CheckYourLogs.Net

Enable Azure Security Center for Storage Accounts

Aug 19, 2019 | Azure | 0 |

If you saw the post last week about the Azure Blueprints and some others, you will know I’ve been focused a lot on modern Azure administration and security. One of the cornerstone pieces of content that Microsoft produces to aid security efforts in Azure is the Azure Security Best Practices PDF. It is linked in this Docs file that will provide a virtual springboard to many security resources. In many of the resources, a consistent theme is to consider Azure Security Center. I have decided to enable this for my storage accounts and will share here with you the...

Thinking About Upgrading Azure Storage Account Configuration Options? Read This.

Aug 19, 2019 | Azure | 0 |

Azure releases new services all the time. Sometimes, individual services have new versions and upgrades. Let’s have Rick walk through an upgrade from v1 to v2 of general purpose storage account.

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Tips to correctly delete Azure resource groups

Aug 16, 2019 | Azure | 0 |

Be sure when you are deleting a resource group – you are doing the right thing. It’s better to be sure than have unused resource groups in the Azure console.

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Why, How and Where to use Azure Tags

Aug 15, 2019 | Azure, Scripts | 0 |

Azure tags can be a construct to organize your resources.

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Using Azure Blueprints: Implementation best practices to put security first

Aug 14, 2019 | Azure | 0 |

Azure Blueprints can help you implement Azure solutions confidently.

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Creating an Azure Budget: A must for test-dev!

Aug 14, 2019 | Azure | 0 |

One of the brightest people I know likes to say that “the cloud is not a charity” and that is true. While I will add that many businesses go to the cloud because it is the right platform for their technology needs, the economics have to part of the process of managing this IT footprint

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Restoring your Azure Virtual Machine to an Alternate Location – #MVPHour #AzureBackup

Aug 1, 2019 | Azure | 0 |

Hey Checkyourlogs Fans, Today, we are going to see how easy it is to clone my LAB Virtual Machine in my Azure Tenant to another VM. I wanted to do this because I have some upcoming presentations and a single Virtual Machine with Nested Hyper-V just wasn’t enough. Step 1 – Open your Azure Portal and Enable Backups (I’ve had mine running for a while so here is what the source looks like.) Step 2 – Click Restore VM Step 3 – Choose your Recovery Point Step 4 – Choose to restore to an Alternate VM – In my...

Azure Mobile App – Should you use it?

Jul 31, 2019 | Azure | 0 |

In a previous post when I highlighted the Azure Advisor, a message that came up on login. The message for Azure Advisor was actually only one of the things that caught my eye on login. The other was an invitation (?) or note to try the Azure mobile app.

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What is Azure Blob Soft Delete and Should I use it?

Jul 30, 2019 | Azure | 0 |

In my last post about using the Azure Advisor for a review of services and their configuration used in Azure, I immediately went to address the high impact (or red) recommendations. Naturally, I then was to look at the medium recommendations and one of them caught my eye for one of my storage accounts: “Enable Soft Delete to protect blob data.” This had me thinking, what is soft delete? How and where should it be used. Here is the medium impact recommendation:

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Is Azure Advisor Advice Worthwhile? Let’s see…

Jul 29, 2019 | Azure | 0 |

Today when logging in, I had a message about trying Azure Advisor recommendations. Normally, I dismiss login messages, but one thing caught my eye: free. Azure Advisor is a free set of recommendations the provide personalized, best practice information.

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Azure File Share Remote Connection Checklist

Jul 18, 2019 | Azure | 0 |

Today I had a situation where I wanted to connect my Azure file share to my Windows PC. This is a very important step in putting a practical use case around the Azure file share from outside of the Azure cloud. I had a few questions and required steps to get there, so I decided to share them with some consideration so you can easily do this when the time comes for you.

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How to Convert Windows SSL certificate PFX Format to PEM Format #WINDOWSSERVER #MVPHOUR @Digicert

Jul 18, 2019 | Windows Server | 0 |

Today, I am going to show you how to convert Windows SSL certificate PFX format to PEM format via free DigiCert GUI too

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MFA for Azure Portal, You’ve Done That Right?

