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  • Azure World Newsletter – Issue 3.09

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 3.09

    May 19, 2022

    Welcome to the ninth edition of the Azure World Newsletter in 2022. 

    We didn’t get too many new announcements in the past two weeks as the team at Microsoft prepares for their Build conference coming up next week. The next newsletter will probably be filled with new announcements. This one will be a bit light.

    In the last two weeks, I’ve been heads-down recording videos. I completed the new 2022 version of the AZ-900 course, and I’m now almost complete with a brand new 2022 version of the AZ-204 course.

    Of course, if you’ve already passed the AZ-900 exam to achieve the Azure Fundamentals certification, you never need to renew that or take that again. So these new videos are mainly for people new to Azure.

    For the AZ-204 Azure Developer certification, you need to renew that online every year. So perhaps the videos can be a good refresher for students who need to renew that sometime soon.

    Besides the obvious benefits to students of getting updated videos, I also benefit from this. I get to see almost every interface in the Azure Portal. And can compare the way it looked a year ago with how it looks today to notice the small (and big) differences.

    Thanks so much for being a subscriber! The unsubscribe link is at the bottom if you want to stop receiving these emails.

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    ONE.

    So the Microsoft Build conference is next week, and let me tell you what I’m looking forward to.

    If you haven’t signed up for Build or want to know what it’s about, the URL is:

    https://mybuild.microsoft.com/en-US/home

    Registration is free. The conference is focused on code and application development. So those topics can be interesting to many of us here.

    The session catalog for Build is live, and 526 sessions are being offered this year. Of course, there’s no way to attend them all or even watch them afterward. Therefore, you are forced to be a bit selective about what sessions to attend.

    The first topic that I always look for is Learning (my business, after all), so I’ll be attending the Liberty Munson “Ask The Experts” talk on the benefits of certification. This might be fairly basic, given how certification has been on my mind every day for the past 7 years, but I do enjoy hearing it straight from Microsoft on what they see as the value and the future of this industry.

    https://mybuild.microsoft.com/en-US/sessions/7ea4cd22-8acf-46aa-9ed5-1e9fcab7d475?source=sessions

    I usually try to find sessions by Scott Hanselman. Not just because he’s named Scott, but I’ve read his blog and watched his videos for more than 10 years. 

    This year, Scott is involved in a couple of their “after hours” sessions covering the day’s themes and will probably be a good way to catch up on everything that I missed.

    https://mybuild.microsoft.com/en-US/sessions/b558d260-efae-4da5-ae31-aaca34ca2aae?source=sessions

    https://mybuild.microsoft.com/en-US/sessions/4b27b864-5854-478b-bb6a-bc64b54abb77?source=sessions

    Scott Guthrie (another Scott!) is presenting a session on cloud-native app scaling, and that seems highly relevant and interesting.

    https://mybuild.microsoft.com/en-US/sessions/cf62806e-b0a6-48ca-9664-92298b049abf?source=/schedule

    Beyond the keynotes and some selected topics in my interest areas, I usually jump around between talks. I’ll see what is going on right now, and out of 3-4 options, I will pick the one that interests me. If I go there, and it’s not as interesting as I hoped, I move to something else.

    Be sure to post in the Azure Facebook community any sessions you’re interested in seeing!

    TWO.

    Microsoft has announced their new ESG initiative called “Cloud for Sustainability”. 

    Microsoft Sustainability Manager launches on June 1, and brings together a set of tools to help you monitor and manage your environmental impact.

    You can use the tool to track your carbon impact. You can see direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions related to your cloud usage, understand how you are avoiding future emissions by optimizing your usage, and share your findings with environmental impact reports that can be exported.

    The tool then can make recommendations to further reduce your carbon emissions by moving more workloads to the cloud. 

    There are videos, an ebook, and more information available on their website.

    Source: https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2022/05/17/accelerate-sustainability-progress-and-business-growth-with-microsoft-cloud-for-sustainability-starting-june-1/

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    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    The number of new announcements has increased dramatically in the last two weeks. Good on the Azure team for continuing to improve the product. 

    The following announcements were made in the last two weeks: 

    • Web Application Firewall (WAF) has enhancements, including new rulesets and improved performance
    • Virtual Network NAT health checks available via Resource Health
    • Azure VM insights guest health (preview) will be retired on 30 November 2022
    • Confidential computing DCsv3 and DCdsv3-series virtual machines (VMs) are in public preview
    • Azure Arc-enabled servers support for private endpoints
    • Azure Compute Gallery support for trusted launch Virtual Machines
    • Improved Azure DevOps support in Static Web Apps, in preview
    • Azure Container Apps now support log streaming and console connect, in preview
    • OCR supports 164 languages in the Cognitive Services Computer Vision
    • Migrate Azure Data Lake Storage Gen1 to Gen2 using Azure Portal
    • Additional support for managed identity authentication in Azure Stream Analytics, in preview
    • HostProcess Containers, in preview
    • Open Service Mesh extension for Azure Arc
    • AKS Private Link Service integration, in preview

    Check out the Azure Updates page if any of these affect you.

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

    COMING UP FOR ME.

    I’ve been enjoying the good reviews for my latest AZ-900 course updates… https://sjd.ca/az900

    I am filming videos for AZ-204 currently, and that course should be completely updated as of this week… https://sjd.ca/az204

    I’ll attend some of Microsoft Build next week, take a few days off, and then pick another course to give some updates to. I’ll check with Jordi to see if AZ-104 needs anything, but I believe he wants me to do some stuff for AZ-305 so that’ll likely be the focus.

    If you want to see updates in any of the courses, please post to social media or the Azure Facebook group and I’ll keep it in mind.

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 3.09. Thanks for reading this far. Talk to you again in two weeks.

    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 3.08

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 3.08

    May 4, 2022

    Welcome to the eighth edition of the Azure World Newsletter in 2022. 

    I’ll start with the usual Star Wars Day greeting, May the Fourth be with you. I’ll now divert the rest of this intro to talk about Star Trek.

