Microsoft Support & Discussions

Hi everyone! Brandon Wilson (Cloud Solution Architect/Engineer) here to talk to you a little bit about a customer offering we have known as the Well-Architected Cost Optimization Assessment. I must admit, being a father of 6 children, I tend to gravitate towards cost savings where I can, so as a result, the Well-Architected cost pillar just fits the bill for me (no pun intended...or maybe there is). First, we’ll touch a little bit on the Azure Well Architected Framework (WAF), and then go over what we cover in one of the cost optimization assessments. A brief overview of the Well Architected Framework (WAF) In the world of Azure, there are a couple of method…

Digital Twins is one of those terms that captures your imagination. It has been massively popularised by sci-fi, where characteristics of specific physical objects are replicated and visualised in the real-time state of their virtual clones. So, it’s not a surprise that advances in the “alternative” realities (augmented, mixed and virtual) only help to bring sci-fi ideas to life. The concept of digital twins is applicable to almost any industry: from healthcare (patient’s vital signs) and manufacturing (production line’s efficiency) to supply chain (cargo monitoring) and retail (out-of-stock control). As a result, you can keep your finger on the “pulse” of your digit…

Microsoft Purview Data owner policies enable users to manage access to different data systems via a central data governance platform Microsoft Purview. In this blog, we will introduce how to use Microsoft Purview to manage storage access. Prerequisites Check Azure storage regions are available. Configure the Azure subscription with AllowPurviewPolicyEnforcement. Registered storage account for Data Use Management in Microsoft Purview. Assign the Policy author role to create, update, and delete Data Owner policies; the Data source admin role can publish a policy. Steps to create a data owner policy for Blob storage The first step is to check the …

Running Extended Event (XEvent) sessions on SQL Server has a cost. Since XEvents was designed for high-performance, this is usually unnoticeable. However, it can become an issue depending on which events, actions, and other XEvent features are in use. New metrics available in SQL Server 2022, in Azure SQL Database, and in Azure SQL Managed Instance can help you understand the performance impact of using XEvents in your database. The sys.dm_xe_session_events DMV (sys.dm_xe_ database_session_events on Azure SQL Database) provides one row for each event found in an active session definition, allowing you to see all events that are currently publishing on your SQL Serv…

Cloud Solution Architects David Ginn, Phil Jirsa, and Chad Voelker explore the Azure Static Web Apps CLI and how it can be leveraged to enhance the developer experience. This tool creates a proxy allowing for local testing of the Front-End Application, Managed API, and Authentication Service. Learn more about hosting your own Static Web Apps at What is Azure Static Web Apps? | Microsoft Learn Azure Static Web Apps CLI Continue reading...

Infrastructure is increasingly becoming more complex as organizations operate across multiple cloud and on-premises environments. Businesses are looking for a secure and reliable management services that can consistently manage this hybrid estate. Azure Automation provides a unified platform for execution of customer provided scripts to manage Azure, Arc-enabled and multi-cloud workloads. User Hybrid Worker enables execution of these scripts directly on the machines for managing guest workloads or as a gateway to environments that are not accessible from Azure. Azure Automation announces General Availability of User Hybrid Worker extension, that is based on Virtual Machin…

As the growth of cloud continues, more workloads are moving to the cloud and new enterprise software solutions are being deployed natively in the cloud. This has resulted in massive growth in identities for workloads and an explosion of access permissions associated with these identities to sensitive data and resources. Organizations and security providers have been focused on human identity security so that access control or security capabilities to manage these emerging identities are limited. This is putting increased pressure on identity security professionals. Zero Trust is all about ensuring that everyone (and everything) is continuously authenticated and aut…

We are excited to announce General Availability of PIM Enabled Azure Lighthouse Delegations. This has been a top ask from customers since the product launch in 2019, and we’re thrilled to deliver this powerful capability to our customers! With the addition of PIM eligible authorizations, customers and service providers have another tool to provide further granular level access to customer resources. With Azure Lighthouse, service providers can deliver managed services using comprehensive and robust tooling built into the Azure platform. Customers maintain control over who has access to their tenant, which resources they can access, and what actions can be taken. …

