Tag: Microsoft

May092019May 9, 2019May 17, 20194 Commentsby Thomas Maurer

How to configure Windows Sandbox

Posted in Containers, Hyper-V, Microsoft, PowerShell, Virtualization, Windows, Windows 10, Work

With the latest release of Windows 10 (1903), Microsoft introduced a new feature called Windows Sandbox. Windows Sandbox is based on Hyper-V technology and allows you to spin up an isolated, temporary, desktop environment where you can run untrusted software. In this blog post, I will show you how you can set up and configure Windows Sandbox in Windows 10. I will also cover who you can do an advanced configuration of your Windows Sandbox using Windows Sandbox config files.

The sandbox is great for demos, troubleshooting or if you are dealing with malware. If you close the sandbox, all the software with all its files and state are permanently deleted. It is a Windows 10 virtual machines, with the advantage that it is built into Windows 10, so it leverages the existing OS, which gives you faster startup, less footprint, better efficiency, and easier handling, without losing security.

Source: Microsoft

Windows Sandbox is a lightweight virtual machine with an operating system. The significant advantage which makes it so small is the usage of existing files from the host, for data which cannot change. For the files which can change, it uses a dynamically generated image, which is only ~100MB in size.

There are much more exciting things happening with the Windows Sandbox like smart memory management, Integrated kernel scheduler, Snapshot and clone, Graphics virtualization and Battery pass-through. If you want to find out more about the Windows Sandbox, check out the official blog post.

Prerequisites

Windows Sandbox comes with a couple of requirements. How more powerful your machine is, the better the experience will be.

Windows 10 (1903) Pro or Enterprise build 18362 or later
64-bit architecture
Virtualization capabilities enabled in BIOS
At least 4GB of RAM (8GB recommended)
1GB of free disk space (SSD recommended)
2 CPU cores (4 cores with hyperthreading recommended)

May082019May 8, 2019May 8, 20190 Commentby Thomas Maurer

Speaking at the Azure Saturday 2019 in Munich

Posted in Cloud, Cloud Advocate, Events, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, PowerShell, Speaking

Azure Saturday Munich is a free community-focused Azure event dedicated to educating and engaging members of the local technical community. Azure Saturday draws upon the expertise of local Azure IT professionals, developers and solutions architects who come together to share their real-world experiences, lessons learned, best practices, and general knowledge with other like-minded individuals. With 30 speakers delivering 25 sessions in front of 500 attendees. I am happy that this year I will be speaking about the Azure Cloud Shell on the Azure Saturday 2019 on May 18 in Munich.

Azure Saturday 2019

Mastering Azure using Cloud Shell, PowerShell and Bash!

Azure can be managed in many different ways. Learn your command line options like Azure PowerShell, Azure CLI and Cloud Shell to be more efficient in managing your Azure infrastructure. Become a hero on the shell to manage the cloud!

If you want to use your Saturday to learn about Azure, come by and I hope to see you there!

May022019May 2, 2019May 2, 20190 Commentby Thomas Maurer

Preview Web Apps with Azure Cloud Shell Web Preview

Posted in Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, PowerShell

If you have worked with the Azure Cloud Shell in the last couple of days, you might have seen a new button called Web Preview. The Azure Cloud Shell Web preview feature allows you to run web applications on the Cloud Shell container instance and preview them before you deploy them. You can run web applications that listen to HTTP requests on the Cloud Shell from port 1025-8079 and 8091-49151.

If you are running for example a .NET Core application in Cloud Shell, you can preview this to the Cloud Shell gateway.

I have created a short video tutorial to show you the Azure Cloud Shell Web preview feature.

How to use the Cloud Shell Web Preview

First you need to run your application, in my case I run a simple .NET Core web application. This also works with other applications which can run in Cloud Shell and can map a local port.

dotnet run

1	dotnet run

By default, this will use port 5000. Now you can create a simple port mapping by clicking on the Web Preview button in Cloud Shell.

This will open up the configuration menu to create the port mapping, where you can select port to use from 1025-8079 and 8091-49151.

Now you can access the application running inside your Cloud Shell container through the gateway, to preview your application.

