Macedonian ITPro User Group Meeting (March 2020)

We finished our first virtual IT Pro user group meeting. Thanks to our friends at Microsoft Teams, we managed to maintain the attention of 30 people, for 2 hours. :)

We combined the session, with different aspect of technology and experiences from 4 MVP's - Vladimir Meloski who spoke about Cloud Security in Business Productivity environment; Gorana Konevska-Jankoska spoke about Microsoft Teams; Vlatko Ivanosvki spoke about DevOps in #WFH mode.

I spoke about Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure, in light of the #WFH model, and how to achieve quick wins by expanding infrastructure and services to the Azure these days. In addition to that, I hosted the session this time.

We gathered valuable feedback, had a quality discussion. Waiting for our next endeavor! :)


Link to the slides  can be found here.

Workshop: Azure Expert Training (Feb 3-4, Gothenburg, Sweden)

Another session on Microsoft Azure, this time for our Swedish partners. It was a 2 day workshop organized by Ingram Micro Sweden. The group was compiled of experienced IT Pros. Primary focus of the training is on Infrastructure-as-a-Service model, with demos and hands on labs focusing on predefined scenarios in operating, planning, creating and configuring the IaaS environment.

Day 1 was focused on Azure Fundamentals: Welcome and introduction, Azure Portal, Resource Groups, Storage Accounts, Virtual networks and Network Interfaces (incl PIP, VPN, Gateways and Peering), Network Security Groups, Virtual Machines, VM Extensions, Scale and Availability Sets, Load Balancer, Traffic Manager. 

Day 2, after the wrap up of Day 1 and discussion, we jump started with Frank Smits session on the Cloud Adoption and the 4R's that are important for Ingram Micro Partners. The rest of the day was reserved for EasyAzure Blueprints - WordPress Multi-tier app, Acronis Backup Blueprints Remote Desktop Services (Small Business Server Replacement) and CheckPoint Blueprints. We spiced up things with short presentation on what's new in Microsoft azure or what's coming in near future, as well as Azure Calculator session.

KUDOS to Tony Arlestal for organizing this and inviting me for the workshop. Had quite a few discussion on solution designs, real world problems, and did quite a brainstorming with the group. 

 

Cloud Solution Provider Disti Bootcamp (Microsoft and Ingram Micro, June 25th- June 26th)

With cooperation of the local office of Microsoft, we held 2 separate events for our Kosovo and North Macedonia Partners.

The first event, was held at the Kosovo Innovation Center (ICK) on June 25th, and the second one, in North Macedonia, at Ingram Micro Offices, on June 26th.

Topics discussed were the changes in Microsoft Partner Program, held by my colleague Marija Gjorgjievska, with emphasis on migrating to the new Partner Center and how to become an Indirect CSP Re-seller.

On both events, I did a session/overview on Microsoft Cloud Services - what's new and what's going on. Emphasis was on Managed Solution Provider model, achieving transformation and growth by adopting the cloud economy model, end of life of Windows server 2008/ SQL Server 2008 and Microsoft 365.

Link's to the presentations can be found here - both for Kosovo and North Macedonia Event.

Microsoft & Cisco Event (March 12th, Tirana, Albania)

As part of our activities in the region, we held a mini conference on March 12th in Tirana. this was a joint Ingram Micro, Microsoft and Cisco event, focused on networking, security and interconnectivity.

 I did a presentation on Microsoft Azure Network and its capabilities, ability to either running workloads in the cloud or enabling hybrid connectivity between the on-prem and cloud datacenters.

Copy of the presentation can be found here

Event: Microsoft Network (April 18th - 20th, Neum, Bosnia&Herzegovina)

After 8 years, after my attendance on the first Microsoft Network Conference (held in Banja Luka), I'm back :) Glad to be there again, since as part of the first one (support, speaker, attendee), the conference progressed a lot. It grew to a amazing number of more than 1000 attendees, from all segments of the Bosnian Business and IT market - Partners, Customers, Academics, IT enthusiast and a bunch of speakers (local, regional and international). 

We got "stuck", on a small peace of the Bosnian seaside, in Neum, with a dilemma - excellent event, filled with people, old friends and great topics, and sunny seaside on the other. I'll tell you, it was tough 3 days! Kudos to the Bosnian team (Enis, Omar, and their sponsors) for this magnificent event.

The center was the imminent Cloud and its connected technologies, services, concepts, and

its future. They were broke down to 6 segments - Digital Transformation and Business Apps, Modern Business Environment, Big Data and AI, Case Studies, Apps and Infrastructure, and Education.

I did an Apps and Infrastructure Track session, titled "Improving your environment's security and management with OMS". This session is all about the "What?", "Where?" and "How?" in Azure Operation Management and Security, driving through the process, giving insights on what to do and how to do it. Little bit of theory, backed up by demos and raw collected data for analytics.

