Microsoft Azure has the best global WAN

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This blog post was recognised on this podcast and here’s the audio snippet (below) where they specifically talked about it. Thanks guys! Microsoft has the second biggest network in the world behind the internet Microsoft Cloud Show Podcast – Episode 281 Want to understand more about Azure’s global WAN and Microsoft’s network backbone? A recent 2018 Public Cloud Performance Benchmark Report from ThousandEyes says Azure has the best global WAN, out of the three major public cloud providers. – all of it is our own private network. Some of the highlights in this report are: AWS’ network design forces traffic from the end…

Save Money with Azure, intelligent shutdown of VMs

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This blog post is based on 3 separate asks from 3 separate customers about adding value for their Azure subscriptions. They came to be and said “Marc, I would like to devise a scheme where at 7pm every night, all Dev/Test VMs can be shut down to save money and the business owners have the final say.” There’s one problem though, the business owners don’t have access to the Azure portal – it has to be done over email. What’s more, an option to force the shutdown of the VMs if the business owners don’t respond in a time frame…

Extended Security Updates | Windows Server 2008/R2 or SQL Server 2008/R2

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Announced recently, the new Extended Security Updates which gives you 3 years free extended security updates past the end of Extended Support for: Windows Server 2008 Windows Server 2008 R2 SQL Server 2008 SQL Server 2008 R2 To make use of the Extended Security Updates offer for the versions of software above, you just need to either: Migrate your Windows Server 2008/R2 or SQL Server 2008/R2 workloads to Azure Purchase Extended Security Updates to get 3 more years of security updates for Windows Server 2008/R2 or SQL Server 2008/R2 Extended Security Updates is not to be confused with Mainstream Support & Extended Support. A bit of history… Microsoft Lifecycle Policy…

Azure VM disk comparison

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Azure Disks, there’s a LOT of them. Many of my customers have VMs deployed with various different storage options, the question always comes up, cost & value. I wanted to post a blog to shine some light on my experience of me talking to customers, some tips and tricks. This blog compares Azure storage to AWS storage, and also has some examples which could potentially save you money, if not most likely get you thinking about a different approach to Azure storage. Pricing Let me preface this and say that these are my estimates only, taken from the official online…

Azure Virtual WAN

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At the time of this publication, the new Azure Virtual WAN is currently in public preview. Similar to Office 365, Microsoft have brought Azure one set closer to the customer by using 130+ edge nodes. It means that your branch sites far away from Azure datacneters, can connect into an edge node closer to them and benefit from using Microsoft’s network backbone then on. If one branch site wanted to talk to another branch site quite some distance apart, they can be both plugged into the same Virtual WAN (two Virtual Hubs) and use Microsoft’s backbone to offer super low…

Azure ExpressRoute demystified

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Microsoft ExpressRoute, as much as it can be complicated and hard work to implement, I have done the hard work and turned the complication into something that is understandable. To begin with, I’ll point out a couple of significant changes to ExpressRoute this year: Bye bye Public peering. Beginning April 1, 2018, public peering is no longer available to implement. All Microsoft public addresses/services (across Office 365 & Azure) are available now on Microsoft peering. Move a public peering to Microsoft peering. Existing Azure public peering configurations will continue to be supported, though Microsoft recommend moving to Microsoft peering with route…

Linux Syslog in Log Analytics

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Monitoring & Logging on-prem Linux devices/servers takes into consideration that the majority of network devices and network appliances are all Linux based and there are also a large number of Linux servers in circulation. A large number of my customers use a large number of Linux servers and network devices – which all need to be monitored centrally using a service which is cloud agnostic and full hybrid – Log Analytics. Here’s how it works…. Focusing on the center piece of the above diagram: If the Log Analytics agent computer has an Rsyslog daemon: The Azure Security Center config file for…

Instant Monitoring of Windows Performance

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Here’s an example similar to my other Blog post Instant Monitoring of Windows Services. Instead, this blog demonstrates monitoring Performance Counters and using alerts to fire off a scheduled task. This scheduled task fires off a PowerShell script which in turn fires off an Azure Function, which in turn fires off an SMS text message and records an entry in a Log Analytics custom log. All this happens sequentially in the space of about 5 seconds. This blog demonstrates monitoring these 3 basic performance counters: Processor(_Total)\% Processor Time Memory\% Committed Bytes In Use LogicalDisk(C:)\% Free Space You could monitor more…

Instant Monitoring of Windows Services

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Has there been a seriously critical Windows Service which you need to monitor in real-time, or more than one Windows Service? – i.e. as soon as the Windows Service stops, you need to be notified by getting an SMS text message to your phone – within 5 seconds? While this is slightly manual, once setup, it works perfectly well and is reliable. This is similar to my other blog post which discusses Instant Monitoring of Windows Performance. This blog post walks you through everything, I am using both Azure Functions and the Telstra SMS API in Australia to send instant…

Log Analytics Data Collector API

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You can send practically any data to Azure Log Analytics (aka. OMS). As long as you can convert it to JSON format prior to sending it to your Log Analytics workspace. Here’s the official write up on it https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/log-analytics/log-analytics-data-collector-api. Data that you upload gets sent to a custom log, with the characters ‘_CL‘ at the end, these characters are appended automatically. This file contains bidirectional Unicode text that may be interpreted or compiled differently than what appears below. To review, open the file in an editor that reveals hidden Unicode characters. Learn more about bidirectional Unicode characters Show hidden characters #region…