Getting Started with Public Load Balancers in Azure

Load balancers provide performance and high availability for applications and services.  In this video, we review Azure public load balancers including inbound connectivity from the internet.  We also review how to use the load balancer public IP address or IP prefix to support outbound internet access from the backend hosts.  Then we walk through steps to deploy a public load balancer in Azure.

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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 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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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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Save Money with an Azure Savings Plan for Compute

Microsoft provide a few options to save money in Azure.  Reserved Instances, Hybrid Benefits, Spot Instances and now Azure Savings Plan for Compute.  This video goes over Azure Savings Plan for Compute, what it is and how it compares to existing cost reduction options.  Then we review details of the Savings Plan and some considerations you should know before implementing Azure Savings Plan for Compute.

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Start an Azure Automation Runbook with a Schedule or PowerShell

Azure Automation Schedule and PowerShell

This video goes over the steps to create a shared scheduled on Azure Automation.  We review options available to create and edit a schedule.  Then we link the schedule to a runbook to automatically start a runbook based on a schedule.  Next, we view the Azure Automation and Runbook settings with PowerShell, then run and view the progress of a job.

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Link Azure Automation to Log Analytics

Azure Automation Log Analytics

Log Analytics is a great tool for storing and searching log data.  We can link an Azure Automation account to a Log Analytics workspace, but the process may not be as obvious as one would think.  In this video, we create a Log Analytics workspace then link it to Azure Automation account. Next, we configure the Automation account to send diagnostic data to a Log Analytics workspace and verify data goes to the workspace.

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