Month: April 2018

We are pleased to announce the general availability of Application Security Groups (ASG) in all Azure regions. This feature provides security micro-segmentation for your virtual networks in Azure. Network security micro segmentation ASGs enable you to define fine-grained network security policies based on workloads, centralized on applications, instead of explicit IP addresses. Provides the capability to group VMs with monikers and secure applications by filtering traffic from trusted segments of your network. Implementing granular security traffic controls improves isolation of workloads and protects them individually. If a breach occurs, this technique limits the potential impact of lateral exploration of your networks from hackers. Security definition simplified With ASGs, filtering traffic based on applications patterns is simplified, using the following steps: Define your application groups, provide a moniker descriptive name that…

Azure reference architectures are arranged by scenario, with related architectures grouped together. Each architecture includes recommended practices, along with considerations for scalability, availability, manageability, and security. Most also include a deployable solution. Reference: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/reference-architectures/

The preview for long-term backup retention in Azure SQL Database was announced in October 2016, providing you with a way to easily manage long-term retention for your databases – up to 10 years – with backups stored in your own Azure Backup Service Vault. Based upon feedback gathered during the preview, we are happy to announce a set of major enhancements to the long-term backup retention solution. With this update we have eliminated the need for you to deploy and manage a separate Backup Service Vault. Instead, SQL Database will utilize Azure Blob Storage under the covers to store and manage your long-term backups. This new design will enable flexibility for your backup strategy, and overall more control over costs. This update brings you the following additional benefits: More regional…

You will learn how to get started analyzing text! We'll show you how to sign up for a cognitive service, and the power of Text Analytics, Entity Linking and Bing Entity Search. Reference: https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/AI-Show/Understanding-Text-using-Cognitive-Services

Today customers rely on Azure’s application, infrastructure, and network monitoring capabilities to ensure their critical workloads are always up and running. It’s exciting to see the growth of these services and that customers are using multiple monitoring services to get visibility into issues and resolve them faster. To make it even easier to adopt Azure monitoring services, today we are announcing a new consistent purchasing experience across the monitoring services. Three key attributes of this new pricing model are: 1. Consistent pay-as-you-go pricing We are adopting a simple “pay-as-you-go” model across the complete portfolio of monitoring services. You have full control and transparency, so you pay for only what you use. 2. Consistent per gigabyte (GB) metering for data ingestion We are changing the pricing model for data ingestion from…

Late 2017 Microsoft released some very cool technology in Azure called Azure AD Domain Services.  This service provides Azure Customers with Virtual Machines in Azure the ability to use Domain Services such as Kerberos, NTLM and Group Policy lock down without the need for deploying Domain Controllers in the cloud. It is important to note, Azure AD Domain Services a paid service, once enabled in your Azure Tenancy, you will be billed monthly.  Azure AD Domain Services unlike other cloud services in Azure cannot be stopped or paused, it must be deleted from the Azure Tenancy to avoid further billing.  To understand how this service is charged, please see https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/pricing/details/active-directory-ds/ What Azure AD Domain Services offers customers is the ability to remove the need for building domain controllers in the…