I hope this was helpful and gave you a quick overview about the Web Preview feature in Cloud Shell. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comments.

You can run Azure Cloud Shell from in the Azure Portal or directly from shell.azure.com.

If you want to learn more about Cloud Shell, check out my video about Mastering Azure using Cloud Shell.

Apr302019April 30, 2019May 1, 20190 Commentby Thomas Maurer

Mastering Azure using Cloud Shell Session

Video: Mastering Azure using Cloud Shell, PowerShell and Bash!

Posted in Cloud, Cloud Advocate, Exchange Online, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Office365, PowerShell, Web, Work

At the NetWork 9 Conference in Neum and at the Global Azure Bootcamp in Switzerland, I presented my session about Mastering Azure using Cloud Shell. Since I got a lot of requests for the session to be online, I recorded my presentation and made it available for everyone. The presentation is a live demo and summary of my blog post “Mastering Azure with Cloud Shell“, which gives you an overview about the Cloud Shell and some of the advanced stuff you can do.

In the session you learn:

Overview about Cloud Shell
Azure PowerShell and Bash experience
Persistent Storage using Azure Files
Azure Drive
Third party tools
Editors
Visual Studio Code integration
Using Git as Source Control
Remote manage Azure virtual machines
Integration of Cloud Shell in Microsoft Docs, Microsoft Learn and more
Cloud Shell in the Azure Mobile App
and more.

I hope you enjoy watching it and let me know what you think in the comments.

Apr292019April 29, 2019May 16, 20197 Commentsby Thomas Maurer

VMware on Azure - Azure VMware Solutions

Run your VMware natively on Azure with Azure VMware Solutions

Posted in Azure Stack HCI, Cloud, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Azure Stack, Virtualization, VMware

Today the Microsoft Azure team announced the Azure VMware Solutions, which allow you to run VMware natively on Azure. VMware Solution on Azure by CloudSimple is a fully managed service that lets you run the VMware platform in Azure. This solution includes vSphere, vCenter, vSAN, NSX-T, and similar tools. VMware environment runs natively on Azure Bare Metal infrastructure, on Azure cloud locations. The service includes all the features required to consume the VMware platforms efficiently and securely. The solution is delivered by Microsoft, verified by VMware, and run on Azure infrastructure.

This allows you to move or extend your on-premises VMware environment to Microsoft Azure. You can seamlessly move VMware workloads to Azure and integrate with your VMware management environment, using the same and existing management tools. This gives you time to modernize your workloads with native Azure services. This extends the Microsoft hybrid cloud offerings for products like Azure Stack, Azure Stack HCI, and more.

VMware Solution on Azure by CloudSimple

Features

On-demand self-service provisioning of VMware cloud environments. Ability to add and remove capacity on demand
VMware platform deployment, upgrade, management plane backup, health/capacity monitoring, alerting, troubleshooting, and remediation.
Underlay networking services required to enable VMware, including L2/L3 services and firewall rule management.
Edge-type networking services, including VPN, Public IP, and Internet Gateways. These edge services run on Azure and carry the corresponding security and DDoS protection of Azure.
Capacity reservation to lower costs.
High-speed, low-latency connectivity to Azure and on-premises.
Solution architectures for customers to consume Azure services in an integrated fashion, take advantage of this unique “VMware cloud in a public cloud” architecture. These Azure services include Azure AD, storage,
application gateways, and others.
Infrastructure is fully dedicated to you and is physically isolated from the infrastructure of other customers.
Management features such as activity management, usage, billing/metering, and user management.
24×7 customer support.

(Source Microsoft Docs)

This will open a couple of crucial scenarios for our customers.

