Migrating resources from AWS to Microsoft Azure

Kloud receives a lot of communications in relation to the work we do and the content we publish on our blog. My colleague Hugh Badini recently published a blog about Azure deployment models from which we received the following legitimate follow up question…

So, Murali, thanks for letting us know you’d like to know more about this… consider this blog a starting point :).… [Keep reading] “Migrating resources from AWS to Microsoft Azure”

Any device, any platform, one Microsoft

Only a few years ago you’d have been hard pressed to have mentioned the following four words in a single blog post where you weren’t arguing for / against a way of doing things: Microsoft, iOS, Android and development.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock you will no doubt have seen Microsoft’s announcement on their intent to acquire Xamarin, a business very much about cross-platform application development.

For those of us working in this space this has really been a case of
“what took you so long?”… [Keep reading] “Any device, any platform, one Microsoft”

Use MailTips to help avoid those embarrassing email slips

If you’re like me you probably have a lot of email addresses that auto-complete in Outlook because you spend a lot of your professional life in email.

As some point I bet you’ve also emailed Alan Smith at an external supplier rather than Alan Smyth in accounts because Outlook auto-complete did its thing and you didn’t notice. That is, until that split second after you clicked ‘Send’ or when Alan Smith replied with an email along the lines of “Errrr, don’t think this was meant for me”.… [Keep reading] “Use MailTips to help avoid those embarrassing email slips”

Using Active Directory Security Groups to Grant Permissions to Azure Resources

The introduction of the Azure Resource Manager platform in Azure continues to expose new possibilities for managing your deployed resources.

One scenario that you may not be aware of is the ability to use scoped RBAC role assignments to grant limited rights to Azure AD-based users and groups.

We know Azure provides us with many built-in RBAC roles, but it may not be immediately obvious that you can control their assignment scope.

What do I mean by this?… [Keep reading] “Using Active Directory Security Groups to Grant Permissions to Azure Resources”

Easy Debugging of PowerShell DSC for Azure Virtual Machines

Many of the Kloud team have recently been buried deep in the world of Azure Resource Manager (ARM) as it becomes the preferred way to create and manage Azure resources.

One extension point offered via ARM for Virtual Machine automation is the use of PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) to control the Windows OS (and now Linux too!) and application software setup on a VM post creation.

I hadn’t touched PowerShell DSC much prior to the last year and have found that it’s not that hard to pick up, especially if you come from a programming, scripting or Linux sysadmin background.… [Keep reading] “Easy Debugging of PowerShell DSC for Azure Virtual Machines”

Getting Started with the Azure Security Center

Microsoft recently announced the availability of the Azure Security Center which is designed to provide a single place to view your security stance for resources deployed to Azure.

In this post I’m going to walk you through what’s initially available and see how it can start helping you today.

Who ever said “no” to something that’s free?

The core features (today) are free. Yes – free. This isn’t just preview pricing either. During preview even the Standard Tier is free until early 2016.… [Keep reading] “Getting Started with the Azure Security Center”