    This makes me wonder, when is Star Trek Day? There’s no similar play on words that can be made for “Live Long and Prosper.” The Internet says it’s on September 8th, the day the show first debuted in 1966. But I’m a bit disappointed by the lack of creativity with that date.

    I was more of a Star Trek fan growing up. Watched The Next Generation on TV every week. Fast forward a couple of decades, and everything is streamed, and I haven’t gotten into Picard at all. But have watched every episode of The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett. 

    So Happy Star Wars Day, everyone!

    Thanks so much for being a subscriber! The unsubscribe link is at the bottom if you want to stop receiving these emails.

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    ONE.

    I recently went through the “annual renewal” process for several Azure certifications. The notifications from Microsoft were piling up in my Inbox, and I decided to tackle as many of them on the same day as possible. 

    A quick recap: Microsoft role-based certifications now expire after one year. Within 6 months of expiry, you can renew them for free online. The online assessment can be taken as many times as you need to pass, once per day.

    On the whole, I found the experience to be pretty good. Clicking on the link from the notification email took me to the landing page that outlined the objectives of the renewal. A reminder that the renewal objectives are way more focused than the full certification test. It generally only covers “new” topics that would not have been on the exam a year prior.

    The number of questions varies, but one assessment I took had 24 multiple-choice questions. There are no labs, no drag-and-drop. Just multiple choice. 1-in-4 shot at the right answer for any guess.

    As best as I can tell, each correct answer is worth one point. 

    The passing score is a bit varied too, but one assessment said it had a passing score of 57%, which seems quite generous. 

    Once you answer a question, there is no going back to the previous question. No “marking” questions to review them later as you can with PearsonVUE tests. 

    There is no time limit, that I can tell. Maybe the browser cookies have a timeout, but nothing is displayed on-screen. 

    Technically, you can probably Google the answers to each question. Sorry, I meant Bing Search. You’re probably not supposed to do that, but it’s probably naive to assume no one does that. But then again, you can also just take the exam, fail, do some studying in between, and try again.

    As I said, it was a pleasant experience. Only 30-45 minutes are required to take the assessment. And then I was done (with that certification renewal) for another year.

    Some assessments were more difficult than others. The Architect Expert was fairly easy (to me). I passed the AI Engineer less confidently, but some of my guesses must have been correct. And the Azure Networking certification reminded me exactly of the exam itself, with all the “VM1, Vnet1, Subnet1, NSG1” questions. 

    As before, if you fail an assessment, you will be given a convenient collection of Azure Learn modules to review before you attempt again. This is really, really smart and I’m pushing Udemy to adopt a similar feature in their product in some way. Imagine taking a Practice Test on Udemy, and then being given an hour-long video playlist to watch that only focuses on your weak topics. Brilliant.

    TWO.

    The next Microsoft Build conference for 2022 is coming up from May 24-26.

    https://microsoft.com/build

    This conference is focused on code and application development. So if that’s up your alley, this could be for you. Registration is free, and Microsoft usually does a pretty good job ensuring the streams are available at times convenient around the world. Not just reruns, but live events happening at hours outside of the United States time zones.

    A specific agenda hasn’t been published yet, but you can sign up at the link above and find the tracks that best suit your interests.

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    The number of new announcements has increased dramatically in the last two weeks. Good on the Azure team for continuing to improve the product. 

    The following announcements were made in the last two weeks: 

    • Azure App Services now supports Java 17 and Tomcat 10.0.0
    • Azure Monitor now supports Windows 10 and 11 clients, in preview
    • Azure Container Instances now supports Managed Identities, in preview
    • Deploy into Azure Container Apps using Visual Studio Code, in preview
    • Deploy into Azure Container Apps using Visual Studio, in preview
    • Azure Container Apps now supports health probes, in preview
    • Azure Container Apps now supports alerts and log analytics queries, in preview
    • Azure Static Web Apps now has private endpoint support
    • Azure Monitor now supports custom and IIS logs, in preview
    • Azure SQL Database general-purpose tier supports zone redundancy
    • Cosmos DB autoscale range is now 100-1000 RU/s, down from 400-4000 RU/s
    • Stable URLs for Azure Static Web Apps, in preview
    • Rehydrate an archive tier blob to a different storage account
    • Azure App Service now has networking capabilities at the Basic pricing tier
    • Gitlab and Bitbucket were added as CI/CD providers for Static Web Apps, in preview
    • Azure Managed Instance for Apache Cassandra now supports Cassandra 4.0 clusters, in preview
    • Azure SQL Database now supports Change Data Capture in GA
    • Azure SQL Database storage limits increase for selected compute sizes
    • Azure Functions Linux Elastic Premium plan increased maximum scale-out limits
    • Automated key rotation now in Azure Key Vault, in GA
    • Azure Machine Learning Reinforcement Learning preview will be retired on 30 June 2022
    • Azure Video Analyzer (preview) will be retired on 30 November 2022
    • Static Web Apps support for preview environments in Azure DevOps, in preview

    Check out the Azure Updates page if any of these affect you.

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

    COMING UP FOR ME.

    My latest AZ-900 course for the 2022 requirements is live on Udemy… https://sjd.ca/az900

    My next course target for a refresh is the AZ-204 track. I’ll keep you posted on that.

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 3.08. Thanks for reading this far. Talk to you again in two weeks.

    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 3.07

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 3.07

    April 20, 2022

    Welcome to the seventh edition of the Azure World Newsletter in 2022. 

    For the last week or two, I’ve been working on a complete re-filming of my AZ-900 course. And before that, I was intensely working on creating some labs. And I must say, I really can appreciate all of the subtle (and not so subtle) improvements that Microsoft has made to Azure over the last year. 

    When I am in the Virtual Machine creation tool, I notice some new options here and there. In small ways, the tool has improved. Same for storage accounts, web apps, and application gateways. I’m sure there are 10 changes that I didn’t notice for every change that I did notice.

    Shout out to the team responsible for the Azure Portal at Microsoft. It gets better and better, and I can’t think of any part of the UI that feels like it’s gotten worse. For me, at least. Keep up the good work.

    Thanks so much for being a subscriber! The unsubscribe link is at the bottom if you want to stop receiving these emails.

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    ONE.

    A couple of weeks ago, Microsoft rolled out a new Azure Front Door service and a new Azure CDN service. The existing services have been renamed “Classic”.

    The Azure Front Door service was first introduced only a few years ago in 2019. Its utility was clear from the start. It’s a combination of a load balancer, web application firewall (WAF), content delivery network (CDN), and caching service that operates at a global scale.

    If you were hosting your web applications in several regions, putting Front Door “in front” of them made great sense. You could increase your applications’ availability, performance, and security while reducing the resources used on each server (potentially saving you money).

    As can happen, Microsoft has been hard at work over these last couple of years working on the V2 of this service, and at the end of March, they made it available to customers. 

    Some features include new DNS options to validate domain names, new DevOps friendly command-line tools, new analytics capabilities, and pushing more application logic to the “edge” closer to the clients. So if you need to route users to a specific set of servers, that decision can be made closer to them geographically instead of being centralized.

    The new services also include a simpler cost model, making it easier to understand the costs of using Azure Front Door and Azure CDN.

    More details can be found at this blog link.

    Source: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/introducing-the-new-azure-front-door-reimagined-for-modern-apps-and-content/

    TWO.

    One of the problems that you don’t really think about with Machine Learning is the amount of duplicated effort across teams when manipulating the data that comes into the model. If you have a large enough organization, the chances are high that one team will be spending significant hours developing a feature to add to a dataset that another team has already developed. 

    If you’re not aware, a feature in Machine Learning is like the column of a data table. Sometimes, the columns from inbound data are not used as-is and need to be transformed and aggregated for a specific purpose. 

    So imagine that one of the ML teams in your organization has done significant work on an inbound data source to make it more valuable in terms of the usefulness to machine learning models. How do they share that work broadly? How do other developers even know that this improved data source even exists?

    The answer is “feature store”. This is effectively an abstraction layer between a machine learning model and the data. Like a “data layer” in an old n-tier architecture diagram. It can standardize how data is accessed and can even be used to make small data transformations, like changing data formats into a common format.

    LinkedIn uses a feature store called Feathr, and Microsoft is now releasing this as an open-source tool on GitHub. Now, more organizations can save time and money by using one team’s improvements to their data features across all teams.

    Source: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/feathr-linkedin-s-feature-store-is-now-available-on-azure/

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    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    The following announcements were made in the last two weeks: 

    • New Ebs/Ebds v5 series VMs have 300% faster storage throughput
    • Capacity reservation support for AKS, in preview
    • Azure Backup for Blobs has metrics and metric alerts, in preview
    • Storage Tables now support Azure AD authentication and RBAC
    • Azure Backup for VMs can now backup to archive tier storage
    • Azure AD Graph retirement date pushed to December 31, 2022
    • Azure Databricks now supports Delta Live Tables
    • User-Defined Routing (UDR) now supports service tags
    • New recommended alert rules for Azure VMs, in preview
    • Azure Monitor can monitor activity logs for changes to Azure resources and resource groups in a subscription, in preview
    • Azure Monitor has a new result set grid layout

    Check out the Azure Updates page if any of these affect you.

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

    COMING UP FOR ME.

    I’ve been finishing up the recording for the new AZ-900 course on Udemy. Completely recorded from scratch and based on the new requirements that go into effect on May 5. If you plan to take the exam in May or later, my course will be up-to-date for you. Grab it here… https://sjd.ca/az900

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 3.07. Thanks for reading this far. Talk to you again in two weeks.

    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 3.06

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 3.06

    April 6, 2022

    Welcome to the sixth edition of the Azure World Newsletter in 2022. 

    I really hope that you have been doing well. It’s now been a couple of years since I’ve attended any type of Microsoft event in person, and as such I haven’t really gotten to meet students and other instructors in that time. I miss the human interaction. Hopefully, Microsoft will start doing events in person in 2022 and I’ll make extra effort to get out to those. I miss you!

    Thanks so much for being a subscriber! The unsubscribe link is at the bottom if you want to stop receiving these emails.

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    ONE.

    Last week, I had a chance to see this new Capacity Reservation feature in Azure. 

    The concept is an interesting one. It allows you to reserve the capacity for a virtual machine, like reserving a table at a restaurant. You know that you need a table at a specific time, and you want to have assurance that one will be available for you when you arrive for dinner.

    Azure Reserved Instances is a slightly different concept. Reserved Instances allow you to commit to using resources like Virtual Machines for 1- to 3-years, for a significant discount. 

    Capacity Reservations allow you to reserve a virtual machine instance in your name, and it’s guaranteed to be available when you are ready to use it. Of course, you start paying for that reservation immediately too.

    I was surprised to learn that Reserved Instances do not come with a capacity guarantee. So even if you have a Reserved Instance, the region may be out of resources for you when you want them.

    I am not sure I have heard about this being a problem for too many Azure customers, but I can imagine that some companies need assurance that there will be VMs for them when they are ready to spin them up. Like you know that you need 100 DS4 VMs tomorrow, and so you reserve them today. Then when you use them tomorrow, you do not encounter the problem of there being no instances available in that region for you.

    There’s no multi-year commitment involved. Just the security of knowing that a specific virtual machine will be available for you. You can also make this capacity reservation WHILE creating the virtual machine, so you know if you ever need to delete it and recreate it, the capacity of the region suddenly won’t fill up for that short period. 

    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/capacity-reservation-overview

    TWO.

    Microsoft continues to sharpen it’s focus when it comes to learning and certification to become more cloud-centric, and focusing less on traditional IT roles. 

    If you remember, on January 31, 2021, Microsoft expired the MCSE, MCSA and MCSD certifications. Particularly for Windows system administrators, it was not clear what they would replace it with. None of the role based certifications at the time focused on core IT infrastructure the way the old MCSE did. Since then, Microsoft has introduced some Windows and Networking certifications, but they focus on cloud and hybrid models. So IT Pros who focus exclusively on non-cloud tech have been left out in the cold so far.

