Now is the time. Join your global partner community for the Microsoft Inspire digital event experience. Register today and get ready to extend your partner network as we explore what’s coming in the year ahead and work together to find shared solutions for our customers. Join Microsoft Inspire 2020 Global Event on July 21-22 Now at no Cost!
Microsoft Azure Stack is a family of products and solutions that extend Azure to your datacenter or the edge. Includes Azure Stack Hub, Azure Stack HCI, and Azure Stack Edge.
Here you find all the information you need about the Microsoft Azure Stack Family
Here you find the Azure Stack HCI Overview
The Power of Hybrid IT Management is awesome with Azure Hybrid Services for your Servers with Microsoft Windows Admin Center. While you can set up most Azure hybrid services by downloading an app and doing some manual configuration, many are integrated directly into Windows Admin Center to provide a simplified setup experience and a server-centric view of the services. Windows Admin Center also provides convenient intelligent hyperlinks to the Azure portal to see connected Azure resources as well as a centralized view of your hybrid environment.
Hybrid IT Management with Azure Family and Windows Admin Center.
See here the Differences between global Azure, Azure Stack, and Azure Stack HCI
You don’t want to miss this Awesome Microsoft Ignite 2019 Event of the Year in Orlando, Florida !
If you can’t attend, don’t worry you can follow the Live Stream of MS Ignite here
Or here on Microsoft Ignite YouTube Channel
Have a look at the Microsoft Ignite 2019 Agenda
Plan your sessions for Microsoft Ignite 2019 ( More 1000+)
Download the Microsoft Events Mobile App for MS Ignite 2019 here
Follow @MS_Ignite on Twitter here
Watch live as technology leaders from across industries share the latest breakthroughs and trends, and explore innovative ways to create solutions. After the keynotes, select Microsoft Build sessions will stream live—dive deep into what’s new and what’s next for developer tools and tech.
Watch the livestream here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/build
Book your Microsoft Build 2019 sessions via the BUILD Scheduler
Vision Keynote by CEO Satya Nadella
Have a good look which sessions to follow because there are 431 sessions 👍🚀
JOIN Azure DevOps Community
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12139259/ …
JOIN Containers in the Cloud Community
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13539967/ …
JOIN Azure Monitor and Security Community https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13517115/ …
Azure Stack HCI solutions are available for customers who want to run virtualized applications on modern hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) to lower costs and improve performance. Azure Stack HCI solutions feature the same software-defined compute, storage, and networking software as Azure Stack, and can integrate with Azure for hybrid capabilities such as cloud-based backup, site recovery, monitoring, and more.
Adopting hybrid cloud is a journey and it is important to have a strategy that takes into account different workloads, skillsets, and tools. Microsoft is the only leading cloud vendor that delivers a comprehensive set of hybrid cloud solutions, so customers can use the right tool for the job without compromise.
Microsoft Announcing Azure Stack HCI: A new member of the Azure Stack family
Security and compliance–basic elements of the trusted cloud–are top priorities for organizations today. This paper is designed to help customers ensure that their data is handled in a manner that meets their data protection, regulatory, and sovereignty requirements on the global cloud architecture of Microsoft Azure. Transparency and control are also essential to establishing and maintaining trust in cloud technology. Microsoft recognizes that restricted and regulated industries require additional details for their risk management and to ensure compliance at all times. Microsoft provides an industry-leading security and compliance portfolio. Security is built into the Azure platform, beginning with the development process, which is conducted in accordance with the Security Development Lifecycle (SDL), and includes technologies, controls and tools that address data management and governance, Active Directory identity and access controls, network and infrastructure security technologies and tools, threat protection, and encryption to protect data in transit and at rest. Microsoft also provides customers with choices to select and limit the types and locations of data storage on Azure. With the innovation of the security and compliance frameworks, customers in regulated industries can successfully run mission-critical workloads in the cloud and leverage all the advantages of the Microsoft hyperscale cloud. This simple approach can assist customers in meeting the data protection requirements of government regulations or company policies by helping them to:
Understand data protection obligations.
