I am sure you might already have heard of our upcoming event called ITOps Talks – All Things Hybrid starting February 2nd. ITOps Talks – All Things Hybrid is an initiative of our Cloud Advocacy AzOps team, to bring you Hybrid Cloud deep dive sessions from your favorite speakers and program managers at Microsoft. You can learn directly from the people behind the products how you can make your on-premises environment better using build-in technologies in Windows Server, Microsoft Azure, and many more!
Now, you might think, not again another online event where I need to wait for the sessions coming up. Well, we do things a little differently. On February 2nd, we will have a keynote by no one else than Microsoft Azure CTO (Chief Technology Officer) Mark Russinovich. After that all the deep-dive sessions are becoming available on-demand, so you can watch them when you have time for it. But how about Q&A? To also allow you not only to watch these sessions but also to interact with others and ask your questions, we have set up a community discord server, where you will have channels for all the different sessions to ask questions. In addition to that, we will also host live Q&As with the speakers a week later.
There is no need for registration to attend this event. However, you might want to make sure you don’t miss it! Here’s a handy landing page where you can quickly/conveniently download an iCal reminder for the Europe/Eastern NorthAmerica livestream OR Asia Pacific/Western NorthAmerica livestream.
The ITOps Talks – All Things Hybrid Keynote
Mark Russinovich was an obvious choice to ask. As a Technical Fellow and CTO of Azure paired with his deep technical expertise in the Microsoft ecosystem – Mark brings a unique perspective to the table. He’s put together this exclusive session about Microsoft Hybrid Solutions and has agreed to join us for a brief interview and live Q&A following the keynote. I’ve had a quick peek at what he has in store for us and I’m happy to report: it’s really cool.
You can find out more about Mark Russinovich’s keynote here.
ITOps Talks – Sessions
As promised, for the ITOps Talks – All Things Hybrid event, we have a list of awesome speakers who will provide deep-dive sessions on some of our best Hybrid Cloud technologies, which will help you to make your hybrid and multi-cloud environment even better!
Check this out the list of ITOps Talks sessions:
OPS101 – Securing your Hybrid environment Part 1 – Azure Security Center
Sarah Young (@_sarahyo) – Sr. Program Manager
Now more than ever, organizations are challenged with keeping their employees productive working remotely and interacting with their customers over digital channels. At the same time there has been an increase in evolving digital security threats as bad actors recognize an opportunity to disrupt your business. Moreover, security resources are stretched, and prioritization is important.
OPS103 – Securing your Hybrid environment Part 2 – Azure Sentinel
Sarah Young (@_sarahyo) – Sr. Program Manager
Sit down with Azure Sentinel Sr. PM Sarah Young to discuss new features, functionality, and best practices on harnessing the AI enabled security solution.
OPS104 – Securing SMB from within and without
Ned Pyle (@nerdPyle) – Principal Program Manager
Learn specific strategies to secure SMB from lateral movement and external interception attacks! Watch interesting demos of the steps you can take to protect your organization! See the often unpredictable Ned Pyle struggle to be professional on camera!
OPS105 – Virtualized and Hybrid Backup Deep Dive
Ben Armstrong (@vBenArmstrong) – Principal Program Manager
Ben Armstrong does a deep dive on Virtualized and Hybrid Backup
OPS106 – How to be an AD Hybrid Health Hero
Mark Morowczynski (@markmorow) – Principal Program Manager, Grace Picking – Program Manager
Once you’ve connected your identity to Azure AD, how do you ensure it continues to function as expected? In this session, you’ll learn how to keep your hybrid identity environment healthy, across different Active Directory and Azure Active Directory scenarios.
OPS107 – Hybrid as a management plane
Jeff Woolsey (@WSV_GUY)- Principal Program Manager
Jeff, Orin & Sonia discuss how cloud makes on-prem environments better, including cloud tiering & management tools, and what the future looks like for IT Pros.
OPS108 – Windows Authentication Internals in a Hybrid World
Steve Syfuhs (@SteveSyfuhs) – Senior Software Engineer
Have you ever wondered what happens when you type your password into Windows? With the cloud becoming a major part of our world, we find ourselves having to talk to both on-premises and cloud-native resources, which dramatically affects what happens when you do type your password into Windows. Follow along as Steve Syfuhs gives a guided tour of how Windows handles logons internally and secures your authentication in a hybrid world.
OPS109 – Getting started with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) on Azure Stack HCI
Matt McSpirit (@mattmcspirit) – Senior Program Manager
In this session, you’ll learn about the new Azure Kubernetes Service on Azure Stack HCI, how you can use it to run your containerized Windows and Linux apps, how it integrates with Azure, and how it provides the best platform to run additional Azure services, including Arc-enabled Data Services. This will help you to modernize your existing applications on our Azure Stack HCI Hybrid Cloud Platform
OPS101 – Windows Virtual Desktop Road Map Deep Dive
Tom Hickling (@tomhickling) – WVD Global Black Belt
Dive into the forthcoming WVD roadmap and how it can help be part of your hybrid cloud strategy.
