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  • Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.21

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.21

    November 17, 2021

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

    I am so grateful to have you as a subscriber.

    In the blink of an eye, another two weeks have passed. I guess I’ve been completely busy with a few things, including the launch of a new course and preparing my courses for the upcoming holiday period.

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

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    ONE.

    The AZ-305 Azure Architect Design beta has become available this week. There are a limited number of coupons that will allow you to take that exam at a discount while it’s in Beta.

    https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-learn-blog/exam-az-305-beta-prove-your-skills-as-an-azure-solutions/ba-p/2147115

    As you might recall from a previous newsletter, Microsoft has re-architected how the Azure Architect Expert certification is earned.

    Up until March 31, 2022, you can earn the Azure Architect Expert certification by passing both AZ-303 and AZ-304. You can also earn it by passing AZ-303 and AZ-305. Both AZ-303 and AZ-304 exams expire on March 31, 2022.

    No worries if you’ve already passed those exams. Your active certification is not affected by the expiry of the exams.

    You can also earn Azure Architect Expert certification by passing AZ-104 and AZ-305. This means that some people can get Expert certified with one fewer exam than the old requirements. Less studying, less cost.

    If you weren’t planning to get the Azure Administrator certificate, then you now have to do that under the new requirements.

    Sign up for the beta of AZ-305 if you’re interested. See if the coupon is still valid for that. And rest assured that I’m updating my AZ-304 course with the new content. I’ve already started on that.

    TWO.

    The new Microsoft Azure Region in Sweden is now active. This was announced a year ago.

    There was a rumor that the rack hardware was provided by IKEA. (Sorry, that’s the best joke I could come up with at the moment. I haven’t been getting enough sleep lately.)

    The Swedish data center was built using sustainable principles, using 100 percent carbon-free energy. They are investing in renewable energy projects with some partners around that too.

    Interesting tidbit. The backup generators for the new data center use diesel fuel made with 50% renewable raw material. So even in an emergency, Microsoft will be reducing the harm to the environment in its energy usage.

    The facilities are cooled with outside air 100% of the year, and rainwater is captured to provide water to the facility.

    https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/microsoft-opens-new-azure-cloud-region-in-sweden/

    THREE.

    I am pleased to finally launch my new DP-300 Azure Data Administrator exam preparation course on Udemy.

    If you are one of the first readers to see this newsletter, I’ll offer a limited number of free spots using this link:

    https://www.udemy.com/course/dp300-azure/?couponCode=FIRST100

    The first 100 students to click the above link can get the course for free as a thank you for reading this newsletter every couple of weeks. If you missed the free link, you can still get the course at its launch price of US $9.99.

    https://www.udemy.com/course/dp300-azure/?couponCode=LAUNCH10

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    There were a ton of other announcements. 90+ Satya said in the keynote. I can’t cover them all here. But check some of the more interesting ones out.

    The following announcements were made in the last two weeks:

    • Bastion Standard SKU in GA
    • Trusted launch for Azure Virtual Machines in GA
    • API Management and Event Grid integration
    • Azure Virtual Network Manager in preview
    • Managed Identities for Azure Automation in GA
    • Azure OpenAI service brings GPT-3 to Azure, in preview
    • Azure Site Recovery supports failover for multiple IP configurations
    • ExpressRoute supports Azure Virtual Desktop Shortpath RDP over Private Peering
    • Static Web Apps now supports .NET 6 Blazor apps
    • .NET 6.0 in Azure Functions now GA
    • Azure Functions Runtime 4.0
    • PowerShell on Linux for Azure Functions in preview
    • Azure Bastion native client support in preview
    • Azure Web PubSub is now in GA
    • App Service support for .NET 6 is now in GA
    • Multi subnet support for SQL Server in a Virtual Machine
    • Azure Archive rehydration priority can be altered after requested
    • VM Applications – deploy applications to VMs and VM Scale sets
    • Microsoft Azure Sweden region now GA
    • Availability Zones for the East Asia region
    • SFTP support for Azure Blob Storage is now in preview
    • Virtual Machine Selector tool lets you find the VM instance type that meets your needs
    • Azure SQL bindings for Azure Functions 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 going to take a break for a little while now that US Thanksgiving is here. I will continue to keep an eye on the courses on Udemy to ensure they’re up to date, including the AZ-305 additions to AZ-304. But don’t expect much from me in the next 2 weeks.

    The next newsletter, on December 1, will be the last one of the year.

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 2.21. 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

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    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter
  • Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.20

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.20

    November 3, 2021

    Welcome to the twentieth edition of the Azure World Newsletter in 2021. 

    I am so grateful to have you as a subscriber. 

    I’ve got the Microsoft Ignite sessions playing in the background as I write this. The online event has kicked off this week, and hopefully, you had a chance to watch some of it. You can watch the videos after the fact if there’s something that you wanted to see and missed.

    I do miss attending in person. Hopefully, in 2022, we can get back to meeting each other in person.

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

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    ONE.

    One of the first announcements that caught my attention at Ignite is a new serverless Container service called Azure Container Apps.

    Container Apps is a new way to host containers in the cloud at scale.

