Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Microsoft Pre-Day at RSA is an exclusive opportunity to meet Microsoft Security business and engineering leaders, to have early access to announcements and product news, and to network with your security peers across industries, including executive leaders and decision makers.

Join us for interactive panels with Microsoft Security executives, a keynote from Microsoft Security Engineering leadership, a first look at news from Microsoft Security Research, and a hosted evening reception.

Microsoft Pre-day offers a more intimate venue for connecting with experts to discuss the solutions and strategies that are shaping the security market and influencing the security posture of organizations of all sizes.

• Discover an AI-powered future
• Meet Microsoft Security and engineering leaders
• Learn about the latest product news
• Network with your security peers across industries

To request an invitation to attend Microsoft Pre-Day at RSA, please register below:

• Date:
  April 23, 2023
• Location:
  San Francisco – RSA Conference
• Request invite/Sign in:
  https://mspredayrsa.eventcore.com/

We’re excited to announce the Microsoft’s Public Sector Productivity Summit for our customers on Government Cloud Community (GCC).

During this event, we’ll share fresh content tailored to help enhance employee experience and productivity to drive real innovation in your organization.

Sessions will include:
• Start Fresh with Enhanced Communication Strategy
• Employee Engagement – Viva Connections and Insights 
• Winning with Microsoft Teams Voice
• Enhance Approval Processes with Teams Integration
• Teams and Collaborative Apps: The Teams Apps story!  
• Optimizing Hybrid Work and What is Next?

Date/Time:
Tuesday, March 28, 2023 at 11:00 AM –
Thursday, March 30, 2023 at 3:00 PM

Registration:
https://msevents.microsoft.com/event?id=3684264388

#msadvocate #ProductivitySummit #m365 #productivitytools #microsoftteams #microsoftteamsVoice #collaborationtools #productivity

Join us for Microsoft Cloud Native Day to explore how the power of modern application development can help meet your changing business needs. Learn to ship faster, operate with ease and scale confidently.

From Azure Kubernetes Service to Cosmos DB and Azure OpenAI, you will hear from Microsoft experts insights and guidance on how to leverage innovative cloud services to supercharge your cloud native application development!

Agenda:

1. Welcome and Introduction
2. AKS Must Know (aka AKS 101)
3. Microservices Made Easy with Azure Container Apps and Dapr
4. Build Data-Intensive and Intelligent Applications with Azure OpenAI and Cosmos DB
5. Q&A

Date/Time:
29 March 2023, 9:30 AM – 12:30 PM CET
(Yes, this is 1:30AM – 4:30AM PST.  I’m so sorry.)

Registration:
https://mktoevents.com/Microsoft+Event/386949/157-GQE-382?wt.mc_id=AID3057417_QSG_SCL_636516

#aks #kubernetes #azureai #openai #cosmosdb #cloudnative #ai #microsoftwe #microsoftadvocate

When you use Site Recovery, you incur charges for:
[from the documentation]

1. The Site Recovery license is per protected instance, where an instance is a virtual machine or a physical server. (Either $16/mo or $25/mo as of 3/15/23)
2. Storage cost is incurred for the Site Recovery replica of storage in the target location. A snapshot taken on this replica storage is used to create a new target storage disk upon test failover or failover. Overall storage cost is hence, based on replica of storage and the number of disaster recovery drills conducted in a year.
3. Storage transactions are charged during steady-state replication and for regular virtual machine operations after a failover or test failover.
4. Outbound data transfer cost is also called as egress and is charged only when the traffic leaves an Azure region. Hence, these charges are applied when you replicate an Azure virtual machine from one region to another. Azure Site Recovery compresses the data before you transfer. Hence, egress is charged for the compressed replication data.
5. Recovery points created by Site Recovery are snapshots taken for the replica storage. These snapshots are charged based on the consumed capacity. For more information, see Managed Disks pricing.
6. Costs are also incurred for the virtual machine compute capacity and is only applied at the time of test failover and failover. This cost is usually zero provided there’s no active disaster recovery drill or no actual disaster.
7. For Azure virtual machine protection, Site Recovery mimics the source storage type on target side. For example, if you protect a virtual machine in Azure with disks in storage accounts, then Site Recovery uses a storage account in the target side to store replication data. In another case, if a virtual machine in Azure uses managed disks, then Site Recovery creates an ASR replica disk in the target that corresponds to each source disk.
8. For VMware/physical machines, Site Recovery creates an ASR replica disk in the target that corresponds to each source disk. All new replications from March 2019 onwards use managed disks for both replication and failovers. Managed disk cost is computed on provisioned capacity. For more information, see Managed Disks pricing.
9. For Hyper-V machines, Site Recovery creates and uses a storage account for replication. By default, the test failover or failover happens on a storage account. However, it provides an option to failover to managed disks if required. In this case, managed disks are created at the time of failover.

