Tag: Azure

Microsoft Ignite Cloud Skills Challenge 2021

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During this month (March 2021), you can do the ‘Microsoft Ignite Cloud Skills Challenge to earn a free Microsoft Exam voucher for the following exams:

AZ-104: Microsoft Azure Administrator
DP-100: Designing and Implementing a Data Science Solution on Azure
MS-700: Managing Microsoft Teams
MS-100: Microsoft 365 Identity and Services
MS-101: Microsoft 365 Mobility and Security
DA-100: Analyzing Data with Microsoft Power BI
SC-200: Microsoft Security Operations Analyst
SC-300: Microsoft Identity and Access Administrator
SC-400: Microsoft Information Protection Administrator

This is a great opportunity to raise your knowledge and get one Microsoft exam for free!

You can find register and find more information about the challenge in the link below!
https://csc.docs.microsoft.com/ignite/officialrules/March2021

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?

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You’ll find all  the answers in this great free ebook ‘Azure for Architecs’.

Download the free ebook here.

Microsoft Ignite 2020 ‘Book of news’

Yesterday, the biggest Microsoft event in the world has started, Microsoft Ignite 2020! This year, it’s completely digital and online!

If you’re not going to watch all the sessions, but you only want to know all the new announcements, start reading the ‘Book of news’. This document will give you an overview of all the new stuff. Happy reading!

Download the Book of news.

Microsoft Ignite 2020 Keynote

Improvements to Azure VM backups are now available

Azure Backup now has even greater support and functionality for Azure VM backups:

  • Azure Backup is introducing restoring Unmanaged VMs/Disks as Managed VMs/Disks to provide the benefit of Managed disks for customers who are currently backing up their unmanaged disks.

For more details, please read our documentation

Restore virtual machine

  • Azure Backup now supports Replace existing disks as an option for VMs that have Managed Service Identities (MSI) Both User assigned Identities and System assigned Identities.

For more details, please read our documentation.

All the above features are generally available in all Azure regions.

Enable Azure Accelerated Networking

Azure Accelerated Networking is a new option for Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Virtual Machine (VM) on the NIC level providing several benefits by enabling single root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) to a VM, greatly improving its networking performance. This high-performance path bypasses the host from the datapath, reducing latency, jitter, and CPU utilization, for use with the most demanding network workloads on supported VM types. You would typically use this feature with heavy workloads that need to send or receive data at high speed with reliable streaming and lower CPU utilization. It will enable speeds of up to 25Gbps per Virtual Machine. Best of all, it’s free!

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How to Enable Accelerated Networking:

You can enable this feature during initial creation of the VM, on the networking tab, you will see “Enable Accelerated Networking”. If you are unable to enable, then it is not compatible on your chosen Azure VM size. If you need to enable this feature after VM creation you will require to do so through powershell as it is not yet supported in the portal. You can do this simply with the below commands after deallocating the Virtual Machine.



Login-AzureRmAccount
  
$nic = Get-AzureRmNetworkInterface -ResourceGroupName “YourResourceGroupName” -Name “YourNicName”

  
$nic.EnableAcceleratedNetworking = $true

  
$nic | Set-AzureRmNetworkInterface

Then proceed to start the Virtual Machine and Accelerated Networking will be enabled.

Nakivo Backup & Replication 9.3 is available

This week Nakivo Backup & Replication 9.3 has been released. There are a lot of cool features within Nakivo Backup & Replication, but one special new feature is support for Oracle RMAN. It’s now possible to backup Oracle databases using Oracle RMAN. Within a few steps, your databases are protected now.

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The installation is really straightforward. It is possible to install Nakivo Backup and Replication on Windows, Linux, virtual appliance (VMware and Hyper-V), on NAS devices as well, like QNAP, Synology, NETGEAR and even on a Raspberry Pi. You can find the list of supported devices and hardware here. Also the deployment requirements for Nakivo Backup and Replication.

Features of Nakivo Backup and Replication:

Oracle backup and restore – there is integration with Oracle RMAN to backup and restore your Oracle databases, using the native Oracle tools. You can schedule and automate your backups.

Backup to cloud – you can send backup copies directly to the cloud (AWS EC2 or Microsoft Azure)

Protect physical, virtual and cloud environments – support for AWS, VMware, Hyper-V, Office 365, Nutanix AHV cluster, physical machines (Windows and Linux)

P2V – backup physical machines and recover it to a virtual machine, like VMDK, VHD or VHDX.

Backup Office 365 mailboxes – backup user mailboxes and recover single items in the origional mailbox, or in a different mailbox

Cross-platform Recovery – export your virtual machine in the desired format and recover it on your hypervisor (VMware or Hyper-V)

Support for Windows Server 2019 – also support for Windows Server 2019, including Hyper-V Server and cluster environtments

Performance – creat performance optimizations like Advanced Bandwith Throtteling, Deduplication, LAN-Free Data Transfer, Network Acceleration using multiple transporter instances

Huge variety of integrations

Nakivo Backup and Replication offers a huge variety of application and platform integrations. ensuring that your critical data, applications and workloads are safe.

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Conclusion:

Nakivo Backup and Replication is a really powerfull and easy to manage backup and recovery solution. The setup is easy, with a great performing webinterface/GUI. It supports a lot of different platforms and cloud environments. Hopefully support for Microsoft Azure workloads will come in the future, but at this moment it is not possible. Support for backup and restore Oracle databases is really powerfull!!

You can get Nakivo 15 days trial and you’re up and running within 2 minutes.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication – Installation, Configuration, and Backup

FREE eBook – The SysAdmin Guide to Azure Infrastructure as a Service

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Many system administrators have been working with on-premises infrastructure for their whole careers so moving to a cloud-based environment can feel like a leap of faith. However, making the leap to Azure doesn’t have to be daunting. With the right preparation it can be a smooth transition, consistent with your current on-premises configuration.

This free eBook written by veteran IT consultant and Microsoft Certified trainer Paul Schnakenberg covers all aspects of setting up and maintaining a high-performing Azure IaaS environment. It starts from the very basics, introducing key terms and features you need to get started, including migration, and goes on to explain everyday maintenance and best practices before covering more advanced features.

To get the best results from this eBook, it is recommended to follow along with the step-by-step tutorials using your own Azure subscription. If you don’t currently have access, the eBook explains how to set up a free 30-day trial alongside $200 worth of Azure resources to use and 12 months of additional free resources!

Altaro consistently delivers high-quality eBooks that are packed full of valuable guidance for system administrators and this latest eBook is no exception. If you currently use Azure IaaS or are planning to use it, this is an awesome free resource that you definitely should not miss.

Download your free eBook today