Make it better https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/make_it_better/feed.xml Mon, 02 Apr 2018 19:41:21 GMT en-US hourly 1 Exam Prep for 70-533, Implementing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/make_it_better/exam-prep-for-70-533-implementing-microsoft-azure-infrastructure-solutions Mon, 02 Apr 2018 15:41:21 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/make_it_better/?p=545 70-533, Implementing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions exam. Each Microsoft exam page has a Skills Measured section. This section clearly outlines the knowledge that will be measured on the exam. i.e. the exam questions are going to be about the following topics only.   As I went through the sections above, I noticed that each section corresponded to documentation on the Azure docs site. Last year when I took the 534 exam, I had noticed the same similarity. Looks like this is a consistent approach that the exam writers are taking across exams. It does make sense since exam writers would test the most important concepts. i.e. those would be the same ones that the Azure technical writers have already documented.  

Study Guide/Links for 70-533

With the above in mind, I went through all the documentation on the exam site, and put together a study guide. I got great feedback last year about my post, and I am hoping that this is going to be helpful as well.   Design and Implement Azure App Service Apps (10-15%)
  • Deploy Web Apps
  • Configure Web Apps
  • Configure diagnostics, monitoring and analytics
  • Configure Web Apps for scale and resilience
Create and Manage Compute Resources (20-25%)
  • Deploy workloads on Azure Resource Manager (ARM) virtual machines (VMs)
  • Perform configuration management
  • Design and implement VM storage
  • Monitor ARM VMs
  • Manage ARM VM availability
  • Scale ARM VMs
  • Manage Containers with Azure Container Services (ACS)
Design and Implement a Storage Strategy (10-15%)
  • Implement Azure Storage blobs and Azure Files
  • Manage access
  • Implement storage encryption
Implement Virtual Networks (15-20%)
  • Configure virtual networks
  • Design and implement multi-site or hybrid network connectivity
  • Configure ARM VM networking
  • Design and implement a connection strategy
  • Implement Hybrid Connections to access data sources on-premises; leverage S2S VPN to connect to an on-premises infrastructure
Design and Deploy ARM Templates (10-15%)
  • Implement ARM templates
  • Control access
  • Design role-based access control (RBAC)
Manage Azure Security and Recovery Services (25-30%)
  • Manage data protection and security compliance
  • Implement recovery services
Manage Azure Operations (5-10%)
  • Enhance cloud management with automation
  • Collect and analyze data generated by resources in cloud and on-premises environments. A
Manage Azure Identities (5-10%)
  • Manage domains with Azure Active Directory Domain Services
  • Implement Azure AD B2C and Azure AD B2B
      Note - Some links may be missing above since the material will be covered in different areas. Do let me know if you find the guide above useful or if you find more relevant links by leaving a comment.    ]]> Physical Data Center Security https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/make_it_better/physical-data-center-security Fri, 09 Mar 2018 16:44:20 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/make_it_better/?p=515 Data at Rest, Data in Transit, Secure Compute), and Application Code security takes up most of my time. In this post, I wanted to step back a bit and look at the bigger picture. Lets toss out the above assumptions and look at the entire stack where we run our applications. With the proliferation of cloud platforms, you now have a wide choice of IT infrastructure to meet your business needs. A typical IT infrastructure today can encompass a mixture of SaaS, PaaS, IaaS and On-prem solutions. With On-prem infrastructure, an IT Manager is responsible for the core capabilities and tenets below to make sure they have a secure infrastructure. As you move left in the diagram below, you notice that responsibilities for those core capabilities start to shift towards your cloud provider (in this case Microsoft). The first shift accountability that a cloud provider takes on is hosting the physical infrastructure and providing Compute\Storage as a Service (i.e. typical IaaS scenarios). Along with hosting the physical hardware and making sure that it is operational, the cloud provider also takes on the responsibility of making sure that the physical hardware is secure. Obviously, you don't want someone walking into a data center and walking out with a disk containing your data. So what does it take to physically secure a data center?
  • Restrict Access to white-listed authorized users with prior time boxed approvals
  • Fences, Gates to prevent unauthorized entry
  • 24/7 Security to monitor internal and external environments
  • Multi Factor Authentication to establish visitor access
  • Security Searches of Personnel\Bags on entry and exit to make sure nothing unauthorized enters or leaves the building.
  • Etc.
The above is not meant to be an exhaustive list but to help you get started thinking about Physical Datacenter Security. Layering in multiple levels of access controls and measures helps protect against an adversary who may defeat a particular layer. How does Microsoft do it? Here is a link to a detailed post by Ryan describing the efforts of his team to make sure that Microsoft Data centers are physically secure. It is a great behind the scenes look at how Microsoft physically secures our global data centers. Microsoft has invested over a billion dollars into making sure that Azure is the most secure it can be so that we can earn our customers trust. Without that trust, customers would never be comfortable in handing over their data and infrastructure. Here are some more resources if you would like to dig deeper. Microsoft Trust Center - Design and Operational Security Microsoft Azure Security, Privacy and Compliance Whitepaper   Do all customers need to physically secure their data centers to the same level as Microsoft? Well...it depends. What is the business impact and cost of a security incident to your business? Does that justify in implementing some or all of the measures above to protect your infrastructure? Hopefully the resources in this article help you understand how to better protect your infrastructure. If you would like to learn how Microsoft Services helps our customers secure their infrastructure, here is a great overview by our Secure Infrastructure team. Microsoft Cloud Security for Enterprise Architects Whitepaper  ]]> Cloud Computing + Modern DevOps == Productivity Gains https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/make_it_better/cloud-computing-modern-devops-productivity-gains Tue, 24 Oct 2017 16:53:45 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/make_it_better/?p=485 Moving to the Cloud allows organizations to focus on generating new ideas and produce better products since they free up time and energy from low-value tasks like running a data center. Having the conversation above, I realized that the true value of Cloud Computing is not just in doing a Lift n'Shift or turning on new Services, but rather leveraging those Services in new ways that were either too difficult or costly before. Hopefully, you too can figure out ways transforming your products and processes to take advantages of new Cloud Services.]]> Updating Windows Form UI elements from another thread https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/make_it_better/updating-windows-form-ui-elements-from-another-thread Mon, 15 May 2017 02:33:26 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/make_it_better/?p=446 More Info   cross-thread-exception   This poses a challenge if you want to update UI elements during those long running operations or as result of them. There are 2 ways to solve this challenge.
  1. Control.BeginInvoke - MSDN - This allows you to run a specified delegate asynchronously on the thread that created the control.backgroundworker
  2. BackgroundWorker - MSDN - The BackgroundWorker class allows you to run an operation on a separate, dedicated thread. begininvoke
You can force updates to UI elements from other threads using PInvoke\Thread UnSafe methods. These are usually not recommended since the alternative is well established and easy to implement. Here is a link to the code that shows how to implement either approach. Link on GitHub Hopefully the two approaches described above will help you implement the correct pattern and update UI elements without any issues.]]> Public previews for mySQL, POSTgreSQL DBs as a Service https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/make_it_better/public-previews-for-mysql-postgresql-dbs-as-a-service Wed, 10 May 2017 20:26:33 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/make_it_better/?p=435 Azure Database for MySQL and Azure Database for PostgreSQL provide fully-managed MySQL and PostgreSQL database as-a-service for easy development and deployment using tools and languages customers prefer, on the cloud they trust. Capable of deploying in minutes and scaling on-the-fly, the services offer automatic backups, 35-day point-in-time restores, automatic patching, and 30 days of historical monitoring data. Both offer pricing models (Azure Database for MySQL and Azure Database for PostgreSQL) with high-availability, security, and recovery built in, at no extra cost.

