 Hello and welcome back to another episode of AZ Update. I'm Anthony Bartolo. Join today by Sarah Lean. Sarah, how's it going? I'm good. Thanks, Anthony. How are you doing? Good, good. Sonja Kuff has been here for the last two weeks. So it's awesome to have you back. I can't believe how fast the time has gone by since you've been away. What have you been up to? It was just time off, Anthony. I think a couple of public holidays here in the UK and coupled with the fact that our lockdown is starting to ease a bit so we can travel a bit more freely. So husband and I took the advantage of taking some time off and actually just going for walks in the middle of nowhere near no one else and enjoy just seeing a different view and exploring because fingers crossed the weather's been actually OK here in Scotland. Well, and this is the thing, right? So with everything that's going on right now, you hear the term about living at work. And a lot of us are working all these hours. And so awesome that you took in consideration, hey, you need time for yourself. You took the two weeks off. It's important, right? We all have to recognize that both Care and I are culprits of that, too. We work so hard. We forget we need to take time for ourselves as well. So it's so awesome that you did that. So anything you did, a couple of walks, anything else that you did while doing your time off? I know you're still busy with work, too. Yeah, so I just took time off to do the walks and do a bit of gardening, starting to warm up, obviously. And I'm loving being back in my garden, although I'm fighting the pests and the aphids at the moment. So every morning I'm out there with my soapy water and squishing that on them or squishing big greenflies. So I'm having fun. I'm having fun. I usually deal with that during tomato season. So in about another two weeks, I'll have the tomatoes out there. Basil, for some reason, the infants hate basil. So it's a natural deterrent for us in putting that in the base of the tomatoes. It actually affects the flavor of the tomatoes, too, which is really cool. Gaming has been a great thing in terms of escaping our current confines. We've been playing a lot of Call of Duty First Person Shooter games, as it would have you. I know we have to set up a game. We haven't done that in a while as well. I'm still as bad as you remember. So I haven't gotten any better. Well, I've got worse because I bought the new Call of Duty. So my skill level has went back down. Well, OK. It's been interesting. And that's the thing, though, it's been interesting in terms of the new one, the Black Ops over Modern Warfare. A lot of people are still in the Modern Warfare place. And there's a lot of push to the new Black Ops. I know you can level up very quickly on the Black Ops side more so than the Warzone side. So there's a good tip if you're looking to finish your battle pass early. What's been interesting is with the lockdown that's going on still here in Toronto, a local developer took it upon themselves to create a game. As Torontonians or in Ontario specifically, we're unable to leave our homes or go outside and travel. We can do the exercise walk, but that's about it. So this developer has gone forth. And the unofficial mascot of Toronto is the raccoon. So this individual has built a game based on the adventures of a raccoon. So you actually become a raccoon. And you explore Toronto and you gain points by knocking over trash cans, which was really interesting. And so it's something where as somebody being creative in regards to, here's your situation. We're currently in this pandemic. We have, without the ability to explore, here's a game that's available that you can actually walk around and producer Pierre is playing it right now. Producer Pierre, you're supposed to be producing the show. So as you can see, you're knocking over the trash cans and you're wandering around the neighborhoods. I wonder, can you go? I haven't seen the run to see and tower. But it's interesting in regards to that's the creativity that we're at right now in terms of to explore our own neighborhoods. We have to be a raccoon. That's pretty awesome. That raccoon needs some clothes, though. Well, it's not bit, or as close as you know, that we're part of the team called Developer Relations and our mascot is a raccoon, which is bit. So there you go. There's Italian there, which is really cool. Thank you, Producer Pierre, for putting that video up. I forgot to share my desktop and now it's been added. But that's pretty awesome that, you know, again, this was built during the pandemic. It's interesting to see what individuals are doing to be creative to still reach out to the outside world and have that ability to shine in terms of their creation skills. So this got picked up by Toronto News in respect to a game to explore our own neighborhoods because we're not allowed to. And I'd love to see what's next from this developer, which is really cool. And we'll provide the links after the show in terms of that game so everybody can have a chance at playing at it. Which is pretty cool. Let's get started with the news. What do you say? Yes, let's see what's happening. You're up first. So I think the first bit of news is Microsoft Teams webinars, which is a feature we announced, I think at the last Ignite, which was March, was it March? And it sounds pretty cool because we have been trying to shoehorn webinars into Teams meetings for those that haven't had a separate webinar platform. So it's pretty cool that this feature is now coming out. And it has those kind of webinar features that you would expect. So you can create a webinar through the Teams app or through the web app. And then you start to build up that registration site so that you can collect data about your customers and send them out links and things like that. And then afterwards you can start to interact with them. So you'll still have the same things that you kind of want from a webinar. So you'll still have the recording. And then you kind of have this mailing list. There's some kind of interaction and link with Dynamics 365. So for organizations that are using like Dynamics 365 as a kind of customer user base, then this is gonna be really good from that integration point of view. And again, if you're using something like Dynamics 365 already, then chances are you are quite well into using the Microsoft platforms and making those tools. So you can hopefully ditch something else and use Microsoft Teams webinars and potentially save yourself some money because as I'm sure a lot of people have been doing, they've been paying for different platforms to do the virtual things differently. So pretty cool. I think we have some limitations around numbers. So I think it's about a thousand people for an interactive webinar. Now, I'm not entirely sure what an interactive webinar means. I don't know if that means that all your attendees can maybe come off mute, I need to try this. But if it's just a non-interactive webinar where you're just broadcasting, you can have up to 10,000 people. So good capacity there. And I think later on in the year, we're gonna be rolling out 20,000 people for a non-interactive webinar. So lots of capabilities there. So it's definitely something I'm excited to try. I don't think it's rolled out to everybody yet. I think we have it in our Microsoft tenant right now. We often get these features first to try them out. But hopefully once it starts rolling out, we'll be able to get to see a bit more about how it works and some of the caveats around it. But it sounds pretty cool. Oh no, this is awesome. The big thing with this is, you know as well as I know in sort of Pierre, the whole aspect of us presenting over the last 16 months has been online. And so when we're doing events and third-party events or events on behalf of customers and what have you, there's these platforms that they use that do the webinars. And usually I get a call, a pre-call to have a meeting in terms of, okay, we need to train you on how to use this new platform, right? Everybody is using Teams. A lot of people are familiar with it. It's something where it's now become a muscle memory to do certain aspects. And this enablement for webinars, incorporating the tools that you have already. We talk about this a lot in terms of other tools, right? The single pane of glass. I go to the one portal, it does everything for me. What I'd be interested to see is what third-party extensions they make available in terms of the webinar. We talk about the interaction capability. So the ability to have conversations while the webinar is going on for people to answer questions, which is pretty cool. Stuff like polling, right? Like, we do it on LearnTV all the time where we submit a poll and we have people participate in terms of their thoughts on things on the poll, specifically if they don't wanna type anything out. I'm wondering when that type of functionality will come out. It's awesome that the webinar pieces there. I'm very intrigued by the evolution of what this is gonna mean in terms of the webinar offering. Yeah, I think that's one of the things we've kind of lacked at the moment within like Teams meetings live or the live events you can create. The interaction just isn't quite there. It's often a one-way interaction you have. So it will be interesting to see what features we have in the webinar in terms of interaction with people and potentially where they go in the future because obviously the first iteration isn't always perfect. We build on it and we use customer feedback. So it's important to try it, feedback and then see where the team go with the feedback. Could you imagine if they bring polling to our team meetings when we have a... All right, that would just be a conch show. It would not be serious. It would just be... No. Let's continue on with the news. So Sarah, your favorite, there are IoT updates available for April. There's actually... So there's a phenomenal project around IoT and farming. I know you're a big farming buff. I definitely gonna share that with you later on probably maybe even the next episode that we do. But today we wanna talk about really quickly in terms of IoT Central and the updates made available. The big news here is the APIs that have been released now for IoT Central make it available for developers to incorporate the management capabilities of IoT Central through third-party applications. So now the ability to have that functionality to... I don't wanna use the portal that's available to me. I have a third-party application that does it for me. I have the ability to manage my devices, capturing the information, how they capture information, who has access to the information from the third-party applications. And I can actually write that in with the APIs that are being offered. The other big news is the ability to now see specifically by device, the dashboarding of that device or the report out of that device. Is the device online? Is it capturing information? Is it into a maintenance cycle? These are something when you're doing troubleshooting and you wanna have that ability to see firsthand what's going on with this device that's capturing all this information. This is a huge opportunity now to do so. Could be cumbersome though, you know, if they go device to device to device. But if you're using tools like Sentinel to understand where failures are occurring