Category Archives: Datacenter Management

The security of AWS environments with Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Microsoft Defender for Cloud, previously known as Azure Security Center and Azure Defender, is a solution of Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) and for the protection of workloads, able to identify security weaknesses in cloud configurations, strengthen the overall security posture of the environment and protect workloads in hybrid and multi-cloud environments. For those who are adopting a multi-cloud strategy and who need high security standards for their environment, it is important to know that Microsoft Defender for Cloud can also include resources present in Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). This article describes how to secure AWS environments using Microsoft Defender for Cloud.

The pillars of security covered by Microsoft Defender for Cloud

The capabilities of Microsoft Defender for Cloud are capable of contemplating two great pillars of cloud security:

Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) capable of providing the following features:
- Visibility: to assess the current security situation.
- Hardening Guide: to be able to improve security efficiently and effectively

Thanks to a continuous assessment, Defender for Cloud is able to continuously discover new resources that are distributed and evaluate if they are configured according to security best practices. If not,, assets are flagged and you get a priority list of recommendations on what to fix to improve their security. This list of recommendations is taken and supported by Azure Security Benchmark, the Azure-specific set of guidelines created by Microsoft, this contains security and compliance best practices based on common frameworks, with a focus on cloud-centric security. This benchmark may cover the controls of theCenter for Internet Security (CIS) and theNational Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Defender for Cloud assigns a global score to the ambient environment, defined Secure Score, which allows you to evaluate the risk profile (the higher the score, the lower the level of risk identified) and to take action to take remediation actions.

Cloud workload protection (CWP): Defender for Cloud delivers security alerts based on Microsoft Threat Intelligence. Furthermore, includes a wide range of advanced and intelligent protections for workloads, provided through specific Microsoft Defender plans for the different types of resources present in the subscriptions and in hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

Defender for Cloud therefore allows you to meet the following three needs, considered essential when managing the security of resources and workloads residing in the cloud and locally:

Figure 1 - Security needs covered by Microsoft Defender for Cloud

AWS resource protection

To protect resources on other public clouds with this solution, there has been a mechanism for some time now that involves the use of interfacing connectors with AWS and GCP accounts. The onboarding process of your AWS account was based on the integration of the solution AWS Security Hub, as detailed in this article.

Now a new native mechanism and, through an approach agentless, allows you to connect to AWS environments. This new method of interfacing take advantage of the AWS API and it has no dependence on other solutions, like AWS Security Hub. The onboarding experience is designed to work easily on a large scale, simply by connecting your AWS master account, which allows you to automatically onboard existing and future accounts.

Figure 2 - Connect AWS to Microsoft Defender for Cloud

This mechanism easily extends Defender for Cloud's advanced security capabilities to your AWS resources and includes the following areas.

Figure 3 - Protection plans available

Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) for AWS

Defender for Cloud CSPM capabilities are extended to your AWS resources. This agentless plan evaluates AWS resources against AWS specific security recommendations and these are included in the calculation of the global security score. To provide an overall view on the security status of your multi-cloud environments, AWS security recommendations are also integrated into the Defender for Cloud portal, along with Azure recommendations. Have been implemented by Microsoft beyond 160 ready-to-use recommendations for IaaS and PaaS services and three regulatory standards including AWS CIS, AWS PCI DSS e AWS Foundational Security Best Practices. All this allows you to strengthen your security posture while also contemplating AWS resources in the best possible way. Furthermore, you can customize existing models or create new ones that contain your own recommendations and standards to verify compliance with internal requirements.

Figure 4 - Recommendations for AWS integrated in Defender for Cloud

Cloud workload protection (CWP) for AWS

AWS currently provides enhanced security for the following workloads:

Server protection: Microsoft Defender for server offers advanced threat detection and defense for EC2 instances as well, for both Windows and Linux systems. This plan includes the integrated license for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and several features, including: Security baselines and assessment at the OS level, Vulnerability assessment, Adaptive Application Controls (AAC) and File Integrity Monitoring (FIM).
Container protection: Microsoft Defender for Containers extends container threat detection and advanced defenses of Defender for Kubernetes to Amazon EKS Clusters (Elastic Kubernetes Service). For Defender for Kubernetes to be able to protect AWS EKS clusters, Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes and Defender extension are required.

Figure 5 – Alerts and recommendations for EKS clusters

Note: For those who have already set up an AWS connector using classic cloud connectors, it is recommended to connect the account again using the new mechanism.

The Cost of the Solution

If you decide to activate this integration, the following information on costs applies:

The CSPM plan is free. To provide recommendations, the CSPM plan queries the AWS resource APIs multiple times a day. These read-only API calls incur no charge, but they are logged in CloudTrail in case you have enabled the trail for reading events. As noted in the AWS documentation, this does not involve additional costs for maintenance. However, it is necessary to be careful and possibly filter these events if data exports are expected (for example to make them flow into an external SIEM).
The Defender for Containers plan will be billed at the same price as the plan Defend for Kubernetes for Azure resources.
For each AWS machine connected to Azure through Azure Arc, the Defender per server plan is billed at the same price as the Microsoft Defender for server plan for Azure machines.

Conclusions

Microsoft Defender for Cloud, originally developed with the claim of being the best tool to protect resources in an Azure environment, extend and refine its capabilities to cover other public clouds as well. In particular, Thanks to the new integration mechanism with AWS, you can natively adopt a CSPM solution and enable threat protection for your computing workloads in Amazon Web Services (AWS). This allows to obtain a high degree of security, to improve security postures in multi-cloud environments and to simplify the management of tools useful for governing security.

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (December 2021 – Weeks: 49 and 50)

This series of blog posts includes the most important announcements and major updates regarding Azure infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and Azure Stack, officialized by Microsoft in the last two weeks.

Azure

Compute

Virtual Machine restore points (preview)

Public preview of VM restore point is available, a new resource that stores VM configuration and a point-in-time snapshot of one or more managed disks attached to a VM. VM restore points supports multi-disk application consistent snapshots and can be leveraged to easily capture backups of your VM and disks. You can easily restore the VM using VM restore points in cases of data loss, corruption, or disasters. Microsoft is also introducing a new Azure Resource Manager (ARM) resource called Restore Point Collection, which will act as a container for all the restore points of a specific VM.

