Category: Cloud 101

Start your Azure Certification today with easy steps 1..2..3

TheΒ #tokyoolympics2021Β is over – so you can start your ownΒ #certificationΒ Olympics withΒ MicrosoftΒ Azure forΒ #freeΒ πŸ’ͺπŸš΄β€β™‚οΈπŸš΄β€β™€οΈ

How to get your Azure & Data Fundamentals (AZ-900 + DP-900) β‰πŸ€”

(Attention:Β you could get aΒ free training + Azure exam voucherΒ by the end of this article)

Microsoft Azure is one of the fastest growing cloud solution providers in the world. It has an “Azure Fundamentals” certification – an entry level cloud certification. Candidates for this exam (AZ-900) should have foundational knowledge of cloud services and how those services are provided with Microsoft Azure.

Azure Fundamentals exam is an opportunity to prove knowledge of cloud concepts, core Azure services, Azure pricing, SLA, and lifecycle, and the fundamentals of cloud security, privacy, compliance, and trust.

Are you excited to start your Azure study?

Check these absolutely free resources below and get ready for this exam then πŸ™‚

Well, next step will be the exam registration, that has a $99 cost in the USA. You could take this exam online, proctored through Pearson VUE or other exam providers.

I have a good news for you – for limited time, Microsoft generously provides complementary exam vouchers for its virtual event attendees. Thank you Microsoft for empowering people on their #cloudjourney!

After completing one of these free training below, you’ll be eligible to take theΒ Microsoft Azure Fundamentals certification examΒ at no cost.

Updated with new #free training opportunities + exam

First Option (AZ-900): After completing one of the free training below, you’ll be eligible to take the Microsoft Azure Fundamentals certification exam at no cost.

Second Option (DP-900): Completion of a free Data training below, will make you eligible to take the  Microsoft Azure Data Fundamentals certification exam at no cost.

Well, don’t look further, just register and guarantee your spot for this event and receive your complementary voucher after the event.

Hopefully, these tips will be an encouragement wave to start your #cloudjourney.

Fᴏʟʟᴏᴑ ᴍᴇ 🎯 α΄€Ι΄α΄… become α΄€Β #cloudmarathonerΒ β›…πŸƒβ€β™‚οΈπŸƒβ€β™€οΈ – 𝐋𝐄𝐓’𝐒 π‚πŽπππ„π‚π“ πŸ‘

Good Luck in your first steps!

What is entitlement management and how it can help?

Hello Cloud Marathoner’s,

We are continuing our cloud learning journey with Azure services today. Last year Azure Active Directory has introduced many useful features and we will talk about one of them that simplifies the identity governance.

“An Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) entitlement management is an identity governance feature that enables organizations to manage identity and access lifecycle at scale, by automating access request workflows, access assignments, reviews, and expiration. ” – Microsoft Azure AD Identity Governance

Entitlement management example with one catalog and two access packages

How can entitlement management help?

There are several ways how you could leverage these features for your Azure resource management activities. The easiest one to get started with is the delegation options:

βœ”οΈ Delegate management of resources from high privileged account to managers
βœ”οΈ Govern access for users in your organization
βœ”οΈ Govern access for users outside your organization
βœ”οΈ Automate and simplify day-2-day management
βœ”οΈ View and report on resource assignments and access packages

Let’s consider following two common scenarios:

First Scenario: As administrator you want to delegate access governance from IT administrators to users who aren’t administrators.
Check out the Video clip for step-by-step guidance.

Second Scenario: You would like to create an automated request process for your users to enable them request for an access package (set of Azure resources and accesses rights) to do their job.

The request process of access packages can be simply understood by a help of a following sample infographic.

A user request for access package (set of resources) to start doing work assignments

When I should use access packages?

It is not a silver bullet, so access packages do not replace other mechanisms for access assignment. However, following use-cases are most appropriate in situations where you would consider them:

  • Employees need time-limited access for a particular task. For example, you might use group-based licensing and a dynamic group to ensure all employees have an Exchange Online mailbox, and then use access packages for situations in which employees need additional access, such as to read departmental resources from another department.
  • Access that requires the approval of an employee’s manager or other designated individuals.
  • Departments wish to manage their own access policies for their resources without IT involvement.
  • Two or more organizations are collaborating on a project, and as a result, multiple users from one organization will need to be brought in via Azure AD B2B to access another organization’s resources.

Thank you for reading till this point. Stay tuned for more Cloud Security and Administration related posts.

Fᴏʟʟᴏᴑ ᴍᴇ 🎯 α΄€Ι΄α΄… become α΄€ #cloudmarathoner β›…πŸƒβ€β™‚οΈπŸƒβ€β™€οΈ – 𝐋𝐄𝐓’𝐒 π‚πŽπππ„π‚π“ πŸ‘

#microsoftazure
#AzureAD
#identitygovernance
#accessmanagement
#secureaccess
#bestpractices
#continuouslearning

What is MCAS and why would you need it?

Hello cloud marathoners,

The MCAS (Microsoft Cloud App Security) πŸ›‘οΈπŸ” – helps to identify and combat cyberthreats across all your cloud services. This is a cloud access security broker (CASB) that provides multifunction visibility, control over data travel, and sophisticated analytics.

Here is a high level architecture diagram from Microsoft docs.

What are the main benefits of this cloud service?

Here are the main three benefits ot brings alone:
βœ”οΈ Discovery & Manage your apps
βœ”οΈ Govern access to apps and resources
βœ”οΈ Check compliance on your cloud apps

Check out this detailed level architecture ofΒ #appsecurityΒ inΒ Microsoft Azure β„’Β πŸ‘

MCAS – Microsoft Cloud App Security.


What are the main use cases for your business?

βœ”οΈ Shadow IT Discovery & Control
βœ”οΈ Secure Access
βœ”οΈ Security Poster Management
βœ”οΈ Threat Protection
βœ”οΈ Information Protection
βœ”οΈ User & Entity Behavioral Analytics

Another beauty of above architecture lies in a fact that you could easily integrate this model with third party SaaS apps, all listed on a diagram.

Thank you Matt Soseman for bringing this diagram  #SharingIsCaring❀️️

Fᴏʟʟᴏᴑ ᴍᴇ 🎯 α΄€Ι΄α΄… become α΄€Β #cloudmarathonerΒ β›…πŸƒβ€β™‚οΈπŸƒβ€β™€οΈ – 𝐋𝐄𝐓’𝐒 π‚πŽπππ„π‚π“ πŸ‘

#microsoftazure
#MCAS#securitymanagement
#OAuth#secureaccess #appsec
#threatprotection
#securityengineering
#bestpractices
#continuouslearning

New four services added to “Azure free services” catalog

Hi Cloud Marathoner friends!

Who would resist to learn Azure cloud and utilize free services that have been annnces this month?

Yes, you have read this correct, there are 4 more servics added to exisiting 25+ always free and 12 months set of free products, up to the monthly limits. 

Those services are listed on the infographic:

βœ”οΈ Azure Key Vault
βœ”οΈ Azure Database for PostreSQL
βœ”οΈ Azure Media Services
βœ”οΈ Azure Database for MySQL

Have you used these new services in your labs or projects yet?
If not, that is okay. Here is the brief description what you can do with these services listed above:

Azure Key Vault – helps teams to securely store and manage sensitive information such as keys, passwords, certificates, etc., in a centralized storage which are safeguarded by industry-standard algorithms, key lengths, and even hardware security modules.

Azure Database for PostreSQL – with Azure you can run your  PostgreSQL Server workloads in a hosted virtual machine infrastructure as a service (IaaS) or as a hosted platform as a service (PaaS). The PaaS option has multiple deployment choices, each with multiple service tiers that you can use with Azure Database for PostreSQL.

Azure Database for MySQL – take the model tha we described above and apply it to MySQL. That how simple it is..

Azure Media Services – lets you deliver any media, on virtually any device, to anywhere in the world using the cloud. The collection of services provide encoding, live or on-demand streaming, content protection and indexing for video and audio content.

Which products are free for 12 months?

These products are free for 12 months, up to the monthly limits. Availability is based on resource and region.

Check out the details about each of these services on Microsoft Azure’s website.

Fᴏʟʟᴏᴑ ᴍᴇ 🎯 α΄€Ι΄α΄… become α΄€Β #cloudmarathonerΒ β›…πŸƒβ€β™‚οΈπŸƒβ€β™€οΈ – 𝐋𝐄𝐓’𝐒 π‚πŽπππ„π‚π“ πŸ‘

#microsoftazureΒ 
#freeΒ #cloudservicesΒ 
#cloudskillsΒ 
#continuouslearning

What are the Microsoft Azure’s Multi-Cloud and Cross-Platform Capabilities?

Hello cloud marathoners,

There are many security and multi-cloud capability services under Microsoft Azure umbrella of services. In this post, I will reference the Microsoft documentation to clarify those capabilities on high-level.
I hope this post will clarify intent and purpose of these capabilities for you.

Important: Please zoom into a infographic – as it is of a high quality and can be very informative in understanding the article.

Microsoft’s cross-platform or cloud security starts with endpoints and cloud visibility and controls: namely Endpoint management and Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) that provides insight across your multi-cloud and on-premises datacenter estate as well as Cloud Workload Protection capabilities

Next are the SIEM and XDR Strategy – where Microsoft provides integrated capabilities for the Security Operations / SOC to get the broad and deep visibility needed to rapidly detect, hunt for, and respond/recover to threats across clouds and platforms.

The following capability on the infographic is – Infrastructure Extended Detection and Response (XDR). These capabilities are provided through set of services, namely Azure Defender, Azure Arc, Microsoft 365 Defender with number of features combined under the suit of services.

Next set of capabilities are Identity Enablement and Security – where Azure Active Directory provides comprehensive solutions, including Zero Trust access control that explicitly verifies trustworthiness of devices (via XDR) and users via native UEBA, Threat Intelligence and analytics.

And finally, Information Protection capabilities – utilize the Microsoft Information Protection and Azure Purview services that provide a full lifecycle approach to discovering, classifying, protecting, and monitoring structured and unstructured data as your organization generates and leverages more data. These capabilities provide insights to drive mission completion and competitive advantage.

What would be your approach?
Please, share in the comments section πŸ‘
#SharingIsCaring❀️️

Important: Please zoom into the infographic – as it is of a high quality and can be very informative in understanding this article.

#microsoftazure
#multicloud
#crossplatform
#endpointmanagement
#SOC
#securityengineering
#identityaccessmanagement

Are you ready to start your Bicep transformation journey in Azure?

Hello friends,

I am getting ready bits and pieces of the presentation and demo code for the #GlobalAzure 2021 event.

This is going to be my second year in a row, presenting at this global event, and I am pumped to contribute with two new sessions this year.

Feel free to check out the details of each session and links here .

Session banner for upcoming presentation on Global Azure 2021

WHY bother to transfrom your exising Azure ARM templates into Bicep?

  • Easy to understand and maintain code for your Azure infrastructure
  • Day zero support for all resource types & API versions
  • Nice transparent abstractionΒ for the underlying platform
  • Awesome Tooling – VS Code extension for Bicep
  • Deep integration with other Azure Services
  • Preflight validation – both Bicep/ARM does preflight validation on entire template
  • Provides high level of confidence that your code is ‘syntactically valid’ before deploying
  • Support – starting from v.03, Bicep is 100% supported by Microsoft Support Plans

This time, I am looking forward to share level 200 talk and demos, where we will ALL deep dive into challenges of transforming exisiting ARM templates into Azure Bicep.

We will inspect the ARM JSON decompiler, which comes with Azure Bicep and how to make it work your way.

Stay tunes, i hope to see you all during the event!

Transfrom your Azure ARM into Bicep during the Global Azure 2021

Global Azure 2021 event in mid-April.

Hello eveyone,
I am very happy to share exciting news with all of you.

Few days ago, i have receieved an email confirming acceptance of my both Azure sessions for the Global Azure 2021 event. I am truely trilled to present on April 16th and 17th following two sesions for eveyone live:

I am looking forward for your participiation, and tune in to learn about latest developments in Microsoft Azure.

In my first session i will share the following new session with you.

Abstract of the presentation as is:

Infrastructure as a Code (IaC) is important strategy to manage your digital estate in any cloud environment. Simplifying management of your infrastructure while re-using code is even better. In Microsoft Azure, we have ARM (Azure Resource Manager) templates that could declaratively define your cloud project infrastructure.

However, it is not easy to author ARM JSON templates and maintain them when your project grows and requires changes. In this demo heavy session, we will introduce the Azure Bicep language and demonstrate how it simplifies authoring ARM templates for your Azure infrastructure. We will author a manageable, readable, and modularized Azure infrastructure code, while using familiar tools.

TheCloudMarathoner πŸ™‚

Please let me know, what topics are you interested in?

How to start Cloud Journey in your organization?

Hi Cloud Marathoners!

It is usually hard to start a new initiative within a company due to a myriad of reasons. πŸ€”
Thus, this post will focus on how to follow some descriptive steps in starting a new Cloud Journey whereever you are in your life πŸ™‚

Let’s check a simple approach πŸ’‘ below that could guide us on cloud ☁️ (AWS, Azure, GCP, Oracle Cloud) adoption journey πŸ—Ί

Choosing the right cloud solution provider for your customers?

1️⃣ Step: Check on Team Alignment with cloud fundamentals
βœ”οΈ Every team member should have a basic understand of how specific cloud works
βœ”οΈ Portfolio of candidate workloads should be available to all team members to be used during strategic, release planning and completion of technical tasks 
βœ”οΈ The technical strategy should include clarity on which levels of the hosting hierarchy will be used and what those terms mean in our business
βœ”οΈ A naming and tagging standard should be established, maintained, and enforced to guide implementation and resource organization
βœ”οΈ The hosting hierarchy should be reflected in a resource organization design (account or subscription design)
βœ”οΈ Align cloud capabilities, teams, and RACI structure to the fundamental concepts above

As an addition, what would you add into first checklist ? πŸ€”

Please, share your thoughts in comments section πŸ‘Β #SharingIsCaring❀️️

Looking πŸ‘€ for more?
Follow the #cloudmarathoner tag on LinkedIn and via blog postsΒ πŸ’‘

Fᴏʟʟᴏᴑ ᴍᴇ 🎯 α΄€Ι΄α΄… become α΄€ #cloudmarathoner β›…πŸƒβ€β™‚οΈπŸƒβ€β™€οΈ – 𝐋𝐄𝐓’𝐒 π‚πŽπππ„π‚π“ πŸ‘

#cloudjourney
#cloudskills
#firststeps
#cloudadoption
#continuouslearning