and now you can drill down specifically to this device saying, hey, this is offline, why is this offline? And going through the aspects of, oh, it's in maintenance mode. Like the device itself has its own maintenance mode. It's pretty cool that you have this availability via dashboard. What I find intriguing is all this functionality and enablement that's coming out on IoT is operations-based. They're realizing the tools need to be in place for the adoption of these type of services for IoT. Operations being included into the conversation in terms of the management and upkeep and ensuring that the data that's coming in is what's supposed to be coming in. We hear a lot of talk of injection of data into IoT devices and malicious intent and siphoning off of data from these devices. So it's awesome to see that Microsoft is now providing these additional tools for operations and IT departments to go in and have that management capability. Sarah, what are your thoughts? Looks cool. I'll admit when I was off, Anthony, I was looking at some IoT devices and figuring out. Oh. I know. I wanna do something in cool Sprinker thing. It was around gardening. So I found this device you can plug into like the soil and then you can trigger watering your plants if the soil's dry and the weather's obviously not raining. And I was starting to think about, I was actually starting to dig into the weeds of it to find out if I could plug it into Azure and if there was APIs open and all that kind of stuff. And then I thought, what am I doing? I need to get away from this. And this is not funny. You're on vacay and you still get drawn into tech because that's what you're passionate about. I'm in the same boat, right? So I actually should share a solution with you. There's a, you've heard of the Canadian Coast Guard story where we did the drones enable to find live jackets out at sea when people are in distress. There was an organization in Australia that took that same technology and the IR piece of the technology in the drone to measure saturation inside of farmer's fields, which was connected to the irrigation system to know when it was the best time to water the fields. So the drones would measure the soil saturation and then would turn on or turn off the irrigation as required, which is pretty cool. That's pretty, I don't know how big your Tamino Garden is if you have something to take, but that would be a pretty cool project if you wanted to do that. It sounds expensive, but it sounds expensive when I could just go out and turn the tap. Well, what fun is that going on and turning the tap on your own and get the robots to do it for you, right? You can just sit there and have your coffee and just watch it happen. Yeah. Shall we continue on with the news? Yes, so there's been something new inside the portal when you're creating either Windows Virtual Machine or a Linux one where you can actually enable Azure Site Recovery as part of that creation. So as you click through all of the options to build that virtual machine, there is now a tick box or a checkbox where you can enable Azure Site Recovery, which is pretty cool. I know a lot of people probably are automating and using infrastructure as code with ARM templates, Bicep, Terraform, and stuff like that, but there are still use cases where people are building through the portal, maybe small businesses or people are just beginning. So being able to have all of these options and seeing what these options are are really useful. I was actually building virtual machines this week inside the portal, just because it was quicker than actually building a template. And the options that you get in terms of what you can add on or enable for that virtual machine, the minute that it's deployed is awesome. We already have the backup kind of features, so you can turn on backup, the minute that you deploy that virtual machine and now being able to set up disaster recovery is also great because let's face it, who hasn't created a virtual machine and forgot to turn on something, forgot to turn on monitoring or backup and then got caught out a couple of weeks later when someone said, can you restore something? So being able to enable these things from the minute of deployment just helps everybody be more efficient and it helps teach those who are maybe new to the platform the options that you have and it will give you that little kind of trigger about, oh, what is this feature and why would I need it and how does it fit in my plan? So yeah, it's pretty cool to see all of these features. Although it's definitely different from where the very first time I created an Azure virtual machine, I think there's probably like two or three tabs and now it's like five or six. So it's, yeah, maybe it is quicker actually to build a template. Well, that's just it, right? So what's interesting with this is utilization of site recovery directly in creation of the VM, you're starting proper at the ground roots of creation of these resources, right? And you no longer have to second guess, do I have a backup? I remember back in the day checking the tapes, if something should happen, I'd have to go back and reestablish everything. I've done that twice. It's something where if you set it and forget it and you're good to go right at the get go when you're creating the resources, that's awesome. But to your point, enabling this now in a template, are we now at that impasse in terms of, I hear this all the time, doing the work on a portal in the GUI is so much easier, because it's next, next, next go. Are we now at that level of, if I do the template, yes, there's a little bit more of a learning curve, but when I really grasp that capability, it's so much