Jul 15, 2019 | Azure | 0 |

From the last two posts I made related to the Azure Key Vault (one on encrypting with your own key and the other on how to generate a key), I’ll admit I’m getting started with security in Azure.

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Generating Keys in Azure Key Vault

Jul 14, 2019 | Azure | 0 |

In my last post, I indicated how easy it was to tell a storage account (particularly the Azure Shell storage account) to use an encryption key. In that example, I brought my own key. That key was an 2048-bit RSA key that Azure Key Vault was happy to use and apply to my storage account. The figure below shows my 2048-bit key:

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Using Azure Shell and want to encrypt with your own key? It’s easy.

Jul 12, 2019 | Azure | 0 |

I recently had a situation where I started using Azure Shell. The way I look at Azure, and really any cloud service, security should be the first part of the process.

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Clear Display Cache using Registry Hack

Jul 9, 2019 | Windows 10 | 0 |

Hey checkyourlogs.net fans! I’m a prolific Surface guy, having used them daily from the release of the original, much maligned Surface RT to my current daily driver, the Surface Book 2. I love these devices, but occasionally, particularly after firmware updates, they like to torment me with odd issues. Today’s gremlin was my SB2 not detecting my external monitor, the very same external monitor I’ve used with this SB2 and it’s Surface Dock since day one. After trying all the usual easy remedies, i.e. disconnect/reconnect the dock, power cycle everything, update the SB2 and the dock, etc… I concluded...

INSTALL Veeam BACKUP & REPLICATION 9.5 UPDATE 4b #Azure #VEEAM #WINDOWSSERVER #MVPHOUR

Jul 8, 2019 | Step-by-Step, Veeam | 0 |

Veeam released the Backup & Replication 9.5 service pack 4b yesterday, Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 Update 4b is a cumulative hotfix rollup that addresses issues reported by customers on the original build of Update 4 and Update 4a, as well as add some new feature and platform support enhancements –
Microsoft Windows 10 May 2019 Update and Microsoft Windows Server version 1903, Microsoft Windows 10 May 2019 Update and Microsoft Windows Server version 1903, Linux Kernel version 5.0, Ubuntu 19.04, SLES 15 SP1, RHEL 8, CentOS 8 and openSUSE Leap 15.1, VMware vCloud Director 9.7, VMware vSphere 6.5 U3 readiness, VMware vSphere 6.7 U3 readiness.
In addition, Update 4b addresses over 100 minor bugs reported by customers and found during the internal testing.

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The Case of the Missing Control Panel Mail Settings App

Jun 28, 2019 | Office365, Windows 10 | 0 |

Hey checkyourlogs.net fans! I stumbled across an issue yesterday where the Mail settings app in Control Panel on my Windows 10 1903 PC wouldn’t open. In expected style, it provided a very non-helpful error “Application not found.” What do you mean, not found? This is the Control Panel for goodness sake! Best guess is that an Office 365 App Update sometime previous “broke” my settings. Especially problematic since my Outlook O365 wouldn’t open because I needed to delete a corrupt profile using, you guessed it, my Control Panel Mail settings app. Oh well, enough ranting and raving, let’s get...

Troubleshooting Storage Spaces Direct Failover Manager with Get-ClusterLog – #StorageSpacesDirect

Jun 17, 2019 | S2D, Windows Server | 0 |

Hey Checkyourlogs Fans, Today, I just wanted to share with you a super easy way to get detailed information about what is happening inside of your Storage Spaces Direct Clusters. We are facing an issue with one of our clusters where the “Network is Partitioned” for the Management Network. We would run a command Get-ClusterLog to generate the cluster.log file and review it for diagnostics. Unfortunately, this generates a rather large file with extra data we don’t need. For us, if we can reproduce the error message or problem and run the following: Get-ClusterLog –Node Node2 –TimeSpan 15 -UseLocalTime...

