And here’s another article in the series on Azure – this time covering the new Security Center. A single place to track the security posture of all (not yet but coming) your Azure resources. Read it here.
Enjoy! And thanks for reading.
Category: 4Sysops
Azure Resource Manager Policies for 4Sysops
Azure Resource Manager (ARM) is a very important part of how to deploy and manage cloud resources in Azure going forward. I covered ARM here. Recently, Microsoft added ARM policies, a way to control where (which region), what type (VM, WebApp, Databases etc.), enforcing naming conventions and requiring deployments to have specific tags attached for tracking. It’s pretty cool, check it out here.
Enjoy! And thanks so much for reading.
Microsoft Azure Backup Server (MABS) vs. Data Protection Manager (DPM) for 4Sysops
Recently Microsoft really upped their game in cloud backup with the new MABS server. Previously, you could only backup volumes to Azure, no application backup, no VM awareness etc. By taking System Center Data Protection Manager and cutting out some features, there’s all of a sudden a very good backup tool for both on-premises and cloud backup. The only catch is that, unlike with DPM, even if you only backup to local disk with MABS, you pay per backed up server, per month. Read it here.
Enjoy! And thanks for reading.
Azure AD Domain Services for 4Sysops
My most recent Azure piece is now online at 4Sysops. I look at the new Azure Active Directory Domain Services that make it possible to host domain joined VMs in Azure IaaS without having to host VMs in Azure that are Domain Controllers from your own domain.
Read it here.
Enjoy! And thanks for reading.
Azure Preview portal (“Ibiza”) for 4Sysops
System Center 2016 Virtual Machine Manager Technical Preview 3 for 4 Sysops – part 2
In this second part we look at Virtual Machine Manager’s support for the new Shielded VM functionality in Hyper-V 2016, along with the Host Guardian Service attestation service. Read it here.
Enjoy and thanks for reading.
Technorati Tags: Virtual Machine Manager,VMM
System Center 2016 Virtual Machine Manager Technical Preview 3 for 4 Sysops – part 1
Technorati Tags: Virtual Machine Manager,VMM
Now that we’ve finally reached Technical Preview 3 in System Center, there’s enough new features there to see what’s coming next year. This part 1 for 4sysops covers management of rolling cluster upgrades, Storage Spaces Direct (S2D), Storage Replica, SOFS in front of SANs, centralized storage QoS management and Azure IaaS VM management. Read it here.
Enjoy and thanks for reading.
Shielded VMs in Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V for 4Sysops
Storage Spaces Direct in Windows Server 2016 TP2 for 4Sysops
Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) is a very interesting technology, coming in the next version of Windows Server. Pooling the internal storage (SAS, SATA and NVMe) in each storage node together for performance and resiliency, this is another option for storage for Hyper-V (and presumably SQL Server). Read it here.
Enjoy! And thanks for reading.
Tell IT as IT is 