    This past week, changes were announced to the MCT program that saw Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS) certifications excluded from that program going forward. In order to qualify for the MCT program, you need to be certified in one of the cloud-based certifications and actively teach them.

    I think the changes to these programs are indicative of the overall direction of learning and education at Microsoft. They are trying to be forward-thinking by focusing their programs on the cloud-based roles. While people who teach Microsoft Excel and those that maintain on-premises servers play a valuable role, it seems like programs that train and reward those efforts no longer exist. 

    I would think that a $2 trillion company could afford to keep programs running for that, so it must just be a question of trying to promote the new technologies over the old ones. Purely a business and market adoption play. And not necessarily one that saves them costs. My 2 cents at least.

    Source: https://www.facebook.com/groups/mctnetwork/posts/2497580307050235

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    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    The following announcements were made in the last two weeks: 

    • Azure Time Series Insights will be retired on 31 March 2025 – we hardly knew ya
    • Operator Assistance in Azure MFA will be retired on 30 September 2023
    • Azure Batch supports Spot Virtual Machines, now in GA
    • On-demand capacity reservations, now in GA
    • On-demand capacity reservation with Azure Site Recovery safeguards VMs failover, now in GA
    • New planned datacenter region in India (India South Central)
    • Copy data directly to Archive Storage with Data Box, now in GA
    • App Service Environment version 1 and version 2 will be retired on 31 August 2024
    • The new Azure Front Door service, now in GA
    • NC-series, NCv2-series, ND-series, NV-series Azure Virtual Machines retirement extended to 31 August 2023
    • Azure classic storage accounts will be retired on 31 August 2024
    • Azure dedicated host support in AKS, public preview
    • Capacity reservation support in AKS, public preview
    • Cross-region snapshot copy for Azure Disk Storage, now in GA
    • Always Encrypted for Azure Cosmos DB, now in GA
    • Bring your own IP ranges to Azure, now in GA
    • ARM64-based Azure Linux VMs, bring better performance for a lower price, in 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’m working on a presentation for the Azure User Group Portugal, and I’ll be happy to share the date/time/link in the next newsletter. I’m excited about that. Continuing to record daily for my Udemy courses. 

    AZ-303 and AZ-304 have now retired, and I need to make some adjustments to the courses to deal with that. AI-900 and DP-900 had some exam objective changes, and I am making changes to those courses to deal with that. Lots of stuff going on, as always.

    If you’re in any of my courses, thanks for being a student. I really do appreciate the honor.

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 3.06. 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 3.05

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 3.05

    March 23, 2022

    Welcome to the fifth edition of the Azure World Newsletter in 2022. 

    Sunday was the first day of spring here in the Northern Hemisphere! I, for one, am excited to see better weather over the next couple of weeks. It’s been a bit rainy here in Portugal recently. I have also been enjoying the fact that sunsets are getting later each evening. Things are looking up, weather-wise.

    I hear that the US congress has passed a bill that will make daylight-savings time permanent. I am very excited about this, I hope it happens. This will make other countries consider following their lead. 

    I think this ritual of moving clocks ahead in the Spring, and then moving them back again in the Autumn, is a relic of a bygone era. We’re not farmers any more, and modern society has lighting systems that can help people who need to do work outdoors before the sun rises or after the sun sets. In my view, we need to more regularly question all rituals which don’t seem to have a purpose other than “we’ve always done it that way”. Or, “now that we do this, it’s difficult to stop”. 

    There are a few interesting things in today’s newsletter, so I hope you enjoy it. Thanks so much for being a subscriber! The unsubscribe link is at the bottom if you want to stop receiving these emails.

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    ONE.

    IT Management firm Flexera has come out with their 2022 State of the Cloud Report, and the results are good news for those working in the Microsoft Azure space.

    Microsoft Azure has passed Amazon AWS in several categories of the latest report for the first time. This was especially true in the large enterprise space.

    Azure has passed AWS is percentage of enterprises using it – 80% for Azure compared to 77% for AWS. Google placed third at 48%, and Oracle at 27% which is a steep 5% drop from last year.

    As well as the number of large scale VM deployments. 71% of enterprises have more than 51 Azure Virtual Machines, while only 69% of enterprises are running more than 51 AWS Instances.

    There is also a higher percentage of companies spending more than $1.2 million annually on Azure than on AWS. 

    With small and medium-sized businesses, AWS continues to have a lead. But that lead is narrowing. AWS dropped from 72% to 69% adoption in SMB, while Azure jumped from 48% in 2021 to 59% in 2022. That’s good news as well.

    When it comes to private clouds, Azure Stack seems to have replaced VMWare as the number 1 private cloud provider. And that change has been quite significant. Suddenly, Stack is being deployed at a rapid pace.

    I’ve covered the Flexera State of the Cloud Report in this newsletter in years past, so it’s interesting to see the progression as major cloud providers reach the point of saturation.

    Source: https://www.flexera.com/about-us/press-center/2022-state-of-the-cloud-report-by-flexera 

    TWO.

    It seems hackers are still finding and exploiting holes in security. And lately Microsoft has found itself the target of this more often than they should.

    If you recall, last year we had the huge SolarWinds breach which affected big companies and governments, and one of Microsoft’s vendors was the pathway into those customer’s systems.

    Now, someone has published some screenshots of Microsoft’s internal code directories. The source code for Bing, Bing Maps, and Cortana have apparently been accessed.

    I will say, screenshots are not proof of anything substantial. It doesn’t even mean a hacker has taken the screenshot themselves; just found the image on some random file system somewhere. 