    While Azure Container Instances has limitations on the scaling of apps, Container Apps let you deploy code without having to worry about those limits. And because it’s serverless, you can even let it scale down to zero. Like Functions, you are only charged while it’s running. And there’s a free tier if you’re running containers that don’t need to run constantly.

    https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/apps-on-azure/introducing-azure-container-apps-a-serverless-container-service/ba-p/2867265?ocid=AID3042118

    TWO.

    There has been a trend inside Azure for “managers”. It started with Azure Monitor for centralized logs. And Azure Security Center for centralized security. There is the “Azure Firewall Manager” to manage all of the firewall rules in one central location. 

    And now there is the “Azure Virtual Network Manager”. Customers can manage their virtual networks across subscriptions and help manage complex network topologies. 

    It’s a good trend. Instead of having 100’s of individual resources which need to be managed one by one, you now have specialized dashboards that allow you to set policies across your subscription, or across a management group. 

    https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/virtual-network-manager/

    THREE.

    My absolute favorite Azure service name has to be “Azure Chaos Studio”.

    As the name implies, Chaos Studio helps you simulate outages so that you can see the effect that has on your applications and services.

    If you ever wanted to see the effect of a Region going down on your app, you can simulate that. You can also add time delays, CPU pressure, physical and virtual memory pressure, disk I/O pressure, DNS failure, network disconnects, and 25+ other faults. 

    Some of these are hard to simulate yourself, so this new tool should make it easier to test your disaster recovery readiness.


    https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-governance-and-management/announcing-the-public-preview-of-azure-chaos-studio/ba-p/2893050

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    There were a ton of other announcements. 90+ Satya said in the keynote. I can’t cover them all here. But check some of the more interesting ones out.

    The following announcements were made in the last two weeks:

    • Visual Studio Code for the Web in public preview
    • Azure Advisor recommendations for Azure Data Explorer Clusters in GA
    • Azure Backup now supports Archive Tier through Azure Portal in GA
    • Azure Policy for Azure Key Vault in GA
    • Azure Spot Virtual Machines “try to restore” functionality in GA
    • Azure Data Explorer Insights in GA
    • Multiple backups per day for Azure Files in public preview
    • Gateway Load Balancer in public preview
    • Metrics and Metric alerts for Azure Backup in public preview
    • Multi-user authorization for Azure Backup is in public preview
    • AKS node pool user start/stop feature in public preview
    • Azure Cache for Redis now supports Redis 6.0
    • Dapr extension for AKS in public preview
    • Azure SQL Managed Instance now has a Link feature in public preview
    • Provisioned throughput spending limit for Azure Cosmos DB in GA
    • Azure Managed Instance for Apache Cassandra service in GA
    • Azure Cosmos DB: Partial document update now in GA
    • Cost-saving recommendations in Azure Advisor for Azure Cosmos DB now GA
    • Log Analytics Workspace Insights in Azure Monitor in GA
    • Azure Container Apps in public preview
    • Live resize of Azure Disk Storage in public preview
    • Centralized management of keys for encrypting Azure disks in GA
    • Provisioned throughput increase for Azure Ultra Disk Storage in GA
    • Azure Service Bus large message support in GA
    • New orchestration mode for Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets in GA
    • Autoscale public preview is now available for Azure Virtual Desktop
    • Azure Chaos Studio is now in public preview
    • New Azure virtual machines for confidential workloads – DCsv3 and DCdsv3

    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 am watching some of the Ignite sessions this week. Work continues on the DP-300 course when that’s not going on. Getting myself set up for November which is a popular time of year for online instructors like myself.

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 2.20. 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
  • Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.19

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.19

    October 20, 2021

    Welcome to the nineteenth edition of the Azure World Newsletter in 2021.

    I am so grateful to have you as a subscriber.

    A reminder that Microsoft Ignite 2021 is coming up on November 2-4, and registration is now open. It’s a conference I used to enjoy going to in-person, and get a lot out of it online.

    https://myignite.microsoft.com/home

    I was away from home two weeks ago, and so this has been the first newsletter in a month. We have a lot of catching up to do…

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

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    ONE.

    An unnamed Microsoft Azure customer in Europe was recently attacked with a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack at an amazing 2.4 terabits per second. And survived. This is the highest volume Azure has ever seen – 140% higher than the previous record from 2020.

    According to an announcement by Microsoft, around 70,000 sources in the USA, Vietnam, Taiwan, and others (a botnet) sent a massive UDP flood attacking an Azure customer with UDP packets across a wide range of ports in an attempt to overwhelm the network and take the target website offline. The attack lasted just 10 minutes.

    But thanks to Azure’s DDoS platform protection, the attack was not successful.

    https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/business-as-usual-for-azure-customers-despite-24-tbps-ddos-attack/

    TWO.

    Azure’s Architect Expert certification is undergoing a change in 2022.

    The current Azure Architect Expert certification requires two exams – AZ-303 and AZ-304. In the future, the exam will also require two exams – AZ-104 and AZ-305.

    Many of us already have the AZ-104 exam because it’s the Azure Administrator certification test. So if you get Azure Administrator, getting the Architect certification only requires one additional exam.

    If you already have the Azure Architect Expert certification, this news doesn’t affect you. You’re certified, and in a year you’ll need to renew in the normal way.