OPS111 – Learn the 5 key areas to consider for your hybrid workloads
David Kurth (@TheDaveKurth) – Senior Product Marketing Manager
In this whiteboard session (after a few slides for context), we will discuss the 5 key areas of any hybrid cloud workload, connectivity, application, data, identity, security & management.
OPS112 – Azure Stack HCI Hybrid is built-in: How does it really work?
Kerim Hanif (@kerimhanif) – Senior Program Manager
Ready to deploy Azure Stack HCI, the new hyperconverged infrastructure operating system delivered as an Azure service? Join this session to learn everything you need to know about how Azure Stack HCI’s hybrid connectivity works. Is it hard to register? (Hint: no.) Is there an agent? (Hint: no.) Does Azure see my VMs and their data? (Hint: no.) Do I need to open my firewall to freely allow Internet traffic? (Hint: no.) All these answers and more.
OPS113 – From WS2008 to Azure with containers – An Ops view on how to modernize existing applications with Windows Admin Center
Vinicius Apolinario (@vrapolinario) – Senior Program Manager
ITPros around the globe are trying to figure out how to modernize existing applications. End of Support for Windows Server 2008, how to move applications to the cloud, and how to leverage new technologies such as Kubernetes have become a daunting process for Ops teams. In this session, we will cover how to containerize existing applications from the perspective of an ITPro. We will use tools that you are used to – such as Windows Admin Center to jumpstart your modernization process and show how to move an application from Windows Server 2008 to Azure Kubernetes Service.
OPS114 – Governing baselines such as STIG in hybrid server environments using Azure Policy Guest Configuration
Michael Greene (@migreene) – Principal Program Manager
Learn to use services in Azure to audit the state of servers across private and public clouds and upcoming plans to expand capabilities in this area.
OPS115 – Log Analytics workspace design deep dive
Meir Mendelovich (@MMendelovich) – Principal Program Manager
in this session we will cover
- Proper Workspace design: resource-centric and RBAC.
- Resource-centric alerts.
- Enterprise features: Dedicated cluster, high scale, AZ, DE, CMK
- OneAgent, Query Packs and infrastructure as code
- Workspace data Export and proper data placement
- Workspace Optimization
OPS116 – Monitoring and Responding to alerts in hybrid environments using Azure Monitor
Erik Namtvedt (@ErikN_MSFT) – Senior Service Engineer
A deep dive of the framework Microsoft Retail has leveraged over the last 3-4 years to monitor all their on-prem system, including in-store Video walls and others. It’s based on Azure Public-Offering technologies. It leverages Application Insights, OMS (SCOM too), Log Analytics, Azure Storage (Blob/Tables), Azure Automation, and PowerShell.
OPS117 – PowerShell Deep dive
Joey Aiello (@joeyaiello) – Senior Program Manager
We will use this time to take a deep dive on migrating\adapting old PowerShell scripts from previous versions and making them work in PowerShell 7 and PowerShell Core.
We’ll also take a serious look at secret management with PowerShell to avoid the ever annoying problem of hardcode creds or use prompts.
OPS118 – Deep dive on Onboarding customers into Lighthouse
Archana Balakrishnan (@Archun0505) – Principal Program Manager
In this session we will demystify the intricacies of onboarding customers in Azure Lighthouse from a service provider’s perspective – soup to nuts.
OPS119 – Databases are cattle too! Running highly available databases consistently on any infrastructure using Arc data services
Travis Wright (@radtravis) – Principal Group Program Manager
Have you heard people say ‘containers or Kubernetes is not for databases’? Let me show you how that is definitely not the case in 2021. Kubernetes provides an abstraction layer over any infrastructure and an orchestration engine that powers Arc enabled data services so DevOps, DBAs, and developers can provision and manage highly available SQL and PostrgreSQL database instances on any infrastructure – on-prem, AWS, or Google. In this session, I’ll dive deep into the technical weeds with nearly 100% demos that show you exactly how it all works and you can manage it all with GUI, CLI, Azure-native tools, or Kubernetes-native tools.
OPS121 – Modernize how you manage hybrid servers with Azure Arc
Ryan Puffer – Senior Program Manager
Think the cloud is just for things that are…in the cloud? Come learn how you can use Azure Arc to simplify IT operations across your entire fleet, no matter where your servers run. We’ll start with a deep dive into the architecture and benefits of Azure Arc followed by a demonstration of how Azure Arc can help you monitor, secure, and simplify management of a multi-tier on-premises application.
You can find out more about the agenda here.
Conclusion
I was recording sessions within the last couple of weeks and days, and trust me I can wait for you to see them! So make sure you block your calendars and join us for our ITOps Talks All Things Hybrid starting February 2nd! I know that the whole team has worked very hard to provide you with some awesome sessions!
If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment or ping us with a tweet using the #AzOps hashtag on Twitter. I hope you will enjoy ITOps Talks All Things Hybrid!
Last modified: January 28, 2021