    Microsoft is still investigating this. It’s yet to be proven. The hacker group responsible is still relatively new, and apparently no one is even sure what their demands are other than trying to get their hacker name famous. I won’t name them. 🙂 

    Source: https://venturebeat.com/2022/03/21/hacking-group-claims-to-leak-microsoft-source-code/ 

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    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    The following announcements were made in the last two weeks: 

    • Azure Chaos Studio can now simulate Key Vault and Cloud Services faults
    • Azure Backup now supports Trusted Launch VMs, in preview
    • Azure Site Recovery can now use capacity reservations to reserve compute capacity for use in a disaster recovery, in preview
    • Support for Private Link is now generally available for Azure Digital Twins
    • Azure App Services Premium Container SKU to be retired on June 30, 2022
    • Azure Private Link support in Azure API Management, in preview
    • Extended support for Microsoft .NET Core 3.1 will end on 3 December 2022
    • Select Azure Dedicated Host SKUs will be retired on 31 March 2023
    • Azure Cloud Services (classic) will be retired on 31 August 2024; must migrate to ARM deployment model before then
    • Azure Kubernetes Service on Azure Stack Hub, in preview
    • Azure Container Registry on Azure Stack Hub, in preview
    • New planned datacenter region in Finland (Finland Central), being developed
    • Azure Data Lake Analytics will be retired on 29 February 2024; migrate to Synapse Analytics before then
    • Azure QnA Maker will be retired on 31 March 2025
    • Update your Azure App Service apps to use Microsoft .NET 6 before 3 December 2022

    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.

    It’s hard to believe that the year is 22% over already. A lot has happened in some respects, but not much has happened in others.

    A couple of my courses need some significant refresh-en-ing (is that a word?), so I’m in the process of re-recording those before starting anything new. A lot of students are asking for AZ-800 and AZ-801 content, so I am considering creating content for that.

    AZ-303 and AZ-304 are retiring as of March 31, 2022, so I’ll need to reposition some content around that. I’ll be able to clean up the AZ-305 course a little bit in April, since that course can be dedicated to AZ-305.

    If you’re in any of my courses, thanks for being a student. I really do appreciate the honor.

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 3.05. 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/

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  • Azure World Newsletter – Issue 3.04

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 3.04

    March 9, 2021

    Welcome to the fourth edition of the Azure World Newsletter in 2022.

    Of course, we must first acknowledge that there have been some very distressing world events unfolding since the last newsletter. As I write this, it’s still a rapidly changing situation in Ukraine. It is estimated that 1.5 million people have had to flee their homes, and no doubt thousands have died in just the last two weeks.

    If you’ve been personally touched by these events – have had to flee yourself or have family/friends trapped in a war zone – my heart goes out to you. My heart aches thinking about the tragedy that is unfolding in Ukraine.

    Alongside the human tragedy we see on the nightly news, we’re likely entering a new era of “cyber war” in which powerful state hackers try to take down or impede critical infrastructure on the other side. Be ready to patch systems once new vulnerabilities are discovered.

    The unsubscribe link is at the bottom if you want to stop receiving these emails.

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    ONE.

    Recently, a security researcher reported a rather serious bug in Azure, and the team has patched the issue.

    Security team Orca reported a bug with Azure Automation to Azure on December 6, which apparently would have allowed scripts to “gain full control over the resources and data of a targeted account”. Basically, a classic privilege escalation exploit.

    This flaw only affected customers that used Managed Identities for authorization for Azure Automation jobs running in Azure Sandbox.

    There’s no evidence, according to Azure, that this was used in the wild by any malicious actors. But this just shows once again that, due to the complexity of these systems, there are thousands of possible vectors that need to be protected against.

    Microsoft responded within a few days of the report by ensuring tokens were only used to access the Sandbox that they legitimately had access to.

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/cloud-computing-microsoft-fixes-azure-flaw-that-could-have-allowed-access-to-other-accounts/

    TWO.

    Microsoft is trying to lay a case for migrating databases on-premises into the cloud, and they’ve taken an interesting angle with it.

    They’re saying that companies intentionally provision databases larger than they need to be. Some of this is to leave room for future growth. And there is also some built-in skepticism in the estimates causing DBAs to add buffer themselves to save from future performance problems that may not even happen.

    Their recently released white-paper even went on to say that database servers sometimes get left behind when it comes to hardware refresh budgets. So administrators know that they should request a larger server than they need now, because it could be years before the company budgets money again for database hardware.

    So what results is some fairly obvious waste that could be turned into cost-savings from migrating to the cloud.

    Imagine a brand new database server is provisioned to be twice as big as it needs to be, to accommodate the future growth expected over the next couple of years. As well, even the estimate is made to be a bit high because a two year projection can turn into three or four years before the hardware is upgraded.

    Microsoft estimates that around “85% of Oracle workloads” are actually over-provisioned. The cloud implementations would only use a fraction of the CPU power given to it on-prem.

    Oracle is pretty good at blocking it’s customers because it’s licensing costs is not optimized to virtual CPU environments.

    Oracle also has it’s own cloud, and I’m sure they’d MUCH rather you migrate to their cloud than to Microsoft.

    If you’re interested in the white paper, a link to it can be found in this Register article.

    https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/07/oracle_cloud_migration_microsoft_advice/

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    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    The following announcements were made in the last two weeks: 

    • You can now export Log Analytics workspace data
    • Direct enterprise agreement (EA) customers now have expanded access to Cost Management and Billing within the Portal
    • App Service has now enhanced options for hosting WordPress, in Preview
    • Azure Backup can now backup Azure Files multiple times per day
    • Subscribe to daily, weekly, or monthly email updates of your saved cost views in Azure Cost Management, in 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’ve now got all my studio equipment set up in Portugal, and can more easily produce video content. It’s taken a while to get to this point, but I’m excited to be working from my new home office.

    I’ll continue updating existing courses, and should be in a better position to talk about new courses in the coming weeks.

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 3.04. 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

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  • Azure World Newsletter – Issue 3.03

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 3.03

    February 23, 2021

    Welcome to the third edition of the Azure World Newsletter in 2022.

