Ubuntu security hardening for the cloud.

Hardening Ubuntu Server Security For Use in the Cloud

26th of October, 2016 / / 1 Comment

The following describes a few simple means of improving Ubuntu Server security for use in the cloud. Many of the optimizations discussed below apply equally to other Linux based distribution although the commands and settings will vary somewhat.

Azure cloud specific recommendations

  1. Use private key and certificate based SSH authentication exclusively and never use passwords.
  2. Never employ common usernames such as root , admin or administrator.
  3. Change the default public SSH port away from 22.
… [Keep reading] “Hardening Ubuntu Server Security For Use in the Cloud”

Are There Sufficient Standards in Cloud Computing Today?

26th of October, 2016 / / No Comments

The hybrid cloud may be a hot topic with adoption growing faster than ever but should we be concerned about a lack of established standards?

What is the Hybrid Cloud?

Private clouds, whether owned or leased, generally consist of closed IT infrastructures accessible only to a business which then makes available resources to it’s own internal customers. Private clouds are often home to core applications where control is essential to the business, they can also offer economies of scales where companies can afford larger, long term investments and have the ability to either run these environments themselves or pay for a managed service.… [Keep reading] “Are There Sufficient Standards in Cloud Computing Today?”

Complex Mail Routing in Exchange Online Staged Migration Scenario

15th of October, 2016 / / No Comments

Notes From the Field:

I was recently asked to assist an ongoing project with understanding some complex mail routing and identity scenario’s which had been identified during planning for an upcoming mail migration from an external system into Exchange Online.
New User accounts were created in Active Directory for the external staff who are about to be migrated. If we were to assign the target state, production email attributes now, and create the exchange online mailboxes, we would have a problem nearing migration.… [Keep reading] “Complex Mail Routing in Exchange Online Staged Migration Scenario”

DataWeave: Tips and tricks from the field

12th of October, 2016 / / 1 Comment

DataWeave (DW) has been part of the MuleSoft Anypoint Platform since v3.7.0 and has been a welcome enhancement providing an order of magnitude improvement in performance as well as increased mapping capability that enables more efficient flow design.
However, like most new features of this scope and size (i.e. brand new transformation engine written from the ground up), early documentation was minimal and often we were left to ourselves. At times even the most simple mapping scenarios could take an hour or so to solve what could have taken 5 mins in data-mapper.… [Keep reading] “DataWeave: Tips and tricks from the field”

How to assign and remove user Office365 licenses using the AzureADPreview Powershell Module

12th of October, 2016 / / No Comments

A couple of months ago the AzureADPreview module was released. The first cmdlet that I experimented with was Set-AzureADUserLicense. And it didn’t work, there was no working examples and I gave up and used GraphAPI instead.
Since then the AzureADPreview has gone through a number of revisions and I’ve been messing around a little with each update. The Set-AzureADUserLicense cmdlet has been my litmus test. Now that I have both removing and assigning Office 365 licenses working I’ll save others the pain of working it out and give a couple of working examples.… [Keep reading] “How to assign and remove user Office365 licenses using the AzureADPreview Powershell Module”

How to make a copy of a virtual machine running Windows in Azure

How to make a copy of a virtual machine running Windows in Azure

6th of October, 2016 / / No Comments

I was called upon recently to help a customer create copies of some of their Windows virtual machines. The idea was to quickly deploy copies of these hosts at any time as opposed to using a system image or point in time copy.
The following PowerShell will therefore allow you to make a copy or clone of a Windows virtual machine using a copy of it’s disks in Azure Resource Manager mode.

Create a new virtual machine from a copy of the disks of another

Having finalized the configuration of the source virtual machine the steps required are as follows.… [Keep reading] “How to make a copy of a virtual machine running Windows in Azure”

SharePoint content migration using Sharegate and Powershell

4th of October, 2016 / / 3 Comments

Content Migration

When it comes to content migration we have the option to write code (script) or use a migration toolset or a combination of both, thus it is important to identify the appropriate toolset based on “ease of use” and what we need to achieve.
I have evaluated several migration toolsets however, in this blog I am going with Sharegate as I have extensively used this product recently.

Sharegate is a toolset used to  “Manage, Migrate and Secure SharePoint & Office 365”. 

… [Keep reading] “SharePoint content migration using Sharegate and Powershell”

Deserialising .NET Core Configuration Settings

28th of September, 2016 / / No Comments

With System.Configuration.dll, we can add custom configSections into either App.config or Web.config files so that we can utilise strongly-typed configuration objects. On the other hand, .NET Core applications have replaced those App.config or Web.config with appsettings.json, which is more convenient for developers to use, especially for dependency injection (DI). In this post, we are going to walkthrough how we can deserialise the appsettings.json for DI purpose.

Basics

When we create an ASP.NET Core web application, we have a basic appsettings.json… [Keep reading] “Deserialising .NET Core Configuration Settings”

Automate ADFS Farm Installation and Configuration

27th of September, 2016 / / No Comments

Originally posted on Nivlesh’s blog @ nivleshc.wordpress.com

Introduction

In this multi-part blog, I will be showing how to automatically install and configure a new ADFS Farm. We will accomplish this using Azure Resource Manager templates, Desired State Configuration scripts and Custom Script Extensions.

Overview

We will use Azure Resource Manager to create a virtual machine that will become our first ADFS Server. We will then use a desired state configuration script to join the virtual machine to our Active Directory domain and to install the ADFS role.… [Keep reading] “Automate ADFS Farm Installation and Configuration”