 Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of A's at update. I'm Anthony Bartolo join as always by Sarah Lee and Sarah. How's it going? I'm good. Thanks, Anthony. I'm good. How are you doing? Good. Good. You know, it's going to be a good show when you have audio guy Steve already calling you out to see how are you going to mess up the show today. So at least, you know, we have that comical intent happening on. I hear you got nice weather out by you right now and you're waiting, you know, to go outside and enjoy that fresh air. Yep. Yep. I've been watering my garden all week because we've had no rain. So Scotland does sometimes get no rain for people wondering. Yeah. A lot of us in Toronto went out and already started to put some seed on the lawn and to address some patchy spots and then it snowed. So it snowed a foot and I guess that's helping out the lawn because it's watering the lawn. But sure, it was a very interesting week this week. Off the bat, I wanted to get started with this really quickly. How has your work life balance been over the last year? I could tell by that face in regards to, you know, everything that's going on, right? You hear the term a lot. You're, you know, living at work. But now, you know, it's not working from home. It's living at work. How has it been for you? It's definitely been a challenge. I think the boundaries have been pushed just that bit more because everybody knows you're at home and they know you can't go off to the cinema or you can't go out for dinner and stuff like that. So you aren't able to give those excuses like you used to when someone tried to put in a 6pm meeting. So the boundaries have definitely been pushed and I definitely think that my meeting, I've got no stats to prove this. Absolutely no stats to prove this, but it definitely feels like I am in more meetings than I have ever been in my entire career over the last year, which is not always a bad thing because some of the meetings are awesome. Like this morning I caught up with two colleagues and we just had a coffee and just, you know, talked about what the week's been like and stuff like that. So those were really good. But yes, definitely the balance is tipping in maybe the wrong direction, although I hope my boss isn't watching this. Here's the thing. So everybody working from home has provided a lot more connections to people that you don't usually talk to only because it's something where you can just do it now. You can have that ability to make the request. There isn't any travel required. Trust me, a lot of us are excited for when we can safely do the traveling again and do the in-person handshakes and what have you. But I wanted to really quickly call attention to what the Outlook team actually did in regards to the initiative to help balance our lives a little bit more. It's a really interesting idea and it's a simple idea. It's actually a PowerShell module or command line that you would enable on Outlook. That would, when you're scheduling out your meetings, it will put in automatically a 10-minute buffer, again, based on your requirements if you want to do it before or after, so that it allows you that break. You know, I don't know about you, Sarah, but you know, I've had certain things, a lot of days where it's been back to back to back to back, and then you look at the clock, it's four o'clock and you haven't had lunch yet, let alone breakfast, right? So I think, you know, it's a small thing. It was launched this week. I just wanted to bring it to everybody's attention because it's an interesting thought process in terms of, you know, using the tools that we have to schedule out our lives to have breaks so that we do take time for ourselves, right? Yeah. I think it's a weird scenario because, like you say, we've been back to back with meetings some days, and I actually think when I look at my calendar for Monday, I'm going to be back to back after lunchtime. But if we were doing that in person, Anthony, there'd be a chance for us to run for a bathroom break between the meeting rooms. And a meeting would never start on time or, you know, nine times up to ten, it probably wouldn't because people would be grabbing a coffee as they walk by the tea station or they'd be grabbing a bathroom break. We don't do that virtually now. Like one meeting ends and I go into the next one. There's not any chance for me to often, you know, knit to get a coffee refill or whatever. So I think it's important to sign build that in because we had that back in the physical world when we were all meeting. We just didn't know we were actually doing it because we were doing it unconsciously, if that makes sense. Well, that's the thing, right? So now we rely on technology to put those breaks in for us because we're just, you know, it's the norm back to back to back to back, right? So it's interesting how technology is being used to help alleviate that. I've actually put it into the chat, the link to the blog post because it came across my desk really late. So I wasn't able to put it into the blog post. But it's interesting just to check out and it's interesting the logic that's being shared by the Outlook team as to why it was included and how they're, you know, it's something that they're trying to put their best foot forward to help out everybody to alleviate that. Because that's the other thing too, if you're doing back to back to back and you're doing it, you know, five, six, I'm having meetings Sunday night sometimes right now too, right? Because of time zones, you probably experienced the same thing. You know, it's something that we all have to take into consideration with everything going on to be able to take those breaks and to, you know, give back to yourself in terms of everything that you've done in your hard work. So I know it's always interesting. I've got one of these smartwatches that kind of measures what they class as my body battery. And you can