x.509 Details – A PowerShell Module for decoding x.509 Certificates with time to certificate expiry

5th of December, 2019 / / No Comments

I’ve just published my X509Details PowerShell Module to the PowerShell Gallery. The x.509 Details PowerShell Module contains the Get-X509Details cmdlet that decodes a base64 encoded PEM/CER format x.509 Certificate and converts it to a PowerShell Object. But wait, there’s more. The reason I created the x.509 Details PowerShell Module is because through automation I need to know what is the ‘Expiry Date’ for a certificate. The returned PowerShell Object from my Get-X509Details cmdlet in the X509Details Module also includes the expiry date-time in PowerShell DateTime format as ‘timeToExpiry‘.… [Keep reading] “x.509 Details – A PowerShell Module for decoding x.509 Certificates with time to certificate expiry”

AWS Re:Invent Day 1

4th of December, 2019 / / No Comments

And here we are at AWS Re:Invent 2019 coming off all of the announcements and happenings for the week. Today’s article is going to cover off all the day 0 and Day 1 announcements that have come out of Midnight Madness and Monday Night Live. The complete list of announcements from Day 0 and 1 are:

  • AWS DeepComposer – Compose Music with Generative Machine Learning Models
  • New AWS Program to Help Future-proof Your End-of-Support Windows Server Applications
  • A New, Simplified, Bring-Your-Own-License Experience for Microsoft Windows Server and SQL Server
  • Automate OS Image Build Pipelines with EC2 Image Builder
  • Amazon Transcribe Medical – Real-Time Automatic Speech Recognition for Healthcare Customers
  • Identify Unintended Resource Access with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) Access Analyzer

AWS DeepComposer – Compose Music with Generative Machine Learning Models

AWS has made a little bit of a habit over the last few years of releasing new hardware at Re:Invent.… [Keep reading] “AWS Re:Invent Day 1”

AWS November Announcement Review – Part 2

4th of December, 2019 / / No Comments

In my last article (available here), I walked through a number of announcements that AWS made over the first couple of weeks in November. Continuing on from there this article covers the announcements from the second half of the month. This will hopefully set us up to tackle the wave of announcements that will come out during Re: Invent.

When we look at the announcements over the second half of November we can see a couple of recurring themes:

Developer Features

There where a number of new features that clearly make life easier for the developer community.… [Keep reading] “AWS November Announcement Review – Part 2”

Azure Backup PowerShell removal of backup protection of a Azure VM

2nd of December, 2019 / / No Comments

Originally posted on Lucian.Blog. Follow Lucian on Twitter: @LucianFrango.

I’ve been looking at Azure Backup and migrating some Windows VM’s from one Recovery Services Vault to another. This is mainly because I’ve taken a look at some production deployed VM’s and found they were aligned to the reference architecture Disaster Recovery and Backup policies. Long story short, 6 VM’s needed to be moved to maintain consistency.

Things get interesting in that my previous level of access at a customer has changed and I’m time poor, so I thought I’d use PowerShell to achieve this faster.… [Keep reading] “Azure Backup PowerShell removal of backup protection of a Azure VM”

November is the new Christmas – At least for fans of AWS

1st of December, 2019 / / No Comments
It’s no secret within the halls of Telstra Purple that the end of November is my favourite time of year, and as a Cloud Architect that lives in the land of AWS…. why wouldn’t this be everybody’s  favourite time of year?
Firstly, for the whole month of November Team Orange slam us with a non stop onslaught of new features and product accounements. In fact, if we have a look at the AWS What’s New page https://aws.amazon.com/new
… [Keep reading] “November is the new Christmas – At least for fans of AWS”

Configuring a SailPoint IdentityNow Workday Source for additional Response Groups

29th of November, 2019 / / No Comments

The SailPoint IdentityNow Workday Source by default will retrieve the standard Workday records and associated metadata for employees and contingent workers. However, if you want to retrieve less or additional information from Workday you need to update the configuration for the Workday Response Groups. My first few attempts at modifying the IdentityNow Workday Source for additional response groups appeared to update the configuration as requested. However, on running an aggregation on the Workday source I’d receive the following error message;

[ ConnectorException ] [ Error details ] java.lang.Boolean
… [Keep reading] “Configuring a SailPoint IdentityNow Workday Source for additional Response Groups”

SailPoint IdentityNow Active Directory Source TLS Configuration

28th of November, 2019 / / No Comments

Recently I needed to enable a SailPoint IdentityNow Active Directory Source to use TLS. Looking for information on how to complete this saw me read many articles in SailPoint Compass. However, none of them were written specifically for IdentityNow Active Directory Source TLS Configuration. Mostly they were for the IQService and Identity IQ. Putting pieces of this information together I got an existing Source (even though it is mentioned this shouldn’t work) updated and working for TLS.… [Keep reading] “SailPoint IdentityNow Active Directory Source TLS Configuration”

Interesting Azure announcements at Ignite 2019

8th of November, 2019 / / No Comments

The big one: Azure Arc

Announced: November 4th, 2019
Source: Azure services now run anywhere with new hybrid capabilities: Announcing Azure Arc

I read recently a stat that said that some ~90% of all workloads are still run on-premises. That’s mind blowing to think that there’s still so much potential for cloud utilisation and workload transformation. This seems like part of the driver for the announcement of Azure Arc – “a set of technologies that unlocks new hybrid scenarios for customers by bringing Azure services and management to any infrastructure.… [Keep reading] “Interesting Azure announcements at Ignite 2019”

A Lean Approach to UX design – ASOS case study – Part 1 of 2

4th of November, 2019 / / No Comments

The double diamond seems to be a popular method of approaching design thinking for most UX designers. Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver. But often clients and stakeholders start to run for the hills when they realise that the discover phase involves time consuming user research, research that the client believes they don’t need to do because “they already know their users”. A lean approach to user experience design may be an easier way to sell design thinking to a client as it involves starting with assumptions and creating hypothesis that may solve a problem, then testing these hypotheses with real users in a short time frame.… [Keep reading] “A Lean Approach to UX design – ASOS case study – Part 1 of 2”

How to bypass the Microsoft AAD login Screen for a Federated SSO User when access an AAD integrated application

31st of October, 2019 / / 1 Comment

As more organisations are integrating their SAML applications to AAD instead of ADFS to take advantage of the Azure AD Conditional Access Policy. One user experience issue of the change is that federated users (e.g. using ADFS for single-sign on) are first redirected to default MS AAD Login page. Only when they have entered their UPN, they are redirected to the ADFS page to sign in.

Many customers and end-users have asked if they can be redirected straight to the ADFS page, bypassing the MS login page, especially when migrating an existing ADFS federated application to AAD.… [Keep reading] “How to bypass the Microsoft AAD login Screen for a Federated SSO User when access an AAD integrated application”