Giving you users (or systems) the least amount of privileged access is one of the three principles in the Zero Trust model. A role you might consider taking a closer look at is the Azure Stack Hub Operator. Written by Bastiaan Wassenaar and Mark Scholman Azure Stack Hub Admin Portal Currently the permissions within the the admin portal is an “all or nothing” thing. The Operator needs to have Owner RBAC rights on the Default Provider Subscription. Some Operators only need, for example, to populate some Marketplace Items, have to run the update process or manage a specific resource provider. Thi ..read more

In the last years the Azure Stack Team made some really good improvements when it comes to Patch and Update (PnU) of Azure Stack Hubs. When the PnU-process is fired off guest vm’s are moved around the nodes, so that a node can be taken in maintenance and be upgraded.  In the last couple of years I noticed that during the migration of the vm’s sometimes a small margin of vm’s get unresponsive (or rebooted). The cause of this can be many reasons, but a common heard thing is that Linux VM’s do this more often than Windows VM’s. This reminded me of a virtualization thing of all time: Disk tim ..read more

Microsoft Ignite 2020 kicked-off yesterday and as far as I can see they have put all the news out there in one go. In the Azure Stack Hub area not too much news, most of it was already announced at Build. VNet peering Probably the most practical one of all announcements is the support for VNet peering on Azure Stack Hub! This was one of the biggest feature requests from users in the last couple of years. Finally we can peer our Kubernetes vnets with our Hub (pun intended) Vnets. The PM’s did a great job writing everything down in the following blogs: – Azure Stack Hub updates at MS Ignite 2020 ..read more

The latest rumour in the Azure Stack world is called “Azure Stack Fiji”. This is a very exciting development if you ask me. And I am looking forward to this years Microsoft Ignite, hope we get some announcements! Microsoft is developing a new member of its Azure Stack hybrid computing family that is codenamed Azure Stack “Fiji.” Fiji is meant to provide users with the ability to run Azure as a local cloud, managed by public Azure and delivered in the form of racks of servers provided by Microsoft directly to users, according to my contacts. Mary Jo Foley on zdnet.com Read Mary Jo’s article he ..read more

There are a lot of podcasts out there these days, which in itself is a good thing, but we only have so much time to spend every day. When it comes to podcasts about hybrid cloud and Azure Stack there is one that stands out for me at the moment. Lisa at the edge is a podcast created by Lisa Clark. Lisa lives in Dundee, Scotland and works for Dell Technologies. Her enthusiasm for hybrid cloud is contagious (in a good way ;-)) and she manage to have a lot of interesting guests. Check her out at: https://lisaattheedge.com ..read more

I am working with some developers to check if their code would work on Azure Stack Hub App Service. One of us made a reference to the “will it blend” videos that were a hit in the early Youtube days, that made me smile. Because… it is important to smile. Note: This post applies to App Service version update 8 on Azure Stack Hub. As App Service on Azure Stack Hub has a subset of features of the App Service in public Azure I found out that, as for now, there isn’t a detailed overview of all the frameworks/languages/… that are supported. In architectural discussions and work you don’t alwa ..read more

Hello from sunny and warm Australia! Unfortunately I couldn’t attend Ignite in Orlando this year, but got all the updates for you in a single blogpost regarding the Azure Stack space. A lot of updates to share now so let me dive in to it right away: Rebranding Alert: Azure Stack refers now to a family of products! Azure Stack as we know it is called from now on Azure Stack Hub. Azure Databox Edge is called from now on Azure Stack Edge. And the current Hyper Converged Infrastructure remains its name Azure Stack HCI Azure Stack Edge New form factors and features With Azure Stack Edge they ..read more

At Microsoft Build 2019 I attended a short session about Azure Image Builder & Azure Stack by Daniel Sol and Ihcene Cheriet. They showed a demo of a fully automated customized linux distro and add it as an image to the Azure tenant. Pretty awesome I thought. It took me a while, but this week I found some time to play with it. What is Azure Image Builder? Azure Image Builder (AIB) makes it possible to automate VM image creation for use in the Azure cloud. The image you create can be automatically placed in the Azure Shared Image Gallery, a managed image or as a VHD-file. The service i ..read more