Placement polices for Azure VMware Solution

Placement policies are used to define constraints for running virtual machines in the Azure VMware Solution Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC). These constraints allow the you to decide where and how the virtual machines should run within the SDDC clusters. Placement polices are used to support performance optimization of virtual machines (VMs) through policy, and help mitigate the impact of maintenance operations to policies within the SDDC cluster.

Storage

Secure access to storage account from a virtual network/subnet in any region (preview)

You can secure access to your storage account by enabling a service endpoint for Storage in the subnet and configuring a virtual network rule for that subnet through the Azure storage firewall. You can now configure your storage account to allow access from virtual networks and subnets in any Azure region. By default, service endpoints enable connectivity from a virtual network to a storage account in the same Azure region as the virtual network or it’s paired Azure region. This preview enables you to register your subnet to allow service endpoint connectivity to storage accounts in any Azure region across the globe.

Attribute-based Access Control (ABAC) conditions with principal attributes (preview)

Attribute-based access control (ABAC) is an authorization strategy that defines access levels based on attributes associated with security principals, resources, requests, and the environment. Azure ABAC builds on role-based access control (RBAC) by adding conditions to Azure role assignments expressed as a predicate using these attributes. This update to the preview enables the use of Azure AD custom security attributes for principals in role assignment conditions. You can now use combine principal attributes with resource and request attributes in your condition expressions.

Soft delete for blobs capability for Azure Data Lake Storage

Soft delete for blobs capability for Azure Data Lake Storage is now generally available. This feature protects files and directories from accidental deletes by retaining the deleted data in the system for a specified period of time. During the retention period, you can restore a soft-deleted object, i.e. file or directory, to its state at the time it was deleted. After the retention period has expired, the object is permanently deleted. All soft deleted files and directories are billed at the same rate as active ones until the retention period has expired.

Azure Stack

Azure Stack HCI

Windows Server guest licensing offer for Azure Stack HCI (preview)

To facilitate guest licensing for Azure Stack HCI customers, we are pleased to announce a new offer that brings simplicity and more flexibility for licensing. The new Windows Server subscription for Azure Stack HCI is available in public preview as of December 14, 2021. This offer will allow you to purchase unlimited Windows Server guest licenses for your Azure Stack HCI cluster through your Azure subscription. You can sign up and cancel anytime and preview pricing is $0 until general availability (GA). At GA, the offer will be charged at $23.60 per physical core per month. This offer simplifies billing through an all-in-one place Azure subscription and in some cases will be less expensive for customers than the traditional licensing model.

How to extend Azure management principles to VMware infrastructures with Azure Arc

The trend that is frequently found in different business contexts is to resort to hybrid and multi-cloud strategies for their IT environments. All this allows you to embark on a path of digital innovation with great flexibility and agility. To do this in the best possible way, it is appropriate to adopt technologies that make it possible to create new opportunities and at the same time to manage the challenges inherent in these new paradigms.. Microsoft has designed a specific solution and is called Azure Arc. One of the crucial benefits of Azure Arc is to extend Azure management and governance practices also to different environments and to adopt solutions and techniques that are typically used in the cloud environment also for on-premises environments. This article explores how Microsoft has recently improved the integration process of VMware vSphere infrastructures in Azure Arc and what opportunities can be seized from this innovation.

Why adopt a hybrid strategy?

Among the main reasons that lead customers to adopt a hybrid strategy we find:

Workloads that cannot be moved to the public cloud due to regulatory and data sovereignty requirements. This is usually common in highly regulated industries such as financial services, healthcare and government environments.
Some workloads, especially those residing in the edges, require low latencies.
Many companies have made significant investments in the on-premises environment that they want to maximize, therefore the choice falls on modernizing the traditional applications that reside on-premises and the solutions adopted.
Ensure greater resilience.

What questions to ask to better leverage and manage hybrid and multi-cloud environments?

In situations where a hybrid or multi-cloud strategy is being adopted, the key questions you should ask yourself to reap the greatest benefits are:

How can I view, govern and protect IT assets, regardless of where they are running?
There is the possibility of bringing cloud innovation to existing infrastructure as well?
How you can modernize local datacenters by adopting new cloud solutions?
How to extend processing and artificial intelligence to the edge to unlock new business scenarios?

The answer to all these questions can be… “by adopting Azure Arc!".

Figure 1 – Azure Arc overview

There are many customers who have VMware-based infrastructure and are using Azure services at the same time. Azure Arc extends the possibilities offered in governance and management by Azure also to virtual machines in VMware environments. To further improve this experience of control and management of these resources, a deep integration between Azure Arc and VMware vSphere has been introduced.

Azure Arc-enabled VMware vSphere: how does it work?

Azure Arc-enabled VMware vSphere is a new Azure Arc feature designed for customers with on-premises VMware vSphere environments or those who adopt Azure VMware Solution.

This direct integration of Azure Arc with VMware vSphere requires you to activate a virtual appliance called "Arc bridge". This resource allows you to establish the connection between the VMware vCenter server and the Azure Arc environment.

Thanks to this integration it is possible to onboard in Azure some or all of the vSphere resources managed by your vCenter server such as: resource pool, cluster, host, datastore, network, existing templates and virtual machines.

Figure 2 - VMware vCenter from the Azure portal

Once the onboarding phase is over, new usage scenarios open up that allow you to take advantage of the benefits reported in the following paragraph.

Benefits of Azure Arc-enabled VMware vSphere

Thanks to this new integration it is possible to obtain the following benefits:

Run the provisioning of new virtual machines in VMware environments from Azure. The distribution of virtual machines on VMware vSphere can be done from the portal or using ARM templates. The possibility of being able to describe the infrastructure, through Infrastructure as Code processes, consistently across Azure and on-premises environments is very important. In fact,, adopting ARM template, DevOps teams can use CI / CD pipelines to provision systems or to update VMware virtual machines in context with other application updates.

