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. 

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We’ve had an exciting few weeks with several significant events across the technical community and the Microsoft ecosystem. These events all had multiple feature announcements and crossed referenced technologies to align usability and productivity, and there has been a lot of excitement throughout the technical communities.

We had GitHub Universe at the end of October, which announced new tools to enhance productivity across IT teams. The event also introduced new and highly anticipated enterprise tooling that provides organisations with enhanced security and compliance requirements.

Just after Ignite was .NET Conf 2021, which didn’t focus on just application development, they were able to line up new feature releases in .NET 6 with the product releases announced at Ignite 2021, enhancing immediate support for the technical community.

The event that we look forward to each year, Microsoft Ignite, took place in early November, and there was an immense amount of product announcements!

Below is a list of some of the key announcements that targeted the IT Pro community:

• Azure Arc enabled features with Azure Stack HCI, VMware vSphere, and machine learning.
• Azure Virtual Desktop supporting Azure Stack HCI.
• Azure Automanage enhanced features for Windows Server and Linux VMs, including support for Azure Arc-enabled server VMs.
• Azure Stack HCI has new features updates and tooling, as well as integration in many other services.
• Azure Container Apps is now in preview as a managed service, removing complex infrastructure.
• SQL Server 2022 is now in preview!
• Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets introduces a flexible orchestration mode.
• Azure Virtual Machines are now delivering better performance at a better price!
• Azure Monitor has announced greater capabilities with better integration into vendor-neutral instrumentation and enhanced troubleshooting for a better monitoring platform.
• Azure Virtual Machines Selector is now generally available, helping customers find the proper performance and price for their VMs.

You can check out all the updates via the Microsoft Ignite Book of News.

PowerShell is also turning 15 years old! Check out the Ask the Experts session with the PowerShell product group and community MVPs.

During the Ignite keynote, Satya stated: “The Microsoft cloud offers the best integration across the entirety of the tech stack while offering openness at every layer … The Microsoft cloud helps orchestrate all of your heterogeneous digital investments across every layer of the tech stack.”

Until next time!

Learn more

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

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