TechNet UK Blog https://review.docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/uktechnet/feed.xml Thu, 12 Sep 2019 10:18:31 GMT en-US hourly 1 Your first project in Azure https://review.docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/uktechnet/your-first-project-in-azure Thu, 02 May 2019 12:00:19 GMT https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/uktechnet/?p=18905 Ever considered creating something in the cloud, but didn’t quite know where to start? It can be a daunting subject to approach, especially if you have little to no experience working with it. Fortunately, it’s never been easier to see what you can do. The best way to learn something new has always been getting hands-on, which is why you can use a free Azure trial to test out some of the tools and services. That way, at the end of the 30-day trial, you’ll know a lot more about cloud computing and what you can do with it. To start you off, here are a few things you can do with your Azure trial.

Create a WordPress website

This is one of the easiest things you can do with Azure, and whether or not you plan to keep a website in the cloud, it’s good practice for becoming more accustomed to Azure tools and features. This will also give you a basic idea of how to set up other kinds of websites, perfect if you’ve long been planning to get a portfolio website put together! In the Azure toolbar, navigate to the ‘Web Sites’ tab and click the ‘Create a web site’ button. From here, it’s as simple as selecting WordPress as your website of choice, then following through some basic setup. Once that’s finished, Azure will initiate build and deploy operations. Once Azure has completed those operations, you’re ready for the final step. Simply navigate back to the ‘Web Sites’ tab and select your new site. You’ll need to run through some basic WordPress setup, but you’ll now have a functioning website! Try playing with the settings to see what kind of control you have when running it in the cloud. During the trial, you can run up to ten websites. The DNS name will be fixed for the duration of the trial, but your URLs will be fully customisable if you have a full account.

Store some files

With the free credit in your trial account, you can use up to 8TB of storage. While you’re learning the basics of Azure, why not create some storage and host some files? This might be where you would want to keep server files, but you may also need to share documents with people you’re collaborating with on a project. With all that storage, it’s perfect for moving large video files, too. To do this, navigate to the ‘Storage accounts’ option in the Azure navigation menu. From here you can create a storage account; in this instance, we want to use the ‘files’ type of storage. Once that’s set up, you can create a file share instance and define how large you want it to be. You have up to 8TB, so don’t worry about running out of space just yet! With this in place, you’ll be able to select that file share and upload/download files. Try it out, and see if you finally have a good way to send large files to your friends.

Next steps

Now you’ve seen a little of what you can do with Azure. Hopefully it will have got you thinking about what you’d like to do with it, but if you're looking for more small projects to complete during your trial, here are a few suggestions:
  • Set up Linux and Windows virtual machines
  • Create an automatic backup of files to the cloud
  • Create and host a web or mobile app
  • Create a Twitter bot
These are some of the simpler uses of the cloud, but you’ll soon find yourself more confident and ready to take on larger projects. Perhaps you'll use it on large volumes of data for machine learning, running high-demand computing, or even getting to grips with the IoT Developer Center. The free trial is a fantastic way to get started with cloud computing, so try it out and experiment. By the end of the 30 days, perhaps you’ll have your eyes on an exciting project or two!

