#Microsoft Azure Hub-Spoke model by Enterprise Design 1 of 4 #Azure #Cloud

 

Azure Hub-Spoke Architecture

Microsoft Azure Hub-Spoke Architecture

This Enterprise reference architecture shows how to implement a hub-spoke topology in Azure. The hub is a virtual network (VNet) in Azure that acts as a central point of connectivity to your on-premises network. The spokes are VNets that peer with the hub, and can be used to isolate workloads. Traffic flows between the on-premises datacenter and the hub through an ExpressRoute or VPN gateway connection.

We only use the Azure Private peering

For this Hybrid Cloud Strategy we made four Microsoft Azure Subscriptions via the EA Portal :

1. Azure HUB Subscription for the connectivity via Azure ExpressRoute to On-premises Datacenter.
2. Azure Spoke 1 for Production workload and Cloud Services
3. Azure Spoke 2 for Test and Acceptance Cloud Services
4. Azure Spoke 3 for Future plans

The naming convention rules and restrictions for Azure resources and a baseline set of recommendations for naming conventions. You can use these recommendations as a starting point for your own conventions specific to your needs.

The choice of a name for any resource in Microsoft Azure is important because:

• It is difficult to change a name later.
• Names must meet the requirements of their specific resource type.

Consistent naming conventions make resources easier to locate. They can also indicate the role of a resource in a solution.The key to success with naming conventions is establishing and following them across your applications and organizations.

Azure connectivity and RBAC Identity

This tenant is federated with via ADFS and Azure Connect to Office 365. Identity management is provisioned
via Microsoft Identity Manager 2016 (MIM2016). With this already in place, we can Configure Microsoft Azure RBAC in the subscriptions.

Access management for cloud resources is a critical function for any organization that is using the cloud. Role-based access control (RBAC) helps you manage who has access to Azure resources, what they can do with those resources, and what areas they have access to.

RBAC is an authorization system built on Azure Resource Manager that provides fine-grained access management of resources in Azure.

Business Development

For Business Development we have a separated Active Directory in one forest and also federated via ADFS to Microsoft Office 365. For this environment we build one Azure subscription with a temporary Site-to-Site VPN connection to On-premises datacenter for the “Lift and Shift” migration via Azure-Site-Recovery (ASR)

S2S VPN IKE v2 tunnel with Cisco and Azure.

Azure Virtual Networks

Next step is to build the connections between the Azure HUB Subscription and the Azure Spoke subscription(s) when every Microsoft Azure subscription has It’s own Virtual Network (VNET). This is called VNET peering.

Virtual network peering enables you to seamlessly connect two Azure virtual networks. Once peered, the virtual networks appear as one, for connectivity purposes. The traffic between virtual machines in the peered virtual networks is routed through the Microsoft backbone infrastructure, much like traffic is routed between virtual machines in the same virtual network, through private IP addresses only. Azure supports:

• VNet peering – connecting VNets within the same Azure region
• Global VNet peering – connecting VNets across Azure regions

Here you see my step-by-step VNET peering creation from HUB to Spoke 1 :

Go to the VNET of the Azure HUB Subscription. and then to Peerings => Add.

Here you make the connection with Spoke 1 Azure subscription.

For Azure HUB is Peering to Spoke 1 Done.

Now we go to the VNET of Azure Subscription Spoke 1 to make the connection.

Go to VNET => Peerings => Click on Add in the Azure Spoke 1 Subscription

Connect here to the Azure HUB

The VNET Peering between Azure HUB subscription and Spoke 1 is Connected.

In this order you have to make the other VNET Peerings from the Azure HUB subscription to the other Spoke Subscriptions so that the network connectivity between VNETs is working. Because we have the Azure Internet Edge in the HUB for the other subscriptions.

In the Azure Reference Architecture we also do Security by Design in the Cloud with Firewall and Azure Network Security Groups (NSG) and every Azure component get it’s own Tag for Security Groups and Billing – Usage.

Azure Storage

In every Microsoft Azure Subscription (HUB and Spoke ) we created a Storage Account. You can choose for different kind of storage in Microsoft Azure.

