Direct from Microsoft
On April 1, Microsoft Azure DNS experienced a service availability issue. This outage resulted in customers not being able to resolve domain names for services. Read more about the outage on the Azure status history page for April 1, 2021.
Azure Monitor is now generally available for Windows Virtual Desktop. The new service, called Windows Virtual Desktop Insights, provides administrators details for troubleshooting deployments, view the health of host pools, and understanding resource utilization.
Microsoft released an experimental module named PSArm. This PowerShell module makes it easier to create Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates. Along with Azure Bicep, Microsoft is giving customers more options for creating ARM templates without writing all that JSON.
Check out Microsoft’s Azure Cost Management and Billing Updates for March 2021. New features this month include forecasted cost alerts, cost-saving options, and new learning resources.
How-To Guides to Azure
Last week I talked about how to create and manage the Azure Network Watcher resource in your tenant. The Azure Network Watcher provides monitoring and logging for IaaS resources in Azure virtual networks. You can capture network logs, verify a VM’s next network hop, and troubleshoot network security groups in the network path.
Thomas Maurer covers how to set up disaster recovery for Azure IaaS VMs. Thomas dives into details using Azure Site Recovery (ASR) to asynchronously replicate virtual machines and failover virtual machines to another region.
Nick Rimmer provides a guide for getting starting with the Azure CLI. Nick covers syntax, parameters, authentication, and creating Azure resources.
Barbara Forbes covers how to create a secure GitHub webhook to trigger an Azure PowerShell function. She uses Azure Key Vault, GitHub Action webhooks settings, and code to verify the function caller is authorized to trigger the function.
Azure DevOps
Phil Marius shows how to set up separate Azure Functions environments for development, staging, and production and configuring GitHub Actions for deployment.
John Reiller demonstrates how to use Azure Bicep inside Azure DevOps pipelines. Since Azure Bicep is new, Microsoft does not yet have a built-in task for using Bicep inside a pipeline. John shows how to work around this limitation with a custom solution.
Upcoming Events
On Thursday, April 29, 2021, Microsoft is hosting Azure Storage Day. This free digital event covers understanding cloud storage trends, demos of Azure storage services, and optimizing migration using best practices. You can register for the event here.
Road Map Updates
The following features are now generally available:
What you should do now
Below are three ways we can help you begin your journey to reducing data risk at your company:
- Schedule a demo session with us, where we can show you around, answer your questions, and help you see if Varonis is right for you.
- Download our free report and learn the risks associated with SaaS data exposure.
- Share this blog post with someone you know who'd enjoy reading it. Share it with them via email, LinkedIn, Reddit, or Facebook.
Jeff Brown
Jeff Brown is a cloud engineer specializing in Microsoft technologies such as Office 365, Teams, Azure and PowerShell. You can find more of his content at https://jeffbrown.tech.
