It turns out that warning on the Microsoft Docs site about Azure Firewall blocking port 25 for certain subscription types - yes, that’s important! I recently faced a scenario where there was a need to support in the migration from Azure EA to Azure CSP billing models - a fairly simple and seamless experience if … Continue reading Port 25 & Azure Firewall
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Managing your Azure environment as it grows
So, you have your subscriptions and your resources are neatly bundled together within resource groups but now, as you're growing you find yourself having to repeat the configuration of you IAM, Security Centre policies and compliance as the number of subscriptions etc. is increased. Microsoft has thought of this and introduced Management groups a while … Continue reading Managing your Azure environment as it grows
Just In Time access for VMs
So, you've been working hard to secure your environment by locking down your NSGs (Network Security Groups) and restricting your admins teams access only to find yourself having to open and close ports on the NSG and add people in and out of AD groups every time someone from your IT team needs to access … Continue reading Just In Time access for VMs
Passing the AZ-300
I finally got around to taking the AZ-300: Microsoft Azure Architect Technologies exam this week (well overdue!) as I work towards achiving the 'Azure Solutions Architect Expert' (although I disagree with the term 'expert' with the word Azure - Azure's just too big to be an 'expert' on everything!). As you'd expect and hopefully want … Continue reading Passing the AZ-300
Release Notes
It's always worth keeping an eye on the change log for any application or tool but especialy with management and scripting tools that you're using every day. The CLI notes can be found here - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cli/azure/release-notes-azure-cli?view=azure-cli-latest#april-9-2019 The PowerShell AZ Module notes can be found here - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/azure/release-notes-azureps?view=azps-1.7.0 If you're seing any qwerks or things not workin you … Continue reading Release Notes
Azure Management Groups
As you start to bring more services into Azure, expanding from pre-production and test workloads into the reals of hosting live, production environments and the number of teams and people involved in keeping the environment running grows you’ll want to make sure you have the right policies and governance in place but keeping in mind … Continue reading Azure Management Groups
Azure Monitor
One of the many announcements from this weeks Ignite 2018 conference (you can found a detailed look at all the Azure announcements here) is the Azure Monitor for VMs. Azure Monitor (currently released in ‘Preview’) will provide an in-depth review of performance, health and even dependencies all in a easy to access view. Azure monitor … Continue reading Azure Monitor
Book of News – Ignite 2018
If like me you’ve been spending all of your time this week just trying to keep on top of the huge number of Azure announcements (never mind all the others) then you may find this - Microsoft’s 'Book of News’ a handy thing to have a look at. A PDF with all the announcements with … Continue reading Book of News – Ignite 2018
Size flexibility for Azure Reserved Instances
A while ago now I covered Azure’s Reserved Instance (RI) feature and how its use can dramatically reduce the TCO for your Azure VMs. Well this useful feature just got even better! Microsoft are introducing ‘size flexibility for Azure Reserved Instances’ With traditional RI’s you chose the VM instance size (D4s_v3 for example) and how … Continue reading Size flexibility for Azure Reserved Instances
Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates
If you would like to start deploying and configuring your environment via code but not sure where to start, or how to structure and write a JSON template then you’re in luck! Microsoft has a whole host of Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates on Github for you to explore and use as you need. And … Continue reading Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates
