VMware

Welcome to our weekly roundup of the hottest tech updates in the worlds of Azure, VMware, and other partners. In this series, we’ll be curating a collection of must-read articles, each offering a deep dive into the latest technological advancements, news, and trends within these cutting-edge platforms.

We understand that in today’s fast-paced tech landscape, staying informed is key. That’s why we’re here to make it easy for you. Each week, we’ll handpick the most insightful and informative articles that cover everything from Cloud, virtualization, Infrastructure As Code (IaC), DevOps to End User Computing breakthroughs.

Without further ado, let’s dive into this week’s top tech insights:

Microsoft 365

• Microsoft 365 licensing changes in Europe. Link
• Microsoft 365 for business security best practices. Link

Microsoft Azure

• Share images using a community gallery. Link
• Generally Available: Azure Update Manager. Link
• Azure WAF Post Deployment Check – Best Practices. Link
• New Azure management and onboarding capabilities for Azure Arc-enabled VMware vSphere. Link
• Recommendations for using availability zones and regions. Link
• What are Virtual Machine Scale Sets? Link
• Azure Storage TLS changes: Intermediate certificate renewals. Link
• Practice Assessments for Microsoft Certifications. Link
• Azure Storage Mover: The Secret of Seamless Cloud Migration. Link
• Which strategy  you should choose when deciding on your Azure compute candidate service? Link

Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) / Windows 365 / VMware Horizon / EUC

• Copilot in Windows and new Cloud PC experiences coming to Windows 11. Link
• Dynamically install Chocolatey packages with AASC and Azure Artifacts (Part Two). Link
• Week 38-2023 VMware Enduser Computing Updates. Link
• AVD Community Newsletter – 21st September 2023. Link
• Remote Desktop client version update 1.2.4582. Link
• A deep dive into the quality difference of VMware Blast Global Quality Levels. Link
• Announcing general availability of Azure Virtual Desktop Custom Image Templates. Link
• Preparing Apps for MSIX. Link

Intune

• Open-source package index of Windows Package Manager repository. Link
• Intune Newsletter – 22nd September 2023. Link
• Winget Packager in Azure DevOps Pipeline. Link

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) / DevOps

• Creating a multi-cloud golden image pipeline with Terraform Cloud and HCP Packer. Link
• Terraform Best Practices Series – Lessons from the Battlefield: Part 1. Link
• Terraform Best Practices Series – Lessons from the Battlefield: Part 2. Link
• Azure Devops – Workload Identity Federation. Link
• How to organize Terraform State For Multi-Region Deployments. Link
• Terrafying Azure – A Tale From The Dark Side. Link
• Now Generally Available: GitHub Advanced Security for Azure DevOps is ready for you to use. Link
• Announcing the removal of bundled plugins in HashiCorp Packer. Link
• Quickstart: Create an Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster by using Terraform. Link

Microsoft Defender / Sentinel

• Github Public Repo for Sentinel where you can find Playbooks, Workbooks, DataConnectors and more. Link
• Respond to threats across tenants more effectively with Microsoft 365 Defender multi-tenant support. Link
• Microsoft Defender for Cloud Webinar | Defender for Storage – What’s New? Link

Vembu

• BDRSuite announces support for Backup and Recovery for Azure Virtual Machines, utilizing Azure Native APIs, and provides options to store backup data locally or in the cloud for Azure VMs. Link

VMware

• Easily disable vSphere Cluster Services (vCLS) using UI/API in vSphere 8.0 Update 2. Link
• Getting Started with the Synology Storage Console for VMware. Link
• VMware vCenter Server 8.0 Update 2 Release Notes. Link
• VMware vCenter Server 8.0 Update 2 download. Link
• VMware ESXi 8.0 Update 2 Release Notes. Link
• VMware ESXi 8.0 Update 2 download. Link

