Azure Sphere OS: the new Microsoft Linux Based OS. The world is changing. What about you?!

A couple of days ago in Microsoft Build 2018, Microsoft has announced the first Microsoft Linux based OS!

The new Linux based kernel OS along with other two major components will present a highly-secured end-to-end solution for connected microcontroller-powered devices. Azure Sphere includes three components working as one, a brand-new class of crossover Microcontrollers running a secured Operating System and supported by cloud services. Along with advanced development tools, Azure Sphere is your opportunity to reimagine your business from the ground up.

Learn more: http://microsoft.com/Azure-Sphere Subscribe to Microsoft on YouTube here: https://aka.ms/SubscribeToYouTube Follow us on social: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/micr... Twitter: https://twitter.com/Microsoft Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Microsoft/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/microsoft/ For more about Microsoft mission, visit http://microsoft.com/Azure-Sphere

https://aka.ms/microsoftstories

Gartner has just published the updated cloud IaaS scores for Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

In March 13, Gartner has published the new Cloud IaaS scores of AWS, Azure, and GCP, As mentioned by Gartner, "Compared to the previous assessments occurred mid-summer 2017, these new assessments show a steady growth in feature coverage by all three providers, with GCP leading the growth with an overall increment of 12 percent points. Azure follows with five additional percent points and AWS, which was the provider with the highest coverage also last year, marked an increment of four percent points. The figure below shows the details of the movements occurred within this update, broken down by required, preferred and optional criteria. It is interesting to note how some scores also went down (see Azure, required). When scores go down, it is not always due to providers removing features, but sometimes – like in this case – due to the modification of the applicability of the criteria’s scope".

Finally, Microsoft plans to open its first set of Middle East data centers in UAE

After becoming an increasing threat to Amazon in the public cloud space, and in the fourth quarter increased its market share from 16 to 20 percent, according to KeyBanc analysts, Microsoft Finally announced its plans for a major expansion of the Microsoft Cloud with the launch of its first cloud regions in the Middle East. These new regions, which are scheduled to go online in 2019, will be located in Abu Dhabi and Dubai and will host the company’s usual Azure, Office 365 and Dynamics 365 services.

“Microsoft has been present in the Middle East for more than two decades and is deeply invested in the region in many ways,” said Sayed Hashish, regional general manager, Microsoft Gulf, in today’s announcement. 

"We see enormous opportunity in MEA (Middle East and Africa) for cloud technology to be the key driver of economic development, as well as provide sustainable solutions to many pressing issues such as youth employability, education and healthcare," Samer Abu-Ltaif, president of Microsoft Middle East Africa, said in a press release.

It’s worth noting that Amazon, too, has already announced its plans for a region in Bahrain, which will open in about a year, while Google has not announced any plans to enter this market yet.

In addition to the new Middle East regions, Microsoft also today announced its first region in Switzerland (with data centers around Geneva and Zürich), which is scheduled to go online in 2019. In Germany, the company is launching an additional cloud region and in France, the Microsoft Cloud is now generally available.

In total, Microsoft now offers 50 regions around the globe, with plans for 12 new regions in the works.

You could have more details in https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/14/microsoft-plans-to-open-its-first-middle-east-data-centers-in-2019.html

Exam 70-535 (Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions) - Azure Compute Infrastructure Sub-topics

These are the sub-topics that you have to cover in the Azure Compute Infrastructure

topic of Exam 70-535 (Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions). This sub-topic should cover 10- 15% of the exam. For the complete list of the seven topics, please refer to the first post of this series :

•      Design solutions using virtual machines

•      Design VM deployments by leveraging availability sets, fault domains, and update domains in Azure; use web app for containers; design VM Scale Sets; design for compute-intensive tasks using Azure Batch; define a migration strategy from cloud services; recommend use of Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery

•      Design solutions for serverless computing

•      Use Azure Functions to implement event-driven actions; design for serverless computing using Azure Container Instances; design application solutions by using Azure Logic Apps, Azure Functions, or both; determine when to use API management service

•      Design microservices-based solutions  

•      Determine when a container-based solution is appropriate; determine when container-orchestration is appropriate; determine when Azure Service Fabric (ASF) is appropriate; determine when Azure Functions is appropriate; determine when to use API management service; determine when Web API is appropriate; determine which platform is appropriate for container orchestration; consider migrating existing assets versus cloud native deployment; design lifecycle management strategies

•      Design web applications

•      Design Azure App Service Web Apps; design custom web API; secure Web API; design Web Apps for scalability and performance; design for high availability using Azure Web Apps in multiple regions; determine which App service plan to use; design Web Apps for business continuity; determine when to use Azure App Service Environment (ASE); design for API apps; determine when to use API management service; determine when to use Web Apps on Linux; determine when to use a CDN; determine when to use a cache, including Azure Redis cache

•      Create compute-intensive application

•      Design high-performance computing (HPC) and other compute-intensive applications using Azure Services; determine when to use Azure Batch; design stateless components to accommodate scale; design lifecycle strategy for Azure Batch

