The full event month of September is slowly coming to an end and what better way to end it than with a great Azure conference? I´m really happy to announce that I will speak at the Experts Live Netherlands. The Experts Live Netherlands is one of the biggest Experts Live conferences next to Experts Live Europe and celebrates its 10th anniversary this year.
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Cloud Identity Summit 2022 Recap
After 8 Months of planning the Cloud Identity Summit 2022 is over and I can say it was really a pleasure to help to organize this great Community event from my perspective. Four years ago Thomas Naunheim come up with the Idea to create a event focus on Identity for the Community. We discuss this in our Azure Bonn Orga Team and finally the Cloud Identity Summit was born. At the end of 2019 we plan the first edition for 2020 as a in-person event, but things changed and we changed the format to an virtual event and this also for 2021.
Back in february we start planning for the 3rd edition 2022 and we decided to go back to our original idea to hold it as a in-person event, but with the experience of two virtual events we move it to an hybrid event. Yesterday was our 1st Cloud Identity Summit 2022 as hybrid edition and I can say, I was really exited about it. Why?
Microsoft announced Azure Premium SSD v2 Disk Storage in preview – for me a big announcement this year
In the past, it was quite quiet about new features and announcements in the Azure IaaS space. Yes, sometimes there were new VM sizes with more cores or more RAM, but in general there were no surprising announcements last year. From my point of view, this has changed with MS Inspire, which is currently underway.
Microsoft announced, surprising from my point of view, a new Disk SKU for Azure VMs called Premium SSD v2 Disk. The last announcement in this area was 2019 with the introduction of Ultra Disks.
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How I passed the Microsoft Cybersecurity Architect exam SC-100 and why I am now a Microsoft Cybersecurity Architect Expert
Three months ago on 7th of April Microsoft announce a new exam for security architects and introduce again the existing exams SC-200, SC-300, AZ-500 and MS-500. The article contains the new announcement of the new exam SC-100 to become Microsoft Cybersecurity Architect.
I took the Microsoft Cybersecurity Beta exam #SC100 and got yesterday the confirmation that I passed the exam. This is great news for me as it confirms that I am gaining a better and better knowledge in Azure Security topics.
In this article I will introduce the exam, how to get the Microsoft Cybersecurity Architect Expert award and which materials I used to prepare for the exam.
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Microsoft MVP for Azure 2022-2023
Every year on July 1, the MVP renewal process takes place and Microsoft notifies us on that day if we will be awarded another year as an MVP based on our contributions. So most of the MVPs look into their inboxes and wait for the mail notification. Some colleagues call the day the F5 day, because second by second the inbox is updated 🙂
This year there were some technical difficulties and so late on July 1 there was an announcement that the MVP announcement would be delayed until July 5. A murmur went through the internet. 🙂
But late Tuesday I got to rejoice again, because that’s when the mail came and I was once again recognized as a Microsoft MPV in the Azure category for 2022-2023. It’s a great award, and I’m very pleased to have received this special award for the fourth year in a row.
Azure AMA – Azure Virtual Desktop Best Practices #AVD with Marcel Meurer and Patrick Koehler
German below
I know it’s been a little quiet on new blog articles the last few months, but that’s due to other community topics I’m working on. One of my new projects is the Azure Ask my Anything Live format that I will be hosting with my team at Azure Bonn Live on YouTube and Linkedin. I’m excited to announce that we’re kicking off this year with an Azure AMA on Azure Virtual Desktop Best Practices, and we have the pleasure of welcoming Marcel Meurer and Patrick Koehler to this session. Marcel and Patrick are two Azure MVPs and do a lot of work in the AVD community. Marcel is known as the brains behind the WVDAdmin and Project Hydra products, which are services to automate all things Azure Virtual Desktop. Patrick has also been active in the AVD community for many years with great sessions and insights about AVD and is the organizer of AVD TechFest together with Simon Binder.
Azure AMA – Azure Virtual Desktop Best Practices will take place live on Youtube on February 14, 2022. You can register for this event via our Azure Bonn page. Please note that this is a live AMA session and we would love for you to join us live and bring your questions to the session. If you don’t have time this time, please use our Microsoft forms to submit your questions before the session starts. The session will be held in German, but you can also ask your questions in English.
German
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Reinstall Azure Backup Windows Workload to fix UserErrorSQL NoSysadminMembership for SQL Server in Azure VM
In the last couple of days I try to optimize some Azure environments from security and cost perspective. One customer has a SQL Server Express installed inside an Azure VM. The backup was configured for the hole VM, but there is no need to backup the Datadisk which contains the SQL databases. In this article I will explain how you can reinstall the Azure Backup Windows Workload extension to fix the issue when the service account will not listed on the Azure SQL Server VM. This fix the issue only did you not find the service account in the SQL Server management studio. To add the account in the right way, please refer to the article from Wim Matthysen.
