Category Archives: Microsoft Azure

Data encryption in Azure

One of the areas related to the improvement of Security Posture of the corporate information system is certainly encryption, through the adoption of specific techniques, that makes the data readable only to those who have the solution to decrypt it. This article provides an overview of how encryption is used in Azure and provides references to further studies.

To protect your data in the cloud, you must first consider the possible states in which the data can be located and evaluate the related controls that can be implemented. Best practices for data security and encryption, particularly in Azure, concern the following states:

  • At rest: includes all information that statically resides on physical storage media, both magnetic and optical.
  • In transit: when data is transferred between components, locations or services, are defined in transit. For example,, transferring data across the network, service bus or during processes of input / output.

Encryption at Rest

Encryption at Rest is a highly recommended technique and is a priority requirement for many organizations to comply with data governance and compliance policies. Different industry-specific and government-specific regulations, require the presence of data protection and encryption measures. Encryption at Rest encrypts the data when it is persistent and is used, in addition to meeting compliance and regulatory requirements, also to have a high level of protection for data. The Azure platform natively involves the adoption of advanced physical security mechanisms, data access control and auditing. However, It is important to take overlapping security measures to deal with potential bankruptcies, and encryption at Rest is a great way to ensure confidentiality, compliance and data sovereignty.

Server-Side Data Encryption Models

Server-side data encryption models refer to encryption performed by Azure services. In this model, it is the Azure Resource Provider that performs encryption and decryption. There are several Encryption at Rest templates at Server Side available in Azure, each of which has different characteristics in key management, these can be applied to different Azure resources:

  • Server-Side Encryption using Service-Managed Keys. In this scenario, the encryption keys are managed by Microsoft and proves to be a good combination of control and convenience.
  • Server-side encryption using customer-managed keys in Azure Key Vault. In this mode, the encryption keys are controlled by the customer through Azure Key Vault, and includes support for using your keys (BYOK).
  • Server-side encryption that uses customer-managed keys on customer-controlled hardware. This methodology allows the customer to check the keys that reside on a repository controlled by the customer, outside of Microsoft's control. This feature is called Host Your Own Key (HYOK). However, configuration is articulated and most Azure services do not support this model at this time.

Figure 1 – Server-side encryption model

Client-side data encryption models

The client-side data encryption model refers to encryption performed outside Azure and is performed directly by the calling service or application. When you use this encryption model, the Resource Provider in Azure receives encrypted data without the ability to decrypt it or access the encryption keys. In this model, key management is performed by the calling service or application and is obscure for the Azure service.

Figure 2 – Client-side encryption model

Encryption at Rest for top Azure services

Azure Storage

Azure Storage provides on automatically encrypts the data when they are made persistent in the cloud environment. In fact,, all Azure Storage services (Blob storage, Queue storage, Table storage, and Azure Files) support server side encryption of data at rest and some of them also support encryption client-side of data and encryption keys managed by the customer.

  • Server-side: all default Azure storage services have enabled by default the server-side encryption using keys managed by the service. For Azure Blob storage and Azure Files is also supported using encryption keys managed by the customer in Azure Key Vault. The technology used is called Azure Storage Service Encryption, in automatically able to encrypt the data before being stored and decode them when they are accessed. This process is completely transparent to the user and involves the use of AES encryption 256 bit, one of the most powerful block ciphers currently available. Azure Storage encryption is similar to BitLocker encryption in a Windows environment. Azure Storage encryption is enabled by default for all new storage accounts and cannot be disabled. Storage accounts are encrypted regardless of performance level (standard or premium) or from the deployment model (Azure Resource Manager or classic). All redundancy options provided for storage accounts support encryption and all copies of a storage account are always encrypted. Encryption does not affect the performance of storage accounts and there is no additional cost.
  • Client-side: this encryption is currently supported by Azure Blobs, Tables, and Queues. When used the data is encrypted by the customer managing their keys and is uploaded as an encrypted blob.

Virtual Machines

All Managed Disks, Snapshots and virtual machine images in Azure are encrypted using Storage Service Encryption via keys managed by the service. When processing data on a virtual machine, data can be kept in the Windows paging file or in the Linux swap file, in a crash dump or an application log. Therefore, to obtain a solution of Encryption at Rest more complete on IaaS virtual machines and virtual disks, which ensures that data is never kept in an unencrypted form, you need to use Azure Disk Encryption . This feature helps you protect Windows virtual machines, using the technology Windows BitLocker, and Linux virtual machines through DM-Crypt. Relying on Azure Disk Encryption you get a full protection of the operating system disks and data volumes. The Encryption keys and the secrets are protected within their own Azure Key Vault. Encrypted virtual machine protection is supported by the Azure Backup service. For more information about Azure Disk Encryption you can see the Microsoft's official documentation.

Azure SQL Database

Azure SQL Database currently supports encryption at rest in the following ways:

  • Server-side: server-side encryption is guaranteed through a SQL feature named Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) and it can be activated either at the database server level. Starting in June 2017 this feature is on by default for all new database. TDE protects SQL data and log files, using AES encryption algorithms and Triple Data Encryption Standard (3DES). Database files are encrypted at the page level, they are encrypted before being written to disk and de-encrypted when read into memory.
  • Client-side: client-side encryption of data to SQL Azure Database is supported through the functionality Always Encrypted, that uses keys that are generated and stored on the client side. By adopting this technology it is possible to encrypt data within the client applications before storing in the Azure SQL database.

