#CloudFirst Archives - MARKSWINKELS.NL

Reduce costs with Azure Spot virtual machines

What is Azure Spot VM?

Azure Spot VM is an Azure feature that allows you to take advantage of the unused capacity of the underlaying platform. If an host has some capacity compute left, these ‘spots’ will be filled with you Spot enabled virtual machines. When enabling this feature, you receive a discount up to 90 percent of the normal pricing in some cases.

Only pricing and eviction are the differences between Spot enabled virtual machines and the regular virtual machines. The compute, networking, storage, etc are exactly the same. The virtual machine can be attached to a virtual network or a load balancing solution, such as a internal/external load balancer. Also, the management capabilities are exactly the same and are done though the Azure Portal or with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) like Bicep, ARM, Powershell or Terraform.

Part 2 – Azure Privileged Identity Management (PIM) for Groups

In my previous post I explained what PIM for Groups is, what it takes to get started with PIM for Groups and how the configuration works. In this post, we are going to look at the different settings that are possible for activating PIM for Groups.

Sign in to the Azure portal and navigate to Azure Active Directory and select Groups. Find the right group, in this example the previously created group ‘PIM-for-Groups-example-group’. Select Privileged Access (Preview), then Settings.

Install and configure ADDS on Windows Server 2022 Core in Azure (Part 2)

A question I often get is ‘why should I use Windows Server Core edition’? This is difficult to manage and I do not like a server without a graphical interface.

The first thing I always tell you is, you DON’T HAVE to do anything, but my advice is to do it. Especially for a number of crucial server roles.

Some advantages of Windows Server Core edition at a glance:

Continue reading “Install and configure ADDS on Windows Server 2022 Core in Azure (Part 2)”

Free eBook – How to Get the Most Out of Windows Admin Center – Second Edition

If you have experience with the Windows Admin Center, you might already have deduced it is a powerhouse of functionality making light of important server management tasks. If you’re just adding it to your system administrator toolbox, welcome to the wonder of Windows Admin Center!

With so much functionality, figuring out where to focus is key. Whether you’re just setting out with Windows Admin Center or wanting to realize its full potential, start with Altaro’s free 160+ page second edition eBook, How To Get The Most Of The Windows Admin Center.

Written by Microsoft Cloud & Datacenter Management MVP Eric Siron, it covers the latest developments like the Control Azure Stack HCI, use of WinRM over HTTPs and integration with Azure Monitor, amongst others. It’s a comprehensive guide on everything from installation methods and security considerations to integrating Windows Admin Center into an existing environment. There is even a brief history lesson along with a comparison to alternatives so you should get a solid overview of Windows Admin Center, why chose it and how to work with it.

An all-new server management experience when it was introduced, Windows Admin Center modernized administrative activities with a centralized HTML 5 web application. Just add servers, clusters, desktops, and Azure virtual machines into a personalized, persistent interface, and manage their roles, features, software, registry, PKI certificates, and more. And with Microsoft’s latest investment into the Windows Admin Center and new functionality, there is now even more server management power to work with.

Learn to simplify and optimize your server management tasks – Download your free eBook now!

Remove DVD drive on Azure virtual machine

When you deploy a new virtual machine, for example Windows Server 2016/2019 or 2022, you’ll get the C: drive with the operating system, the D: drive for the TEMP storage (most of the VM types) and a DVD drive.

The DVD drive is not needed in some situations, for example on domain controllers. This type of servers you want to harden the security as much as possible. So, for domain controllers we’re deploying in our customer environments, we want to disable the DVD drive.

We run the following command when deploying new domain controllers in Azure.

## Disable DVD drive
Set-ItemProperty -Path HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\cdrom -Name Start -Value 4 -Type DWord

After this step, reboot the server and your DVD drive is gone!

Free ebook ‘Azure for Architects’

Do you want to know all the ins and outs about cloud computing. What is the cloud? What is Azure? What kind of functionalities and concepts are available within this cloud?