Educational Episodes: Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI)

For a number of reasons, you may want to wipe your Azure subscription clean of all the policies you have. Whether it’s because you’re testing and demo-ing something often, or because the subscription is too old and your working algorithms need resetting. Although it sounds like a hassle, you only need to enter two commands.

VMware presented vRealize AI Cloud during VMworld 2020 as its next step in cloud automation. The tool is designed for automated performance optimization as part of the Self-Driving Data Center concept. As defined by the vendor, it’s meant to monitor infrastructure performance and apply machine learning to improve performance as workloads change.

It’s a misconception that only a hacker attack is the biggest threat to cybersecurity. In reality, employees not abiding by basic security protocols during their routine work is the biggest “backdoor.” Making sure that all roles, privileges, and systems are set to avoid any outside access is paramount for ensuring your company’s solid daily cybersecurity.

It’s time-consuming and, frankly, annoying to browse through various news feeds to be fully hands-on on all the changes and releases. Microsoft knows it, too, so it integrated a feature into Logic Apps Designer that informs you of the updates to where you need them. Choose a period, RSS feed items, mailbox, teams, or twitter, and you’re all set!

Having an Oracle Database on hand for testing purposes is a handy endeavor. For example, if you want to test software integration capabilities or work with PL/SQL scripts. We’re not talking about configuring a full-blown production-ready Oracle. Just something useful and easy to have for you to test the work stuff that you need.

Azure Backup Center was revealed during Microsoft Ignite 2020. It will be later released as a single-pane-of-glass management and monitoring tool for Azure Backup vaults. The solution will allow you to monitor and configure your backups, restore data, and set a certain level of compliance, all from a single GUI. Read the short guide by Romain Serre, a Microsoft MVP, about Azure Backup Center, its benefits, and how you can preview it today.

For whatever reason, you may want to switch your storage account from your primary region to the secondary one. In Azure Geo-Redundant Storage (GRS), there’s a feature that allows you to perform that action manually. There’s nothing overly complicated to it. The manual failover will take just a few minutes to conclude.

Cases like Meltdown and Spectre showed that minuscule flaws in hardware-layer security can become serious breaches in another person’s keen eyes. AMD’s SEV-ES and latest SEV-SNP exist to protect guest OS by encrypting all CPU register content. So, if your hypervisor is compromised, it won’t be able to access any guest OS data.

Monitoring an HCI can be a real pain because of having to shuffle through multiple UIs, each responsible for a different stat. That’s why HCI vendors continuously aim to perfect their options for control. To simplify your Azure Stack HCI monitoring, you can enable Azure Monitor via Windows Admin Center, with its in-built rules, or create your own.