As with Azure Storage and Azure SQL Database, also for many other Azure services (Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Data Lake, etc.) the data encryption at rest occurs by default, but for other services it can be optionally activated.

Encryption in Transit in Azure

The protection of data in transit must be an essential element to be considered in your data protection strategy. It is generally recommended to protect the movement and exchange of data always using SSL protocols / TLS. Under certain circumstances, it may be appropriate to isolate the entire channel of communication between the on-premises environment and the cloud using a VPN. Microsoft uses the TLS protocol (Transport Layer Security) to protect data when traveling between cloud services and customers. In fact,, a TLS connection is negotiated between the Microsoft datacenter and client systems that connect to the Azure Services. The TLS protocol provides strong authentication, privacy and message integrity (allows detection of tampering, interception and message forgery).

Conclusions

The issue of protection through encryption of the data stored in Azure environment is seen as very important for those who decide to rely on the services in the cloud. Knowing that all Azure services provide encryption at rest options and that basic services encryption is enabled by default, is certainly very comforting. Some services also support the control of the encryption keys from the customer and the client side encryption to provide a greater level of control and flexibility. Microsoft is constantly improving its services to ensure greater control of the encryption at rest options and aims to enable encryption at rest as the default for all customer data.

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (December 2019 – 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

Azure Dedicated Hosts now generally available

Azure Dedicated Host provides a single-tenant physical server to host your Azure virtual machines for Windows and Linux. The server capacity is not shared with other customers. As a result, you can run general purpose, memory intensive or compute intensive workloads in a hardware-isolated and virtualized server environment dedicated to your organization. With Azure Dedicated Host, you can address specific compliance requirements while increasing visibility and control over your underlying infrastructure.

General Availability of Proximity Placement Groups

Azure proximity placement groups, now in General Availability,  enable customers to achieve co-location of Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) resources with low network latency.

Azure Spot VMs in Preview

Azure Spot VMs let you access unused Azure compute capacity at deep discounts compared to pay-as-you-go VM prices. Spot VMs are ideal for workloads that can be interrupted, providing scalability while reducing costs. You get unique Azure pricing and benefits when running Windows Server workloads on Spot VMs.
You can take advantage of Spot VM pricing for Azure VMs or VM scale sets (VMSS). Select the right deployment model based on your preferences and the characteristics of your application. Like their low-priority VMs predecessors, Spot VMs are engineered to run workloads that don’t need to be completed within a specific timeframe.

New bot protection rule in preview for Web Application Firewall with Azure Front Door service

A new bot protection ruleset is in preview for Azure Web Application Firewall with Azure Front Door service. Adding to this updated ruleset are three bot categories: good, bad, and unknown. There are multiple bot groups within each category. Bot signatures are managed and dynamically updated by Web Application Firewall service. The default action for bad bot groups is set to Block, for the verified search engine crawlers group it’s set to Allow, and for the unknown bot category it’s set to Log. Customers may overwrite the default action with Allow, Block, Log, or Redirect for any type of bot groups. 

Maintenance control for platform updates in preview

The preview of a maintenance control feature for Azure Virtual Machines gives more control to customers with highly sensitive workloads for platform maintenance, running on an Azure Dedicated Host or an Isolated VM, where the underlying physical server runs a single customer’s workload. This feature is not supported for VMs deployed in hosts shared with other customers. Using this feature, customers can control all impactful host updates, including rebootless updates, for up to 35 days.

Azure Private Link support in AKS is in preview

AKS now supports Azure Private Link in public preview. With Azure Private Link in AKS, customers can interact with the Kubernetes API server as a private endpoint in their virtual network, ensuring that all Kubernetes management operations remain completely isolated. Because Private Link provides private connectivity from the customer’s virtual network to the Azure-managed Kubernetes control plane, customers can still get all the benefits of AKS but in an even more secure configuration.

Application Gateway Ingress Controller for Azure Kubernetes Service

A new solution to bind Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and Application Gateway. This new solution provides an open source Application Gateway Ingress Controller (AGIC) for Kubernetes, which makes it possible for AKS customers to leverage Application Gateway to expose their cloud software to the Internet. Bringing together the benefits of the Azure Kubernetes Service, our managed Kubernetes service, which makes it easy to operate advanced Kubernetes environments and Azure Application Gateway, our native, scalable, and highly available, L7 load balancer has been highly requested by our customers.

HC-Series VMs are now available in South Central US

HC-Series Hi Performance Computing VMs now available in South Central US

Azure Cost Management updates

New updates to Azure Cost Management help you manage costs for cloud solution provider (CSP) subscriptions, build better dashboards by customizing tile names, save money with Azure reservations for 16 different services, along with additional enhancements.

Azure Migrate: Agentless dependency analysis is now available in preview

Azure Migrate now supports agentless dependency analysis in a limited preview. The dependency data is discovered remotely by the Azure Migrate appliance without the installation of any agent or script on virtual machines. This feature is currently available only for VMware servers.

Microsoft plans to establish new cloud datacenter region in Qatar

Microsoft recently announced plans to establish a new cloud datacenter region in Qatar to deliver its intelligent, trusted cloud services and expand the Microsoft global cloud infrastructure to 55 cloud regions in 20 countries. he new region is anticipated to be available starting with Microsoft Azure in 2021, and Office 365, Dynamics 365 and Power Platform to follow.

