rss.livelink.threads@place:occasion

Azure Virtual Network Manager: Herding Networks the Easy Way

lukemurraynz — Mon, 25 May 2026 01:46:08 GMT

If you’re running workloads in Azure, you already know the world of Virtual Networks, subnets, IP ranges, and all the moving parts that come with cloud networking.

But have you met Azure Virtual Network Manager: the service that finally brings centralized governance and consistency to your network landscape?

Instead of managing each Virtual Network separately, Azure Virtual Network Manager gives you a single control plane to define, deploy, and enforce network configurations across your entire environment. Even better, it introduces long‑awaited capabilities like built‑in IP Address Management that previously required third‑party tools or custom solutions.

In this session, we’ll walk through how to configure Azure Virtual Network Manager from the ground up, explore its strengths, and shine a light on its limitations so you know exactly what to expect before adopting it.

When you head home after the event, your backpack will be filled with:
- Guidelines for setting up Azure Virtual Network Manager
- A clear understanding of its key features and how to use them effectively
- Real-world scenarios where AVNM is not the right choice
- All demo code so you can deploy everything in your own environment

Join us as Rex de Koning goes through a practical, honest, and demo-heavy deep dive into one of Azure’s most powerful new networking tools.

Azure Functions and network security.. Can it be done?

lukemurraynz — Mon, 25 May 2026 01:38:36 GMT

Do you work with Azure functions, but want to keep them secure?

Rex de Koning joins us to talk through Azure Functions security!

If you got a closed and secure Azure environment you don't always want your Azure Functions to be reachable for the whole world, but just from within your own environment.

For this we can use private endpoints and secure the access from Azure Functions to your own clients, and we can also route outgoing traffic from an Azure function via the Azure Firewall. This way also you outgoing traffic can be secured.

for the developers, all code will be in bicep and available after the session

In this session you will see
- the deployment of an Azure Function using Azure Devops
- setting up Private Endpoints to secure the incoming traffic
- using Azure Firewall to secure the outgoing traffic
- using Azure VPN to demonstrate the workings

Azure SRE Agent: Automating Reliability at Scale

lukemurraynz — Mon, 11 May 2026 19:59:27 GMT

Join us as Nicholas Chang runs through and introduces the Azure SRE Agent, an AI‑powered assistant that automates cloud reliability tasks across Azure by detecting issues, taking action, and enforcing standards at scale.

Make your automations more sustainable

lukemurraynz — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 18:08:50 GMT

Join us as Leo Visser runs us through sustainability considerations for automation!

uring this talk I will show you several data sources for the European market. I will demonstrate how you can connect to these data sources and how to utilize the data. I will also demo how you can use this data for several situations that you can encounter in your job.

For example have you considered creating a scheduler for your automations? This scheduler could run the automations when the maximum amount of green energy is available. Or what about a tool which will move resources around based on the amount of green energy available in regions?

Of course there are many caveats to keep in mind too, like the cost of network traffic and other hidden costs. So if you want to know how to make your automations more sustainable while keeping the other costs in mind then join this session!

Set It and Forget It: Secure & Automated Certificate Management on AKS

lukemurraynz — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 02:42:54 GMT

Manual certificate rotation has become a significant operational liability. In an era of shrinking certificate lifespans and increasing cluster complexity, traditional manual methods are no longer a viable way to maintain production uptime. Automation has transitioned from a luxury to a fundamental security requirement for modern cloud-native environments.

This session breaks down the implementation of a modern "Gold Standard" for certificate management on Azure Kubernetes Service, explaining the mechanics of both HTTP-01 and DNS-01 validation challenges while detailing the practical differences between specific and wildcard certificates.

The presentation demonstrates a secure, zero-secret identity model using Azure Workload Identity to grant Cert-Manager access to Azure DNS without managing long-lived credentials.

Attendees will gain a technical understanding of the mechanics behind the DNS-01 challenge and why it is the essential method for issuing wildcard certificates. The discussion also covers how to configure automated renewals and on-demand provisioning, enabling advanced workflows such as dynamic certificate creation for ephemeral environments during pull request deployments.

