Microsoft Azure on justinverstijnen.nl

Create HTTPS 301 redirects with Azure Front Door

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

For this solution, you need the following stuff:

An Azure Subscription
A domain name or multiple domain names, which may also be subdomains (subdomain.domain.com)
Some HTTPS knowledge
Some Azure knowledge

The solution explained

I will explain how I have made the shortcuts to my tools at https://justinverstijnen.nl/tools, as this is something what Azure Front Door can do for you.

In short, Azure Front Door is a load balancer/CDN application with a lot of load balancing options to distribute load onto your backend. In this guide we will use a simple part, only redirecting traffic using 301 rules, but if interested, its a very nice application.

Everything you need to know about Azure Bastion

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

How does Azure Bastion work?

Azure Bastion is a serverless instance you deploy in your Azure virtual network. It resides there waiting for users to connect with it. It acts like a Jump-server, a secured server from where an administrative user connects to another server.

The process of it looks like this:

A user can choose to connect from the Azure Portal to Azure Bastion and from there to the destination server or use a native client, which can be:

I tried running Active Directory DNS on Azure Private DNS

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The configuration explained

The configuration in this blog post is a virtual network with one server and one client. In the virtual network, we will deploy a Azure Private DNS instance and that instance will do everything DNS in our network.

This looks like this:

Deploying Azure Private DNS

Assuming you have everything already in plave, we will now deploy our Azure Private DNS zone. Open the Azure Portal and search for “Private DNS zones”.

ARM templates and Azure VM + Script deployment

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In this post I will show some examples of deploying with ARM templates and also will show you how to deploy a PowerShell script to run directly after the deployment of an virtual machine. This further helps automating your tasks.

Requirements

Around 30 minutes of your time
An Azure subscription to deploy resources (if wanting to follow the guide)
A Github account, Azure Storage account or other hosting option to publish Powershell scripts to URL
Basic knowledge of Azure

What is ARM?

ARM stands for Azure Resource Manager and is the underlying API for everything you deploy, change and manage in the Azure Portal, Azure PowerShell and Azure CLI. A basic understanding of ARM is in this picture:

Automatic Azure Boot diagnostics monitoring with Azure Policy

Thu, 11 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In short, Azure Policy is a compliance/governance tool in Azure with capabilities for automatically pushing your resources to be compliant with your stated policy. This means if we configure Azure Policy to automatically configure boot diagnostics and save the information to a storage account, this will be automatically done for all existing and new virtual machines.

Step 1: The configuration explained

The boot diagnostics in Azure enables you to monitor the state of the virtual machine in the portal. By default, this will be enabled with a Microsoft managed storage account but we don’t have control over the storage account.

Wordpress on Azure

Thu, 04 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

An Azure subscription
A public domain name to run the website on (not required, but really nice)
Some basic knowledge about Azure
Some basic knowledge about IP addresses, DNS and websites
Around 45 minutes of your time

What is Wordpress?

For the people who may not know what Wordpress is; Wordpress is a tool to create and manage websites, without needing to have knowledge of code. It is a so-called content management system (CMS) and has thousands of themes and plugins to play with. This website you see now is also running on Wordpress.

New: Azure Service Groups

Mon, 01 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

What are these new Service Groups in Azure?

Service Groups are a parralel type of group to group resources and separate permissions to them. In this manner we can assign multiple resources of different resource groups and put them into a overshadowing Service Group to apply permissions. This eliminates the need to move resources into specific resource groups with all broken links that comes with it.

This looks like this:

In-Place upgrade to Windows Server 2025 on Azure

Thu, 28 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Once every 3 to 4 years you want to be on the last version of Windows Server because of new features and of course to have the latest security updates. These security updates are the most important these days.

When having your server hosted on Microsoft Azure, this proces can look a bit complicated but it is relatively easy to upgrade your Windows Server to the last version, and I will explain how to on this page.

