Tech Tips, Tricks & Trivia

This Week I Learned - *  A resource group can contain resources that are located in different regions. *  Microsoft Azure Storage Team has found the need to support direct FTP and SFTP access to Azure Blob storage decrease over time as customers move to REST based tools that provide greater throughput and better security than legacy protocols. There are external solutions that provide direct FTP and SFTP access to Azure Blob storage such as http://ftp2azure.codeplex.com * D15_v2/DS15_v2  isolated Azure VMs will be replaced with Azure Dedicated Host. * Virtual networks are a traffic isolation boundary in Azure. By default, VMs in one virtual network can't communicate directly with VMs in a different virtual network. However, you can explicitly connect virtual networks by using virtual network peering. * The Azure platform uses a virtualized environment. User instances operate as standalone virtual machines that do not have access to a physical host server. * ...

Nice summary slide from a presentation " Applications modernization journey – The four R’s " by Alexandre Menezes - click on image for enlarged view Definitions: Rehost  (lift & shift) - Redeploy as-is to cloud Refactor / Repack - Minimally alter to take better advantage of cloud Rearchitect - Materially alter/decompose application to services Rebuild - New code written with cloud native approach

Key points from the LinkedIn course Creating Great First Impressions by Vanessa Van Edwards : We decide if we like someone, trust someone, or would want to work with someone within the first 20 seconds of meeting them. A strong first impression is like a shortcut to success. What matters: - the way we look - what we wear - how we carry ourselves - our facial expressions - our vocal power - our handshake - our body language When someone meets you, they're trying to decide how confident you are. Based on your body language, handshake, posture, and vocal power, they're trying to decipher if you're confident or anxious. Whether we like it or not, everyone makes a snap judgment when we first see someone. Aim to land in that upper right quadrant - How do you want to come across? When someone meets you for the first time, what word do you want them to think of in their head? Think of your ideal first impression word, words like authentic, charismatic, captivati...

This Week I Learned - *  Azure Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) enables partners to have end-to-end ownership of the customer lifecycle and relationship for Microsoft Azure. That means partners are empowered to manage sales, own the billing relationship, provide technical and billing support, and be the customer's single point of contact. Azure CSP supports only Azure Resource Manager services. ** If you are moving an existing workload to Azure, start with the VM size that's the closest match to your on-premises servers. Then measure the performance of your actual workload in terms of CPU, memory, and disk input/output operations per second (IOPS), and adjust the size as needed . *  When deploying to availability zones, use the Standard SKU of Azure Load Balancer and the v2 SKU of Application Gateway. These SKUs support cross-zone redundancy. *  When possible, Azure prefers at least 300 miles of separation between datacenters in a regional pair, although this isn't ...

This Week I Learned - * ~50% of IaaS VMs in Azure run Linux *  When you create a storage account, you select the primary region for the account. The paired secondary region is determined based on the primary region, and can't be changed. *  Azure Cosmos DB allows configuring multiple Azure regions as writable endpoints for a Database Account. In this configuration, Cosmos DB offers 99.999% SLA for both read and write availability. *  Throttling is most frequently used in applications exposing API endpoints.  * Azure Functions, Azure Container Instances (ACI), and Logic Apps are examples of serverless computing available on Azure. With ACI, you're charged only for the execution time per second. * Containers take the virtualization up a level. The virtualization is done at the OS level, making it possible to run multiple identical application instances within the same OS. * Azure Kubernetes Service allows you to set up virtual machines to act as...

Notes from the ebook  The essential guide to data in the cloud: a handbook for DBAs  [PDF] Azure SQL Database is best for a fully managed cloud database always based on the latest stable version of the Microsoft SQL Server Database Engine Azure SQL Database Managed Instance is best for Lifting and Shifting existing on-premises SQL Server applications to the cloud with minimal application and database changes SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines  is best for hosting enterprise SQL Server apps in the cloud, including those with dependencies on SQL Server Reporting Services, or when you need full control over your operating system and database Azure SQL Database Managed Instance is a deployment option of Azure SQL Database The vCore-based purchasing model enables you to choose the exact amount of storage capacity and compute that you need for your workload.  The DTU-based purchasing model lets you choose bundled compute and storage packages balan...

This Week I Learned - * Generation 2 virtual machines are now generally available on Azure. Generation 2 VMs provide support for Intel Software Guard Extensions (Intel SGX), UEFI boot architecture, and the ability to provision large VMs (up to 12TB) and OS Disks sizes that exceed 2TB.   * Azure AD DS lets you join Azure virtual machines to a domain without domain controllers *  Five critical areas when migrating your workloads to the Cloud : • Selecting the right computing option for your workload. • Choosing the cloud consumption models to best fit your requirements. • Reducing operating costs by leveraging application and data services available within the cloud platform. • Addressing security and management challenges. • Transforming your applications with new public cloud services. *  Foundational pillars of cloud-native systems: Automation Backing Services Cloud Infrastructure - PaaS, DevOps Containers Modern design - Twelve-Factor methodology,...