By the end of the session, participants will have the specific technical knowledge required to integrate these automated systems with both Ingress and the Gateway API, allowing them to build and maintain a fully automated, hands-off certificate lifecycle.

Join us as Wolfgang Ofner runs us through automated certificate management in AKS!

Mastering the Kubernetes Gateway API

lukemurraynz — Mon, 11 May 2026 19:44:56 GMT

For years, Kubernetes Ingress has been the default, yet it often forces teams into a fragile web of vendor-specific "annotation hell" to handle modern traffic requirements. The Gateway API moves beyond these limitations, offering an expressive, role-oriented standard that fundamentally rethinks the networking stack.

This session demonstrates why the Gateway API is the superior choice by breaking down its modular resource model, from core infrastructure components to granular routing definitions, and showing how it resolves the friction between platform, DevOps, and development teams.

This session compares in-cluster proxies like Traefik, Envoy, and Nginx against managed controllers like Azure Application Gateway for Containers. The presentation provides practical insights into native traffic engineering patterns, such as canary splits and path-based routing, alongside the specific technical steps for automating HTTPS via cert-manager.

By breaking down the integration between these components, the session ensures participants understand exactly how the Gateway API functions and how to implement a fully automated, secure, and easier-to-manage networking stack independently.

Join us as:

Wolfgang Ofner

Takes us through the Kubernetes Gateway!

Global Azure ANZ 2026

lukemurraynz — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 20:54:18 GMT

Global Azure ANZ 2026

Join us for online sessions where we'll dive into Azure and explore topics like AI, security, identity, developer technologies, DevOps, and more.

This is also a fantastic opportunity to connect with MVPs and industry experts in the Azure space.

https://globalazure.net/events/8df745e6-59dd-4d5b-ad32-41c3c7cfb37b

Feature Flags & Configuration Management using Azure App Configuration for .NET Apps

lukemurraynz — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 20:54:36 GMT

Modern .NET applications need to adapt quickly without redeployments, downtime, or security risks. In this session, we’ll explore how Azure App Configuration works to provide a robust, secure, and scalable approach to managing feature flags and application configuration in .NET applications.

We’ll walk through real-world scenarios showing how to:

* Use feature flags to enable safe rollouts, canary releases, and experimentation

* Centralize configuration across environments without hardcoding values

* Integrate App Configuration seamlessly with ASP.NET Core and the Options pattern

* Dynamically refresh configuration at runtime without restarting the application

Through live demos and practical examples, you’ll see how these Azure services help teams move faster, reduce risk, and improve security, all while keeping .NET applications clean, maintainable, and cloud-ready.

Speaker:

Timothy Ogunwemimo

The AI Trilemma: Navigating Hype, Hope, and Horror

lukemurraynz — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 20:51:24 GMT

Artificial Intelligence has taken the world by storm, inspiring a mix of excitement, optimism, and profound concern. Is the current explosion of AI just hype, a beacon of hope for humanity's greatest challenges, or a potential horror story in the making?
Join AI Safety expert Harshavardhan Bajoria for a comprehensive overview of this critical field. This workshop delves into the essential questions surrounding the safe and beneficial development of advanced AI, moving from current issues to future possibilities.
You will explore:
- The Risks (Horror): Understand the real-world dangers already present, from AI-powered scams and deep fakes to future concerns like societal destabilization and the "misalignment problem," where AI goals diverge catastrophically from human values.
- The Potential (Hope): Discover the incredible promise AI holds, with the potential to solve complex problems like climate change, prevent diseases through breakthroughs like protein folding, and unleash human potential.
- The Approaches: Learn about the core concepts and research areas designed to steer AI in a positive direction, including Value Alignment, Robustness, Scalable Oversight, Interpretability, and Governance.
This session provides a foundational look at the challenges and solutions in AI safety, equipping you to engage more deeply with one of the most important conversations of our time.

Speaker:

Harshavardhan Bajoria

Bridging Classic Logging and Azure Monitor Using Azure DCEs and DCRs

lukemurraynz — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 20:46:47 GMT

Many organizations rely on long-standing, embedded logging frameworks that span multiple applications, making modernization challenging. This session demonstrates how teams can continue using their existing application logging while unlocking the advanced capabilities of Azure Log Analytics through Azure Data Collection Rules (DCRs) and Data Collection Endpoints (DCEs).