quicker and I save that much more time as opposed to going GUI-based. What are your thoughts on that? I suppose it will depend on, if you already have Azure Site Recovery enabled, I haven't actually tried using this in the portal, but I wonder if it helps you create the various different pieces in the right order, because I know that's previously been an issue where you've had to nest like ARM templates, where you've had to do depends on and different things and you have to think about the logic behind that, because if the Azure Site Recovery vault isn't there, you obviously can't enable it but which comes first, the chicken or the egg? So yeah, maybe it is one of those questions where it's actually maybe easier sometimes in the portal than maybe templating all of this, unless of course you're really good with templating, which I think Pierre is, or he's really good with bicep and stuff like that nowadays. So it depends, I'll suppose it'll depend on your skill level and what you're doing. Like for me, when I was doing that demo the other day, it was just super quick to go, next, next, next, I just want all the defaults. I don't have to sit there and write a template and figure out where the curly brackets need to go and the commas and what API method I'm using and all that kind of fun stuff. So yeah, I'll suppose the use cases are there and I love the fact that we have so many places where we can actually do this, depending on your use case and skill set. Yeah, what I've been dabbling with is once I've created that instance, that resource, there is the availability of then spinning out the ARM template at the end of it, right? And then now, this is the try, test and true resource that I'm gonna create in terms of a virtual machine. I have this template, I just modify the name and keep on carbon copying the virtual machines out. But yes, to your point in terms of nested in which resource has to be created first, that becomes a challenge. I definitely leverage peer a lot in regards to creation of templates and what have you. But by step, it was an interesting endeavor that Microsoft has gone down as well. And we're actually gonna talk about that later on in the show in their Microsoft Learn segment of the week. But it's something where we're at that point now in terms of, well, there's so many clicks on the portal. Does it not make sense to do the template? And we'll save that for another day. We know of Roebake's access control and we've talked about that a lot. Have you heard of the new terminology in terms of attribute access control? No, I've totally missed the whole world being off in a few weeks. That's awesome. That is awesome that you were able to disconnect. Just me reach for the IoT device for your garden. But other than that, just disconnect, you're good. So here's the thing, right? Microsoft is now putting in public preview the ability for storage to be assigned attribute access control. So what that means is from a compute aspect, level of security, type of storage requirements, type of latency requirements, you name it, the ability to have that intelligence to say, if it's this type of compute, this is the storage it'll have access to. Similar to Roebake's access control in terms of certain individual having certain access, the same can now be done for attributes of the compute cycle, which is awesome, especially from a security perspective. So if you have something that has, let's say personal information that's being captured through a compute, you can have it specifically be provided access for storage in a segmented storage blob or tool that is off network or off segment in terms of access. This is getting granular in terms of the way that compute access is in rights to storage as opposed to just having access to any storage and made available. Now, this is the first implementation of this. This is currently in public preview. So definitely go forward and test it out if it's something of interest on behalf of your organization to see, hey, is this something that Microsoft should pursue and make generally available to the public in terms of this type of capability? Obviously this was created based on feedback and based on ask. So it's awesome to see this in action. Sarah, what do you think? Sounds pretty cool. I need to dive in and have a look at the use cases and see what the examples are to fully understand it and probably have to play with it and see what works and stuff like that. But it sounds like there's obviously a use case for it. I don't think we would have been invented it if there wasn't a use case. So yeah, it'd be interesting to see how that grows and whether that grows out within other products and how we integrate that fully into Azure. But yeah, it sounds intriguing for sure. The two biggest use cases that they're talking about right now is security and latency. So based on the information that you're capturing, there are plethora of devices that are trying to gain access to this information or trying to store access into the Azure Blobs. And so having the ability to have intelligence in terms of the way that the information is being captured and stored based on security and latency, which are the two big ones that are being talked about in the documentation that's provided is pretty cool. Let's take a quick hello to everybody that's in the chat room. There's a lot of conversations today about IoT, which is funny. Paul Jensen, hello, Sarah. How's it going? Andrew McCollum always joining us. Jared Chocolate, aka Audio Steve is in the house. A lot of people chatting about IoT, the trash end of video game. Actually it was a call out for Paul DeCarlo too, a good friend of ours. Wired Canuck is sharing his ARM template