Educational Episodes: Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI)

There isn’t always time or reason to remake data into convenient presentations, complications, and other content. Sometimes, you just need to get the job done quickly and effectively. Microsoft has thought about it and, now, you can easily control what you share, who receives your data, and on what terms with a single tool.

Nothing in life comes for free and, certainly, not all the little things used in Azure. Such components as RD Broker or RD Web Access, for example, are “hidden.” You won’t see their apparent activity in Azure Portal, unlike the RD Host Session or Windows 10 VMs. As a result, your Azure credit will be spent without you actually using the productivity of such VMs.

Part 1 of this topic covered why using AWS Elastic Beanstalk (EB) can be more beneficial for making apps if you are using Django. It showcased how to prepare your Django project for correct deployment via AWS EB. Part 2 will explain how to configure the EB environment and the Django project to use Postgres database.

Online activities using malware and viruses increase exponentially every year. Even the smallest mishaps in cybersecurity policies may result in substantial damage. Therefore, who / how / and the way someone accesses your virtual machines is also important. Fortunately, Microsoft created a tool that allows using Azure RBAC and AD Conditional Access to control all of that. Read the guide by Nicolas Prigent, a Swiss Systems Engineer, to learn how to use Azure Active Directory to sign in to your VMs so that other Azure security tools are involved in the process.

Recently at my job, I was faced with a task to develop a file server explicitly suited for the requirements of the company. Needless to say, any configuration of a kind depends on what the infrastructure needs. So, drawing from my personal experience and numerous materials on the web, I came up with the combination FreeBSD+SAMBA+AD as the most appropriate. This combination is a harmonic addition to the existing network configuration since and enables admins with a broad range of possibilities for access control in Windows-based infrastructures. Also, Samba allows you to apply its network resources for Windows client OSs without any additional configurations required. Moreover, FreeBSD is well-documented.

Keeping your credentials and online behavior safe is key to upholding corporate cybersecurity. But the number of applications that are used on-premises and in the Web grow every day. Such conditions require employees to have various access identities with different credentials. Consequently, it causes unnecessary work complexity and potential online threats. Read the article by Romain Serre about using Azure AD Connect to synchronize identities across your on-premises and web application directories to enhance your cybersecurity.

We all can get too wrapped up in our daily work, chores, and thoughts. Often times, it results in us forgetting to renew stuff, like the Windows Admin Center certificate, for example. Luckily, renewing it and updating it in the WAC itself takes just a few moments.

It’s always the hardest to start something but, once you do, it’s all downhill from there. Then again, you may need some encouragement and guidance to begin. Microsoft Azure is a multi-dimensional cloud service of a grand scale and getting to know it may seem intimidating. But there’s an option to start free to get the hang of it.

Just as VMware’s Project Pacific implies, the plans for the further submergence into the world of containerized applications for vSphere clusters intends to deepen. VMware Tanzu Mission Control is to allow admins to manage Kubernetes clusters regardless of their residential environment. The tool is rumored to become the single base of all K8s cluster operations.