Durable and highly available. Redundancy ensures that your data is safe in the event of transient hardware failures. You can also opt to replicate data across datacenters or geographical regions for additional protection from local catastrophe or natural disaster. Data replicated in this way remains highly available in the event of an unexpected outage.
Secure. All data written to Azure Storage is encrypted by the service. Azure Storage provides you with fine-grained control over who has access to your data.
Scalable. Azure Storage is designed to be massively scalable to meet the data storage and performance needs of today’s applications.
Managed. Microsoft Azure handles maintenance and any critical problems for you.
Accessible. Data in Azure Storage is accessible from anywhere in the world over HTTP or HTTPS. Microsoft provides SDKs for Azure Storage in a variety of languages — .NET, Java, Node.js, Python, PHP, Ruby, Go, and others — as well as a mature REST API. Azure Storage supports scripting in Azure PowerShell or Azure CLI. And the Azure portal and Azure Storage Explorer offer easy visual solutions for working with your data.

Azure Storage includes these data services:
Azure Blobs: A massively scalable object store for text and binary data.
Azure Files: Managed file shares for cloud or on-premises deployments.
Azure Queues: A messaging store for reliable messaging between application components.
Azure Tables: A NoSQL store for schemaless storage of structured data.

Creating your Azure Storage accounts by Design.

One of our Architecture Security by Design policy, is to Encrypt all the storage in Azure via Microsoft Azure Key vault.

Deploying Azure IaaS Virtual Machine with ARM Templates

Enterprise organizations with more then ten employees managing IT datacenters are working by process and order to do the job for the business. When they are all using the Azure Portal and deploy Virtual Machines manually you will get a mess and things can go wrong. In Microsoft Azure you have the Azure Resource Manager for deploying  JSON ARM Templates. With these Azure Resource Manager Templates you can automate your workload deployments in Microsoft Azure. For example : We build a JSON template to deploy a Windows Server in the right Azure Subscription in the right Azure Resource Group and with the following extensions to it :

• Antimalware agent installed
• Domain joined in the right OU (Active Directory)
• Azure Log analytics agent installed ( Connected to Azure Monitor and SCOM )
• Encryption by default.

Using with our Azure naming conventions and Azure policy we always deploy consistent without making mistakes or by wrong typing in the Azure portal. When you write and make your ARM templates for different workloads, you can store them in Azure DevOps Repo ( Repository) and you can connect your private repo to GitHub.

Making ARM templates works really Awesome with Microsoft Visual Studio Code which is opensource and free of charge. You can add your favorite VSC extensions to work with like Azure Resource Manager.

 Our Azure ARM Template to deploy Virtual Machines into Azure HUB-Spoke model with VSC

Azure monitoring and Recovery Service Vault

To manage your Azure Hybrid Cloud environment you have to monitor everything to keep in control of your Virtual Datacenter. And of course you have to plan your business continuity with Azure Recovery Services (Backup) by Design. We made in every Azure Subscription an Azure Recovery Services Vault for making Backups. This is because you don’t want backup traffic over your VNET peering’s. In the Azure HUB subscription we made a second Azure Site Recovery (ASR) Vault for the “Lift & Shift” migration of On-premises Virtual Machines to the landing zone in Azure HUB.

With Microsoft Azure Monitor we use Log Analytics and Service maps and with the same OMS agent on the Virtual Machine, we still can use Microsoft System Center Operation Manager (SCOM) connected to the same agent 🙂

When you have 45 locations, 45.000 students with BYOD and 10.000 Managed workstations, you will monitor 24 x 7 to keep everything running for your Business. Monitoring Express Route with a Backup connection is a must for your Hybrid Virtual Datacenter. Here you have more information about monitoring Express Route Circuit

Monitoring our Express Route

With this all installed in Microsoft Azure by Design, we have the policy Security First !

Microsoft Azure Security Center

Azure Security Center provides unified security management and advanced threat protection across hybrid cloud workloads. With Security Center, you can apply security policies across your workloads, limit your exposure to threats, and detect and respond to attacks.

We are already installing Azure Threat Protection (ATP) for our On-premises Datacenter for Security.

Azure Security Center

We still have a lot to configure in Microsoft Azure to get the Basic Architecture Design in place. When that is done, I will make three more blogposts about this datacenter transformation :

• “Lift and Shift” migration with ASR for Virtual Machines on Hyper-V and VMware.
• SQL assessment and Data Migration to Azure
• Optimize of all Workloads in Microsoft Azure.

Hope this blogpost will help you too with your Datacenter transition to Microsoft Azure Cloud.