Figure 3 - Provisioning of a VMware VM from the Azure portal

Make ordinary maintenance operations on virtual machines directly from the Azure portal such as: stop, start, reboot, resizing, adding or updating disks and managing network cards.
Guarantee a self-service access to vSphere resources via Azure Arc. For administrators managing vSphere environments, this means they can easily delegate self-service access to VMware resources, governing and ensuring compliance through advanced controls of Azure governance and Azure RBAC. In fact,, it is possible to assign granular authorizations on computational resources, storage, network and templates.
Provide a inventory of virtual machines in distributed vSphere environments.
Run and manage on a large scale the’onboarding of vSphere environments in Azure management services such as Azure Monitor Log Analytics and Azure Policy Guest Configuration. This enabling allows you to orchestrate the installation of the specific Azure Arc agent (Connected Machine agent) directly from Azure.
Keep changes made directly through vCenter synchronized in Azure, thanks to automatic detection features.

Conclusions

Thanks to this new advanced integration, customers can have the flexibility to innovate, even using their existing VMware environment. Furthermore, through this approach it is possible to have an effective control mechanism to manage and govern all IT resources in a coherent way.

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (December 2021 – Weeks: 47 and 48)

Azure

Compute

West Central US: Microsoft expands cloud services with two new datacenters in Wyoming

Microsoft is announcing the launch of two new Microsoft datacenters in Cheyenne – Wyoming, one in Cheyenne Business Parkway and another in Bison Business Park, enabling to expand and support the growth and demand for digital services in West Central US datacenter region. Cheyenne has been home to Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure services since 2012 and this expansion will enable us to continue providing services to current and new customers.

New Azure Virtual Machines DCasv5 and ECasv5-series (preview)

Azure DCasv5/ECasv5 confidential virtual machines (VMs) powered by 3rd Gen AMD EPYC™ processors with SEV-SNP are available in preview.

SQL Server IaaS Agent extension for Linux SQL VMs

Microsoft is making the capabilities of SQL Server IaaS Agent extension available to Linux platforms, starting with Ubuntu with plans for other distributions in time.

If you are already running SQL Server on Azure using an Ubuntu Linux Virtual Machine, the SQL Server IaaS Agent extension now enables you to leverage integration with the Azure portal and unlocks the following benefits for SQL Server on Linux Azure VMs:

Compliance: The extension offers a simplified method to fulfill the requirement of notifying Microsoft that the Azure Hybrid Benefit has been enabled as is specified in the product terms. This process negates needing to manage licensing registration forms for each resource.
Simplified license management: The extension simplifies SQL Server license management, and allows you to quickly identify SQL Server VMs with the Azure Hybrid Benefit enabled using the Azure portal, Azure PowerShell, or the Azure CLI.

IaaS Agent extension full mode no restart for SQL VMs

You can now enable the full mode of SQL Server IaaS Agent extension with no restart, giving you access to more manageability features for SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines without interruption to your workloads. Previously, you had to restart the SQL Server services to enable these features. The full mode of SQL Server IaaS Agent extension unlocks many benefits such as Automated Backup, Automated Patching, Storage Optimization, and more, along with license management that comes with lightweight mode.

Storage

Azure File Sync: new agent released

The Azure File Sync agent v14.1 is available. Issue that is fixed in the v14.1 release:

Tiered files deleted on Windows Server 2022 are not detected by cloud tiering filter driver. This issue can also impact Windows 2016 and Windows Server 2019 if a tiered file is deleted using the FILE_DISPOSITION_INFORMATION_EX class.

To obtain and install this update, configure your Azure File Sync agent to automatically update when a new version becomes available or manually download the update from the Microsoft Update Catalog.

More information about this release:

This release is available for Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019 and Windows Server 2022 installations.
A restart is required for servers that have an existing Azure File Sync agent installation if the agent version is less than version 12.0.
The agent version for this release is 14.1.0.0.
Installation instructions are documented in KB5001873.

Azure NetApp Files application volume group for SAP HANA (preview)

Application volume group (AVG) for SAP HANA enables you to deploy all volumes required to install and operate an SAP HANA database according to best practices in a single one-step and optimized workflow. The application volume group feature includes the use of proximity placement group (PPG) with VMs to achieve automated, low-latency deployments. Application volume group for SAP HANA has implemented many technical improvements that simplify and standardize the entire process to help you streamline volume deployments for SAP HANA. Instead of creating the SAP HANA volumes (data, log, shared, log-backup, file-backup) individually, the new application volume group for SAP HANA creates these volumes in a single ‘atomic’ operation (GUI, RP, API).

Networking

VPN Gateway NAT

Azure VPN NAT (Network Address Translation) supports overlapping address spaces between your on-premises branch networks and your Azure Virtual Networks. NAT can also enable business-to-business connectivity where address spaces are managed by different organizations and re-numbering networks is not possible. VPN NAT provides support for 1:1 Static NAT and 1-to-many dynamic NAT.

Wildcard listener on Application Gateways

Azure Application Gateway now supports the use of wildcard characters such as asterisk (*) and question mark (?) for hostnames on a multi-site HTTP(S) listener. You can now route requests from multiple host-names such as shop.contoso.com, accounts.contoso.com, pay.contoso.com to the same backend pool through a single listener configured with a wildcard hostname such as *.contoso.com.

Azure Management services: what's new in November 2021

In November, Microsoft unveiled several news regarding Azure management services, accomplice also the Microsoft Ignite conference 2021. Through these articles released on a monthly basis, we want to provide an overall overview of the main news of the month, in order to stay up to date on these arguments and have the necessary references for further information.

The following diagram shows the different areas related to management, which are covered in this series of articles, in order to stay up to date on these topics and to better deploy and maintain applications and resources.

Figure 1 – Management services in Azure overview

Monitor

Azure Monitor

Log Analytics Workspace Insights in Azure Monitor

Microsoft has announced the availability ofLog Analytics workspace insights which allows you to obtain detailed information on the Log Analytics workspaces, providing a comprehensive overview of the following aspects: usage, performance, integrity, agents, query and change logs.