Filter Out Local AD Users to Not Sync with Azure AD

Jun 17, 2019 | Azure, Office365, Windows Server | 0 |

Hey checkyourlogs.net fans, today’s post covers a common “ask” from those synchronizing on-premises Active Directory with Azure AD: how to prevent certain local objects, specifically users, from synchronizing to Azure AD. Use AD Connect’s filtering capabilities, that’s how! In today’s scenario I’m going to prevent the SystemMailbox account created for Exchange from synchronizing to Azure AD. I’ll set a value on an existing, but unused attribute found on the SystemMailbox AD object, then filter based on that new value. Let’s get this done! Step one is preventing unwanted synchronization while making changes. Do this by disabling the synchronization scheduled...

The Case of unable to connect to Storage Spaces Direct in Windows Admin Center because of WinRM errors – #StorageSpacesDirect #HyperV

Jun 17, 2019 | S2D, Windows Admin Center, Windows Server | 0 |

Hey Checkyourlogs Fans, Today, we were working on a Storage Spaces Direct cluster that is managed by Windows Admin Center. We love using Windows Admin Center because it gives our administrators an HTML 5 interface with rich reporting and performance history. When we attempted to logon to the cluster this morning, we received the following error message: Connection to remote Server <Server> failed with the following error message: WinRM cannot complete the operation. Verify that the specified computer name is valid, that the computer is accessible over the network, and that the firewall exception for the WinRM service is...

The Case of low Disk Space on Windows Server R2 File Servers – Enable Dedup – #MVPHour

Jun 14, 2019 | Veeam, Windows Server | 0 |

Hey Checkyourlogs Fans, Today, we have a quick post just reminding you that if you have Windows Server 2012 R2 File Servers are not able to migrate them to Server 2019 yet. You can still fix issues like lack of disk space with good old deduplication. Deduplication has worked for us like a charm on NTFS volumes, especially file servers for 7+ years now. We run it in production, and it makes a big difference. This week we faced an issue with a customer that was looking to convert virtual machines using ISCSI and Passthrough disks with Veeam. http://www.checkyourlogs.net/?p=66163...

The Case of Troubleshooting and poor VM Performance via Windows Admin Center – #MVPHour

Jun 13, 2019 | Windows Admin Center, Windows Server | 0 |

Hey Checkyourlogs Fans, Today, I wanted to write a very quick post showing how you can use Windows Admin Center to quickly diagnose issues with poorly performing Virtual Machines on a Storage Spaces Direct Cluster. We had a call come in from a customer today that their SQL Server in production was running a bit sluggish on our all flash (NVME) S2D Cluster. Step 1 – Open Windows Admin Center and browse the Virtual Machine Summary Tab. What I noticed right away is that my CPU looks fine only 16 % utilized and none of my VM’s appear to...

Converting Virtual Machines with Pass Through disks using Veeam Agent for Windows – #Veeam @Veeam

Jun 13, 2019 | Hyper-V, Veeam, Windows Server | 0 |

Hey Checkyourlogs fans, Today, I want to showcase a hidden little gem with Veeam Agent for Windows. Let us have a look at our problem. This VM is a SQL Server, and in the original design, the team decided to build out on their ISCSI SAN using Pass-Through Disks. These are known as Raw Device Mappings (RDMs) in VMware. The problem is that Veeam or Azure Site Recovery cannot replicate a VM with this configuration. Here is what the Pass-Through disk looks like inside the VM. So, how can we fix this? I like to use Veeam Agent for...

Veeam Agent for Windows Error – Failed to load backup meta from file #Veeam @Veeam

Jun 12, 2019 | Veeam, Windows Server | 5 |

Hey Checkyourlogs fans, today I encountered a very weird error when attempting to take an incremental backup of a SQL Server using the Veeam Agent for Windows. When running the job, it would immediately fail with an error message that said: “Failed to load backup meta from file: Blah veeam Backup.vbk.” This was a very interesting error message because I had just completed a full backup earlier that morning. Here was the error message from the Veeam Console. Digging in the UI told me to have a look at the logs for more details. So, I went to the...