For detailed cost estimation, visit:

Review the Azure Site Recovery Deployment Planner cost estimation report for disaster recovery of Hyper-VM/VMware to Azure

• VMware: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/site-recovery/site-recovery-vmware-deployment-planner-cost-estimation
• Hyper-V: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/site-recovery/hyper-v-deployment-planner-cost-estimation

Here’s Microsoft’s Azure Cost Management & Billing Resources for folks learning about their invoicing.

• Documentation:
  https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cost-management-billing/
  • Review your individual Azure subscription bill – Microsoft Cost Management
    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cost-management-billing/understand/review-individual-bill
  • Review your Azure Enterprise Agreement bill – Microsoft Cost Management
    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cost-management-billing/understand/review-enterprise-agreement-bill
  • …and more.
• Self-service On-demand Training:
  • Control Azure spending and manage bills with Microsoft Cost Management + Billing
    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/paths/control-spending-manage-bills/
    • Microsoft Azure Well-architected Framework Cost Optimization
    • Plan and manage your Azure costs
    • Introduction to analyzing costs and creating budgets with Microsoft Cost Management
    • Save money with Azure Reserved Instances
    • Optimize Azure costs with data analysis in Power BI
    • Configure and manage costs as a Microsoft partner by using Microsoft Cost Management

• Self-service Video Training:
  Youtube Channel: “Azure Cost Management”
  https://www.youtube.com/@AzureCostManagement
  • How to apply budgets to subscriptions
  • Optimizing cloujd investments
  • How to manage and control your cloud costs
  • How to manage cloud spend
  • Understand your Microsoft Customer Agreement invoice
  • …
• Instructor-led Training: (Unified Support customers only. Note: This consumes credits from the Unified Support contract)
  “The goal of the Azure Cost Management Planning is to enable you to holistically understand cloud financial management and establish the right approach to manage and optimize your cloud expenditures through a series of sessions covering key topics which underpin Cost Management and Optimization on Azure. Furthermore, information collected throughout the engagement is exploited to provide a Cost Management Policy document.”
  (See attached datasheet, “Azure Cost Management Planning”)
• Quick reference guide for “Azure Cost Management”:
  • CATALOG: https://kurtsh.com/2023/02/13/download-learning-pathways-one-pager-companions-for-learning-microsoft-azure/
  • DOWNLOAD: https://learning-pathways.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Microsoft-Cost-Management-Learning-Companion-1122i.pdf

Microsoft’s annual BlueHat Conference provides a unique opportunity the security community to come together and learn about the current threat landscape and challenge the thinking and action we take in security.

The goal of BlueHat is to engage directly with external security researchers and industry partners on current and emerging security threats and to protect our customers.

(For background, visit: https://www.microsoft.com/bluehat/)

MSRC BLOG
The event is largely driven by Microsoft Security Response Center researchers which has a blog at:
https://msrc.microsoft.com/blog/category/bluehat/

SESSION RECORDINGS
Microsoft BlueHat 2023’s 21 session recordings have been made public.  Here’s the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBpsu5tXsUg&list=PLXkmvDo4MfusWp9f7IHT9xAPCkN2ZSm2L

#cybersecurity #security #bluehat #microsoft

Today, we’re taking another big step forward in this journey with the launch of next-generation AI features for Power Virtual Agents and AI Builder, enabled by Azure OpenAI Service.