Use Azure Logic Apps to automatically start and stop VMs

Sun, 13 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Azure Logic Apps

Azure Logic Apps is a solution to automate flows that we can run based on a trigger. After a certain trigger is being met, the Logic App can then perform some certain steps, like;

Get data from database/SharePoint
Process data
Send email
Start or Stop VM

To keep it simple, such logic app can looks like this:

In Logic Apps there are templates to help you starting out what the possibilities are:

How to implement Azure Firewall to secure your Azure environment

Thu, 10 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

Around 60 minutes of your time
An Azure subscription
Basic knowledge of Azure
Basic knowledge of Networking
Basic knowledge of Azure Firewall

Overview

Before creating all resources, it is great to plan before we build. I mean planning your network before building and having different overlaps or too much/less addresses available. In most cases, Azure recommends building a Hub-and-Spoke network, where we connect all spoke networks to a big hub.

What is Azure Firewall?

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

Around 15 minutes of your time
Basic knowledge of Azure
Basic knowledge of networking and networking protocols

What is Azure Firewall?

Azure Firewall is an cloud based firewall to secure and your cloud networking environment. It acts as point of access, a sort of castledoor, and can allow or block certain traffic from the internet to your environment and from environment to the internet. The firewall can mostly work on layers 3, 4 and 7 of the OSI model.

Azure Default VM Outbound access deprecated

Thu, 19 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

What does this new requirement mean?

This requirement means that every virtual machine in Azure created after 30 September 2025 needs to have an outbound connectivity method configured. You can see this as a “bring your own connection”.

If you do not configure one of these methods, you will end up with a virtual machine that is not reachable from the internet. It can be reached from other servers (Jump servers) on the internal network or by using Azure Bastion.

Microsoft Azure certifications for Developers

Wed, 11 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The certification poster

Microsoft has an monthly updating certification poster available to have an overview for each solution category and the certifications of that category. You can find the poster here:

Certification poster

Certification types

Certifications in the Microsoft world consist of 4 categories/levels:

Fundamentals: Foundational certifications to learn the overview of the category
Intermediate: Intermediate certification to learn how a solution works and to manage it
Expert: Expert certifications to learn to how to architect a solution
Specialties: These are add-ons designed for specific solutions like Azure Virtual Desktop, SAP workloads, Cosmos DB and such. (not included below)

Microsoft wants you to always have lower certifications before going up the stairs. It wants you if you take an expert certification, you also have the knowledge of the fundamentals and intermediate certification levels. Some expert certifications even have hard pre-requisites.

Creating Static Web Apps on Azure the easy way

Thu, 29 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

Around 45 minutes of your time
An account for Github (recommended)
An Azure subscription to host your Static Web App
Some basic knowledge of Azure
A custom domain to link the web app to your domain

Introduction to Static Web Apps and Github

Before we dive into Static Web Apps and Github, I want to give a clear explaination of both the components that will help us achieving our goal, hosting a simple web app on Azure.

Create custom Azure Workbooks for detailed monitoring

Thu, 08 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

Azure Workbooks are a powerful way to build customizable dashboards for monitoring applications and infrastructure. They can combine multiple data sources such as:

Metrics
Log Analytics Workspaces
Visualizations

They are flexible enough for quick performance overviews or deep investigations.

Using Default Azure Workbooks

Many Azure resources include built-in workbook templates with basic health and performance insights.

Open your Virtual Machine.
Select Workbooks.
Choose Overview or another template.

Setup a Minecraft server on Azure

Thu, 01 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

An Azure environment
Basic knowledge of Azure
Basic knowledge of Linux and SSH
Basic knowledge of networking and TCP/UDP
Experience with Minecraft to test the server
Around 45 minutes of your time

System requirements of a Minecraft server

For a typical Minecraft server, without Mods, the guidelines and system requirements are as stated below:


Processor cores	Ram	Player Slots	World Size
2	8GB	Up to 10	Up to 8GB
4	16GB	Up to 20	Up to 15GB
8	32GB	Up to 50	Up to 20GB
16	64GB	Up to 100	Up to 60GB

Setup the Azure environment for a Minecraft server

Creating the Resource Group

First, we need to setup our Azure environment for a Minecraft server. I started with creating a Resource group named “rg-jv-minecraftserver”.