    If you are currently studying for one or both of the AZ-303 and AZ-304 exams, you’ll have some time to pass both before it’s too late. Those exams expire in March 2022. So you have 4 or 5 months to pass the existing tests, and in that way, this news may not affect you either.

    But if you have already passed AZ-104, and want to take the shortcut by passing AZ-305, you can wait a little. The exam goes into Beta in November 2021. Beta exams are not scored right away, so it’ll take a few weeks to find out if you passed.

    Or you can wait until early 2022 when the exam is live, and pass AZ-104+AZ-305 or AZ-303+AZ-305.

    As you can expect, I’ll be all over this for the next few months, updating my courses. Stay tuned for news on that.

    https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-learn-blog/reimagining-the-azure-solutions-architect-expert-certification/ba-p/2813695

    THREE.

    Also in exam news, Microsoft seems to be coming up with more specialty exams. The first of these is an Azure Cosmos DB Developer specialty certification.

    This makes sense, as Cosmos DB is an important central component of Azure data skills. Some of the existing exams (like DP-300) focus on the relational data side, and so it’s good to see Cosmos DB getting some certification attention.

    So the new DP-420 exam will focus on the non-relational side of databases. This is an exciting new release for developers who want to prove their expertise with certification.

    https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-learn-blog/coming-soon-the-new-azure-cosmos-db-developer-specialty/ba-p/2834982

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    The following announcements were made in the last two weeks: 

    • Oracle consistent snapshots using Azure VM Backup is in GA
    • Azure Database for MySQL: Azure Pipelines support in public preview
    • Azure Database for PostgreSQL – Flexible Server: Azure Pipelines in public preview
    • Azure Functions runtime 4.0 is now in public preview
    • Norway East Availability Zones now GA
    • Azure Purview is now generally available
    • Enable hierarchical namespace for existing Azure Storage accounts in GA
    • Azure Maps Geolocation Service is now GA
    • Korea Central Availability Zones now GA
    • South Africa North Availability Zones now GA
    • Windows 11 on Azure Virtual Desktop now GA
    • Azure Functions Python 3.9 support is now generally available
    • Dynamic concurrency in Azure Functions in public preview
    • AKS support for Kubernetes 1.22 in public preview
    • AKS: IPv6 for Kubenet in public preview
    • IP-based website protection for Azure Static Web Apps now GA
    • Azure Synapse Analytics pre-purchase plans, 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.

    I had a lovely trip away at the end of September and the beginning of October. I’m now ready to get back to work.

    I have a number of courses in various stages of development. This week, I’ve been spending time working with Jordi on a DP-300 Administering Relational Databases on Azure certification course. There’s a lot of work to go on that, but videos are being produced and uploaded to Udemy. The course is slowly coming together.

    I’ll hold off talking about the other courses since it’s better for me to focus on one thing at a time. Now that we’re halfway through October, there are only two more months left in the year and I need to buckle down and complete everything I have underway.

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 2.19. 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
  • Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.18

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.18

    September 22, 2021

    Welcome to the eighteenth edition of the Azure World Newsletter in 2021. 

    I am so grateful to have you as a subscriber. 

    A reminder that Microsoft Ignite 2021 is coming up on November 2-4, and registration is now open. It’s a conference I used to enjoy going to in-person, and get a lot out of it online. https://myignite.microsoft.com/home 

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

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    ONE.

    Virtual Machine Scale Sets is getting some cool new features.

    Microsoft is calling it “flexible orchestration mode”, and gives you more power when it comes to how VMs scale up and down.

    For instance, there is a new “AI Prediction” option for scaling. Instead of relying on specific metrics or specific dates/times, you can leave it to AI to predict when to expand and contract the scale set. Is there anything AI can’t do? I think not!

    You can also include spot instances and regular instances in the same scale set. A cool way to save some money depending on your workload.

    And it also includes “automatic instance repair”, where “unhealthy” VMs are automatically replaced. 

    This is in public preview now. Check out Flexible Orchestration if this is interesting to you. 

    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/flexible-virtual-machine-scale-sets

    TWO.

    On-demand capacity reservations for Virtual Machines are also now in public preview.

    The idea here is that you know that you’re going to be needing a certain number of VMs in a short period of time. Let’s say you are going to need 2500 VMs in a few days’ time.

    And let’s also say that those VMs are critical for your business. You are launching a big promotion, spending millions on advertising, and you will need to be able to spin up the extra capacity for this event. 

    You can reserve those VMs in advance. 

    Before now, you could deploy those VMs a few days early (and pay for that) just to ensure they are available for use. This is wasteful both in terms of the money spent on computing power you’re not using, and the management overhead of running so many VMs for all those extra days. Even if they’re stopped, there is cost and overhead to that.

    Unlike Reserved Instances, you don’t have to commit to a 1- or 3-year term for this. The reservations can be canceled at any time for no extra cost.

    This is a rather niche service for people who absolutely need VMs in the future and are willing to pay a little something to reserve the capacity in the region and availability zone that they wish to use. Without having to pay for all the extra stuff like storage and operating system licenses.

    https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/guarantee-capacity-access-with-ondemand-capacity-reservations-now-in-preview/

    THREE.