Paraphrased summary of a NYT article -  How to Give People Advice They’ll Be Delighted to Take Researchers identified three factors that determine whether input will be taken to heart.  People will go along with advice if it was costly to attain and the task is difficult (think: lawyers interpreting a contract).  Advice is also more likely to be taken if the person offering counsel is more experienced and expresses extreme confidence in the quality of the advice (doctors recommending a treatment, for example).  Emotion plays a role, too: Decision makers are more likely to disregard advice if they feel certain about what they’re going to do (staying with a dud boyfriend no matter what) or they’re angry (sending an ill-advised text while fuming). Things to keep in mind to make sure the advice you give to others will help - Evaluate the situation. Make sure you’re actually being asked to give counsel & not just feel heard Be clear on the advice-seeker’...

Domain names are hosted on name servers as DNS Records like A records, CName record, TXT record and so on. The combination of Names servers and DNS records is called as DNS Zones. DNS servers create a DNS record to provide important information about a domain or hostname, particularly its current IP address. The most common DNS record types are: 1. The A record maps a name to one or more IP addresses when the IP are known and stable. 2. The CNAME record maps a name to another name. CNAME stands for Canonical Name. It should only be used when there are no other records on that name. A common example is when you have both example.com and www.example.com pointing to the same application and hosted by the same server. In this case, to avoid maintaining two different records, it’s common to create: An A record for example.com pointing to the server IP address A CNAME record for www.example.com pointing to example.com As a result, example.com points to the server IP address, ...

Bultoo is how local Adivasis in Chhattisgarh pronounce Bluetooth.  ‘Bultoo’ radio enables rural people in one of India’s poorest states to use mobile handsets to broadcast issues in their own language - Kuduk, Gondi.  These are converted to Internet-based radio programmes and transmitted to all gram panchayats with broadband facilities. Each morning, one representative of each village visits their gram panchayat office to download those radio programmes onto their Bluetooth-enabled mobile handsets, and carries them back to their village to share through Bluetooth, free of charge, with other villagers.  All programmes recorded in the district over the day reach every villager via ‘bultoo’.  All India Radio does not broadcast even a single new bulletin in their language.

More than 2,000 years ago Aristotle outlined a formula on how to master the art of persuasion in his work Rhetoric. To become a master of persuasion yourself and successfully sell your own ideas, try using these five rhetorical devices that Aristotle identified in your next speech or presentation: 1) Ethos or “Character” - establish that you are committed to the welfare of others by building credibility 2) Logos or “Reason” - Why should your audience care about your idea? Use data, evidence, and facts to form a rational argument. 3) Pathos or “Emotion” - wrap the big idea in a story that is authentic & relatable 4) Metaphor - turn words into images that help others gain a clearer understanding of  their ideas 5) Brevity - An argument should be expressed as compactly and in as few words as possible. Start with your strongest point. Propaganda—communication designed to manipulate thought or behavior—is the opposite of persuasion. It’s running amok, juiced by social media c...

Dieters already face an uphill battle, and studies show they pay selective attention to attractive food. Lotte F. Van Dillen et al. in ”Turning a Blind Eye to Temptation” (2013) discovered that cognitive load can decrease the effect of temptation on both thinking and behavior. When study participants were forced to engage in mental tasks that increased cognitive load, they paid less attention to attractive stimuli. Everyone can relate to the experience of being totally engrossed in an interesting or enjoyable task, conversation, or project, where time seems to fly by.  Apparently, such conditions are also conducive to sticking to a diet plan. Busy people often do not have an opportunity to pay attention to tempting food items because they are simply not exposed to them.  They do not have time to even take a lunch break and sometimes, in the absence of food cues, do not feel hungry. Does this idea work?

This Week I Learned - * Each high scale VM size also has a specific IOPS limit that it can sustain. For example, a Standard GS5 VM has 80,000 IOPS limit. *  Azure Portal or PowerShell can be used to move a VM to a different subscription or another resource group .  Subscription transfer in the Azure portal is available for certain subscription types * Site Recovery provides test failovers to support disaster recovery drills without affecting production environments. You can run failovers with minimal data loss (depending on replication frequency) for unexpected disasters. In the scenario of migrating to Premium Storage , you can use the failover in Site Recovery to migrate target disks to a premium storage account. * By default, when you enable disaster recovery for Azure VMs, Site Recovery creates target resources based on source resource settings. For Azure VMs configured with static IP addresses, Site Recovery tries to provision the same IP address for the target V...