Data Center retirement or migration – If you need to retire your datacenter and you need a fast and straightforward way to move your existing VMware workloads, Azure is a great place to host these workloads without rearchitecting them. This will give you time to modernize your applications in the mid and long term
Expansion on demand – If you are running your VMware environment and you need more capacity on demand, you can extend it to Azure.
Disaster Recovery – You can use Azure as your recovery site for your on-premises VMware workloads
Virtual Desktops – If you are running a VDI solution on top of VMware, you are also able to host the infrastructure in Azure.
Hosting High-Performance Applications – The CloudSimple solution provides a hyper-converged architecture designed to run high-performance workloads
Hybrid Cloud – It opens up scenarios for companies to run hybrid cloud scenarios, without the need to switch all your tools and to rearchitect your workloads

If you want to know more about VMware Solution on Azure by CloudSimple, you can check out the Microsoft docs.

Integration into Azure

The VMware solutions on Azure, are not just isolated from the rest of your Azure environment. VMware on Azure by CloudSimple is integrated into Azure, which means it allows you to leverage Azure Express Route and even the Azure Resource Manager to deploy virtual machines on your VMware host running in Azure. This will enable you to create new virtual machines from your VMware administration tools like vCenter, but also within the Azure Portal or using Azure Resource Manager templates.

Pricing

In terms of pricing, you will be paying per VMware node in Azure, and you will get charged by Microsoft for it. You can use your existing Azure Enterprise Agreement precommitments for it.

We have two different instances available depending on the size you need, the CS28 and the larger CS36 nodes. These include CPU cores, RAM, NVME Cache, and useable all-flash storage. The minimum of nodes you will need is three instances per cluster. You can also make use of the Reserved options for 1 or 3 years to save up to 50%. You can also use the Azure Hybrid Benefit to use your existing Windows Server licenses, and you can also make use of the Extended Security Update options for Windows Server 2008 / 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2008 / 2008 R2.

The storage pricing is the useable storage in vSAN. If you want to know more about pricing, check out the Azure pricing page for Azure VMware Solution by CloudSimple.

What are your thoughts about these announcements? Let me know in the comments!

Apr292019April 29, 2019April 29, 20190 Commentby Thomas Maurer

Speaking at the Cloud and Datacenter Conference Germany 2019

Posted in Azure Stack HCI, Cloud, Cloud Advocate, Containers, Events, Hyper-V, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Azure Stack, PowerShell, Speaking, Virtualization, Windows Admin Center, Windows Server, Windows Server 2019, Work

One of the best conferences when it comes to cloud and datacenter topics of IT Pros, is the Cloud and Datacenter Conference Germany 2019 organized by Microsoft MVP Carsten Rachfahl. I had the opportunity to speak at CDC-Germany 2016, 2017 and also in 2018. I am happy that I again was invited to speak at CDC-Germany 2019. The two day, Cloud & Datacenter Conference Germany will be held in Hanau, Germany on May 21-22. The CDC Germany will be focusing on Microsoft Technology and will have 6 tracks full of great Microsoft Cloud and Datacenter content with speakers from all over the world.

My Sessions at the Cloud and Datacenter Conference Germany 2019

I happy to speak in 1 of the main sessions and 2 breakout session about Hybird Cloud topics, like Azure Cloud Shell, Azure Stack, Windows Server 2019, Windows Admin Center, Azure Stack HCI and much much more.

CDC-Germany

Hybrid is the New Black!

Hybrid Cloud is not just a state during your cloud migration, it is here to stay! Hybrid Cloud goes far beyond Microsoft Azure Stack, and in this session you will see an overview about the different solutions you can use to extend your on-premises environment with Microsoft cloud services.

CDC-Germany

Windows Server 2019 – The Next Generation of Software-Defined Datacenter

Join this session for the best of Windows Server 2019, about the new innovation and improvements of Windows Server. Learn how Microsoft enhances the SDDC feature like Hyper-V, Storage and Networking and get the most out of the new Azure Hybrid Integration and Container features. You’ll get an overview about the new, exciting improvements that are in Windows Server and how they’ll improve your day-to-day job. In this presentation Thomas Maurer (Microsoft MVP) will guide you through the highly anticipated innovations in Windows Server 2019 and the Semi-Annual Channel including: Windows Server Containers Azure Integration Hyper-V features Storage Networking Security Windows Server Containers And more!

CDC-Germany

Mastering Azure using Cloud Shell, PowerShell and Bash!