Windows

• Windows Server 2025: Initial Glimpse with New Domain Functional Level. Link
• Active Directory Hardening Series – Part 1 – Disabling NTLMv1. Link
• Introducing Copilot in Windows 11, new AI tools, and more. Link
• Retirement of Exchange Web Services in Exchange Online. Link
• Windows Subsystem for Linux September 2023 update. Link
• Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (Windows ADK) for Windows 11, version 22H2 (updated September 2023) is available. Link

Other

• Unleash the Power of Liquidware FlexApp One: Trial it QUICK! Over a Cup of Coffee! Link

Welcome to our weekly roundup of the hottest tech updates in the worlds of Azure, VMware, and other partners. In this series, we’ll be curating a collection of must-read articles, each offering a deep dive into the latest technological advancements, news, and trends within these cutting-edge platforms.

We understand that in today’s fast-paced tech landscape, staying informed is key. That’s why we’re here to make it easy for you. Each week, we’ll handpick the most insightful and informative articles that cover everything from Cloud, virtualization, Infrastructure As Code (IaC), DevOps to End User Computing breakthroughs.

Without further ado, let’s dive into this week’s top tech insights:

Microsoft Azure

• Choose an Azure compute service. Link
• Announcing the general availability of new Azure burstable virtual machines. Link
• Migration and modernization for Oracle workloads. Link
• Entra News #10: Your weekly dose of Microsoft Entra. Link
• Performance Testing with Azure Firewall Basic SK. Link
• David-Summers/Azure-Design: My Azure stencil collection for Visio. Highly functional and always up to date. Link
• PIM, PAM and PAW – what and how in Azure? Link
• Supported Kubernetes versions in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). Link
• Get Ahead with Self-Hosted Agents and Container Apps Jobs. Link

Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) / Windows 365 / VMware Horizon / EUC

• Windows 365 Enterprise – Points of Clarification and PoC Proven Practices. Link
• AVD Automation Cocktail – Azure Virtual Desktop automated with Bicep and Azure CLI. Link
• AVD Community Newsletter – 14th September 2023. Link
• Week 37-2023 VMware Enduser Computing Updates. Link
• Ruben’s EUC Industry Bento Box – September 2023. Link
• FSLogix App Masking YouTube video. Link
• Deploy secure management and monitoring to Azure Virtual Desktop. Link

Intune

• Easily removing access to the Microsoft Store. Link
• Send Intune Discovered apps to Log Analytics with Azure Automation. Link
• Intune: Auto Reconnect Mapped Drives. Link
• Windows Autopilot Testing in VMs: A Step-by-Step Guide! Link
• Intune Newsletter – 15th September 2023. Link
• Endpoint Management Community Newsletter – September 11-17, 2023. Link
• Deploy SentinelOne with Intune. Link

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) / DevOps

• Gitops Your Scheduled Tasks. Link
• Introduction to Azure DevOps Workload Identity Federation (OIDC) with Terraform. Link
• Azure Deployment using Terraform Cloud – Overview, Prerequisites, Sample Code, and Resources. Link
• A simple example of Windows PowerShell Just Enough Administration (JEA)! Link
• Connect to Microsoft Graph in Azure DevOps Pipelines using Workload Identity Federation. Link
• Streamlining Multi-Component Deployments to Terraform Environments with GitHub Actions Matrices. Link
• Best Practices: 7 Key Benefits of Automated Infrastructure Deployment. Link
• Terraform Cloud pricing. Link
• Build image with containerized self-hosted Azure DevOps agent and private Azure Container Registry. Link

Microsoft Defender

• Common mistakes during Microsoft Defender for Endpoint deployments. Link

Vembu

• BDRSuite now offers agentless backup and recovery for KVM virtual machines, seamlessly integrated with KVM hypervisor. Link

VMware

• Bulk Deploy UAGs. Link
• Extreme Performance Series 2023: Optimizing for Latency Sensitive Applications. Link

Windows

• End of servicing plan for third-party printer drivers on Windows. Link
• Release notes: September 2023 – Windows 11, version 22H2. Link
• Windows 11 KB5030219 trashes PCs, gaming performance issues affect Starfield. Link