• New! Conversation booster in Microsoft Power Virtual Agents: Simply point your bot to your company-specific resources, like your website or an internal knowledge base, and watch it start to answer questions in minutes, right out-of-box, with no additional authoring. Learn more here.
• New! Create text with GPT model in AI Builder: AI Builder now brings Azure OpenAI Service to its user-friendly interface, enabling makers to use a new low-code generative AI model and templates with Microsoft Power Automate and Microsoft Power Apps. Learn more here.

…

Read more here:

• BLOG: Build solutions with Microsoft Power Platform and AI
  https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/powerplatform/2023/03/06/build-solutions-faster-with-microsoft-power-platform-and-next-generation-ai/

Join us for our March 9 “Ask Microsoft Anything” chat about Windows Server updates and upgrades.

We’ll cover your questions on how to stay more secure by upgrading older servers (2008 and 2012 versions), the importance of running regular updates, and security features for Windows Server 2022 and Windows Server on Azure.

For this March 9 AMA we’ll have members of Windows Servicing and Delivery team, Windows Server engineering, and security product managers available to answer your questions via chat.

This AMA is text only – meaning there will not be any video nor audio.

An AMA is a live online event similar to an “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit. This AMA gives you the opportunity to connect with members of Microsoft trainers and the product engineering team who will be on hand to answer your questions and listen to feedback.

Feel free to post your questions anytime in the comments below beforehand, if it fits your schedule or time zone better, though questions will not be answered until the live hour.

• Date/Time:
  Mar 09 2023
  09:00 AM – 10:00 AM (PST)
• Add to Calendar:
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/gxcuf89792/downloadCalendar?message.id=3751616
• Event Page:
  Upgrading, updating, and securing Windows Server AMA
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-server-events/upgrading-updating-and-securing-windows-server-ama/ev-p/3751616

Mark your calendars for an Azure Communication Services & Microsoft Teams AMA on March 8, 2023 at 9AM PT!

We’ll talk about the possibilities of connecting Teams with the communication capabilities in Azure and the cool stuff we can build with it. We are looking forward to hearing your ideas, concerns or top of mind and answer any questions you might have about Azure Communication Services interoperability into Microsoft Teams.

The AMA will take place on Wednesday, March 8 from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. PT in the comment section below. This AMA is text only – meaning there will not be any video nor audio.

An AMA is a live online event similar to an “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit. This AMA gives you the opportunity to connect with members of Microsoft trainers and the product engineering team who will be on hand to answer your questions and listen to feedback.

Feel free to post your questions anytime in the comments below beforehand, if it fits your schedule or time zone better, though questions will not be answered until the live hour.

• Date/Time:
  March 8, 2023 at 9AM PT!

• Event Page:
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-events/azure-communication-services-and-microsoft-teams-ama/ev-p/3751501

#AzureCommunicationServices and #MicrosoftTeams

Check out #AzureOpenSource Day on Tuesday, March 7th, 2023.

Learn how to use your data to build intelligent, scalable apps faster and easier. Take a deep dive into open source and Azure and see the latest open-source technology in action—while connecting with the community of industry leaders, innovators, and open-source enthusiasts.

Join this free digital event to:

• See app-building demos using Azure and the latest in open-source technologies, cloud-native architectures, and microservices.
• Get tips and best practices for open source from industry leaders at companies like HashiCorp, GitHub, and Redis.
• Learn to build cloud-native apps for relational and nonrelational data with Azure Cosmos DB, now supporting native PostgreSQL.
• Discover new capabilities in IaaS, PaaS, containers, and serverless computing, including Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).
• Explore practical ways to optimize your open-source investments and gain more time for innovation.
• Learn how to protect your data and business assets by building on a highly secure cloud platform designed to meet your open-source security and compliance needs.

Plus, ask Azure and open-source industry experts your questions during the live chat Q&A.

• Date/Time:
  Tuesday, March 7, 2023
  9:00 AM–10:30 AM Pacific Time (UTC-8)
   
• Registration:
  https://info.microsoft.com/ww-landing-azure-open-source-day.html?ocid=cmm595mpcp0