Event: Microsoft Refresh IT (March 28th, Tirana, Albania)

On March 28th, Microsoft held its "Refresh IT" conference, focused on cloud, cloud security and artificial intelligence. There was a mix of 200 people attending, from various local Partners, Customers, Students and IT enthusiast.

I did a session on "Microsoft Azure hybrid security and management", covering Backup, Disaster Recovery and Operations Management, in hybrid model. Copy of the presentation can be found on the following link

Webinars: EasyAzure Blueprints - EasyData

On February 19th, starting at 10:00 (GMT+1), I will be running the 4th in series webinars on Microsoft Azure.

This week, we are going to talk and see demo of Azure Files, a part of the Expansion set of Solution Blueprints. The session is based on EasyData Cloud Folder scenario.

Please use the following link to register for the session:EasyAzure Expansion - Cloud Folder. Session connection link will be set to you afterwards. The link to the presentation and recording will be posted after the event.

More details on the program can be obtained @ http://www.ingrammicrocloud.eu, choose your country location and browse the local content.

For countries not in the list (like Macedonia, Albania and Kosovo use the following link). An simple registration form is being filled prior to download of the files.

Webinars: EasyAzure Blueprints - EasyDR

On February 14th, starting at 10:00 (GMT+1), I will be running the 3rd in series webinars on Microsoft Azure.

This week, we are going to talk and see demo of Azure Site Recovery, a part of the Protection set of Solution Blueprints. The session is based on EasyDR Blueprints (Physical, Hyper-V and VMware).

Please use the following link to connect to the session: EasyAzure Disaster Recovery - Site Recovery

The recording from the session will be posted afterwards.

More details on the program can be obtained @ http://www.ingrammicrocloud.eu, choose your country location and browse the local content.

For countries not in the list (like Macedonia, Albania and Kosovo use the following link). An simple registration form is being filled prior to download of the files.

Webinars: EasyAzure Blueprints

Starting this month, I will be doing series of webinars for CEE, aimed at Ingram Micro partners/re-sellers. The topics covered witl be EasyAzure, which is a set of Blueprints aimed at easy  deployment of Azure IaaS solutions.

They represent a set of easy-to-use, easy-to-understand, step-by-step instructions in 3 solution areas:

1. Protection
2. Management
3. Expansion

More details on the program can be obtained @ http://www.ingrammicrocloud.eu, choose your country location and browse the local content. For countries not in the list (especially those in the Balkan area), choose Croatia (in English), and than browse and download the content. A simple registration form is being filled prior to download.


The timeline is, every Monday, from 10:00 - 11:00 (GMT+1), covering following topics:

- January 29th: EasyAzure Protection - Backup;
- February 5th: EasyAzure Management  - Audit
- February 14th: EasyAzure Disaster Recovery -Site Recovery Options
- February 19th: EasyAzure Expansion - Cloud Folder

Links to recordings and presentations will be posted  as well.

Event: Macedonian IT Pro User Group Meet up - January 2018

Its time for our monthly IT Pro User Group meeting.Its scheduled for January 24th @ Microsoft Macedonia Office (starting from 15:00 till 16:30).

The topic covered will be Mobile Device Management (MDM) и Microsoft Intune, covered by Biljana Janeva.

The event is co-organized with my colleagues Vladimir and Gorana.

Please refer to the following link for additional information and register for seat allocation: 
https://www.facebook.com/events/1964401453574309.

Event: Ingram Micro Days (28-29 September, Iassi, Romania)

Just wrapped up my session at Ingram Micro Days, in Iasi (Romania). It  was 2 days event, supported from different vendors and our local teams. First day was focused on sales aspect, where Microsoft Cloud was covered on a high level, by a joint session done by Marius Danescu (Microsoft Romania) and Mihalea Babeanu (Ingram Micro Romania).

The second day was all about technical stuff and demos. I did an hour technical session titled "Azure Fundamentals and implementation scenarios", with demos and interactive chalk talk segment.

Looking forward for the next event, in Cluz (Romania).

Olddie, but still valid - Microsoft FREE book giveaway

Once again, its that time of the year.  Microsoft isgiving away a bunch of free eBooks, reference guides, Step-By-Step Guides, and other informational resources to our customers and partners around the world.

Complete list can be found here.

Introducing the Azure app public preview

Well, if you ask me it was about time for this app. For all those Azure admins out there, there is a new app (currently in Preview) for managing you Azure resources and subscriptions.

The Azure App will enable you to check status and critical metrics of your Azure resources, get notifications and alerts about important health issues, perform simple operations to resolve common issues and run Azure Cloud Shell scripts in the app (coming soon).

