Microsoft Cloud Library
Articles about Microsoft Cloud
Latest news and technical articles related to cloud computing with Windows Server. We have carefully selected articles published by industry experts, featuring Microsoft’s engineering team.
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Passwordless – What’s it worth?
We’ve known for some time now that passwords are failing as a security mechanism. Passwords are expensive to manage and users struggle to remember them. Passwordless authentication solutions promise better security and convenience, but you may wonder how to start ... continue reading
Monitoring options available for Azure SQL Database Managed Instance
For production workloads running on your Azure SQL Database managed instance it is very important to continuously understand the resource consumption and any potential performance issues such that you can react in time and have your business running smoothly. There ... continue reading
Finding a common language to describe AI security threats
As artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning systems become increasingly important to our lives, it’s critical that when they fail we understand how and why. Many research papers have been dedicated to this topic, but inconsistent vocabulary has limited their ... continue reading
Troubleshooting problems related to Azure AD authentication with Azure SQL DB and DW
When working with Azure AD authentication for Azure SQL DB and DW, you may sometimes encounter certain issues. The table below contains some of the Azure AD authentication problems that may appear when accessing SQL DB/DW, as well as how ... continue reading
Hyper-V Powering Windows Features
December 2019 Hyper-V is Microsoft’s hardware virtualization technology that initially released with Windows Server 2008 to support server virtualization and has since become a core component of many Microsoft products and features. These features range from enhancing security to empowering ... continue reading

Multi-stage downloader Trojan sLoad abuses BITS almost exclusively for malicious activities
Many of today’s threats evolve to incorporate as many living-off-the-land techniques as possible into the attack chain. The PowerShell-based downloader Trojan known as sLoad, however, puts all its bets on BITS. Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) is a component of ... continue reading

GALLIUM: Targeting global telecom
Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) is raising awareness of the ongoing activity by a group we call GALLIUM, targeting telecommunication providers. When Microsoft customers have been targeted by this activity, we notified them directly with the relevant information they need ... continue reading
Microsoft Azure Data Services Integration into ServiceNow
ServiceNow is a SaaS based application that provides service management software via multiple offerings such as: IT services management (ITSM), IT operations management (ITOM) and IT business management (ITBM). ServiceNow is a leader within the Gartner Magic Quadrant and holds ... continue reading

Go passwordless to strengthen security and reduce costs
We all know passwords are inherently unsecure. They’re also expensive to manage. Users struggle to remember them. It’s why we’re so passionate about eliminating passwords entirely. Passwordless solutions, such as Windows Hello, FIDO2 security keys, and the Microsoft Authenticator app, ... continue reading

PowerTip: Identify Completed PowerShell Jobs with Data yet to be Received
Summary: Doctor Scripto quickly shows how to identify Completed Jobs in PowerShell which have yet to have the data Received Hey Doctor Scripto, How can I identify jobs which already completed but I haven’t done a Receive-Job on to get ... continue reading

The quiet evolution of phishing
The battle against phishing is a silent one: every day, Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection detects millions of distinct malicious URLs and email attachments. Every year, billions of phishing emails don’t ever reach mailboxes—real-world attacks foiled in real-time. Heuristics, detonation, ... continue reading
Tools and commands for running SQL Server 2019 on Linux
Organizations that embraced the option to run Microsoft SQL Server 2017 on Linux have been looking forward to the release of SQL Server 2019. Regardless of which operating system (OS) you choose, it's the same SQL Server database code, and ... continue reading

Dynamic Signal integrated with Azure AD to improve the usability of its SaaS communication solution
Hello! Today’s ‘Voice of the ISV’ story is from Patrick Hanley at Dynamic Signal, an independent software vendor (ISV) partner. Dynamic Signal is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution that helps companies communicate effectively with their employees through appropriate channels by making ... continue reading

Combine the Power of Video Indexer and Computer Vision
We are pleased to introduce the ability to export high-resolution keyframes from Azure Media Service’s Video Indexer. Whereas keyframes were previously exported in reduced resolution compared to the source video, high resolution keyframes extraction gives you original quality images and ... continue reading

Parallel Processing with jobs in PowerShell
Hello everyone! Doctor Scripto is elated to present some more great content from Joel Vickery, PFE , today he discusses using jobs in PowerShell. Stay tuned in the upcoming weeks for some amazing regular content. Take it away Joel! I ... continue reading

