as well as routing, security, and all that fun stuff.
This feels like an AZ-104 type course (Associate level) but more focused on Networking.
Here are the exam objectives:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/exams/az-700
And here is the official blog announcement:
THREE.
I’ve been mentioning for the last couple of newsletters that I have been working on a new SC-900 course. Well, it’s here! Allow me to tell you about this new course.
Cloud Security is one of the hottest issues in recent years, and that trend should continue as the war between security professionals and hackers escalate. Would you like to learn the basics of Cloud security? Whether you’re a business stakeholder or an IT professional hoping to get into security, the SC-900 Microsoft Security, Compliance, and Identity Fundamentals might be a good first step into the field.
The SC-900 Microsoft Security, Compliance, and Identity Fundamentals certification is targeted to those looking to familiarize themselves with the fundamentals of security, compliance, and identity (SCI) across cloud-based and related Microsoft services.
This exam covers both Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365. This exam measures your ability to describe the following: concepts of security, compliance, and identity; capabilities of Microsoft identity and access management solutions; capabilities of Microsoft security solutions; and capabilities of Microsoft compliance solutions.
My brand new course on SC-900 is now live on Udemy. You can have a chance to get in on Launch Day pricing using the link below.
For US $9.99, or your local equivalent pricing, this course covers all of the requirements of the SC-900 exam.
https://www.udemy.com/course/sc900-azure/?couponCode=LAUNCH10
If you’re interested, check out the link above. Watch the promo video and some of the preview lectures to see if this course is for you.
As always, I REALLY appreciate your feedback and reviews. Reviews are what enable the course to be found in Udemy search, and so please consider leaving a review for any Udemy course you take (from any instructor) to support them in their goals of sharing their knowledge online.
As always, Udemy’s 30-day money-back guarantee applies. I hope you enjoy the course and will work hard to continually improve it for you and others based on the feedback I get. But for any reason you don’t enjoy it, you’re entitled to your money back in the first 30 days.
AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.
There were a lot of announcements due to Microsoft Build. The following platform updates happened in the past two weeks:
- Azure private multi-access edge compute (MEC) enables secure and private 5G networks, in preview
- Alerts based on smart detection for Application Insights, in preview
- Azure Data Lake Storage static website in GA
- Azure Blob index tags in GA
- Azure Key Vault Managed HSM is generally available
- AAD only authentication for SQL Database and SQL Managed Instance in preview
- SQL Managed Instances can be upgraded to handle up to 16 TB of data in preview
- Azure Blob Storage NFS 3.0 protocol support generally available
- Azure Data Lake Storage Gen1: Account creation will be blocked for new customers starting July 5, 2021
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.
Now that the SC-900 course is live, I can turn my attention to other things. First up, I’m taking a break. I’m on vacation next week, but Jordi and Kevin should be still in the courses answering questions.
I am working on some more practice test courses since they are well-received. My AZ-303 practice test course went live a couple of weeks ago and has been doing well. I will produce a couple of more practice test courses in the next couple of weeks after my vacation.
And maybe I’ll look at that AZ-700 course for the end of July. I’m just starting to think about the potential here.
WHERE TO FIND ME.
And that’s it for issue 2.12. Thanks for reading this far.
What is your favorite platform to be on? Perhaps we can connect there.
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