In this post, I will explain how I redirect my domains and subdomains to websites and parts of my website. If you ever visited my tools page at https://justinverstijnen.nl/tools, you will see I have shortcuts to my tools themselves, although they are not directly linked to the instances. In this post I will explain how this is done, how to setup Azure Front Door to do this and how to create your own redirects from the Azure Portal.
Azure Bastion is a great tool in Azure to ensure your virtual machines are accessible in a fast, safe and easy way. This is cool if you want to embrace Zero Trust into your servers management layer and so a secure way to access your servers in Azure. In this guide I will explain more about Azure Bastion and I hope I can give you a good overview of the service, its features, pricing and some practice information.
In Azure we can configure private DNS zones for local domains. We can use this to resolve our resources in our virtual network by name instead of IP addresses, which can be helpful creating failover and redundancy. These could all help to achieve a higher availability for your end users. Especially because Private DNS Zones are free and globally redundant.I thought of myself; “Will this also work for Active Directory?”. In that case, DNS would still resolve if suddenly our domain controllers are offline and users are working in a solution like Azure Virtual Desktop. In this guide I will describe how I got this to work. Honestly, the setup with real DNS servers is better, but it’s worth giving this setup a chance.
In Azure we can deploy ARM templates (+ script afterwards) to deploy resources on a big scale. This is like an easier version Terraform and Bicep, but without the great need to test every change and to learn a whole new language and convention. Also with less features indeed.
In Azure, we can configure Boot diagnostics to view the status of a virtual machine and connect to its serial console. However, this must be configured manually. The good part is that we can automate this process with Azure Policy. In this post I will explain step-by-step how to configure this and how to start using this in your own environment.
Wordpress. Its maybe the best and easiest way to maintain a website. This can be run on any server. In Azure, we also have great and serverless possibilities to run Wordpress. In this guide I will show you how to do this, how to enhance the experience and what steps are needed to build the solution. I will also tell more about the theoretical stuff to get a better understanding of what we are doing.
A new feature in Microsoft Azure rised up on the Microsoft pages; Service Groups. In this guide, we will dive a bit deeper into Service Groups and what we can do with them in practice. At the time of writing, this feature is in public preview and anyone can use it now.
This guide explains how to perform a in-place upgrade WIndows Server on Azure to leverage the newest version and stay secure.
With Azure Logic apps we can save some money on compute costs. Azure Logic apps are flow based tasks that can be run on schedule, or on a specific trigger like receiving a email message or Teams message. After the trigger has been started, we can choose what action to do. If you are familiar with Microsoft’s Power Automate, Logic Apps is almost exactly the same but then hosted in Azure. In this guide I will demonstrate some simple examples of what Logic Apps can do to save on compute costs.
In this article, we are going to implement Azure Firewall in Azure. We are going to do this by building and architecting a new network and creating the basic rules to make everything work.
Azure Firewall is a cloud-native Firewall which can be implemented in your Azure network. It acts as a Layer 3, 4 and 7 Firewall and so has more administrative options than for example NSGs.
Starting on 30 September 2025, default outbound connectivity for Azure VMs will be retired. This means that after this date you have to configure a way for virtual machines to actually have connection to the internet. Otherwise, you will get an VM that runs but is only available through your internal network. In this post I will do a deep dive into this new developement and explain what is needed and what this means for your existing environment and how to transition to the new situation after this 30 September 2025 date.
This page shows what Microsoft Azure certifications are available for Developer-minded people. I intend to focus as much on the developers as possible, although this is not my primary subject. I did some research and i didn’t find it very clear what to do, where to start etcetera.
Microsoft Azure has a service called the ‘Static Web Apps" (SWA) which are simple but yet effective webpages. They can host HTML pages with included CSS and can link with Azure Functions for doing more advanced tasks for you. In this guide we will explore the possibilities of Static Web Apps in Azure.
Azure Workbooks are an excellent way to monitor your application and dependencies in a nice and customizable dashboard. Workbooks can…
Sometimes, we also want a step down from our work and want to fully enjoy a videogame. Especially when you really like games with open worlds, Minecraft is a great game. And what if I tell you we can setup a server for Minecraft on Azure so you can play it with your friends and have a 24/7 uptime this way.
