Category Archives: Datacenter Management

Azure Management services: What's new in July 2021

Microsoft constantly announces news regarding Azure management services and as usual this monthly summary. The aim is to provide an overview of the main news of the month, in order to stay up to date on these topics and have the necessary references to conduct further exploration.

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

New built-in policies for Log Analytics workspaces and linked automation accounts

When designing and deploying Azure Monitor Log Analytics workspaces, it is advisable to adopt specific criteria to distribute them consistently, in compliance with the compliance of their environment. Thanks to a new built-in policy it is possible to automate and control the distribution of Log Analytics workspaces and the Automation Accounts connected to them in your own environments.

Better integration between Azure Monitor and Grafana

Grafana is a very popular open source visualization and analysis software, which allows you to query, view and explore various metrics from multiple data sources in a centralized way. Recently, some updates have been made to the Azure Monitor plug-in for Grafana that allow you to enable additional data sources and easier authentication via managed identity. Among the main improvements we find:

  • Azure Resource Graph in the Azure Monitor Grafana data source. Azure Resource Graph (ARG) is a service in Azure that allows you to perform large-scale queries on a given subscription set, so that you can effectively govern your environment. With Grafana 8.0, Azure Monitor data source supports querying ARG.
  • Managed Identities are supported for the Grafana data source hosted in Azure and for Azure Monitor. Customers hosting Grafana on Azure (e.g.. App Service, Azure Virtual Machine) and have enabled managed identity on their virtual machine, they will be able to use it to configure Azure Monitor in Grafana. This aspect simplifies the configuration of the data source, requiring it to be securely authenticated without having to manually configure credentials through app registrations in Azure AD for each data source.
  • Direct links to the Azure portal for Grafana metrics. To allow easy exploration of Azure Monitor metrics directly from Grafana, when a user selects the result of a query, a menu appears with a link to “View in the Azure portal”. Selecting it will redirect you to the corresponding chart in the Azure Metrics Explorer portal.

Direct proxy and Log Analytics gateway support for the new agent

Following the recent announcement on the availability of the new Azure Monitor agent (AMA) and data collection rules (Data Collection Rules), support for direct proxies and support for Log Analytics gateways is introduced for this agent.

Configure

Azure Automation

Support for User Assigned Managed Identities (preview)

Azure Automation has introduced support for User Assigned Managed Identities, which allows you to eliminate the effort of managing RunAs 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

Azure Policy

Azure Policy built-in for Network Watcher Traffic Analytics

Traffic Analytics is based on the analysis of NSG flow logs and after an appropriate aggregation of data, inserting the necessary intelligence concerning security, topology and geographic map, can provide detailed information about the network traffic of your Azure cloud environment. The following new built-in policies have been introduced to facilitate the deployment of Traffic Analytics:

  • An audit policy: Flag flow logs resource without traffic analytics enabled
  • DeployIfNotExists policies: Enable Traffic Analytics on NSGs in an Azure region of a subscription or resource group

Azure Cost Management

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, including:

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 Site Recovery

New Update Rollup

For Azure Site Recovery was released theUpdate Rollup 56 that solves several issues and introduces some improvements. In particular, this update introduces the following new features:

  • Microsoft Azure Site Recovery (services): Improvements have been made to enable replication and new protection operations to be faster than 46%.
  • Microsoft Azure Site Recovery (portal): Replication between any two Azure regions around the world can now be enabled. You are no longer limited to enabling replication on your continent.

The details and the procedure to follow for the installation can be found in the specific KB.

Evaluation of Azure

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

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (July 2021 – Weeks: 27 and 28)

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

Free Extended Security Updates only on Azure for Windows Server 2012/R2and SQL Server 2012

On-premises Windows Server and SQL Server customers looking to migrate and modernize can take advantage of the extension of free Extended Security Updates (ESUs) for Windows Server 2012/R2 and SQL Server 2012, as follows:

  • Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 Extended Support (ESU) will end on October 10, 2023. Extended Support for SQL Server 2012 ends July 12, 2022. Customers that cannot meet this deadline can protect their apps and data running on these releases for three additional years when they migrate to Windows Server and SQL Server on Azure and take advantage of free ESUs on Azure. Customers running Windows Server and SQL Server on these releases and on-premises will have the option to purchase ESUs.
  • Windows Server and SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 three-year ESUs are coming to an end on January 10, 2023, and July 12, 2022, respectively. Customers who need more time to migrate and modernize will be able to take advantage of a Windows Server and SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 on Azure, we will now provide one addiitonal year of extended security updates only on Azure.

Virtual Machine (VM) bursting is now generally available on more VM types

Virtual machine level disk bursting is a now enabled for our Dsv4, Dasv4, Ddsv4, Esv4, Easv4, Edsv4, Fsv2 and B-series VM families, which allows your virtual machine to burst its disk IO and MiB/s throughput performance for a short time daily. This enables your VMs to handle unforeseen spikey disk traffic smoothly and process batched jobs with speed. There is no additional cost associated with this new capability or adjustments on the VM pricing and it comes enabled by default.

HPC Cache on E-Series VMs Support of Blob NFS 3.0

The Azure Blob team recently announced that Blob NFS 3.0 protocol support is generally available and now, Azure HPC Cache will follow suit with general availability using E-Series VMs.

