*Update at the end Azure Storage Policies are around for some time already, but they manage to stay unnoticed. This feature is very powerful and few people know about it. Probably you already know about Storage Keys and Shared Access Security. It’s important to highlight one limitation: Once we generate a SAS key, we can’t … Read more
Resource groups and subscriptions sometimes are not enough to organize the content of our Azure Portal. I was preparing for a presentation and looking into a lot of resource groups, but during the presentation only a few of them should appear for me. How could I control this? The need is the mother of the … Read more
Recently a new feature appeared in Azure Portal, an ARM Template Visualizer, capable to show a graphic view of the resources inside an ARM template. The feature appears as a new button in screens where we are editing or downloading templates. These are some of the screens where you will see the new button: When … Read more
Infrastructure as code is evolving in large steps to improve the way we build and manage cloud infrastructure. ARM templates is the Azure way to code the infrastructure, besides the fact it’s evolving towards BICEP. Since January, a new feature to manage ARM templates is being tested and made available in Azure Portal: ARM Template … Read more
1 – Azure Hybrid Benefit Azure services related to servers and direct infrastructure reservation require software licenses, such as Windows Server and SQL Server. Microsoft offers what’s called Hybrid Benefit. When the software license is required, the service provisioning process asks if you would like to use the hybrid benefit. If you already have on … Read more
Azure Cost Management is in constant evolution to help manage the cost of services in the cloud. Microsoft provides the Azure Cost Management Power BI App to manage cloud costs, but this app only works with Enterprise Agreement accounts. This was a considerable limitation, since many companies use the cloud using Customer Agreement instead of … Read more
Log Analytics is a basic tool for the entire Azure environment, I wrote about it before. The possibility to access log analytics data from a tool for analysis, such as Power BI, only increases its importance. There are some options to make this access and we expect these options to improve very soon. Using Notebooks … Read more
Azure technologies evolve so fast sometimes we lose track of what’s happening. One day, a simple technology is created, on the next day, it becomes something huge, in a blink of an eye. I’m not even sure if my recollection of the story will be correct. The launch of the GA version of Static Web … Read more
What is wrong with the Enterprise Data Warehouse? Quite a lot, it seems. By taking the narrow view that the struggle is that of accommodating and interrogating huge quantities of data, then initiatives such as the Virtual Data Warehouse and Logical Data Warehouse could make sense. But what about data quality, security, access control, archiving, retention, privacy and regulatory compliance?… Read more
OpenStack holds a great deal of promise as a cloud platform built on open standards, and has support from the major players in cloud services. It has the potential for allowing organisations to set up their own private cloud services that are designed to inter-operate. Is it ready yet for companies that want the convenience of cloud solutions, but with more control, and without the large subscription fees? Robert Sheldon finds out.… Read more
What's the best way of providing self-service business intelligence (BI) to data that is held in on-premise SQL Server? Not, it seems, Power BI 2.0 the hosted cloud service, but Power BI 2.0 Desktop. If moving your database to Azure isn't an option, Power BI 2.0 desktop could still bring smiles to the faces of your BI hotshots.… Read more
In a bid to challenge Intel's dominance of high performance computing environments, IBM have introduced OpenPOWER, a flexible open-source framework based on their POWER processor architecture. Robert Sheldon looks at the potential of this new platform.… Read more
Are microservices the cure for the ague of monolithic applications, or do they bring their own problems with them that monolithic architectures have circumvented? Are they capable of delivering applications that are easier to maintain and develop? How can they avoid the failings of service-oriented architectures? Once more, Robert Sheldon gets to the heart of the technical issues.… Read more
Was the marketing hook 'The Internet of Things' conjured up before the technical definition? Are we being persuaded to spend money on fending off yet another fantasy tsunami of data? Already, we have televisions that listen to, and report, your conversations; so are we facing the Science Fiction future of gadgets that report where you go, who you visit and what medications you take? As Robert Sheldon says; "It's big, almost too big to get your arms around"… Read more
Containers promise to make applications more portable and efficient. The technology, originally based on Linux's cgroups, provides a way of running several applications as modular, platform-agnostic packages in isolation on the same server. Docker's open-source approach to containers has dominated the market, and Microsoft is producing its own equivalent Windows system. What next? Will Containers replace VMS? Robert Sheldon investigates.… Read more
SQL-based distributed Cloud Relational databases aren't new, but Amazon's Aurora offers an alternative to SQL Azure, and, being MySQL-compatible, provides the obvious route to the cloud for hosted LAMP web applications. Is this of interest to the rest of us? Rob Sheldon investigates.… Read more
Identities, the 'accounts' by which Cloud and Web users identify themselves, are tricky to manage, and tiresome for the users. Cloud services such as Office 365 have their main use in large organisations and so there have to be easy ways for system administrators to maintain them. Microsoft provide three alternative strategies; Cloud identities, Synced identities and federated identities. What is the differences between them, and which should you choose? … Read more
There is a growing assumption that Cloud file-storage services represent an ideal way of backing up files. It seems a compelling idea because it is so easy and seems secure. The truth is, as always, more complicated. There is more to any backup strategy than just cloud storag… Read more
The public perception is that, when something is deleted, it no longer exists. IT in general prefers the fuzzier idea of the trashcan, where the deleted compromising documents can blow around a digital landfill site for years. The Cloud takes this further, and so the data you serve up to the cloud can be stored out there indefinitely, no matter how hard to try to delete it. Rob Sheldon investigates, and finds the cloud a worryingly public place.… Read more
To access SQL Server from the client, you use TDS protocol over TCP. This is fine over reliable LANs but over the internet these connections are relatively slow and fragile, TDS is still used to connect to databases in the cloud, but you need to use a combination of the new features such as connection pools and idle connection resiliency to make applications faster and more reliable. … Read more
