Tech Tips, Tricks & Trivia

This Week I Learned - *  The ping attribute is new for the anchor tag in HTML5 .  When the user clicks on the hyperlink, the ping attribute will send a short HTTP POST request to the specified URL. This attribute is useful for monitoring/tracking. Google Search uses this technique to track clicks. * Customers using Windows Server 2008/R2 and SQL Server 2008/R2 can get an additional 3 years of security fixes (for free) if they migrate those workloads to Azure * Azure Migrate is a tool for assessing an on-premises server deployment and helps you plan for the Azure sizing and migration. The VMware edition has been out for a while, and the Hyper-V version is awaited - Petri * ..the Azure infrastructure exam, 70-533, was 40% PaaS, covering stuff that IT pros would typically not know. 70-533 was replaced by AZ-100 and AZ-101, with an upgrade via AZ-102. * Chia seeds contain omega-3 fatty acids, carbohydrates, protein, fiber, antioxidants, phosphorus, magnesium, zinc, and c...

I noticed that the  Azure Example Scenarios and Azure Blog posts now have sample cost calculations which are very welcome. A handy reference of such sample cost calculations - Apps: Running SAP production workloads using an Oracle Database on Azure  (VM, Managed Disks) - 4 samples Dev/test environments for SAP workloads on Azure  (VM, Managed Disks) - 4 Intelligent product search engine for e-commerce (Web App, Azure Bot service, Azure Search service, and SQL Database) - 3 Migrating a legacy web application to an API-based architecture on Azure (App Service) - 1 An e-commerce front end on Azure  (Block Blob Storage,  Queue Storage, Content Delivery Network, App Service, Azure Active Directory B2C, Functions, Cognitive Services - Text Analytics, Azure Search, Azure SQL Database, Azure Monitor) - 3 Design a CI/CD pipeline using Azure DevOps  (Azure DevOps) - 1 CI/CD pipeline for container-based workloads (...

Azure Backup offers multiple components that you download and deploy on the appropriate computer, server, or in the cloud .  The following matrix from the official documentation provides a quick summary of the options & key terms ( for a better view of the table, click here ) - Feature Azure Backup (MARS) agent System Center DPM Azure Backup Server Azure IaaS VM Backup Benefits Back up files and folders on physical or virtual Windows OS (VMs can be on-premises or in Azure) No separate backup server required. Application-aware snapshots (VSS - Volume Snapshot Service ) Full flexibility for when to take backups Recovery granularity (all) Can use Recovery Services vault Linux support on Hyper-V and VMware VMs Back up and restore VMware VMs using DPM 2012 R2 Application-aware snapshots (VSS) Full flexibility for when to take backups Recovery granularity (all) Can use Recovery Services vault Linux support on Hyper-V and...

The 14 paged  Azure Backup Deep Dive Whitepaper [PDF]  written by Adin Ermie and Charbel Nemnom  covers MARS & IaaS VM Level Backup but not hybrid Azure Backup related technologies, such as System Center Data Protection Manager (SC DPM), and the Microsoft Azure Backup Server (MABS). Key points are paraphrased below along with info from other online resources - * The MARS in Azure Backup (MARS) Agent stands for "Microsoft Azure Recovery Services"...ever since Microsoft combined the Azure Backup (ABU), and the Azure Site Recovery (ASR) services together under the "Azure Recovery Services" label, these two technologies work as 2 pieces in the same puzzle of "recovery" - * In case of System Center Data Protection Manager (SC DPM), or the Microsoft Azure Backup Server (MABS),  there is a main server that performs the processing, coordination, etc. of the agents, backup/recovery jobs - kind of like the air traffic controller between the source (i.e. t...

This Week I Learned - *  You might not need jQuery *  There are significant differences between running SAP HANA on HANA Large Instance and SAP HANA running on VMs deployed in Azure : ·         There is no virtualization layer for SAP HANA on Azure (Large Instances). You get the performance of the underlying bare-metal hardware. ·         Unlike Azure, the SAP HANA on Azure (Large Instances) server is dedicated to a specific customer. There is no possibility that a server unit or host is hard or soft partitioned. As a result, a HANA Large Instance unit is used as assigned as a whole to a tenant and with that to you. A reboot or shutdown of the server doesn't lead automatically to the operating system and SAP HANA being deployed on another server. (For Type I class SKUs, the only exception is if a server encounters issues and redeployment needs to be performed on another server.) ·         Unlike ...

