Azure Solutions Architect Expert

According to https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/learning/azure-solutions-architect.aspx

Microsoft Certified:

Azure Solutions Architect Expert

Microsoft Azure Solutions Architects must have expertise in compute, network, storage, and security so that they can design solutions that run on Azure.

Recommended approach

Step 1: Review the skills and knowledge required to certify.

Step 2: Train for certification exams.*

• Find classroom and online training
• Explore more training on Microsoft Learn

Step 3: Take a practice exam

• Microsoft Official Practice Tests are coming soon

Step 4: Schedule your exams and get certified

• Schedule to take Exam AZ-300
• Schedule to take Exam AZ-301
• Schedule to take Exam AZ-302 (transition exam for people who passed Exam 70-535)

*Classroom and online training options will be added when available.

Start by Proving that You Know the Fundamentals

Just starting in technology, thinking about a career change, or want to explore one of the technologies that will drive digital transformation in organizations? Prove that you have the basic knowledge to get started with an optional Fundamentals certification exam.

LEARN MORE

Exam AZ-900: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals

Validate that you know the fundamentals of Azure

EXAM DETAILS

Required exams

Exam AZ-300: Microsoft Azure Architect Technologies

LEARN MORE 

Exam AZ-301: Microsoft Azure Architect Design

LEARN MORE 

Exam AZ-302: Microsoft Azure Solutions Architect Certification Transition

This exam is intended only for candidates who have taken Exam 70-535: Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions. If you have not taken Exam 535, you will not earn a certification by taking this exam.

LEARN MORE 

Skills and knowledge

Candidates who earn an Azure Solutions Architect certification are verified by Microsoft to have the following skills and knowledge.

• Deploy and Configure Infrastructure
• Implement Workloads and Security
• Create and Deploy Apps
• Implement Authentication and Secure Data
• Develop for the Cloud and for Azure Storage
• Determine Workload Requirements
• Design for Identity and Security
• Design a Data Platform Solution
• Design a Business Continuity Strategy
• Design for Deployment, Migration, and Integration
• Design an Infrastructure Strategy

Analyze resource utilization and consumption

• configure diagnostic settings on resources
• create baseline for resources
• create and rest alerts
• analyze alerts across subscription
• analyze metrics across subscription
• create action groups
• monitor for unused resources
• monitor spend
• report on spend
• utilize Log Search query functions
• view alerts in Log Analytics

Create and configure storage accounts

• configure network access to the storage account
• create and configure storage account
• generate shared access signature
• install and use Azure Storage Explorer
• manage access keys
• monitor activity log by using Log Analytics
• implement Azure storage replication

Create and configure a Virtual Machine (VM) for Windows and Linux

• configure high availability
• configure monitoring, networking, storage, and virtual machine size
• deploy and configure scale sets

Automate deployment of Virtual Machines (VMs)

• modify Azure Resource Manager (ARM) template
• configure location of new VMs
• configure VHD template
• deploy from template
• save a deployment as an ARM template
• deploy Windows and Linux VMs

Implement solutions that use virtual machines (VM)

• provision VMs
• create ARM templates
• configure Azure Disk Encryption for VMs

Create connectivity between virtual networks

• create and configure VNET peering
• create and configure VNET to VNET
• verify virtual network connectivity
• create virtual network gateway

Implement and manage virtual networking

• configure private and public IP addresses, network routes, network interface, subnets, and virtual network

Manage Azure Active Directory (AD)

• add custom domains
• configure Azure AD Identity Protection, Azure AD Join, and Enterprise State Roaming
• configure self-service password reset
• implement conditional access policies
• manage multiple directories
• perform an access review

Implement and manage hybrid identities

• install and configure Azure AD Connect
• configure federation and single sign-on
• manage Azure AD Connect
• manage password sync and writeback

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Website lading performance - 10 Ways to Make Your Website Load Faster

Website lading performance - 10 Ways to Make Your Website Load Faster

According to
https://hostway.com/blog/10-ways-to-make-your-website-load-faster/

 Courtney Abud - Technical Team Writer

This article has been updated with new data. It was originally published in February 2013. 

Online shoppers are looking for the fastest, most secure way to get to your product. According to an Akamai Technologies survey, 47% of consumers expect a page to load in 2 seconds or less. Here are ten ways to keep your website speed up to standard:

1. Implement your own content delivery network (CDN). A collection of global servers share a website’s static files, such as CSS or JavaScript, and they deliver from the server closest to the user’s physical location. In other words, when a user clicks on a video, the file loads faster because it is distributed from a server nearby. Larger websites implement CDNs to ensure visitors around the world have a much more accessible, fast experience.
2. Use adaptive images. According to the HTTP Archive, 61 percent of a website’s page weight on a desktop computer is images. Start by using tools such as Picturefill or Adaptive Images on your website to save bandwidth and improve page speed for your site. Another option is to adopt new image formats like WebP and JPeg XR—this can help reduce image weight by twenty to fifty percent without sacrificing image quality.
3. Cache, cache, cache. Browser caching stores cache versions of static resources, a process that quickens page speed tremendously and reduces server lag. When a user visits a page on your website, the cached version usually displays unless it has changed since it was last cached. This means the browser saves a lot of requests to your server and improves load speed for your site.
4. Evaluate your plugins. Plugins can bring new functionality and features to your website, but the more plugins your website has, the longer it takes to load. Poor or outdated plugins can slow down website performance dramatically, which could be fixed by removing plugins that duplicate functionality, are out of date or are no longer used.
5. Combine images into CSS sprites. If you have several images on a page, you are forcing multiple roundtrips of the server to get all the resources secured, which slows down page speed. Sprites combine all background images on a page into one single image, which means all images appear when the main “sprite” loads. This reduces the chance of flickering images and a smoother experience for your users.
6. Enable HTTP keep-alive response headers. HTTP requests are simple: they grab a single file, distribute and close. That said, this process is not always fast. Keep-alive allows the web browser and server to agree to use the same connection to grab and send multiple files. In other words, the server holds the connection open while a user is on the site instead of opening a new connection with every request, easing the load for the processor, network and memory.
7. Compress your content. You can compress your content significantly in order to improve your website performance. Popular web servers such as Apache and IIS use the GZIP compression algorithm to do this automatically on HTML, CSS and JavaScript. There are even compressor services online that remove unnecessary spaces and characters across your HTML and CSS code.
8. Configure expires headers. When a user visits your website, the website files are stored on their computer so that your website loads faster for them the next time they visit. There is an expiration date in the file header that determines how long these files will be stored on their computer, which is usually set to 24 hours by default. You can configure the expires header so that the files never time out, or you can increase the expiration date so that it doesn’t impact your server and page load time.
9. Minify JavaScript and CSS. By removing unnecessary line breaks, extra space, and so on, you will speed up parsing, downloading and executing. This simple task can cut bytes of data from your page, and every little bit counts. Tools like this CSS Minifier/Compressor can be very helpful in this department.
10. Review your hosting package. If you’ve taken these previous steps and your website is still loading slowly, you may want to consider a new hosting package. On a typical shared hosting account, you might be sharing server space with dozens of other companies, which can impact the speed of your website since a number of people are using the same server. If shared hosting no longer meets your needs, consider dedicated hosting. This option allows you alone have access to the server, or a VPS (Virtual Private Server)—a physical computer partitioned into multiple servers each running its own operating system.
    You can also try migrating to a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). Companies that rely on their website to stream large amounts of content, or those running a browser-based SaaS platform may find that a VPC enables faster, more predictable performance and can cut bandwidth costs up to 70%.

Ready for a faster, more user-friendly site? Find out how an updated infrastructure can keep things loading quickly by  for a free consultation.

IT Consultant
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APPLE ID Using app-specific passwords

APPLE ID Using app-specific passwords
ACCORDING TO

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204397

Using app-specific passwords

App-specific passwords allow you to sign in to your account securely when you use third-party apps with your Apple ID.

App-specific passwords are single-use passwords for your Apple ID that let you sign in to your account and securely access the information you store in iCloud from a third-party app. For example, use app-specific passwords with Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, or other mail, contacts, and calendar services not provided by Apple. App-specific passwords maintain a high level of security and help ensure your Apple ID password won’t be collected or stored by any third-party apps you use.

To generate and use app-specific passwords, your Apple ID must be protected with two-factor authentication.

You also need an app-specific password for your devices that use Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5 and earlier or iOS 5 and earlier. If you don’t have devices that can be updated to iOS 9 or OS X El Capitan, you can set up two-step verification and generate app-specific passwords.

How to generate an app-specific password

1. Sign in to your Apple ID account page.
2. In the Security section, click Generate Password below App-Specific Passwords.
3. Follow the steps on your screen.

After you generate your app-specific password, enter or paste it into the password field of the app as you would normally.

How to manage app-specific passwords

You can have up to 25 active app-specific passwords at any given time. If you need to, you can revoke passwords individually or all at once.

1. Sign in to your Apple ID account page.
2. In the Security section, click Edit.
3. In the App Specific Passwords section, click View History.
4. Click  next to a password you want to delete, or Revoke All.

After you revoke a password, the app using that password will be signed out of your account until you generate a new password and sign in again.

Any time you change or reset your primary Apple ID password, all of your app-specific passwords are revoked automatically to protect the security of your account. You'll need to generate new app-specific passwords for any apps that you want to continue using.

Information about products not manufactured by Apple, or independent websites not controlled or tested by Apple, is provided without recommendation or endorsement. Apple assumes no responsibility with regard to the selection, performance, or use of third-party websites or products. Apple makes no representations regarding third-party website accuracy or reliability. Risks are inherent in the use of the Internet. Contact the vendor for additional information. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Published Date: February 26, 2018

MOBILE APP DEVELOPMENT BY

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Redirect from HTTP to HTTPS using the IIS URL Rewrite module

As per https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/dawiese/2016/06/07/redirect-from-http-to-https-using-the-iis-url-rewrite-module/

A production deployment of SharePoint 2013 or 2016 should ensure that all HTTP traffic is encrypted in transit, however many users will still type http:// in their browser or have links that point to http:// instead of  https://. In these cases it can beneficial to automatically redirect users to the proper URL. One way of accomplishing this is the URL Rewrite module for IIS.