see on the days where I'm back to back to back, the body battery drains quicker than the days where I don't have any meetings. So it does have an effect on you, you know, even if you're not, you know, noticing it yourself. But yeah, so it's a good, good additional need to have a look and see if I can enable it on my machine. Yeah, and I try to actually schedule all the time just to go out on the bike, right? When there's not snow outside to just there's trails by where I live and it's a good break in terms of everything going on. I actually put that into my calendar in terms of just scheduling the time off. Producer pairs in the chat room talking about taking breaks in Redansk. That does occur as well, especially with the new season three that's upon us right now. So we've been having a lot of fun with that. Shall we get started with the news? Yes, let's do. All right, you're up first, Sarah. Me, me and first. So something that's when generally available this week is the Azure application gateway ability to rewrite your URL header or your requests coming in. And I think this is actually super interesting for me because I've been learning about some of our load balancing technologies and I didn't realize this wasn't a GA feature. So it's timely that it's came out because I was telling people all about it this week. But it basically allows you to be a bit more granular with what's happening with your traffic. If something comes into a certain URL, you can then push it somewhere else. And you know, there is an example on the screen here that Anthony's shown. You know, you're pushing the external URL could be like control.com storage, but internally what it's actually pushing it to is an Azure website or one of the static website. So you're not necessarily having to expose that website or that static storage within Azure storage to the internet traffic. You know, the application gateway is the external point. And then you can change that. And then if you do some maintenance to that back end application and you change the location or you change where it was, you wouldn't have to change the external point and redirect everybody to that URL. So lots of scenarios here that they can be used on. So definitely an exciting feature. And thankfully it's went to you this week after I told everybody that it was a feature that was available. Perfect timing. That's what I call that right. So we talked a little bit this prior to the show. It's very interesting use for this. There's a plethora of uses that we can implement this technology into. But the one that struck me right away was our documentation we have in docs.microsoft.com. It comes in a multitude of languages. And sometimes when we share out those links and it's blog posts or on social, we forget to take out the ENUS, which other parts of the world obviously doesn't work for them. And they want it in their native language. And that's available in their native language, of course, on docs. So you can actually have this service be intelligent enough to know that if it's going to this specific URL that includes the ENUS for the language for that documentation, but it's coming from another part of the world that has a different language, let's say Brazil and we would need it in Portuguese. It could be, you know, set up so that it's intelligent enough to understand that the request is coming from Brazil for a US site. Maybe it should go or it should provide the link to the Portuguese language portrayal of that document as opposed to the English one. Yeah, yeah, lots of scenarios, lots of use cases. So definitely a cool feature within the application gateway. So let's continue on with the news. Next up is a notice from Microsoft in regards to Ubuntu. If you have Ubuntu virtual machines or clusters set up inside of your tenant, it is time to update. As of the end of this month, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS will no longer be supported by Ubuntu. That means that no other updates, no other support for that offering will be made available. You can, however, still go to Microsoft Azure because there is the understanding that the requirement around the use of Ubuntu is still needed for specific applications. It is a challenge to have applications moved off older platforms because that may require a rewrite. In those instances there, you would require, you know, the ability to spin up that resource is still available. But do note that there is a disclaimer right on the page itself inside of Marketplace that Ubuntu Server 16.04 LTS will no longer receive security patches beyond April 2021. And especially in this day and age in regards to everything that's going on, it is important to have your VMs and your services up to date, especially around patching and what have you because a lot of us are remote working. And so gaining access to resources like this and patching no longer being available, that does then become a concern in terms of your footprint to be attacked on, if not service properly. What do you think, Sarah? I actually can't believe this is going kind of in a life, this operating system, because I think it was released in what, 2015 or something, and I remember it then. I'm starting to feel old with all of these operating systems going end of life and then we're having to upgrade. Yeah, but there's several versions that have been out since 1604, so hopefully it's not massively impactful for a lot of organizations. I say that with a pinch of salt. But yeah, it'll be interesting to see how people cope with the fact that it's going end of life and find solutions for those legacy applications that are probably living on it. Now the suggestion is for migration from 1604 to 1804. So you don't have to go to the latest flavoring of Ubuntu. It is also a smart thing to go through and make sure you do the testing and spitting up the new resource in 1804 or higher to make sure that your applications work. The hope is that you've done that prior to this point. If you have not, as you can see, 1604 is still going to be offered, but the disclaimer is at the end of this month, security patches will no longer be made available. So it is, hey, you need to start testing out 1804 or higher to make sure that your solution still works and to migrate your solutions that way. The documentation that we've shared on the blog post today is actually the steps for migration from 1604 to 1804 or higher. So it is a less of a disruption for your services when you're moving to the newer service. And producer Pierre, thank you. He's sharing out the link for today's show. Everything you can find is on aka.ms4.com. Next up, again, Sarah, for the news. So I'm talking about one of my favorite products because if you've ever heard me talk or watch my blog and stuff, it's always about migration in Azure Migrate. This is a new announcement. I think I actually missed this because if you'll notice the date on the blog, the team released this at the start of the month. So we're a bit late in announcing this, but it's an interesting one because with Azure Migrate, if you're migrating your workloads from your on-prem data center up into Azure, when Azure Migrate was first released, it did all that kind of migration traffic over the public internet. And a lot of organizations that's absolutely fine for, but then when some of the other customers with compliance needs came along, the team had to build and support using ExpressRoute and ExpressRoute with Microsoft peering. And that's an important caveat because if they use the ExpressRoute, it wasn't going over the public internet. It was on the Microsoft backbone and it was a bit more protected from attackers. This gives you even more protection because it's enabling the use of private endpoints. So again, you can start to secure that traffic much more when you're trying to migrate. If you're going to potentially like a no-trust or a zero-trust environment in your Azure environment, this can be enabled in there. So yeah, it's just one of those cool features that potentially a lot of customers might not need, but there'll be some use cases where people want to migrate and are going to, like I said, that zero-trust kind of infrastructure or design and private endpoints and private link are something that's built into it. So yeah, that's there. And I believe it's just easy to kind of enable when you're setting up your migrate projects. Just a little tech box that you tech that you're using a private endpoint and point it towards that private endpoint and then Azure Migrate will do all that for you. So yeah, pretty cool. Pretty cool to see them implement these little features that actually can make a big difference to our customers and enable them to use a product in their environment and make their migration path a lot easier for them. So yeah, pretty cool. Oh, this is huge. Like I already know in terms of oil and gas and finance and health care, there are so many facets that could utilize this type of enablement. It's something where, you know, I love the fact that we're again forward-thinking and understanding what people's needs are, organizational needs are to keep even ISO and certification standards in play, the inclusion of ExpressRep. I know especially for oil and gas and the remote locations that these services lie. It's where, you know, having this type of capability right now to use the ExpressRep for that private endpoint from a security perspective, it's a big deal. Yeah, yeah, it's a big deal. I kind of got it that I missed it earlier in the month and didn't announce it sooner, but it's there now, so make use of it. Oh, no, it's awesome to, you know, to share it out and that's why we do what we do, right? Because we hear from our audience what's important and then, you know, we jump on it, which is really cool. So definitely thank you for bringing this up. Next up, working with the team at HoloLens, our team was able to go forth and help with the steps and process around securing and deploying your HoloLens devices. Believe it or not, HoloLens is a Windows 10 device and that means that when you're deploying it at an organization, you still require the security policies and management capabilities in play to manage these devices. It's a hands-free Windows 10 device that, you know, projects holograms into real-world scenarios or real-world instances that you then interact with, and it is still a computing device and thus it can still be attacked or it can still be used for malicious use. So a lot of organizations, again, that have ISOs or certificate standards that they have to adhere to, these devices too have to be managed. So it was a great opportunity to sit down with the HoloLens team and just, you know, build out what documentation is currently available and make a, you know, a recommended best practice in terms of, you know, these are the steps that you should look at, inclusion of Azure AD for end user authentication, inclusion of endpoint management, specifically for the device for the deployment, the use of Windows 10 auto-enrollment. So when the device connects to the infrastructure for the first time or boots up for the first time, it's automatically loaded with all the tools and the needs for the device to operate. I learned something too in the fact that you can actually put the HoloLens into kiosk mode. So if you're not familiar with kiosk mode in Windows 10, I can actually set the HoloLens to only have a specific experience and do nothing else. So it limits the, you know, if there's confusion or, you know, I want to use this device to play games on instead of doing work that I'm supposed to be doing. You know, you can limit that to have only that purpose or, you know, we're seeing a lot of these devices show up in amusement parks for experiences in terms of, you know, enjoying the ride and what have you. So now if it's only in kiosk mode