Deploy Resource Group locks automatically with Azure Policy

Thu, 17 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Note: Locks on Resource Groups can stop some automations. If you use read-only locks on a Azure Virtual Desktop resource group for example, autoscaling will not work anymore.

Take care and test these changes before creating them and assigning this policy to such (production) subscription.

The solution described

This solution consists of an Azure Policy Definition, that is assigned to the subscription where this must be executed. It also consists of a custom role that only gives the needed permissions, and nothing more.

Monitor and reduce carbon emissions (CO2) in Azure

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Carbon Optimization dashboard

Azure offers several Carbon Optimization options to help organizations to monitor and reduce their CO₂ emissions and operate more sustainable. You can find this in the Azure Portal by searching for “Carbon optimizations”:

At this dashboard we can find some interesting information, like the total emissions from when your organization started using Azure services, emissions in the last month and the potential reductions that your organization can make.

Migrate servers with Azure Migrate in 7 steps

Thu, 03 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

A server to migrate to Microsoft Azure
Ability to install 1 or 2 additional servers
- Must be in the same network
Around 60 minutes of your time
Administrator access to all source servers
RDP access to all source servers is useful
Secure Boot must be disabled on the source servers
A target Azure Subscription with Owner access
1 server dedicated to Migration based on Windows Server 2016*
2 servers for Discovery and Migration based on Windows Server 2016*

*Windows Server 2016 is the only supported OS, please do not install other versions as this will not work.

Save Azure costs on Virtual Machines with Start/Stop

Sun, 02 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

Around 45 minutes of your time
An Azure subscription
One or more Azure VMs to automatically start and stop
Basic knowledge of Azure
No fear of JSON configurations
Some drink of your choice

Introduction to the Start/Stop solution

The Start/Stop solution is a complete solution and collection of predefined resources built by Microsoft itself. It is purely focussed on starting VMs and stopping VMs based on some rules you can configure. The solution consists of some different resources and dependencies:

Deep dive into IPv6 with Microsoft Azure

Mon, 17 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Requirements

Basic knowledge of Azure and IPv4 and IPv6
- Reading this guide prior is recommended: https://justinverstijnen.nl/basic-ipv6-explaination/
Around 45 minutes of your time
An Azure subscription to test and succeed on
A cup of coffee or drink of your choice :)

Creating a Virtual Network (VNET) with IPv6

By default, Azure pushes you to use an IPv4 address space when creating a virtual network in Azure. Now this is the best understandable and easy version of addressing.

Using Azure Update Manager to manage updates at scale

Sat, 08 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Requirements

Around 15 minutes of your time
An Azure subsciption
An Azure server or Azure Arc server

Supported systems

Azure Update Manager supports the following systems for assessments and installing updates, therefore managing them:

10 ways to use tags in Microsoft Azure

Fri, 10 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

What are Tags in Azure?

Tags are a pair of editable values in Microsoft Azure. These are in this pair-convention:

Name : Value

We can define ourselves what the Name and Value actually are, if we stay within these limits:

Name: maximum of 512 characters
Value: maximum of 256 characters
- Half these values for storage accounts
These characters are not supported: <, >, %, &, \, ?, /

An example of a resource in my environment using tags:

Azure VPN Gateway Maintenance - How to configure

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Why configure a maintenance configuration?

We would want to configure a maintenance configuration for our VPN gateway to Azure to prevent unwanted updates during business hours. Microsoft doesn’t publish when they perform updates to their infrastructure, so this could be any moment.

Microsoft has to patch or replace their hardware regularly, and by configuring this maintenance configuration, we tell them: “Hey, please only do this for us in this window“. You could understand that configuring this is essential for availability reasons, but also don’t postpone updates too long for security and continuity reasons. My advice is to schedule these updates daily or weekly.

Azure Key Vault

Tue, 26 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Azure Key Vault is a type of vault used to store sensitive technical information, such as:

Certificates
Secrets
Keys

What sets Azure Key Vault apart from a traditional password manager is that it allows software to integrate with the vault. Instead of hardcoding a secret, the software can retrieve it from the vault. Additionally, it is possible to rotate a secret every month, enabling the application to use a different secret each month.

