In my current project we have the requirement to deactivate Hyper-threading on some Azure VMs. There are some Azure VMs available without Hyper-threading which can be found on the Azure compute unit site where Microsoft published a table with VM SKUs sizes where the “vCPU: Core” give a hint about VMs which are not having HT integrated. But this sizes are very limited and we have some requirements from licensing side to disable Hyper-threading and there also some applications which have a better performance when HT is disabled.
Continue reading How to deactivate Hyper-threading on Azure VMs in an easy way without Microsoft supportTag Archives: AzureVM
Speaking at Cloud Brew 2022 about Azure Arc
After many hybrid events in the last few years I really like to get back to in-person or hybrid events to see the community live at the events and discuss and learn from each other about different projects and meet some new people.
About the Cloud Brew
One of my favorite conference in 2019 was the Cloud Brew in Belgium, it was a great conference because of different things:
- Great list of speakers and sessions
- Deep dive technical sessions
- Big community from around europe
- One of the biggest Azure related conference in belgium
- Great place in the beautiful former brewery Lamot
The Cloud Brew 2022 will take place from 18/11/ – 19/11/2022 in Lamot, Mechelen in Belgium. There are some free seats available.
About my session
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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.
Continue reading Microsoft announced Azure Premium SSD v2 Disk Storage in preview – for me a big announcement this year
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
Continue reading Azure AMA – Azure Virtual Desktop Best Practices #AVD with Marcel Meurer and Patrick Koehler
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.
Azure Bastion supports SCALABILITY for SSH/RDP Connections with the new Standard SKU
Update 1 on 01/12/2021 :
Microsoft has changed the #AzureBastion minimum subnet size from /27 to /26. Installed #Azure Bastion are unaffected, but new deployments require the new subnet size. Please remember this. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/bastion/bastion-faq#subnet
Azure Bastion is a fully managed PaaS service to secure access Azure VMs via SSH/RDP without the need for Internet connectivity on the selected VMs. Azure Bastion was released as part of the Microsoft Ignite 2019. As part of the ongoing Microsoft Inspire 2021, Microsoft has launched a new SKU for Azure Bastion called Standard.
Difference between Basic and Standard SKU
When you create an Azure Bastion instance Microsoft creates in the backend an optimized Azure VM that runs all the processes they are needed for Azure Bastion. This Azure VM is called a Instance and had some limitations. In general when you deploy the Azure Bastion Basic SKU Microsoft deploys two instances which supports 20-24 concurrent sessions which means each instance support 10-12 sessions.
The Standard SKU allows you to specify the number of instances called as host scalling.
Please note that when using an Azure Bastion Standard SKU, the AzureBastionSubnet size should be increased to a subnet size of approximately /26 or larger.
| Azure Bastion | Basic | Standard |
| Instances | 2 Default | up to 50 |
| Max. supported concurrent sessions | 20-24 | up to 500 |
| Supported configuration | Azure Portal, Powershell, CLI | Only Azure Portal |
Deploy an Azure Bastion Standard SKU
Only the Azure Portal allows to deploy an Azure Bastion Standard SKU with the host scalling feature, because the feature is in public preview.
Continue reading Azure Bastion supports SCALABILITY for SSH/RDP Connections with the new Standard SKU
Connect physical/virtual servers to Azure Arc for centralized Azure management
The Cloud usage grows in the last years rapidly, but in many customer environments we had servers and applications they can´t migrate to the cloud about different reasons. There are many reasons why applications can not migrated to the cloud e.g. data regulations, connections and latency challenges and more. On the other hand customers whish to use different cloud providers. In summary the hybrid cloud is one of the most use cases in many customer environments. Microsoft released Azure Arc as a solution for hybrid cloud environments. Azure Arc was announced as public preview at Ignite 2019 and going GA on Ignite 2020.
In this article I will cover how connect Windows VMs to Azure Arc.
Azure Arc in General
Azure Arc is a solution to extend the Azure management capabilitites to services outside of Azure. This gives the possibilites to manage different services, in different environments from one central place with same capabilities across different services layers.
Microsoft release the first version for Server management and has since expanded the range of functions over Dataservices, Kubernetes and new since some days Azure applications.
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My Microsoft Ignite 2021 Spring Highlights
The corona situation brings new opportunities and one of them is that Microsoft Ignite going to a virtual conference twice a year. It used to be an in-person event only once a year. Last week the Microsoft Ignite 2021 spring conference started and in this article I will cover most of the highlights from my perspective. I would really appreciate your feedback on how valuable the article is.
Windows Server 2022 in preview
With Windows Server 2022 there coming the next Major release for as Windows Server OS. This release coming as the next LTSC release with lots of new features, such as new hybrid and security capabilities. Take a look at the MS Ignite Session about latest Azure innovation for SQL and Windows Servers
Passwordless Azure AD authentication is GA
To prevent phishing attacks Microsoft is part of the FIDO2 alliance. Azure AD supports long time ago the login with FIDO2 keys, but the service are in public preview. With this Ignite Microsoft move the service from Public Preview state into GA state and add some new capabilities, like the Temporary access pass. To unterstand how FIDO2 and TAP works, take a look at the short video. Passwordless authentication with FIDO2 keys, brings Identity Security to a new level. This prevents custom user passwords, enable higher security and preventing phishing attacks.
To enable passwordless login for the own Azure AD Tenant take a look at my blog article “Setup passwordless login for Azure & Microsoft 365 mit Yubico and FIDO2 (german)“.
http://aka.ms/passwordlesswizard
Continue reading My Microsoft Ignite 2021 Spring Highlights
Azure VM Best Practices
Last year Gregor Suttie and Richard Hooper launched the Azure Advent Calendar and I got to support with a session on Azure Bastion. This year they improved on the idea with the Festive Tech Calendar. I’m happy to be back with an article on Azure VM best practices. I hope you find the article helpful and I would appreciate feedback.
Over the past few months, I have conducted many customer workshops, designed and implemented Landing Zones, and migrated or placed VMs into Azure. One of the most common customer questions has been about best practices for Azure VMs to maximize performance and efficiency, minimize costs, increase security, and reduce management overhead. This article is based on my real-world experience and recommendations based on several Azure projects.
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Azure Bastion now supports VNET Peering
Update 2 on 01/12/2021
Microsoft has changed the #AzureBastion minimum subnet size from /27 to /26. Installed #Azure Bastion are unaffected, but new deployments require the new subnet size. Please remember this. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/bastion/bastion-faq#subnet
Update – 12/2020
Azure Bastion is now available in West Germany Central.
Azure Bastion is a service to avoid deployment own Jumphosts and reach Azure VMs over the Management Ports (SSH and RDP) in a secure way without the need to assign Public IPs directly to Azure VMs.
Azure Bastion got a really big improvement and now supports Azure VNET Peering. This includes all VNET peering models, inside a single subscription and VNET peering across different subscriptions.
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