Azure Arc Recent Updates

-

    Many companies today have critical assets spanned across data centers, clouds, and on-premises environments. Managing all of these moving parts can become complex, time-consuming, and labor intensive very rapidly. Companies with similar infrastructures can greatly benefit from Azure Arc and its ability manage these various resources in a centralized and cohesive solution. As Microsoft Ignite 2022 took place last month there were several updates and added functionalities announced for a wide range of products and services. In this post, I’ll provide an overview of a few features that I believe bring tremendous value to Azure Arc.

Azure Automanage

    Automanage is a brand-new feature, available for use now, that assists in configuration and management of Arc-enabled servers and Azure VMs through the use of automation. To use Automanage the user defines a configuration profile in the Azure Portal that entails rules to be applied across all included deployments or can be implemented directly into an ARM template. This service provides several benefits that can enhance monitoring, security, and compliance of deployments. Automanage is free to use as users are only required to pay for the resources that they deploy. Implementing Automanage will make the deployment process of various resources much smoother, efficient, and cost effective providing direct value to your development teams and business as a whole.

Arc-Enabled SQL Servers Upgrades

    Arc-enabled SQL Servers hosted on-premises or in other public clouds can now enjoy added features similar to Azure SQL Servers. Arc-enabled SQL Servers now integrate with Azure AD to provide all of the added benefits that come with it like added security and a simplified authentication/authorization method. Another significant integration available is Microsoft Defender which provides a range of security benefits that help to keep your data safe and secure no matter where the server is hosted. Bringing these added functionalities to your new or existing SQL Server will provide immediate value for management as well as prevention and remediation of any security concerns.

Azure Kubernetes Service Deployment Upgrades

    The following upgrades are still in preview but are valuable to become familiar with as they approach general availability. The main functionality added by this upgrade is a central deployment and management experience for AKS on Windows devices including IoT, 2019 & 2022 Servers, and Azure Stack HCI hosts. Upon release, users will be able to run containerized applications no matter where they are be it an on-premises datacenter, the Azure cloud, or any public cloud offering. An important feature to note is the integration of GitOps configurations that can assist in syncing and automating updates across all deployments. These benefits allow simplified and expanded methods of hosting and deploying AKS that can provide immense value to development teams in all stages of the deployment process.

    For any inquiries on how Azure Arc, or any Azure cloud service, can benefit your organization, please submit a service request here.


Comments

Post a Comment

Please keep the comments constructive and clean!

Popular posts from this blog

Plesk Issues - 404 Errors with Pages not loading

-
 Wanted to share some experiences over the past few weeks where some websites were moved from a server infrastructure on Windows to Linux leveraging Plesk.  The amount of incorrect blogs and suggestions out there made it very unusual and not helpful at all.  The issues occurred where many sub pages and graphics weren't loading correctly on some of the sites but not all of them.  As we dug extremely deep into the firewall, NGINX, and all the deeper settings we took a step back to review the configuration.  Took me back to the VBA days when I developed using notepad and good ol case sensitivity would cause my code to fail.  Light bulb went off and there it was....just some case sensitive references all over the website configuration.  I found this troubling as it's been this way for years but if you run across some odd behavior and you leverage plesk on Linux....take a look and see if this may be a problem before you go and attempt to restamp permissions or rebuild the box :)   E
Read more

Cloud Migration Benefits

-
       As several legacy systems, including SQL and Windows Server 2012, reach their end of support it is essential to consider how a cloud modernization project could benefit your organization. Cloud migrations may seem like a daunting task, but they can provide immense value and with the help of a trusted partner can be implemented very efficiently. When migrating your workloads to the cloud there are several options that allow you to tailor your solution to achieve maximal value. Some of the greatest benefits you can expect when leveraging cloud resources include:      Hybrid Cloud Models: When first modernizing your workloads it may not be prudent to move all of your assets at once. Luckily, Azure provides several methods of leveraging cloud benefits without going all or nothing. With services such as Azure Arc and Azure Stack you can extend the capabilities of existing resources to take advantage of cloud benefits like scalability, security, and incorporation of intelligence th
Read more

Power Automate Recent Updates

-
     Power Automate is an innovative service that allows low-code implementation of automated processes for a variety of tasks. These processes can connect to nearly any data source through prebuilt connectors or publicly available APIs. Power Automate also provides a large set of prebuilt templates that can be implemented out-of-the-box for common automation tasks. In this post I will highlight some of the latest updates that make Power Automate so valuable.      Unstructured Document Processing: Using Power Automate and AI Builder documents of nearly any kind can be parsed and processed without human intervention after set up. By simply providing the model with a few samples and training it on what data to record you can have a fully operational processor in no time. The model supports documents in over 150 languages and can even process handwritten text. While only in preview, Feedback Loop is a tool included that allows documents to be selected to retrain the model with to furth
Read more