While in preview, both Services only offer the Basic and Standard service tiers. Premium is not yet available.

azure-new-db-service]]> Exam prep for Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions, 70-534 https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/make_it_better/exam-prep-for-architecting-microsoft-azure-solutions-70-534 Sat, 06 May 2017 16:37:50 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/make_it_better/?p=407 227,000 search results for "Azure 70-534 certification". With all these different resources, whats a good place to start?   Lets take a look at the exam listing page on the Microsoft Learning site. Each Microsoft exam page has a Skills Measured section. This section clearly outlines the knowledge that will be measured on the exam. i.e. the exam questions are going to be about the following topics only. skills-measured-534   I was going through the listings above, and noticed that they seemed to clearly match up to documentation on azure.microsoft.com. There almost was a 1:1 correlation to the Azure documentation. As I was preparing for the exam, I went through each skill being measured and made sure that I had a good understanding of the concepts. (As an aside, I do want to give a shout out to the Azure Technical writers. They have done a fantastic job of structuring the documentation, and keeping it consistent across all the different services. This makes it very easy to quickly learn about the service and get started right away.)   azure-documentation   After writing the exam, I found the above approach to work really well. I have shared this with a few colleagues and customers, and each had rave reviews about how easy it was to study for the exam.

Other Prep Notes

  • Dont spend time reading through the text on scenario questions. Skip to the first question, and then come back to the text to dig out the answers.
  • Track your time. You will have plenty of time to finish the exam, just dont get bogged down on questions.

534 Skills Measured and Links

To make it even easier, I scraped all the Skills Measured on the 534 page, and have attempted to hyperlink them to their corresponding webpage on the Azure site. Hopefully this makes it even easier for you to study and get certified. ]]> Windows as a Service https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/make_it_better/windows-as-a-service Wed, 01 Mar 2017 16:07:50 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/make_it_better/?p=385 ]]> SQL Migration Assistance https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/make_it_better/sql-migration-assistance Mon, 31 Oct 2016 16:24:45 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/make_it_better/?p=356 Database Experimentation Assistant. It will assist in evaluating a targeted version of SQL for a given workload. Customers who are upgrading from previous SQL server versions (starting 2005 and above) to any new version of the SQL server will be able to use these analysis metrics provided by tool, such as, queries that have compatibility errors, degraded queries and query plans, and other workload comparison data to help them build higher confidence, making it a successful upgrade experience.   While this tool still requires you to setup a new instance of the target SQL server, and copy your database....this does remove the application from the equation. It allows you to isolate the database from the application code. I think that is a major step forward. You can capture a trace from an existing SQL workload, and then replay the trace on the target server. ViewexistingReport-1024x502 Pros
  • Removes application from the testing scenario, allowing you to focus only on the database.
  • Replay trace on target SQL instance
  • Significantly reduced test effort for migration testing
  • Detailed performance impact assessments and comparisons between the SQL server versions
  • Early warning reports that can help you remediate issues faster to complete the migration
Cons
  • Requires you to setup the target SQL instance, and copy over your database
  • Focuses only on the SQL side, and does not provide any guidance for the application\code
  While this is not a perfect tool, I believe this will help organizations significantly reduce time and effort on their application upgrade projects.You can download this tool from the Microsoft Download Center. For best practices, assessing your current SQL instance or migrating to a new SQL version, here are some great tips and techniques to get you going.]]> Need to find a quick link to something in Azure? https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/make_it_better/need-to-find-a-quick-link-to-something-in-azure Thu, 08 Sep 2016 20:31:37 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/make_it_better/?p=345 aka.ms/Azure/<the thing>   Here are a few examples.     For more examples take a look at the exhaustive listing at the link below. https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/tangent_thoughts/2016/02/04/bookmark-this-aka-msazureshortcuts/  ]]> New Servicing models for Windows 7 and 8.1 https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/make_it_better/new-servicing-models-for-windows-7-and-8-1 Fri, 02 Sep 2016 15:09:13 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/make_it_better/?p=335 Whats happening? The new Servicing model now releases monthly rollups for all non-Security related fixes. The rollups will be cumulative in nature as well. What does this mean to you? Instead of having to find, review and install different fixes...Now...you just install the latest rollup, and you are ready to go! Having such a simple model makes it much simpler for users and enterprises to consume and keep their machines to update. It reduces fragmentation(different machines having different fixes) thereby making it much simpler to test before deployment. It may seem counter-intuitive, but the simpler we make the update process, the more people can take advantage and be up-to date. But what about regressions? Does this mean that I now will get fixes that I dont really need? Microsoft already does an incredible amount of testing to make sure that any fixes that go out the door do not cause new problems. With this new change, there is additional pressure to make sure we get it right and dont affect customers adversely. The reduced fragmentation not only helps customers reduce test complexity, but it also helps us improve our test quality by have a defined set of configuration\combinations to target. With this coming change users and enterprises can expect the following benefits
  • Reduced Scan times and effort for compliance\reporting
  • Smaller number of downloads and packages to deploy over internal network
  • Reduced test complexity and configurations
  • Customers not running into known issues thereby reducing overall support costs and efforts

 

What happens to Security Updates

Security updates are going to be rolled into a single monthly update as well. This will not be a cumulative update to give enterprises the option of being able to deploy the smallest possible update while still maintaining secure devices.

 

What happens to Windows 10

Much has been covered and written about the Windows 10 servicing model, so I wont cover that here. It pretty much lines with the above already. (OK, so it does a few things more like Windows as a Service, CBB, LTSB, etc. ... so not exactly the same) For more information take a look at this article. https://technet.microsoft.com/itpro/windows/manage/introduction-to-windows-10-servicing    ]]>