    Please be advised that I will not be able to send a newsletter on October 6. The next newsletter will be on October 20. Sorry for the inconvenience.

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    The following announcements were made in the last two weeks: 

    • Azure VM Scale Sets with Flexible Orchestration mode in public preview
    • On-demand capacity reservations for Azure VMs in public preview
    • Screen capture protection for Azure Virtual Desktop is generally available
    • AKS Run command is generally available
    • Scale down mode for AKS is in public preview
    • Azure VMware Solution achieves FedRAMP High Authorization
    • Azure Virtual Desktop is now available in the Azure China cloud
    • Azure Archive Storage now available in three new regions: Norway East, UAE North, and Germany West Central
    • Azure Reservations can now be scoped to a Management Group and not only a subscription, 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’m actually going on vacation for a couple of weeks. Hopefully, I’m not tempting fate too much and Microsoft doesn’t take this opportunity to change all their exams next week. 

    Stay safe everyone, and I wish you all the best!

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 2.18. 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

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter
  • Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.17

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.17

    September 8, 2021

    Welcome to the seventeenth edition of the Azure World Newsletter in 2021. 

    Here in Toronto, the kids are heading back to school this week and the temperatures are a bit cooler. It’s funny how the weather changes in a single day. One day, stifling heat. And the next, you can easily be without air conditioning. I expect the stifling heat will return later this month. But you really miss it that first week that it’s gone.

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

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    ONE.

    Microsoft is rolling out support for Availability Zones in App Service Plans. It’s in general availability as of now.

    As you know, Availability Zones gives us increased availability within a region. Of course, you can deploy your applications across multiple regions (using an App Gateway for instance) to get global availability. But now we can get increased availability inside the same region.

    There are some very specific requirements in order to use Availability Zones with App Services.

    1. You must be running on Premium V2 or V3 level plans
    2. Minimum of 3 instances (one for each zone)
    3. Must be running in a supported region
    4. Must be a NEW app service plan
    5. Must be deployed using ARM templates

    Currently, converting a pre-existing App Service Plan to support availability zones is not supported. So if you want to take advantage of this, you must recreate the service plan and redeploy.

    It’s also only supported in the “new portion” of the data center, so that’s why you need to be on Premium V2 or V3 in order to get this new feature.

    The last requirement is interesting. It’s currently not supported in the Azure Portal or with either of the command-line SDKs. So you must deploy this using ARM templates. Hopefully, they add that function to those interfaces soon.

    https://azure.github.io/AppService/2021/08/25/App-service-support-for-availability-zones.html

    TWO.

    I probably should mention the vulnerability that was discovered in Cosmos DB a couple of weeks ago.

    Apparently, it was not actually used by “bad guys” (as far as Microsoft can tell), but security researchers discovered a way to access any Cosmos DB account through an exploit in Jupyter Notebooks functionality.

    The researchers were able to gain privilege escalation through Notebooks, which gave them the ability to get the “access keys” of any other Cosmos DB account. Which as you know, gives you full read/write access.

    Around 30% of customers received an email from Microsoft telling them to regenerate their Cosmos DB access keys. But the security researchers suggest that every Cosmos DB customer regenerates their keys.

    If you’re in a position to do so, I’d look to regenerate your access keys. Maybe this is a good opportunity to make it easy for yourself to update the keys by putting a reliable process in place to do so and testing that process. Like changing a password, you can do that every few months on a schedule.

    https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/08/worst-cloud-vulnerability-you-can-imagine-discovered-in-microsoft-azure/

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    The following announcements were made in the last two weeks: 

    • Automatic key rotation of customer-managed keys for encrypting Azure disks, now in GA
    • Change performance tiers for Azure Premium SSDs with no downtime, now in GA.
    • Windows Server IoT 2022, now generally available
    • Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise, in private preview
    • Custom AKS policy support, now public preview
    • Azure Route Server, now in GA
    • NSG support for Private Link, now in public preview
    • User-Defined Routes (UDR) support for Private Link, now in public preview
    • Azure Files supports reservations for storage capacity
    • Azure App Service support for Availability Zones, now in GA

    The last newsletter contained a lot of service retirements. There are still a few more to come:

    • Java 7 to be retired from App Service on 29 July 2022
    • ND-series Azure Virtual Machines will be retired by 31 August 2022
    • Multi-step web tests will be retired on 31 August 2024
    • Azure Functions support for Python 3.6 is ending on 30 September 2022
    • Azure Functions support for Node 6 is ending on 28 February 2022
    • Azure Functions support for Node 8 is ending on 28 February 2022
    • Azure Functions support for Node 10 is ending on 30 September 2022
    • Azure Functions support for PowerShell 6 is ending on 30 September 2022
    • Community support for Python 3.7 is ending on 27 June 2023
    • Azure AD Graph is retiring on 30 June 2022
    • Upgrade to the latest version of Azure AD Connect before 31 August 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.

