Keeping Your Cloud Healthy: A Masterminds Approach
Modern Hyper clouds like Azure (and AWS!) are incredible, running your business with advanced services like Kubernetes clusters, Serverless functions, Scale Sets, Data Factory and even those classic VMs we often still lean on. Everything you run needs maintenance. And...
Indispensable Azure Tools: KubeDeck for Kubernetes Management
Welcome back to our Indispensable Azure Tools series. This time, we’re exploring the KubeDeck suite, a set of tools that makes managing Kubernetes, especially on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), a whole lot easier. Created by Richard Hooper, better known as Pixel...
Landing Zones De-mystified
"Start small, scale smart; Landing Zones grow with your cloud ambitions." Azure Landing Zones are a cornerstone of effective cloud adoption, yet they often spark confusion among teams diving into Microsoft Azure. This article aims to clarify what they are, how they’re...
Indispensable Azure Tools: Azure Charts – Mapping Azure’s Cloud Ecosystem
Welcome back to the Indispensable Azure Tools series! So far, we’ve tackled tools that solve specific pain points in Azure management: Azure Monitor Baseline Alerts (AMBA) for proactive monitoring and the Azure Naming Tool for consistent resource naming. Today, our...
Cloud Monitoring: Trust Is Good, but Control Is Better
"The real question is not, 'What do we do with the cloud?' but rather, 'What doesn’t the cloud do for us?'" said Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal almost a decade ago. Historic words, especially when your business relies on...
Indispensable Azure Tools: Azure Monitor Baseline Alerts (AMBA)
Welcome back to our series exploring must-have tools for mastering Azure! The Indispensable Azure Tool we discuss today empowers Azure Monitor with Baseline Alerts (AMBA). A robust, and rapidly evolving framework that transforms how you monitor and govern your Azure...
Exploring the 5 Azure Migration Offerings
If you’re planning a move to Microsoft Azure, or looking to optimize your existing cloud setup, Azure’s migration tools —Azure Migrate, Azure Database Migration Service, Azure Data Box, Azure Site Recovery, and Azure App Service Migration Assistant— are definitely...
The Azure Well-Architected Framework: Design workloads that deliver business value over time
The Azure Well-Architected Framework (WAF) is Microsoft’s blueprint for building high-quality cloud workloads that stand the test of time. Workloads that are reliable, secure, cost-effective, and operationally sound. WAF is a set of best practices wrapped around five...
Indispensable Azure Tools: Kick Off with the Azure Naming Tool
Welcome to our new series exploring must-have tools for mastering Azure! We’re kicking things off with the Azure Naming Tool, a game-changer for anyone wrestling with the complexity (or chaos) of naming Azure resources. Whether you’re getting started or you’re a...
Shifting Left: From ClickOps to DevOps – The evolution of Cloud Management
In the world of cloud computing, the management of cloud resources has evolved significantly, particularly with the transition from "ClickOps" to "DevOps" practices within Microsoft's Azure and Microsoft Data Platform ecosystems. This article explores the nuances of...
DevOps Masterminds: Empowering Your Journey to DevOps Excellence
Meeting you where you are - Take control of your Microsoft Platform with the DevOps Masterminds Maturity Model In a Gartner survey, 70% of IT leaders reported DevOps as critical for business agility. With IT developments evolving at an increasing pace, it’s a real...
Cloud Cost Management – not all you can pay
Cloud cost optimization isn’t about cutting costs at the expense of performance, it’s about getting the most value from every dollar spent. --Microsoft FinOps, a combination of Finance and DevOps, is a framework designed to bring financial management to cloud...
The Azure SLA and what that means for your you
The Azure SLA is a critical concept for organizations using Azure to build applications. When you are using multiple Azure services (and what app doesn’t?) we are talking about the Azure Composite SLA. So what does the Composite SLA involve?, how it is calculated?,...
Understanding Partner Admin Link (PAL): A Simple Step for Better Azure Partnership
As your trusted Partner, we’re committed to delivering excellent service while growing our expertise alongside your business. One tool we use to strengthen this partnership is the Partner Admin Link (PAL), a simple, behind-the-scenes feature from Microsoft that...