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NEW Buy Now THE System Center Configuration Manager Current Branch Book #SCCM #ConfigMgr #Sysctr #MVPbuzz

System Center Configuration Manager Current Branch provides a total systems management solution for a people-centric world. It can deploy applications to individuals using virtually any device or platform, centralizing and automating management across on-premise, service provider, and Microsoft Azure environments. In System Center Configuration Manager Current Branch Unleashed, a team of world-renowned System Center experts shows you how to make the most of this powerful toolset.

A Great Book and a Must have for every System Center Administrator,  the book has more then 1100 pages with the following Chapters :

Configuration management basics
Configuration manager overview
Looking inside configuration manager
Architecture design planning
Network design
Installing and updating system center configuration manager
Upgrading and migrating to configmgr current branch
Using the configuration manager console
Client management
Managing compliance
Creating and managing applications
Creating and using deployment types
Creating and managing applications and packages
Distributing and deploying applications and packages
Managing software updates
Integrating intune hybrid into your configuration manager environment
Managing mobile devices
Conditional access in configuration manager
Endpoint protection
Configuration manager queries
Configuration manager reporting
Operating system deployment
Security and delegation in configuration manager
Backup, recovery, and maintenance
Configuration manager log files
Extending hardware inventory
Co-managing windows intune and configmgr
Reference urls

The System Center Configuration Manager Current Branch Unleashed is written by the following world wide Experts :

Kenneth van Surksum
Kerrie Meyler
Gerry Hampson
Saud Al-Mishari
Greg Ramsey
Michael Wiles
Byron Holt
Garth Jones

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What is New in Microsoft System Center version 1801 #Sysctr #SCOM #SCVMM #SCDPM

What is New in Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager version 1801 ?

• Nested virtualization
• Migration of VMware VM (EFI firmware-based VM) to Hyper-V VM
• Performance improvement in host refresher
• Enhanced console session in VMM

Networking :

• Configuration of guest clusters in SDN through VMM
• Configuration of SLB VIPs through VMM service templates
• Configuration of encrypted VM networks through VMM

Security :

• Support to Linux shielded VM
• Configuration of fallback HGS

Azure Integration :

• Management of ARM-based and region-specific Azure subscriptions

SCVMM 1801 supports management of ARM-based VMs, Azure Active Directory (AD) based authentication that is created by using the new Azure portal and region-specific Azure subscriptions (namely, Germany, China, US Government Azure regions).

Download here System Center Virtual Machine Manager version 1801 VHD

What is New in System Center Data Protection Manager version 1801 ?

The following features are either new to DPM, or are improved for DPM 2016.

Modern Backup Storage – Using Resilient File System (ReFS) block-cloning technology to store incremental backups, DPM 2016 dramatically improves storage utilization and performance. The storage consumed by backups grows and shrinks with the production data source, and there is no over-allocation of storage.
Resilient change tracking (RCT) – DPM uses RCT (the native change tracking in Hyper-V), which removes the need for time-consuming consistency checks. RCT provides better resiliency than the change tracking provided by VSS snapshot-based backups. DPM also uses RCT for incremental backup. It identifies VHD changes for virtual machines, and transfers only those blocks that are indicated by the change tracker.
Continued protection during cluster aware updates – Windows Server 2016 comes with the cluster OS rolling update, where a cluster can be upgraded to Windows Server 2016 without bringing it down. DPM 2016 continues to protect VMs during the upgrade, maintaining the backup service level agreement (SLA).
Shielded VM Backups – Shielded VMs in Windows Server 2016 help protect sensitive VMs from inspection, tampering, and data theft by malware and malicious administrators. DPM 2016 backups retain the protections provided by shielded VMs to ensure they can be recovered seamlessly and securely.
Hyper-V with Storage Spaces Direct – DPM recognizes and protects Hyper-V VMs deployed on Storage Spaces Direct, delivering seamless backup and recovery of VMs in disaggregated and hyper-converged scenarios.
Hyper-V with ReFS SOFS Cluster – DPM 2016 can back up Hyper-V VMs deployed on ReFS-based SOFS clusters. Backup and recovery of RCT-based VMs and non-RCT VMs is supported.
Upgrading a DPM production server to 2016 doesn’t require a reboot – When you upgrade to DPM 2016, you are not required to reboot the production server. To avoid rebooting the production server, upgrade to DPM 2016 and upgrade the DPM agent on the production servers. Backups continue and you reboot the production server when you want.