Azure can be managed in many different way. Learn your command line options like Azure PowerShell, Azure CLI and Cloud Shell to be more efficient in managing your Azure infrastructure. Become a hero on the shell to manage the cloud!

My Session at the Hyper-V Community + Hybrid Cloud Community Pre-Day

I will also be speaking at the Hyper-V Community + Hybrid Cloud Community Pre-Day at May 20, 2019.

Hyper-V Community + Hybrid Cloud Community Pre-Day

Extend the Intelligent Cloud to the Edge with Azure Stack and Azure Stack HCI

Azure Stack allows you to extend Azure to your datacenter and run Azure Services under your terms. With Azure Stack HCI, the latest member in the Azure Stack family, we also offer a great hyper-converged infrastructure solution, with optional Azure connected services. Find out more about Azure Stack and Azure Stack HCI, how these solutions can help you to in your Hybrid Cloud strategy. Learn about the features and services you will get by offering Azure Stack to your customers and how you can build a true Hybrid Cloud experience.

I am really looking forward to the Cloud and Datacenter Conference Germany 2019, and I hope to see you there!

Apr282019April 28, 2019April 28, 20191 Commentby Thomas Maurer

Microsoft Ignite The Tour Amsterdam 2019 Thomas Maurer Speaking

Microsoft Ignite The Tour 2019 Azure Hybrid Session Recordings

Posted in Cloud, Cloud Advocate, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Speaking, Windows Admin Center, Windows Server, Windows Server 2019, Work

As you might know, had the chance to present my first sessions as a Microsoft employee at Microsoft Ignite The Tour 2019 in London and Amsterdam. A couple of weeks ago, the session recordings from Amsterdam are now available. My sessions were part of the Azure Hybrid Cloud learning path.

Building and maintaining your Azure hybrid environment
Tailwind Traders has seen exponential growth over the last two years, transitioning from a midsize company to a worldwide corporation. This growth has required extending Tailwind’s existing infrastructure into Microsoft Azure in a hybrid deployment, with some important workloads remaining in the organization’s on-premises datacenter, while increasing numbers of critical workloads running in Azure.
In the five modules for this learning path, you’ll learn how to plan and configure hybrid network connectivity, apply best practice security configuration to Azure resources, learn how to effectively monitor and maintain those resources, ensure that those resources meet organizational compliance requirements, and ensure that workloads in Azure are highly available and protected against catastrophe.

Sessions at Microsoft Ignite The Tour 2019

Microsoft Ignite The Tour

HYB10 - Planning and implementing hybrid network connectivity

Once your organization has decided to implement a hybrid model, you need to start figuring out how to ensure that communication between your on-premises environment and your hybrid workloads is both secure and reliable. You also need to ensure that those workloads are protected from internal and external network threats. In this module, you’ll learn how to assess your organization’s on-prem network infrastructure, how to plan and then implement an appropriate networking design for Azure. You’ll learn how to implement appropriate Azure virtual network technologies, including securing connectivity between on-premises and Azure using VPNs and ExpressRoute as well as how to strategically deploy firewalls, network security groups and marketplace appliances to protect those resources and workloads.

Microsoft Ignite The Tour

HYB20 - Securing your Azure environment

With Cloud resources now connected with our datacenter, secure administrative access to critical workloads needs to be configured appropriately. It’s also important from an organizational and compliance perspective to ensure that workloads have a security configuration aligned with industry best practice. In this module, you’ll learn how to improve the security of privileged accounts used to manage Azure resources, manage software updates for both on-premises and cloud hosted virtual machines, and how to get the most out of Azure Security Center for assessing and remediating security configuration issues in a hybrid environment.

You can find more Microsoft Ignite The Tour recordings on the offical website.

Tag: Microsoft

How to configure Windows Sandbox

Prerequisites

Run your VMware natively on Azure with Azure VMware Solutions

VMware Solution on Azure by CloudSimple

Integration into Azure

Pricing

Microsoft Ignite The Tour 2019 Azure Hybrid Session Recordings

Sessions at Microsoft Ignite The Tour 2019

HYB10 - Planning and implementing hybrid network connectivity

HYB20 - Securing your Azure environment

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