Testing latency between Azure & AWS in the same region. Imagine you had a customer with workloads in AWS and workloads in Azure. This test was assuming the front-end workloads in Azure would connect to back-end workloads in AWS. The big question what would be the latency. To start with, let’s start with the general web speed tests from each public cloud provider to level set. Web Browser Speed Tests Tests results from both Azure & AWS using the browser and the popular speed test websites. Speedtest.net Comparing apples with apples, using the Telstra Sydney speed test server for both….
Programmably connect to a WiFi network using a password
Connecting to a wireless network using a password is harder than what you might think, as you need to create a WiFi ‘profile’. The below PowerShell code can do exactly what you need, it creates the WiFi profile, and connects you to the WiFi network automatically. # Fill in mandatory details for the WiFi network $WirelessNetworkSSID = '<WiFi_SSID>' $WirelessNetworkPassword = '<WiFi_password>' $Authentication = 'WPA2PSK' # Could be WPA2 $Encryption = 'AES' # Create the WiFi profile, set the profile to auto connect $WirelessProfile = @' <WLANProfile xmlns="http://www.microsoft.com/networking/WLAN/profile/v1"> <name>{0}</name> <SSIDConfig> <SSID> <name>{0}</name> </SSID> </SSIDConfig> <connectionType>ESS</connectionType> <connectionMode>auto</connectionMode> <MSM> <security> <authEncryption> <authentication>{2}</authentication> <encryption>{3}</encryption>…
Easy tagging of resources in Azure for billing and charge back
Tagging of resources in Azure can be a pain, especially if you have heaps of resources deployed. Tagging is used primarily for billing purposes and tags applied to the resource group are not inherited by the resources in that resource group. What’s more, if you want to chargeback Azure consumption to the business across various business units, tagging is the best way to do it. There’s a few of ways you can chargeback to business units by using tags: Download or view your Azure billing invoice and daily usage data Connect to Microsoft Azure Enterprise with Power BI Cloudyn which has…
Windows 10 Adaptive Contrast
Have you ever experienced the contrast/brightness of the screen in Windows 10 change dynamically between applications? Especially switching from high white contrast apps like a web browser to a dark contrast application like VS Code for example? It’s pretty annoying. I have a Surface Pro 6 and its fairly off putting. It’s different to this setting where it changes the brightness/contrast across the board to the OS level regardless of specific apps: The setting I am talking about where it changes contrast as you change and flick between apps. Solution: From here https://www.windowscentral.com/how-disable-adapative-contrast-surface Adaptive contrast is very different than auto-brightness (or…
Microsoft Azure has the best global WAN
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
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
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
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
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
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…