Azure Stack HCI - Host your Virtual Desktops locally

Thu, 03 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction to Azure Stack HCI

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.

How to learn Azure - My learning resources

Tue, 10 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

To give a quick overview of all the training resources I used throughout the years and give you different types and sorted the resources from beginning to end:

Text based
Video’s
Labs and Applied Skills

1. Starting out (Video and text-based)

When starting out, my advice is to first watch the following video of John Savill explaining Microsoft Azure and giving a real introduction.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x1V2ny8FWM

After this, there is a Microsoft Learn collection available which describes the beginning of Azure:

Introduction to Azure roles and permissions (RBAC/IAM)

Tue, 30 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

When managing a Microsoft Azure environment, permissions and roles with RBAC is one of the basic ways to improve your security. At one hand, you want to have the permissions to do basic tasks but at the other hand you want to restrict an user to be able to do only what he needs to. This is called, the principle of “least-privilege”.

In this guide, I want to you to understand the most of the basic knowledge of managing access controls in Azure without very complex stuff.

Network security in Azure with NSG and ASG

Fri, 26 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

What does an Network Security Group (NSG) do?

A network Security Group is a layer 4 network security layer in Azure to filter incoming and outgoing traffic which you can apply to:

A single VM, you assign it to the NIC (Network Interface Card)
A subnet, which contains similar virtual machines or need the same policy

In a Network Security Group, you can define which traffic may enter or leave the assigned resource, this all based on layer 4 of the OSI model. In the Azure Portal, this looks like this:

Rename name-tags to resource groups and resources

Tue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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. This looks like this:

How to add those renameable tags in the Azure Portal?

You can add this name tag by using a tag in Microsoft Azure. In the portal, go to your resource and go to tags. Here you can add a new tag:

Introduction to the Microsoft Cloud Security Benchmark (MCSB)

Tue, 16 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In the modern era like where we are today, security is a very important aspect of every system you manage. Bad security of 1 system can mess with all your systems.

So have a good overview of how secure your complete IT environment is, Microsoft released the Microsoft Cloud Security Benchmark, which is an collection of high-impact security recommendations you can use to secure your cloud services, even when utilizing a hybrid environment. When using Microsoft Defender for Cloud, this MCSB is included in the recommendations.

Introduction to the Azure Well-Architected Framework

Tue, 02 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Azure Well-Architected Framework is a framework to improve the quality of your Microsoft Azure Deployment. This does it by spanning 5 pillars so an architect can determine with IT decision makers how they can get the most Azure with the planned budget.

The 5 pillars of the Well-Architected Framework are:


Pillar	Target
Reliability	The ability to recover a system and/or contine to work
Security	Secure the environment in all spots
Cost Optimization	Maximize the value when minimizing the costs
Operational Excellence	The processes that keep a system running
Performance Efficiency	The ability to adapt to changes

Cloud Adoption Framework Introduction (CAF)

Thu, 04 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

More and more organizations are moving to the cloud. In order to do this succesful, we can use the Cloud Adoption Framework which is described by Microsoft.

The framework is a succesful order of processes and guidelines which companys can use to increase the success of adopting the cloud. The framework is described in the diagram below:

The CAF has the following steps:

Strategy: Define the project, define what you want to achieve and define the business outcomes.
Plan: Plan your migration, determine the plans and make sure the environment readiness is at a good level.
Ready (and migrate): Prepare your new cloud environment for planned changes and migrate your workloads to the cloud.
Optimize: After migrating to the cloud, optimize your environment by using the beste solutions possible and innovate at this level.
Secure: Improve the security of your workloads and plan your perodical security checks.
Manage: Manage operations for cloud and hybrid solutions.
Govern: Govern your environment and its workloads.

Intention of use

Increase the chance of your cloud success
Gives you a best practice of how to perform the migration by proven methodology
Ensures you don’t miss a crucial step

Intended users/audience

IT Decision makers
Company Management Teams
Companies who want to profit from cloud solutions
Companies that are planning to migrate to the cloud
Technicians and project managers for planning the migration

For more information, check out this page: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cloud-adoption-framework/scenarios/