Azure File Sync agent v9.1

Improvements and issues that are fixed:

  • Self-service restore support: users can now restore their files by using the previous version feature. Prior to the v9 release, the previous version feature was not supported on volumes that had cloud tiering enabled. This feature must be enabled for each volume separately, on which an endpoint with cloud tiering enabled exists. 
  • Support for larger file share sizes: Azure File Sync now supports up to 64TiB and 100 million files in a single, syncing namespace.
  • Data Deduplication support on Server 2019: Data Deduplication is now supported with cloud tiering enabled on Windows Server 2019. To support Data Deduplication on volumes with cloud tiering, Windows update KB4520062 must be installed.
  • Improved minimum file size for a file to tier: The minimum file size for a file to tier is now based on the file system cluster size (double the file system cluster size). For example, by default, the NTFS file system cluster size is 4KB, the resulting minimum file size for a file to tier is 8KB.
  • Network connectivity test cmdlet: As part of Azure File Sync configuration, multiple service endpoints must be contacted. They each have their own DNS name that needs to be accessible to the server. These URLs are also specific to the region a server is registered to. Once a server is registered, the connectivity test cmdlet (PowerShell and Server Registration Utility) can be used to test communications with all URLs specific to this server. This cmdlet can help troubleshoot when incomplete communication prevents the server from fully working with Azure File Sync and it can be used to fine tune proxy and firewall configurations.
    • To run the network connectivity test, run the following PowerShell commands:
      • Import-Module “<SyncAgentInstallPath>\StorageSync.Management.ServerCmdlets.dll”
      • Test-StorageSyncNetworkConnectivity
  • Remove server endpoint improvement when cloud tiering is enabled: As before, removing a server endpoint does not result in removing files in the Azure file share. However, behavior for reparse points on the local server has changed. Reparse points (pointers to files that are not local on the server) are now deleted when removing a server endpoint. The fully cached files will remain on the server. This improvement was made to prevent orphaned tiered files when removing a server endpoint. If the server endpoint is recreated, the reparse points for the tiered files will be recreated on the server.
  • Performance and reliability improvements
    • Reduced recall failures. Recall size is now automatically adjusted based on network bandwidth.
    • Improved download performance when adding a new server to a sync group.
    • Reduced files not syncing due to constraint conflicts.

Installation instructions are documented in KB4522360.

Azure Stack

Microsoft has validated the Lenovo ThinkSystem SE350 edge server for Azure Stack HCI

Microsoft and Lenovo have teamed up to validate the Lenovo ThinkSystem SE350 for Microsoft’s Azure Stack HCI program. The ThinkSystem SE350 was designed and built with the unique requirements of edge servers in mind. It is versatile enough to stretch the limitations of server locations, providing a variety of connectivity and security options and can be easily managed with Lenovo XClarity Controller. The ThinkSystem SE350 solution has a focus on smart connectivity, business security, and manageability for the harsh environment.

Azure Networking: managing micro-perimeters with Azure Firewall Manager

Microsoft's public cloud introduces the new management service Azure Firewall Manager that allows you to centrally manage security policies and routing rules. With this solution, you can better govern the security perimeters of your cloud environments and help you protect your business ecosystem. This article lists the key features of the new service, highlighting the benefits that can be gained by using it.

The security model, defined Zero trust by Forrester Research analysts, and in contrast with the conventional models based on perimeter security, directs us to adopt an approach related to micro-segmentation and the definition of granular perimeters in its network architecture. To facilitate this approach, Microsoft has released this tool that, providing a single centralized control panel, is able to simplify the configuration and management of network security policies, which often need to be deployed across multiple Azure Firewall instances.

Azure Firewall Manager at the moment is integrated with Azure Virtual WAN, the service that allows you to implement network architectures that are managed according to the hub and spoke model. Azure Firewall can now be enabled in Virtual WAN Hub networks, and when security and routing policies are associated by Azure Firewall Manager the Hub network is defined as a Secured Virtual Hub.

Figure 1 – Overview of Azure Firewall Manager

Adopting Azure Firewall Manager you can get the following benefits:

  • Centralized configurations and deployments: deploying and configuring multiple instances of Azure Firewall, in Virtual WAN Hub networks, can be done centrally. These Azure Firewall instances can reside in different Azure regions and on different subscriptions. Furthermore, you can organize a hierarchy of DevOps-optimized Azure Firewall policies, where Global firewall policies are managed by central IT and local policy firewalls are delegated to DevOps to promote better agility in processes.
  • Automated routing: comes the ability to easily route traffic in a centralized manner from the spoke networks to the Secure Virtual Hub, all without having to manipulate the User Defined Routes of spoke networks.
  • Integration with Partners Security as a Service (SECaaS) of third party: to further enhance the security features it can be integrated with SECaaS partners, today Zscaler and iBoss, but soon it will be possible even with CheckPoint.

Figure 2 – Central security e route policy management

In detail the steps to adopt the solution are as follows:

  1. Creating the hub-and-spoke network architecture, using the Azure Virtual WAN service and activating an Azure Firewall instance in the Hub network. To do this, you can do by using two separate modes:
    1. Creating a new one Secured Virtual Hub by Azure Firewall Manager and adding virtual network connections;
    2. Transforming an existing Virtual WAN Hub, activating the Azure Firewall service on the Hub network.

Figure 3 – Start the process using Azure Firewall Manager

  1. Selecting security providers (Optional). This can be done either during the process of creating a Secure Virtual Hub or during the conversion of a Virtual WAN Hub in a Secure Virtual Hub.

