Keeping your Linux and Windows Machines updated with Azure!

In this Episode, we are joined with our colleagues Allen Brokken and Shannon Kuehn on how they leveraged components of Azure to introduce automation for a customer to keep 1000’s of VMs updated regardless of where the infrastructure is running! This was accomplished using in-built capabilities in Azure called update management and a component called Hybrid runbook workers. This is […]

Tales from the Breakdown Lane: Real World stories of customer mistakes

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” ― Albert Einstein. When it comes to cloud computing, I’m in full agreement with Albert Einstein. Deploying and operating workloads in the cloud, especially at scale, is functionally different than on premises and it’s important to review and apply some of the recommended practices and practices we provide […]

Cloud Governance: Starting with a Plan

Cloud computing allows you to move at a rapid pace, but thankfully Azure has capabilities to introduce guard rails without being too imposing. Check out our conversation with Principal Program Manager from Patterns and Practices, Derek Martin, about his experiences helping and guiding customers to establish governance plans. Microsoft has guides geared towards small and large enterprises available here. Derek […]

Containers…Simplified

Lex Thomas over at the Taste of Premier show had me on as a guest to bring simplicity to the growing trend of micro services and containerizing applications. I get down to basics starting with a primer on containerization concepts and walk through how Kubernetes on Azure can provide value to anyone needing to host services and applications in a […]

Azure PodCast – DevOps Simplified

The kind folks over at The Azure Podcast had me on as a guest where I chatted with them about some interesting ways customers have leveraged Azure DevOps pipelines to address complex management of large cloud deployments for doing simple tasks such as deploying new software to more complex operations such as patching or tearing environments up and down. In […]

Simplifying Cloud Connectivity

Azure provides many options for stitching together networks using partner solutions from vendors like Cisco and Barracuda but also provides native features to help you quickly get started such as the Azure VPN Gateway where you can easily bridge an on-premises network with a network in the cloud. Check out Taste of Premier where I walk through connecting up my […]

Creating and Establishing Security Parameters in the Cloud

As more people have started to trust their data, business and personal information to the data centers that power the cloud, it’s ushered in a new era of cybersecurity. Microsoft Azure was built with modern security and privacy in mind. It’s also a controlled ecosystem protected by people who spend all day thinking about data security and privacy. Join our […]

Azure App Services – Java App not starting

After working with a customer deploying Java apps to Azure ASEs, I thought I’d share some simple wisdom. These are not comprehensive troubleshooting steps by any means, there are always connectivity items to troubleshoot, IE DNS resolution, firewall/nsg ports to look at, etc… these are just a few of the simpler things to try before you spend hours troubleshooting something that […]

Using PowerShell to Sync Blob Containers Across Storage Accounts

[Link to script on GitHub] Background: I was working with a customer who needed to perform file backups housed in a specific storage account and a specific container to a separate storage account.  Geo-redundant storage (GRS) was enabled at the storage account level providing physical redundancy of the customer’s data in across 2 separate data centers however the customer was […]

Azure Linux Agent – Repair

Recently, I was working with a customer who makes extensive use of Linux workloads in Azure deploying many heavily customized virtual machines (VM) into Azure.  After some reboots, installing packages, and performing some system configuration tasks the customer ran into an issue where the Azure Linux agent was unable to communicate with the Azure Fabric to report the health and […]

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