 Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of A's at Update. I'm Anthony Bartolo and join us always by Sarah Lee and Sarah. How's it going? I'm good. Thanks, Anthony. How you doing? Good. It's another busy week. You know, next week is Ignite. There's been a lot of preparation this week for what's coming up for next week. A couple of interesting things that we've been working on in terms of videos, in terms of other hidden Easter eggs that you're going to see next week. I can't share right now what that's going to be, but a lot of work going on right now. I know, Sarah, you've been busy as well filming some segments. Yeah, I finished my slide deck for my presentation. So it's a way to the designers to approve and go through that approval process. So fingers crossed, it comes back okay, and I don't have to change it all again. I know. And that's the thing, right? There's a lot of work behind the scenes that happens for Ignite. There's revisions because of announcements and because of changes in terms of terminology or wording or what have you. So, you know, it's something where it's a work of love for us in terms of sharing the information with you. We just want to make sure that we get it right. And so, you know, the changes happened last minute in Celebi. The schedule builder was launched this week, I believe it went on live on Wednesday. And so that's now available in regards to you going out and scheduling some time. Sarah, have you had some time to look at the schedule and see what sessions peak your interest? There's a few. One that I remember is Ed Baker, the MCT regional leader. I think that's his official title here in the UK is actually doing a can ask me anything or ask the expert session on certification. So that looks quite interesting. So definitely look at that session because Ed is I think he actually posted on Twitter today that he's done 40 different exams for Microsoft. So he knows his stuff. So we definitely go and tune in and ask him some questions, ask him the hard questions and tell him I sent you. Awesome. That's actually cool. Hey, ask him hard questions, but Sarah sent you. Just remember that. Sarah sent you. I did want to highlight the keynote for Ignite, which is going to be pretty interesting. Producer Pierre, if you can really quickly share the desktop there. Thank you, sir. And thank you, producer Pierre as always. He is back this week helping us out with production. He has not gone anywhere and we're happy that he's healthy and happy and he's laughing behind the scenes right now. This is interesting. So the keynote right now is going to be a dual view keynote. There will be a standard view for everybody to watch in regards to the keynote, but Alex Kipman has been out on social saying if you have a mixed reality device. So if you have a HoloLens, you have any other other devices that, you know, utilize mixed reality. If you have a smartphone that enables the functionality for mixed reality, producer Pierre behind the scenes is showing us his mixed reality device. You can actually watch the keynote and watch it in a special environment specifically for the keynote to watch on the mixed reality device. Why do I bring this up is, you know, this is interesting. I get it, you know, from an IT pro perspective, a lot of people look at this and say, well, it's VR AR. Is it really exciting for IT professionals? I want to share a quick story with everybody. I was working on a project. I think it was about two years ago with a power plant out in eastern Canada where regulations required individuals to go out and look at the power generators in terms of their maintenance and, you know, operation. And the challenge is they would have to literally go out with no pads to go out because there was no place to put a laptop. And so they would go out with these no pads and take the information and come back in into the information, get the analytics and go back out again and make the adjustments, right? Mixed reality solution that we worked on in terms of the proof of concept, allow these individuals via their tablets to see the gauges on the machines directly. So holding the tablet in one hand, making the changes as required on the dashboard of the machine itself from the tablet in real time, looking at all the gauges in a mixed reality format. Why is that important? For the regulations sake, the adjustments can't be done from a separate machine. They have to be done on the machine itself. You actually have to be within vicinity of the machine to make those controls. From an ITPRO perspective, you want to make sure that that interface and that capabilities govern in terms of security. Do you imagine if somebody got in and, you know, created havoc in regards to that aspect of the control panel for the solution? What I've been told is that there's going to be a lot of conversation at ignite around the ITPRO's role in the enablement of mixed reality. And it's something where Microsoft is taking more consideration in terms of what ITPRO's roles in regards to governance. From everything from IoT to machine learning to mixed reality. And it's going to be an underlying message that I'm hearing from all the solutions that are being made available out there. Sarah, what are your thoughts on this? It sounds cool. I'm not a fan of mixed reality. I'll be honest, because last time I tried it, someone put a program on where a dinosaur was chasing me and I was petrified. I thought an actual dinosaur was coming toward me. So I have stayed away from all of this. But yeah, it's definitely something that we need to be aware of. And we need to make sure that, like you said, there's