Category Archives: Azure

TechNine March Updates for IT Pro’s

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TechNine March Updates for IT Pro’s

TechNine (https://www.technine.be/) is organizing its first user group event of 2020 on Tuesday 3 March. The TechNine March Updates for IT Pro’s. This is just a quick blog post to invite all who are in our neck of the woods to join us. It is hosted by the Sentia Group in Lochristi.

TechNine March Updates for IT Pro's

Content

There are 3 sessions.The first session, Micha Wets – Enterprise Mobility MVP, introduces us all to Azure Policy Guest Configurations. What can this do today and what does it mean for Windows GPO configurations in the long run? Can they co-exist? Come find out!

Microsoft launched the new EDGE chromium-based browser. Erik Moreau – Windows Insider MVP will deliver his insights about this great new browser in the second session. I hope he has some good news about one of my main complaints about it. What is that? Attend and you’ll find out.

The 3rd session is still a mystery … TechNine likes to have a last moment surprise.

Practicalities

Schedule

  • 18h00: Welcome & Food
  • 18h30: Azure Policy Guest Configurations: The end of Windows GPO? – Micha Wets
  • 19h15: The New Edge – Erik Moreau
  • 20h00: Break
  • 20h15: To be announced, stay tuned!
  • 21h00: Networking and Questions
  • 21h30: End

When: Tuesday, March 3rd, 18:00 sharp

Location: Sentia, Denen 157, 9080 Lochristi, Belgium

Join us by registering here: March Updates for IT Pro’s

TechNine SMB Technology User Group

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Introduction

The TechNine SMB Technology User Group has a meetup on December the 4th 2019. It will be the last event of 2019.

It takes place at Ingram Micro who is hosting this at Ingram Micro, Hermeslaan 1b / 3rd floor, B-1831 Diegem. Thanks for this.

There are 3 speakers who will share some of their insights with you.

Hyper-V backups. The good, the bad, the ugly

This is the session I am giving. I presented this before and I have found that it still delivers a lot of value and insights to people. Every time it has helped some attendees out. We’ll discuss how Hyper-V backups have improved and why. I will also share some insights into what can trip you up with Windows Server 2016/2019.

7 Habits every Azure Admin Must Have

Wim Matthyssen, a well known Azure specialist at Cegeka and is an experienced speaker delivers this one. It will help you be a better Azure admin. As he is a Microsoft Certified Trainer his teaching talents are well developed. We can only benefit from this.

The mystery session

Diego Lens is an experienced trainer, speaker, and Citrix expert. He works as a Cloud Technology Strategist and he will bring us a mystery session. Actually, it is such a mystery I honestly have no idea what it is all about. You’ll have to attend to find out! a talk about Azure Migrate This is “the” tool for migrating workloads to Azure. Is this the forklift for lift and shift or is there more to know? Come and find out!

TechNine SMB Technology User Group event on December 4th 2019

Calendar:
18h00: Welcome & Food
18h30: Hyper-V backups. The good, the bad, the ugly – Didier Van Hoye
19h15: 7 habits every Azure admin must have – Wim Matthyssen
20h00: Break
20h15: Mystery session 😊 – Diego Lens
21h00: Networking and Questions
21h30: End
When: Woensdag 4/12 om 18:00
Where: Ingram Micro, Hermeslaan 1b / 3rd floor, B-1831 Diegem

Register

If you are interested in attending just navigate to the TechNine SMB Usergroup website read up un the other sessions and register. It is as easy as that. If you don’t even have the time for that, the blow button takes you directly to the Eventbrite site for registration.

Register for TechNine Event

I hope to see you at the TechNine SMB Technology User Group on December 4th 2019.

Azure Virtual Datacenter

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Azure Virtual Datacenter

Sometimes Microsoft times a blog post exactly right. For a while now working on bridging worlds (on-premises / cloud) in a responsible and realistic manner. Making sure the transition is smooth and avoids pitfalls. You use what you need where you need it, when you need it and in a way that fits your needs, right? Anyway, in real life that means that I’m working on a Azure Virtual Datacenter deployment (brainstorming/architecture/design phase).

Last week during white boarding twitter notified me of the release of a new portal for the Azure Virtual Datacenter. That’s great timing! And no, there’s no need for thin foil head paranoia here. We MVP are not linked directly into the mother ship.

Azure Virtual Datacenter

MSFT previously delivered an Azure Virtual Datacenter eBook with the concepts and the Lift and Shift Guide. But right now we are mainly looking at workload migrations and not lift and shift. You evaluate and make the best decision within the context at hand.

Help with project communications

The nice thing is they also published a slide deck about the Azure Virtual Datacenter concept. This helps me build presentations on this subject. Well, after removing the marketing slides and adding some extra content. Both technical content and information specific to the environments I’m working in.

Azure Virtual Datacenter

Right now I’m working on the network part (VNETs, subnets, peering, BGP), but I need to pause now and go take care of some Dell PowerEdge R740 and maybe R940 server configurations to order together with some RDMA NICs. Yeah, my existing skills are still in high demand and I know how to bridge worlds pragmatically, efficiently and effectively. There is server- less in our future as well as hardware, at least for now. Now I need to get some IoT in this mix, that’s the fun full stack game right now.

Real life cost savings with Azure IAAS B-Series virtual machines

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I recently move some low end virtual machines from the rather low spec but cheap basic A series (A2, 2 CPU  AMD Opteron and 3.5 GB RAM) to the newer B-Series. These have better processors and better specs all over. I did not want to move to the standard A series A2 or A2v2 as those are more expensive. I had to needs: reduce costs, get better performance. I achieved real life cost savings with Azure IAAS B-Series virtual machines

The B-Series are burstable and offer better pricing if you can build up credits when the VM is not going over it’s base line. The B-series provides you with the ability to purchase a VM size with baseline performance and the VM instance builds up credits when it is using less than its baseline. When the VM has accumulated credit, the VM can burst above the baseline using up to 100% of the vCPU when your application requires higher CPU performance. So picking the VM size is key here. The B2S seemed the best option as the base line for the CPU is 40%. and we needed at least 2 CPU and 3.5GB of RAM. The CPU type is the Intel Broadwell or Haswell E5-2673 so these are also better than the AMD Opteron.

You can see a quick price comparison here. More on the B-Series can be found here: Introducing B-Series, our new burstable VM size

One concern was that we might not be under the base line enough to build up the credits for when we go over the base line. That might kill our cost reduction hopes. That concern was invalidated by the fact that the average vCPU usage % is lower anyway due to the fact the the processors are faster and better. This helps to stay below the vCPU base line and as a result gives me credits for when I need more CPU cycles.

Overall I now have better performance at lower costs. As you can see in the screenshot of 1 VM below the savings are real after swapping over from the basic A2 to the B2S size.

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So, that’s an optimization that has worked out well for me. I suggest you check it out and see where you can reduce or optimize your spending in Azure.