Azure Global VNET Peering – An Alternative to MPLS and SD-WAN

nbeam published 4 years ago in Azure, Cloud Services, Microsoft, Network Security, Networking, Tunneling, VPN. Tags: , , , , , ,

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When your business hinges upon remote workers and remote offices, secure connections, and lots of data manipulation… how do you deal with some of your folks being extra remote? Granted the internet in 2020 is very different from the internet in say 2008 and the world has grown ever smaller as a result… but distance and all of the congested, intervening, network hops that come with it are still a reality. Particularly for remote workers living on other continents that have to interface regularly with systems in the United States as a part of their job.

The two big headaches for remote workers in other countries connecting to offices in the US are latency and bandwidth. In the past there were only and handful of solutions, most involving long-term contracts with a telcom and lengthy, complicated setups. I would argue that MPLS still falls squarely in this camp. SD-WAN has certainly improved on all of the above but it’s still enough of a headache that it typically involves contract terms and conversations with sales “engineers.”

I would like to propose something different using Azure.
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Azure Hosted VPN Solutions Review – Sonicwall SMA 500v vs. OpenVPN Access Server

nbeam published 4 years ago in Authentication, Azure, Cloud Services, Information Security, Linux, Microsoft, OpenVPN, Ubuntu, VPN, Windows Administration. Tags: , , ,

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The current state of the world has caused some unique stresses on IT infrastructure. For IT departments servicing internal teams, remote access infrastructure in particular has felt the brunt of the blow. To that end, I spent a couple of weeks testing out enterprise VPN solutions.
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Azure Automation – Use AZ Powershell to Schedule AzureSQL Database Scale-Up and Scale-Down Operations

nbeam published 4 years ago in Azure, Cloud Services, Database Administration, Development, Fun, Microsoft, Powershell. Tags: , , , ,

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Continuing on my journey up the Azure Automation mountain, I recently completed a simple AZ PowerShell script that takes several input parameters and scales UP or scales DOWN a given AzureSQL database instance depending on what time of day it is.

Before I go any further, if you are just getting started in Azure Automation, I wrote another article here which may help you avoid some of the headaches I ran into as part of my initial foray:
Azure Automation – Powershell – Getting it Working – Authentication the “Easy” Way -and- Ditching AzureRM

BACKGROUND
Azure has excellent auto-scaling parameters built-in for scaling App Services horizontally (i.e. “out” and “in”… adding or decreasing instance count). However for vertical scaling of AzureSQL services, you are pretty much left to your own devices.

I have an “okay” amount of experience using AZ Powershell to script and get things done in my Azure Subscriptions and with that in mind and the task set in front of me of auto-scaling our AzureSQL databases based on time of day (scale up before the busy hours, scale down when the quiet hours start) I turned to Azure Automation to get the work done.

Being an IT professional of several years, I did what we all do… I turned to Google and searched for scripts I could just steal, modify, and use (I am nodding at you right now…). However, if your want to use “AZ” Powershell instead of the deprecated “AzureRM”… I think the term is… “forgetaboutit.” The templates and examples that I found were either based on Powershell “Workflows” which I didn’t want to mess with and/or used the old AzureRM Powershell syntax. So I then turned to… Powershell ISE… and started writing.
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Azure Automation – Powershell – Getting it Working – Authentication the “Easy” Way -and- Ditching AzureRM

nbeam published 4 years ago in Authentication, Azure, Cloud Services, Development, Fun, Microsoft, Powershell. Tags: , , , , , ,

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I have been using Powershell to manage pieces of Azure on and off for about a year and half now. I had heard tell of Azure Automation but never really had a good reason to justify spending the time climbing that particular mountain (hill really…).

Then the request came through… let’s scale AzureSQL databases up and down based on time of day for a given project… If you have worked in Azure you know Microsoft has built in a fairly robust and relatively easy to use auto scale-out configuration interface for Azure App services. Not so for “up/down” scale operations (increasing/decreasing the size of a single-instance). Hence, my foray into Azure Automation.

I have done a fair bit of Azure Powershell scripting just using the ISE interface and keeping scripts on my desktop. I started out with “AzureRM” and migrated to “AZ” as Microsoft starting a couple of years ago pretty much said “AZ” is the future… switch now.

With that background in place, I will state that I found starting out on Azure Automation to be a bit of a bumpy ride. I wanted to hopefully save you the reader some of the time I spent chasing my tail…
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