These are the main questions to which the solution can provide an answer:

What are the main tables, those where most of the data is imported?
Which resource sends the most logs to the workspace?
How long does it take for the logs to reach the workspace?
How many agents are connected to the work area? How many are in a health state?
Query control: how many queries run in the workspace? What are their response codes and duration time? What are the slow and inefficient queries that require workspace overhead?
Who has set a daily limit? When data retention has changed?
- Useful for keeping a log of changes in workspace settings.

New troubleshooting experiences in Network Insights for VPN Gateway & Azure Firewall

It is now possible to access detailed information and have a new problem solving experience in Azure Monitor Network Insights for VPN Gateway and Azure Firewall.

In fact,, you have the option of:

Access the resource topology that shows the integrity of the same and the related connections
A workbook showing all the key metrics
Direct links to documentation and troubleshooting guide

Azure Monitor container insights for Azure Arc enabled Kubernetes

In Azure Monitor, you can get detailed information about the containers running in Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes environments. This allows you to centralize the visualization of infrastructure metrics, of container logs and related recommendations. The main features are:

Simple onboarding directly from the Azure portal
Receipt of automatic updates from the monitoring agent
Performance visibility, collecting memory and processor metrics from controllers, nodes and containers
Views via workbook and in the Azure portal
Alerts and queries on historical data for troubleshooting
Ability to examine Prometheus metrics

Manage Log Analytics data export rules in the Azure portal (preview)

The export of Log Analytics data can now be configured in the Azure portal. This allows you to easily manage data export rules by giving you a clear view of existing rules in the workspace, regardless of whether they are in the enabled or disabled state. It is also possible to modify existing rules and create new rules with a few simple steps.

Azure Monitor for SAP: new telemetry and root cause analysis (RCA)

Azure Monitor for SAP Solutions (AMS) introduced support for new telemetry data of SAP HANA (preview) and SAP NetWeaver

For SAP HANA we find:

License status: provides licensing details for all tenants running with SAP HANA MDC.
Multi-Version Concurrency Control (MVCC): report on the consistency of transactional data, isolating the transactions that access the same data at the same time
Details on save point operation
Details on delta merge
Statistics on HANA Alert

Customers who are using the solution will have available, without carrying out any further activities, the above telemetry data. For new customers who want to activate this solution, you can follow this guide to AMS onboarding and configure at least one SAP HANA provider.

Furthermore, customers using SAP in an Azure environment can view the “root cause analysis (RCA)” when a SAP system becomes unavailable due to an outage of the virtual machine or host. In fact,, AMS allows you to view information about the restart, the analysis of the triggering cause, details on the affected system and recommended steps.

AMS is currently available in the following Azure regions: US East, US East 2, US West 2, Europe West, and Europe North. AMS does not incur any additional licensing fees, but only the consumption costs of Azure Monitor are covered.

Configure

Azure Automation

PowerShell runbook support 7.1 (preview)

Azure Automation support for PowerShell runbooks 7.1 has been made available in preview on Azure, Azure Gov and Azure China. This allows for the development and execution of runbooks using PowerShell 7.1, both for cloud processes and for hybrid processes on Azure and non-Azure systems.

Support for Managed Identities

Support for Managed Identities has been introduced in Azure Automation. System Assigned Managed Identities are supported for cloud and hybrid processes, while User Assigned Managed Identities are only supported for cloud processes. This support allows you to reduce the effort of managing Run As Accounts for runbooks. A User Assigned Managed Identities is an independent Azure resource that can be assigned to the Azure Automation account, which can have multiple associated user-assigned identities. The same identity can be assigned to multiple Azure Automation accounts.

Govern

Update Management

Automatic VM guest patching

The new feature called "Automatic VM guest patching" is now available and helps simplify update management and achieve security compliance. Enabling the feature “Automatic VM guest patching” patches classified as critical and security are automatically downloaded and applied to the system. This feature is available for both Windows and Linux systems.

Azure Cost Management

Azure Advisor: tips to save on Azure Cosmos DB resource costs

Specific recommendations have been included in Azure Advisor to help you achieve possible cost savings for Azure Cosmos DB, obtained based on the historical use of resources.

Updates related toAzure Cost Management and Billing

Microsoft is constantly looking for new methodologies to improve Azure Cost Management and Billing, the solution to provide greater visibility into where costs are accumulating in the cloud, identify and prevent incorrect spending patterns and optimize costs . Inthis article some of the latest improvements and updates regarding this solution are reported.

Secure

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Change to the names of Azure solutions in the security field

In November, durante Ignite 2021, changes have been announced to the names of Microsoft Azure solutions in the security field, as below:

Figure 2 - New names for Azure security solutions

New features, bug fixes and deprecated features of Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Microsoft Defender for Cloud development is constantly evolving and improvements are being made on an ongoing basis. To stay up to date on the latest developments, Microsoft updates this page, this provides information about new features, bug fixes and deprecated features. In particular, this month the main news concern:

Azure Security Center and Azure Defender have been unified and are called “Microsoft Defender for Cloud”
Native CSPM for AWS and Threat Protection for Amazon EKS and AWS EC2
Prioritizing sensitive data in cloud workloads, using Azure Purview
Improvements to integration with Microsoft Sentinel
Azure Security Benchmark v3 released

Protect

Azure Backup

Multi-user authorization for backups (preview)

Multi-user authorization for Azure Backup provides advanced protection for Recovery Services vaults against unauthorized critical operations. Azure Backup uses a Resource Guard to ensure that critical operations are performed only with the appropriate authorization. With this mechanism, Azure Backup helps provide better protection against operations that could lead to the loss of backup data, including:

Disabling soft delete and hybrid security settings
Disabling MUA protection
Changes to backup policies
Security changes
Stop protection
Changing the MARS security PIN

The backup administrator, which typically accesses the Recovery Services vault, must acquire the role of Contributor on Resource Guard to be able to perform the above protected operations (Critical). To do this, it must also request the action of the Resource Guard owner, who must approve and grant the requested access. It is also possible to use Azure AD Privileged Identity Management to manage just-in-time access on Resource Guard. Furthermore, it is possible to create the Resource Guard resource in a subscription or in a tenant other than that of the Recovery Services vault, for maximum isolation.

