Cloud Coverage™ Library
Quality Content You Can Trust
Latest news and technical articles related to cloud computing with Windows Server 2016. Argon has carefully selected articles published by industry experts, featuring Microsoft’s engineering team.
Select a Topic to view articles of just that Topic. Select All to view the entire library.
SQL Server 2016 Service Pack 2 is now available
The SQL Server team is excited to bring you the second service pack release for SQL Server 2016. The service pack is now available for download on the Microsoft Download Center and will be coming soon to Visual Studio Subscriptions, ... continue reading

Securing the modern workplace with Microsoft 365 threat protection – part 1
This post is authored by Debraj Ghosh, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Microsoft 365 Security. The roots of Microsoft 365 threat protection Over the next few weeks, well introduce you to Microsoft 365s threat protection services and demonstrate how Microsoft 365s ... continue reading

Azure Toolkit for Eclipse integrates with HDInsight Ambari and supports Spark 2.2
To provide more authentication options, Azure Toolkit for Eclipse now supports integration with HDInsight clusters through Ambari for job submission, cluster resource browse and storage files navigate. You can easily link or unlink any cluster by using an Ambari-managed username ... continue reading

Azure Toolkit for IntelliJ integrates with HDInsight Ambari and supports Spark 2.2
To provide more authentication options, Azure Toolkit for IntelliJ now supports integration with HDInsight clusters through Ambari for job submission, cluster resource browse and storage files navigate. You can easily link or unlink any cluster by using an Ambari-managed username ... continue reading
The edge of possibility: best practices for IoT-driven infrastructure transformation
Corporate IT infrastructure has changed a lot in the past decade. From a relatively simple bounded space, with a defined “inside” and “outside,” IT networks have evolved to incorporate a wider range of devices, such as smartphones and tablets, and ... continue reading

How Azure Security Center helps detect attacks against your Linux machines
Azure Security Center (ASC) is now extending its Linux threat detection preview program, both on cloud and on-premise. New capabilities include detection of suspicious processes, suspect login attempts, and anomalous kernel module loads. Security Center is using auditd for collecting ... continue reading
Storage scenarios for Cray in Azure
When you get a dedicated Cray supercomputer on your Azure virtual network, you also get attached Cray® ClusterStor™ storage. This is a great solution for the high-performance storage you need while running jobs on the supercomputer. But what happens when ... continue reading

Making Sense of Replication Schedules in PowerShell
Hi all! Jan-Hendrik Peters, PFE, here to talk to you today about using PowerShell to view replication schedules. Automation with PowerShell is a part of our daily life. However, there are certain things that are for some reason not achievable ... continue reading

Azure.Source – Volume 28
Azure Security News at RSA Conference 2018 Last week, we made several Azure Security announcements in conjunction with RSA Conference 2018 in San Francisco: Introducing Microsoft Azure Sphere: Secure and power the intelligent edge - Microsoft Azure Sphere is a ... continue reading
Azure IoT Hub SDK officially provides native iOS support
We recently released a port of our Azure IoT Hub C SDK for iOS platform. Whether your iOS project is written in Swift or Objective-C, you can leverage our device SDK and service SDK directly and begin turning your iOS ... continue reading

Teaming up in the war on tech support scams
(Editors note: Erik Wahlstrom spoke about the far-reaching impact of tech support scams and the need for industry-wide cooperation in his RSA Conference 2018 talk Tech Scams: It's Time to Release the Hounds.) Introduction Social engineering attacks like tech support ... continue reading
![clip_image002[8]](https://azurecomcdn.azureedge.net/mediahandler/acomblog/media/Default/blog/80e503f0-7646-4428-bddf-8e5a575b8af1.png)
Automating Industrial IoT Security
Industrial IoT is the largest IoT opportunity. At Microsoft, we serve this vertical by offering an Industrial IoT Cloud Platform Reference Architecture, which we have conveniently bundled into an open-source Azure IoT Suite solution called Connected Factory and launched it ... continue reading

Introducing Windows Defender System Guard runtime attestation
At Microsoft, we want users to be in control of their devices, including knowing the security health of these devices. If important security features should fail, users should be aware. Windows Defender System Guard runtime attestation, a new Windows platform ... continue reading
Altair democratizes access to computer-aided engineering with Azure
My high school physics teacher taught us about metal fatigue by having everyone bend paper clips back and forth until they broke. In the real world, engineers use computer simulations to test their designs. From the trivial paperclip to the ... continue reading