    Once again, two weeks have passed. It’s hard to believe. For me, 2022 is progressing pretty quickly. The year is 14% over at this point, which is one-seventh of the year. I need to get moving on some of my goals for 2022! Thanks again for subscribing.

    The unsubscribe link is at the bottom if you want to stop receiving these emails.

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    ONE.

    A research paper at Microsoft caught the attention of Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet. It talks about it’s AI project code-named Singularity. 

    The paper was named, “Singularity: Planet-Scale, Preemptive and Elastic Scheduling of AI Workloads” which alludes to the size of this AI project. 

    https://arxiv.org/pdf/2202.07848.pdf

    Singularity promises to scale AI workloads to hundreds of thousands of servers (GPUs and FPGAs, etc) in an efficient manner. These workloads are usually the training of an AI model which can take hours, days or even weeks depending on the job.

    This reminds me of the idea of Azure Batch Service – an orchestration layer that distributes discrete workloads to hundreds or thousands of VMs. Singularity takes the same concept but for the new types of AI workloads. 

    Singularity is focused on optimizing for the performance of the entire job. 

    If you’re interested in the future of “planet-scale” AI training, the link is above. If you want to read Mary Jo Foley’s article, this is the link here:

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-goes-public-with-details-on-its-singularity-ai-infrastructure-service/

    TWO.

    Over the last year, Microsoft has been working hard to improve the experience for customers running SQL Server in a Virtual Machine.

    In my Azure courses, I used to be able to say “if you choose to run SQL Server in a VM, that’s IaaS. You’re completely on your own. You are responsible for patching the software and the OS. You are responsible for backups. All of the work you did for SQL Server on-premises has to also be done in the cloud because you’re running SQL Server inside a VM.”

    But that’s not true anymore.

    Over the last year or two, you can now do some management of SQL Server in a VM from the Azure Portal. There is actually an Agent that runs in the virtual machine that allows the Azure Portal to interact with the SQL Server instance.

    In the Azure Portal, now you can schedule Automated Patching. Important or Critical SQL Server updates can be installed automatically during a predefined maintenance window.

    You can also schedule Automated Backups from the Portal. These are database-level backups that take into account things such as always-on availability groups. It also supports point-in-time recovery. Backups for SQL Server in a VM now have features that used to be reserved for Azure SQL Database.

    In the past week, Azure has released an update that allows you to manage the tempdb storage settings from the Portal.

    Pulling some of these management settings from SQL Server into the Portal makes it easier to manage these databases at scale, and improves the experience for database administrators. While still keeping the compatibility of running SQL Server in a virtual machine instead of the platform option.

    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql/virtual-machines/windows/sql-server-on-azure-vm-iaas-what-is-overview

    A reminder that the AZ-303 and AZ-304 exams expire at the end of March.

    Those exams together get you the Azure Architect Expert certification. Going forward, you’ll need AZ-104 and AZ-305 to get that certification. You can also get it with AZ-303 and AZ-305.

    AZ-305 is out of beta, and if you took it in beta you should have your results by now. You get that from the Microsoft MCP dashboard. 

    Two exams in beta now are AZ-800: Administering Windows Server Hybrid Core Infrastructure, and AZ-801: Configuring Windows Server Hybrid Advanced Services. These are Windows Server exams, but focus on the hybrid element. 

    AZ-800: “Administrative tools … such as Windows Admin Center, PowerShell, Azure Arc, and IaaS virtual machine administration.”

    AZ-801: “Administrative tools … such as Windows Admin Center, PowerShell, Azure Arc, Azure Automation Update Management, Microsoft Defender for Identity, Azure Security Center, Azure Migrate, and Azure Monitor.”

    Check out the new exams below:

    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/exams/az-800

    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/exams/az-801

    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql/virtual-machines/windows/sql-server-on-azure-vm-iaas-what-is-overview

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    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    The following announcements were made in the last two weeks: 

    • Azure Site Recovery can now keep up to 15 days of recovery points instead of just 72 hours
    • Azure Bastion now supports file transfer via the native client, in preview
    • OCR now supports 164 languages including Arabic and Hindi, in preview
    • Azure AKS now support tags
    • Azure Automanage for Windows Server now supports reboot-less updates (hotpatch)
    • Azure Monitor now has predictive autoscale for VM Scalesets, in preview
    • Virtual Machine level disk bursting supports additional VM types
    • Automatically delete a VM and its associated resources simultaneously
    • Application Gateway mutual authentication
    • Cost Management anomaly detection for subscriptions, in 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.

    Not much change in my status from two weeks ago. I’m recording some videos, and putting them on Youtube. As well, updating some courses where the content needs a refresh. No new courses to announce just yet.

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 3.03. 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

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  • Azure World Newsletter – Issue 3.02

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 3.02

    February 9, 2021

    Welcome to the second edition of the Azure World Newsletter in 2022.

    I hope everything is well with you. I very much appreciate that you read these emails from me, and I just want to say “Thank You”.

    The unsubscribe link is at the bottom if you want to stop receiving these emails.

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    ONE.

    When I was a teenager, I was fascinated with supercomputers like the Cray-1. I think at one point I had a poster of a Cray in my bedroom. True geek credentials +1. (There was a poster of a Lamborghini Countach next to that, so it’s not like I had a bedroom wall full of computer posters.)

    We don’t hear a lot about supercomputers these days (although you can get access to a Cray using your Azure account if you need one). But we do hear about quantum computers.

    If you’re not familiar, the great power of a quantum computer is that can (potentially) solve traditional computing problems in a fraction of the time that a powerful computer can today. I say “potentially” because we’re still at the experimental phase of this technology. If it can be proven reliable, and the potential is realized, it would have major implications for many fields including finance and cryptography.

    Azure actually provides quantum computing from four different vendors. And they are offering up to $500 credits from each of them to anyone who wants to try it.

    I believe quantum computers have their own programming language, so it’s not like you can just run your existing Web App on that hardware. So there’s a technical challenge to do that.

    Microsoft Offering Free Credits to Try Out Azure Quantum

    There do not seem to be any prerequisites for getting the credits. So if you’ve always wanted to try programming for a quantum computer, now’s your chance.