Storage

Azure File Sync agent v13

The Azure File Sync agent v13 release is being flighted to servers which are configured to automatically update when a new version becomes available.

Improvements and issues that are fixed in the v13 release:

  • Authoritative upload. Authoritative upload is a new mode available when creating the first server endpoint in a sync group. It is useful for the scenario where the cloud (Azure file share) has some/most of the data but is outdated and needs to be caught up with the more recent data on the new server endpoint. This is the case in offline migration scenarios like DataBox, for instance. When a DataBox is filled and sent to Azure, the users of the local server will keep changing / adding / deleting files on the local server. That makes the data in the DataBox and thus the Azure file share, slightly outdated. With Authoritative Upload, you can now tell the server and cloud, how to resolve this case and get the cloud seamlessly updated with the latest changes on the server. No matter how the data got to the cloud, this mode can update the Azure file share if the data stems from the matching location on the server. Be sure to avoid large directory restructures between the initial copy to the cloud and catching up with Authoritative Upload. This will ensure you are only transporting updates. Changes to directory names will cause all files in these renamed directories to be uploaded again. This functionality is comparable to semantics of RoboCopy /MIR = mirror source to target, including removing files on the target that no longer exist on the source. Authoritative Upload replaces the “Offline Data Transfer” feature for DataBox integration with Azure File Sync via a staging share. A staging share is no longer required to use DataBox. New Offline Data Transfer jobs can no longer be started with the AFS V13 agent. Existing jobs on a server will continue even with the upgrade to agent version 13.
  • Portal improvements to view cloud change enumeration and sync progress. When a new sync group is created, any connected server endpoint can only begin sync, when cloud change enumeration is complete. In case files already exist in the cloud endpoint (Azure file share) of this sync group, change enumeration of content in the cloud can take some time. The more items (files and folders) exist in the namespace, the longer this process can take. Admins will now be able to obtain cloud change enumeration progress in the Azure portal to estimate an eta for completion / sync to start with servers.
  • Support for server rename. If a registered server is renamed, Azure File Sync will now show the new server name in the portal. If the server was renamed prior to the v13 release, the server name in the portal will now be updated to show the correct server name.
  • Support for Windows Server 2022 Preview. The Azure File Sync agent is now supported on Windows Server 2022 Preview build 20348 or later. Note: Windows Server 2022 adds support for TLS 1.3 which is not currently supported by Azure File Sync. If the TLS settings are managed via group policy, the server must be configured to support TLS 1.2.
  • Miscellaneous improvements:
    • Reliability improvements for sync, cloud tiering and cloud change enumeration.
    • If a large number of files is changed on the server, sync upload is now performed from a VSS snapshot which reduces per-item errors and sync session failures.
    • The Invoke-StorageSyncFileRecall cmdlet will now recall all tiered files associated with a server endpoint, even if the file has moved outside the server endpoint location.
    • Explorer.exe is now excluded from cloud tiering last access time tracking.
    • New telemetry (Event ID 6664) to monitor the orphaned tiered files cleanup progress after removing a server endpoint with cloud tiering enabled.

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 Preview 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 13.0.0.0.
  • Installation instructions are documented in KB4588753.

Azure Blob storage: container Soft Delete

Administrators can set a retention policy and recover data from a deletion of a blob container without contacting support.

HPC Cache for NVME-based Storage, Storage Target Management, and HIPAA Compliance

The latest release of HPC Cache adds support for high throughput VMs as well as enhancements to storage target operations.

Disk pool for Azure VMware Solution (preview)

With disk pool, Azure VMware Solution customers can now access Azure Disk Storage for high-performance, durable block storage. Customer can scale their storage independent of compute and handle their growing data needs more cost-effectively.

Networking

Azure Bastion Standard SKU public (preview)

With the new Azure Bastion Standard SKU, you can now perform/configure the following: 

  • Manually scale Bastion host Virtual Machine instances: Azure Bastion supports manual scaling of the Virtual Machine (VM) instances facilitating Bastion connectivity. You can configure 2-50 instances to manage the number of concurrent SSH and RDP sessions Azure Bastion can support. 

  • Azure Bastion admin panel: Azure Bastion supports enabling/disabling features accessed by the Bastion host. 

Azure Web Application Firewall: OWASP ModSecurity Core Rule Set 3.2 (preview)

Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) ModSecurity Core Rule Set 3.2 (CRS 3.2) for Azure Web Application Firewall (WAF) deployments running on Application Gateway is in preview. This release offers improved security from web vulnerabilities, reduced false positives, and improvements to performance. Microsoft is also announcing an increase in the file upload limit and request body size limit to 4GB and 2MB respectively.

Azure Advisor: the free and personalized guide to Azure best practices

Designing correct architectures in the cloud, with predictable costs, compliant with regulations and security standards is a challenging goal, also given by the nature of the cloud itself which is constantly evolving. The Azure platform provides several tools to make Azure architectures optimized and cost-effective, including Azure Advisor. This article describes the main features and functionalities of the solution.

The Azure Advisor solution is able to provide useful recommendations to optimize the deployments in your Azure environment. Analyzing the configuration of their resources and telemetry data on their use, Azure Advisor is able to propose useful solutions to optimize costs, the performance, reliability, efficiency and security. The solution performs its assessments in the background and automatically intercept new resources created. From the moment of creation of new resources it can take a few hours to receive the related recommendations.