Attendees will learn how to ingest log data directly from server-based log files using DCRs, map and transform data for Log Analytics, and incrementally transition log pipelines from third-party tools, such as Datadog, to Azure Data Collection Endpoints. The session provides practical guidance for modernizing logging architectures without rewriting applications, enabling greater observability, scalability, and integration within the Azure monitoring ecosystem.

Speaker:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothy-ogunwemimo-9a2586a1/

AI Innovation With Azure: From Concept to Creation

lukemurraynz — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 21:02:36 GMT

The session will explore the transformative power of Azure AI and its services, demonstrating how they can drive innovation and propel individuals and organisations to new heights. Attendees will gain insights into cloud computing concepts through real-world examples and learn how to leverage Azure AI, GitHub Codespaces, and GitHub Copilot to develop cutting-edge applications. The focus will be on building applications that redefine the future with enhanced accuracy and efficiency, while also addressing security concerns and streamlining the development process.

Presented by:

Harshavardhan Bajoria

Telemetry at Scale: Lessons from Building Observability for Distributed Systems

lukemurraynz — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 18:34:56 GMT

Modern distributed systems fail in complex, unpredictable ways and traditional logging often can’t keep up. As engineers, we need more than dashboards; we need deep, connected telemetry that explains why things break, not just what broke. In this session, I’ll share real-world lessons from building the telemetry and observability platform behind Azure Container Apps and the Aspire Dashboard used by thousands of customer environments.

We’ll walk through the practical challenges of capturing end-to-end visibility across microservices, containers, proxies, and control planes. I’ll demonstrate how OpenTelemetry (OTEL) unified our traces, metrics, and logs across heterogeneous workloads; how distributed context propagation reveals root causes hidden behind multiple hops; and why cardinality explosions, sampling decisions, and inconsistent instrumentation are some of the most expensive mistakes teams make.

This talk is not theoretical — it’s a behind-the-scenes look at what worked, what didn’t, and what we learned while building an observability system for real production-scale traffic. I’ll show common anti-patterns from the field, patterns that consistently improve developer velocity, and how to design telemetry that accelerates debugging rather than creating noise.

Live examples will walk through trace visualizations, anomaly detection patterns, and debugging scenarios that surfaced unexpected bottlenecks. Attendees will leave with a clear blueprint for building reliable, debuggable distributed systems with observability as a first-class concern.

If your team is scaling microservices, struggling with opaque failures, or trying to modernize your observability stack, this session will give you the mental model, patterns, and practices needed to move from "reactive firefighting" to "proactive insight-driven engineering."

Join us as Sneha Parthasarathy talks to us about telemetry.

Season of AI - MCP

lukemurraynz — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 03:37:11 GMT

Join us for Season of AI – MCP, a global, community-driven initiative by Microsoft developers, created for developers. This event is all about hands-on learning, collaboration, and innovation with Model Context Protocol (MCP).

Register here: Microsoft Virtual Events Powered by Teams

This session is your chance to:

🤝 Connect with like-minded innovators in your local community
💡 Learn how MCP works and how to build smarter AI-powered experiences
🛠 Work through guided labs and exercises
🚀 Exchange ideas, share challenges, and inspire new projects

Why attend?
You'll not only gain practical AI skills but also become part of a supportive, global network of developers contributing to the future of AI interoperability.

🎯 Skill Level: All levels welcome. Basic C# knowledge and familiarity with GitHub is helpful.

💻 What's needed: A laptop with VStudio Code is required if you want to make some cool demo. This is going to be a guided hands-on session!

💬 Agenda

Welcome & Introductions
Overview of the Model Context Protocol (MCP)
Hands-on Lab Session
Community Discussions & Q&A
Closing Remarks

This event is happening in partnership with Coding Night ANZ.

Hub & spokes variations with Azure Virtual WAN

lukemurraynz — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 00:50:20 GMT

The most seen Azure network topology relies on Hub & Spokes, peering all vnets to the same central one, called the hub.

While this scenario works well, as witnessed by its wide adoption, there are now other options for using Azure Virtual WAN.

