If so, here's a study guide: http://vnext.azurewebsites.net/?p=10381. It looks at each area covered in the exam and looks at the specifics of what is covered there. For each objective, there are some links to more information about that area.
And, as the article points out, don't forget that if you take this exam before May 31st 2015, you get a free re-take of the exam should you not pass it first time.
In keeping with the near constant stream of improvements to all aspects of Azure, Microsoft has just announced some updates to Azure Backup.
Previously, there were several limits, including;
But today, MS announced some major changes to Azure Backup.
The latest update also fixes some older issues, like not being able to backup > 850GB, etc.
Before Christmas, Microsoft added a bunch of new features to Azure. One that I've only really just noticed was Premium Storage. Azure provides several types of cloud storage (blogs, queues, tables and files) – with the files storage still in preview. Premium storage too is in Preview.
The basic idea if Azure Storage is that you can store your data in the cloud: whether that data is the VHD drive for an Azure VM, a message queue used to hook up different parts of an application, or whatever. Azure storage is a fundamental building block you use to create cloud computing systems based on Azure.
The new premium storage feature now allows you to store this data on SSD disks. This new storage option provides higher performance and lower disk latency. Not only that, but, at least during the preview, Microsoft offered three types of SSD: P10, P20, and P30. These disks are 128gb, 512gb and 1tb respectively. The bigger disk provide more IOPS and greater throughput.
I look forward to playing a bit more with Premium Storage! I suppose it goes without saying: you can easily use Azure PowerShell cmdlets to manage this storage. I hope to generate a few scripts to demonstrate this!
For more details on Azure Storage, See Sirius Kuttiyan's recent blog post. For fuller details on Azure Storage pricing, see: http://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/pricing/details/storage/. Premium storage is still in preview, and is offered at a bit of a discount. The 128GB P10 disk, for example, is £5.47/month, while the 1TB P30 is £37.54/month.
In a blog post over the weekend, I demonstrated how you can access an Azure VM from an on-premises workstation using PowerShell. To summarise this approach: you first need to trust the management certificate provided to the VM by Azure, then use Enter-PSSession using the DNS name of the service, the port opened for PowerShell management endpoint and explicitly requesting SSL. While it took me a bit of time to work all this out (getting the cert downloaded was my biggest initial stumbling block), the approach is fairly simple.
But, like almost everything in PowerShell, it seems, there is yet another way to do this. No sooner had I posted that blog article when I got a tweet:
And – the answer was, at that point, no. I'd not noticed that cmdlet! I don't know all of then circa 500 cmdlets (yet)! But it was a nice prod to take a look. Johan's suggestion was a good one as the coding is simpler. Using both methods, you need to create a credential object to pass to the remote machine (specifying the UserID you created when you first created the Azure VM, or some other administrator you have created on the remote Azure system). And you need to trust the certificate the Azure machine presents when negotiating SSL between your client system and the Azure server. Once you have those two done, then you can enter the PSSession like this:
$PshEP = Get-AzureVm cookhamlo | Get-AzureEndpoint |
Where name -eq 'PowerShell'
Enter-PsSession -ComputerName $VmName -Port $PshEp.Port –Credential
$VmCred –UseSSL
Using Johan's suggestion, the coding would look like this:
$Azuri = Get-AzureWinRmUri -ServiceName $VmName
Enter-PsSession -ConnectionUri $Azuri.AbsoluteUri -Credential $VmCred
Having tried them, both approaches work perfectly fine (assuming you have a valid credential object and trust the remote system's management port certificate). both approaches work, but it feels like the second approach to be easier.