Figure 1 - Azure Advisor overview

Azure Advisor is a totally free solution, included in all Azure environments, which allows you to easily optimize the resources present in your deployments, offering specific recommendations for the following areas:

  • Costs: it provides guidance to maximize the economic return on investment in Azure, thanks to the extra touches that can reduce and optimize costs.
  • Security: reports on how to best protect Azure resources from security threats.
  • Performance: thanks to constant analysis of resources used, the solution is able to report useful information to increase the speed and responsiveness of applications.
  • Reliability (high availability): it gives directions on how you can increase the availability of your business-critical applications, in order to ensure greater continuity of service.
  • Operational excellence: highlights the techniques to be used to increase the efficiency of processes and workflows and to improve the management of resources and deployments.

Azure Advisor therefore allows you to achieve the following objectives:

  • Get personalized advice for your environment, based on Microsoft best practices. The recommendations are proactive and, to facilitate its implementation, contain proposals for concrete actions to be carried out.
  • Improve performance, efficiency, the security and reliability of your Azure resources, also identifying the opportunities to be seized to reduce the overall spending of Azure services.

Azure Advisor is accessible from the Azure portal and, in the overview screen, brings together the recommendations of the five macro-categories mentioned:

Figure 2 - Overview of Advisor in the Azure portal

All information provided by the solution can be downloaded in two different formats (.pdf and .csv), to facilitate the consultation and to keep them documented.

Furthermore, the Advisor Score is now available, a new way of consulting these recommendations which makes it easy to prioritize, track progress and better assess its impact.

Figure 3 - New Advisor Score

By selecting each category you will be sent to the detail section, where you can check, for each recommendation provided, what are the resources impacted and the relative level of criticality (high, medium, low).

Figure 4 - Cost recommendations

In the specific case, to optimize Azure resource costs , among the recommendations, the purchase of Virtual Machine Reserved Instances prevails (VM RIs), estimating the actual savings that could be obtained by adopting VM RIs in three years.

As for the recommendations related to Security, it should be noted that these are the same provided by the Azure Security Center (ASC) and to obtain a better consultation experience, it is convenient to directly access the interface of the ASC solution.

Selecting the recommended action for a recommendation will open a simple interface that allows you to implement it or you have the option of being directed to the Microsoft documentation that reports the implementation processes.

If you do not want to take immediate action on a recommendation, you can postpone it for a specified period of time or ignore it completely.

If you do not want to receive recommendations for a particular Azure subscription or a specific resource group, Azure Advisor can be configured to generate recommendations only for certain subscriptions and certain resource groups. You also have the option to edit, at the moment for the only rule relating to the use of the CPU, the threshold of use of virtual machines to be taken into consideration in the relative assessments.

Whenever Azure Advisor detects a new recommendation for one of your resources, an event is generated in the Azure Activity log. For these events you can configure Alerts directly from Azure Advisor, which provides a specific creation experience for recommendations.

To always stay informed about the recommendations generated by the solution is also possible to configure the “Recommendation digests”.

Conclusions

Azure Advisor is a very effective tool to verify afterwards that the main implementation best practices in the Azure environment have been respected and to direct the appropriate corrective actions. This tool centralizes in a single solution the different recommendations for different Azure services, present in your environment, useful to have a global view and to improve your implementations in Azure.

Azure Stack HCI: how to monitor the environment in a complete and effective way

Azure Stack HCI is the Microsoft solution that allows you to create hyper-converged infrastructures (HCI) for the execution of workloads in an on-premises environment. Azure Stack HCI, in addition to seamlessly integrating into on-premises datacenters, offers an important added value: the ability to connect with Azure services to obtain a hybrid hyper-converged solution. Among these services we find Azure Monitor and this article reports the benefits and features of the solution to monitor the Azure Stack HCI environment in a complete and effective way.

The solutionAzure Stack HCI Insights is able to provide detailed information on integrity, on the performance and usage of Azure Stack HCI clusters. The version of the clusters must be 21H2, must be connected to Azure andregistered for related monitoring. Azure Stack HCI Insights stores your data in a Log Analytics workspace, thus providing the possibility to use powerful filters and aggregations to better analyze the data collected over time.

Benefits of the solution

The main benefits of adopting Azure Stack HCI Insights are:

  • Managed by Azure. The solution is accessible directly from the Azure portal, it is constantly updated and no additional infrastructure components or third-party software are required.
  • Scalability. This is a very scalable solution, able to load more than 400 cluster information set, located on multiple subscriptions, and without limits of domain or physical location.
  • Advanced customization. The user experience is based on Azure Monitor workbooks. Workbooks allow users to change views, the query, set specific thresholds according to your needs and save these customizations. Furthermore, workbook charts can be added to dashboards in the Azure portal.

Activation requirements

In order to use Azure Stack HCI Insights the following steps must be completed:

  • Azure Stack HCI cluster registration with Azure. This step ensures that every server in the cluster is automatically Azure Arc-enabled. This action allows Azure Monitor to retrieve details not only of the cluster, but also of the single nodes that compose it.
  • Enabling Log Analytics, to connect the cluster to a Log Analytics workspace, in which the necessary logs for the monitor will be saved.
  • Enable monitoring, to allow Azure Monitor to begin collecting the necessary events for the monitor.