Metrics and related alerts for Azure Backup (preview)

Azure Backup now provides built-in metrics to allow you to monitor the integrity of backups and write custom alert rules based on these metrics.

Azure Site Recovery

Support for failover of multiple IP configurations

Azure Site Recovery has been introduced, for virtual machines on Azure, support for failover of secondary IP configurations. This allows you to configure failover and test failover settings for each secondary IP configuration, currently only in the Azure to Azure scenario (A2A).

New Update Rollup

For Azure Site Recovery was released theUpdate Rollup 59 which solves several problems and introduces some improvements. Among the most important innovations we find support for Windows Server 2022 for the mobility Service. The details and the procedure to follow for the installation can be found in the specific KB.

Migrate

Azure Migrate

New Azure Migrate releases and features

Azure Migrate is the service in Azure that includes a large portfolio of tools that you can use, through a guided experience, to address effectively the most common migration scenarios. To stay up-to-date on the latest developments in the solution, please consult this page, that provides information about new releases and features.

Evaluation of Azure

To test for free and evaluate the services provided by Azure you can access this page.

Azure Stack HCI: the constantly evolving hyper-converged solution – edition of November 2021

Azure Stack HCI is the solution that allows you to create a hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) for running workloads in an on-premises environment and that provides a strategic connection to various Azure services. Azure Stack HCI is also considered as a hybrid service of Azure and as such it is constantly evolving. Microsoft recently introduced a series of new features that pave the way for new Azure Stack HCI adoption scenarios and allow you to better manage your hybrid infrastructure based on this solution.. This article reports the main aspects that have undergone an evolution and the new features recently introduced in Azure Stack HCI.

New workloads and new benefits

The result that Microsoft intends to pursue with the Azure Stack HCI infrastructure is to be able to run the same workloads as the public cloud in an on-premises environment with the same advantages. To achieve this, Microsoft is bringing the most popular Azure workloads to Azure Stack HCI.

Starting last year, the Azure Kubernetes Service orchestrator can be activated on Azure Stack HCI (AKS), which allows you to automate the distribution and management of containerized applications in an on-premises environment just like in Azure. In addition to being able to run Windows and Linux apps in container, AKS makes the infrastructure available to run selected services of the Azure platform (PaaS) on Azure Stack HCI.

The important news announced in this area are the following.

Figure 1 - New Azure workloads and new benefits in Azure Stack HCI

Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI (preview)

By activating Azure Virtual Desktop in the public cloud, users can access their desktops and applications from anywhere, taking advantage of the familiarity and compatibility guaranteed by Windows 10 and Windows 11. Azure Virtual Desktop is a service hosted and managed by Microsoft, which does not require the configuration of a complex VDI infrastructure.

However, there are situations where applications are sensitive to latency, such as video editing, or scenarios where users need to take advantage of a legacy system present on-premises that cannot be easily reached. To allow you to better deal with situations of this type, Azure Virtual Desktop adds a new hybrid option thanks to Azure Stack HCI.

Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI uses the same cloud management plan as regular Azure Virtual Desktop, but it allows you to create session host pools using virtual machines running on Azure Stack HCI. These virtual machines can run Windows 10 and/or Windows 11 Enterprise multi-session. By placing desktops closer to users, it is possible to enable direct access with low latency and without round trip, using a technology called RDP Shortpath.

Azure benefit for Windows Server

Microsoft offers special benefits when deploying Windows Server in Azure environment and the same benefits, by the end of this year, will also be available on Azure Stack HCI.

First of all, when deploying virtual machines with Windows Server 2022, even in the Azure Stack HCI environment it is possible to activate the Azure Datacenter edition which offers specific features not available in the classic Standard and Datacenter editions. To learn more about the features available in this edition, you can consult this article.

Furthermore, Azure Stack HCI version 21H2 allows you to:

Get extended security updates for free, just like in Azure. This applies to Windows Server 2008 / R2 and will soon apply to Windows Server 2012 / R2 as well when we reach end of support, in addition to the corresponding versions of SQL Server.
Obtain the license and activate the Windows Server machines as in Azure. Azure Stack HCI as well as allowing you to use your own Datacenter license to enable automatic activation of virtual machines (Automatic VM Activation – AVMA), provides the option to pay the Windows Server license for guest systems through your Azure subscription, just like in Azure environment.

Infrastructure innovation

Microsoft manages some of the world's largest data centers and wants to bring the experience gained and innovation of the cloud to Azure Stack HCI. For these reasons, Azure Stack HCI is a subscription service that receives regular feature updates with the important goal of being able to take advantage on-premises of the technology tested on a large scale in the cloud.

Figure 2 – Infrastructure innovation in Azure Stack HCI

Thanks to the release of the latest update, known as “version 21H2” or as a "feature update 21H2", the following new features are introduced:

Quick restart management with Kernel Soft Reboot: improves restart performance, skipping the pre-boot sequence and self-test when turning on the hardware. This also reduces the overall cluster upgrade time (available only on Azure Stack HCI Integrated Systems).
Use of GPUs with clustered VMs: provides GPU acceleration to workloads running on clustered VMs. Ideal for AI / ML workloads.
Dynamic CPU compatibility mode: the processor compatibility mode has been updated to take full advantage of all the features of the processors in a cluster environment. In fact,, it is possible to combine different generations of processors in the same cluster with minimal degradation. The cluster intelligently calculates the largest common subset of processor functionality that can be exposed to virtual machines.
Storage thin provisioning: improves storage efficiency and simplifies management through thin provisioning.
Network ATC: simplifies host network configuration management.
Adjustable storage repair speed: greater control over the data re-synchronization process.
Support for nested virtualization with AMD processors: better flexibility to create test and evaluation environments thanks to the possibility of activating nested virtualization even in the presence of AMD processors.
Secured-Core Server: offers transversal security on hardware and firmware, integrated into the functionalities of the operating system, that can help protect servers from advanced threats.

New management features

Another result you want to achieve with Azure Stack HCI is to be able to manage your infrastructure as if it were an extension of the public cloud. Azure Stack HCI integrates natively with Azure Resource Manager and this allows you to project the cluster as a resource in the Azure portal. This allows you to leverage the same processes across all environments and manage Azure Stack HCI resources just like cloud resources.