In this session, we'll go back to what VWAN is and what it brings to the table.
Then we'll explore different topology variations using it instead of the "classic" hub & spokes.

Speaker: David Frappart

AI Innovation With Azure: From Concept to Creation

lukemurraynz — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 19:05:15 GMT

We have the amazing Harshavardhan Bajoria here to speak to us about AI Innovation!

The Integrated World of Microsoft Cloud Frameworks

lukemurraynz — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 21:15:28 GMT

If you’ve ever found yourself lost in a labyrinth of acronyms and documentation describing today’s cloud, this session is for you. We will deep dive on Microsoft’s master strategy for its cloud environments, connecting the dots between seemingly disparate frameworks, and revealing how they come together to form a unified, practical approach to the cloud. And yes, artificial intelligence is woven through every layer, shaping the present and future of cloud operations. This is your guide through the intricate—and let’s be honest, sometimes tangled—universe of cloud management, security, and optimization. Settle in—this is a full-length journey, not a highlight reel.

Speaker is: Saul Patino (https://www.linkedin.com/in/saulpatino/)

Security Best Practices for Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS)

lukemurraynz — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 20:17:13 GMT

Learn about the best practices for securing your AKS cluster using Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other strategies in the Azure cloud. In this session, you'll discover how to implement security configurations for AKS environments, leading to enhanced security, improved compliance, and a more secure cloud environment. This session covers key topics such as Defender for Containers, securing ingress and egress traffic, networking security, pod and container security, workload identity, and role-based access control (RBAC).

The Speaker is: Santhoshkumar Anandakrishnan

ASO(cial) Superpowers: Streamlined App Deployments with Azure Service Operator

lukemurraynz — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 17:40:49 GMT

When every dev team rolls out its own infrastructure dependencies, you know what is coming: chaos. In one of my recent projects, I ended up with hundreds of Terraform solutions, sometimes even split across different teams working on the same app. It worked, but it was not pretty.

That is when I gave the teams some ASO powers. With the Azure Service Operator, they could deploy their application dependencies in the same way they already deploy their containers. Suddenly, things looked a lot cleaner, more consistent, and easier to manage.

In this session, I will share what that looked like in practice, the lessons learned, the benefits, and of course a demo. You will walk away with concrete ideas on how to cut down Terraform sprawl, make life easier for your developers, and bring some order back into your deployments.

Join Daniel Paulus as he shows us how to use the power of Azure Service Operator!

Mastering Full Stack with Azure: Effortless Infrastructure and Well-Architected Framework

lukemurraynz — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 05:49:11 GMT

Is your cloud architecture haunted by inefficiencies, security gaps, or spiraling costs? Don't panic; call in the Well-Architected Framework! In this session, we'll explore the most common cloud challenges by diving into Microsoft's Well-Architected Framework, providing you with the tools, tips, and Terraform magic to eliminate those issues.

From securing your stack to optimizing performance, we'll cover all the essential pillars: Cost Optimization, Security, Reliability, Performance Efficiency, and Operational Excellence. With Terraform in your toolkit, you'll automate your way to a more resilient and efficient cloud, reducing technical debt and making your Azure solutions both ghost-proof and future-proof.

Packed with real-world examples and practical tips, this session is perfect for anyone looking to build smarter, faster, and more securely in Azure. Get ready to bust those cloud problems- because when it comes to Well-Architected, who you gonna call?

Join Simone Bennett, Principal Consultant, Microsoft MVP, and all-around great person, as she discusses the practicality of the Well-Architected Framework with Azure!

Cash Strapped but Cloud Ready with Michaël Hompus

lukemurraynz — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 22:07:28 GMT

Starting your journey into the cloud? Don’t let your Azure credits disappear by day two!

As a student, it’s exciting to experiment with Azure, but managing your credits wisely is key. In this session, you’ll learn practical tips and tricks to get the most out of Azure’s cheapest (and often free!) services.

Discover how to stretch your credits, avoid common mistakes, and make the most of Azure while building your cloud skills, without running out of resources too soon!

🎯 REGISTRATION REQUIRED

Event: Cash Strapped but Cloud Ready with Michaël Hompus

Make sure you click the Event Link to register for the Teams webinar!