Azure Sphere guardian module simplifies & secures brownfield IoT
One of the toughest IoT quandaries is figuring out how to bake IoT into existing hardware in a secure, cost-effective way. For many customers, scrapping existing hardware investments for new IoT-enabled devices (“greenfield” installations) isn’t feasible. And retrofitting mission-critical devices ... continue reading
Environment Tracing and Build Annotations with Azure Pipelines
The numbers show, using continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) solutions for delivering software and cloud infrastructure improve deployment reliability, recoverability, and agility. In addition to these great benefits, CI/CD produces many byproducts that are also useful. One of these ... continue reading
The “This Update is not Applicable to this Computer” Anomaly
Hello everyone! My name is Mike Kammer, and I'm a Platforms PFE with Microsoft, dealing with all versions of Windows Server, and other duties as assigned. Sometimes those duties are fun, and everything works perfectly, like playing with kittens or ... continue reading
Azure Stack HCI now running on HPE Edgeline EL8000
Do you need rugged, compact-sized hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) enabled servers to run your branch office and edge workloads? Do you want to modernize your applications and IoT functions with container technology? Do you want to leverage Azure's hybrid services such ... continue reading
Building REST API with Python, Flask and Azure SQL
I mentioned in my previous article that having native JSON support in Azure SQL it’s a game changer as it profoundly change the way a developer can interact with a relational database, bringing the simplicity and the flexibility needed in ... continue reading
Improvements in Windows PowerShell Container Images
Beginning with Windows Server 20H1 Insider builds, Windows Server Core Insider images have been reduced in size from ~2.1 GBs to ~1.1 GBs. Traditionally, Windows 10 and Windows Server have always included a set of .NET native binaries that were ... continue reading

Networking enables the new world of Edge and 5G Computing
At the recent Microsoft Ignite 2019 conference, we introduced two new and related perspectives on the future and roadmap of edge computing. Before getting further into the details of Network Edge Compute (NEC) and Multi-access Edge Compute (MEC), let’s take ... continue reading
How to use composite indexes and correlated subqueries with Azure Cosmos DB
Tim Sander joins Scott Hanselman to discuss composite indexes and correlated subqueries. A Request Unit, or RU, is the measure of throughput in Azure Cosmos DB. Learn how to optimize queries with a composite index to decrease the RUs needed ... continue reading
How to connect virtual networks across Azure regions with Azure Global VNet peering
Anavi Nahar joins Donovan Brown to show how virtual network peering enables you to connect networks seamlessly in Azure Virtual Network. The virtual networks appear as one for connectivity purposes. The traffic between virtual machines uses the Microsoft backbone infrastructure ... continue reading
Video Tutorial: Administration Service in Configuration Manager current branch
Hello everyone, @Steve Rachui a principal field engineer specializing in endpoint management technologies brings us another video tutorial. This session focuses on the Configuration Manager administration service introduced in current branch version1810. The tutorial focuses on current branch 1906 and ... continue reading
Bring identities from disconnected ADs into Azure AD with just a few clicks!
Howdy folks, Today we’ve got some amazingly cool news to share. If you work in a large enterprise, you probably already know how big the challenges can be when your company makes an acquisition and you suddenly get asked to ... continue reading
Easier management of PolyBase and relational data through SQL Server 2019
The days when a database administrator (DBA) could specialize solely in a single database technology are rapidly ending. Today, we're much more likely than ever before to be asked to bring together many types of data from diverse sources. Although ... continue reading
Use Azure Automation to onboard VMs to Log Analytics
Hello, Chris Wallen here and in this post, I'm going to show how you can use an automation runbook to onboard Windows and Linux VMs to a Log Analytics workspace. Before we get started with the code portion, there are ... continue reading
Step-By-Step: Building a Hyper-V Lab in Azure with Windows Server 2019
I was recently challenged with having to create technical demos for a Microsoft Ignite the tour session called “Migrating to Windows Server 2019” (watch the recording here - awesome session). The demos for this talk centered around taking a bunch ... continue reading
BitLocker, Intune, and Raven
Hello Paul Bergson, back again with another story about my dog Raven. From time to time we get a visit from a family member and they will bring their dog along, problem is we have never socialized Raven with other ... continue reading