Windows Admin Center (preview)

Windows Admin Center, which is in preview as of this writing, can be used in the Azure portal to manage Window Server operating system inside Azure virtual machine without using remote desktop or PowerShell.

The following virtual machines csan be manged by Windows Admin Center

  • Windows Server 2022
  • Windows Server 2019
  • Windows Server 2016

An inbound port is required for public IP address to connect to the virtual machine, which is not recommended. Since an inbound port is not required for private IP, it should be used to connect to the virtual machine although it does require access to the virtual network, and cane accomplished by using a VPN gateway.

Azure Spot Virtual Machines

Azure spot virtual machines can handle workloads that are not constant and can be interrupted such as batch processing jobs, development/testing environments and so forth, hence there is a significant cost savings. Due to this, spot virtual machines can be evicted any time and Microsoft will only provide 30 seconds notice.

Also, keep in mind, there is no SLA for spot virtual machines and guarantees no high availability.

Limitations

The following VM sizes are not supported for Azure Spot Virtual Machines:
* B-series
* Promo versions of any size (like Dv2, NV, NC, H promo sizes)

The following offer types are currently supported:
* Enterprise Agreement
* Pay-as-you-go offer code
* Sponsored
* Cloud Service Provider (CSP)

When you are deploying a VM, you can choose to use an Azure spot instance. Eviction type can be either ‘capacity only’ or ‘price’ and eviction policy can either be ‘stop/deallocate’ or ‘delete’.

Azure Administrator Associate Certification

Microsoft recently updated the content of Exam AZ-104: Microsoft Azure Administrator along with the exam skills guide, which provide a comparison table for the former and new study guide.

Azure-Administrator-Associate-certification-journey

Skills measured

  • The content of this exam was updated on March 26, 2021. Please download the exam skills outline below to see what changed.
  • Manage Azure identities and governance (15-20%)
  • Implement and manage storage (15-20%)
  • Deploy and manage Azure compute resources (20-25%)
  • Configure and manage virtual networking (25-30%)
  • Monitor and back up Azure resources (10-15%)
exam-az-104-microsoft-azure-administrator-skills-measured

Learning paths

Good luck and happy studying!