Azure AD Connect is a free tool from Microsoft that's used for synchronizing objects between on-premises Windows Server Active Directory (AD) and Azure Active Directory. Microsoft announced in August the availability of Azure AD Connect V2.0. And in this article, I'm going to discuss the major changes in this new release. Here are the major… Read More

I think you’ll find that there are quite a few announcements this month. The summer quiet period is over, and we’re into a whole new development/release semester in Microsoft, not to mention the countdown to the usual peak release season for Microsoft Ignite has started – most releases announced at Ignite happen well before Ignite.… Read More

It has been revealed that Microsoft pulled a component of its Azure Cosmos DB service earlier this month because of a serious security issue uncovered by researchers at Wiz.io. Dubbed #ChaosDB, the flaw was disclosed to Microsoft on August 12, 2021. It gives any Azure user full access to other customers' Cosmos DB instances, without… Read More

Back in June this year, Microsoft sent the final Windows Server 2022 bits to OEMs for testing. And without so much as an official announcement, Microsoft has made the next version of its server product available to mainstream users. Windows Server 2022 will only be available on the Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC); unlike recent versions… Read More

Earlier this month, the Azure Sentinel and Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) teams announced the public availability of 'Fusion detection for ransomware'. Fusion is designed to automatically correlate security alerts that could be related to ransomware. More precisely, Microsoft said the Fusion machine learning model collates alerts detected in a specific timeframe during defense evasion… Read More

Microsoft recently announced that it acquired CloudKnox Security, a security management solution for businesses that use more than one cloud service provider. CloudKnox says that its solutions help IT departments "granular visibility, actionable insights, and control of machine and human identities with excessive high-risk privileges." Joy Chik, who is corporate vice president for Microsoft Identity,… Read More

July – a month that many take a vacation in, and it’s the start of the commercial year for Microsoft. That year kicks off with Microsoft Inspire, a conference for the partner community to learn about what Microsoft is launching and how Microsoft wants their partners to sell to customers. Most of the content is… Read More

I’ll admit that I may have done a not-so-best-practice type of thing, I have not gone into the Azure Portal in quite a long time (around 2 months). Now everyone’s usage of Azure is different and for me, I spend most of my time in the Azure Storage world, with many applications interacting with those… Read More

July is here and we are halfway through the year. Am I the only one that feels like 2021 is zipping by? I have been working non-stop for the last 6 months preparing for and migrating legacy workloads from a data center to Microsoft Azure and I have barely had time to look up from… Read More

Microsoft’s Build conference was on last week and it gave us lots of AI, Machine Learning, and every other type of “machines doe it better” cloud tech announcements. But there were also a few infrastructure announcements during the month. I’ve become the “Azure networking” person at my job, so it’s no surprise (to me) that… Read More

Last week Microsoft announced improvements to its cloud-native SIEM product, Azure Sentinel. In an effort to make Sentinel more efficient for Security Operations (SecOps) teams, Microsoft has improved the quality of rules and includes more innate intelligence out-of-the-box. There's also built-in support for SAP in preview. Plus, other features like UEBA and entity pages, which… Read More

One of the good things about virtual events like VeeamOn is that you can attend specifically what you want to learn. I personally can’t wait to get back into the regular events circuit. I’ve put in a few call for presentations for in-person events and I see a number of events planning for the fall,… Read More

I've been drowning in project deadlines for the last month and I've not had a chance to keep up with the improvements in Microsoft Azure IaaS. So this month's article is as much for me as it is for you! New General Purpose VMs The most common virtual machine family that I use in Microsoft… Read More

Microsoft ran another virtual edition of the Ignite conference in March. As usual there were a large number of Azure infrastructure announcements. Availability Zones Expansion Microsoft has committed to introducing availability zones to all Azure regions by the end of 2021. An Azure region (supposedly) is made up of one or more physical data centers… Read More

I do most of my Azure work in both North Central US and Central US. However, I had a recent project where I needed to deploy some Azure storage in the new South Africa North region. Random, I love how the names get names by their dates of entry and there is a funny story… Read More