Educational Episodes: Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI)

The flawless operation of your Office 365 infrastructure directly depends on the updates installed on time. An SSL certificate provides secure communication between Office 365 components. If it expires, your infrastructure becomes unprotected. This is where the Azure AD Connect tool comes in. With its help, you can update the SSL certificate for both AD FS and WAP Servers quickly and easily.

If you are a VMware vSphere administrator who wants to solve the problem of a low network throughput, Network I/O Control (NIOC) is exactly what you need! It’s a traffic-specific vSphere Distributed Switch (vDS) mechanism of network bandwidth regulation that was firstly introduced in vSphere 4.1 in 2010. NIOC appeared when 10G networking was increasingly prevalent and became a real breakthrough. With this mechanism, you can ensure high network throughput and go with fewer network adapters in ESXi hosts. That sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

It is never superfluous to provide an extra level of protection for your data and privacy in management. The Microsoft platform allows users to register and manage their applications, have a set of identifiers, and access their data 24/7. Creating a user with Azure Function will allow you to secure your data and provide private access to applications. Ensure information privacy right now!

There are many anti-spam tools. And they are pretty good. For example, better-known and reliable domains can be added to your whitelist. However, spoofed emails will always be redone because they represent legitimate business emails. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC is a mechanism that will protect your email box and will allow you to get rid of annoying spam, ensuring verification of the sender’s domain. Stop spam emails right now!

After rolling out Windows Server 2019 and Windows Admin Center a month ago, Microsoft said that both were designed with ongoing popularity of all-cloud and hybrid-cloud environments in mind. This being said, let’s talk about the new multifunctional Azure Network Adapter! As you know, large workloads require good connections to VMs in Azure. This can be accomplished by using things like Site-to-Site VPN, Azure Express Route, or Point-to-Site VPN. Here, Azure Network Adapter comes into the play, allowing to connect VMs to the Azure Virtual Network just in one (or two) clicks!

In order to build your own Hyper-V lab in Azure, you need two Hyper-V instances. But, hey, why do we need Hyper-V Replica here? This technology allows you to shift a virtual machine from a server on-prem to Microsoft Azure for maxing out your services uptime. With Hyper-V Replica, returning your services back to the normal functioning becomes a matter of only a few seconds… Looks like a must-have for your Hyper-V environment, doesn’t it?

If you work with Azure close enough, you’ve probably have heard of Nested Virtualization. Yes, it is the feature allowing you to run Hyper-V inside an Azure VM. Why does one need that thing? Well, to build a perfect lab for demos, development, testing, whatever… without buying any extra hardware!

In October 2018, Microsoft officially launched the newest version of Windows Server – Windows Server 2019, and earlier this month it became available to the public. Microsoft is known throughout the globe for its excellent software products, operating systems, computer systems, and other consumer electronics. Windows Server 2019 is the first and the only Microsoft product that went straight to general availability without going through the release to manufacturing (RTM) phase. But, did Windows Server 2019 satisfy the customers’ expectations? What are its main features? Let’s scrutinize from every angle.

IT administrators are always confronted with the problem of building innovative, fast, modern, and reliable IT infrastructure that fits the budget and saves resources for future growth. To commence, you should plan, select, re-plan, clarify goals, and so on ad infinitum in a vicious circle. However, the issue of guaranteeing the data safety will always be relevant on the agenda. Choosing a SAN (Storage Area Network) with the iSCSI protocol as one of the possible storage solutions will ensure data security and constant availability. In addition, this approach is cost-effective in terms of maintenance and support.