DPM to Azure Backup Vault.

Download here System Center Data Protection Manager version 1801 VHD

What is New in System Center Operations Manager version 1801 ?

• Enter product key from the Operation Console
• Linux monitoring
• Improved HTML5 dashboarding experience
• System Center Visual Studio Authoring Extension (VSAE) support for Visual Studio 2017
• Enhanced SDK Client performance
• Updates and recommendations for third-party Management Packs
• Linux Kerberos support
• Service Map integration

Microsoft Service Map automatically discovers application components on Windows and Linux systems and maps the communication between services. It automatically builds a common reference map of dependencies across your servers, processes, and third-party services. Integration between Service Map and System Center Operations Manager allows you to automatically create distributed application diagrams in Operations Manager that are based on the dynamic dependency maps in Service Map.

The Microsoft System Center Operations Manager Team published a great blogpost on the New SCOM Web Console version 1801

Download here System Center Operations Manager version 1801 VHD

Download here System Center Orchestrator version 1801 VHD

Download here System Center Service Manager version 1801 VHD

 

Here you find more information about System Center version 1801

Test today the new features of System Center version 1801 with the Evaluation VHD’s 😉

#Microsoft Azure Security Center Overview #Cloud #Security #HybridCloud #Azure

Microsoft Azure Security Center provides unified security management and advanced threat protection across hybrid cloud workloads. With Security Center, you can apply security policies across your workloads, limit your exposure to threats, and detect and respond to attacks.

You can select an existing Log Analytics workspace to store data collected by Security Center. To use your existing Log Analytics workspace:
• The workspace must be associated with your selected Azure subscription.
• At a minimum, you must have read permissions to access the workspace.

You can edit the default security policy for each of your Azure subscriptions in Security Center. To modify a security policy, you must be an owner, contributor, or security administrator of the subscription. To configure security policies in Security Center, do the following:
1. Sign in to the Azure portal.
2. On the Security Center dashboard, under General, select Security policy.
3. Select the subscription that you want to enable a security policy for.
4. In the Policy Components section, select Security policy.
This is the default policy that’s assigned by Security Center. You can turn on or off the available security recommendations.
5. When you finish editing, select Save.

Here you find more on Set security policies in Azure Security Center

Some policies need the upgrade Enhanced Security

Contact information for Notifications

Azure Security Center provides unified security management and advanced threat protection for workloads running in Azure, on-premises, and in other clouds. It delivers visibility and control over hybrid cloud workloads, active defenses that reduce your exposure to threats, and intelligent detection to help you keep pace with rapidly evolving cyber attacks.
Pricing tiers
Security Center is offered in two tiers:
• The Free tier is automatically enabled on all Azure subscriptions, and provides security policy, continuous security assessment, and actionable security recommendations to help you protect your Azure resources.
• The Standard tier extends the capabilities of the Free tier to workloads running in private and other public clouds, providing unified security management and threat protection across your hybrid cloud workloads. The Standard tier also adds advanced threat detection capabilities, which uses built-in behavioral analytics and machine learning to identify attacks and zero-day exploits, access and application controls to reduce exposure to network attacks and malware, and more. The Standard tier is free for the first 60 days. Read here more…….

What are OS Security Configurations?
Azure Security Center monitors security configurations using a set of over 150 recommended rules for hardening the OS, including rules related to firewalls, auditing, password policies, and more. If a machine is found to have a vulnerable configuration, a security recommendation is generated.
Customization of the rules can help organizations to control which configuration options are more appropriate for their environment. This feature enables users to set a customized assessment policy and apply it on all applicable machines in the subscription.

Note
• Currently OS Security Configuration customization is available for Windows Server 2008, 2008R2, 2012, 2012R2 operating systems only.
• The configuration applies to all VMs and computers connected to all workspaces under the selected subscription.
• OS Security Configuration customization is available only on Security Center’s Standard tier.