utilization. We've got to mention that the solution for the made available for site recovery also is for Linux. So Windows and Linux both have that type of function now. So it's always interesting to see the conversations that are going on in the chat room with Pierre, producer Pierre, egging everybody on. Sarah, your thoughts on build. What is IT Pro's role at build? I think there's always a small slice of build for the operations teams because let's face it, the developers do the thing that they're best at in developing products. And then we as operations people do our bit. And at some point we have to come together. So I think previously, I think Thomas and I spoke at build because there was a topic conversation. And I think there's a bunch of us this time from our team actually in build as well. So there's definitely an overlap. But yeah, you're doing something though, Antony. You're not at build? Well, the next thing I have three IoT sessions at build in regards to OT and IoT with two different functionalities from everything from automation to data capture and then from security mechanism made available through Azure Security Center, which is really cool. I know Rick is hosting. He's hosting a couple of days at build as well. I think it's alongside Donna Sackar. Pierre is doing roundtables on virtualization. And that's also an open discussion, open conversation. If you could participate, that's awesome as well. And Oren Thomas is doing a session on behalf of MS Learn. I was told it was Node.js, but I hear it's around certification. There's an inside joke in terms of Oren Thomas and Node.js and his passion for it. So a lot of interesting conversations. And that's just it, right? The lines are blurring between IT pros and developers. And I know there was that distinct, there was a distinction before, and it's now gone. There was the argument that PowerShell was the catalyst of that distinction. I honestly think it's the amount of information that we're now capturing. I think 80% of the world's data has been captured over the last two years, which is crazy to think about. And so it's everybody's responsibility to enable an organization to put their best foot forward in the adoption of technology, not just one department or the other. So events like Build, yeah, they're going to be talking about creation of solutions, building of opportunities. But that doesn't just meet a developer's requirements. It also addresses IT pro related aspects as well. So definitely check it out, and it's free, right? Other events, Patch and Switch, it's been a fortnight. Last week was testing and production. This week is Patch and Switch. We also have Hello World. So Hello World, today's episode is the last regular episode. Next week, they will have Hello World for Build specifically. So they'll be leading up to Build or the countdown to Build will be made available. I was actually told that Rick Claus is going to be one of the hosts for the week talking about the aspects of what's happening coming up to Build, which is pretty cool. And last but not least for events, the security skills bootcamp that's being made available in Australia. Sonya brought this up last week. It's actually happening next week. So from the 17th to the 21st, it is a completely free registration. And because we are on this digital online world, everybody has access to it. Yes, some of the time zones might be a challenge, especially for Sarah. It's usually it's like 3 AM when it's a big morning for the Australians. But for us in North America, there's a lot of us that can go in and participate when we can to watch a couple of the episodes. So definitely check it out if you have the opportunity. And of course, if you're in the Australian region, definitely check this out. It's completely free and allows you to participate. Next, the Microsoft Learn module of the week. And we talked about this earlier, Bicep. I honestly have not played with Bicep yet. Have you played with Bicep yet? You have not either. I know producer Pierre is flexing his guns in the back. The world does not get to see the backstage, which is awesome. I dare producer Pierre to come on and show off his Bicep. He's not going to do it. Here's the thing. Been playing with ARM templates. It's something that we talked about this in terms of the quickness of setting up of resources. Bicep is the solution that makes it that much easier. So it uses natural language. Very similar, I would argue to Python in terms of the natural language utilization for the same instance of creation of resources via templates. As you can see, I have not checked this out yet. This is a brand new Learn module that has been made available. Producer Pierre actually brought it to our attention. It's something where, if you want to dabble in terms of learning on the resource, learning on the template creation via hands-on learning, and we say this every time, but it's so true, it's a great opportunity to go through the basic steps of just creating a VM using Bicep. Sarah, what do you think? I'll need to give it a go because I have not looked at Bicep at all. So yeah, it will definitely help me get started. So this show has just zoomed by as it usually does. And we've got two minutes left. Sarah, if people want to get ahold of you, what's the best way to get ahold of you? You can find me at Tech Elast on Twitter or anywhere on the social medias. That's me. And if you want to get ahold of Producer Pierre, you can do so on Twitter at Wired Connect. And if you want to get ahold of me for some reason, you can do so on Twitter as well at Wired This Life. Sarah, thank you for coming back on the show. We will see everybody next week. Have a great week and all.