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Sonia joins Anthony to discuss AR switches, public preview updates to Azure Backup and Azure Security Center, a new Azure Monitor agent and Intune notifications. Our Microsoft Learn Module of the week is a Cloud Skills Challenge currently running, for Windows Server and Hybrid topics.
Using AR to see the devices attached to your network switch
Scott Hanselman has been posting great content on TikTok, including this footage of how augmented reality lets him visualize what devices are plugged into which network ports! Go and check out Scott's other TikTok content.
Updates to Azure Backup Center (public preview)
Azure Backup Center has seen a few updated features now in public preview.
SQL in Azure VM, SAP HANA in Azure VM and Azure Files are now supported workloads. In particular, Azure File share backup lets you customize scheduled backups and retention periods, alert and report on backup and restore failures, restore files instantly and enable a 14 day soft delete feature on storage accounts.
There are also new public preview built-in policies for Azure Backup that allow you to configure backup of Azure Virtual Machines at scale, based on resource group and tag information. Learn more here: Auto-Enable Backup on VM Creation using Azure Policy.
To get started with using Backup Center, search for Backup Center in the Azure portal and navigate to the Backup Center (Preview) dashboard.
New Azure Monitor Agent available on latest Linux distros and new regions
Azure Monitor has introduced a new concept for configuring data collection and a new, unified agent for Azure Monitor in public preview. This new agent (Azure Monitor Agent, or AMA) and the Data Collection Rules (or DCR) improve on a few key areas of data collection from VMs including granular and flexible configuration (e.g. collect from a subset of VMs for a single workspace), collect once and send to both Log Analytics and Azure Monitor Metrics, send to multiple workspaces (multi-homing for Linux), data filtration at source for Windows and Linux, improved extension management and better performance overall.
New Linux distros and regions have been added to this public preview:
CentOS Linux 8*
Debian 10
Oracle Linux 8*
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 8*
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15.2*
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15.1*
Ubuntu 20
*Known issue with Syslog events. Only supports Performance Counters (CPU, Memory, Disk, Network)
Additional regions:
UK West (WUK)
KoreaCentral (SE)
France Central (FRC)
South Africa North (JNB)
Switzerland North
Learn more about Data Collection Rules
Learn more about Azure Monitor Agent
Azure Security Center public preview and general availability updates
Azure Security Center also has some new features in public preview.
Secure Score for management groups is now available in preview. This lets you view the combined score for all subscriptions and resources in one management group. You can also now exempt a recommendation from applying to an entire subscription or management group - perfect for removing erroneous unhealthy resources so they don't negatively impact your secure score, if a recommendation isn't relevant or is being mitigated some other way.
35 new preview recommendations have been added to the Azure Security Benchmark policy initiative for Azure Security Center. These include policies for encryption at rest, security best practices, Web Application Firewall for protection againt DDoD attacks, and restricting unauthorized network access.
Learn more about the Azure Security Benchmark
Microsoft Intune enhancements to noncompliance email notifications
Receiving an email that your device is not compliant with a corporate Intune policy can be very confusing, if the notification is in English and that's not your native language. Until now, administrators have needed to set up duplicate policies to add non-compliant notifications in different languages. Now, you can use the one policy and a single notification template, but add multiple localized language messages to it.
View the announcement and learn how to set this up.
Microsoft Ignite - Registration is open!
Microsoft's second online Microsoft Ignite couldn't wait a whole year - join us on March 2-4. Register here.
MS Learn Module of the Week
ITOps Talks: All things Hybrid - Cloud Skills Challenge
The Cloud Skills Challenge is a collection of Microsoft Learn modules on Windows Server and Hybrid topics. These include server deployment & administration, Hyper-V, Active Directory Domain Controllers in Azure, hybrid identity, hybrid networking, hybrid file servers, hybrid backup & recovery, Azure Arc, Azure Stack and more!
There's also the chance to win 1:1 time with some Microsoft staff!
Check out the ITOps Talks: All things Hybrid - Cloud Skills Challenge at https://aka.ms/ITOpsTalks-CloudSkills