Resources

]]> Azure Migrate – Where Should I Start? https://review.docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/uktechnet/azure-migrate-where-should-i-start Tue, 30 Apr 2019 12:00:20 GMT https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/uktechnet/?p=28805 By Joe Carlyle, Principal Azure Solution Architect at Evros Technology Group and owner of wedoAzure If you’re thinking about making a move to Azure, it’s important to first understand how to approach it. With the correct approach and sufficient planning, a migration can be straight forward, efficient and void of surprises. Therefore, the place to start is the Microsoft Cloud Operating Model. This is a detailed white paper that allows you to create a strategy for migration. Covering cloud readiness, people strategy and technical analysis, it’s a comprehensive document. Once you have an understanding of your business strategy, read “Why am I moving to Azure?” and your people strategy, read “Who is moving us to Azure?” you can progress to the technical phase. The vast majority of initial moves to Azure are often re-host migrations, or “lift and shift”, as these are most common, I will reference this scenario as an example. There are four stages: The first step of the technical phase is to Assess. This means understanding what it is that you are moving and what the best process will be. This includes everything from involving the business stake holders, to cost calculation to application evaluation. This analysis should give you an output that not only details where the application could go but more importantly, where it can go. Microsoft offer several tools to help with some of this. First up is Azure TCO. This allows you to estimate the cost savings you could make by migrating to Azure. Next is Azure Migrate, this is an assessment tool that is FREE and allows you to discover, document and assess your workloads and their dependencies. You can then create cost estimates for running them in Azure. [caption id="attachment_28835" align="aligncenter" width="1040"] Azure Migrate Dependencies Example[/caption] Now that you have your environment discovered, grouped and sized correctly, you can begin to migrate your workloads. Microsoft provide a service for this also, Azure Site Recovery (ASR). This service allows you to replicate your servers from your on-premises environment. For most services it is application aware, meaning it can replicate services like SQL server without any data loss. Before you implement ASR it is important to use your data from Azure Migrate to capacity plan for your replication requirements. Taking this step allows for greater speed and efficiency during replication and migration of workloads. Microsoft also provide a script repository for migrating large numbers of VMs at once. These can be from VMware, AWS, GCP or physical servers. There are some limitations, most restrictive is lack of support for Managed Disks, but you can always flip these manually later. The scripts and guide can be found here. How long it takes to migrate your workloads is determined by your business requirements. However, once complete, it is vital that you revisit these workloads for optimisation. Azure Advisor can provide recommendations but the key areas to focus on are:
  • VM sizing – Ensure the VM is running on an appropriate size to gain maximum cost efficiency
  • Storage tier – Ensure the disks associated with the VM are using the correct tier to balance performance requirements against cost.
  • Reserved Instances – Once the VM is sized correctly, purchase Reserved Instances to achieve the maximum discount to run your workload for one to three years.
Now that your workloads are migrated and optimised, your final step is to ensure they’re secure and managed correctly. The best place to start with this process is Azure Security Center. This provides unified security management and allows you to take action to mitigate risk and implement actionable recommendations. This will include common requirements like disk encryption and anti virus. More advanced and platform specific features like Just In Time Access are also available. So to recap, there is 1 prerequisite then 4 main steps:
  1. Understand and create your Cloud Operating Model
  2. Assess your current environment
  3. Migrate it!
  4. Optimise your utilisation
  5. Secure and Manage it
If all of the above is completed and optimisation and security are reviewed regularly you can be confident in the quality of your environment state. If you have any questions, feel free to tweet me @wedoAzure or leave a comment!]]> A look at the Chromium-powered Microsoft Edge https://review.docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/uktechnet/a-look-at-the-chromium-powered-microsoft-edge Thu, 25 Apr 2019 12:00:17 GMT https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/uktechnet/?p=28745

On April 8th, we shipped the first Dev and Canary channel builds of the next version of Microsoft Edge, based on the Chromium open-source project. In this post, we'll take a look at the Edge Insider Channels and their differences.

The new Microsoft Edge builds are available through preview channels, which we're calling “Microsoft Edge Insider Channels.” The first two channels, Canary and Dev, are available to download and try at the Microsoft Edge Insider site. These channels are available on all supported versions of Windows 10, with more platforms coming soon. The Canary channel will be updated daily, and the Dev channel will be updated weekly. You can also choose to install multiple channels side-by-side for testing, as they will have separate icons and names so you can easily tell them apart. The Canary channel is truly the bleeding edge, so you may discover bugs before we’ve had a chance to discover and fix them. If you’re eager for the latest changes and don’t mind a bug or two, this is the channel for you. If you prefer a build with slightly more testing, you might be interested in the Dev channel, which is the best build of the week from the Canary channel. We look at several sources, including user feedback, automated test results, performance metrics, and telemetry, to choose the right Canary build to promote to the Dev channel. We expect most users on Insider builds will be on the Dev channel. We will soon be introducing the Beta and Stable channels. The Beta channel is a significantly more stable release and will be a good target for Enterprises and IT Pros who are interested in trying out the next version of Microsoft Edge. We are not changing the existing version of Microsoft Edge installed on your devices at this time – it will continue to work side by side with the builds from any of the Microsoft Edge Insider Channels.  

Chromium

When we initially announced our decision to adopt Chromium as the foundation for future versions of Microsoft Edge, we published a set of open source principles and declared our intent to contribute to the Chromium project to make Microsoft Edge and other Chromium-based browsers better on PCs and other devices. While we will continue to focus on delivering a world class browsing experience with Microsoft Edge’s user experience and connected services, when it comes to improving the web platform, our default position will be to contribute to the Chromium project. Our early contributions include landing over 300 commits into the Chromium project since we joined this community in December.  

Accessibility

We are committed to building a more accessible web platform for all users. Today, Microsoft Edge is the only browser to earn a perfect score on the HTML5Accessibility browser benchmark, and we’re hoping to bring those contributions to the Chromium project and improve web experiences for all users.
  • Modern accessibility APIs - To enable a better accessibility experience for screen readers, like Windows Narrator, magnifiers, braille displays, and other accessibility tools, we’ve shared our intent to implement support for the Microsoft UI Automation interfaces, a more modern and secure Windows accessibility framework, in Chromium.
  • High contrast - To ensure our customers have the best readability experience, we’re working in the W3C CSS working group to standardise the high-contrast CSS Media query and have shared our intent to implement it in Chromium. This will allow customers to use the Windows Ease of Access settings to select their preferred colour contrast settings to improve content readability on Windows devices.
  • HTML video caption styling - We’ve partnered with Chromium engineers to land support for Windows Ease of Access settings to improve caption readability on Windows 10.
  • Caret browsing - For customers who use their keyboard to navigate the web and select text, we’ve shared our intent to implement caret browsing in Chromium.
We’re starting to work with our Chromium counterparts to improve the accessibility of native web controls, like media and input controls. Over time we expect this work will help Chromium earn a perfect score on the HTML5Accessibility browser benchmark. While we’re participating in the Chromium open source project, we still believe the evolution of the open web is best served though the standards communities, and the open web benefits from open debate from a wide variety of perspectives. We are continuing to remain deeply engaged in standards discussions where the perspectives of vendors developing different browsers and the larger web community can be heard and considered. You can keep track of all Microsoft explainer documents on the Microsoft Edge Explainers GitHub.  

Learn More

]]> Share and learn from the global Azure community with April bootcamp events for all https://review.docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/uktechnet/share-and-learn-from-the-global-azure-community-with-april-bootcamp-events-for-all Wed, 24 Apr 2019 10:06:34 GMT https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/uktechnet/?p=28855 Developers and IT professionals recognise Microsoft Azure as a fantastic tool, providing you a way to quickly deploy applications for enterprises, startups, or your own personal projects. But sometimes you need help to make the most out of the platform, whether you’re looking for tips on design, development, or deployment, or searching for advice on testing and maintenance. It’s great to speak with experts face-to-face—and an opportunity to do just that is coming up soon! On April 27, 2019, you are invited to attend the sixth annual Global Azure Bootcamp, a one-day series of events organised by members of Azure groups around the globe. The Global Azure Bootcamp is open to anyone, whether you’re an enterprise developer using Azure for your day job, a startup founder looking for an easily accessible and industry-leading platform to run your business, or even a hobbyist running your own development projects in your spare time. There will be a good number of events in the UK and Ireland. We’re particularly excited that an event will be held in Nottingham for the first time— the biggest tech city in the East Midlands. If you can’t make any of the events in person, there is also the 24-hour online event, where a number of MVPs will be speaking and sharing knowledge with the Azure community. It is important to note that this is not organised by Microsoft. The Global Azure Bootcamp events are all designed by the community, for people who want to learn about Azure and discover what it can do. The passionate organisers deserve full credit for creating this massive event, which the developer and IT professional community have found so useful. Why attend the Global Azure Bootcamp? It’s so easy for developers to deploy prototypes and applications with Azure. That’s why a diverse global community exists where members regularly share advice, tips, know-how and skills with each other, driven by talented and enthusiastic MVPs, RDs, and User Group leaders around the world. In the UK, there is a thriving community of Azure users and developers. Since 2011, a UK Azure Users Group with thousands of members has been meeting regularly in London, Birmingham, and Manchester. Global Azure Bootcamp events started back when the platform was called Windows Azure. One huge day of events was seen as a great way to create excitement among the community, and in the first year 92 locations in 36 countries participated. Now it has grown so large that it’s very likely you can attend an event wherever you are in the world. Last year, in fact, there were 273 locations in 59 countries participating, organised by local community leaders and Azure enthusiasts. There were 13,699 confirmed attendees, with 424 MVPs or RDs involved. How can a Global Azure Bootcamp help you? Content for each event is dependent on the organisers. Forms it could take include question-and-answer sessions, hackathons, workshops, or even one-to-one Azure tutorials. Some might have multiple tracks and sessions, while others could be individual lab sessions. Some might even be about raising money for a charity. That’s the beauty of a non-corporate community event. These events can springboard you into the world of Azure, which has a range of uses and benefits for individuals and businesses of all sizes. Many companies are using cloud services for their network infrastructure, and because so many of them already use Microsoft services, Azure is a natural direction to take. Where can you sign up? Thanks to hard work behind the scenes, a range of UK Azure Bootcamp events—all free—are being offered. The full Azure Bootcamps agenda is here. You can sign up for events in Birmingham, Cardiff, ­Exeter, Glasgow, London, Manchester, Milton Keynes, Newcastle, and Nottingham. There are also Irish events in Letterkenny and Dublin, as well as one online hosted by MVPs. Click on the links for more information and details of how to register. A YouTube introduction to the Global Azure Online Bootcamp is here. We also have a handy Azure global registration page.          ]]> Windows Virtual Desktop – First Thoughts https://review.docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/uktechnet/windows-virtual-desktop-first-thoughts Tue, 23 Apr 2019 12:00:37 GMT https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/uktechnet/?p=28785 By Joe Carlyle, Principal Azure Solution Architect at Evros Technology Group and owner of wedoAzure Last month, Microsoft released Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) to the public in preview. The service was first announced back at Ignite 2018. Microsoft describe the service as follows: Windows Virtual Desktop is a desktop and app virtualization service that runs on the cloud. Here’s what you can do when you run Windows Virtual Desktop on Azure:
  • Set up a multi-session Windows 10 deployment that delivers a full Windows 10 with scalability
  • Virtualize Office 365 ProPlus and optimize it to run in multi-user virtual scenarios
  • Provide Windows 7 virtual desktops with free Extended Security Updates
  • Bring your existing Remote Desktop Services (RDS) and Windows Server desktops and apps to any computer
  • Virtualize both desktops and apps
  • Manage Windows 10, Windows Server, and Windows 7 desktops and apps with a unified management experience
One point not mentioned that is important - Azure is the only public cloud you can run Windows 10 workloads. There are a couple of pre-requisites to deploying WVD. First up is licensing, below are the requirements for running WVD
OS Required License
Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session or Windows 10 single-session Microsoft E3, E5, A3, A5, Business Windows E3, E5, A3, A5
Windows 7 Microsoft E3, E5, A3, A5, Business Windows E3, E5, A3, A5
Windows Server 2012 R2, 2016, 2019 RDS Client Access License (CAL) with Software Assurance
Next, you’ll need the following infrastructure components:
  • Azure AD tenant to register the service against
  • AD Domain Services reachable by VMs in WVD pool, so either a domain controller in the vnet or enable AAD DS.
  • An Azure subscription to host and pay for the above 🙂
Once the above is all ready to go, you’ll want to start your deployment. First, you need to register your AAD tenant with the WVD service. This requires Global Admin rights and your tenant ID, full details here. I found the process quick, simple and well documented. Second, you need to create a host pool. This links the IaaS resources to your domain and your WVD service. I opted for an isolated vnet with AADDS activated to domain join the VMs, using a server pool for applications. Full details for this step here. After a little time, my host pool was deployed and I could access the service via the web client.
[caption id="attachment_28795" align="aligncenter" width="665"] A Windows 10 desktop session running via the HTML5 client right in the browser[/caption]
The experience was good but I wouldn’t call it seamless. Simple things jumped out straight away from the authentication side of things with the HTML5 client. After logging into the Azure AD app, I then have to login again to the desktop, I would have expected SSO here. The same lack of SSO is present in the RDS client on Windows 10. However, once connected, performance and latency were good. Exactly as expected in fact. Even via the HTML5 client. Next, I wanted to test some individual apps. Namely, the powerhouse of app virtualisation, Notepad. I created a new RemoteApp Group, following the instructions here, again they were easy to follow. Although, Notepad didn’t show up in the list of available apps, I just entered the location where I know it is installed and it worked. Again performance was as expected however the issue I ran into here was the fact that I couldn’t assign the same user to multiple groups, it was one group or the other as I had a “desktop” group and an “app” group. Hopefully this is something that is fixed, or a workaround in place for GA. Next on my list will be to test the FSlogix option for profiles, load balancing options and creating a pool with a customised image. But so far I am impressed with the simplicity of deployment. I will follow this post up with impressions relative to that next level of customisation required for a production environment. One final note is that all of the customisation of the Windows Virtual Desktop service is done via Powershell. If you’re not familiar or comfortable with this, you may struggle to get a working POC in place. My advice is to follow the published guides exactly or ask on Twitter for help!
]]> New certification: Azure Security Engineer Associate https://review.docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/uktechnet/new-certification-azure-security-engineer-associate Thu, 18 Apr 2019 12:00:00 GMT https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/uktechnet/?p=28775 Microsoft certified professionals earn 15% more on average than their peers according to The Business Value of IT Certification, a 2015 survey conducted by IDC and Microsoft. Since then, several other surveys have continued to prove the value of certification for both technology professionals as well as the companies they work for:
  • According to a 2017 survey by Global Knowledge, Microsoft certifications represent 3 of the top 15 highest-paying technology related certifications.
  • In Pearson VUE’s 2016 Value of IT Certification Survey, 33% of certified respondents received either a promotion or a salary increase after they achieved certifications.
So with that in mind, do you:
  • Implement security controls, manage identity and access, and protect data, apps and networks?
  • Identify and remediate vulnerabilities by using a variety of security tools, implement threat protection, and respond to security incident escalations?
  • Have strong skills in scripting and automation, a deep understanding of networking and virtualization, and a strong familiarity with cloud capabilities, Microsoft Azure products and services, and other Microsoft products and services?
If so, this could be the certification for you! The new Microsoft Certified: Azure Security Engineer Associate certification has one exam that is currently in beta: AZ-500: Microsoft Azure Security Engineer. As a bonus, the first 300 people who register to take this course will receive an 80% discount - to receive the 80% discount, use code AZ500Hearts when prompted for payment. The seats are offered on a first-come, first-served basis. You must register for the exam on or before April 30, 2019. Take the exam as soon as possible, so we can leverage your comments, feedback, and exam data in our evaluation of the quality of the questions.  

Preparing for Beta Exams

The rescore process starts on the day that exams go live, and final scores are released approximately 10 days later. For questions about the timing of beta exam scoring and live exam release, see the blog posts The Path from Beta Exam to Live Exam and More Tips About Beta Exams. Keep in mind that these exams are in beta, so you will not be scored immediately. You will receive your final score and passing status after your exam is live.  

Resources

]]> What are Azure Blueprints? https://review.docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/uktechnet/what-are-azure-blueprints Fri, 12 Apr 2019 11:39:22 GMT https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/uktechnet/?p=28695 By Joe Carlyle, Principal Azure Solution Architect at Evros Technology Group and owner of wedoAzure I’m sure most of you have seen recent announcements relative to Blueprints as well as multiple Microsoft posts about the service and what it can do to improve your environments. However, what if you’re not sure about what they are and if they are usable for your environment? Hopefully, that’s where this post comes in. I’m going to explain exactly what they are and why you might use an Azure Blueprint. This should allow you to make a decision on whether you need them or not. Following on from that, I think that’s the first basic point about Azure Blueprints. Similar to several other new services in Azure, the functionality is great and could help progress a lot of environments, but that doesn’t mean they help, or are even useful in a lot of other environments. Never feel guilt-ed into using a new service because there is a “buzz” about it at launch. Assess the service, understand it, assess it’s usability versus your requirements then TEST TEST TEST! Don’t forget, Blueprints are still in preview so no production workloads yet. So, what is an Azure Blueprint? To try explain it plainly, it is a collection of governance and resource services, defined in such a way to allow you to repeat deployments to a set standard. The collection of governance and resource services within a Blueprint are referred to as Artifacts. Within each Blueprint, you can make use of any combination of the following:
Resource Hierarchy options Description
Resource Groups Subscription Create a new resource group for use by other artifacts within the blueprint. This enables you to organize resources and provides a scope for other artifacts.
Azure Resource Manager template Subscription, Resource Group Templates are used to create resources. This could range from individual deployments to entire environments.
Policy Assignment Subscription, Resource Group Allows assignment of a policy or initiative to the subscription and/or resource group the blueprint is assigned to. Any parameters are assigned at creation of the blueprint or during blueprint assignment.
Role Assignment Subscription, Resource Group Role assignments can be defined for the entire subscription or nested to a specific resource group included in the blueprint.
  As you can see above, artifacts can be deployed/assigned at different levels. However, the Blueprint itself must be located in either a subscription you have at least Contributor access to or a Management Group. If located within a Management Group the Blueprint is available to any of the child subscriptions of that group. When defining your Blueprint, several artifact options allow you to choose parameters that are passed from Blueprint to artifact. For example, when defining a Resource Group, you can choose to specify the name and location. You don’t have to specify these parameters within the Blueprint, you can also allow these to be passed when the Blueprint is assigned. Once you have your Blueprint defined, your next step is to publish it. When publishing, you must indicate a version. I found it odd that this isn’t restricted in some way, you can literally name one version “1.0” and the next “B” so I’d recommend adding notes with each version and try to stick to a pattern. However, it makes sense if you’re going to use different versions for different assignments (I’ll explain that next), so choose relative to your requirements. When your Blueprint is published, you can then assign it. A nice feature is the ability to assign different versions of a Blueprint to different subscriptions. For example you could have two versions of a Blueprint, that have different artifact definitions (think test version and production version) assigned to different subscriptions. They can be independently updated too. At assignment, there are some options to chose as well as subscription. They are Resource Locking and Managed Identity. For Managed Identity, it’s recommended you simply choose System Assigned as the Blueprints service will then manage the security lifecycle. More on Managed Identities to help you understand and choose what’s right for your environment. The Resource Locking feature really allows you to maintain control of your governed deployment. If you’re not familiar with Resource Locks, check out this post. The familiar status applies to resources deployed by a Blueprint assignment:
  • Not locked
  • Read Only
  • Cannot delete
However, once a status is applied, not even a user/object with the Owner role can modify it. This is due to how these statuses are applied. An RBAC deny assignments deny action is applied to artifact resources during assignment of a blueprint if the assignment selected the Read Only or Do Not Delete option. The deny action is added by the managed identity of the blueprint assignment and can only be removed from the artifact resources by the same managed identity. So, how do you edit or delete your resources? Update your Blueprint to “Not locked” and push the update to the relevant assignment. This method prevents unwanted and unexpected changes occurring outside of the scope of the Blueprint. There is quite a learning curve for Blueprints I think as they combine several other services you must be familiar with, so for me, you have to start there. Understand each of the artifacts fully so you can see how they may work well if defined in your environment. Recently, sample Blueprints have been released to allow you to deploy governed pre-designed environments with a couple of clicks, one sample is the ISO27001 Shared Services which I think is good to help understand the service, even if it might be slightly complex for your first test. Again, Blueprints are still in Preview. So be as cautious as always with your production environments. I look forward to seeing what changes come with GA, which shouldn’t be much longer considering Blueprints were announced back at Ignite. I will update this post relevant to GA when it happens. As always, if you have questions, leave a comment, mail me, or ping me on Twitter!
]]> It’s official: Visual Studio 2019 has launched! https://review.docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/uktechnet/its-official-visual-studio-2019-has-launched Tue, 09 Apr 2019 11:32:03 GMT https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/uktechnet/?p=28665 With the April 2 public launch of Visual Studio 2019, developers worldwide can now use the most productive, modern, and innovative Visual Studio yet. The latest generation of Visual Studio—in Community, Professional, and Enterprise editions—delivers new levels of productivity for every developer, fuller and more effective team collaboration, and AI-powered innovation. If you didn’t catch the livestream for the virtual launch, or attend a day-of event, no worries. You can view recordings of the virtual launch here. Many of you had the opportunity to work with Visual Studio 2019 during the four-month preview period that began in December. Thanks! Your feedback helped us to add capabilities, improve performance, and refine the developer experience. For those of you now meeting Visual Studio 2019 for the first time, prepare for better, faster ways to deliver the business value that your enterprise users or external customers demand. For example,
  • Get more productive with one-click code clean-up. Search in debug windows. Access integrated pull requests.
  • Exploit modern features including .NET Core 3 support, cross-platform C++, and Docker and Kubernetes support.
  • Leverage innovation including AI-powered code completion, real-time coding collaboration, and production debugging.
 