and it's managed to run that one application and nothing else, it's even easier for management to go through and, you know, ensure that the end users are only using it for what it's specified for. And then, you know, not, you know, fumbling around with the settings or changing anything on the fly to do other things, right? Sarah, what are your thoughts? That's pretty cool, Anthony, because I actually naively didn't think of HoloLens as something you would have to put into device management. I didn't realize it ran Windows 10. I was just, I'm going to say just another PC that you have to manage and do it. But I didn't realize those capabilities were there. So that's actually pretty cool. I'll need to have a look at what you've done in terms of the video and educate myself a bit. So that sounds interesting. This is the thing, right? And I've been in the vertical of mobile device management for a long time and I date myself, you know, back to the BlackBerry devices and the Windows mobile devices that we had originally. It's something where, you know, we don't think of it. It's another device. It's touching your architecture. It's accessing your data. It too needs to be secured and it too needs to be managed, especially if there's the ISO certifications. I work with a lot of organizations that are implementing HoloLens from an engineering perspective, right? And understanding the schematics of a construction site that's going up or understanding the engine in a vehicle or in an aircraft. It's, you know, this is sensitive information that if it gets out there, it can cause a lot of damage. And so, you know, awesome. And what's crazy is that the documentation exists. It's there. It's just, we don't know, right? So it was something where can, you know, in helping the HoloLens team build out this story, including a lot of the documentation that already exists to build out the path that, you know, IT departments can follow in terms of deploying these devices, making it easier for the end user to even use the devices because you just boot it up and you log in and all your information automatically populates the device like your laptop or desktop, right? Which was cool. It's like you said, you don't think of it as a PC, but it is, right? And then just have that enablement. And so it's a great program, you know, that our team is participating on. And there will be more down the road. We're doing more in terms of ensuring that this documentation is being available. So do check out the blog post and we will have more information down the road as well. Shall we do a quick shout out to the chat room? So we have Paul Jensen is here. Audio guy Steve, Jared Shockley is here. Andrew McCollum is here. How's it going? Robert Jr. all the way from South Africa has joined us today, which is awesome. Great to see everybody. And of course, producer Pierre is lurking around sharing his insights and everything that's going on. And then Sarah, you're in there chiming in as well. I can't even tell you're watching the camera. You're into the chat. I always get, you know, heckled for, why do you look at your keyboard while you're talking? Like, what's going on? What's going on? What's going on? What's going on? What's going on? So it's a bit of a challenge to do that. Shall we chat about the upcoming events that will coming next week? So my background is Maltese and the Maltese community reached out and said, hey, would you mind talking about our event? I said, sure, it's breaking on down, right? So Saturday the 24th of April, there's multi-day Saturday that's occurring and it's going to be talking about data, everything from your back end to how you place it in the cloud, how you provide access to it. It is a free conference. And because we're all online, you can join from anywhere in the world, right? So we have the link that's inside of the blog post for you to go and check this out. I do hope to go speak on the island one day. That is something that I'm trying to make sure that it's feasible down the road, not just going to do it for the sake of doing it, but definitely a great opportunity and it's interesting. There is a big tech mecca in Malta. A lot of the casinos operate their operations out of there, which is really cool. So a lot of data resides in Malta and in the cloud that they manage. So definitely check this out. I've seen a couple of videos that they've had and it's pretty in-depth in terms of their capabilities around data management, which is really cool. We also have the Toronto Azure Group has also reached out to bring some visibility to their event. So this is an interesting one. It's specifically around transforming pipelines to solve complex data problems inside of banking. So if you're in the financial industry and you're an IT professional looking at the infrastructure that's there and you want to ensure that your data transport is secure and it is done in a way that achieves the certification standards that are required, definitely check out this meeting. Again, it's online. So anywhere in the world you can participate in production, which is producer Pierre and audio guy Steve, which will have their event today. Producer Pierre, correct me if I'm wrong. I'm bad with time zones. It's noon, right? Eastern Standard Time? He's shaking his head, yes. So noon Eastern Standard Time, I got it right. If you go to twitch.tv forward slash patch and switch you can check out testing and production. I know producer Pierre has been busy behind the scenes to get ready for this one. He's got a lot of custom work that he's done that he'll be showcasing today. So definitely check it out. And of course, audio guy Steve will be there as well. So they're both there at this show. He'll be chiming in on the chat room now saying, what did you say? What's going on? And last but not least for events, Hello World is a daily news event that occurs on Learn TV alongside us and other shows. But what's