Is cloud the end state? Do I need to migrate all of my workloads? We have been having this conversation for years now, and the answer is a resounding no.

Migrate what makes sense, keep on-premises what makes sense and figure out how to get benefits from the two working together. Jason Zander, Executive Vice-President of Microsoft Azure said it best at Microsoft Ignite in 2019.

“Hybrid, we believe, is a permanent state. It’s not just a transition.”

This is the truth we strive for everyday here at Microsoft. To that end we are releasing more and more capabilities for you to use and leverage, such as Azure Arc enabled Windows Servers that unlock capabilities such as Azure Policy, Azure Sentinel, Azure Automation and more. These all make managing your hybrid environment easier and more streamlined.

We’ve published a series that covers hybrid management – check out the posts below if you’d like to learn more.

1. Best practices for onboarding Microsoft Azure Arc enabled servers
2. Standardize DevOps practices across hybrid and multicloud environments
3. Centrally design, deploy, and operate Kubernetes apps and clusters anywhere using Azure Arc
4. Azure Arc – enabled data services with Azure Stack HCI and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
5. Azure Arc – enabled data services in disconnected mode
6. Choose the right data solution for your hybrid environment

And remember, manage your environment in a way that makes sense for you. Just ensure that you manage ALL your environments using the tools that will bring you value.

Cheers!

Learn more

• Plan and implement a hybrid environment
• Introduction to Azure hybrid cloud services
• Azure Orbital, and why you should skill up for the future

The post Becoming hybrid by design appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

One significant impact of AI in enterprise infrastructure is the automation of repetitive tasks. AI-powered tools and applications can automate routine operations, allowing businesses to focus on more complex and strategic tasks. This automation not only improves operational efficiency but also reduces costs and improves accuracy.

For example, Azure Monitor uses AI and machine learning to analyse data across your applications, infrastructure, and network to identify issues that impact your applications and services.

It can also help you detect threats by using machine learning-based algorithms to analyse data across your environment and surface those threats in Microsoft Sentinel. Microsoft Sentinel enhances your investigation and detection capabilities with AI by using machine learning algorithms to reduce noise from legitimate events and focus on finding real threats quickly.

Let’s not forget the assistance in learning coding skills by asking questions and getting coding example and explanations of code syntax. Visual Studio Code and GitHub Copilot for example, provide autocomplete-style suggestions from an AI pair programmer as you code. You can receive suggestions from GitHub Copilot either by starting to write the code you want to use, or by writing a natural language comment describing what you want the code to do.

I’m not saying that AI will do everything for you, but it can help make tasks more efficient. For example, the first two paragraphs of this editorial were written by ChatGPT.

So keep an open mind, evaluate where the technology makes sense and leverage it to your benefit.

Cheers!

The post The impact of AI in our production environments appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Hello Folks,

How far do you think your career can take you? I believe it can take you anywhere, and yet I’m the first one to be surprised at the heights we can achieve. As far as I’m concerned space is the limit, or as we geeks like to be reminded… the final frontier.

I worked on 2 projects with Azure Orbital, one of which was featured online:

• Cloud ‘data bursts’ from space move astronauts closer to Mars — and improve life on Earth
• Genomics testing on the ISS with HPE Spaceborne Computer-2 and Azure

Some of the challenges on these project involve storing and transferring large amounts of data from space to earth ground stations.

On both these projects, networking, security, deployment skills and more are crucial for the success of the project and therefore we (as a community) need to ensure we are ready for new adventures while leveraging the skills we already possess. However, it never hurts to learn new ways. To that effect, there are many learning opportunities for you to take advantage of:

• Architect network infrastructure in Azure
• Secure network connectivity on Azure
• Azure Fundamentals part 4: Describe general security and network security features

Technology is evolving, and our skills are crucial to the success of our enterprises. We owe it to ourselves to be prepared and ready.

Are you?

Learn more

• Introduction to Azure fundamentals
• Plan and manage your Azure costs
• How Azure Backup Center deals with constant change

The post Azure Orbital, and why you should skill up for the future appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

We are now firmly in 2023. Will the new year change anything for us? Probably, since in our business change is the only constant. Considering the economic landscape around us in this new year, we will have to, as Satya said in his last Microsoft Ignite keynote, do more with less.

Remember, you are the change agents. Therefore, you need to prioritise your growth and upskilling activities. Microsoft Learn provides you with an updated structure and content to help.

1. Learn by doing
2. Find technical documentation
3. Ask questions and get help
4. Try code samples
5. Find new ways to innovate
6. and once you’ve mastered the technology, you can showcase your skills

Should you or the developers in your company be interested in Cloud Native technologies (including Kubernetes), I suggest you check out the upcoming Cloud Native New Year. It will be 30 days of free online and self-paced content.

It starts off with introductory Level 100 explanations of Cloud Native and your options, through to application deployment and migration scenarios, including storage, networking and instrumentation for observability.

