Thomas Maurer MVP

Jul262018July 26, 2018August 18, 20181 Commentby Thomas Maurer

My Workplace 2018 – How does yours look like?

Posted in Dell, Hardware, Hardware, Home, Microsoft, Surface, Windows, Windows 10, Work

Last week I was browsing the web and I found a lot of cool looking home office setups. I realized it is quiet interesting to see how people workplaces look like. With that I want to give a quick look at my home office and my workplace setup. Secondly, I would like to share your setup as well. If you want to share yours write a blog, link it in the comments or show it on Twitter, what ever you like.

This is it, this is my workplace if I am not on the road.

My main machine today is the 15-inch Surface Book 2 attached to a Dell curved-ultrawide monitor (Dell UltraSharp 38 Monitor – U3818DW), which with Windows 10 and the Snap feature is absolutely great to use.
I also have a Surface Pro as a company work machine, which I use mostly on the road when I need a real mobile work machine. It has enough powerful to do serious work and still gives you a mobile work experience.
I am obviously using a lot of Surface accessories like the Surface Precision Mouse, the Surface Pen, the Surface Dial and the Microsoft Modern Keyboard.
I also use some wireless Bose Quiet Comfort 35 headphones, not only for travel but also in the home office
I like the Surface Pen on my Surface Pro to draw some quick stuff or take some notes in Onenote.

Jul252018July 25, 2018August 14, 20180 Commentby Thomas Maurer

How to use Emojis in Windows 10

Posted in Microsoft, Windows, Windows 10

This is a very quick note because I really start to like this feature a lot. In Windows 10 you can easily use emojis by pressing the Windows Key + “.” and the emoji panel will show up.

I also used that feature to rename my audio devices in Windows 10 and add emojis to their name. 🙂

Jul232018July 23, 2018August 14, 20180 Commentby Thomas Maurer

Azure Stack Readiness Checker – AzsReadinessChecker

Posted in Cloud, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Azure Stack, PowerShell, Work

Since I am dealing with a lot of Azure Stack installations I also want to share some interesting tools you can leverage like the Azure Stack Capacity Calculator and others. One of the latest I want to share with you is the Azure Stack Readiness Checker PowerShell module called AzsReadinessChecker. This PowerShell module helps you to run validations of your environment and resources before you deploy Azure Stack. The AzsReadinessChecker module for example validates things like:

Certificates
Azure Active Directory
Azure Accounts
Azure Subscriptions

The Start-AzsREadinessChecker cmdlet also helps to generate a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) which you can summit to your CA or your CA provider to get the specific certificates.

Jul212018July 21, 2018August 14, 20180 Commentby Thomas Maurer

Flush DNS Cache with PowerShell

Posted in Microsoft, PowerShell, Windows, Windows 10, Windows Server, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019, Work

Awhile ago I wrote a blog post called PowerShell Networking Cheat sheet, where I put together several networking commands which can be replaced by PowerShell. One of the latest once I saw and a couple of people requested is how you flush the DNS cache using PowerShell. This would allow you to replace ipconfig/ flushdns with PowerShell. Guess what, Microsoft as now a PowerShell cmdlet for that.

Clear and Flush DNS with PowerShell

You can use the following command to clear the DNS cache on a Windows system using PowerShell

Clear-DnsClientCache

1	Clear-DnsClientCache

Show DNS Cache with PowerShell

There is also a PowerShell command to show you the DNS cache:

Get-DnsClientCache

1	Get-DnsClientCache

I hope this blog post and these commands are useful.

Jul192018July 19, 2018August 19, 20180 Commentby Thomas Maurer

This is the Microsoft Azure Firewall

Posted in Cloud, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, PowerShell

Last week Microsoft announced some cool new and long awaited Azure Network functionalities, which are now in public preview. One of them is the Azure Firewall, which is a fully stateful firewall as a service with built-in high availability and unrestricted cloud scalability. The Azure Firewall is centrally created, enforced, and allows you to log application and network connectivity policies across subscriptions and virtual networks.

This is especially helpful in scenarios where you simply want to block internet traffic or you need centralized management and logging. Obviously, there is still space for third-party firewall appliances with even more functionality, but if you need something easy to configure, without any additional licensing, which you can automatically configure using the existing tooling and has unrestricted scaling capabilities, the Azure Firewall is a great option.

It is also important to notice that the service is still in preview and additional functionality might be added as well as existing functionality might change.

(Image credit: Microsoft)

The Azure Firewall provides you with the following features:

Stateful firewall as a service
Built-in high availability with unrestricted cloud scalability
Ability to centrally create, enforce, and log application and network connectivity policies

Outbound source network address translation (SNAT) support
Fully integrated with Azure Monitor for logging and analytics

Jul172018July 17, 2018August 14, 20180 Commentby Thomas Maurer

You can now run a Visual Studio Code based editor in Azure Cloud Shell

Posted in Cloud, Containers, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, PowerShell, Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, Work

Azure Cloud Shell, a browser-accessible shell for managing Azure resources, just got even more powerful. Today Microsoft added a new Visual Studio Code editor to Azure Cloud Shell. Okay, it is not the real Visual Studio Code, it is an editor based on the Visual Studio Code open-source project Monaco. Monaco is the same web-standards based editor that powers Visual Studio Code, and the editor is now integrated directly into Cloud Shell.

Now you not only have editors like vim, emacs or nano, you also able to run code, directly with in the Azure Cloud Shell. This is pretty handy when it comes to quickly edit some files like scripts or ARM templates.

This is not the first time the Azure Cloud Shell team and the Visual Studio Code team collaborated: Azure Cloud Shell in Visual Studio Code

Jul172018July 17, 2018August 14, 20181 Commentby Thomas Maurer

New Microsoft Azure Certifications announced

Posted in Certification, Cloud, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Work

This week Microsoft Inspire takes place in Las Vegas, unfortunately I couldn’t make it this year. However, some of my colleagues from itnetX Switzerland and itnetX are there, don’t miss them and visit our booth! During the first day keynote at Microsoft Inspire, Microsoft quickly announced 3 new Azure Certifications for Administrators, Developers and Architects. You can already take the beta exams for the Azure Certified Administrator with more information on the Microsoft Learning Blog.

New Microsoft Azure Certifications

The three new Microsoft Azure Certifications are:

Microsoft Certified Azure Developer
Microsoft Certified Azure Administrator
Microsoft Certified Azure Architect

My Workplace 2018 – How does yours look like?

How to use Emojis in Windows 10

Azure Stack Readiness Checker – AzsReadinessChecker

Flush DNS Cache with PowerShell

Clear and Flush DNS with PowerShell

Show DNS Cache with PowerShell

New Microsoft Azure Certifications announced

New Microsoft Azure Certifications

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