    My SC-300 course is now live. It’s available for students in Udemy Business, or you can pick it up using the link below. It’s rated 4.96 stars right now. This course covers the exam SC-300: Microsoft Identity and Access Administrator. Passing that exam gets you Microsoft Certified: Identity and Access Administrator Associate certification.

    https://www.udemy.com/course/sc300-azure/?couponCode=SEP2021

    I now turn my attention to something people have been asking me to create for years. Another security-related exam, AZ-500. I hope to have that out this month. So stay tuned to this space in future newsletters for updates.

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 2.17. 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 2.16

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.16

    August 25, 2021

    Welcome to the sixteenth edition of the Azure World Newsletter in 2021. 

    We’re coming to the end of August, can you believe it? I actually like fall weather in Canada. September and October are some pleasant months. If you’re ever planning to come visit Canada, fall is a great time to do it. 

    When November comes, it starts to get colder and jackets are required. That’s when the weather stops being so nice. So I have to enjoy it before then.

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

    >>> BACK TO SCHOOL PRACTICE LABS SPECIAL: 

    Do you wish you could get more hands-on practice with Azure or AWS?

    For a limited time, get 700+ practice labs & 12 months of cloud access, for only $99!

    I sell this product on GetCloudSkills.com for $125 normally. But for the first 100 people to use the link below, the price will drop to $99. After that, the price will return to $125 which is still a great price. 

    You get 700+ practice labs across Azure, AWS, Linux, Cybersecurity, Windows Server, and more. You get 3 attempts at each lab and over 700 labs to try. That is hundreds of hours of practice over the next year. And each lab comes with access to Azure or AWS cloud accounts for free! There are no additional costs to you to learn Azure or AWS using hands-on labs besides this one price for the next 12 months.

    This code is limited to 100 uses. So grab it before it’s gone. 

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    Find out more details about the labs here including a video that demonstrates:

    https://getcloudskills.com/all-labs/
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    ONE.

    Microsoft has announced the next Microsoft Ignite for fall 2021, from November 2-4.

    I know it’s a bit early to start thinking about Ignite. And you can’t register for it yet. But the dates are announced, so you can add it to your calendar and tell your boss you won’t be available for those days. 

    https://myignite.microsoft.com/home

    TWO.

    Microsoft has released its quarterly updates to the exams. Several exams are seeing minor updates as of September 24, 2021. So you have some time to adjust before then, and none of the changes are major.

    • AZ-104 has added a single new requirement. So the changes are minor. 
    • AZ-303 has added Bicep to the exam requirements, so there are some interesting changes there. 
    • AZ-304 and AI-102 saw only wording changes, with nothing else changing. 
    • AZ-900, DP-900, AI-900, SC-900, AZ-204, DP-100 : no changes, so far. 

    Of course, I will make changes to the relevant courses before then. 

    AZ-303 seems to have the most changes to its objectives of any exam I’ve seen:

    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/exams/az-303

    THREE.

    I personally took the AZ-700 exam in beta within the last couple of weeks, and the exam was interesting. To say the least.

    The exam had a lot of questions that followed a common format. Such as, “you have a Virtual Network named VNET1, which has two Subnets attached named SUBNET1 and SUBNET2. SUBNET1 uses NSG1 while SUBNET2 uses NSG2. There is also a gateway subnet named GATEWAYSUBNET with a network gateway named GATEWAY1….”

    My brain gets a headache by the end of the first paragraph on a question like this, and there are three more paragraphs to read. For some reason, I just can’t keep all of the details in my head at the same time when they are written out as a paragraph like this. And of course, we can’t scribble notes on a piece of paper so we can’t organize them in a way that helps.

    By the time the question asks “What is the result of trying to connect to VM1 using VM2 over port 80?” I’ve forgotten all of the details of what network VM1 belongs to and all of the various details of what security restrictions VM1 has on it.

    Anyways, long story short, this exam was tougher than I expected. Time was a factor. 59 questions over 120 minutes averages to around 2 minutes per question. And I can’t even read a question like the above in 2 minutes, let alone answer it.

    The few people I have talked to that took AZ-700 described similar experiences of running out of time and finding the questions more difficult than expected.

    Oh well. I hope Microsoft Worldwide Learning gets valuable feedback on the questions that work and the questions that don’t. Maybe it’s me. Or maybe it’s the exam. We’ll see in the fall when those exam scores come back…

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    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    The following announcements were made in the last two weeks: 

    • Azure Defender for SQL now GA for Azure SQL Virtual Machine
    • Private Link for Azure Managed HSM now GA
    • ExpressRoute Global Reach has 2 new locations
    • Global disaster recovery via Azure Site Recovery in GA
    • Azure VPN client for macOS
    • Azure Migrate can containerize apps for AKS and App Service in preview
    • Azure VMs can now auto-upgrade extensions
    • GitHub Codespaces in GA
    • Azure Blob storage Inventory now in GA
    • Azure Cosmos DB: Continuous backup with point in time restore now in GA
    • Application Insights auto-instrumentation of .NET apps on Linux in public preview
    • AKS support for Kubernetes 1.21 in GA
    • Azure Archive Storage events for easy rehydration of archived blobs in GA
    • Azure Blob storage – Last access time tracking now in GA
    • Windows 11 public preview is now available on Azure Virtual Desktop
    • Apply settings inside machines using Azure Policy’s guest configuration in public preview

    This past fortnight, there were a TON of announcements of services being retired. Be aware of the following services and version numbers going away in the next couple of years.