Locks in Azure are a great way to prevent accidental deletion or modify resources or resource groups. This helps further securing your environment and make it somewhat more “fool proof”. Now with Azure Policy we can automatically deploy Locks to Resource Groups to secure them from deleting or read-only resources. In this guide I will explain how this can be done and how it works.
In Microsoft Azure, we have some options to monitor and reduce your organizations Carbon emissions (CO2) from services hosted in the cloud. When hosting servers on-premises, they need power, cooling and networking and those are also needed in the cloud. By migrating servers to the cloud doesn’t mean that those emissions do not count. Those emissions are generated on an other location. In this guide, I will show some features of Microsoft Azure regarding monitoring and reducing carbon emissions.
This page is about Azure Migrate and how you can migrate an on-premises server or multiple servers to Microsoft Azure. This process is not very easy, but it’s also not extremely difficult. Microsoft hasn’t made it as simple as just installing an agent on a VM, logging in, and clicking the migrate button. Instead, it is built in a scalable way.
With the Azure Start/Stop solution we can save costs in Microsoft Azure and save some environmental impact. In this guide I will explain how the solution works, how it can help your Azure solutions and how it must be deployed and configured.
In Microsoft Azure, we can build servers and networks that use IPv6 for their connectivity. This is especially great for your webservers, where you want the highest level of availability for your users. This is achieved the best using both IPv4 and IPv6 protocols. In this guide we do a deep dive into IPv6 in Microsoft Azure and i will show some practical examples of use of IPv6 in Azure.
Azure Update Manager is a tool from Microsoft and is developed to automate, installing and documenting Windows updates or updates to Linux server on Azure. This all in a single pane of glass and without installing any additional software.
When being introduced to Azure, I learned about tags very quickly. However, this is something you can use in practice but is no requirement to make stuff actually work. Now some years ahead in my Azure journey, I can recommend (at least) 10 ways to use them properly and to make them actually useful in your environment. I will explain these ways in this article.
Most companies who use Microsoft Azure in a hybrid setup have a Site-to-Site VPN gateway between the network in Azure and on-premises. This connection becomes mission critical for this company as a disruption mostly means a disruption in work or processes. But sometimes, Microsoft has to perform updates to these gateways to keep them up-to-date and secure. We can now define when this will be exactly, so we can configure the gateways to update only outside of business hours. In this guide I will explain how to configure this.
Azure Key Vault is a type of vault used to store sensitive technical information, such as: Certificates, Secrets and Keys. What sets Azure…
Azure Stack HCI is a solution for Microsoft Azure to host Azure resources on your own hardware and location. This sounds traditional but can help to boost your Azure resources for your customer and/or use case. For example, with Azure Stack HCI it is possible to host some Azure Virtual Desktop hosts in your own network to boost performance by decreasing latency. Also it is possible to use GPU enabled software on this without having the very high monthly computing costs.
When starting to learn Microsoft Azure, the resources and information can be overwhelming. At this page I have summarized some resources which found out during my Azure journey and my advice on when to use what resource.
In this page, I will explain you the basics of Microsoft Azure roles and permissions management (RBAC) and help you secure your environment.
When designing, managing and securing a network in Microsoft Azure we have lots of options to do this. We can leverage third-party appliances like Fortinet, Palo Alto, PFSense or Sophos XG Firewall but we can also use the somewhat limited built-in options; Network Security Groups (NSG for short) and Application Security Groups (ASG). In this guide I will explain how Network Security Groups (NSG) and Application Security Groups (ASG) can be used to secure your environment.
When it comes to naming your Azure Resource Groups and resources, most of them are not renameable. This due to limitations on the platform and maybe some underlying technical limitations. However, it is possible to assign a renameable tag to a resource in Azure which can be changed or used to clarify its role.
So have a good overview of how secure your complete IT environment is, Microsoft released the Microsoft Cloud Security Benchmark, which is…
The Azure Well Architected Framework (WAF) is a framework to improve the quality of your Microsoft Azure Deployment. This does it by..
More and more organizations are moving to the cloud. In order to do this succesfully, we can use the Cloud Adoption Framework which is de…