AWS Site-to-Site VPN and Transit Gateway

14th of February, 2019 / / 3 Comments

I recently implemented an AWS site-to-site VPN for a customer to connect their on-premise network to their newly deployed AWS account.

The requirement was network level connectivity from their on-premise network to their management VPC. Support of production VPC resources would be carried out from bastion hosts in the management VPC.

The setup of this was simple from an AWS perspective. With Cloud Formation we deployed a Customer Gateway (CGW) using the IP address of their on-premise firewall, created a Virtual Private Gateway (VPG) and then the VPN Gateway (VPN).… [Keep reading] “AWS Site-to-Site VPN and Transit Gateway”

Office 365 Lessons Learned – Advice on how to approach your deployment

11th of February, 2019 / / No Comments

Hindsight sometimes gets the better of us. That poor storm trooper.  If only he had the advice before Obi-Wan Kenobi showed up.  Clearly the Galactic Empire don’t learn lessons.  Perhaps consultants use the Jedi mind trick to persuade their customers?

I’ve recently completed an 18 month project that rolled out Office 365 to an ASX Top 30 company. This project successfully rolled out Office 365 to each division & team across the company, migrating content from SharePoint 2007 and File Shares.… [Keep reading] “Office 365 Lessons Learned – Advice on how to approach your deployment”

Error 25009 HResult 0x80131700 when installing Microsoft Identity Manager

10th of February, 2019 / / No Comments

This week I was installing Microsoft Identity Manager in a new environment and wasn’t using my usual scripts that semi automate the process. During the installation of the Microsoft Identity Manager Synchronization Service I got the Error 25009 HResult 0x80131700 as shown below.

As mentioned above I normally do this semi-automated but this time I was updating a bunch of that so was starting with a fresh install on a Windows Server 2016 host.

Note: Windows Server 2019 isn’t an officially supported platform currently.… [Keep reading] “Error 25009 HResult 0x80131700 when installing Microsoft Identity Manager”

Weekly AWS update: Friday 8th February 2019

8th of February, 2019 / / No Comments

DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS… oh wait, wrong cloud. Regardless of who said those words, this week has been a busy one for our friends over at Amazon Web Services with a host of new products and features that are sure to delight the developers among us. This article continues the weekly series we are doing this year to help customers with a brief overview of the happenings within the AWS world over the last week. This is to try and help surface some of the more important announcements.… [Keep reading] “Weekly AWS update: Friday 8th February 2019”

Office365-AzureHybrid: Building an automated solution to pull Office 365 Audit logs

6th of February, 2019 / / No Comments

Custom reporting for Office 365 Audit logs is possible using data fetched from the Security and Compliance center. In the previous blogs here, we have seen how to use PowerShell and Office 365 Management API to fetch the data. In this blog, we will look at planning, prerequisites and rationale to help decide between the approaches.

The Office 365 Audit logs are available from the Security and Compliance center when enabled. At present, audit logging is not enabled by default and needs to be enabled from the Security and Compliance center.… [Keep reading] “Office365-AzureHybrid: Building an automated solution to pull Office 365 Audit logs”

Automating Azure Instrumentation and Monitoring – Part 4: Metric Alerts

5th of February, 2019 / / No Comments

One of the most important features of Azure Monitor is its ability to send alerts when something interesting happens – in other words, when our telemetry meets some criteria we have told Azure Monitor that we’re interested in. We might have alerts that indicate when our application is down, or when it’s getting an unusually high amount of traffic, or when the response time or other performance metrics aren’t within the normal range. We can also have alerts based on the contents of log messages, and on the health status of Azure resources as reported by Azure itself.… [Keep reading] “Automating Azure Instrumentation and Monitoring – Part 4: Metric Alerts”

Loading and Querying Data in Azure Table Storage using PowerShell

5th of February, 2019 / / 3 Comments

As part of both a side project and a work project I recently had a couple of larger datasets that I needed to put into a database and be able to search them. I had previously used Azure Blob Storage but hadn’t done too much with Azure Table Storage. Naturally I needed to use PowerShell to perform this and I quickly found out that the AzureRM PowerShell Module could do the basics, but it wasn’t going to scale to the size of the datasets I had.… [Keep reading] “Loading and Querying Data in Azure Table Storage using PowerShell”

Weekly AWS update: Friday 1st February 2019

1st of February, 2019 / / No Comments

And here we are, in February of 2019 already… 1/12 of the year has already been and gone. This week it’s been a little quiet in the world of Amazon Web Services, but there’s still been several announcements and releases this week that will help those building and developing in the World of AWS. This article continues the weekly series we are doing this year to help customers with a brief overview of the happenings within the AWS world over the last week to try and help surface some of the more important announcements.… [Keep reading] “Weekly AWS update: Friday 1st February 2019”

Analogue Devices and Microsoft Teams

30th of January, 2019 / / No Comments
Last week, I was working through a technical workshop with a customer who wanted to make the move to Microsoft Teams. We’d worked through the usual questions, and then the infamous question came: So .. are there any analogue devices still in use? “Yeah, about 50 handsets”. You’d be forgiven for thinking that analogue handsets were a thing of the past. However, much like the fax machine, there’s still a whole lot of love out there for them.… [Keep reading] “Analogue Devices and Microsoft Teams”

A tale of two products (don’t expect Dickens)

30th of January, 2019 / / No Comments

At Re:Invent and just after, AWS released several new products. Included in those were AWS FSx Windows and AWS Backup. Both of these products had a lot of interest for me, for various reasons, so I thought I’d give them a try. None of my experience was under work conditions, but the following are my experiences. Note: Both are only in a small number of regions, currently.

AWS FSx Windows

Pros:

  • Easy setup (by itself)
  • Fully compatible Windows file server
  • DFS support
  • Has backups
  • Works as expected

Cons:

  • Requires AWS Microsoft AD in each VPC
  • Can’t change file share size
  • Some features can only be changed from CLI
  • Throughput can only be changed through restore
  • Minimum share size is 300GB

First out of the box, and released at Re:Invent is AWS FSx Windows.… [Keep reading] “A tale of two products (don’t expect Dickens)”