Interesting comparison from an official Azure documentation article - On-premises implementation Azure implementation Networking LAN/WAN SDN (software-defined networking) Security group IP/port restriction tools Network Security Group (NSG) Resilience MTBF (mean time between failures) MTTR (mean time to recovery) Planned maintenance Patching/upgrades Availability sets (patching/upgrades managed by Azure) Resource Dedicated Shared with other clients Regions Datacenters Region pairs Storage SAN/physical disks Azure-managed storage Scale Vertical scale Horizontal scale

This Week I Learned - *  The majority of the Azure planned maintenance updates are performed without any impact to the hosted virtual machines . * Azure Firewall is a managed cloud-based network security service that protects your Azure Virtual Network resources. * Azure Site Recovery now supports firewall-enabled storage accounts *  Azure Site Recovery supports cross-subscription disaster recovery (DR) for Azure Virtual Machines . * Use Azure Data Box service when you want to transfer large amounts of data to Azure but are limited by time, network availability or costs. *  Windows Virtual Desktop enables you to get the best virtual desktop with the full Windows 10 and an optimised Office 365 ProPlus experience. It enables you to stream the full desktop or apps to any device. * Azure Advisor is a free service that helps you optimise your Azure resources to reduce costs, boost performance, strengthen security and improve reliability. * Azure Virtual WAN pr...

Constraints and what is not possible with VNet Peering: * Peering virtual networks in different regions is also referred to as global peering. When creating a global peering, the peered virtual networks can exist in any Azure public cloud region, but not in Azure national clouds. You can only peer virtual networks in the same region in national clouds. * Resources in one virtual network cannot communicate with the front-end IP address of an Azure internal load balancer in a globally peered virtual network. The load balancer and the resources that communicate with it must be in a virtual network in the same region. * You cannot use remote gateways or allow gateway transit in globally peered virtual networks. * The virtual networks you peer cannot have overlapping IP address spaces. * You cannot add address ranges to, or delete address ranges from a virtual network's address space once a virtual network is peered with another virtual network. * You cannot peer two virtu...

Bold new features that device makers keep coming up with to differentiate from the old & existing - * Modular smartphone add-ons that bring transformative features -  Moto Mod s snap onto any Moto Z phone, transforming it into a device that does things other phones can't like turning it into a projector and photo printer * Gesture control music, camera, calls with smart band - Fastrack Reflex Wav smart band goes beyond being activity tracker * Bluetooth enabled stylus as remote for multiple functions - Samsung's S Pen harnesses the power of Bluetooth technology, acting as a remote for Galaxy Note9. Snap photos, change slides, and pause YouTube videos with a press of the button — or set your own custom controls * EKG/ECG - Heart-rate tracking has always been a big part of the Apple Watch and fitness trackers in general. But until now, it's mainly been used for activity tracking and calorie counting. With the update to Watch OS 5.1.2, heart rate will play...

This Week I Learned - * When you have an asynchronous function, and an Error occurs inside of that function, your script will have continued with the execution already, so there will not be any Error immediately....handling asynchronous functions with callbacks..is not recommended.  A better way of dealing with asynchronity is using promises. Here, in addition to having more readable code, we also have improved error handling -  Handling Errors in JavaScript: The Definitive Guide * ..in the SQL Server documentation Microsoft notes that you should not enable any caching on disks that are dedicated to log files because it could result in a minor decrease in disk performance . * Azure Site Recovery charges include Network egress costs to replicate data changes from the source VM disks to another Azure region. Azure Site Recovery uses built-in compression to reduce the data transfer requirements by approximately 50%. *  Microsoft Azure Site Recovery (ASR) now su...

This Week I Learned - *  Sites like Google Sheets ship up to 5.8MB of script (when decompressed) * ...roughly 80% of all enterprise applications run on Windows Server. Of those applications, 70% still run on Windows Server 2008 or earlier versions....By containerizing legacy applications and their dependencies with the Docker Enterprise container platform, they can be moved to Windows Server 2016 and later OS without code changes.... And because containerized applications run independently of the underlying operating system, they break the cycle of extensive, dependency ridden upgrades, creating a future-proof architecture that makes it easy to always stay current on the latest OS. Docker Enterprise allows you to upgrade Windows Server applications to a cloud portable architecture without recoding. And only Docker can run Windows Server containers - Docker Blog * You can run any application in Docker as long as it can be installed and executed unattended, and the ba...