    TWO.

    Over the last year, Microsoft has been working hard to improve the experience for customers running SQL Server in a Virtual Machine.

    In my Azure courses, I used to be able to say “if you choose to run SQL Server in a VM, that’s IaaS. You’re completely on your own. You are responsible for patching the software and the OS. You are responsible for backups. All of the work you did for SQL Server on-premises has to also be done in the cloud because you’re running SQL Server inside a VM.”

    But that’s not true anymore.

    Over the last year or two, you can now do some management of SQL Server in a VM from the Azure Portal. There is actually an Agent that runs in the virtual machine that allows the Azure Portal to interact with the SQL Server instance.

    In the Azure Portal, now you can schedule Automated Patching. Important or Critical SQL Server updates can be installed automatically during a predefined maintenance window.

    You can also schedule Automated Backups from the Portal. These are database-level backups that take into account things such as always-on availability groups. It also supports point-in-time recovery. Backups for SQL Server in a VM now have features that used to be reserved for Azure SQL Database.

    In the past week, Azure has released an update that allows you to manage the tempdb storage settings from the Portal.

    Pulling some of these management settings from SQL Server into the Portal makes it easier to manage these databases at scale, and improves the experience for database administrators. While still keeping the compatibility of running SQL Server in a virtual machine instead of the platform option.

    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql/virtual-machines/windows/sql-server-on-azure-vm-iaas-what-is-overview

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    Now that we are into February, it seems that Azure engineers are back from their winter breaks and releasing new features again. 🙂

    The following announcements were made in the last two weeks:

    • Azure Site Recovery (ASR) now supports Zone-Redundant Storage disks
    • Azure Database for MySQL – Flexible Server is now available in China
    • Azure Cost Management has a new tabbed experience in preview mode
    • Azure Key Vault service throughput limits have been increased for each vault
    • Azure Maps now has historical weather, air quality and tropical storm data
    • Azure PostgreSQL can now keep backups up to 10 years
    • Azure Monitory supports testing of action groups
    • Azure Container Apps can be deployed to virtual networks, in preview mode
    • Azure Functions now supports PowerShell on Linux
    • Azure Cache for Redis active geo-replication in enterprise tiers
    • New SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines setup-like experience when deploying from the Marketplace
    • Automated backup enhancements for SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines
    • Enhanced storage configuration with tempdb for SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines

    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.

    Not much to talk about at the current time. I’m currently getting settled in Portugal, and am getting in touch with the local Azure and Microsoft MVP communities. I’m starting a couple of interesting projects, but that will take some time to develop into something worth talking about.

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 3.02. 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/

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  • Azure World Newsletter – Issue 3.01

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 3.01

    January 26, 2021

    Welcome to the first edition of the Azure World Newsletter in 2022. 

    I started the year with some good news. I was awarded the Microsoft MVP for Azure award in 2022. It’s a great honor to be recognized for my work with the Azure community. I am thankful to the Microsoft employee who nominated me, and to the tens of thousands of you who are in this wonderful Azure community. I hope to do even more in 2022 to bring lots of up-to-date Azure knowledge to you on a regular basis.

    I am writing this newsletter from my new home office in Portugal. I can’t say we’re 100% completely set up, as there is still a lot of work to do. But being able to record videos again feels like a big accomplishment. (You have to celebrate the little stuff too!) So I’ve been taking your feedback on things that need fixing and updating course videos this week. If you see something in one of my courses that can use a refresh, please let me know in the Q&A section of the course.

    It’s been a couple of months since I sent a newsletter, and so this edition will cover that period.

    The unsubscribe link is at the bottom if you want to stop receiving these emails.

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    ONE.

    If you’ve been paying attention to Apple over the past few years, one of the more interesting moves was when they started making their own computer chips. While the common wisdom at the time was to standardize on commodity hardware like Intel x86, Apple decided to go the other way with it and make their own chips. 

    After all, it’s better to let the chip companies focus on making chips, since they are the world’s experts at it, right?

    Apple had been making its own chips for the iPhone for years (the A-series). But recently they started making chips for their personal computers. The M1 chip is surprisingly much faster than the previous Intel chips they were using. The low power usage alone doubles the battery life of a Macbook. That’s an amazing improvement by making their own chips.

    And so it might come as no surprise that other companies now want to make their own chips.

    Azure recently hired chip designer Mike Fillipo from Apple, who has also previously worked at Intel and ARM. The rumor is that they are going to be making their own Azure server chips.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-12/microsoft-recruits-key-apple-engineer-to-work-on-custom-chips

    Now if Azure can get a competitive advantage over AWS and Google Cloud by moving off the Intel and AMD chipsets and onto their own custom chips, that can be worth billions of dollars to Microsoft. And of course, ultimately reduce costs to the end-users.

    Of course, the rest of Azure’s hardware is custom-designed already. There have been some interesting talks by Azure CTO Mark Russinovich on how the Azure datacenter is designed if you’re interested.

    TWO.

    Microsoft released it’s Q2 earnings yesterday, and they beat Wall Street expectations. Unfortunately, the Azure Cloud growth has slowed to a 46% annual growth rate. It was 48% annually last quarter.

    https://www.thestreet.com/markets/microsoft-stock-slumps-as-azure-growth-clouds-q2-earnings-beat

    Obviously, the pandemic has changed the trajectory of cloud adoption. Initially, it accelerated it. I remember reading a quote from an Azure VP that said that they saw adoption accelerated by a few years in 2020. Everyone needed to move their apps to the cloud, to enable their employees to work from home without complicated VPN setups. 

    But now that adoption has largely occurred, and so it’s not surprising that growth has slowed.

    I don’t want to make this an us vs them type competition, but it’s worth nothing that Amazon AWS has been growing at under 40% since 2019, and so Azure is still growing at a slightly faster pace. Actually, it’s fair to say that the “competition” between Azure and AWS has largely been silent (except for the occasional big government contract dispute) since both businesses are massive and prevalent throughout all major enterprises. We’re reaching a saturation point.

