Azure Archives - Page 5 of 6

How to: Implementing Storage Spaces insides Azure Virtual Machines

Within an Azure Virtual Machine, you should never store your (personal) data on the C: drive or the temporary disk. You can attach new storage disks to the virtual machine, how many disks depends on the VM size you’ve choosen.

View all VM sizes in Microsoft Azure:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/virtual-machines-windows-sizes

In my example I’ve choosen the ‘DS1v2’ VM size, so I can attach two extra (premium storage) disks. Because the maximum size of an disk in Microsoft Azure is 1023 GB, I’ve created multiple disks. Both disks are attached to the virtual machine and we’re going to implement Storage Spaces within the virtual machine. Storage Spaces is software defined storage (SDS) from Windows Server 2012 R2 and above.

Storage Spaces is a built-in Windows Server Role. When combining all the data disks, you can create one, or more, big data volumes in your Windows Virtual Machine. Extremely powerful for example file servers.

1.) First of all I’ve created a new virtual machine using the Azure Portal

2.) Next I’ve created two new disks (premium storage – SSD) with tthe size of 1023 GB.

3.) Next I’ve logged in into the new created virtual machine and configured Storage Spaces.

4.) The next step is to create a new virtual disk

5.) The final step is to create the new volume for storing your data on.

As you can see, there’s a new volume of 2 TBwithin the virtual machine. If you’re changing the size of the virtual machine, it is also possible to add some more disks to the virtual machine and extend the Storage Spaces with more terabytes!!

How big is the Microsoft Azure Cloud?

The Microsoft Azure Cloud is huge….very huge!! We could also say H-y-uuuuuuu-ge!!! This blogpost by Microsoft explains the current size and it’s still growing very fast!!

Here are some facts about Microsoft’s Cloud Infrastructure that powers Microsoft Azure, Office 365, Xbox Live, and many other services:

The Microsoft Cloud is made up of more than 100 datacenters worldwide.
The Microsoft Cloud serves over 140 countries.
The Microsoft Cloud is comprised of MILLIONS of servers, and growing!
The Microsoft Cloud is built with the latest hardware innovations to maximize efficiency.
The Microsoft Cloud is connected by enough fiber to stretch to the Moon and back 3 times!
Microsoft processes Millions of network requests per second backed by high availability infrastructure.
Everything is monitored 24x7x365
The Microsoft global infrastructure is 100% carbon neutral.
Microsoft has built one of the most connected networks in the world so you don’t have to.
Microsoft Azure is used by 85% of Fortune 500 companies.

Microsoft is also aiming to increase that figure to 50 by 2018!!

Free eBook: Enterprise Cloud Strategy

Together Microsoft Press and Microsoft Virtual Academy have a number of Free eBooks available for download. The latest released eBook is “Enterprise Cloud Strategy” written by Barry Briggs and Eduardo Kassner.

Enterprise Cloud Strategy outlines the benefits Enterprises can realize from adoption Microsoft Azure and the Cloud. Based on the authors real world experience they describe the details necessary to answer the most common questions Enterprises have on moving to the cloud.

The different download formats for the book are available on the Free eBooks from Microsoft Press page, along with the full catalog of other Free eBooks that have been published. For convenience, I’ve included the file download links below:

PDF for desktop & tablet (8.75 MB)

PDF for mobile (4.70 MB)

EPUB (6.41 MB)

Mobi for Kindle (15.7 MB)

This eBook is also available Free for Amazon Kindle as well!

Microsoft Ignite 2016 Slidedeck and Video downloader

Have you missed the Microsoft Ignite 2016 event…..no problem!! MVP Michel de Rooij has created a script to download all the content (videos and slidedecks). So you can watch all the content again.

This script will download all the Ignite 2016 slidedecks and videos that are available from Techcommunity via the OneDrive URL on the session page. Video downloads will leverage a utility which can be downloaded from https://yt-dl.org/latest/youtube-dl.exe, and put it in the same folder as the script. The script itself will try to download the utility when the utility is not present.

Special credits goes to:
Original scraper for slidedecks by Mattias Fors, http://deploywindows.info.
Adjusted for video downloading by Michel de Rooij, http://eightwone.com
Enhancements by Scott Ladewig http://ladewig.com

Download the script here.

How to: Customize your ADFS loginpage

When migrating a customer to for example Microsoft Office 365, most of the time we install a ADFS environment to. With ADFS you create a single sign-on experience (SSO) for your users. Within Windows Server 2012 R2, ADFS is a default server role, which can be enabled really easily. After the installation, you’ve to configure some options and you’re ready to rock!

The default logon screen of ADFS is not that nice. Some basic colors and no custom branding. In the most environments our customers wanted to have some custom branding. There’re a few things you can change on the logon screen. For example:

The company text;
The company logo;
The big picture on the left side of the page;
Helpdesk URL’s;
etc…

In this example I’ve changed the ADFS logon screen with our new company branding. Within a few minutes, the logon screen looks really different and ‘personal’ (heeeey….that’s me!!! 🙂 )

## Change the company name
Set-AdfsGlobalWebContent -CompanyName "Lab Environment ADFS"

## Change the company logo
Set-AdfsWebTheme -TargetName default -Logo @{path="C:\ADSF_branding\Ictivity_Logo_Small.png"}

## Change the left side of the page
Set-AdfsWebTheme -TargetName default -Illustration @{path="C:\ADSF_branding\Ictivity_Logo_Large.png"}

As you can see, it’s really great to customize your ADFS logon screen with your company branding. In this example it’s really personal, because the picture on the logon screen is ME!! 🙂

Free ebook: Microsoft Azure Essentials: Fundamentals of Azure, Second Edition

This book focuses on providing essential information about the key services of Azure for developers and IT professionals who are new to cloud computing. Detailed, step-by-step demonstrations are included to help the reader understand how to get started with each of the key services. This material is useful not only for those who have no prior experience with Azure, but also for those who need a refresher and those who may be familiar with one area but not others. Each chapter is standalone; there is no requirement that you perform the hands-on demonstrations from previous chapters to understand any particular chapter.

Download the free eBook here.

How to: Resize hard disk in Azure Resource Manager (ARM)

Resizing a virtual hard disk in Azure Resource Manager is really easy to do through the Azure Managent Portal. In a few clicks you can extend the virtual hard disk size. Note that the VM should be turned off!! So you need to plan a maintenance window!!
You can also extend the virtual hard disk with PowerShell. In this example I’ve extended the data disk from 25 to 30 GB.


# Specify the VM
$VM = Get-AzureRmVM -ResourceGroupName MSS-DEMO -VMName MSS-DEMO-DC01
# Set the new size of the data disk
Set-AzureRmVMDataDisk -VM $VM -Name MSS-DEMO-DC01-20160801-100246 -DiskSizeInGB 30
# View the new size of the data disk(s)
$VM.StorageProfile.DataDisks
# Update the configuration in Azure
Update-AzureRmVM -VM $VM -ResourceGroupName MSS-DEMO

1.) Login to the Azure Management Portal
2.) Check the current size of the data disk. In my example 25 GB
3.) Start PowerShell and login to your Azure subscription
4.) Change the data disk to the new value
5.) Update the configuration to Azure
6.) Check the new size of the data disk with PowerShell or within the Azure Management Portal.
In my example the new size is 30 GB.

Microsoft Azure Cloud Services Overview

This dashboard gives you a overview of all the services within Microsoft Azure. When you select one of the services, you’ll get an URL to pricing, SLA, documentation and some more stuff. Very useful to understand the power of Microsoft Azure.

Download the Cloud Services Overview here