Microsoft has a lot of options to view Azure log data in one form or another. There is the Security Center, Azure Sentinel, Log Analytics, and Insights. This is fine for an Azure centric organization, but many organizations already have log collection systems in place such as Splunk, and using multiple logging platforms is not efficient. This article walks through sending Azure AD and Office 365 logs to Splunk.
Continue reading “Use Splunk to Collect Logs from Office 365 and Azure AD”
Azure Privileged Identify Management, or PIM, is a Microsoft service that enables management, control and monitoring of privileged access in Azure. In this video, I give you an introduction to Azure PIM. We go over the basics of on boarding a user to PIM, adding a user for active and eligible access, activating an eligible role, requiring an activation approval on a role and creating access reviews.
This video goes over two ways of restricting access to Microsoft Azures PaaS services; Service Endpoints and Private Endpoints. Both are used to restrict access to PaaS serviced, but work differently. The video gives an overview if the differences and then does a walkthrough of deploying Service Endpoints and Private Endpoints using an Azure Storage account as an example.
Continue reading “Azure Virtual Networking Service Endpoints and Private Endpoints”
In this video, I go over deploying Azure AD and configuring replication with an on-premises Windows Active Directory domain and Azure Active Directory. I review deployment options and how to synchronize passwords from Windows and Azure directory services. A server is deployed and joined to the Azure AD Domain Services domain and users source from Azure AD and Windows AD log in using same sign-on credentials.
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In this video I go over the benefits of using Azure Proximity Placement Groups and Accelerated networking with Azure IaaS VM’s. I start by explaining what Proximity Placement Groups are and how they work, then go over the basics of Accelerated Networking. After that, I deploy a Proximity Placement Group and accelerated networking and compare results with and without the features enabled.
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This video shows how I created a VPN connection between my home lab and Azure Subscription. I used a Routing and Remote Access role on a Windows Server 2019 as the local endpoint. This provides the ability to setup a VPN connection without special firewall hardware. This is useful for home labs and small offices that need connectivity to an Azure subscription. It also is helpful to walk through the setup to prepare for Azure certifications such as the AZ-103.
Continue reading “Site-to-Site Azure VPN with a Windows RRAS Server”
Azure Spot Virtual Machines are an IaaS server option offered at a deep discount compared to pay-as-you-go and Reserved Instance pricing. This video walks through deploying the new Azure Spot VM’s with the Azure Portal. The video also gives an overview of what Azure Spot VM instances are and some considerations to using them.
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One value proposition of any cloud service is consumption-based pricing, only paying for services when used. Consumption-based pricing is an advantage of Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD), Microsoft Azure-hosted remote desktop service. Or at least it would be if there was an easy way to start and stop session hosts based on demand.
Continue reading “Automatically Start and Stop WVD VM’s with Azure Automation”