Recap of 2021 and Looking forward to 2022
2021 is over and it was a challenging and interesting year from many perspectives. I think the most important thing in these times is health and consideration for the community. Looking back to 2021, I was a speaker at many virtual events and that was quite interesting because of the different organization and audience. What I miss most is feedback and discussing different solutions with the event attendees. This was a little bit sad, because the virtual events feel more like a YouTube streaming and less a in-person event. So when I look in direction of spring, I hope we can get back more to in-person event.
Looking forward to 2022
I’am really looking forwad to 2022. We planning some great Azure Bonn Meetups and will start in January with Esther Barthel and Transitioning Ops to the Cloud and in February we will welcome David O Brien.
The 3rd Cloud Identity Summit is also on our List and we hope we can start this event first time as a Hybrid conference – so stay tuned and follow our Twitter account for latest updates.
Finally, I have a few tasks on my list. I will update my sessions to focus more on governance, security and cloud reviews because I see many growing cloud environments with little review iterations, yet there are some services that can help clean up your cloud environments and get them in good shape.
I will also expand my activities on Youtube, where I will conduct more frequent AMA sessions on various Azure topics. You can find there a AMA Session about Azure VM Best Practice for the Festive Techcalendar where I discuss different best pratice with Eric Berg, Marcel Meurer and the audience for the Festive Tech Calendar.
I am also looking forward to a adesso meeting in Frankfurt where we will share the important Azure topics for 2022. When you interested in meet me live and discuss the interesting topics for 2022 please join our (german) event “Wolkenreicher Start in den Frühling” on 09/03/2022.
And you will recognize me better now that I have a small logo for my activities 🙂
I would like to take this opportunity to thank some great community heroes for the past year and your support: Melanie Eible, Thomas Naunheim, René de la Motte, Eric Berg and Marcel Meurer
Finally I noted the upcoming #community events, that I aware of it on my event page. Upcoming Conferences and Open CFPs | Gregor Reimling
Recap of 2021
Continue reading Recap of 2021 and Looking forward to 2022
Microsoft release Azure AD Connect V2 with tons of new features and remove support for WS 2012 R2 or Older
Update 18/08/2021
Added some details about v. 1.6.11.3 which fixes a security issue.
Microsoft released a major update of Azure AD Connect. This major release brings a lots of new features and requirements for the local infrastructure. In this article I will cover the latest information and how you can upgrade to the new release.
The new version 2 of Azure AD Connect was released on 20/07/2021 and bring the product to the version 2.0.3.0 the lastet release of version 1 was 1.6.4.0 1.6.11.3. Microsoft found a security issue in 1.6.4.0 and 2.0.3.0 and updated the Azure AD Connect v2 to 2.0.8.0.
Microsoft released also an update for AAD Connect v1 and brings it to 1.6.11.3. This is for customers who running an older version of Windows Server who can not upgrade to WS 2016 and fixes an security issue in 1.6.4.0.
MY UPCOMING COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENTS IN 2ND HALF OF 2021
Summer is here and I hope many enjoy the time on vacation. In this article I would like to give a little preview on which community events you can find me in the 2nd half of 2021.
GeekSprech Podcast
I had the pleasure of visiting Eric Berg and Weimar on the 3rd weekend in July. We had a great time and talked a lot about the community, new projects and more. On Sunday, Eric and I had the idea to record a new GeekSpeak episode with the news about the Microsoft Inspire 2021. We had a lot of fun recording it and hope you do too. The podcast is in German.
German AVD UserGroup – Azure Files
Patrick Köhler and Marcel Meurer are the founder of the German Azure Virtual Desktop User Group. The host a monthly meetup with different topics around AVD. Both invited me to speak about Azure Files and is this the perfect profile store solution. I am really looking forward to the event and hope that I can give you a good overview about the different file store solutions in Azure.
Cloud Identity Summit 2021
In 2020 based on the initial idea of my best buddy Thomas Naunheim we started as Azure Bonn Team the Cloud Identity Summit 2020. The speaker lineup was awesome and the feedback was so great that we decided to repeat this in 2021. This year the Cloud Identity Summit will another virtual conference and take place at 30/09/2021. We hope you attend our 2nd edition. The agenda and the speaker will announce in August 2021.
CloudInspires Podcast
Thomas and I founded in June our own CloudInspires.me Podcast. Do not miss the latest two episodes (in German). We have so many great speaker on our timeline – stay tuned 🙂
AVD TechFest Fall 2021
I am very happy to speak for a 2nd time at the well organized AVD Techfest. This a free online conference with all topics related to Azure Virtual Desktop. There are so many sessions on the agenda, it’s worth taking a look if you work in the AVD space. I’ll be giving a session on Azure Files as an AVD profile storage solution, and diving into the different ways you can use the Azure Files solution for AVD. This means that I will introduce Azure Files and Azure NetApp Files and show in which scenarios some of these options are the better solution.
IT Tage Konferenz
One of the last conferences this year is the German IT Tage Konferenz in December. This is a really big conference running about 4 days with a wide range of topics. I had a pleasure to hold a session about Azure VM Best Practices.
I will add additional events, when I know about.