great about this one, it's the human aspect of everything that goes on in regards to technology and how we enable one another to do more within what we have and especially the times that we're in right now. It's great to see just familiar faces talking about how they adopt technology and what resources are available to do so, which is really cool. Wow, that was a lot. All right. There's a lot of events going on, right? And this is the thing, right? Right now, I know build is coming up. It's coming up in May. This is the time where, when we were doing the travel, a lot of the travel happened during these months. This is the busier time of the year. And so it's great to see that community is still thriving. I know out by you, there's the Azure community out by you as well that they're still having their events online. I've said this numerous times. I love the fact that for the ability to connect to the Scotland Azure user group, right? I don't have to be in Scotland. I can actually go in and observe and watch. I love to go out there one day and meet everybody in person. And trust me, that's still something for me in terms of having that handshake. It makes it personal. It makes it, you know, to connect with people, which is really cool. But just the observation of how technology is adopted around the world and how the doors have opened. I hope that that continues on past when we're able to go see people in person again. It's an availability that you can go out and watch what other people are doing in terms of the sharing of technology is really cool. Your thoughts, Sarah? It's been pretty cool because we had Donovan Brown speaker, the Glasgow Azure user group last year and trying to get a hold of Donovan normally would have been impossible. And I know the Welsh user group, the Azure user group had Scott Hanselman speak at their user group. I think it was last month. So again, trying to get a hold of these people, normally, if they were physically, you would never get a chance to do it unless their travel schedule mixed in with the user group. So it's great to be able to have that. It's great to be able to have that range of speakers and share that knowledge and get access to people that you necessarily wouldn't have been able to get to. So yeah, hopefully it will continue. But I'm definitely looking forward to getting back to having physical meet-ups and sharing a beer and a pizza and sharing videos and all that fun stuff and not having a camera anywhere near me. You know what? I'm interested to do, you know, we do AZIT Update on the road and we're in, you know, Country X for whatever event that it is and we're doing this on the road and having, you know, others participate, you know, inside of the community and having, you know, I can't wait to see what this will evolve to once we're outside of this and we're all working back out there with people. But again, I love the fact that I can attend the Malta data user group remotely from my home and, you know, participate as required. Now, producer Pierre Flash on the screen the email address which is another way to reach out to us directly if you have any questions or any feedback or any inquiries. We love your feedback. That's something that's very important for us. It guides what we do in the show it guides what we do in terms of creation of tutorials and instruction and blog posts and what have you based on what you are letting us know that is important to you so definitely, you know, let us know in regards to what we can recommend or what we can build if it's not existing already. Let's talk about the Microsoft Learn module of the week because we have three minutes left. So this one was an interesting one develop a security and compliance plan. This is around the AZ 400 designing and implementing a Microsoft DevOps solution certification the reason I bring this out though is it's interesting premise. It's not just about the technology. It's about the people that also utilize the technology and how the communication across an organization supports that enablement for the organization to move forward and it's something where, you know, understanding the premises around the, you know, the security aspect and how that affects the end user, how it affects the business decision maker how it affects the developers. The management capabilities, the deployment capabilities it's a very well rounded learning path is 11 modules to complete. So it's a pretty substantial you know, the average time on this to completion is seven hours. Sorry, almost eight hours and it's something, but it's something where it takes into consideration more than just the technology. Also, what does the organization need to accomplish, which is pretty cool. Yeah, I think I talk a lot about migrations and how it's not just about the technology. There's also a lot of culture and people involved in it. And I think when you're doing a kind of DevOps culture and you're going down that kind of CI CD pipeline and things like that, then, yeah, there's technology involved, but there's also that people element. So it's good to hear that the modules including that as well. So we got two minutes left, Sarah. If people want to get ahold of you, what is the best way to get ahold of you? You can find me on Twitter at Techie Lass and yeah, I'll probably be posting lovely pictures of Scotland this weekend. So make sure you follow me there. And I'll be jealous because it's absolutely beautiful where you are right now. I send a picture on Instagram of my biking habits and everything is still gray right now. It's turning green, which is nice. If you want to get ahold of producer Pierre, you can do so at Pierre, sorry, at Wire Connect on Twitter. He's laughing in the background because I messed that up. And if you want to get ahold of me for some reason, you can also get ahold of me on Twitter at Wire This Life. Everybody enjoy your weekend and we'll see you all next Friday.