Hello once again!  This will be an evolving blog, but many are asking what are the specific certifications around Azure Stack. Below is an excerpt from our engineering group.

“Customers told us that compliance paperwork is a major frustration. To alleviate that, Azure Stack is going through a formal assessment with a 3PAO (3rd-Party Assessor Organization). The outcome of this effort will be documentation on how the Azure Stack infrastructure meets the applicable controls from several major compliance standards. Customers will be able to use this documentation to jump-start their certification process. For the first round of assessments, we are targeting the following standards: PCI-DSS and the CSA Cloud Control Matrix. The former addresses the payment card industry while the latter gives comprehensive mapping across multiple standards.

Continue reading “Azure Stack Security aka.ms/AzureStack/Security” →

As my career progresses and I dive deeper and deeper into the cloud, every once in a while my core Windows Server Active Directory roots come up and tap me on the shoulder.  Or else others ping me to say “Hey, where are the best resources out there for Active Directory goodness?”. Since many of these links are oldies but goodies, I want to collect and collate the best current and past links for you, me and our customers.  Hope you enjoy and please share!

Continue reading “Back to Basics with Active Directory | aka.ms/Identity/AD” →

Bookmark this!  https://aka.ms/PkiLinks

Having taken some recent internal PKI training, I decided to take my internal PKI resources, update with some of the newer concepts I have been learning about, and am now sharing with you.  This is a lot!  But if you want to really know PKI and Certificates, particularly around Windows Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS), then there is plenty for you to read below 🙂 As I find new and update resources, I will refresh this blog.  Enjoy?

Continue reading “PKI and Certificate Resources” →

Once you have your Azure Subscription, I think the planning and implementing Resource Groups should be first on your list.  Because if this is not done, then when you go to deploy anything in the new Azure portal in ARM mode, then a default Resource Group will be created for you.  If you pre-make a few to start with, then once you create storage, network and compute resources, then you can assign those resources to Azure Resource groups, per Azure Region, as you see fit.  There are many ways to do this e.g. by dev/test environments or by resource types such as domain controllers or web servers. At a high level, most Azure pages will say to create these according to managed lifecycles of Azure Resources. By default the subscription administrators will have access to all of these, so if you make a bunch, then later, you can create groups to assign RBAC to delegate administration.

Continue reading “Azure Resource Manager aka.ms/Azure/ARM” →

Hello again. It’s been too long since I made a post. But before I make any new posts, I want to migrate some of the better posts I did on TechNet Blogs. Most of them were migrated here. However a few seemed to not make it over. Regardless, I want to move the more relevant ones all over to WordPress since I did back them up.

At Microsoft DevOps has been very important for a while, and now in Services, it is becoming even more of the modus operandi. These are some awesome classic resources that are still relevant. Enjoy!

Continue reading “aka.ms/Azure/DevOps” →

Hello again. It’s been too long since I made a post. But before I make any new posts, I want to migrate some of the better posts I did on TechNet Blogs. Most of them were migrated here. However a few seemed to not make it over. Regardless, I want to move the more relevant ones all over to WordPress since I did back them up.

This old TechNet post was the culmination of several conversations about how many subscriptions is enough? While just one might be enough, hundreds isn’t manageable in most cases. So below are some decision criteria to consider, along with some summary thoughts at the bottom.

Continue reading “How many subscriptions are enough? aka.ms/Azure/Subscriptions” →

I want to eventually do some YouTube videos, but that takes a lot of time! Hope to get to them. Just ordered an external webcam (Razor Kiyo) with a light, so will use that for my first post. But for now, can post my favorite recipes, starting with this, at aka.ms/EZVegan.

I usually make 2-3 of these at a time for convenience. Not any more as I want them more fresh. Continue reading “EZ Overnight Oats” →

Happy New Years all!

I just discovered that all of my original blog content on TechNet Blogs has officially been moved to their archives.  I still have some great content there.  I will slowly move or update the most relevant content as needed.  Some of the older content I’ll just let lie. Nonetheless, I have redirected my aka.ms/MarkGrimes url to just come to this newer WordPress site. Continue reading “Archived AllergicToCode Content” →

Hello all!  As I have been going through this journey called life, I am continually seeking to do so better.  Don’t we all? I want to dispel the myths that as we age we will get shorter, fatter, on more and more medications and not as mobile as we were when we were younger. While there are some exceptions, for the majority of things that will kill ourselves and our loved ones, “Our genes are not our destiny”.  I want to stay as Vibrant, Active and as Drug free as possible through the remainder of my life to fully enjoy all the richness that it has. I believe that this is made best possible through a Whole Food Plant based diet. Continue reading “The EZ Vegan” →