Microsoft Exam 70-535 (Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions) in a nutshell!- Key Sub-topics of Dev-Ops

Design a management, monitoring, and business continuity strategy (20–25%)

• Azure IaaS monitoring with OMS 
• Create an alert rule on a metric with the Azure portal
• Azure Automation Account
• Replicate Hyper-V virtual machines (without VMM) to Azure using Azure Site Recovery with the Azure portal
• Replicate physical machines to Azure by using Site Recovery
• My first graphical runbook
• My first PowerShell runbook
• My first PowerShell Workflow runbook
• Getting Started with Azure Automation DSC
  Desired State Configuration (DSC) 
• How Azure Backup Works in 10 mins
• Microsoft Azure Backup Server v2 Docs
• AzureRM.RecoveryServices.Backup (PowerShell)

Microsoft Exam 70-535 (Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions) in a nutshell!- Key sub-topics of Design Azure Web and Mobile Apps

These are the sub-topics that you have to cover in the Design Azure Web and Mobile Apps

topic of Exam 70-535 (Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions). This sub-topic should cover 5-10% of the exam. For the complete list of the seven topics, please refer to the first post of this series:

q Design of Web Applications

            Design Azure App Service Web Apps 

            Design custom web API 

            Offload long-running applications using WebJobs 

            Secure Web API using Azure AD, design Web Apps for scalability and                                 performance

             Deploy Azure Web Apps to multiple regions for high availability 

             Deploy Web Apps, create App Service plans 

             Design Web Apps for business continuity 

             Configure data replication patterns 

             Update Azure Web Apps with minimal downtime 

             Back up and restore data 

             Design for disaster recovery.

q Design of Mobile Applications

Design Azure Mobile Services 

Consume Mobile Apps from cross-platform clients 

Integrate offline sync capabilities into an application

Extend Mobile Apps using custom code 

Implement Mobile Apps using Microsoft .NET or Node.js 

Secure Mobile Apps using Azure AD 

Implement push notification services in Mobile Apps 

Send push notifications to all subscribers 

Specific subscribers, or a segment of subscribers

Exam 70-535 sub-topics of Design advanced applications

These are the sub-topics that you have to cover in the Design Advanced Applications

topic of exam 70-535 (Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions). This sub-topic should cover 20%-25% of the exam For the complete list of the seven topics, please refer to the first post of this series :      

Design for Artificial Intelligence Services 

–      Determine when to use the appropriate Cognitive Services, Azure Bot Service, Azure Machine Learning, and other categories that fall under cognitive AI

•       Design for IoT 

–      Determine when to use Stream Analytics, IoT Hubs, Event Hubs, real-time analytics, Time Series Insights, IoT Edge, Notification Hubs, Event Grid, and other categories that fall under IoT

•       Design messaging solution architectures  

–      Design a messaging architecture; determine when to use Azure Storage Queues, Azure Service Bus, Azure Event Hubs, Event Grid, Azure Relay, Azure Functions, and Azure Logic Apps; design a push notification strategy for Mobile Apps; design for performance and scale

•       Design for media service solutions 

–      Define solutions using Azure Media Services, video indexer, video API, computer vision API, preview, and other media related services

Microsoft Exam 70-535 (Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions) in a nutshell!- Key topics of Design an application storage and data access strategy

In a previous post about the exam  70-535 (Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions), I talked about the seven pillar main topics that you have to cover before entering this exam. Today I will speak about the third topic. This topic should cover 5%-10%:

• Design an application storage and data access strategy : 

This includes two dimensions; the data access strategy design and the Azure storage that fits it. The following are the main topics that you have to consider when studying this topic:

• •Design for Azure Storage solutions•Determine when to use Azure Blob Storage, blob tiers, Azure Files, disks, and StorSimple
  •Design for Azure Data Services
  •Design for relational database storage
  •Design for NoSQL storage
  •Design for CosmosDB storage
• •Determine when to use MongoDB API, DocumentDB API, Graph API, Azure Tables API; design for cost, performance, data consistency, availability, and business continuity
• •Determine when to use Azure Redis Cache, Azure Table Storage, Azure  Data Lake, Azure Search, Time Series Insights
• •Determine when to use Azure SQL Database and SQL Server Stretch Database; design for scalability and features; determine when to use Azure Database for MySQL and Azure Database for PostgreSQL; design for HA/DR, geo-replication; design a backup and recovery strategy
• •Determine when to use Data Catalog, Azure Data Factory, SQL Data Warehouse, Azure Data Lake Analytics, Azure Analysis Services, and Azure HDInsight.





Important Tip:

Know the various storage types and their uses. For example, many times you can use Queues to decouple components of a system.
Check this link to know when to use what: https://aka.ms/azure/storage

Microsoft Exam 70-535 (Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions) in a nutshell!- Key topics of Design-Azure-Resource-Manager-ARM-Networking

These are the sub-topics that you have to cover in the Design-Azure-Resource-Manager-ARM-Networking topic of exam Exam 70-535 (Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions). This sub-topic should cover 5-10% of the exam.