    • Select Azure Cognitive Search skills will be retired on 31 August 2024
    • Upgrade to Text-to-Speech Neural Voice  by 31 August 2024
    • Update Java SDK 3.x to Java SDK 4.x by 31 August 2024
    • Tomcat 7 reached End-of-Life on 23 March 2021
    • Migrate your Azure IoT Central apps to version 3 before 1 March 2022
    • Basic and Standard A-series VMs will retire on 31 August 2024
    • HB-series Azure Virtual Machines will be retired by 31 August 2024
    • H-series Azure Virtual Machines will be retired by 31 August 2022
    • NC-series Azure Virtual Machines will be retired by 31 August 2022
    • NC v2-series Azure Virtual Machines will be retired by 31 August 2022
    • NV-series and NV_Promo Azure Virtual Machines will be retired by 31 August 2022
    • Azure AD B2C redirect URL login.microsoftonline.com will be retired on 31 August 2022
    • Version 2.x of the Azure Cosmos DB .NET SDK will be retired on 31 August 2024
    • Community support for PHP 7.3 is ending on 6 December 2021
    • Azure Data Factory Compute Optimized data flows will be retired on 31 August 2024
    • Cloud Services (classic) deployment model is retiring on 31 August 2024
    • Machine Learning Studio (classic) will retire on 31 August 2024
    • Log Analytics agent in Azure Monitor will retire on 31 August 2024
    • Transition to new work item integration in Application Insights by 31 August 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.

    I was hoping to have launched my next course on SC-300 exam by the time this newsletter goes out. Unfortunately, I may be a few days delayed on that. Oh well. In the next newsletter, I’ll provide a discount link to my SC-300 course.

    Coming up after that, I want to finish up some more practice test questions for AZ-700 based on my experience taking the exam in beta. And maybe I’ll need a nap after that.

    Thanks for reading this far! 

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 2.16. 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 2.15

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.15

    August 4, 2021

    Welcome to the fifteenth edition of the Azure World Newsletter in 2021. 

    As I sit here to write this newsletter, I can’t help but feel extremely grateful that you’re subscribed to this list. I have the privilege of writing this newsletter every two weeks in an email that gets sent to tens of thousands of you, recording courses that guide thousands of students around the world, and virtually connecting with many of you over Twitter, Facebook, and through Udemy. Thank you for being here.

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

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    ONE.

    Ransomware has been in the news a lot in the past couple of years. From entire American cities that have been taken over by it (Baltimore 2018), core energy infrastructure such as a gas pipeline (Colonial Pipeline), schools, hospitals, and companies all over the world have been taken hostage by these hackers demanding payment to unlock their devices.

    These attacks appear to be increasing every year. It’s clear something more needs to be done.

    Microsoft is adding Fusion ransomware detection to Azure Sentinel. This tool can detect attacks in place, and alert you to help prevent them from succeeding.

    It does this of course through pattern matching (machine learning). According to the article, “The Fusion system will correlate data from Azure Defender (Azure Security Center), Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender for Identity, Microsoft Cloud App Security and Azure Sentinel scheduled analytics rules.”

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-announces-new-ransomware-detection-features-for-azure/

    TWO.

    Over time, Azure continues to chip away at AWS’ global cloud market share.

    According to the most recent revenue reports from Amazon and Microsoft, Azure has grown to take 22% of the global market share for cloud “infrastructure” services. Meanwhile, over the past 4 years, AWS has maintained about a 31% market share.

    Now surely the overall market is growing, so market “share” is a bit misleading. 

    But it’s interesting nonetheless to see these two Internet giants slowly approach market parity. Interesting to me, at least. 

    Google Cloud Platform is also “standing still” while maintaining an 8% market share.

    I’ve been saying for years that the trend is “multi-cloud”, where big companies use the best services from both top vendors (and perhaps all three). 

    Azure has been releasing various services that happily co-exist with AWS, including Azure Arc, Application Gateways, Azure Monitor, Cost Optimization, Service Fabric and others that can integrate with servers running in AWS.

    https://www.statista.com/statistics/967365/worldwide-cloud-infrastructure-services-market-share-vendor/

    THREE.

    Have you gone through any Azure Certification renewals yet?

    I’ve gone through a few already. I actually thought the process was pretty good. Here are my top 10 tips on the certification renewal process. If you have a renewal coming up – or a few –  hopefully these tips make it seem easier than it seems.