Figure 3 – New Azure Stack HCI management features

Host server Arc-enabled and extensions

From the Azure Stack HCI resource you can locate, add, modify or remove extensions, thanks to which you can easily access the management features. With the availability of Azure Stack HCI version 21H2 the cluster will automatically enable host servers to Arc, at the time of registration, to be able to use the available extensions right away.

Arc-enabled VM management (preview)

In addition to managing the cluster, Azure Arc can now also be used to provision and manage virtual machines running on Azure Stack HCI, directly from the Azure portal. Virtual machines and their associated resources (images, disks, and network) are projected into ARM as separate resources using a new cross-platform technology called Arc Resource Bridge.

In this way you can:

achieve consistent management between cloud resources and Azure Stack HCI resources;
automate virtual machine deployments using ARM templates;
guarantee self-service access thanks to Azure RBAC support.

Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery

With Azure Stack HCI version 21H2 official support for Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery was introduced. With MABS v3 UR2 or later it is possible to back up hosts and active virtual machines in Azure Stack HCI. Furthermore, with Azure Site Recovery it is possible to replicate virtual machines from Azure Stack HCI to Azure and activate disaster recovery scenarios.

Conclusions

Thanks to constant improvement, the continuous introduction of new features and the inclusion of new usage scenarios, the proposition for hyper-converged scenarios is increasingly complete, integrated and performing. Azure Stack HCI integrates perfectly with the existing on-premises environment and offers an important added value: the ability to connect Azure Stack HCI with other Azure services to obtain a hybrid hyper-converged solution. This aspect in particular strongly differentiates it from other competitors who offer solutions in this area.

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (November 2021 – Weeks: 45 and 46)

Azure

Compute

Virtual machines selector now generally available

Microsoft want to simplify the process required for you to identify the right VM based on your needs and budget. To that end, virtual machines selector is a web-based tool localized in 26 languages and available worldwide. Using the virtual machines selector you can specify your requirements, such as the category of workload you plan to run in Azure, and the technical specifications of your VM (e.g., OS disks storage options, data disks storage performance, Operating System, deployment region, etc.). After a few simple steps, the tool identifies the best VM and disk storage combination based on the information you enter. You will then be able to view the details of the recommended VMs and their prices. You can then add the selected VMs to the pricing calculator to perform a more comprehensive cost analysis.

New cloud region in Sweden

The new sustainable datacenter region in Sweden, with presence in Gävle, Sandviken and Staffanstorp is available. It includes Azure Availability Zones, which offer you additional resiliency for your applications by designing the region with unique physical datacenter locations with independent power, network, and cooling for additional tolerance to datacenter failures.

Azure VMware Solution now generally available in the France Central Azure Region and in Japan West Azure Region

Azure VMware Solution has expanded availability to Japan West and to France Central. With this release Japan West is now the second region within the Japan sovereign area to become available (joining Japan East).

SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines: Multi subnet high availability

You can now simplify your SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines high availability and disaster recovery configuration by deploying virtual machines in multiple subnets, eliminating the need for an Azure Load Balancer. Multi subnet configuration natively helps you match on-premises experience for connecting to your availability group listener or SQL Server failover cluster instance. Additionally, this feature doesn’t have any limitations on unique port or feature interoperability considerations like distributed network name (DNN) for availability group and failover cluster instance. Multi subnet configuration is natively supported by all versions of SQL Server and Windows Server Failover Cluster to simplify deployment, maintenance and improve failover time.

Azure Virtual Machines DCv3-series now available in Europe West and North (preview)

Announcing public preview expansion of the DCv3-series VMs to Europe West and North.

Storage

SFTP support for Azure Blob Storage (preview)

Starting today, SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) support for Azure Blob Storage is available for public preview in select regions. Azure Blob Storage is the only storage platform that supports SFTP over object storage natively in a serverless fashion, enabling you to leverage object storage economics and features. With multi-protocol support, you can run your applications on a single storage platform with no application rewrites necessary, therefore eliminating data silos.

NFSv4.1 support on Azure Files

Azure Files support for NFS v4.1 on premium tier for both locally-redundant storage and zone-redundant storage is available. Now you can deploy these fully POSIX compliant, distributed NFS file shares in your production environments for a wide variety of Linux and container based workloads. Some example workloads include: highly available SAP application layer, enterprise messaging, user home directories, custom line-of-business applications, database backups, database replication, and devops pipelines. NFS 4.1 is available in all regions where the premium tier of Azure Files exists.

Azure Archive rehydration priority update

Azure Archive Storage provides a secure, low-cost means for retaining cold data, including backups and archival storage. Data stored in Archive Storage is offline and unavailable for read access until it is rehydrated to the hot or cool tier. You can choose to rehydrate data with standard or high priority, depending on the urgency of the retrieval request. Previously, it was not possible to change the retrieval priority after initiating a rehydration operation; priority had to be determined in advance, and there was no flexibility to update the priority if the retrieval urgency subsequently changed.

Archive Storage now supports updating the retrieval priority from standard to high while a rehydration operation is pending. You can simplify rehydration management and improve cost efficiency by initiating the rehydration operation with standard priority for a set of blobs, then updating the priority to high for any blobs that require faster retrieval.

Networking

VPN Gateways: increased connection limit

The max number of Site-to-Site/VNet-to-VNet connections on a VPN Gateway has been increased from 30 to 100 tunnels for SKUs VpnGw4, VpnGw5, VpnGw4AZ, and VpnGw5AZ.
This change does not affect legacy gateways with the High Performance SKU.

Azure Bastion: new features available with Standard SKU (preview)

With the new Azure Bastion native client support you can:

Connect to your target Azure virtual machine via Azure Bastion using Azure CLI and a native client on your local Windows machine
Log into Azure Active Directory-joined virtual machines using your Azure Active Directory credentials

Also, with the new Azure Bastion IP based connection capability you can now connect to any target resource reachable from your Bastion using its private IP address. This includes any reachable resources hosted on-premises or in other clouds, allowing you to achieve more secure global remote connectivity with Azure Bastion.