For more details, check out the Cloud Native New Year website when the content goes live from January 23rd, 2023.

Let’s make 2023 the year that we introduce more innovation, agility, and resilience in a way that scales and amplifies what you can accomplish.

Cheers!

Learn more

• This article was written for the Monthly TechNet UK IT Pro Newsletter – sign up today!
• Getting started with GitHub
• New Azure features and functionality for December​ 2022

The post Have a cloud native new year! appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Our business has only one constant; Change.

Actually…

There might be one thing that has not changed for IT Pros and operation folks, and that’s the need for an appropriate backup strategy.  Today, in this world of fast innovation and ever faster iteration, we need to be flexible and nimble when it comes to protecting assets and data for accidental or malicious events. More than that, we are also facing a new set of challenges in the management of our respective environments:

• Exponential data growth
• Data sources sprawl
• Maintaining ever-growing databases
• Keeping everything in compliance with current regulations.

The Azure Backup Center team has come up with tools and processes to address these challenges; How to discover and protect your workloads, how to monitor and operate your backup environment and how to ensure that your environment complies with policies of your design.

You can find a series of articles and videos covering all the ins and out of Azure Backup Center.

The best thing we can do for our businesses, is to be prepared and ready. Are you?

Learn more

• Introduction to Azure Backup
• Protect your virtual machines by using Azure Backup

The post How Azure Backup Center deals with constant change appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

We have been bombarded with marketing telling us that the future is the cloud and that we must migrate everything. The reality is that hybrid, I believe, is a permanent state. It’s not just a transition. A lot of IT Pros wonder how to get started – to integrate the goodness of cloud services in a way that brings value and efficiencies without the need for a complete rip and replace.

Case in point, I spoke to a conference attendee last month in Vienna and he made a statement that stuck with me. He basically said that it was easier to find guidance on migrating everything than finding guidance on slowly integrating cloud services in his environment when it makes sense. I can’t confirm his findings, but I can agree that finding the right information for each specific situation can sometimes be challenging.

Our approach to hybrid environments is to be consistent – it’s the way we enable unified management, common identity framework and security. Taking that approach also allows for seamless extension to the cloud when it makes sense for you. This is where technologies like Azure Arc are so impactful as they simplify the way to provide a centralised, unified way to:

• Manage your entire environment together by projecting your existing non-Azure and/or on-premises resources into Azure Resource Manager.
• Manage virtual machines, Kubernetes clusters, and databases as if they are running in Azure regardless of their location.
• Use familiar Azure services and management capabilities, regardless of where they live.
• Continue using traditional ITOps while introducing DevOps practices to support new cloud native patterns in your environment.
• Configure custom locations as an abstraction layer on top of Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes clusters and cluster extensions.

To that end, our team has started a series that will take you on a journey. A journey of a typical on-prem only environment where we gradually implement cloud services to lighten up efficiencies and the power of cloud services to the benefit of the business. Step by step, with a look at why and not just how you too should look at cloud services:

• Connecting your environment to the cloud.
• Connect to your on-prem server from anywhere.
• Setting up DNS in a Hybrid Environment.
• Securely Manage my On-prem Server Using Cloud services.
• Planning the Monitoring of my hybrid environment.
• Apply Azure Policy to Azure Arc-enabled Servers in a Hybrid environment.
• How does Azure Stack HCI fit into Hybrid Cloud Services?

More articles will be added to this list in the near future. However, we are very interested in hearing about your challenges in this area, and as such we have set up an email address you can use to tell us about the scenarios you are challenged with. You can reach us at ITOpsTalk-Feedback@microsoft.com or as usual on our discord server.

Cheers!

Learn more

• This article was written for the Monthly TechNet UK IT Pro Newsletter – sign up today!
• A look at the announcements from Microsoft Build 2022
• What to catch up on from Build 2022
• New Azure features and functionality for July​ 2022 – Microsoft Build edition

The post Applying cloud goodness to your existing environments appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Hello folks,

Every few years I hear the same chorus of voices shouting “What do you mean, Windows Server (insert version here) is out of support??? Why did you not notify us?”.

This happened in 2015 with Server 2003, again in 2020 for 2008/2008R2, and now it’s already started regarding 2012/2012R2.

It is our responsibility as IT professionals to keep track of the lifecycle of our environments and to inform/prepare our management of the lead-time, effort and budgets required to address these events. Therefore, a long time ago (2011), Microsoft defined its lifecycle policy to address this and make it more predictable and consistent for easier planning.

The Fixed Lifecycle Policy applies to many commercial and some consumer products currently available through retail purchase and/or volume licensing. It provides:

• A defined support and servicing Lifecycle timeline at the time of product launch.
• A minimum of five years Mainstream Support.
• An additional period of Extended Support for some products.

Please refer to the Lifecycle product search for specific end of support dates and details for the products that your environment depends on. Keeping our environments up to date, patched and supported is one of the best way to ensure a stable environment.

Cheers!