I think most practitioners can agree that making the jump from ad-hoc code deployments to a continuous integration (CI/CD) deployment model can seem complex. There are so many things that you need to learn - Azure pipelines, Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates, the Azure CLI, and a whole new system to set up, secure, and monitor for deployments. It was daunting to learn and apply multiple new technologies at the same time when I learned the process. We've provided various architectures and tools to work with Azure API Management. However, the best tool for deploying a single API is one that is readily available to you - Bicep modules. Bicep is a language tha…

Active Directory Explorer v1.52 This update to Active Directory Explorer, an advanced Active Directory viewer and editor, fixes a crash caused by searching for strings in a snapshot longer than object names. Contig v1.82 This update to Contig, a single-file defragmenter, adds safe DLL loading and support for long command-line arguments. Sysmon v14.13 This update to Sysmon addresses CVE-2022-41120 by ensuring the archive directory has permissions restricted to the system account. Continue reading...

Microsoft Teams has been in extensive use for collaboration features such as IM, Teams meetings, 1:1 or group calls, files collaboration, etc., and has been explored by all organizations without any additional financial costs with existing Microsoft 365 licenses. This has been a boon to organizations for increasing productivity. However, one of the added functionalities of Microsoft Teams, which comes in handy, is to replace traditional telephone systems by enabling the Teams integrated Cloud telephone system that includes Calling Plans and PSTN Audio conferencing options for dial out and dial in capabilities—all without any additional on-premises PSTN infrastructure set …

We are excited to announce the public preview for hardware and firmware assessments in Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management. Firmware and hardware attacks are on the rise. Attackers are increasingly targeting firmware and device drivers of hardware components to gain high privilege and persistence. Visibility into the threat posture of firmware and timely remediation of firmware vulnerabilities are paramount for enterprise security. Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management new firmware assessments feature provides customers with full visibility into device manufacturer, processor and BIOS information. Customers who have access to Microsoft Defender…

On December 13th the Global AI Student Conference is taking place. This is the 5th edition of conference that highlights student projects and educator discussion. In 12 hours, the conference travelers around the world, centrally hosted from the Global AI Studio in the Netherlands. Day one has over 20 sessions and panels covering the world, from China to Mexico. Day two is all about gaining hands-on knowledge with deep-learning. You can find all the sessions and create a personal agenda on https://aiconf.education. My top 3 for Day 1 The first session I’m looking forward to, is from 3 students from China, they are going to share how they used Microsoft Cogniti…

Overview A global enterprise wants to migrate thousands of virtual machines (VMs) to Microsoft Azure as part of their application modernization strategy. Their first step is to exit their on-premises data centers and rapidly relocate their legacy application VMs to the Azure VMware Solution as a staging area for the first phase of their modernization strategy. What should the Azure VMware Solution look like? Azure VMware Solution is a VMware validated first party Azure service from Microsoft that provides private clouds containing VMware vSphere clusters built from dedicated bare-metal Azure infrastructure. It enables customers to leverage their existing inves…

Organizations are finding network-based attacks becoming an increasingly popular way of infiltrating systems because they often leave minimal traces on source and target devices. At Microsoft Ignite 2022, we announced partnering with Zeek, an open-source network security monitoring platform, and its corporate sponsor, Corelight, to help security teams combat these attacks more effectively. As a result, Zeek is now integrated as a component within Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. The integration of Zeek into Microsoft Defender for Endpoint provides new levels of network analysis capabilities based on deep inspection of network traffic powered by Zeek, a powerfu…

こんにちは、 SQL Server サポートです。 今回は、 Always On 可用性グループを構成するデータベースを Azure Key Vault を利用し TDE 暗号化する手順についてご紹介します。 手順の大まかな流れとしては以下の公開情報の手順を、プライマリ、セカンダリ両方で実施し、同じ非対称キーを用いてTDE暗号化する流れとなります。 Azure Key Vault を使用した SQL Server TDE 拡張キー管理を設定する Azure Key Vault を使用した Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) 拡張キー管理を設定する - SQL Server Azure Portal での手順 Azure Portal にて、「Azure Key Vault を使用した SQL Server TDE 拡張キー管理を設定する」の手順1-3を完了します。 手順 1:Azure AD サービス プリンシパルを設定する 　　　-> 手順内で取得するクライアント ID 、シークレットはのちの手順で使用するため、必ずメモをしてください。 手順 2:Key Vault を作成します 手順 3:SQL Server コネクタをインストールする 　　-> プライマリ、セカンダリ両方に同じバージョンの SQL Server Connector をインストールします。 各VM上…