Figure 1 - Configuration of the Log Analytics Agent extension and monitoring

Environment monitor

After completing the necessary configurations, you have the possibility to view the monitor data of a single cluster directly from the Azure Stack HCI resource page or you can use Azure Monitor to obtain an aggregate view of multiple Azure Stack HCI clusters.

Figure 2 – Aggregated view of multiple Azure Stack HCI clusters

Is offered the ability to monitor the health of the cluster , the status of individual nodes and virtual machines.

Figure 3 - Overview of the status of the cluster nodes

By accessing the specific tabs it is possible to obtain further detailed information regarding virtual machines and storage (health, usage, and performance).

Information regarding the performance of the Azure Stack HCI environment is also reported. The following performance trends can be consulted through the panels integrated into the solution:

  • CPU usage
  • Average latency of storage volumes
  • IOPS of storage volumes
  • Storage volume capacity

Figure 4 - Consultation of performance trends

Costs of the solution

There are no specific costs for the use of Azure Stack HCI Insights, but the cost is calculated based on the amount of data that is entered in the Log Analytics workspace and the related retention settings.

Conclusions

Having an effective monitor system for such environments, that allows to detect and prevent anomalous conditions and performance problems is of fundamental importance. This further possibility, offered through the integration of Azure Stack HCI with the Azure Monitor service, makes the solution more and more complete and integrated. This is a further added value compared to other competitors who propose solutions in this area.

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (July 2021 – Weeks: 25 and 26)

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

Azure VM Image Builder service: custom image building process

Azure VM Image Builder service is a managed service to build custom Linux or Windows virtual machine (VM) images with ease, and be compliant with your company’s security policy across Azure and Azure Stack. With Azure VM Image Builder, the Microsoft managed service built on HashiCorp Packer, you can describe custom images in a template using new or existing configurations and enables VM image building immediately without setting up and managing your own image building pipeline.

New Azure VMs for confidential workloads (Limited Preview)

Microsoft is announcing the limited preview go-live of the DCsv3-series and DCdsv3-series Azure Virtual Machines, starting in the East US 2 region. Leveraging Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX), you can allocate private regions of memory, called enclaves, giving you more granular protection against processes or administrators with higher privilege levels. These new VMs enable you to protect the confidentiality and integrity your code and data while in use.

Storage

Azure Blob storage: NFS 3.0 protocol support

Network File System (NFS) 3.0 protocol support for Azure Blob Storage is generally available. Azure Blob Storage is the only storage platform that supports NFS 3.0 protocol over object storage natively (no gateway or data copying required), with object storage economics. The data stored in your storage account with NFS support is billed at the same rate as blob storage capacity charges with no minimal provisioned capacity required.

Azure NetApp Files: regional Capacity Quota

The default capacity quota for each subscription will be changed from no quota to a quota of 25 TiB, per region, across all service levels. This capacity change will not have any impact on your current service but will ensure (new) capacity pool creation or capacity pool size increases will succeed based on available regional capacity. Any regional capacity quota increase does not incur a billing increase, as billing will still be based on the provisioned capacity pools.

Expansion of credit-based disk bursting to Azure Standard SSDs E30 and smaller

Credit-based disk bursting is now available on Azure Standard SSDs E30 and smaller (less than or equal to 1TiB). With credit-based bursting, your disks can burst IOPS and throughput for a short-time (up to 30 minutes) to handle unexpected disk traffic and process batch jobs with speed. Now you can deploy your disks for their average performance needs instead of for peak performance, enabling you to achieve cost savings. All your existing or new Standard SSD disks (less than or equal to 1TiB) will have credit-based bursting enabled by default with no user action or addition costs.

Expansion of on-demand disk bursting for Premium SSD to more regions (preview)

Microsoft has now expanded the preview of on-demand disk bursting to all production regions. You can enable on-demand bursting on existing or new disks following instructions here.

Networking

VPN NAT (preview)

Azure VPN NAT (Network Address Translation) supports overlapping address spaces between customers on-premises branch networks and their 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 preview provides support for 1:1 Static NAT.

Azure Management services: What's new in June 2021

In June have been announced, by Microsoft, a considerable number of news regarding Azure management services. Through these articles released monthly we want to provide an overall overview of the main news, 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

The new Azure Monitor agent and new Data Collection Rules features are available

Azure Monitor introduces, for some months now, a new unified agent (Azure Monitor Agent – AMA) and a new concept to make data collection more efficient (Data Collection Rules – DCR).

Among the various key features added in this new agent we find:

  • Support for Azure Arc server(Windows and Linux) 
  • Virtual Machine Scale Set support (VMSS)
  • Installation via ARM template

With regard to the Data Collection, these innovations have been made:

  • Better control in defining the scope of data collection (e.g.. ability to collect from a subset of VMs for a single workspace)
  • Single collection and sending to both Log Analytics and Azure Monitor Metrics
  • Send to multiple workspaces (multi-homing for Linux)
  • Ability to better filter Windows events
  • Better extension management

All the preview features are ready to be used even in production environments, with the exception of the use of custom Azure Monitor Metrics (still in preview).

Collection of Syslog events from the Azure Monitor agent for Linux distro (preview)

Azure Monitor introduced a new concept for configuring data collection and a new unified agent for Azure Monitor. This new agent (AMA – Azure Monitor Agent) allows you to improve some key aspects of data collection from virtual machines, as reported in the previous paragraph. There was an issue on this front where Syslog data collection was not working as expected. This problem has been solved and the latest version of the agent includes support for the collection of Syslog events from Linux machines (using version 1.10 and later), available for all supported distributions.