Be more productive right away

Visual Studio 2019 opens with a new start window on launch. This experience is better designed to work with today’s Git repositories – whether local repos or online Git repos on GitHub, Azure Repos, or elsewhere. Once you’re in the IDE, you’ll notice a cleaner interface and a more compact title and menu bar. A new search experience replaces the previous “Quick Launch” box. You can now search for settings, commands, and install options. The new search experience is also smarter, supporting fuzzy string searching to help find what you’re looking for even when you don’t have the spelling quite right. When you’re coding, Visual Studio 2019 makes it easier to get your work done quickly, with new capabilities including code maintainability and consistency. We’ve added new refactoring capabilities to make it even easier to keep your code in good shape. With the new document health indicator and code clean-up functionality, you can now easily identify and fix warnings and suggestions with the click of a button. Common debugging tasks are also easier. Stepping performance is improved, allowing for a much smoother debugging experience. We’ve added search capabilities to the Autos, Locals, and Watch windows, which will help you track down objects and values. In addition, we’ve added Time Travel Debugging for managed code, updates to the Snapshot Debugger to target Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS), and better performance when debugging large C++ projects, thanks to an out-of-process 64-bit debugger.
[embed width="720" height="480"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DANLUUIUrcM[/embed]
 

Collaborate more

Building on the work we started in Visual Studio 2017, we improved Visual Studio IntelliCode—our context-aware and AI-powered IntelliSense—so you can train it on your own code repositories and share the results with your team. IntelliCode reduces the number of keystrokes you need because the completion lists are prioritised on the most common coding patterns for that API combined with the context of the code in your existing project. The Visual Studio Live Share feature helps you collaborate in real time with anyone across the globe using Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code. With Live Share, you can immediately invite your teammates to join your coding session to take care of a bug or help make a quick change. You’ll also find it’s easier to start a session and view the people you’re working with. With the brand-new pull request (PR) experience in Visual Studio 2019, you can review, run, and even debug pull requests from your team without leaving the IDE.  

Deliver the most modern code

.NET Core 3 is a major .NET update and Visual Studio 2019 is the way to build .NET Core 3 applications for any platform. Visual Studio 2019 also includes improved support for cross-platform C++ development, as well as .NET mobile development for iOS and Android with Xamarin.  

Learn more

With the production release of Visual Studio 2019, there’s never been a better time to learn all about how you and your team can take advantage of it. And there’s no better place to start than here. Of course, seeing is believing, and you can begin to do that right now too, by downloading Visual Studio 2019 and trying it out for yourself.]]> Azure Cosmos DB: A Completely Unofficial Primer https://review.docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/uktechnet/azure-cosmos-db-a-completely-unofficial-primer Tue, 02 Apr 2019 16:28:43 GMT https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/uktechnet/?p=28625 By Ian Moulster, Partner Market Advisor, Partner Business & Development at Microsoft A little while ago I wrote a completely unofficial primer for Azure SQL Managed Instance. On a similar theme here’s my take – again totally unofficial – on Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB. A service that is growing at a phenomenal rate as developers and data scientists across the world start taking advantage of its remarkable capabilities. As before please accept the usual caveats i.e. be aware that I have over-simplified somewhat and that you should read the official documentation for the full and totally accurate picture. With that out of the way let’s cut to the chase: Cosmos DB is, as the name suggests, a database and it resides within Microsoft’s Azure cloud. But it’s a database with a difference. In this article I’m going to focus on just two significant benefits of Cosmos DB:
  • Your data is available globally with incredibly low latency. This is no small feat – I’ll explain why shortly
  • Cosmos DB is a “No SQL” database. What does that mean and why should you care? Let’s explore that one first
 

What is a “No SQL” database and why should I care?

