This past April, I had a chance to try out the new Microsoft Cybersecurity Architect (SC-100) certification exam beta. At the time, no official study or preparation material was available. As it usually goes with beta exams, the results take… Read More »Thoughts on preparing and passing the new Microsoft Cybersecurity Architect (SC-100) certification
One of the announcements during Microsoft Build 2022 – among many – that caught my eye was that F5 NGINX is now natively available on Azure. NGINX has been around for some time on Azure, but as compute-based, you’re deploying… Read More »A lap around F5 NGINX on Azure
This is one of those blog posts that are pretty obvious but took a surprisingly long time for me to start using. Here’s the problem I have. Our family mostly listens to music when we’re in the car or when… Read More »Streaming to Sonos with Stream What You Hear
After a lengthier-than-expected wait, the Shared Channel capability for Microsoft Teams landed in one of my tenants last week. I don’t follow Teams-related news or announcements that closely, but I knew that the preview of this feature was close to… Read More »Setting up Microsoft Teams Shared Channels between three companies for frictionless communication
I’ve written about cost management in the cloud a couple of times. Sometimes it’s figuring out the exact cost of something; other times, it’s recapping the total cost after months of running a service. I’m reasonably well versed with Azure… Read More »Detect anomalies in cloud spending using the new Cost Insight capability in Azure
I was exposed to PostgreSQL about two years ago through a few deployment projects. I blogged about my experience configuring and running Azure Database for PostgreSQL instances. At the time, I didn’t need to worry much about backups or recovery,… Read More »Backing up PostgreSQL databases in Azure
At home, I have a few essential services I need to keep running at all times. When I write crucial, I mean that they are services I rely on and would like very much for those services to be running… Read More »Running a single Docker Container in Azure cost-effectively
I’ve been delighted in recent months when more and more projects I work with are starting to consider retiring the on-premises Active Directory infrastructure. This is a massive change in terms of thinking – as, for the past ten years,… Read More »Transforming your organization to cloud-only: Retiring the On-Premises Active Directory
I’ve had a chance to work with several exciting projects involving Microsoft Azure and Power Platform. Usually, Azure is already utilized for plenty of things, and Power Platform is starting to gain in usage. I wanted to write this post… Read More »A look at fusion teams with Microsoft Azure and Power Platform
Microsoft’s RPA tool, Power Automate Desktop, has two modes – unattended and attended. In this post, I’ll look into the implications of these two and how it affects the features and licensing. I’ve written previously about RPA and Power Automate… Read More »Planning for licensing in unattended and attended RPA solutions with Power Automate Desktop
Recently, I started capturing the numerous best practices and recommended approaches on Microsoft Azure. You can view them all here. But why, though? Microsoft is obviously doing the heavy lifting here – they have the Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF), the… Read More »Best practice: Subscribe to Azure Advisor alerts and recommendations
I wrote about how I built a Site-to-Site VPN between my home network and Azure more than a year ago. It’s a neat solution and something that I see many companies utilizing in their environments. The idea is that you… Read More »Best practice: Use health alerts with Azure Site-to-Site VPN connections
This one is easy. If you block and deny all traffic in your firewall, you cannot access any Azure services. Someone asked me this question a few months ago, and I wanted to test what happens and how a company… Read More »Can you access Microsoft Azure if your firewall is blocking all traffic?
Last week, Windows 365 became available as part of Microsoft 365. It’s a “cloud PC” service – essentially providing a dedicated workstation (as a virtual machine) in Microsoft 365 for a fixed monthly fee. I activated the trial as I… Read More »A look at Windows 365 – the Cloud PC service
Last week, I finally received my new laptop. It’s the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (9th generation). I’ll write a separate post on that soon, and once I’ve had some time to use and experience the laptop in different situations. I… Read More »My experience using Windows 11 with the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Gen 9)
On most devices that I frequently use, I use a solution to block excessive ads. Firefox on mobile and desktop is super easy as the same ad blocking extensions work on both. Many of my friends have been praising Pi-Hole… Read More »Goodbye telemetry and ads – running Pi-Hole in a home network
When you work in IT, numerous little things could or should be automated. One of those is the monitoring of expiring SSL certificates. Quite often, the process of monitoring for SSL certificates is calendar-based. When someone orders a new certificate,… Read More »Using Azure Application Insights to monitor for expiring SSL certificates
I’ve used Google Photos since 1969. Err, no, wait – that’s what the image metadata is telling me, but actually, my earliest photos stored in Google’s cloud are from 2009. I’ve paid the 1.99 €/month fee to ensure I have… Read More »Self-hosting memories: Migrating from Google Photos to Synology Photos
For years, I’ve used the Logitech BRIO 4K as my primary webcam at home. I use it for Windows Hello to unlock my PC, and I use it for each meeting. It’s pretty great – but it’s also just a… Read More »Using a DSLR as a webcam
Today, I needed to move some resources from one Azure subscription to another Azure subscription. You can use scripting, a REST API, or the Azure Portal to achieve this. I wanted to start with a script, as it often teaches… Read More »Quick fix: Moving resources in Azure fails