the governance there around it because it could potentially go wrong. I think last year in the UK, we did some stuff with some of our customers around it where car manufacturers were helping make ventilators. And they used the kind of mixed reality in the whole lens and stuff like that to help share the knowledge between different companies because we obviously couldn't get on a plane and share that. So you definitely don't want that kind of stuff going wrong. Like you say, you definitely don't want someone breaching into that environment and causing havoc. So yeah, it's definitely something we have to be aware of as cool as it is. There has to be some kind of governance and control over what happens in the security around it. And that's just it, right? It's an input. So you're having this dashboard, you're able to manipulate data from this input plane. It should be governed just like any other input plane, any other endpoint device, anything that's out there. So it's interesting to see the integration of mixed reality from this perspective. A couple of weeks back, we shared the Scott Hanselman demo of the router that he was using with mixed reality and showing the ports in terms of what's been connected. And how easy it was for him to just use his smartphone to point at the router itself, the ubiquity router, and have his smartphone seeing what's connected to each port, right? It's that instant gratification of information. Yeah, there's the entertainment perspective as well. And I've seen the dinosaur demo, which is pretty cool. But it's something where I love the fact that it's now been extended to smartphones as opposed to just wearing a device because now it becomes readily available in everybody's hands as opposed to you have to buy a specific product to interact. And then the inclusion of spatial mapping to do stuff, to do stuff, what we did with the power plant, we actually had to deploy IOT terminals. There's an IOT pitch in there for you, Sarah. IOT terminals throughout the plant to provide the triangulation of the devices in terms of what they were looking at. And it worked, but it required Bluetooth connectivity. It sapped the power from the device with the whole spatial mapping piece now actually having the coordinates built in the device to see what they're looking at. That's another governance piece that has to be controlled because could you imagine if somebody even altered that functionality to say that this device is not in the plant. It's here and you're making changes and you don't know you're making changes to the wrong plant. There's so much that has to be taken into consideration this. I'm excited to see what announcements are made. I'm excited to see what's going to happen in regards to the IOT's role and everything. And that's the reason why we say IOT isn't everything. Don't think that all of this is IOT is a developer's business because reality is a developer's world. We have a seat at the table just like everybody else in terms of the solutions that are being put forth. And we have to make sure that we help the organization in collaboration with the developers and the business decision makers to push the organization forward responsibly when adopting new technology. Absolutely, absolutely. Shall we get started with the news? Yes, let's go. What's happening this week? You're up first. Oh, I'm first. Yes, you are. The first bit of news is around Azure Front Door and we've got new preview versions of that or SKUs available for Azure Front Door. Basically, if you're not aware of what Azure Front Door is, it's the content delivery network solution that we have within Azure to help you scale your applications, help them be faster delivered to your users, point them to the closest ones. The new SKUs that we're seeing are standard and premium and they differ slightly. So standard is more about that global load balancing, offloading that static and dynamic content so that it loads quicker for all your users. And then the premium one actually has more focus on the security. So there's the web application firewall or WAF features built into it and you have WAP protection, DDoS protection in there. There's also threat intelligence. So there's a bunch of capabilities added on to that. So yeah, it's definitely something that a lot of organizations are looking at. It is that front end, that first level protection for your back end applications. These two SKUs are in public preview. So they are available for everybody to try today. Obviously, when we talk about preview features, we always caution that there is potential for change. There is potential for them to completely change or even completely go away. So be mindful of that if you're going to implement it within a production environment. But seriously, if you're using Azure front door or potentially using even just a WAF right now today and you want to look at front door, definitely implement it in your development environments and see what these different SKUs can do. And again, feedback to the team if there's anything that you can do because it's in preview. So there's opportunities to change it going forward in production. What do you think, Antony? Have you used Azure front door at all? I've not. I've looked into it and I love the fact that you simplify the ability for end points to gain access to data specifically in terms of websites. There was a little more complex earlier on in terms of that enablement to segment out access and control to specific resources. Front door simplifies that and provides a lot more robust functionality. I love the fact that the evolution of front door now being offered in standard