Before we get into “No SQL” we should ask: What is “SQL”? It stands for “Structured Query Language” which is a fairly gross misnomer given that arguably it’s not particularly structured, is about more than just queries, and isn’t really a language. But let’s not get bogged down with poor nomenclature. SQL has been used for many years as the way to interact with data – I spent much of my youth as a developer building applications that used Microsoft SQL Server and it works very well. You can use SQL Server to define the schema - a sort of blue-print of the structure of the information you need to store and access - and the commands themselves that you use to access it. The problem is that while SQL is useful in many situations it isn’t always the best way to either store the data or access it. Let me give you an example: If you’re storing documents you may find that each one might contain completely different data and you may need to change its structure on the fly. SQL is fairly poor at doing this – it likes a nice, ordered world where data structures don’t change very often and everything can conform to a template. For this reason Cosmos DB provides a number of different ways to store and access data, it isn’t just restricted to the “SQL way” of doing things. For sure, it has the concept of a key-value pair which is similar in many ways to how SQL works but it goes well beyond this, having document stores (which address the issue mentioned above) as well as others such graph stores that focus on relationships (great for social-media type data for example), column stores that store data in columns rather than rows which massively increases read speeds for certain types of data, and so on. The other amazing feature is that Cosmos DB indexes all of your data automatically, no matter which data model you’re using. Indexes equate to blisteringly-fast data access so this is a big deal. So while it’s called “No SQL” it’s actually much more than SQL: It stores and provides access to data with super-efficiency due to its flexible nature, no need for schemas, and automatic indexing taking it well beyond what we think of as “SQL”.  

Ok, so what about this global availability thing?

In case you hadn’t noticed, the world has changed a bit in the last few years. These days people (and I absolutely include myself in this) expect…well, they expect far too much. By which I mean, and I’ll use myself as an example, I expect to be able to use my phone anywhere in the world and get instant access to everything. I would be furious if I found that, simply because I’m on the other side of the planet, my apps are slow and it takes ages to get at data or update things. Such is the height of the expectation bar these days. And of course the problem is worse for business that need to process masses of data. Now if you’re a developer or data architect this is a problem. The challenge, you see, is the speed of light. No really. The speed of light. As you may know if you remember your school physics the speed of light is a cosmic speed limit – nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. This isn’t a physical limitation that we haven’t figured out how to crack yet, it’s a part of the actual structure of the universe. And that includes the data sloshing around your network and the internet. Now, you might think that light travels pretty fast which it does – 196,000 miles per second. But even those monstrous speeds can cause a problem if your data resides on the other side of the planet. In short, there will be a very noticeable delay compared to the access times you would experience if your data were, say, just a few miles away. So what’s the answer? There’s only one way to address this (unless you’re able to change the structure of the universe): Have copies of your data dotted around the planet so that wherever you are you’re never far from a copy. And hey presto, you have fast access wherever you are. However as is so often the case the answer to one question causes new questions to arise. Or in this case, new problems. The first one is quite obvious – storing your data in locations around the planet is far from trivial and likely to be insanely expensive. Microsoft Azure has data centres in regions across the planet and so addresses this issue. Then there’s the second problem, how on earth do you keep everything in sync so that everyone sees and uses the same version of the data, even though there are multiple copies of it? Fortunately some extremely brainy data scientists have spent a lot of time thinking about this and much of the fruits of their labour are built into Cosmos DB. Without getting into details (although there’s lots of information here if you want to know more) Cosmos DB is able to balance the need for speed of access with the need for data consistency in a number of clever ways so that you don’t need to worry about it.  