Learn more

• This article was written for the Monthly TechNet UK IT Pro Newsletter – sign up today!
• A look at the announcements from Microsoft Build 2022
• What to catch up on from Build 2022
• New Azure features and functionality for June​ 2022 – Microsoft Build edition

The post End of support woes! appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Hello folks,

I recently came across an issue while working with colleagues on a shared demo environment, which required notification of the entire group should anyone change the local admin password or redeploys said environment with a password of their own. This challenge prompted me to begin investigating Azure Key Vault as a potential solution to address this. Recently, the PowerShell Team announced the general availability of their SecretManagement and SecretStore modules which helps users manage secrets through a common set of cmdlets to interface with the vaults. Administrators can utilise this extensible model, where local and remote vaults can be registered and unregistered for use in accessing and retrieving secrets.

I have recently created a blog post detailing the steps required to harness PowerShell SecretManagement modules in the hopes that others would find the solution helpful.

As always, our team grateful when the community shares input in helping us create technical articles, demo videos and interviews. Active conversations also take place on Twitter via the #AzOps hashtag. Feel free to reach out with any of your questions as our team is always happy to help. 

The post Leveraging PowerShell SecretManagement modules to generalise a shared environment appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Hello Folks,

Hybrid is the end state I believe we’re all chasing, which means that all of your on-prem skills are valuable. But we as a community must ensure we’re maintaining well rounded skills. To measure those skills, we designed the Microsoft Certified: Windows Server Hybrid Administrator Associate certification.

Last December, we released beta exams. The beta is closed now, which tells us that we can expect the exams to be available to everyone soon. Those exams will measure the following:

• Deploy and manage Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) in on-premises and cloud environments (30-35%)
• Manage Windows Servers and workloads in a hybrid environment (10-15%)
• Manage virtual machines and containers (15-20%)
• Implement and manage an on-premises and hybrid networking infrastructure (15-20%)
• Manage storage and file services (15-20%)

Are you ready for them? Now is the time to start preparing to take those exams. Even if you’re not planning on taking them as soon as they release, preparation has the side effect of making you more knowledgeable and prepared for the hybrid-by-design world.

To get ready for the exams, or to enhance your skills in general, I highly suggest the following resources:

• Check out the exam pages for details. The Exam AZ-800 skills outline and the Exam AZ-801 skills outline alert you to key topics covered on the exams.
• Review this Microsoft Learn collection.
• Gear up with the AZ-800 Study Guide and the AZ-801 Study Guide created by Microsoft Cloud Advocate Orin Thomas.
• Need other preparation ideas? Check out my blog post on Just How Does One Prepare for Beta Exams?

Keep an eye on the Microsoft Learn Blog or the ITOpsTalk blog for any announcements.

Cheers!

Learn more

• This article was written for the Monthly TechNet UK IT Pro Newsletter – sign up today!
• New Azure features and functionality for January 2022
• How to get started with Microsoft certifications

The post A look at new Windows Server Hybrid certification appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Hello Folks,

There have been many questions regarding the lack of updated Microsoft Windows certification exams in the last year or so. Considering the fact that there are approximately 2.2 million professionals on LinkedIn with Windows Server in their job role description and 800 thousand professionals that certified on Windows Server since 2012, we knew we had to do something. And did we ever!

Windows Server Summit, it was announced that we will have a new Windows Server Hybrid Administrator Associate certification, releasing early December 2021.

Orin Thomas led the initiative to give IT Pros focusing on an on-premises environment a reason to be excited, as this new certification will validate the skills of administrators working in hybrid environments. Hybrid is the reality for many organisations that are building new cloud-native applications, while still supporting current on-premises applications. We know that Windows Server administrators help organisations successfully make the most of these environments.

You can start preparing now for the upcoming beta exams

Even though these exams will be released in December 2021, you can start preparing for them now:

• Check out the exam page for details. The Exam AZ-800 (beta) skills outline and the Exam AZ-801 (beta) skills outline documents alert you to key topics covered in the exams.
• Tune in for two special IT Ops Talk episodes, in which Microsoft Cloud Advocate @OrinThomas takes Azure Stack HCI/Windows Server/Hybrid Cloud Principal Program Manager @Jeff Woolsey through the details for both exams: AZ-800 Reaction and AZ-801 Reaction.
• Gear up with study guides created by Orin Thomas:
  • AZ-800 Study Guide
  • AZ-801 Study Guide

Be a leader in the hybrid future

Start learning about the Windows Server Hybrid Administrator Associate certification today and signal that you have what it takes to manage and deploy infrastructure and apps in the new hybrid future.

Cheers!

Learn more

• This article was written for the Monthly TechNet UK IT Pro Newsletter – sign up today!
• New Azure features and functionality for August​ 2021
• Plan and implement a hybrid environment
• Introduction to Azure hybrid cloud services
• Azure Orbital, and why you should skill up for the future

The post It’s up to you to lead the hybrid future: New Hybrid certification arrives this December appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.