Figure 4 – Choosing the Trusted Security Partner

  1. Creating a firewall policy and association with the Network Hub. This is only possible for Azure Firewall Policies, while for Security as a Service solutions policies (SECaaS) provided by partners, you need to use their management tools.
  1. Configuring routing settings on the Secured Hub to attract the traffic of the spoke networks and make it filtered according to the defined policies.

At the moment Azure Firewall Manager is supported only for managing Hub and Spoke architectures created through the Azure Virtual WAN service. Support for managing Azure Firewall instances enabled in Virtual Networks is expected in the first half of next year.

Conclusions

Azure Firewall Manager is a tool that is very useful for managing complex environments composed of different network architectures that adopt the Hub and Spoke model over Azure Virtual WAN. This additional management service despite the dawn, and destined to get rich soon with new features, is essential to manage more easily and effectively the Azure network architecture. At the moment the service is Public Preview, so are not guaranteed SLA (Service-Level Agreements) and it should not be used in production environments.

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (December 2019 – Weeks: 47 and 48)

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

Microsoft cloud in Norway opens with availability of Microsoft Azure

Microsoft announces the availability of Microsoft Azure from the new cloud datacenter regions in Norway, marking a major milestone as the first global cloud provider to deliver enterprise-grade services in country. The new cloud regions in Norway are targeted to expand in 2020 with Office 365, one of the world’s leading cloud-based productivity solutions, and Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, the next generation of intelligent business applications and tools.

Azure Migrate now supports assessment of physical servers

Support to assess physical servers is now available in Azure preview, in addition to existing support for VMware and Hyper-V servers. The appliance for physical servers can be installed on an existing Windows server. This feature can be used to assess virtual machines where there is no access to the hypervisor, as well as virtual machines on any cloud.

Azure Migrate: assessment of imported servers is supported in preview

Azure Migrate now supports the assessment of server inventories imported using a CSV file. Import the servers into Azure Migrate server assessment by adding server details in a CSV file as per the available template, deploying an appliance isn’t required. This is useful if you’re looking for a quick assessment using CMDB inventory or if you’re waiting for approvals to deploy the Azure Migrate appliance. Performance-based assessments can be run as well by specifying utilization values in the CSV.

Azure DevTest Labs: Azure managed identities to deploy lab environments

Azure managed identities to deploy lab environments As a lab owner, you can now use a user assigned managed identity to deploy environments in a lab. This feature is helpful in scenarios where the environment contains or has references to Azure resources such as key vaults, shared image galleries, and networks that are external to the environment’s resource group. It enables creation of sandbox environments that aren’t limited to the resource group of that environment only.

Azure DevTest Labs: New Dashboard with Cost Estimator

Azure Lab Services added a dashboard view enabling instructors to view the summary of the lab. On the dashboard, you will be able to see cost estimate for the lab based on size of the virtual machine picked, number of students, quota hours and scheduled hours.

HPC Specialized VMs (GPU) – NVv4-Series in preview

NVv4 offers unprecedented GPU resourcing flexibility, giving customers more choice than ever before. Customers can select from VMs with a whole GPU all the way down to 1/8th of a GPU. This makes entry-level and low-intensity GPU workloads more cost-effective than ever before, while still giving customers the option to scale up to powerful full-GPU processing power. NVv4 Virtual Machines support up to 32 vCPUs, 112GB of RAM, and 16 GB of GPU memory.

Kubernetes cluster health with Azure Monitor for containers

Azure Monitor for containers can now monitor and report health status of Kubernetes cluster infrastructure components and all nodes running on any Kubernetes cluster.

Azure private endpoint support for Azure Cosmos DB in preview

Azure private endpoint for Azure Cosmos DB is a network interface that connects you privately and securely to a service powered by Azure Private Link. Private Endpoint uses a private IP address from your virtual network, effectively bringing the service into your virtual network.

Azure management services and System Center: What's New in November 2019

In November, accomplice also the Microsoft Ignite conference 2019, Microsoft has unveiled a number of new features regarding Azure management services and System Center. Our community, through these articles that are released on a monthly basis, want to provide an 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.

Azure Log Analytics

New version of the agent for Linux systems

This month, the new version of the Log Analytics agent for Linux systems introduces improvements regarding the installation process, performance and resolution of issues in the use of custom logs. For more information about this, you can access theGitHub official page.

Azure Site Recovery

New Update Rollup

For Azure Site Recovery was released theUpdate Rollup 42 that solves several issues and introduces some improvements. The details and the procedure to follow for the installation can be found in the specific KB.

Improvements in resource clean-up

In Azure Site Recovery, the replication scenario of VMs between different Azure regions, the improvements were introduced regarding the clean up of the virtual machines and the related deallocated NIC (failed back), when the primary site is restored as a result of a failback process. In this way are easier the necessary operations to rehabilitate the protection. Furthermore, if you disable replication after a failback, Site Recovery also cleans up disks in the secondary region, as well as the VMs and their NIC.

Azure Backup

New features to protect SQL Server

In Azure backup the following new features regarding SQL Server protection was made available:

  • Native Protection of SQL Server 2019 on virtual machines Windows Server 2019 in Azure.
  • Protection of SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 for systems migrated to Azure.
  • Ability to make “Restore as Files”, that enables you to recover protected data as files .bak. This feature allows you to move files anywhere (different subscriptions, regions and on-premises) introducing more flexibility in performing restore operations.

SAP HANA backup

In Azure Backup, SAP HANA DB protection on virtual machines is available in the UK South region, all in an integrated way and without having to provide a specific backup infrastructure. This solution is officially certified BackInt from SAP.

System Center Updates Publisher

New version

A new version of System Center Updates Publisher (SCUP) has been released and is available to this link.

Microsoft Endpoint Manager

New brand for Configuration Manager

Microsoft Endpoint Manager is the name assigned to the Microsoft solution for the integrated management of all devices. Microsoft has decided to unify Configuration Manager and Intune, without having to deal with complex migrations and simplifying licensing. With this approach, Microsoft helps you take advantage of your investments in Configuration Manager and take advantage of the benefits and capabilities of the Microsoft cloud.

The Microsoft Endpoint Manager brand includes the following Microsoft management solutions:

New version for Configuration Manager Technical Preview Branch

For Configuration Manager was released the update 1911 (Technical Preview Branch) that among the main innovations officializes that Configuration Manager is now part of Microsoft Endpoint Manager.

To verify the details about what's new in this update you can see this document.

Please note that the Technical Preview Branch releases help you to evaluate new features of SCCM and it is recommended to apply these updates only in test environments.

Desktop Analytics is now available

The Desktop Analytics solution is publicly available. It is a tool that can provide useful information and provide the automations necessary to keep the Windows machines up-to-date. The possible integration of Desktop Analytics with System Center Configuration Manager, adds the value given by the cloud solution to the local infrastructure.

Evaluation of Azure and System Center

To test for free and evaluate the services provided by Azure you can access this page, while to try the various System Center components you must access theEvaluation Center and, after registering, you can start the trial period.

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (November 2019 – Weeks: 45 and 46)

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.

In this dedicated post you can find the most important announcements and major updates officialized last week during Microsoft Ignite 2019 conference.

Azure

Save more on Azure usage: reservations for six more services

With reserved capacity, you get significant discounts over your on-demand costs by committing to long-term usage of a service. Microsoft is pleased to share reserved capacity offerings for the following additional services:

  • Blob Storage (GPv2) and Azure Data Lake Storage (Gen2).
  • Azure Database for MySQL.
  • Azure Database for PostgreSQL.
  • Azure Database for MariaDB.
  • Azure Data Explorer.
  • Premium SSD Managed Disks.

With the addition of these services, Microsoft supports reservations for 16 services, giving you more options to save and get better cost predictability across more workloads.

Azure Key Vault Virtual Machine extension generally available

The Azure Key Vault Virtual Machine extension makes it easier for apps running on virtual machines to use certificates from a key vault, by abstracting the common tasks as well as best practices.

Azure Disk Encryption

Azure Disk Encryption enables you to encrypt your Azure Virtual Machine disks with your keys safeguarded in Azure Key Vault. Previously this capability was available through PowerShell and CLI, now this capability is also available in the Azure portal, which makes it very easy to use. Microsoft has also added support for the latest versions of the common Linux distros on Azure, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6 and 7.7 as well as CentOS Linux 7.6 and 7.7.

HB and HC Virtual Machines in additional regions

The HB-series VMs are optimized for HPC applications driven by memory bandwidth, such as fluid dynamics, explicit finite element analysis, and weather modeling. The HB-Series VM is now available in East US. HC-series VMs are optimized for HPC applications driven by intensive computation, such as implicit finite element analysis, reservoir simulation, and computational chemistry. The HC-Series VM is now available in Japan East. 

Azure Monitor: the news about network monitoring in Azure

Monitor Azure is a cloud-based solution that can collect different types of telemetry data, analyze them and take certain actions. Among the various features provides the ability to monitor the health of the networking, connectivity to applications and is able to provide detailed information on network performance. All this not only for cloud environments, but even in the presence of hybrid architectures. This article shows important changes that were recently announced by Microsoft to make the solution even more comprehensive.

Before focusing on the new features that have been introduced it is good to specify that Azure Monitor includes different specific solutions to monitor the Azure networking, including Network Performance Monitor (NPM), The suite includes the following features:

In addition to the tools included in the Network Performance Monitor (NPM) you can use Traffic Analytics, allowing you to have an overall visibility on network activities that are undertaken in the cloud environment. How this solution works is based on the principle that in Azure, to allow or deny network communication to Azure Virtual Networks-connected resources (vNet), it uses the Network Security Group (NSG), containing a list of access rules. The NSGs are applied to network interfaces connected to the virtual machines, or directly to the subnet (recommended). The platform uses NSG flow logs to maintain the visibility of inbound and outbound network traffic from the Network Security Group. Traffic Analytics is based on the analysis ofNSG 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 news that interests Traffic Analytics is that you can now process this data more frequently, at time intervals each time 10 minutes, against the 60 minutes previously possible.

Figure 1 – Traffic Analytics Processing Frequency

Azure Monitor for Networks

For greater visibility into network activities in the cloud Microsoft released Azure Monitor for Networks that introduces a useful visual view on the health of all network resources in your environment, enriched by their metrics. Everything is available without the need to make any specific configuration.

Figure 2 – Overview of Azure Monitor for Networks

In the top pane, you can set up search parameters to quickly identify the resources of interest, while on the right there is a panel showing any critical alerts.

Selecting individual components gives you more detail.

Figure 3 – VPN connection status details

In particular, currently only for Application Gateways, a very useful view of the Dependency, which helps you pinpoint component configuration and track error conditions more quickly. This representation shows the relationships between the front-end IPs, the listeners, the rules and the backend pool of Application Gateway. Colors make it easy to identify problematic health states on resources.

The view also lists key metrics for Application Gateways.

Figure 4 – List of Application Gateways

Figure 5 - Dependency view of a specific Application Gateway

The graph also allows easy access to the various component configurations. In order to identify connectivity issues and start troubleshooting operations, you have the option, right-clicking on the single virtual machine, of access directly to VM Insight and to Connection troubleshoot.

Figure 6 – Access resources to do machine troubleshooting

Conclusions

The new solution Network Insights present in Azure Monitor allows you to have a comprehensive view of network resources in a simple and intuitive way. The solution is particularly useful in the presence of complex environments and the console of Dependency view is a help also to document the implementations of the Application Gateway. It is currently a feature in preview and as such will surely be enriched in the short term with further news, allowing you to have a more complete and intuitive monitor of the network architecture in Azure.

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (Microsoft Ignite 2019 – Special Edition)

This special edition includes the most important announcements and major updates regarding Azure infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and Azure Stack, officialized by Microsoft this week during Microsoft Ignite 2019 conference. Microsoft announced several important additions to its Azure infrastructure as a service (IaaS) portfolio and the Microsoft infrastructure services continue to evolve to optimize the experience of running business-critical workloads.

Azure

Azure Arc: Extended Azure management and security to any infrastructure

Azure Arc enables Azure services anywhere and extends Azure management to any infrastructure for unified management, governance and control across clouds, datacenters and edge. They look and feel just like Azure resources, and they provide unified auditing, compliance, and role based access control across multiple environments and at scale.
As a result, customers can modernize any infrastructure with cloud management and security protection. With cloud practices that work anywhere, Microsoft is delivering these resources, from cloud to datacenter to edge, and enabling cloud security anywhere.
With Azure Arc, customers can now take advantage of Azure’s robust cloud management experience for their own servers (Linux and Windows Server) and Kubernetes clusters by extending Azure management across environments.
Customers can seamlessly inventory, organize, and govern their own resources at scale through a consistent and unified experience through the Azure Portal.

Virtual Machines

Azure generation 2 virtual machines generally available

Generation 2 virtual machines are now generally available on Azure. Generation 2 VMs provide support for Intel Software Guard Extensions (Intel SGX), UEFI boot architecture, and the ability to provision large VMs (up to 12TB) and OS Disks sizes that exceed 2TB. 

Proximity placement groups generally available

A proximity placement group is a logical grouping capability for Azure Virtual Machines that you can use to decrease the network latency between a set of virtual machines. When you assign your virtual machines to a proximity placement group, their placement is optimized to deliver lower latency for your latency-sensitive workloads. Now this feature is generally available in most Azure regions.

Azure VMware Solutions available in West Europe

Azure VMware Solutions are available in the West Europe Azure region. Azure VMware Solutions delivers the ability to run your VMware environment natively on Azure. This gives you the option to leverage your existing VMware skills and investments while taking full advantage of the scale and automation Azure offers. Azure VMware Solutions is now supported in East US, West US, and West Europe regions.

Azure Spot VMs

Azure Spot Virtual Machines, give you access to unused Azure compute capacity at deep discounts, will be available soon (we expect to preview this by early 2020). Spot Virtual Machines will be ideal for workloads that can be interrupted, providing scalability while reducing costs. You will be able to take advantage of Spot Virtual Machine pricing for Azure Virtual Machines or Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS) to deploy opportunistic workloads of all sizes.

New virtual machine scale sets capabilities in preview

New virtual machine scale sets features simplify the management of virtual machines while improving their runtime and performance capabilities.

Vulnerability assessment in Azure Security Center

Applications that are installed in virtual machines could often have vulnerabilities that could lead to a breach of the virtual machine. Microsoft announced that the Security Center Standard tier includes built-in vulnerability assessment for virtual machines for no additional fee.

Advanced data security for SQL servers on Azure Virtual Machines

Azure Security Center’s support for threat protection and vulnerability assessment for SQL DBs running on IaaS virtual machines (VMs) is in preview.

New Azure Dav4-series and Eav4-series virtual machines

New Azure Dav4-series and Eav4-series virtual machines (VMs) based on AMD EPYC™ are available. They are ideal for general purpose (Dav4-series) and memory intensive workloads (Eav4-series).

New NVv4 series Azure Virtual Machines in preview

NVv4 (currently in preview) offers, for Windows Virtual Desktops and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads, enhanced GPU resourcing flexibility, giving customers more choice by offering partitioned GPUs built using industry-standard SR-IOV technology. Customers can select the right size of GPU Virtual Machines with as little as 2GB of dedicated GPU frame buffer for an entry-level desktop in the cloud, and up to the whole GPU with 16GB of frame buffer to provide powerful engineering workstations.

Updated NDv2 Azure Virtual Machines preview

The NDv2-series Virtual Machines, currently in preview, are the latest, fastest, and most powerful addition to the GPU family, specifically designed for the cutting edge demands of distributed HPC, AI, and machine learning workloads.

HBv2 Azure Virtual Machines for HPC workloads coming soon

HBv2 VMs are designed to deliver supercomputer-class performance, message passing interface (MPI) scalability, and cost efficiency for a variety of real-world HPC workloads. HBv2 Virtual Machines support up to 80,000 cores for single MPI jobs to deliver performance that rivals some of the world’s largest and most powerful bare metal supercomputers.

Networking

Azure Bastion is generally available

Microsoft announced the general availability (GA) of Azure Bastion, a fully managed platform as a service (PaaS) service that provides more secure and seamless RDP and SSH access to virtual machines directly through the Azure portal.

Azure Firewall Manager is now in preview

Azure Firewall Manager Preview is a security management service that provides central security policy and route management for cloud-based security perimeters. It works with Azure Virtual WAN Hub, a Microsoft-managed resource that lets you easily create hub and spoke architectures. When security and routing policies are associated with such a hub, it is referred to as a Secured Virtual Hub.

Native Azure Active Directory authentication support in point-to-site VPN

Native Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) authentication support for OpenVPN protocol, and Azure VPN Client for Windows are now available. Native Azure AD authentication support was widely requested by enterprise customers because Azure AD integration enables user-based policies, conditional access, and multi-factor authentication (MFA) for P2S VPN. Native Azure AD authentication requires both Azure VPN gateway integration and a new Azure VPN Client to obtain and validate an Azure AD token.

Azure Private Link is now available in all regions

Azure Private Link, which provides private connectivity to Azure services, is now available in all regions.

Azure Peering Service in managed preview

Azure Peering Service is a partnership with service providers to provide highly reliable and optimized internet connectivity to Microsoft services. It also provides internet latency telemetry and route monitoring with alerting against hijacks, leaks, and any other BGP mal configurations.  Azure Peering Service is targeting customers with an internet-first network strategy for accessing Azure and SaaS services such as Office 365. Through partnering with internet service providers, customers are able to take advantage of optimized routing of their internet traffic to the Microsoft cloud.

Enhancements to Azure Virtual WAN

Significant enhancements include the preview of hub-to-hub and any-to-any connectivity. Virtual WAN users can connect multiple hubs for full mesh connectivity to further simplify their network architecture. Additionally, ExpressRoute and Point to Site are now Generally Available with Virtual WAN.

IPv6 for Azure Virtual Network is generally available

IPv6 support within the virtual network and to the internet enables you to expand into the growing mobile and IoT markets with Azure-based applications and to address IPv4 depletion in your own corporate networks.

Azure ExpressRoute for satellites is available

ExpressRoute, with one of the largest networking ecosystems in the public cloud, now includes satellite connectivity partners, bringing new options and coverage.

Storage

Azure Data Share is available

Azure Data Share enables organizations to easily and securely share data with other organizations to expand analytics datasets for enhanced insights.

Azure Stack

Azure Stack, the extension of Azure that brings the innovation of cloud computing to build and deploy hybrid applications anywhere, is being renamed “Azure Stack Hub“. Also, Azure Data Box Edge, the Microsoft data-transfer devices, is being renamed as “Azure Stack Edge“.

So, Azure Stack will expand to include a portfolio of products consisting of:

  • Azure Stack HCI
  • Azure Stack Hub (previously Azure Stack)
  • Azure Stack Edge (previously Azure Data Box Edge):
    • It is an Azure managed appliance that brings the compute, storage, and intelligence of Azure to the edge.
    • It is a first party Microsoft appliance, delivered to customers’ sites to run Azure services with no upfront costs (you pay monthly in your Azure bill).
    • Customers can use the Azure portal to order and provision Azure Stack Edge; Azure management tools are used for monitoring and running updates.

Azure Stack Hub

Microsoft is sharing some new updates for Azure Stack Hub roadmap, including N-Series virtual machines enabled by NVIDIA V100 GPUs. It’s also announcing the general availability of Kubernetes on Azure Stack Hub. You can now easily provision Kubernetes clusters on Azure Stack Hub using Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) engine to automate the creation, update, and scaling of Kubernetes clusters. In the first half of 2020, Event Hubs and Azure Stream Analytics will also be available for public preview.

Azure Stack Edge

Azure Stack Edge will soon support new compute and AI capabilities including virtual machines, Kubernetes clusters, NVIDIA GPU support and high-availability support. With these capabilities, Azure Stack Edge is quickly evolving to the forefront of edge computing in the market. Microsoft is also enabling private cellular networks as a service by adding the tech preview of multi-access edge compute (MEC) on Azure Stack Edge.

Azure Stack portfolio and Azure Arc

Azure Arc and Azure Stack portfolio are complementary, so you can combine the benefits of Azure Arc with Azure Stack portfolio, where Azure Arc can manage virtual machines, containers, and run Azure Data Services on Azure Stack portfolio of validated and integrated systems while leveraging the compute and cloud capabilities of Azure Stack.

Conclusions

The most important announcement from Microsoft Ignite 2019 for me is Azure Arc, the Microsoft’s new approach to hybrid. Enterprises rely on a hybrid technology approach to take advantage of their on-premises investment and, at the same time, utilize cloud innovation. As more business operations and applications expand to include edge devices and multiple clouds, hybrid capabilities must enable apps to run seamlessly across on-premises, multi-cloud, and edge devices, while providing consistent management and security across all distributed locations. Hybrid cloud capabilities in Microsoft is evolving to enable innovation anywhere, while providing a seamless development, deployment and ongoing management experience.

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (November 2019 – Weeks: 43 and 44)

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

New Cost Management features

Here are the Cost Management features that are generally available as of October 2019.

Azure Mv2-series VMs with 12TB memory now GA in new regions

Azure Mv2-series Virtual Machines with 12TB memory are generally available for the US West 2, US East, US East 2, Southeast Asia, EU West and EU North regions. Azure Mv2-series virtual machines are hyper-threaded and feature Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8180M 2.5GHz (Skylake) processors, offering up to 416 vCPU in 3TB, 6 TB and 12 TB memory configurations. This is by far the largest-memory virtual machine offered on Azure. Mv2-series virtual machines provide unparalleled computational performance to support large in-memory databases and workloads such as SAP HANA and SQL Hekaton.

Azure Monitor’s Service Map is available in new regions

The Service Map feature of Azure Monitor is now available in South Central US, West US, Central US, North Central US, East Asia, and Central India.  Around the world is it available in eighteen public regions. Service map automatically discovers application components on Windows and Linux systems and maps the communication between services. With service map, you can view your servers in the way that you think of them—as interconnected systems that deliver critical services. Service map shows connections between servers, processes, inbound and outbound connection latency, and ports across any TCP-connected architecture, with no configuration required other than the installation of an agent.

Server-side encryption with customer-managed keys for Azure Managed Disks (preview)

The preview for server-side encryption (SSE) with customer-managed keys (CMK) for Azure Managed Disks is available. Azure customers already benefit from server-side encryption with platform managed keys (PMK) for Azure Managed Disks enabled by default. Customers also benefit from Azure disk encryption (ADE) that leverages the BitLocker feature of Windows and the DM-Crypt feature of Linux to encrypt Managed Disks with customer managed keys within the guest virtual machine. Server-side encryption with customer-managed keys improves on platform managed keys by giving you control of the encryption keys to meet your compliance needs. It improves on Azure disk encryption by enabling you to use any OS types and images for your virtual machines by encrypting data in the storage service. Server-side encryption with customer-managed keys is integrated with Azure Key Vault (AKV) that provides highly available and scalable, secure storage for RSA cryptographic keys backed by hardware security modules (HSMs). You can either import your RSA keys to Azure Key Vault or generate new RSA keys in Azure Key Vault.

Azure File Sync is available in new regions

Azure File Sync is available in South Africa and UAE regions. To get the latest list of supported regions, see this document.

Azure File Sync agent v8 release

Azure File Sync is now on Microsoft Update and Microsoft Download Center. Improvements and issues that are fixed:

  • Restore performance improvements
    • Faster recovery times for recovery done through Azure Backup.Restored files will sync back down to Azure File Sync servers much faster.
  • Improved cloud tiering portal experience
    • If you have tiered files that are failing to recall, you can now view the recall errors in the server endpoint properties. Also, the server endpoint health will now show an error and mitigation steps if the cloud tiering filter driver is not loaded on the server.
  • Simpler agent installation
    • The Az\AzureRM PowerShell module is no longer required to register the server making installation simpler and fast.
  • Miscellaneous performance and reliability improvements

More information about this release:

  • This update is available for Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016 and Windows Server 2019 installations that have Azure File Sync agent version 4.0.1.0 or later installed.
  • The agent version of this update rollup is 8.0.0.0.
  • A restart may be required if files are in use during the update rollup installation.
  • Installation instructions are documented in KB4511224.

Azure management services and System Center: What's New in October 2019

In October were announced, by Microsoft, a considerable number of news regarding the Azure management services and System Center. Our community, through these articles that are released on a monthly basis, want to provide an 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.

Azure Log Analytics

Availability in new regions

Azure Log Analytics is now available in the new regions “Switzerland North”, to allow you to collect log and perform related trend analysis on the use of resources.

New option for the pricing model

For Azure Monitor Log Analytics is available from November 1 2019 a new pricing model, allowing you to pay a fixed fee for data ingestion, based on the capacity of the selected tier. The tier start at 100 GB per day and allow you to get a saving of up to 25%, compared to the Pay-As-You-Go cost.

New version of the agent for Linux systems

This month the new agent version of Log Analytics introduces enhancements for Linux systems in particular concerning the installation process and performance. For more information about this, you can access theGitHub official page.

Retention configurable by data type

Azure Monitor Log Analytics introduces the ability to configure data retention, that is, the retention period of the data, for each type of data, instead of having a single retention setting for the entire workspace. The configuration at the time must be made through ARM commands. This new possibility allows for greater flexibility and savings in retention costs from the collated data from October (release date of this functionality). For more details please visit the Microsoft's official documentation.

Changing the saving of data in Service Map in Log Analytics

Data for Service Map, until now saved in custom log tables ServiceMapComputer_CL and ServiceMapProcess_CL will be moved to specific Log Analytics data types. These new tables will be called VMComputer and VMProcess, Inl.

Azure Site Recovery

New Update Rollup

For Azure Site Recovery was released theUpdate Rollup 41 that solves several issues and introduces some improvements. The details and the procedure to follow for the installation can be found in the specific KB.

Update for Windows servicing stack and SHA-2

For the Azure Site Recovery Mobility agent was issued a specific update required to enable Windows servicing stack and SHA-2 support.

Availability in new regions

Azure Site Recovery is now available in “Norway East” and “Norway West, North Dakota”. To check the availability of the service in all the Azure regions you can consult this document.

Azure Backup

Support for disks up to 32 TB

Support for large Managed disks has been announced for Azure Backup, up to 32 TB. For further information you can consultthis article.

System Center Configuration Manager

New releases for the Technical Preview Branch

For Configuration Manager was released the update 1910 that one of the main innovations is the ability to deploy and manage Microsoft Edge. With this integration, you can also easily manage the deployment of new versions of Microsoft Edge from the beta channel (updated every 6 weeks) and the Dev channel (updated weekly).

To check the details of what's included in these updates, you can see this document.

Please note that the Technical Preview Branch releases help you to evaluate new features of SCCM and it is recommended to apply these updates only in test environments.

Evaluation of Azure and System Center

To test and evaluate free of charge the service offered by Azure you can access this page, while to try out the various components of System Center you must Access to theEvaluation Center and, after registering, you can start the trial period.