Since the pandemic hit, improving the employee experience in this new hybrid world has become a priority for Microsoft. One of the tools to support this mission is Microsoft Viva, a suite of apps available through Teams which can help employees to stay more connected, to better manage their time and to work more efficiently. Today we'll focus on one of the apps of the Viva suite called Viva Learning, which helps employees to grow and learn. Through Viva Learning, enterprises can make available learning content in a variety of forms (videos, articles, books, etc.) that employees can consume at their own pace. Through the platform, administrators can also dispatch le…

WordPress on Azure App Service has been gaining popularity since it has been made generally available. Read the GA Announcement here: Announcing the General Availability of WordPress on Azure App Service - Microsoft Community Hub We received multiple requests to make the service available in National clouds. We are excited to announce that WordPress on Azure App Service is available on all National Clouds. What are national clouds? National Clouds, also known as sovereign clouds, are physical and logical network-isolated instances of Azure that are confined within a country to honor residency, sovereignty, and compliance requirements within geographical…

Hi everyone! Brandon Wilson (Cloud Solution Architect/Engineer) here to talk to you a little bit about a customer offering we have known as the Well-Architected Framework (WAF) Cost Optimization Assessment. I must admit, being a father of 6 children, I tend to gravitate towards cost savings where I can, so as a result, the Well-Architected cost pillar just fits the bill for me (no pun intended...or maybe there is). First, we’ll touch a little bit on the Azure Well Architected Framework (WAF), and then go over what we cover in one of the cost optimization assessments. A brief overview of the Well Architected Framework (WAF) In the world of Azure, there are a …

Inserting image as choices is a long expected feature from forms and quizzes users. Today, we are excited to share you can now add image as answers in Microsoft Forms. Starting from December, it will be gradually rolling out globally, hope you can explore these new updates when it's available to you. Images as answer is supported in both forms and quiz. We understand that visualization is critically important in teaching and learning to assist students digest context easier and create connection with knowledge faster, especially for young kids when they are still growing language skills. How to insert image You can insert images in multiple choi…

I recently learned about 2 exciting ways that you can use your coding skills to extend the functionality of the Power Platform. The 2 ways: Using your experience of working with APIs to build custom connectors that allow Low Code Applications to connect to external and your favorite data sources Tools & Concepts: VS Code, Power Platform CLI (pac), Postman, GitHub, APIs [Focus for this blog] Bringing in your coding skills to build custom controls that will be deployed to the Dataverse to be accessed by citizen developers as drag-and-drop controls for their applications. Learn why you should build custom controls in this 2-minute video: Tool…

@Parikshit Savjani in the previous blog post explained about the Pgbouncer and the importance of using a connection pooling with Azure Database for PostgreSQL. Besides, he showed the performance improvements with a simple benchmark test with pgbench, and shared the steps to install the pgbouncer in a VM. The blog post is intended to focus on steps for install and setup the PgBouncer as a sidecar pattern enabling connection pooling between a containerized application and Azure DB for PostgreSQL Single-Server. If you are looking to install and run PgBouncer on Ubuntu VM, you should move on to the last blog post Steps to install and setup PgBouncer connection pooling proxy w…

Microsoft Student Developer Day was held at Microsoft Reactor India to empower & encourage students to share learning with the community via the Microsoft Reactor platform. We are super excited for Microsoft Student Developer Day at Reactor India! Student Dev Day India 25th November 2022 On Demand Agenda: Introduction to Cloud Computing | Speaker - Aadyaa Srivastava Getting started with Azure Functions | Speaker - Dwitrisha Saha Building Machine Learning Model using Azure Custom Vision | Speaker - Rohit Yadav & Arpita Das Azure DevOps 101 | Speaker - Abhinav Sharma Networking Cloud Skill Challenge: https://aka.ms/msdevday Event Host: Vivek S…

When migrating your services to AKS, you could potentially run into an issue, which has to do with logging levels and the volume of data that is being sent to Container Insights. This is especially true when you need to run hundreds or even thousands of pods, as AKS clusters are pretty chatty and generate a ton of logs. You may notice a massive volume of metrics being pushed from the containers running inside the pods into container insights (mostly CPU and Memory metrics). By default, these are collected every minute for every container. As a result of this and the quantity of pods you have, you will be looking at GBs of data being pushed to Container Insi…