Azure Monitor cost changes to achieve significant savings

Microsoft recently made several changes to Azure Monitor Log Analytics costs, which allow for significant savings, if important amounts of data are merged into the workspaces. It should be noted that a new naming has been introduced with regard to capacity reservations, which are now called “commitment tiers”. These changes have been made available since 2 June 2021:

  • New commitment tiers (higher). New engagement levels are introduced for Azure Sentinel and Azure Monitor Log Analytics for data ingestion: 1 TB/Day, 2 TB/Day, and 5 TB/Day.
  • Changes to the billing method for importing data that exceed the commitment tiers. Data imported beyond the commitment tiers will be billed using the actual commitment tiers rate, instead of the pay-as-you-go rate, with consequent cost reduction.
  • Simplification of commitment tiers: it is now possible to select from eight distinct commitment tiers and it is no longer necessary to manage tiers due to minor changes in the data ingestion. As part of this change, all workspaces with a commitment tier greater than 500 GB / day will be reset to the lowest available commitment tier: 500 GB / day, 1 TB / day, 2 TB / day or 5 TB / day.

Govern

Azure Policy

Changes in compliance for Resource Type Policies

Starting from 16 June 2021, the policies in which the resource type is the only evaluation criterion (e.g.. Allowed Resource Types, Disallowed Resource Types) they will have no resources “compliant” in compliance records. This means that if there are no non-compliant resources, the policy will show compliance with the 100%. If one or more non-compliant resources are present, the policy will show it 0% of compliance, with total resources equal to non-compliant resources. This change is to respond to feedback that resource type policies skew overall compliance rate data (which are calculated as compliant resources + exempt from total resources in all policies, deduplicated for unique resource IDs) due to a large number of total resources.

Azure Cost Management

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, including:

  • Display of amortized costs in the cost analysis preview.
  • Cloudyn is withdrawn from the 30 June.
  • News regarding Cost Management Labs.

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

TLS 1.2 enforcement per il MARS backup agent

Starting from September 1st 2020, Azure Backup will enforce the presence of the Transport Layer Security protocol (TLS) version 1.2 or later. To continue using Azure Backup, you need to make sure that all resources use the Microsoft Azure Recovery Services agent (MARS) updated to use TLS 1.2 or superior.

Cross Region Restore of SQL / SAP HANA running on VM in Azure

In Azure Backup, restore between different regions of Azure (Cross-Region Restore – CRR), available for virtual machines, has also been extended to support SQL and SAP HANA. Cross Region Restore allows customers to restore their data to secondary regions (paired region) at any time, essential in the event of the unavailability of the primary region. Geo-replicated backup data can then be used to restore SQL and SAP HANA databases running on Azure VMs to the “paired region” from Azure, during planned or unplanned incidents.

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. In particular, this month the main news concern:

  • Support for new geographies of the public cloud.
  • The ability to register servers running SQL Server, with SQL VM RP, to automatically install the IaaS SQL agent extension. This feature is available for VMware (without agent), Hyper-V (without agent) and agent-based migrations.
  • Evaluation via CSV file import supports up to 20 disks. Previously, there was a limit of eight disks per server.

Support for Azure private links

Private Link support allows you to connect to the Azure Migrate service privately and securely via ExpressRoute or via a site-to-site VPN. Thanks to this method of connectivity, the instrumentsAzure Migrate: Discovery and Assessment andAzure Migrate: Server Migration, they can be used by connecting privately and securely. This method is recommended to use when there is an organizational requirement to access the Azure Migrate service and other Azure resources without crossing public networks or if you want to get better results in terms of bandwidth or latency.

Evaluation of Azure

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

Azure Management services: What's new in June 2021

In June have been announced, by Microsoft, a considerable number of news regarding Azure management services. Through these articles released monthly we want to provide an overall overview of the main news, 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

The new Azure Monitor agent and new Data Collection Rules features are available

Azure Monitor introduces, for some months now, a new unified agent (Azure Monitor Agent – AMA) and a new concept to make data collection more efficient (Data Collection Rules – DCR).

Among the various key features added in this new agent we find:

  • Support for Azure Arc server(Windows and Linux) 
  • Virtual Machine Scale Set support (VMSS)
  • Installation via ARM template

With regard to the Data Collection, these innovations have been made:

  • Better control in defining the scope of data collection (e.g.. ability to collect from a subset of VMs for a single workspace)
  • Single collection and sending to both Log Analytics and Azure Monitor Metrics
  • Send to multiple workspaces (multi-homing for Linux)
  • Ability to better filter Windows events
  • Better extension management

All the preview features are ready to be used even in production environments, with the exception of the use of custom Azure Monitor Metrics (still in preview).

Collection of Syslog events from the Azure Monitor agent for Linux distro (preview)

Azure Monitor introduced a new concept for configuring data collection and a new unified agent for Azure Monitor. This new agent (AMA – Azure Monitor Agent) allows you to improve some key aspects of data collection from virtual machines, as reported in the previous paragraph. There was an issue on this front where Syslog data collection was not working as expected. This problem has been solved and the latest version of the agent includes support for the collection of Syslog events from Linux machines (using version 1.10 and later), available for all supported distributions.