Understand the services and controls that Azure provides to help its customers meet those obligations.
Understand the evidence that customers need to assert compliance.
The paper is structured into these three sections, with each diving deeper into the security and technologies that help Microsoft customers to meet data protection requirements. The final section discusses specific requirements to which industries and organizations in selected European markets are subject.
Download this Awesome whitepaper, “Achieving compliant data residency and security with Azure.”
Learn here more on Compliance, Trust, Security and Responsibilities
First of all Thank you for following me and Sharing Microsoft Cloud and Datacenter Management content on Social Media 🙂 Sharing & Learning Together is Better.
Here some work I did for the Community in 2018 :
Rocking with Azure in the Classroom !
I will continue every day sharing knowledge with the Community and continue my Free work on MVPbuzz Friday for Education to get Azure Cloud Technology in the Classroom for Teachers and Students.
The trend I see for 2019 is more Infrastructure and Security by Code with Microsoft Azure DevOps
and of course you have to be in Control with Microsoft Azure Monitor
I will write a blogpost in January 2019 about Microsoft Azure Hub-Spoke model by Enterprise Design 4 of 4 : Optimize your Azure Workload.
More Items in 2019 to come :
2019 will be a Great year again with New Microsoft Technologies and Features for your business.
Microsoft Azure HUB-Spoke Model
When you have your Microsoft Azure Architectural Design in place like a HUB-Spoke model this Microsoft documentation can help you with the Security and networking design in Microsoft Azure Cloud services.
The Virtual Data Center (VDC) isn’t just the application workloads in the cloud. It’s also the network, security, management, and infrastructure. Examples are DNS and directory services. It usually provides a private connection back to an on-premises network or datacenter. As more and more workloads move to Azure, it’s important to think about the supporting infrastructure and objects that these workloads are placed in. Think carefully about how resources are structured to avoid the proliferation of hundreds of workload islands that must be managed separately with independent data flow, security models, and compliance challenges.
Read this Awesome Microsoft Azure Virtual Data Center documentation from a Network perspective here
Conclusion :
When you have your Microsoft Azure High Level Design, get your security and network in Azure in place in a manageable way for your Cloud Administrators and your Business. Here are some tips:
This blogpost is about SQL assessment and Data Migration to your Azure design in the Cloud in a secure way.
Before you begin with your Data assessment and getting your workloads together with Microsoft Azure ServiceMaps, I wrote these blogposts about Microsoft Azure HUB – Spoke model by Enterprise Design :
For Microsoft SQL databases there are different Azure Solutions in the Cloud possible, but first you need to know which versions of SQL do you have and how are they running now in your Datacenter?
Here you can see a totally different SQL Cluster configuration, running on Hyper-V instead of physical Server nodes like you can see in the first picture with SQL 2008 R2 Clusters.
When you have a CMDB of your SQL versions running in your Datacenter, you can compare it with these SQL versions on this Great website.
What is also important to know, in which compatibility mode is your SQL Server running? Because you can have a recent SQL version but it’s running in a old compatibility version for the application.
SQL versions with Compatibility matrix
When you have all the insights of your SQL workload on-premises like :
Then you want to know to which Microsoft Azure SQL solution will I migrate my data ?
When you do a “Lift and Shift” first to the Azure-HUB subscription for the complete workload (Virtual Machines + SQL Databases) then you can implement SQL Always-On in Azure.
SQL Always-ON Availability Group
More information about SQL Always-On in Availability Groups in Azure
Or you can migrate to Azure SQL (PaaS) directly.
Later in this blogpost you see the Options with Microsoft Azure Data Migration Assistant (DMA)
Test & Acceptance and Production Azure Spoke
When you have “Lift and Shift” your workload to the Azure-HUB landing zone, then you can do the Optimize of your solutions included SQL to the Test & Acceptance and Production Spoke. For this it’s important where and how your SQL Backend is landing in Microsoft Azure by Design.
