Azure Storage File Share Backup

Tiago Costa / / Azure

Keeping up with the changes in Microsoft Azure is one of the more challenging tasks I have in my professional life. I teach classes on Microsoft Azure all the time and I provide advising about Cloud to my customers, so it’s kind in my job description that I need to know all (in the real world most of…) the new services and new features that Microsoft releases. 

In the previous week we had some changes in the Azure Portal UI, but I also found out another great feature in the Azure Recovery Services. It’s now possible to backup your Azure Storage File Shares using the Azure Backup service in a very easy and quick way. When you add another Backup Item to you Azure Recovery Services Vault you can choose that it’s an Azure Service and up until now we only had the option for Virtual Machines, but now we also have Azure File Shares. At the time of writing this post it works with both Azure Storage Accounts V1 and V2. This allows you to create a backup solution for your Azure File Shares with zero infrastructure costs that allows you to do file-level restores.

Supposing that you already have a File Share in an Azure Storage account, if you want to backup that data using the Azure Backup service you just need to follow these steps:

  1. In the Recovery Services Vault overview blade, click on the + Backup option.
  2. In the Backup Goal blade select the following options and then click Backup.
    1. Where is your workload running?
      1. Select Azure
    2. What do you want to backup? 
      1. Select Azure FileShare
  4. In the Select Storage Account blade, select the Azure Storage Account that contains the file share and click OK.
    1. This will register the Storage Account with Recovery Services Vault. This operation might take a minute.
  5. In the File Share to backup blade, select the file shares you want to backup and click OK. You can select more than 1 file share.
  6. In the Backup Policy blade, select an existing backup policy or create a new one.
  7. In the Backup blade, just click Backup and your File Share backup will be created.

Hope all of you love this feature as much as I do! This is a great feature to improve Microsoft Azure Storage and backup services. Waiting for more great features in both services, like Azure Blob Storage or event real Azure SQL Database Backups.

If you still don’t have an Azure Storage Account and/or an Azure Backup Vault here is some links to help you with that:

New Microsoft Azure Exam: 70-535: Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions

Tiago Costa / / Azure, Certification

Microsoft is creating a new Microsoft Azure Exam – 70-535: Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions, in order to better align the objective domains to Architecting solutions in Microsoft Azure and not the details in implementing solutions in Azure like we have today in the 70-534 exam.

This new exam will also bring changes to the current certifications that use the now old 70-534 Exam. MCSA and MCSE will start using this in the next few weeks. If you have a current MCSA/MCSE or MCSD certification that used the 70-534, your certification will still be current. I also recommend you to check the new Microsoft Azure Certification that Microsoft is releasing. You can find more information’s at:  https://borntolearn.mslearn.net/b/weblog/posts/announcing-three-new-azure-exams

Microsoft is also creating a new MOC (Microsoft Official Course) that aligns with this new exam. It will be the 20535: Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions. According to the Born to Learn post it will be available in February 2018.

You can find more information in this Born to Learn article: https://borntolearn.mslearn.net/b/weblog/posts/microsoft-exam-70_2d00_535-to-replace-70_2d00_534_3a00_-architecting-microsoft-azure-solutions-on-november-30-_1320_-here_1920_s-what-you-should-know-

I will be Speaking at Collab 365 Global Conference 2017

Tiago Costa / / Events, Speaking

Have you heard about the virtual Collab365 Global Conference 2017 that’s streaming online November 1st – 2nd?

Join me and 120 other speakers from around the world who will be bringing you the very latest content around SharePoint, Office 365, Flow, PowerApps, Azure, OneDrive for Business and of course the increasingly popular Microsoft Teams. The event is produced by the Collab365 Community and is entirely free to attend.

Places are limited to 5000 so be quick and register now.

During the conference I’d love you to watch my session which is called : ‘Supercharge your applications with the Microsoft Graph API’.

When creating line of business applications we always need data from several sources. This is no different in a cloud world, but instead of creating different services, that are accessed in different ways, we can leverage the power of the Microsoft Graph API to get data from Office 365 and other Microsoft cloud services in a quick, easy and integrated way. In this session, we will check how easy is to get data using the Microsoft Graph API to your application, like for example files from OneDrive for Business or SharePoint, list data from SharePoint, schedule a new event in a user agenda, etc… This is a very demo depended session where, we will create an application integrated with data from Azure AD and Office 365.

If you join me, you will learn:

  • Microsoft Graph API
  • Integrate Microsoft Graph in your application
  • Get data from SharePoint, Azure AD and Office 365 using Microsoft Graph API
  • How to create state of the art application with the Microsoft Graph API

Topic(s):

  • Microsoft Graph

Audience:

  • Developers

Time (in UTC):

  • Thursday, November 2 2017 7:00PM

How to attend:

  1. Register here.
  2. At the time listed above go here to watch my session. (you can also add me to your own personal planner from the agenda)
  3. Be ready to take notes!

Connect an Azure Web App to an Existing Virtual Network

Tiago Costa / / Random words

Hi Readers,

Teaching a Azure Workshop to prepare my students for the 70-533, 70-532 and 70-534 exams in just 9 days. Bootcamp style!!!

One of my students asked me if we could associate and Azure Web App to an Existing Virtual Network. So, if I’m going to prep a demo for tomorrow, let’s just write a blog post about it and share this with all the community!!!

While you cannot place the Azure Web App in the Azure Virtual Network, this feature provides access to resources running in the Azure Virtual Network to the Azure Web App. This will allow for example that your Azure Web App can access REST end Points, SQL Server Virtual Machines and even other resources available on-premise if you configure a Site-to-site VPN between you Azure Virtual Network and your on-premise location. There is a small catch, this only works with Standard or Premium Azure Web Apps tiers.

To configure this, the first step that you must take is under your Azure Web App, select the “Networking” option, this will open a new blade. Under this new blade we should select “Setup”.

 

After this step, we just need to choose what is the Azure Virtual Network that we want to associate our Azure Web App.

Note: The Azure Virtual Network that we will select must have an Azure Virtual Network Gateway configured in order to be possible to make this association.

It should take a few minutes and after that you have your Azure Web App integrated with your Azure Virtual Network.

Thanks for the question of my student Joe Gough. With his great question, I had the idea to write this great blog post!

Microsoft Planner – Assign multiple users to a task

Tiago Costa / / Random words

Since the 3rd of April, 2017 it’s possible to assign more than one user to a specific task. This was a feature that many companies and professionals were waiting for in Microsoft Planner. Planner is a great tool, love it, but the lack of this feature was keeping me away because in most scenarios that I work on I really need to have more than one user assign to one task. Also, some of my customer have the same need, but starting now I can start to implement Microsoft Planner in many customers. Good times ahead!

 

This feature was the most request feature in User Voice. If you find that Microsoft Planner is missing some features, please review if someone already add then to User Voice and vote for then, if you can’t find then on User Voice, add then yourself! Just go to https://planner.uservoice.com/forums/330525-microsoft-planner-feedback-forum

Are you using Microsoft Planner?