and in premium. But like you said, Sarah, it is in preview. Test it out. Check it out. Provide your feedback. Don't put into production just yet. I do know because it could change, right? The services could change. But yeah, no, this is awesome that they're going to forward on and continuously evolve the front door offering to provide further functionality. Again, based on the feedback that those that are using it, which is cool. Cool. What news have you got? Next up, we have the Azure. There's a couple of updates. So we're going to do this in tandem on this one because there's a couple of updates of services that are retiring and it's important that we bring this to everybody's attention. Azure. So the first one is Azure 80 connect sync update requirement to a new version by February 29, 2024. If you are running a version 1.1.751.0 or older, you need to upgrade your version of Azure 80 connected to something newer. Doesn't have to be the newest one, but to something newer than that version before the 29th of February, 2024. Microsoft is giving a long heads up in regards to this. And this is because there's a lot of organizations that have this in production. There are security requirements that are enabled. In terms of standardization on the level of Azure 80 connected to that the organization needs to use. Take the time now to start doing testing on the newer versions. Because on the 29th of February in 2024, it will be retired and your services will stop working. So this is a very early notification to everybody to start doing the testing now. And I know the testing takes a long time. There might be some intricacies in terms of applications that are using sync for authentication as well. Take that in consideration. I also wanted to share really quickly the migration guide. So this is linked inside of our blog post blog post is aka.ms or slash is an update show. If you want to go directly to the blog post itself. There is the full on link to the migration guide to allow you to migrate seamlessly to the newer versions of Azure 80 connect. Take a look at that. Start doing tests on it now. You know, there's a reason why there's early notification of this occurring so that you can start testing to ensure that there's no breakage in services when the retirement does happen for the older versions of 80 connect. So with that next news item is yours here in terms of the yes. Yes. So I am probably going to read this because it's a tongue twister and there's no way I'm going to get this right if I don't read it. But what we are doing another retirement here is if you've been using managed Azure Active Directory, which is not easy to say, to simplify your AD integration with your Azure Kubernetes services, that's going to retire in February 2024 as well. And we're moving towards. No, I've got that the wrong way round. I've even been reading my notes and I've got it round the wrong way. Oh man. So you want to be using managed Azure Active Directory. You don't want to be using Azure Active Directory integration because that's going out of date into February 2024. Please don't listen to what I'm saying. Please do check out the documentation. But again, it's another notification. You have to have a look at this. You have to be aware of what's happening and keep up to date with this. Yes, it is three years away. But again, you have to do some testing. You have to understand the process. I think the team have shared some kind of upgrade guide for you to do this. So again, look at it, test it, figure out what way you is, figure out what product is retiring because you clearly can't rely on me. But you know, Anthony, who else is retiring this week? Well, so, so AKS Legacy retiring based on, you know, also the Azure AD Connect retiring. So you can see that there's the linkage between the two. Definitely awesome that Microsoft is providing three years heads up that this is testing. Steven's actually just made mention of that comment on the chat itself. And hello, Steve. Hello, Andrew. We have Rabbi Jair coming in from South Africa. Paul Jensen, Gabrielle Louise. Sorry. How's it going? And Jen Mortensen. A lot of people chatting about this in the chat room three years is a lot of time, but it will go by really quickly. So make sure you do your testing now. The last piece of news in terms of retirement is the Azure batch rendering VM images and licensing will be retired as well on February 29, 2024. This is if you're doing rendering, if you're doing image work on the using the custom virtual machines images made available in Marketplace. These two will retire on the 29th of February, 2024. So, you know, just as you said earlier, Sarah, if you require some time to go and test to make sure the functionality is not being broken. What I love about this is it's not just the notification. They actually provide the full on documentation in terms of what you should do to safeguard yourself, what you should do to create your new image pool, the steps to do this. So you're not just left hanging in terms of this is going to retire figured out it's no Microsoft is providing full on documentation three years in advance. Now, producer Pierre made an interesting comment on on the on the chat in terms of, you know, hey, you know, 2008 is end was end of life and, you know, there are still organizations on it. Remember, this is cloud services when retirement happens is on cloud services, the services are turned off. So beyond the time frame of 20 of February 29, 2024, the services will no longer work and will be a disruption to your organization. It is the reason why Microsoft is providing this much of a heads up in regards