    1. Microsoft will send (several) emails to your registered email address to remind you of the renewal. The ones that I’ve seen are 180-days and 90-days. I’m sure they send more, but I haven’t let the certifications get that close to expiry yet.
    2. Passing the certification renewal adds one year to the expiry date of your certification, regardless of when you take the renewal assessment. Waiting to take the assessment until the expiry date doesn’t add more time, and taking the assessment early doesn’t penalize you.
    3. Taking the assessment is free. If you fail, you can re-take it once more in the first 24 hours, and once per 24 hours after that.
    4. If you fail, Microsoft suggests some MS Learn modules for you to take before retrying.
    5. The assessment tests focus on “new exam objectives” since you took the exam. So in some ways, these assessments might be more difficult than you expect. Instead of getting 1 or 2 questions about a topic on a real certification exam, you might find 6 or 7 questions about the same topic on an assessment.
    6. You can see the assessment topics on the certification renewal page, before starting the assessment. So you can see the list of topics and do a little studying beforehand to prepare before starting the assessment for the first time.
    7. Unlike a real certification test, there is no time limit to finish the assessment. You can take minutes or you can take hours.
    8. There is no proctor, no ID required, and nobody is watching you.
    9. You get your results right away, pass or fail. Microsoft puts up a little fireworks to congratulate you if you passed and tells you your new certification expiry date.
    10. Don’t be afraid to fail. Just take the assessment without much preparation the first time, to get a feeling for it. There is no penalty for failing and you’ll be much better prepared to take the exam the second time. And who knows, you just might pass the first time without preparation.

    Those are my tips for the exam renewal process. Below is a video I made a few weeks ago, talking about my experience with it.

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    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    The following announcements were made in the last two weeks: 

    • Azure ExpressRoute has 3 new peering locations: Campinas, Sao Paulo2, and Dublin2
    • Immutable Storage with Versioning for Blob Storage now in public preview
    • Start VM on Connect for Azure Virtual Desktop in GA
    • Web Application Firewall (WAF) geo-match custom rules on Application Gateway in GA
    • Web Application Firewall (WAF) bot protection on Application Gateway in GA
    • Azure Backup now supports Archive Tier for backups of SQL Server in Azure VMs in GA
    • Azure Database for MySQL – Flexible Server now offers reserved instance pricing
    • Azure Database for PostgreSQL – Flexible Server now offers reserved instance pricing

    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.

    My AZ-700 course launched 2 weeks ago and has been very popular. Thanks to all of you who have taken the course. Your reviews mean the world to me!

    I am writing some practice test questions for AZ-700 and will add them to the course. I’ll also have a full “practice test” course available at some point on Udemy.

    Thanks for reading this far! 

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 2.15. 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 2.14

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.14

    July 28, 2021

    Welcome to the fourteenth edition of the Azure World Newsletter in 2021. 

    I’ve been heads-down working on new things over the past couple of weeks. And so, as usual, the time just flew by. I hope you are all doing well, and enjoying your summer (if it’s summer where you are). 

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

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    ONE.

    A few weeks ago, Microsoft pre-announced a new exam for Azure, AZ-700 Design and Implement Azure Networking. Networking is one of those topics like security which is foundational to computing and will always be a required skill. So this was a brilliant move.

    Now, they’ve moved the exam into Beta:

    https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-learn-blog/beta-exam-prove-your-expertise-as-an-azure-network-engineer/ba-p/2147116

    Beta exams, as you may know, are a bit special in that they are a bit longer than normal exams and you don’t get your score right away. Microsoft will ask a few additional questions during the beta, evaluate the results across all of the candidates, and only later decide which questions count and which get “tossed in the bin”.

    If this interests you, you can find details of the exam here on the exam objectives page:

    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/exams/az-700

    And if you’re looking for 6-hours of video training covering all the key Azure elements of the exam, well then I have something for that too.

    https://www.udemy.com/course/az700-azure/?couponCode=LAUNCH10

    Special launch pricing of US$9.99 or local currency equivalent.

    This course is brand-new, recorded in the last couple of weeks, and covers all of the requirements of this beta exam. Be one of the first students of this course, and be one of the first people to book and take the AZ-700 Azure Networking exam. You’ll gain an Azure Networking Engineer badge as a reward for passing.

    (Note: Udemy Business students should already see this course in their company’s course catalog.)

    TWO.

    Microsoft just released its fourth-quarter earnings. Once again, they blew away expectations from analysts.

    Total Microsoft revenue was up 21% from a year ago, earning $16.5 billion in the quarter in profits. That’s a couple of billion more than analysts were expecting.

    Microsoft Azure specifically posted 51% annual revenue growth compared to last year. I remember when I first started teaching Azure and it was 100% YoY growth. 51% is still spectacular, years later. 

    Congratulations to the whole Blue Badge team on the continued amazing results. Let’s do it again in the next fiscal year.
    https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/27/microsoft-bests-earnings-estimates-as-azure-posts-51-growth-shares-fall/

    THREE.

    Azure has released Azure Firewall Premium with a new set of advanced features.

    Azure Firewall Premium includes:

    • TLS inspection – the ability to decrypt outbound traffic, process the data, and then encrypt it again
    • IDPS, Intrusion Detection and Prevention System – allows you to monitor network activities for malicious activity, log information about this activity, report it, and optionally block it.
    • URL filtering – you can filter part of the path of a URL, not just the domain
    • Web categories – you can filter websites that have been categorized such as gambling, social media, and other things you might not want your users to be doing

    As well, Azure Firewall has changed to work on a “Firewall Policy” model which makes it easier to manage policies using Azure Firewall Manager. “Firewall Rules” is now being moved to “classic” status and Firewall Policies will be the new method going forward.

    The new AZ-700 course above contains a section covering the new Azure Firewall / Policy setup. It’s pretty interesting.

