Getting Started with Azure Internal Load Balancers

Load balancers provide performance and high availability for applications and services.  In this video, we review Azure internal load balancers including features of each SKU, or type of load balancer, load balancing algorithm and distribution modes and health probes.  Then we walk through steps to deploy an internal load balancer in Azure.

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What’s the difference Between Windows AD, Azure AD, and Azure AD DS?

This live stream is based on a presentation I gave at a few events in 2022.  I didn’t get a chance to record them, so I decided to give it as a live stream.

Many organizations want to stop managing domain controllers, but what is the difference between Windows AD, Azure AD, and Azure AD DS, and how do we know when we can get rid of domain controllers? This live stream will begin by outlining the difference between Windows AD, Azure AD, and Azure AD Domain Services. After that, we’ll review the considerations for choosing one option over the other.

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What you need to know about Azure Network Security Groups and Application Security Groups

This video covers what you need to know about Azure Network Security Groups and Application Security Groups.  I started with the idea of a quick video on Network Security groups.  Things snowballed from there, and it ended up being a comprehensive review of Network Security Groups (NSG) and application Security Groups (ASG).  I also added some bonus content on verifying IP flow with Network Watcher.  This video is intended as an introduction to NSG’s.  However, stick around even if you’ve used NSG’s for a while.  There may be some new information here for you.

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Azure Automation Hybrid Workers with PowerShell Remoting and Credential Resources

This video is a follow-up to a previous one on Azure Automation with Arc-enabled Hybrid Workers.  Hybrid Workers extend runbooks to a private network, but not every computer needs to be a Hybrid Worker.  In this video, we review using PowerShell Remoting with Hybrid Workers to build idempotent runbooks that target computers inside a private network.  Then we use a shared credential resource to authenticate the runbook in the local environment.  Multiple examples showing how to target other systems with PowerShell from the Hybrid Worker are provided.

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Windows 365 Enterprise and Intune Management Training Course Now Available!

I am happy to announce a new Microsoft training course for Windows 365 Enterprise and Intune Management is now available at Udemy.com.  I collaborated with Dean Ellerby (@dean_ellerby) to create this course.  It covers everything needed to implement and manage Windows 365 Enterprise with Intune. 

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Send Email with SendGrid and PowerShell

Updated 12/2022
In this video, we create a free SendGrid account in Azure and send email with the Rest API and PowerShell. We walk through the reusable function that builds the header and body of the message. This function is helpful for anyone who needs to send email from a PowerShell script that doesn’t have access to an SMTP relay or are behind a firewall that blocks outbound SMTP traffic.

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Azure Networking, User Defined Routes, and Network Virtual Appliances

This video was intended to show User Defined Routes (UDRs) and a few items were added on to demonstrate how they work.  It starts with some Azure Networking Basics and then we review a hub and spoke network.  From there, A Windows Server with Routing and Remote Access Services (RRAS) is configured as a Network Virtual Appliance (NVA) to route traffic between the spokes in the network.  UDRs are configured on the spoke subnets that send inter-spoke traffic to the NVA.  After that, we add a firewall into the network and direct internet traffic to the firewall with a default route in the UDR.

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Azure Automation Hybrid Worker with Azure Arc Enabled Servers

Azure Arc Automation Hybrid Worker

Azure Automation is not just for Azure!  We can extend it to an on-premises or multi-cloud environment with Hybrid Workers.  This video starts with an introduction to Hybrid Workers and then moves on to installing an Azure Automation Hybrid Worker on Azure Arc enabled severs.  We then test the implementation with a simple runbook.

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