to this. So do you know, start your testing now do start your your research in terms of the documentation now. Don't be, you know, left hanging a month before the 29 of 2024, and oh, I have to cover this over my whole organization is going to go down. Start preparing now start preparing documentation, start having conversations with your organization in terms of where are we going, what's the future of what we're trying to accomplish. What is the three year plan and where we're going with this right. Don't do the knee jerk reaction because that always hurts an organization and always cost more for an organization plan for it properly. And it's the reason why we're trying to provide as early notification as possible in regards to these changes in services. This also gives you the ability when you're doing this testing to reach out to Microsoft and provide feedback should any changes be required that three year window, you know, gives you enough time to say hey, this service is not working for me in its current instance. I need to get this addressed. So that's, you know, want to make sure that's brought to attention. One other piece that we wanted to share out was there in his announcement of the Windows server preview preview build 20298. This is an interesting one. When you deploy this VM you have to be a Windows server insider to gain access to this one. When you deploy this VM it actually it comes up as Windows server 2022. And the question had come in from Reddit saying, Well, what do you mean 2022? I thought Microsoft said no more version numbers for the offerings that are out there. 100% clear here. This is to distinguish itself from the 2019 offering. When you load this VM for testing. So this is the amazing thing about this. You're given early access as a as a Windows server insider to provide your feedback in terms of the next upgrade offering of Windows server. Go through and start doing your testing now. Yes, it's labeled 2022. That doesn't mean it's going to be the final naming for the service. It is something where it's just so it can distinguish itself from the existing offerings. So when you're doing the testing, please don't put this in production. Please, please, please don't put this in production. Do your testing on it now. Sarah is laughing because we've seen this happen, right? We see people go out and know, oh, this is a lazy grace. Throw it in production and then they shut it off the support for it and then everything goes down. And what do you mean? What's going on? This is for testing. Sign up for the Windows server insider. Make sure your voice is heard. Test out the new functionality that's being made available. There's a reason why the labeling of 2022. The look and feel is going to be very similar to the existing offering Windows server, right? Some of the functionality is going to be changed. A lot of the documentation is being shared on the blog post in regards to where you can get more information in terms of the changes that are occurring. But do check it out. Do start testing with the service and provide your feedback. That's the biggest thing with this. Make sure that you're providing your feedback back to Microsoft in terms of what you'd like to see addressed. What's awesome that was fixed, right? What are the new functionality? We don't hear enough of that. Hey, this is awesome that has been addressed. Thank you very much in a way you go, right? So take that in consideration when you're looking at running the beta in a demo environment and running your tests. Don't run it in production. And no, this is not the final name. So just because it says 2022, it's not the final. So just wanted to throw that out there. Sarah, your thoughts? Yeah, I'm a big fan of trying out these kind of insider builds and preview builds. I do remember years ago trying one of them out and not being able to get the network connection working. So which turned out to be a bug. So yeah, you know, you find these out before it's in a lab environment. You lose a day trying to figure out what's happening, but you don't lose any production. You don't lose any, you know, there's the big boss man or big boss woman is not coming down shouting at you because you've taken down the payroll. You know, whatever it may be because you've installed the preview service. So yeah, definitely try them out because that's where we find the bugs. That's where we find these issues and we find the ones that have been fixed as well. Like you said, congratulate the team on fixing something that you've hated for years or hasn't worked or stuff like that. So yeah, download it, give it a try. Try it on your lab, try it on a VM somewhere. Try it. And understand the functionality, right? Remember, we talked about this through this show, having the conversations with your business decision makers and your developers to understand what is a three year plan for your organization. Then gives you the ability to have that information to arm yourself in terms of with Windows the next upgrade of Windows Server. What does that mean from the new functionality features that could be incorporated into terms of where the organization is going to go, right? We as IT professionals need to stop being reactive. We want to be more proactive. We want to make sure that we are in step with the organization moving forward. That's the only way we get out of the cost bracket in terms of what our department does or what our services do. And we get into the future planning and investment side, right? We want to be on that side in regards to the recognition for the efforts put forth and helping the organization move forward. Doing