Azure Monitor cost changes to achieve significant savings

Microsoft recently made several changes to Azure Monitor Log Analytics costs, which allow for significant savings, if important amounts of data are merged into the workspaces. It should be noted that a new naming has been introduced with regard to capacity reservations, which are now called “commitment tiers”. These changes have been made available since 2 June 2021:

  • New commitment tiers (higher). New engagement levels are introduced for Azure Sentinel and Azure Monitor Log Analytics for data ingestion: 1 TB/Day, 2 TB/Day, and 5 TB/Day.
  • Changes to the billing method for importing data that exceed the commitment tiers. Data imported beyond the commitment tiers will be billed using the actual commitment tiers rate, instead of the pay-as-you-go rate, with consequent cost reduction.
  • Simplification of commitment tiers: it is now possible to select from eight distinct commitment tiers and it is no longer necessary to manage tiers due to minor changes in the data ingestion. As part of this change, all workspaces with a commitment tier greater than 500 GB / day will be reset to the lowest available commitment tier: 500 GB / day, 1 TB / day, 2 TB / day or 5 TB / day.

Govern

Azure Policy

Changes in compliance for Resource Type Policies

Starting from 16 June 2021, the policies in which the resource type is the only evaluation criterion (e.g.. Allowed Resource Types, Disallowed Resource Types) they will have no resources “compliant” in compliance records. This means that if there are no non-compliant resources, the policy will show compliance with the 100%. If one or more non-compliant resources are present, the policy will show it 0% of compliance, with total resources equal to non-compliant resources. This change is to respond to feedback that resource type policies skew overall compliance rate data (which are calculated as compliant resources + exempt from total resources in all policies, deduplicated for unique resource IDs) due to a large number of total resources.

Azure Cost Management

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, including:

  • Display of amortized costs in the cost analysis preview.
  • Cloudyn is withdrawn from the 30 June.
  • News regarding Cost Management Labs.

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

TLS 1.2 enforcement per il MARS backup agent

Starting from September 1st 2020, Azure Backup will enforce the presence of the Transport Layer Security protocol (TLS) version 1.2 or later. To continue using Azure Backup, you need to make sure that all resources use the Microsoft Azure Recovery Services agent (MARS) updated to use TLS 1.2 or superior.

Cross Region Restore of SQL / SAP HANA running on VM in Azure

In Azure Backup, restore between different regions of Azure (Cross-Region Restore – CRR), available for virtual machines, has also been extended to support SQL and SAP HANA. Cross Region Restore allows customers to restore their data to secondary regions (paired region) at any time, essential in the event of the unavailability of the primary region. Geo-replicated backup data can then be used to restore SQL and SAP HANA databases running on Azure VMs to the “paired region” from Azure, during planned or unplanned incidents.

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. In particular, this month the main news concern:

  • Support for new geographies of the public cloud.
  • The ability to register servers running SQL Server, with SQL VM RP, to automatically install the IaaS SQL agent extension. This feature is available for VMware (without agent), Hyper-V (without agent) and agent-based migrations.
  • Evaluation via CSV file import supports up to 20 disks. Previously, there was a limit of eight disks per server.

Support for Azure private links

Private Link support allows you to connect to the Azure Migrate service privately and securely via ExpressRoute or via a site-to-site VPN. Thanks to this method of connectivity, the instrumentsAzure Migrate: Discovery and Assessment andAzure Migrate: Server Migration, they can be used by connecting privately and securely. This method is recommended to use when there is an organizational requirement to access the Azure Migrate service and other Azure resources without crossing public networks or if you want to get better results in terms of bandwidth or latency.

Evaluation of Azure

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

Azure Arc for the management of server systems: benefits and usage scenarios

Heterogeneous infrastructures, applications based on different technologies and solutions located on different public clouds are increasingly common elements in corporate IT environments. These complexities, combined with a continuous evolution of their datacenters bring out more and more the need to visualize, govern and protect IT assets, regardless of where they are running. In Microsoft, this customer need was addressed by designing a solution that allows you to manage complex realities, also offering the possibility of bringing cloud innovation even using existing infrastructures: this solution is called Azure Arc. In particular, Azure Arc for servers extends the possibilities offered by Azure in governance and management also to physical machines and virtual systems that reside in environments other than Azure. In this article we will explore the main benefits and implementation scenarios that can be contemplated by adopting Azure Arc in the management of server systems.

Enabling Azure Arc servers allows you to manage physical servers and virtual machines residing outside Azure, on the on-premises corporate network or at other cloud providers. This management experience, valid for both Windows and Linux systems, is designed to provide consistency with the management methodologies of native virtual machines residing in the Azure environment. In fact, connecting a machine to Azure through Arc is considered in all respects as an Azure resource. Each connected machine has a specific ID, it is included in a resource group and benefits from standard Azure constructs.

Figure 1 – Azure Arc Management Overview

Main usage scenarios

The projection of server resources in Azure using Arc is a useful step to take advantage of the management and monitoring solutions described below.

Visibility and organization

In hybrid and multicloud environments, it can be particularly challenging to get a centralized view of all available resources. Some of these resources are running on Azure, some in a local environment, at branch offices or other cloud providers. By connecting resources to Azure Resource Manager via Azure Arc, it is possible to organize, centrally inventory and manage a wide range of resources, include Windows and Linux servers, server SQL, Kubernetes clusters and Azure services running in Azure and outside Azure. This visibility can be obtained directly from the Azure portal and specific queries can be performed using Azure Resource Graph.