Download the Baseline configuration JSON file

You can make a Custom Baseline with Visual Studio Code and Upload to Azure

Microsoft Azure Security Center QuickStart :

Configure Security Policy

Managing security recommendations in Azure Security Center

Security health monitoring in Azure Security Center

Managing and responding to security alerts in Azure Security Center

Documentation :

Microsoft Azure Security Center Documentation 

Microsoft Azure Security Center Forum

Planning guide
This guide covers a set of steps and tasks that you can follow to optimize your use of Security Center based on your organization’s security requirements and cloud management model. To take full advantage of Security Center, it is important to understand how different individuals or teams in your organization use the service to meet secure development and operations, monitoring, governance, and incident response needs. The key areas to consider when planning to use Security Center are:

Security Roles and Access Controls
Security Policies and Recommendations
Data Collection and Storage
Ongoing non-Azure resources
Ongoing Security Monitoring
Incident Response

Here you will learn how to plan for each one of those areas and apply those recommendations based on your requirements.

All Events view in Azure Security Center

Upgrade to standard Tier for Hybrid Security

Search with analytics

Queries can be used to search terms, identify trends, analyze patterns, and provide many other insights based on your data.

Have a look and play with Azure Log Analytics.

Getting Started with the Analytics Portal

in this tutorial you will learn to write Azure Log Analytics queries. When completing this tutorial you will know how to:

• Understand queries’ structure
• Sort query results
• Filter query results
• Specify a time range
• Select which fields to include in the results
• Define and use custom fields
• Aggregate and group results

Getting Started with Queries

Azure Security Center gives you Recommendations

For example to Encrypt your Virtual Machines in Azure with a Link

Integrated Azure security solutions
Security Center makes it easy to enable integrated security solutions in Azure. Benefits include:

Simplified deployment: Security Center offers streamlined provisioning of integrated partner solutions. For solutions like antimalware and vulnerability assessment, Security Center can provision the needed agent on your virtual machines, and for firewall appliances, Security Center can take care of much of the network configuration required.
Integrated detections: Security events from partner solutions are automatically collected, aggregated, and displayed as part of Security Center alerts and incidents. These events also are fused with detections from other sources to provide advanced threat-detection capabilities.
Unified health monitoring and management: Customers can use integrated health events to monitor all partner solutions at a glance. Basic management is available, with easy access to advanced setup by using the partner solution.

More on Integrated Azure Security Solutions

Compute Security Overview

Compute Security and Components view

Networking Security Overview

Storage & Data Security Overview

Identity and Access Overview in Azure Security Center

Application Whitelisting

Just in time virtual machine (VM) access can be used to lock down inbound traffic to your Azure VMs, reducing exposure to attacks while providing easy access to connect to VMs when needed.

Attack scenario
Brute force attacks commonly target management ports as a means to gain access to a VM. If successful, an attacker can take control over the VM and establish a foothold into your environment.

One way to reduce exposure to a brute force attack is to limit the amount of time that a port is open. Management ports do not need to be open at all times. They only need to be open while you are connected to the VM, for example to perform management or maintenance tasks. When just in time is enabled, Security Center uses Network Security Group (NSG) rules, which restrict access to management ports so they cannot be targeted by attackers.

More on Just in Time Virtual Machine

Security Alerts

Azure Security Center’s advanced detection capabilities, helps you identify active threats targeting your Microsoft Azure resources and provides you with the insights needed to respond quickly

More on Azure Security Center detection capabilities

Custom Alert Rules

What are custom alert rules in Security Center?

Security Center has a set of predefined security alerts, which are triggered when a threat, or suspicious activity takes place. In some scenarios, you may want to create a custom alert to address specific needs of your environment.

Custom alert rules in Security Center allow you to define new security alerts based on data that is already collected from your environment. You can create queries, and the result of these queries can be used as criteria for the custom rule, and once this criteria is matched, the rule is executed. You can use computers security events, partner’s security solution logs or data ingested using APIs to create your custom queries.

More information about Custom Alert Rules in Azure Security Center

Threat Intelligence

Azure Security Center Playbooks

What is security playbook in Security Center?
Security playbook is a collection of procedures that can be executed from Security Center once a certain playbook is triggered from selected alert. Security playbook can help to automate and orchestrate your response to a specific security alert detected by Security Center. Security Playbooks in Security Center are based on Azure Logic Apps, which means you can use the templates that are provided under the security category in Logic Apps templates, you can modify them based on your needs, or you can create new playbooks using Azure Logic Apps workflow, and using Security Center as your trigger.

More on Azure Security Center Playbook

Hope this Microsoft Azure Security Center Overview will help to make your Hybrid IT more Secure !

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Manage hybrid cloud and transform your workplace with PowerShell and Azure Automation

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