Data Migration Assistant (DMA) enables you to upgrade to a modern data platform by detecting compatibility issues that can impact database functionality on your new version of SQL Server. It recommends performance and reliability improvements for your target environment. It allows you to not only move your schema and data, but also uncontained objects from your source server to your target server.
Azure SQL Data Migration Assistant
In the following Step-by-Step Guide we will Migrate a SQL 2016 SP2 Database to a Microsoft Azure SQL Database (PaaS):
first you have to download Microsoft Azure SQL Data Migration Assistant here
Click Next.
Click Next
Click Install
Ready for Assessments and Migrations.
Select the options for the Assessment.
Connect to the local SQL Instance and Select your Database
Connect and select your Azure SQL Database.
Select the Schema objects to migrate into Azure SQL
Here you see the Script to Deploy Schema.
Schema migration in progress
Schema Migration is Done, now you Click on Migrate Data
Select the Tables to Migrate and click on Start data Migration
Data Migration in progress
The SQL 2016 SP2 Migration from On-premisses to Azure SQL is Successful Completed 🙂
Connected to Azure SQL Database with my Data.
The SQL Query editor is a browser query tool that provides an efficient and lightweight way to execute SQL queries on your Azure SQL Database or Azure SQL Data Warehouse without leaving the Azure portal. This quickstart demonstrates how to use the Query editor to connect to a SQL database, and then use Transact-SQL statements to query, insert, update, and delete data in the database.
Here is my Data in Azure SQL with Query Editor of the Azure Portal.
This is just one Scenario with Azure SQL Data Migration Assistant. What you have learned is that you must have your Azure SQL Solution in place by Architectural Design before you do the SQL Data Migration.
Here you find more information about Data Migration to Microsoft Azure :
Microsoft Azure Data Migration Guide
Here you find Microsoft Azure Migration Center
Microsoft Azure Architecture design like a Hub-Spoke model for example is important to have in place before you do your Data Migration to the Azure Cloud. You got different SQL Solutions in Microsoft Azure, like SQL Always-On in availability Groups and Microsoft Azure SQL Database with or without Managed Instances. Choose for the best scenario in your own Design. My next blogpost in this Serie will be on Optimize your Azure workloads
How can you make your solution smarter, more intelligent for your business and in Azure costs cheaper with Great benefits! Here we can think out of the box to get the best 😉
Microsoft Visual Studio Code Tools for AI
With container support, customers can use Azure’s intelligent Cognitive Services capabilities, wherever the data resides. This means customers can perform facial recognition, OCR, or text analytics operations without sending their content to the cloud. Their intelligent apps are portable and scale with greater consistency whether they run on the edge or in Azure.
Bringing AI to the Edge via Corporate Vice President, Azure AI Eric Boyd
Building solutions with machine learning often requires a data scientist. Azure Cognitive Services enable organizations to take advantage of AI with developers, without requiring a data scientist. We do this by taking the machine learning models and the pipelines and the infrastructure needed to build a model and packaging it up into a Cognitive Service for vision, speech, search, text processing, language understanding, and more. This makes it possible for anyone who can write a program, to now use machine learning to improve an application. However, many enterprises still face challenges building large-scale AI systems. Today Microsoft announced container support for Cognitive Services, making it significantly easier for developers to build ML-driven solutions.
Microsoft got the following Containers :
More information from Director of Program Management Applied AI Lance Olson here
You must first complete and submit the Cognitive Services Vision Containers Request form to request access to the Face container. The form requests information about you, your company, and the user scenario for which you’ll use the container. Once submitted, the Azure Cognitive Services team reviews the form to ensure that you meet the criteria for access to the private container registry.
Important !
You must use an email address associated with either a Microsoft Account (MSA) or Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) account in the form. If your request is approved, you then receive an email with instructions describing how to obtain your credentials and access the private container registry.
Read more about installing the Containers here
The Face container uses a common configuration framework, so that you can easily configure and manage storage, logging and telemetry, and security settings for your containers.
Configuration settings
Configuration settings in the Face container are hierarchical, and all containers use a shared hierarchy, based on the following top-level structure:
Read more here about Configuring the Containers
Cloud and Datacenter Management Blog 