Figure 2 - Azure Arc and resources in the Azure portal

Access management

With Azure Arc for servers it is possible to provide access to systems through Azure role-based access control (Azure RBAC). Furthermore, in the presence of different environments and tenants, Azure Arc also integrates with Azure Lighthouse. This scenario can be of particular interest to providers that offer managed services to multiple customers.

Monitor

Through VM Insights it is possible to consult the main performance data, from the guest operating system. Thanks to the powerful data aggregation and filtering functions, it is possible to easily monitor the performance for a very large number of systems and easily identify those that have performance problems. Furthermore, it is possible to generate a map with the interconnections present between the various components residing on different systems. Maps show how VMs and processes interact with each other and can identify dependencies on third-party services. The solution also allows you to check for connection errors, count connections in real time, network bytes sent and received by processes and latencies encountered at the service level.

Figure 3 – Monitoring: Performance

Figure 4 – Monitoring: Map

Azure Policy guest configurations

Guest Configuration Policies allow you to control settings within a system, both for virtual machines running in Azure environment and for "Arc Connected" machines. Validation is performed by the client and by the Guest Configuration extension as regards:

  • Operating system configuration
  • Configuration or presence of applications
  • Environment settings

At the moment, most of the Azure Guest Configuration Policies only allow you to make checks on the settings inside the machine, but they don't apply configurations. For more information on this scenario, you can consult the article Azure Governance: how to control system configurations in hybrid and multicloud environments.

Inventory

This feature allows you to retrieve inventory information relating to: installed software, files, Registry keys in a Windows environment, Windows Services and Linux Daemons. All this can easily be accessed directly from the portal Azure.

Change Tracking

The functionality ofChange Tracking monitors changes made to systems relatively to Daemons, File, Registry, software and services on Windows . This feature can be very useful in particular for diagnosing specific problems and for enabling alerts in the face of unexpected changes.

Figure 5 – Change Tracking e Inventory

Update Management

The solution ofUpdate Management allows you to have an overall visibility on the compliance of updates for both Windows and Linux systems. The solution is not only useful for consultation purposes, but it also allows you to schedule deployments for installing updates within specific maintenance windows.

Figure 6 – Update Management

Azure Defender
The projection of server resources in Azure using Arc is a useful step to ensure that all the machines in the infrastructure are protected by Azure Defender for Server. Similar to an Azure VM, it will also be necessary to deploy the Log Analytics agent on the target system. To simplify the onboarding process this agent is deployed using the VM extension, and this is one of the advantages of using Arc.

Once the Log Analytics agent has been installed and connected to a workspace used by ASC, the machine will be ready to use and benefit from the various security features offered in the Azure Defender for Servers plan.

Deployment Tools

Deployments can be simplified thanks to the use of Azure Automation State Configuration and of Azure VM extensions. This allows you to contemplate post-deployment configurations or software installation using the Custom Script Extension.

Conclusions

Maintain control and manage the security of workloads running on-premises, in Azure and on other cloud platforms it can be particularly challenging. Thanks to Azure Arc for Servers it is possible to easily extend the typical Azure management and monitoring services to workloads residing outside the Azure environment. Furthermore, Azure Arc allows you to obtain detailed information and organize various IT resources in a single centralized console, useful for effectively managing and controlling your entire IT environment.

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (June2021 – Weeks: 23 and 24)

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

Confidential Computing price reduction on DCsv2 virtual machines

DCsv2-series protects the confidentiality and integrity of your data and code while it’s processed in the public cloud. Microsoft is announcing a price reduction on DCsv2-series Azure Virtual Machines by 37%. The new pricing is effective June 1st, 2021, and applies to all the regions where DCsv2-series is available.

New datacenter region in Arizona

Microsoft is launching a new sustainable datacenter region in Arizona, known as “West US 3.” For more details you can read “Expanding cloud services: Microsoft launches its sustainable datacenter region in Arizona“.

Azure Virtual Machines DCsv2-series are available in Australia

Confidential computing DCsv2-series virtual machines (VMs) are now available in Australia East, Austria Southeast will launch in the coming weeks to provide disaster recovery capabilities.

Storage

Azure Blob index tags

Prior to index tags, solutions that required the ability to quickly find specific objects in a blob container would need to keep a secondary catalog. Blob index tags provides a built in capability to add tags and then quickly query for or filter using this information. This provides a simpler solution without requiring a separate query system. This includes the ability to set index tags both upon upload or after upload. You can utilize these indexes as part of lifecycle management that automates deletion and movement between tiers.

Networking

New Azure private MEC solution announced

An evolution of Private Edge Zones, Azure private multi-access edge compute (MEC) expands the scope of possibilities from a single platform and service to a combination of edge compute, multi-access networking stacks, and the application services that run together at the edge. These capabilities help simplify integration complexity and securely manage services from the cloud for high-performance networking and applications.