ExpressRoute now supports Azure Virtual Desktop Shortpath RDP over Private Peering

ExpressRoute Private Peering now supports Azure Virtual Desktop RDP Shortpath. After establishing the reverse connect transport, the client and session host starts the RDP connection. With RDP Shortpath configured, the client will require a direct connectivity with the session host to establish a secure TLS connection. You can leverage ExpressRoute Private peering to setup the direct connection to support RDP Shortpath.

The Azure edition of Windows Server 2022

The new operating system Windows Server 2022 introduced a new special edition dedicated to Azure environments, able to offer specific features not available in the classic Standard and Datacenter editions. This article describes the features available in this edition that allow you to better address certain scenarios in cloud environments.

First of all, the Azure Datacenter edition of Windows Server 2022 is only supported in the following environments:

Azure IaaS
Azure Stack HCI (21H2)

Windows Server 2022 Datacenter Azure Edition includes all the features of the Datacenter version, in addition it offers the functions described in the following paragraphs, not available outside of these environments.

Azure Extended Networking

This is a feature designed to solve the challenge of moving applications and workloads running on-premises to the cloud, when it is required to keep the same IP addresses associated with virtual machines. Azure Extended Networking allows you to extend an existing on-premises subnet to Azure to allow virtual machines to keep the same private IP addresses. All this is made possible thanks to the fact that the network is extended using a bi-directional VXLAN tunnel between two Windows Server virtual machines. 2022 which cover the role of virtual appliance.

Figure 1 - Generic diagram for extending a subnet in Azure

A virtual appliance must be running in an on-premises environment, while the other must be running in the cloud and must have the Datacenter Azure Edition. Each subnet to be extended requires the presence of a pair of these virtual appliances. In this way, you can keep your private IP addresses in use in the on-premises environment also in Azure and everything works transparently for applications. In this regard it is good to specify that it is advisable to use this feature only in scenarios where it is not possible to proceed otherwise. In fact,, if possible, it is always better to change the IP address and directly connect the migrated systems to existing subnets in Azure. This type of configuration can be done using the procedure reported in Microsoft's official documentation, which provides for the presence of Windows Admin Center connected to Azure.

SMB over QUIC

QUIC is a standard protocol designed to provide a reliable connection over unsecured networks, like the Internet. In fact,, QUIC uses a TLS encrypted tunnel 1.3 on the UDP port 443. With SMB over QUIC all SMB traffic, including the authentication and authorization process, it always remains inside this tunnel and is never exposed on the network. In this scenario, SMB behaves in a standard way inside the tunnel, therefore the user experience and capabilities remain unchanged. SMB over QUIC inWindows Server 2022 Datacenter Azure Edition uses the updated version of the SMB protocol (version 3.1.1). Using SMB over QUIC, users and applications can securely and reliably access data on file servers running in the Azure environment or file servers located on the edges, without having to adopt VPN connections. For more details please visit the Microsoft's official documentation.

Figure 2 - Configuring SMB over QUIC from Windows Admin Center

Hotpatch of Azure Automanage

The Hotpatch feature, part of Azure Automanage, is supported inWindows Server 2022 Datacenter: Azure Edition. Support is currently for Core mode installations, but will also be extended to Desktop installations in the future. Hotpatching is a new mechanism, used to install updates on Windows Server Azure Edition virtual machines, which allows you to reduce the number of reboots required to install updates.

Figure 3 - Hotpatch for a machine Windows Server 2022 in Azure environment

Azure Automanage allows you to orchestrate the installation of security patches on top of a Cumulative Update, which is released every three months. Cumulative Update requires a system restart, but the security patches released between the Cumulative Updates can modify the code running in memory without the need to reboot the machine.

For more information about this feature, you can consult thespecific Microsoft documentation.

Conclusions

Thanks to these features, designed for hybrid environments and fully integrated into the operating system, Windows Server 2022 allows you to significantly increase efficiency and agility. To discover all the new features introduced in Windows Server 2022 you can consult this series of articles.

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (November 2021 – Weeks: 43 and 44)

In this dedicated post you can find the most important announcements and major updates officialized last week during Microsoft Ignite (November 2021) conference.

Azure

Compute

Zerto Disaster Recovery for Azure VMware Solution

Zerto Disaster Recovery is now available and supported with Azure VMware Solution, delivering data protection and disaster recovery services that eliminate data loss and downtime for vSphere virtual machines running on Azure VMware Solution environment.

Zerto Disaster Recovery for Azure VMware Solution supports the following 3 scenarios:

On-premises VMware to Azure VMware Solution for Hybrid disaster recovery
Azure VMware Solution to Azure VMware Solution for cloud-based disaster recovery
Azure VMware Solution to Azure IaaS for cloud-based disaster recovery

Azure Spot Virtual Machines: Try to restore functionality

You can now opt-in and use this feature while deploying Spot VMs using Virtual Machine Scale Sets. This new feature will automatically try to restore an evicted Spot VM to maintain the desired target compute capacity (e.g., number of VMs) in a scale set.

Storage

Azure File Sync agent v14

Improvements and issues that are fixed in the v14 release:

Improved server endpoint deprovisioning guidance in the portal. When removing a server endpoint via the portal, we now provide step by step guidance based on the reason behind deleting the server endpoint, so that you can avoid data loss and ensure your data is where it needs to be (server or Azure file share).
Invoke-AzStorageSyncChangeDetection cmdlet improvements. Microsoft has improved the Invoke-AzStorageSyncChangeDetection cmdlet and the 10,000 item limit no longer applies when scanning the entire share.
Azure File Sync is now supported in West US 3 region.
Reduced transactions when a file consistently fails to upload due to a per-item sync error.
Reliability and telemetry improvements for cloud tiering and sync.

To obtain and install this update, configure your Azure File Sync agent to automatically update when a new version becomes available or manually download the update from the Microsoft Update Catalog.

More information about this release:

This release is available for Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019 and Windows Server 2022 installations.
A restart is required for servers that have an existing Azure File Sync agent installation if the agent version is less than version 12.0.
The agent version for this release is 14.0.0.0.
Installation instructions are documented in KB5001872.