Connect to the Intelligent Security Graph using a new API
Most organizations deal with high volumes of security data and have dozens of security solutions in their enterprise, making the task of integrating various products and services daunting and complex. The cost, time, and resources necessary to connect systems, enable ... continue reading
Calling Http endpoints in T-SQL using CURL extension
SQL Server Database Engine don’t have built-in functions that would enable you to send information to some API using http protocol. If you would need to call some REST endpoint or a web hook from the T-SQL code, you would ... continue reading
Tapping the intelligent cloud to make security better and easier
There has been a distinct shift in my conversations with customers over the last year. Most have gone from asking can we still keep our assets secure as we adopt cloud services?, to declaring, we are adopting cloud services in ... continue reading

Failover Cluster File Share Witness and DFS
This blog discusses a new feature in the upcoming release of Windows Server 2019. Currently, Windows Insiders receive current builds of Server 2019. We urge you to become an Insider and play a part in making Windows Server 2019 the ... continue reading

#Microsoft Introduction to Windows Admin Center #Winserv #Windows10 #Azure #hyperv #AzureStack
Microsoft is introducing the New Windows Admin Center ( former Project Honolulu ) Last weekend I made my MVPLAB.LOCAL domain with Project Honolulu version 1803 and Windows Server Insider version. I Made my Domain controller first and later a Cluster ... continue reading
Connect to Virtual Machines (VMs) on PAW
Continuing the PAW series, this blog post discusses the options to connect to the VMs running on the PAW device. In Windows, you can connect to a locally running VM using: VMConnect (basic mode or enhanced mode) RDP using mstsc.exe ... continue reading
High Availability Options for Microsoft SQL Server in the Google Cloud
I was recently interviewed by VMblog about high availability options for SQL Server. You can check out the interview here http://vmblog.com/ For the step by step guide I previously published, check it out here https://clusteringformeremortals.com/2018/01/10/how-to-build-a-sanless-sql-server-failover-cluster-instance-in-google-cloud-platform/ ... continue reading
Offline media import for Azure
So many customers I talk to want to upload their offline data stores into the cloud. Yet, no one wants to spend hours and hours inserting tapes, connecting older hard disks, or figuring out how to digitize and upload film ... continue reading

New Disaster Recovery tutorials for Wingtip Tickets sample SaaS application
Continuing in our series of tutorials showcasing features of Azure SQL database that enable SaaS app management, we are introducing two new tutorials that explore disaster recovery strategies for recovering an app and its resources in the event of an ... continue reading

Three critical analytics use cases with Microsoft Azure Databricks
Data science and machine learning can be applied to solve many common business scenarios, yet there are many barriers preventing organizations from adopting them. Collaboration between data scientists, data engineers, and business analysts and curating data, structured and unstructured, from ... continue reading
Security baselines should underpin efforts to manage cybersecurity risk across sectors
This post is authored byAngela McKay, Director of Cybersecurity Policy and Amanda Craig, Senior Cybersecurity Strategist, CELA. Organizations are leveraging technology to transform their operations, products, and services, and governments are increasingly focusing on how to enable such dynamic change ... continue reading
Celebrating data and you with #SQLDataWins
Hey you, data whiz! You’re an expert, a data aficionado, a steward of a finely tuned database – but not everyone gets it. Well, we do. #SQLDataWins celebrates professionals who make an impact with data every day. Play along with ... continue reading

How to configure Azure SQL Database Geo-DR with Azure Key Vault
Azure SQL Database and Data Warehouse offer encryption-at-rest by providing Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) for all data written to disk, including databases, log files and backups. This protects data in case of unauthorized access to hardware. TDE provides a TDE ... continue reading
Fast and easy development with Azure Database for MySQL and PostgreSQL
This blog post was co-authored by James Ashley, MR and AI Architect, Microsoft MVP. Developers sometimes get anxious when it comes to hooking up a database for their apps. However, with Azure Database for MySQL and Azure Database for PostgreSQL, ... continue reading
Monitoring performance of natively compiled stored procedures – database-scoped configuration options
We just added new database-scoped configuration options that will help with monitoring performance of natively compiled stored procedures. The new options XTP_PROCEDURE_EXECUTION_STATISTICS and XTP_QUERY_EXECUTION_STATISTICS are available now in Azure SQL Database, and will be available in the next major release ... continue reading

Hunting down Dofoil with Windows Defender ATP
Dofoil is a sophisticated threat that attempted to install coin miner malware on hundreds of thousands of computers in March, 2018. In previous blog posts we detailed how behavior monitoring and machine learning in Windows Defender AV protected customers from ... continue reading