Multiple subscriptions

The app will enable you to consolidate and aggregate all Azure subscriptions you currently manage.  Each resource includes the following information (if applicable):

• Status
• Number of errors in the past week with a link to the full activity log
• Important properties (Essentials)
• Key usage metrics
• Related resources
• All resource properties

In case you manage more than one subscription, and it gets cluttered, there is also an option to put them in Favorites

Personalized notifications and alerts

By opening the Notification hub, you will be always up to date with the current status of the resources within your subscription. The health alerts include:

• Status
• Link to the impacted subscription
• Latest communication details
• Tracking ID unique to the event
• List of impacted locations
• List of impacted services
• Brief history of the status over the past week

In addition to this, you will always have available the custom resource alert rules in the list. Each metric alert includes:

• Status (activated or resolved)
• Link to the related resource
• Description of the alert rule, if specified
• Brief history of the status over the last week
  

Quickly resolve common issues

You will be able to get help in resolving common issues, directly from the Azure app itself:

• Suspend and resume Analysis Services servers
• Open the API Management portal in the browser
• Start, stop, and restart App Service web apps and deployment slots
• Start and stop App Service environments
• Restart all App Service web apps in a plan or environment
• Open App Service web apps and deployment slots in the browser
• Start and stop Content Delivery Network endpoints
• Start, stop, and swap cloud service slots
• Open the HDInsight portal in the browser
• Open Log Analytics workspaces in the Operations Management Suite app
• Enable and disable Logic App workflows
• Enable and disable Scheduler job collections
• Start and stop Stream Analytics jobs
• Start, stop, and restart virtual machines
• Connect to Windows virtual machines using the RDP app
• Start, stop, and restart virtual machine scale set instances
• Open Visual Studio Team Services accounts in the browser

Last, but not least of the functionalities which will come soon will be the ability to run Azure CLI or PowerShell commands trough the Azure Cloud Shell workspace. By starting a session from the portal it enables you to continue your work later. The Cloud Shell will preserve your code, configuration, and activity in your $Home directory across sessions and across devices.

Currently, the app is available for Apple and Android devices, with Windows Store app coming soon.

Microsoft BUILD 2017

In Seattle, from May 10th - 12th, Microsoft is hostin the annual BUILD conference. The conference is primarily aimed towards developers, covering various aspect of Microsoft cloud platform (Office 365, Azure) and tools for it.

You can wath the live streams and/or recordings on Channel 9 following link: http://soc.fm/RiXn1gik as well as follw what's going on on Twitter via hastag #MSBuild.

The wrap up of Day 1 can be seen on the following link.

C+E University: Azure Sales Webinars

If you are interested, there is undergoing series of sales webinars on Azure, organized
by Cloud and Enterprise Partner University.

They cover different topics, from Hybrid cloud management, Open Source on Azure, Business continuity, SAP Deployment, Client discussions, Datacenter modernization, Enhanced development and testing, Sales scenarios, Value propositions and success stories.

You can either watch the sessions that were already held, or you can register to the upcoming ones.

Bulk registration address: https://infopedia.eventbuilder.com/index?landingpageid=7M76lV

Global Azure Bootcamp 2107

On April 22nd, all around the world different user groups and communities will host 5th Azure Bootcamp event. It's a free one-day training event - sessions and labs based on materials from Microsoft or custom content. The event has been originally designed by 5 Microsoft Azure MVPs in order to benefit the local community members and teach essential Microsoft Azure skills and know how. While supported by several sponsors, including Microsoft, the event is completely independent and community-driven. Our goal is to provide the catalyst for Azure communities to grow around the world, not just for this one day, but year round. It will be held on 255 locations world wide.

More info can be found on the main site Global Azure Bootcamp 2017, but if you are searching for a location near you just follow this link Locations. you can follow the event on Twitter via #GlobalAzure.

Microsoft Azure Trial Offer

Get in the cloud with this Azure trail offer $25 credit for 12 months when you join IT Pro Cloud Essentials. In addition to that, you can gain access to Azure hands-on experience, targeted educational materials, and access to experts support and guidance.

Click on the following link to gain access to the program: http://msft.social/spFFED.

Great opp for IT Pros to gain access to Microsoft Azure for testing purposes, for a whole year, as well as set of resources for further career development.

Macedonian IT-Pro User Group monthly meeting

On March 29th, the Macedonian IT-Pro user group will meet in Microsoft offices in Skopje. This is a quarterly technology update, covering the latest and brightest of Microsoft Datacenter and Cloud Technologies, such as - Windows Server 2016, Exchange 2016, Office 365, Azure, Intune.

Event start time: 17:30
Speakers: Vladimir Meloski and Dimitar Grozdanov
Event location: Microsoft Macedonia (location)