Key Terms

Rewrite - Modifies the incoming URL, the outgoing URL, or both.

Redirection - Uses HTTP status codes such as 301 or 302 to redirect the client to a different location. This involves an additional client round trip.

Supportability for SharePoint

The support for redirects and rewrites with SharePoint is documented in KB2818415. Since a HTTP 301/302 redirect to inform the browser of the updated URL is the preferred option for SharePoint, that will be the focus of this post. Please note that 301/302 redirects may not work with Office client applications.

Uses for redirect

In most cases a redirect is used for one of two reasons:

1. Redirecting the user from http to https to enforce SSL communication. When a SharePoint farm is load balanced this is typically done using the load balancer but it some cases can be done on the SharePoint server or another server running IIS by using the IIS URL Rewrite module
2. Redirecting a user who has a stale URL, typically when the name is changed during a farm migration or upgrade. This can also be done using a load balancer or any IIS server by implementing the URL Rewrite module.

Step by Step Instructions for HTTP to HTTPS redirect

#1 Download the URL Rewrite tool by following the instructions here

#2 Ensure that the IIS site you are using is configured for the proper port 80 binding. In this case we are listening for all traffic on port 80. But you could restrict this based on host header as needed

#3 Create a new URL rewrite rule

#4 Configure Rule Settings Exactly as follows

Note: In this example {HTTPS}, {HTTP_HOST}, and {REQUEST_URI} are all URL parts that can be accessed using the URL Rewrite module. More information on URL parts can be found here.

#5 Apply the rule

#6 From the top node disable and enable the rule (alternatively perform IISReset)

Note: web.config file modifications

The URL rewrite rules get written to the web.config file for the site you are working in. For example, the above configuration should result in this addition to the web.config file:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

<rewrite> <rules> <rule name="Redirect to http" enabled="true" patternSyntax="Wildcard" stopProcessing="true"> <match url="*" negate="false" /> <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAny"> <add input="{HTTPS}" pattern="off" /> </conditions> <action type="Redirect" url="https://{HTTP_HOST}{REQUEST_URI}" redirectType="Found" /> </rule> </rules> </rewrite>

Additional Resources

Creating Rewrite Rules for the URL Rewrite Modulehttp://www.iis.net/learn/extensions/url-rewrite-module/creating-rewrite-rules-for-the-url-rewrite-module

Supportability of Rewrite and Redirects with SharePoint 2007/2010/2013http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2818415

Mixed Http and Https Content with SharePoint 2010http://blogs.visigo.com/chriscoulson/mixed-http-and-https-content-with-sharepoint-2010/

URL Rewrite for IIS7 http to https redirectionhttp://tech.mikeal.com/blog1.php/url-rewrite-for-iis7-http-to-https-redirection

URL Component Referencehttp://www.iis.net/learn/extensions/url-rewrite-module/url-rewrite-module-configuration-reference#Accessing_URL_Parts_from_a_Rewrite_Rule

Tags redirect; http; https; SSL

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Turn on Network Discovery in Network and Sharing Center in Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008

Turn on Network Discovery in Network and Sharing Center in Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008

According to :

https://support.microsoft.com/en-ca/help/2722035/you-cannot-turn-on-network-discovery-in-network-and-sharing-center-in

Turn on Network Discovery in Network and Sharing Center in Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, or Windows Server 2012 

Applies to: Windows Server 2008 R2 DatacenterWindows Server 2008 R2 EnterpriseWindows Server 2008 R2 Foundation More

Symptoms 
Assume that you try to turn on Network Discovery on a computer that is running Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, or Windows Server 2012. To do this, you change the Advanced sharing settings in Network and Sharing Center. However, the changes are not saved. Therefore, you cannot turn on Network Discovery, and you experience the following issues: 
You cannot browse or find any network share. You cannot view shared folders on a local network. 

Cause This issue occurs for one of the following reasons: 

The dependency services for Network Discovery are not running.  The Windows firewall or other firewalls do not allow Network Discovery.   
Resolution 

To resolve the issue, follow these steps: 
Make sure that the following dependency services are started:

1. • DNS Client
   • Function Discovery Resource Publication
   • SSDP Discovery
   • UPnP Device Host
2. Configure the Windows firewall to allow Network Discovery. To do this, follow these steps:
   1. Open Control Panel, click System and Security, and then click Windows Firewall.
   2. In the left pane, click Allow an app or feature through Windows Firewall if you are running Windows Server 2012. Or, click Allow a program or feature through Windows Firewall if you are running Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2.
   3. Click Change settings. If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
   4. Select Network discovery, and then click OK.
3. Configure other firewalls in the network to allow Network Discovery.
4. Turn on Network Discovery in Network and Sharing Center.

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