Azure ExpressRoute Public and Microsoft peering changes, notes from the field

27th of July, 2018 / / No Comments

I’ve been trying to piece all this together and get a single, concise blog post that covers all bases around the changes that have happened and are going to be happening for Microsoft ExpressRoute peering. That’s been a bit of a challenge because, I hope I don’t harp on this too much, but, communication could be a bit better from the product group team. With that said, though, it’s no secret for those that use ExpressRoute, Microsoft is looking to simply it’s configuration.… [Keep reading] “Azure ExpressRoute Public and Microsoft peering changes, notes from the field”

Psychodynamics Revisited: Data Privacy

27th of July, 2018 / / 1 Comment

business camera coffee connection
How many of you, between waking up and your first cup of hot, caffeinated beverage, told the world something about yourselves online? Whether it be a social media status update, an Instagram photo or story post or even a tweak to your personal profile on LinkedIn. Maybe, yes, maybe no, although I would hedge my bets that you’ve at least checked your notifications, emails or had a scroll through the newsfeed.
Another way to view this question would be: how many of you interacted with the internet in some way since waking up?… [Keep reading] “Psychodynamics Revisited: Data Privacy”

Scheduled Runbook Tasks at background to automatically back up VMs with tag@{backup = 'true'}

26th of July, 2018 / / No Comments

I always like to create some automation tasks to replace the tedious manual click job. This can be very helpful for customers with large environment. In this blog, I want to share the Azure Runbook which I made to run at the Azure background and automatically back up the VMs with tag@{backup = ‘true’}. This can standardize the VM backup with certain backup policy and automatically audit the environment and make sure to back up the required computing VM resources.… [Keep reading] “Scheduled Runbook Tasks at background to automatically back up VMs with tag@{backup = 'true'}”

Avoiding Cosmos DB Bill Shock with Azure Functions

24th of July, 2018 / / 1 Comment

Cosmos DB is a fantastic database service for many different types of applications. But it can also be quite expensive, especially if you have a number of instances of your database to maintain. For example, in some enterprise development teams you may need to have dev, test, UAT, staging, and production instances of your application and its components. Assuming you’re following best practices and keeping these isolated from each other, that means you’re running at least five Cosmos DB collections.… [Keep reading] “Avoiding Cosmos DB Bill Shock with Azure Functions”

Azure AD Connect: How to run custom Sync scheduler with multiple on-premise AD connectors

24th of July, 2018 / / No Comments

Hello All,
I was recently involved on a project where I did some PowerShell scripts to remotely connect to an Azure AD (AAD) Connect server and run custom manual synchronization cycles (Delta Import & Delta Sync) using AAD Connect’s Custom Scheduler component.
The primary reason we had to do this was due to AD migration of users from one AD forest to another AD forest. Both these AD forest users were being synchronized (using a single AADConnect in target AD forest) to a common Azure AD tenant.… [Keep reading] “Azure AD Connect: How to run custom Sync scheduler with multiple on-premise AD connectors”

Microsoft 365 ATP: Anti-Phishing Policy/Sender Domain Hygiene (Lessons from the Field)

24th of July, 2018 / / No Comments

I was recently working on a project implementing Microsoft Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) on Office 365 services for one of our clients and have come across a few lessons learnt that hopefully might become useful for others out there & also looking into this great new feature from Microsoft!
LESSON 1: ATP Anti-Phishing Policy Not Working due to existing Spam policies
We created a new ATP Anti-Phishing policy where we added a bunch of Executive team users to protect them from being impersonated by attackers under “Add Users to Protect” setting.… [Keep reading] “Microsoft 365 ATP: Anti-Phishing Policy/Sender Domain Hygiene (Lessons from the Field)”

Power BI: Using anonymous authentication on Web data sources with a API key in URL

23rd of July, 2018 / / No Comments

Currently, there are some challenges on Power BI service when trying to Schedule Refresh from a Web API data source that uses an API key for authentication. On this post, I will talk about a way to work around this problem by using an Azure Functions Proxy. The proxy will be used the override the request to the Web API and successfully use anonymous authentication.

Scenario overview

I have some reports on Power BI that get the data from WorkflowMax API, they have been published on Power BI service and embedded on SharePoint Online.… [Keep reading] “Power BI: Using anonymous authentication on Web data sources with a API key in URL”

IaaS Application Migration Principles and Process – Consideration

20th of July, 2018 / / No Comments

What is IaaS Application Migration

Application migration is the process of moving an application program or set of applications from one environment to another. This includes migration from an on-premises enterprise server to a cloud provider’s environment or from one cloud environment to another. In this example, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) application migration.
It is important to consider some migration principles to guide your application migration that will allow to complete your transition successfully. At the same time, having too many principles can impact the overall delivery of the transition.… [Keep reading] “IaaS Application Migration Principles and Process – Consideration”

The 5 ways to migrate from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams

19th of July, 2018 / / No Comments

Microsoft recently published a technet article outlining the different ways to migrate away from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams. The article currently contains 5 different migration methods. Lets take a closer look at each of them, and how they might be used within your organisation.
The 5 migration methods
They say good things come in three’s, but in this case they come in five! Five different methods of moving from SfB to Microsoft Teams. When it comes to migration planning, choice is a good thing
5-migration-methods-teams
 
Migration Method 1: Skype for Business with Teams Collaboration
Ok, so you have a Skype for Business deployment right now, and are looking at moving to Teams.… [Keep reading] “The 5 ways to migrate from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams”

Measure O365 ATP Safe Attachments Latency using PowerShell

19th of July, 2018 / / 1 Comment

Microsoft Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) is a cloud based security service that is part of the O365 E5 offering. Also can be separately added to other O365 subscriptions. Now a lot can be learned about ATP from here. But in this post we’re going to extract data corresponding to one of ATP’s primary features; ATP Safe Attachments.

In short, ATP Safe Attachments scans documents for malicious content and can block these attachments depending on the policy configuration.… [Keep reading] “Measure O365 ATP Safe Attachments Latency using PowerShell”