Azure Cost Control in Detail
There isn’t a magic button that can be pressed in Azure to reduce cost. The right level of spend in Azure is achieved as the sum of many frugal decisions. The right spending level is found by looking carefully in these three areas: Processes. The processes put in place for standing up resources in Azure. […]
Where to start with massive Azure Bills
So you’ve just finished your cloud migration. Some of it went well, some of it not so well, but you got there, or mostly there in a hybrid setup. But then three or so months pass and boom, a massive bill has been reported by one of the execs and everyone is looking around hoping […]
Cost Saving Through Better Deployment
Azure’s consumption-based model requires attention to detail and continued focus on utilisation and cost. A subtle difference that was not a daily discipline in the more traditional datacentre setting of the past. While this paradigm shift in the way in which organisations utilise compute services is hardly new. . Fun fact “Azure was first introduced […]
SQL Database Backup on IaaS using Azure Automation
I had a need to take a full SQL Database backup from a virtual machine with SQL Server hosted on Azure. This is done via an Azure Automation account, executing a runbook on a hybrid worker. This is a great way to take a offline copy of your production SQL and store it someplace safe. […]
Azure Migrate – Additional Firewall Rules
When deploying Azure Migrate Appliances to discovery servers, the appliance needs outbound internet access. In many IT environments, servers are disallowed internet access unless prescribed to certain URL sets. Gratefully Microsoft have given us a list of what they think is the list of URLs that the appliance will need to have whitelisted. This can […]
Undocumented ARM Oddities – .Net Core App Services
Every once in a while, when working with ARM templates you come across something that is missing from the official Microsoft ARM template reference. In my case yesterday, I was looking to update the configuration of an Azure App Service to use the DotNetCore stack (rather than .NET 4.8). While I initially thought this would […]
Azure Bastion – Unable to query Bastion data.
I’ve recently setup Azure Bastion to give external users/vendors access to resources via RDP or SSH following these instructions: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/bastion/tutorial-create-host-portal The key permissions outlined in the prerequisites at point 3 are: A virtual network. A Windows virtual machine in the virtual network. The following required roles: Reader role on the virtual machine. Reader role on […]
Get all restore points for an Azure VM
Getting restore points out of Azure can be like getting blood from a stone. The portal likes to always set a custom filter showing only ~90 days and your Powershell cmdlet only allows for a 30 day interval for retrieval dates. When running ‘Get-AzRecoveryServicesBackupRecoveryPoint’ you get the following: Sigh.. I just want all my restore […]
Azure Application Insights – No Client Source IP Address
Working with one of your customers this week who is implementing Azure API Management alongside their web applications. We are funnelling all the request logs into an Application Insights services to manage visibility of the end-to-end transaction data. We noticed that all the client GET requests had ‘0.0.0.0’ in Client IP Address. Request Properties Value […]
Automating Azure Site Recovery with PowerShell
In a recent consulting engagement, I’ve needed to perform a large-scale migration of a company’s virtual machine (VM) fleet from an On-premise datacenter to Microsoft Azure. Thinking about what that actually means – We’re picking up many compute workloads that are (in most cases) essential for day to day business operation and re-homing them to […]