Ephemeral OS disks for Azure VMs support additional VM sizes

You now can choose where to store Ephemeral OS disks, either in VM temp disk or on VM cache. This feature enables Ephemeral OS disks to be created for all the VMs, which don’t have cache or have an insufficient cache (such as Dav3, Dav4, Eav4, and Eav3) but has sufficient temp disk to host the Ephemeral OS disk.

Networking

New Azure Firewall Premium capabilities

Several new Azure Firewall Premium capabilities are available:

Azure Firewall Premium availability in more regions. Azure Firewall Premium is now available in both Microsoft Government Cloud and Azure China 21Vianet. This expansion makes Azure Firewall Premium now available in 44 Azure regions.
Terraform support for Firewall Policy Premium. Azure Firewall Premium supports a range of DevOps tools including Azure CLI, PowerShell, REST API. Customers can now use Terraform, a popular open-source tool used by DevOps for implementing infrastructure as code, to manage their Azure Firewall Premium.
Web categories Category Check (in preview). Web categories lets administrators allow or deny user access to web site categories such as gambling websites, social media websites, and others. Often customers want to check what categories does a specific URL fall under. Customers can now use the convenience of Azure Portal to determine URL web categories and share feedback if the category is not accurate.
Migrate to Premium SKU using Stop/Start approach. If you use Azure Firewall Standard SKU with Firewall Policy, you can use the Allocate/Deallocate method to upgrade your Firewall SKU to Premium. This migration approach is supported on both VNET Hub and Secure Hub Firewalls. Secure Hub deployments will be upgraded while preserving the public IP of the firewall.

Extended regional availability for Private Link NSG Support and for Private Link UDR Support

Private Endpoint support for Network Security Groups (NSGs) and Private Endpoint support for User Defined Routes (UDRs) are now in public preview.

Private Endpoint support for Network Security Groups (NSGs) enhancement will provide you with the ability to enable advanced security controls on traffic destined to a private endpoint.
Private Endpoint support for User Defined Routes (UDRs) enhancement will provide you with the ability to apply custom routes to traffic destined to a private endpoint with a wider subnet range.

At this time, this features are available in the following regions: UsEast2Euap, UsCentralEuap, WestCentralUS, WestUS, WestUS2, EastUS, EastUS2, Asiaeast, Australiaeast, Japaneast, Canadacentral, Europenorth, Koreacentral, Brazilsouth, Uksouth, US South, US North, and France Central.

ExpressRoute IPv6 Support for Private Peering

IPv6 support for ExpressRoute Private Peering is now generally available with ExpressRoute circuits and Azure environments globally. IPv6 support will unlock hybrid connectivity for you as you look to expand into mobile and IoT markets with Azure, or to address IPv4 exhaustion in your on-premise networks.

Azure Management services: what's new in October 2021

In October, Microsoft announced a considerable number of news regarding Azure management services. Through these articles released on a monthly basis I want to provide an overall overview of the main news of the month, so that you can always stay up to date on these topics and have the necessary references to carry out further studies.

Monitor

Azure Monitor

Availability and support of availability zones in new regions

Azure Monitor Log Analytics is available in the following new regions:

West US 3
Korea South
Canada East

To check the availability of the service in all the Azure regions you can consult this document.

Furthermore, support for Availability Zones was introduced in the region of West US 2 for Azure Monitor Log Analytics and Application Insights, which allows to ensure greater availability for the logs present in the Workspace.

Azure Monitor container insights: updating the user experience from the portal

The user experience from the portal for Azure Monitor container insights has been updated and allows you to:

Get detailed information about containers more easily
View resource usage as allocable capacity
Take advantage of new metrics and new recommended alerts

Azure Monitor Query SDK

Microsoft has released the Azure Monitor Query SDK for .NET, Java, JavaScript/TypeScript e Python. This new SDK allows developers to build applications that perform read-only queries on Azure Monitor logs and metrics, so that they can analyze and visualize the data in customized ways. The SDK has been modernized to follow the Azure SDK guidelines and be idiomatic for each programming language. Furthermore, introduces a number of updates and new features.

Azure Monitor application insights in Azure Spring Cloud

Thanks to this new integration in Azure Monitor Application Insights it is possible to enable the monitoring of Java Spring Boot applications running in Azure Spring Cloud with a few simple steps and without making any changes to the code.

Govern

Azure Cost Management

Updates related toAzure Cost Management and Billing

Secure

Azure Security Center

New features, bug fixes and deprecated features of Azure Security Center

Azure Security Center development is constantly evolving and improvements are being made on an ongoing basis. To stay up to date on the latest developments, Microsoft updates this page, this provides information about new features, bug fixes and deprecated features. In particular, this month the main news concern:

Protect

Azure Backup

Multiple backups during the day for Azure Files

Keeping RPO low is often a key requirement for Azure Files that contain frequently updated business-critical data. To ensure minimal data loss, in the event of an emergency or unwanted content changes, organizations may need to back up more frequently than once a day. Azure Backup now allows you to create backup policies to take multiple snapshots per day. With this feature it is also possible to define the duration of the backup processes.

Support for Archive storage for the backup of VMs and SQL on board VMs using the Azure portal

Azure Backup announced in August the ability to move recovery points to the Azure Storage Vault-Archive tier to save costs and retain backup data for a longer duration. This feature is available for Azure VMs and SQL Servers installed on board Azure VMs. Initially this possibility was only given using Azure PowerShell, while now it is possible to move these backups from the standard tier to the new archive tier also from the Azure portal.

When moving backup data from vault-standard to vault-archive, Azure Backup converts incremental data into full backup. This procedure involves an increase in the total GB used, but costs are reduced due to the huge difference in cost per GB between the two storage tiers. To simplify this process, Azure Backup provides advice on Recovery Points (RPs) for which migration to the vault-archive is recommended. Restores can always be done in an integrated way from the Azure portal, with a simple and intuitive process.

Migrate

Azure Migrate

New Azure Migrate releases and features

Evaluation of Azure

To test for free and evaluate the services provided by Azure you can access this page.