You can’t have it all, and this is true even for the best things in life. It’s possible to schedule automatic shutdowns of VMs in Azure (one of the ways to cut Azure costs). But you can’t use the same Azure Portal to schedule their automatic boot-up the same way. A way out of it is to use PowerShell, however, there’s another trick you might like better.

Read the article by Nicolas Prigent, a three-time Microsoft MVP, about using Azure Logic Apps to automatically start your VMs at whatever time you specify.

Just earlier this April, Microsoft released an update for their Windows Virtual Desktop. Among others, the novelty includes a new graphical interface directly in the Azure port. Unfortunately, it seems like this is just a teaser though: the feature is currently available in Preview, only US regions are available through this portal. You can’t migrate there yet.

Read the post by Florent Appointare, a Microsoft Engineer, explaining how you can access and view the new interface of WVD in preview mode.

All good things come to an end, and so, sadly, has the previous way of updating your Azure Automation modules. Previously, you’d just click on the respective button to update and that would be it. Microsoft deprecated that option and now you may be seeing a weird message with instructions on how to proceed with the issue today.

Read the guide by Florent Appointare, a Microsoft Engineer, about using a dedicated GitHub open-source runbook to update Azure Automation modules with no fuss.

Working for an MSP demands a lot of toggling between browsers. For each separate tenancy, managing Azure resources demands multiple browsers and tabs. Thankfully, this turmoil has been solved: Azure Lighthouse comes to save the day. You can now allocate customer Azure resources and manage permissions from a single console!

Read the article by Nicolas Prigent, a three-time Microsoft MVP, about using Azure Lighthouse to make your MSP daily routine easier and more effective.

The open-source community emerged with its own storage software solutions as a response to growing corporate prices and rigidity. However, sysadmins and decision-makers often don’t have enough knowledge about open source to make the right decision. We can help you learn more about open-source software, pros/cons, support, principles, and popular open-source SDS offers.

Watch this video to gain more insight into open-source to balance out your regular pro-infrastructure purchases with these cool open-source storage software products.

You can still keep VM templates in a separate folder, working with them individually. Or you can use Content Library in vSphere 7.0 along with Check-in and Check-out. In the updated suite, you can use versioning, manage your templates, and keep track. With these new options, you can revert to the exact version from the list or just delete it.

Read the article by Vladan Seget of ESX Virtualization (vladan.fr) to see how you can manage your templates in a neat new way and make your VM routine more precise.

Part 2 of the topic explained how to configure the AWS Elastic Beanstalk (EB) environment and the Django project to use the Postgres database. The current third installment will focus on configuring S3 storage for static and media files, as well as assigning a custom domain name for the app.

Read the article by Mikhail Rodionov, a K2 and Microsoft specialist, about how to configure S3 storage to ensure the persistence of static and media files in your AWS EB Django app.

Business, as well as the rest of the world, will never be the same again. COVID-19 has caused a lot of new insights, and going remote is broadly considered to be a “thing.” To that end, StarWind offers turnkey assistance with its offer for organizing remote access. The solution is based on StarWind HCA with Microsoft RDS or Citrix XenApp on top.

Read the article on VirtualizationHowTo about StarWind VDI & Home Office, discussing the technical side of the solution and the full-blown all-round support that comes with it.

Securing servers and workstations and managing them directly from the cloud is a must-have during the current "stay-at-home." Windows Defender ATP is a Microsoft security product to monitor and protect your servers without excessive effort. ATP constitutes a preventative, reactive, and investigative feature of the said product.

Read the guide by Florent Appointare, a Microsoft Engineer, about using Windows Defender ATP to make sure your servers are safe regardless of your place of operation.

Generally, people like new things, especially when it comes to technology. But with the new vSphere 7 coming in, little to no focus is offered to what’s been discarded. For example, there is no more Flash-based vSphere Web Client, Platform Services Controller has been dropped, vCenter for Windows — canceled, and so on.

Read the article by Alex Samoylenko, a virtualization pro, about what features and tools (that you might come to miss) have been taken off of vSphere 7 with its new updates.