What is Azure Firewall Basic and How to Deploy One

What is Azure Firewall Basic and How to Deploy One

Azure now has three SKUs for the firewall project: Premium, Standard, and recently GA, Basic.  Azure Firewall Basic offers many of the same features as the Premium and Standard firewall but at a reduced cost.  Azure Firewall Basic is a good option for small and medium businesses or application-specific deployments where internet or East and West traffic needs to be controlled.  In this video, we start with an overview of Azure Firewall Basic and how it differs from Premium and Standard.  Then we examine the requirements to deploy it and move into the Azure portal to deploy it.

Continue reading “What is Azure Firewall Basic and How to Deploy One”

What is RDP Shortpath for AVD Public Networks and How to Use It

AVD

This is a follow up to my previous video on RDP Shortpath for Private networks.  A low Round Trip Time (RTT) is required for a good user experience in Azure Virtual Desktop.  RDP Shortpath for Public Networks in AVD improves the connection between the client and session host.  Performance is improved by using UDP and a direct connection over the public internet. In this video, we go over the requirements and considerations of RDP Shortpath for public networks. 

Continue reading “What is RDP Shortpath for AVD Public Networks and How to Use It”

What is RDP Shortpath for AVD Managed Networks and How to Use It

AVD

A low Round Trip Time (RTT) is required for a good user experience in Azure Virtual Desktop.  With RDP Shortpath for AVD Managed Networks, we can leverage existing connections between the client network and Azure to keep the RTT latency low.  But this feature is not enabled by default.  In this video, we go over connectivity between the client and an AVD Session Host.  Then we review how we can use RDP Shortpath for AVD Managed Networks to direct traffic over existing private WAN connections between the client and Session Hosts.

Continue reading “What is RDP Shortpath for AVD Managed Networks and How to Use It”

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.

Continue reading “Getting Started with Public Load Balancers in Azure”

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.

Continue reading “Azure Networking, User Defined Routes, and Network Virtual Appliances”

SFTP with Azure Storage is now Generally Availability

Azure Storage SFTP

SSH File Transfer protocol (SFTP), sometimes called Secure FTP, provides the ability to transfer files between autonomous systems.  Azure Storage standard V2 and Premium now supports SFPT access to blob containers.  This video goes over how to enable SFTP on a new storage account, then we add local users and connect with SFTP and the WinSCP client. 

Continue reading “SFTP with Azure Storage is now Generally Availability”

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.

Continue reading “Save Money with an Azure Savings Plan for Compute”

Azure Hub and Spoke Virtual Network (VNet) with a VPN Gateway

In this video, we create a hub and spoke network in Azure by peering our spoke VNet’s to a centralized, Hub Virtual Network.  Then we use a VPN Virtual Network Gateway to enable gateway transit connectivity between the spokes.  Next, we configure routing with Azure Route Tables and User Defined Routes (UDR) to send traffic going to other spokes to the hub.  Then we log into a virtual machine and verify connectivity.

Continue reading “Azure Hub and Spoke Virtual Network (VNet) with a VPN Gateway”