    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/firewall/premium-features

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    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    Very few announcements in the last couple of weeks. Summer is here: 

    • AKS smart defaults in public preview
    • Always Encrypted with secure enclaves for SQL Database now generally available
    • Azure Maps Creator v1 to be retired by September 6, 2021
    • Migrate Azure Data Lake Storage from Gen1 to Gen2 using the Portal in preview
    • Session and cache provider using Azure Cosmos DB in general availability
    • Shared disks on Azure Disk Storage are now generally available on all Premium SSD and Standard SSD sizes
    • Azure Firewall Premium general availability
    • Azure Active Directory support for Azure Relay 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.

    This week is about cleaning up some loose ends around here. I have a couple of videos remaining for AZ-700 and then to tell more people about it. I want to loop back to some of my existing courses and make sure all the videos are up-to-date. Especially with this new Firewall Policy change.

    I ran a poll in the Azure User Group (unofficial) Facebook Group asking what course I should create next, and people seem to want me to create either an AZ-400 or an AZ-500 course next. Quite surprising because those exams have been out for a while, but actually I should probably put a plan together for something around those.

    I don’t know what I’ll do next, but I’ll let you know when I do.

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 2.14. 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 2.13

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.13

    July 14, 2021

    Welcome to the thirteenth edition of the Azure World Newsletter in 2021. 

    We are now past the halfway mark of 2021. For me, the concept of time has really been distorted with all that has been going on in 2020 and 2021, and so saying “the year is half over” sounds so weird. 

    I can’t wait to get back to traveling, going to conferences like Microsoft Ignite, and getting back out into the community. I plan on attending way more local Microsoft and Azure events once things are back open again. 

    I hope you are staying safe, wherever you are in the world. 

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

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    ONE.

    Today’s first item has to do with Azure App Services App Service Environments (ASE). As you know, the ASE is an Azure App Service feature that provides a fully isolated and dedicated environment for securely running App Service apps at a high scale.

    Azure has introduced ASEv3 which is the latest iteration of this, and it’s now in General Availability.

    There are several notable changes to App Service Environments in V3. 

    • ASEv3 deploys as a resource to a single subnet on your virtual network
    • It can have either an internal private IP address or an external public IP address
    • Being a resource on your VNet, app services have access to other resources on the same subnet without any additional configuration
    • Traffic travels to ASE through an NSG so you can filter it using those access control lists
    • For isolated hosts, elimination of “stamp fees”, now there’s just per app instance fees
    • Ability to deploy app services into availability zones if you wish (a minimum of 9 app instances to do this, 3 per zone)
    • Availability of reserved instances for Isolated V2 plans – 1- or 3-year commitments for significant savings

    See the announcement for more details:

    https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/apps-on-azure/announcing-app-service-environment-v3-ga/ba-p/2517990

    TWO.

    I’ve mentioned the US Department of Defence JEDI project a few times last year. And so this is the epitaph for that program. The US DoD has announced they are canceling the project and starting the bidding process over.

    If you recall, Microsoft won the single-source contract for this program, which would have amounted to $10 billion over several years. This bothered several of Microsoft’s competitors, and there was a lot of political and legal battles over it.

    Despite the DoD investigating the issues and confirming that nothing was wrong in granting this project entirely to Microsoft, the delays persisted and Amazon was pressing the issue through the court systems. This could take years to resolve.

    So in the end, AWS got what they wanted. They are bidding for the contract again.

    Rumor is that Microsoft will win a significant share of the new contract with some of that being given to AWS as well. Because some of this money is for hardware such as Microsoft’s Hololens and Amazon cannot really compete with that part of the bid.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/06/pentagon-cancels-10-billion-jedi-cloud-contract.html

    THREE.

    Apparently, a flaw has been found in PowerShell 7.0 and 7.1 that could allow remote code execution. Users are recommended to upgrade to a newer version of PowerShell.

    This does not affect older versions of PowerShell (like 5.1). 
    https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/update-powershell-versions-70-and-71-to-protect-against-a-vulnerability/

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    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    Very few announcements in the last couple of weeks. Summer is here: 

    • Azure Automation Customer-Managed Keys in GA
    • Azure Bastion Standard SKU public preview
    • New tool to transition from Classic deployment model to Cloud Services (extended support) model
    • App Service Environment v3 now GA
    • Form Recognizer container support in public preview
    • VM level disk bursting on more VM types

    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 SC-900 has successfully launched (go check that course out at https://sjd.ca/sc900), I am starting a new course. I think many of you will be interested in it because it’s a very popular topic in IT. I will keep it a secret for a couple of more weeks and you’ll hear about it more in the next newsletter.

    A bunch of Microsoft Azure exams are getting minor updates by Microsoft. And so I’ll be tweaking some of my courses to ensure that they cover the new changes. For instance, SC-900 already had its first revision. And AI-102 is seeing some changes too.

    Check out my YouTube channel, where I post about exam updates and go over what topics were added and removed to each. Please subscribe!

    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwDGcuS41uVFS_2iDHL0h-A

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 2.13. 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 2.12

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.12

    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! 

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

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    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:

    https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-learn-blog/coming-soon-the-new-azure-network-engineer-associate/ba-p/2465056

    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.

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    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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