Introduction Microsoft 365 security score is a consolidated security score based on Microsoft best practice security configurations for Microsoft 365 tenants. The higher the score the higher theoretically your overall Microsoft 365 tenant security levels. The score comprises a list of improvement actions based on your current security posture. Not […]
Azure Virtual Desktop support for Windows Server 2022 and Windows 11
Azure Virtual Desktop support for Windows Azure Virtual Desktop follows the Microsoft Lifecycle Policy and supports the following x64 operating system images: Windows 11 Enterprise multi-session (Preview) Windows 11 Enterprise (Preview) Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session Windows 10 Enterprise Windows 7 Enterprise Windows Server 2022 Windows Server 2019 Windows Server 2016 […]
Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service reference architecture on Azure
Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (CVAD) service options Citrix offers the following two services for implementing Virtual Apps and Desktops cloud service: Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service (managed entirely via the Citrix Cloud and can deploy in any CVAD resource location) Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops Standard for Azure […]
Azure and Microsoft 365 billing for Cloud Service Providers CSP
Microsoft Azure region classification can fall under one of the following categories: Azure CSP billing regions based on the information tied to the Azure AD tenant. These are the regions under which you can register an Azure tenant and based on which your end-customer will be billed. If for instance […]
Azure and Microsoft 365 support for Cloud Service Providers CSP
As a Microsoft Cloud Service Provider (Distributor or Reseller) you will need provide technical support to your customers related to their Azure NCE and Microsoft 365 services. Depending on your customer’s subscription type, they will have the following technical support options: If the end customer has a pay as you […]
TLS 1.0 and 1.1 deprecation in Azure services
Overview Some of TLS protocols (TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1) as well as ciphers suites (3DES – TLS_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA) are gradually being deprecated from all software systems (client and server). This undoubtably affects Azure services as well. If there is a mismatch in the TLS configuration among the components of your […]
Azure migration design considerations
Running an Azure migration can entail many services and parameters which should taken into account. In the case of an Azure migration Proof of Concept (PoC), the Azure PoC subscription is used as an intermediary platform on which to perform an initial migration, test the proof of concept and validate […]
Azure service categories
Azure service directory overview All Microsoft Azure service categories are browsable from the following URL: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/. You can also explore all features and technical details of all available Azure services at: https://portal.azure.com/#allservices. Microsoft Azure organizes available services under the following general categories: AI + machine learning Analytics Compute Containers Databases […]
Migrating .NET apps and SQL databases to Azure
Introduction When planning a migration of .NET apps with associated SQL databases to Azure, you generally have two options: Azure IaaS with Azure VMs and VM scale sets running SQL Server or any other supported SQL DBMS (e.g. MySQL Server) Azure PaaS with Azure App Service and Azure SQL or […]
Azure App Service design considerations part 2
Introduction In a previous blog post, a high-level inventory of Azure App Service design considerations was provided. In this post, we provide further design considerations which supplement the first blog post. There are a number of ways to host your application code in Azure. This could be IaaS based (virtual […]
Azure database for MySQL zone and region disaster recovery
Introduction The Azure database for MySQL instance can be scaled up and down depending on your organization requirements without downtime, as described at: https://docs.microsoft.com/enus/azure/mysql/concepts-high-availability. This article describes all possible failure events (except for region-level failure), which are automatically managed by the Azure database for MySQL service, without admin intervention. Azure […]
Azure Front Door design considerations
Introduction As discussed in a previous blog post regarding Azure load balancing service options, Azure Front Door (AFD) is one of the many available load balancing options in Azure, the alternative options being the following: Azure Traffic Manager Azure Application Gateway which can be combined with Web Application Firewall Azure […]
Azure App Service zone and region disaster recovery
Introduction When running a single instance of an Azure App Service, you . You need at least two instances of the Azure App service to be covered for Azure zone-level disasters, since each instance will be running in a different zone. You are however covered in cases of Azure region […]
Hosting SQL Server workloads in the Azure Cloud
Introduction Microsoft Azure offers a handful of cloud services for hosting your SQL as well as NoSQL databases and in-memory databases. The supported SQL databases are SQL Server, Oracle database, MySQL, PostGreSQL and MariaDB. Hosting SQL databses in Azure comes in the form of either IaaS or PaaS service. An […]
Google Cloud Platform federation options in Azure Active Directory
Introduction You may come across an implementation scenario in which you will need to utilize the customer’s Google Cloud Platform (GCP) directory as an Identity Provider when consuming Azure services. This contradicts to the default case in which Azure AD is both an Identity Provider (IDP) and a Service Provider […]