How to bring existing Azure resources under Terraform management

Posted on 04/07/2020 by

In a perfect world, an application with all of its components is provisioned and managed as code from the very beginning. But unfortunately that is not always the reality. Some companies start to provision services manually before they find out this might not be a good thing for the long run. Others start with one tool, only to find out that they feel more comfortable with another tool – and want to change it. If you are using Hashicorp’s Terraform to manage your infrastructure, you can bring existing resources that have been provisioned outside of Terraform under its control. Read on to find out how.

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Microsoft MVP for another year!

Posted on 03/07/2020 by

July 1 is an important day for the worldwide Microsoft community. On that day, Microsoft awards new and renews existing Microsoft MVPs. I am more than happy to have been renewed for another year in the “Microsoft Azure” category.

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I’m a Microsoft Regional Director – again!

Posted on 21/06/2020 by

Two weeks ago I received a nice confirmation email from Microsoft and finally I am allowed to share the news: My nomination for becoming a Microsoft Regional Director for Switzerland has been approved! That said, I am again part of a privileged group of approx. 160 people from around the globe that closely works with Microsoft to drive business and community engagements.

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Azure Security Center – Workflow Automation

Posted on 13/06/2020 by

Azure Security Center (ASC) is your main stop when you need a first broad overview of your environment’s security posture. If there is potential to improve your overall security, ASC will give you recommendations that explain how a specific resource can be better protected. In addition to that, you can use advanced security features that assist you to detect and protect against threats. Those features bring additional intelligence to the show (think of machine learning) and help you make easier decisions to drive security to the next level.

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Just for fun: Using symbols in Azure

Posted on 29/05/2020 by

I was asked recently if it is possible to use symbols when assigning names to Azure objects. The short answer is ‘yes’, this is indeed possible, but definitely not something I would recommend in a business environment. However, it makes things look nice, shiny and less boring and might be of use to drive attention in workshops, demos etc.

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Managing Azure Front Door with the Azure CLI

Posted on 19/04/2020 by

My last post about Azure Front Door went through the roof, so I though to deliver some more content about this topic. In this post I will focus on how Azure Front Doors can be deployed and managed using the Azure CLI. This will also unveil some new secrets about the service that are important to understand before you start managing it in a production environment.

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Unleashing Azure Virtual WAN – Part 1

Posted on 15/04/2020 by

If you are working with Azure and especially IaaS, you might know that designing and building a virtual network can become a challenge. Lots of differents parts must work together to have a secure, fast and solid network and routing infrastructure for your services – in Azure and for hybrid connectivity. If you have multiple offices you want to connect, it gets even more complex. But thanks to Azure Virtual WAN, this might be easier than you think!

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Mastering Azure Front Door

Posted on 13/04/2020 by

During my work with customers I discovered that Azure Front Door is a not-so-well known service. However, it is very valuable if you run applications that are not only distributed across multiple regions, but also used by consumers across the globe. This article takes you through the (more or less) full Front Door journey and explains how to set it up for a (very simple) globally distributed web application.

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Walkthrough: How to use and configure reservations to save money

Posted on 09/04/2020 by

When consuming cloud services, customers benefit from the pay-what-you-use billing model. That means that you only pay what you have provisioned and use. If you delete a resource, you will not pay for it anymore. This gives customers very good flexbility and cost control. However, what if you know that you will have some workloads such as virtual machines running in Azure for a long time? For those cases you can reserve capacity for one or three years upfront and get a financial discount. In Azure this is called ‘Reservations’. Many people know that reservations exist in Azure, but only few actually ever configured and used them. This walkthrough gives you some insights.

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