Summary

I’ve only really scratched the surface in this article. There is lots more to Cosmos DB - for example it would be remiss of me not to mention that Cosmos DB offers a money-back guarantee via comprehensive Service Level Agreements. Or the multiple APIs for accessing it. Or the incredible uptime and low-latency guarantees. Plus it’s in the cloud so has almost limitless capacity. And lots more. All of which adds up to an incredibly powerful, flexible and global-scale way of storing and accessing data. Start learning more here. Or try it for free (for a limited time).]]> Azure SQL Database Managed Instance: A Completely Unofficial Primer https://review.docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/uktechnet/azure-sql-database-managed-instance-a-completely-unofficial-primer Thu, 28 Mar 2019 16:02:34 GMT https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/uktechnet/?p=28645 By Ian Moulster, Partner Market Advisor, Partner Business & Development at Microsoft If you haven’t heard about Azure SQL Database Managed Instance, or have heard of it but aren’t quite sure what it’s all about, here’s my completely unofficial primer to get you off the ground. I have attempted to describe things using “normal” English so that we don’t get bogged down in technical or marketing speak, let me know I’ve managed to pull this off (it’s trickier than it seems). It also means that in places I’ll almost certainly over-simplify and may omit mentioning some features for the sake of brevity. Which means you should read up the official documentation if you want to get the complete picture – I’ve provided some links at the end of this article to get you started. With those caveats out of the way, let’s begin with an assumption that you’re aware of SQL Server as an on-premises database service ie you install it on your local network and do all the sizing, administration, security etc yourself. This is of course the traditional way of doing things and on the face of it there’s nothing wrong with it. However as I’m sure you’re aware there is another way. For some time Microsoft has offered Azure SQL Database, a cloud-based fully-managed relational database service. SQL Database has many advantages over a locally-installed version of SQL Server such as the ability to scale up and down easily according to need, financially-backed uptime, built-in intelligent optimisation, advanced security, geo-availability, near zero administration and more. While SQL Database is highly-successful and widely used there can be some challenges if you want to move your locally-installed on-premises SQL Server databases to the Azure SQL Database service. Let me highlight two specific challenges that are particularly relevant if you need to migrate a large number of apps and corresponding databases from an on-premises implementation:
  1. App compatibility: You may need to update, refactor or in some cases re-write apps that use the database in order to get the full benefit of SQL Database
  2. No support for virtual networks, known as VNETs. Let’s not get into VNETs just yet except to say that a VNET allows you a completely isolated and secure method of connecting to a cloud service ie with a VNET you can really lock-down access in a way that’s more difficult to do without a VNET
And here’s where, magician-like, we unveil Azure SQL Database Manged Instance. But what is it exactly? Managed Instance - as we’ll call it for short - isn’t a new service as such, it’s a third deployment option within Azure SQL Database sitting alongside the two existing deployment options (for the record these existing options are single instance databases and so-called elastic pools but let’s not get into that here as it’s out of scope for this article. If you’re interested there is lots more information here). It’s called “Managed Instance” for a reason – essentially it’s a cloud-based version of an on-premises SQL Server instance. Ok, so what does that mean? Well, databases in a SQL Database Managed Instance share the resources allocated to the managed instance and all the databases in the instance are managed collectively. Think of it as a way of grouping SQL Databases together in the cloud so that they share resources and management. So far so good, but what other advantages are there? I’m going to point out two significant ones that relate directly to the challenges highlighted above:
  1. Very, very high levels of compatibility with the programming model of an on-premises SQL Server Enterprise, going all the way back to SQL Server 2005. For those of you who are interested this includes things like CLR support, SQL agents, native backup and restore and a whole lot more. You are very likely to find that once you move your local SQL Server database to a Managed Instance your apps will simply work without any changes, a huge advantage. And not just work: They will benefit from the scalability, security, geo-availability and almost zero-admin you get from a cloud service
  2. Support for VNET. There’s that VNET thing again, so let’s examine it a bit more closely. VNET is a big deal because, as alluded to above, it gives you options for connecting to the database that are completely isolated and dedicated to a customer. Before VNET there would be a public endpoint that, even though it still required passwords and other credentials, was not a viable option for large institutions like banks or healthcare who need completely isolated access. Now that each Managed Instance is a VNET customers can connect their on-premises app to it via VPN or Express Route Gateway (if you’re not familiar with Express Route Gateway it uses 3rd parties to broker the connection without using the Internet). And of course web apps have a similar capability for isolated, secure connectivity.
This all sounds good and indeed it is but we’ve skimmed over something and I need to return to it: data migration. If you only have one local database then it probably isn’t a big deal to migrate it to the cloud – for example you could use the native backup facility in SQL Server, then connect to your Managed Instance and restore it (again natively as SQL Database Managed Instances support native backup and restore). But if you have hundreds or thousands of databases, possibly some of which are using non-Microsoft database products, then you should take a look at the excellent Azure Database Migration Service. We have recently announced Azure Database Migration Services support for Managed Instance. It’s out of scope of this article but you can take a look here for more information: https://datamigration.microsoft.com/ There are a couple of other things you should be aware of:
  1. There are actually two Managed Instance options that provide different levels of compute, storage and availability: General Purpose which is best suited to data applications with basic IO and availability requirements; And Business Critical which is best suited to data applications with fast IO and high availability requirements. You can read more here
  2. Sizing: If you have a local SQL Server Database then you will be used to estimating the processing and storage requirements using physical hardware such as the number and type of processor cores required. To help you use a similar approach for Managed Instances you can use virtual cores (vCores) which represent virtual equivalents of local CPU cores. While this article isn’t focused on licencing there is something that’s worth mentioning: If you’re a SQL Enterprise Edition customer with Software Assurance you get 4 cores in the cloud for every 1 core you own on-premises for workloads moving to the General Purpose Managed Instance. Obviously this will be of enormous help if you’re moving virtualised applications to Managed Instance as you won’t need to purchase incremental vCores. For lots more on pricing and sizing take a look here.
There is of course tons more and if you’re interested take a look at the official blog post that provides good pointers to more information including how to get started, and the official documentation here.]]>