Last month I had the pleasure of taking part in Azure Back to School 2023 – a community event that takes place in September and hosts a range of contributors and content to share knowledge with the community! You can read more about Azure Back to School here – https://azurebacktoschool.github.io/. ✅ There’s a huge list of awesome sessions and speakers […]
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I’ve been using Terraform Cloud to create Azure Environments for some time, and in this post, I wanted to share an overview of Terraform Cloud, the prerequisites for deploying Azure environments using it, and provide additional resources to help get started. Note – this article is not exhaustive, and there are other ways of getting started and different potential setups […]
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Recently I took and passed the AI-102 Exam, Designing and Implementing a Microsoft Azure AI Solution – which earns the Certification Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Engineer Associate. I must admit, I have found the AI exams to be challenging, as they are a totally new topic to me, requiring time spent reading the learning materials, as well as creating test and […]
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Recently the Azure Advisor Cost Optimization Workbook was made available in Public Preview. This workbook aims to provide a centralised location that enables a number of common methods for identifying cost optimization opportunities, aligned to the Well Architected Framework Cost Optimization Pillar. It is a great place to start a cost optimization journey and make effective changes to ensure optimal […]
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As you may have seen, the Cross-Region (Global) Azure Load Balancer has recently become Generally Available (10th July 2023) – https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/updates/azure-s-crossregion-load-balancer-is-now-generally-available/. I decided therefore to create a test and demo environment for it – whereby a quick example can be deployed to get started. ✅ For a detailed overview of Cross-Region Load Balancer, please see here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/load-balancer/cross-region-overview Overview The Cross-Region […]
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This week I had the pleasure of presenting at the EUC Forum Meeting, which was hosted in Manchester. Alongside my friend and fellow MVP Jon Jarvis, we presented the session “Unleashing the Power of Code-Driven Virtual Desktop Deployments for AVD & Windows 365“. Click here to find out more about the awesome EUC Forum! This session focused on the tooling required […]
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I recently noticed that Azure Storage Mover is now Generally Available. This is a service I’ve not used before, but migrations of Storage to Azure is something I am often involved with, so I was keen to test out this service, and explore the setup and usage with a test migration. In this post I will run through an overview […]
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As a follow on from my last post, I wanted to explore using Packer to create images for Azure Lab Services in more detail. Specifically, how images created using Packer could be imported into Azure Lab Services. If you’re new to Azure Lab Services, I’d recommend reading my previous post on it. Why use Packer with Azure Lab Services? This […]
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Overview Recently I have been using Azure Lab Services to prepare Lab Environments for testing and training scenarios, and also using various tools to help create and customise these environments as I need. Azure Lab Services provides on-demand or scheduled access to virtual machines to support various scenarios. A summary of the key points is below: Provide access to Virtual […]
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On Friday last week Jon Jarvis and myself hosted our first Cloud Chat Monthly Session. As this was our first session, we started off with an introduction to Cloud Chat Monthly, talked about our goals and objectives, and then went into our first technical session – “Unleashing the Power of Code-Driven Virtual Desktop Deployments: AVD & Windows 365“. Upcoming April […]
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Please note – Elastic SAN is a Preview Service – so expect changes and updates! As you may be aware, Azure Elastic SAN is now in Public Preview. Elastic SAN aims to solve the challenge of workload optimization and integration between large scale databases and performance-intensive mission-critical applications. The Elastic SAN Preview simplifies deployment, scaling, management, and configuration of a […]
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A recent topic of conversation with colleagues, friends in the technical community, and customers I work with, has been how I manage and deploy lab environments. I have to regularly deploy lab environments both for my own use (learning, training, etc.), and for customer demos – and often need to spin up/down these environments with little notice, relying on as […]
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