For the complete list of the seven topics, please refer to the first post of this series :

That is entitled: Microsoft Exam 70-535 (Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions) in a nutshell!

• Design Azure virtual networks

•Design solutions that use Azure networking services: design for load balancing using Azure Load Balancer and Azure Traffic Manager; define DNS, DHCP, and IP strategies; determine when to use Azure Application Gateway; determine when to use multi-node application gateways, Traffic Manager and load balancers

•

• Design external connectivity for Azure Virtual Networks

•Determine when to use Azure VPN, ExpressRoute and Virtual Network Peering architecture and design; determine when to use User Defined Routes (UDRs); determine when to use VPN gateway site-to-site failover for ExpressRoute 

•

• Design security strategies

•Determine when to use network virtual appliances; design a perimeter network (DMZ); determine when to use a Web Application Firewall (WAF), Network Security Group (NSG), and virtual network service tunneling

•

• Design connectivity for hybrid applications

•Design connectivity to on-premises data from Azure applications using Azure Relay Service, Azure Data Management Gateway for Data Factory, Azure On-Premises Data Gateway, Hybrid Connections, or Azure Web App’s virtual private network (VPN) capability; identify constraints for connectivity with VPN; identify options for joining VMs to domains

Microsoft Exam 70-535 (Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions) in a nutshell!

Many People are asking  and searching for the new Microsoft Exam 70-535: 

Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions that is still in A version and B is still not released.

Few important points to know:

• In its current version is coming in one only language which is English. 
• The exam is coming is an adaptive exam that comes with couple of cases and each cases has some applied questions. Your answers to one case determine the next case you get.
• Based on being an adaptive exam, means that once you leave one case you will not be able to return it back. This applies because the second case has been decided based on the answers of the previous case so, changing the answers of the first case may lead to changing the second case that you already have answered already which could create a lot of miss during the exam. that is why, this is already disabled and not possible initially.
• The exam is based on seven pillars of knowledge. Here are they and some key points under each of them:

• Design Azure Resource Manager (ARM) networking.

• Secure Resources.

• Design an application storage and data access strategy.

• Design advanced applications.

• Design Azure Web and Mobile Apps.

• Design a management, monitoring, and business continuity strategy.

• Architect an Azure Compute infrastructure.

Please note that The exam 70-534 includes main 6 topics. The 70-535 includes 7 topics. The main topics are different.

The 70-535 includes more features to study like CosmosDB, DMZ, WAF, AAD, Azure Key Vault, Event Grid and more.

in the The following posts I will speak about the content topics that you should be aware of in each of the seven pillar topics. 

Introducing Managed Service (MSI) Identity for Azure Resources

A common challenge when building cloud applications is how to manage the credentials that need to be in your code for authenticating to cloud services. Keeping these credentials secure is an important task. Ideally, they never appear on developer workstations or get checked into source control. Azure Key Vault provides a way to securely store credentials and other keys and secrets, but your code needs to authenticate to Key Vault to retrieve them. Managed Service Identity (MSI) makes solving this problem simpler by giving Azure services an automatically managed identity in Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). You can use this identity to authenticate to any service that supports Azure AD authentication, including Key Vault, without having any credentials in your code.

A Managed Service Identity (MSI) is a cross-Azure feature that enables you to create a secure identity associated with the deployment under which your application code runs. You can then associate that identity with access-control roles that grant custom permissions for accessing specific Azure resources that your application needs.

With MSI, the Azure platform manages this runtime identity. You do not need to store and protect access keys in your application code or configuration, either for the identity itself, or for the resources you need to access. A Service Bus client app running inside an Azure App Service application or in a virtual machine with enabled MSI support does not need to handle SAS rules and keys, or any other access tokens. The client app only needs the endpoint address of the Service Bus Messaging namespace. When the app connects, Service Bus binds the MSI context to the client in an operation that is shown in an example later in this article.

Once it is associated with a managed service identity, a Service Bus client can perform all authorized operations. Authorization is granted by associating an MSI with Service Bus roles.

How Does it Work?

For More information please refer for the following MSI documentation that is the main source of this post :

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/managed-service-identity/overview

Microsoft Azure is a leader in the Gartner's Cloud IaaS Magic Quadrant

In June 2017 report, Gartner has recognized Microsoft as a leader in their Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) MQ for the fourth consecutive year. It is really exciting that Gartner continues to recognize Microsoft for completeness of the vision and ability to execute in this key area.

Here’s the list of cloud-related Gartner MQs where Microsoft is placed in the leader’s quadrant:

According to the Register.co.uk "Oracle and IBM are rated visionaries may turn heads, as both strut like cloud leaders: Oracle regularly says its cloud is superior to Amazon's. Yet Gartner rates Oracle's cloud “a bare-bones 'minimum viable product'” that offers “only the most vitally necessary cloud IaaS compute, storage and networking capabilities.” The analyst firm also worries about the Oracle cloud's “limited operational track record” and warns that “Customers need to have a very high tolerance for risk, along with strong technical acumen.”

If you’d like to read the full report, “Gartner: Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service,” you can request it here.