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    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    Since the last newsletter was sent at the beginning of December, a lot has happened. Here’s a summary of the highlights.

    The following announcements were made in the last two weeks:

    • Azure Communication Services now supports short codes in SMS, in Preview
    • AKS node image auto-upgrade now in GA
    • AKS auto-certificate rotation now in GA
    • Create AKS clusters without local user accounts now in GA
    • Azure is renaming “action rules” to “alert processing rules” which is clearer
    • SQL Server IaaS Agent extension for Linux SQL VMs now in GA
    • Virtual Machine restore points now in public preview
    • Availability Zones now generally available in India Central 
    • Immutable storage with versioning for Blob Storage now in GA
    • Azure Communication Services interoperability with Microsoft Teams
    • Azure Storage: Attribute-based Access Control (ABAC) conditions with principal attributes now in public preview
    • Azure Storage: Secure access to storage account from a virtual network/subnet in any region now in public preview
    • Automated key rotation in Azure Key Vault is now in public preview
    • Soft delete for blobs capability for Azure Data Lake Storage now in GA
    • Azure Policy support for Azure Site Recovery now in GA
    • Azure Ultra Disk Storage in West US 3 now in 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.

    I don’t have any new courses on the immediate horizon, but it’s a good time to go back to all of my existing courses and give them a refresh. I’ve already begun recording and editing videos for AZ-104, AZ-304, and others. Rest assured that I remain focused on the latest exam objectives for each exam code, and ensuring my courses contain up-to-date material.

    If you have ideas for Microsoft exams that could use a course, feel free to post them in the Facebook group (link below) or tag me on Twitter (also below). I’m always looking for new ideas on new ways to help students.

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 3.01. 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/

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  • Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.22

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.22

    December 1, 2021

    Welcome to the twenty-second edition of the Azure World Newsletter in 2021. 

    This is the last Azure World newsletter of the year. When I started writing these two years ago, my only intention was to get in regular communication with you, by providing you the major news from Azure over the past couple of weeks. In this time, the newsletter has now grown to over 20,000 subscribers including you. I am genuinely grateful that thousands of you read this every two weeks and I hope to continue to serve you in 2022.

    In 2022, I will be writing these newsletters from a new geographical location. I am moving from my current home in Toronto, Canada to my new home in Lisbon, Portugal. This is a new adventure for me and my family. Nothing should change for you as a newsletter reader or student. However, support might be delayed over the holiday period.

    The unsubscribe link is at the bottom if you want to stop receiving these emails.

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    ONE.

    Microsoft focuses on improved service resilience in 2022.

    There have been a few service outages in the past year, and certainly, this is one of the big challenges Azure faces in the coming years to keep its uptime promises to its customers. What’s the point of moving to the cloud when the entire operation can go down for an entire day and there’s nothing you can do about that?

    So Microsoft is working harder to ensure its key services operate without interruption. They recently increased the Service Level Agreement guarantee for Azure Active Directory (AAD) from 99.9% to 99.99%. 

    In September 2020, and again in April 2021, Azure Active Directory suffered a multi-hour outage after a bad deployment on their side. This left applications that rely on AAD being unable to log in including the Azure Portal, Teams, Exchange, and user apps that rely on it.

    So having them double down on the availability of these services to hopefully prevent outages in the future is a smart step.

    One of their strategies for backup is to have a cache of Azure authentications. This way, if AAD was to go down for any length of time, most users will still be able to log in using the cached copy of their credentials. Microsoft claims this will help in 93 percent of cases, making the outage less severe.

    Azure CTO Mark Russinovich addressed this in a recent blog post.

    https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/advancing-service-resilience-in-azure-active-directory-with-its-backup-authentication-service/

    TWO.

    Azure launches a fully-managed load testing service.

    This makes perfect sense. It wasn’t too long ago when I was working on a big project that was expecting a huge amount of traffic around US Thanksgiving. We prepared the site for months for that big week. Not only adding some more servers, but doing proper load testing and finding out where the bottlenecks of the application were and fixing them.

    Load Testing is critical, and having an official Azure Load Testing product is overdue.

    Sure, Visual Studio Team System had some built-in testing features, but you really need to spin up a lot of external servers to really drive traffic to your site in an authentic way. Not just one machine simulating hundreds of users.

    Azure DevOps also had some load testing features, but that had been deprecated earlier this year. Now we know what they planned to do as a replacement.

    “Azure Load Testing is a fully-managed Azure service that allows developers and testers to generate high-scale load with custom Apache JMeter scripts”, says the announcement.

    If you have an application that has the potential to have to scale quickly, it’s in your best interests to do some load testing. You’ll reveal things that you didn’t know. And some of the mitigations are quite easy to implement, such as web caching and CDN. 

    For instance, for that project a few years ago, we fixed a lot of code bugs, cached a lot, disabled logins for that period, and got ourselves to the point where the hardware load balancer we were using was the bottleneck. When internet components outside your application become the bottleneck… that’s a whole new level of problems but at least it’s not your application or database.

    https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/introducing-azure-load-testing-optimize-app-performance-at-scale/

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    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    It’s been a quiet two weeks. Since Ignite was at the beginning of November, most of the announcements have been made and now it’s time for Microsoft to implement

    The following announcements were made in the last two weeks:

    • Some VPN Gateway SKUs can now support up to 100 S2S/Vnet-to-Vnet connections, up from 30
    • New planned data center region in Belgium called Belgium Central (p.s. I love Belgium)
    • Azure Scheduler will be retired on 31 January 2022
    • OpenID Connect authentication now supported for App Service and Azure Functions
    • Application Gateway now supports wildcard characters for multi-site listeners
    • VPN Gateway NAT now general availability

    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.

    That’s it for the Azure World newsletter for 2021.

    I want to thank you so much for signing up for this, and I wish you and your family a happy, safe, and peaceful end of the year.

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 2.22. Thanks for reading this far.

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

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