In addition to the Azure private MEC solution, we are announcing the following Microsoft and partner services and solutions:

  • New Azure Network Function Manager (public preview) service
  • Metaswitch Fusion Core third-party services on Azure Stack Edge
  • Affirmed Private Network Service third-party service on Azure Stage Edge
  • New Azure Marketplace solutions from our partners’

Default Rule Set 2.0 for Azure Web Application Firewall (preview)

The Default Rule Set 2.0 (DRS 2.0) for Azure Web Application Firewall (WAF) deployments running on Azure Front Door is in preview. This rule set is only available on the Azure Front Door Premium SKU. DRS 2.0 includes the latest changes to our rule set, including the addition of anomaly scoring. With anomaly scoring, incoming requests are assigned an anomaly score when they violate WAF rules and an action is taken only when they breach an anomaly threshold. This helps drastically reduce false positives for customer applications. Also included in DRS2.0 are rules powered by Microsoft Threat Intelligence which offer increased coverage and patches for specific vulnerabilities.

Azure Stack HCI: the constantly evolving hyper-converged solution – June edition 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. Recently Microsoft has brought a series of new features that open up new scenarios in the adoption of this solution and that allow you to better manage your hybrid infrastructure based on Azure Stack HCI. This article reports the main aspects that have undergone an evolution and the new features recently introduced in Azure Stack HCI.

Azure Kubernetes Service in Azure Stack HCI

One of the main new features is the ability to activate Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) in Azure Stack HCI. This new on-premises AKS implementation scenario allows you to automate the large-scale execution of modern applications based on micro-services. Thanks to Azure Stack HCI, the adoption of these container-based application architectures can be hosted directly in your own datacenter, adopting the same Kubernetes management experience that you have with the managed service present in the Azure public cloud.

Figure 1 - AKS overview on Azure Stack HCI

Azure Monitor Insights for Azure Stack HCI (preview)

The solution Azure Stack HCI Insights is able to provide detailed information on integrity, on the performance and usage of Azure Stack HCI clusters, version 21H2 connected to Azure and registered for related monitoring. Azure Stack HCI Insights stores its data in a Log Analytics workspace, thus having the possibility to use powerful aggregations and filters to better analyze the data collected over time. There are no specific costs for using Azure Stack HCI Insights, but the cost is calculated based on the amount of data entered in the Log Analytics workspace and the related data retention settings.

You have the option of viewing the monitor data of a single cluster from the Azure Stack HCI resource page or you can use Azure Monitor to obtain an aggregate view of multiple Azure Stack HCI clusters with an overview of the health of the cluster, the state of nodes and virtual machines (CPU, memory and storage consumption), performance metrics and more. This is the same data also provided by Windows Admin Center, but designed to scale up to 500 cluster at the same time.

Figure 2 - Azure Monitor Insights control panel for Azure Stack HCI

Simplification of networking with Network ATC (preview)

Azure Stack HCI networking deployments and operations can be complex and error-prone. Due to the flexibility that is provided in the configuration of the network stack of the hosts that make up the Azure Stack HCI cluster, there are several parts that can be configured not in the best way. Staying up to date with the latest best practices is also a challenge as improvements are continually made to underlying technologies. Furthermore, consistency of the configuration between the nodes of the HCI cluster is an important aspect as it allows for a stable and more reliable environment.

Network ATC makes it easy to create and manage network configuration for Azure Stack HCI nodes, helping to:

  • Reduce the time, the complexity and failures of cluster host networking implementation
  • Deploy the latest best practices validated and supported by Microsoft
  • Ensure configuration consistency across the cluster environment

Automatic activation of Windows virtual machines

Starting with the cumulative update of June 2021, Azure Stack HCI will support the popular automatic virtual machine activation feature (Automatic VM Activation – AVMA) of Hyper-V for Windows Server. Customers who have an activation key of Windows Server 2019 Datacenter Edition can insert them directly into the Azure Stack HCI host using Windows Admin Center or PowerShell. In this way. virtual machines hosted in a clustered environment running Windows Server will automatically inherit activation from the host, without having to manage it for each virtual machine.

Figure 3 – Automatic VM Activation (AVMA) from Windows Admin Center

Trial Period Extension a 60 days

Azure Stack HCI offers a free trial period that allows you to thoroughly evaluate the solution. The duration of this test is extended by 30 days to 60 days and will start from when the registration of the cluster environment is completed. These changes have been applied to all tests since 3 may 2021.

Preview channel

Starting with the cumulative update of June 2021, you have the option of joining the Preview channel with non-production cluster environments, similar to the Windows Insider program but for Azure Stack HCI. It is a program that allows customers to install the next version of the operating system before the official release (build pre-release). This allows you to evaluate the new Azure Stack HCI features and is for evaluation and testing purposes only. Joining this program does not include any cost for Azure Stack HCI and the cluster environment will not have any type of support. The Preview channel will allow you to share feedback on the experience of participating in the channel, useful for enriching and improving the adoption of Azure Stack HCI.

Figure 4 - Join the Preview channel from Windows Admin Center

Availability in China

The Azure Stack HCI team is working to make its service available in other regions and now it is possible to activate it also in Azure China. In fact, you can download Azure Stack HCI from azure.cn, register your cluster in the region China East 2 and take advantage of the advantages of the solution. Integrated systems for Azure Stack HCI are available in China for different vendors, from Lenovo and Dell, as well as from regional partners, ensuring a strong local presence able to provide the best technical advice and the necessary support.

Conclusions

This set of new features introduced demonstrates a major investment by Microsoft in the Azure Stack HCI solution. 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 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.