the testing like this, understanding the functionality, having that conversation with leadership and with the developers in terms of what's coming with functionality made available, having that incorporating that into future planning, huge advantage to help the organizations move forward. In terms of events, big event next week, Microsoft Ignite. We talked about it earlier in the show. A lot of people have reached out and said, do we need to register? And no, you don't. You don't need to register to participate. Sorry, you don't need to register to watch this event. You do need to register to participate in the event. What does participation mean? If you want to be able to chat via the live chat stream that's available while the keynote's going on, while sessions are going on, you need to be registered. Registration is completely free. There is no cost for registration. Do sign up, do register, have that ability to converse not only with those that are speaking, but to have those hallway conversations with others that are out there that are also enjoying the event and learning from the event. With that being said, we also have our own Discord server, which a lot of us will be in to having chats based on the event itself. If you want to have a chat with our team, our Discord server producer Pierre has just put it on the window, aka.ms4-itopstalk-discord. And you have the ability to actually have conversations with us. Pierre, producer Pierre has done a tremendous amount of work to get that set up. He set up special rooms specifically for Ignite. So definitely have the ability to come out and share ideas with everybody that's out there. Last but not least, the Microsoft Learn module of the week, special one specifically for Ignite, producer Pierre, if you can show that up on the screen there. It is the Microsoft Ignite Cloud Skills Challenge. This starts on March the 2nd when the keynote kicks off. They did it at the last Ignite as well. And I'm going to turn off this right now. We'll quickly apologize. So this was made available last Ignite was hugely successful. This is going to be also made available at Ignite this time. There will be seven challenges made available for you to take up. And depending on which challenge you wish to complete, you will be offered a free voucher to do the certification exam specifically for that challenge. They haven't released any information in terms of what the challenge is going to be. They will be announced next week. But when you complete a specific challenge, you receive a certification for that specific challenge to then address and to certify yourself on. And, you know, certification just proves that you understand the content, understand the concepts that have been shared in terms of the services that based on that challenge, hugely beneficial in terms of, hey, I verify that I understand what's going on. And then you can continue on in terms of your skill and growing and learning, right? Sarah, thoughts. I'm a big fan of Microsoft Learn. I'm currently using it to study for an exam, not going to tell you which one in case I don't pass. But yes, the content is very much aligned to the exam kind of objectives. I'm looking at the exam objectives for this exam that I'm trying to set. And there's the exact content I hopefully need in order to study for it and then pass. So big fan of it. So definitely take advantage of it and be able to get a free exam certification is worth. I think they're about, it's about £100 or something for an exam or something. So it's quite a good offer to put in that time and get that free exam. And whether you pass or not, obviously it's a free shot at the exam. So definitely worth trying and investing in the time and registering for that challenge and giving it a go. I learned by hands-on. That's why Microsoft Learn is so beneficial to me because I actually get to go through the labs. It cost me nothing to do that. And now that they're throwing in the free exam voucher as well, when you complete the challenge, that's even more amazing. Take the opportunity to go through the challenge, get your questions written up, and then talk to people that are attending Ignite and have your questions answered. Like you can have your questions answered possibly by the engineers, right? Ignite is such a huge opportunity. Yes, we all miss being in person. We all miss those side room conversations or hallway conversations. But you can still have them at Ignite. You still have that ability to do so. And Microsoft and our team and everybody is trying to enable that. So take advantage of that in regards to that opportunity. Sarah, we've got two minutes left. If people want to get a hold of you, what's the best way to get a hold of you? You can find me on Twitter at Techie Last or on my own YouTube channel where I talk nonsense every now and again. The beautiful views of Scotland. I love seeing the views, though. Awesome. And if you want to get a hold of Producer Pierre for some reason, and he thanks you for all the well wishes that he received last week, you can find him on Twitter at Wired Canuck. And if you want to get a hold of me for some reason, you can get a hold of me on Twitter at Wireless Life. Sarah, it's going to be a very busy week next week in terms of Ignite. So make sure everybody takes some rest. And I'm excited to see all the conversations and see all the information that will be shared next week. One more time, if you want to chat with us directly, you can be our Discord server. That Discord server is aka.ms4 slash ipopstock-discord. And we look forward to see everybody next week at Ignite. Have a great weekend, everybody.