CommPulse

Azure weekly update #33 is here. This week Azure rolled out key networking and SQL platform improvements, new Copilot and healthcare agent offerings, and important service lifecycle updates including Azure VMware Solution retirement planning. Detailed list: * Launched | Generally Available: Summarized advertised gateway prefixes for route advertisement . This feature allows for advertising aggregated prefixes instead of every individual virtual network address space, which is great for large hub-and-spoke deployments. * Announcing: Azure Copilot introduces direct access to agents . Users can now select specific Azure Copilot agents like Troubleshooting or Deployment to move more quickly from questions to action. * Launched | Generally Available: Azure Databricks Lakebase in four additional regions . Lakebase is now available in North Central US, France Central, Germany West Central, and East Asia, expanding regional options for workloads. * Launched | Generally Available: Azure SQL updates for mid-August 2026 . This update brings enhancements to Azure SQL, including customizable keyboard shortcuts within Visual Studio Code. * In preview | Public Preview: SQL Formatter in MSSQL extension . The SQL Formatter is now in public preview, offering more customizable formatting options to help streamline development. * Launched | Generally Available: Azure SQL Database provisioning in MSSQL extension . You can now create and connect to a fully managed cloud database directly from your editor at no cost. * Launched | Generally Available: vCore Customization: Disable Multithreading and Configurable Constrained Cores . This new capability gives users greater control over virtual CPU configurations to optimize performance and reduce licensing costs. * Launched | Generally Available: BYON (Bring Your Own NIC) in Azure Site Recovery . Azure Site Recovery now supports attaching existing, pre-provisioned NICs in the target region for failover scenarios. * Retirement: Azure VMware Solution License-included service will be retired August 30, 2027 . Customers should be aware that the AVS license-included service will be retired on August 30, 2027, requiring transition planning. * Launched | Generally Available: Managed Instance on Azure App Service . Managed Instance is now available, allowing migration of web applications to Azure App Service with minimal configuration. * In preview | Public Preview: Ipv6 support in Azure Firewall . Azure Firewall now supports IPv6 in public preview, enabling dual-stack mode for both IPv4 and IPv6 traffic. * In preview | Public Preview: Zone redundancy for Azure SQL Managed Instance Next-gen General Purpose . Enhanced resilience is available via public preview zone redundancy for Azure SQL Managed Instance Next-gen General Purpose. * Launched | Generally Available: Dragon Copilot Physician Apps and Agents on Microsoft Marketplace . Dragon Copilot Physician Apps and Agents are now available for discovery and purchase through Microsoft Marketplace. * In preview | Public Preview: Azure Linux on WSL . Azure Linux on WSL is now available in Public Preview, allowing teams to use a consistent Linux foundation across development, testing, and production. submitted by /u/groovy-sky to r/AZURE [link] [comments]

Had one of those fun discoveries recently: a nightly backup cron had been failing (or not running) for a stretch, and nobody knew. Host was fine, uptime checks were green, no ticket, nothing. Found it only when we actually needed a restore. Curious how other people handle the "job went quiet" case — not "the server is down", but "the scheduled thing didn't check in". What are you using in practice? - Healthchecks / Cronitor / Dead Man's Snitch / something else SaaS? - Self-hosted (Uptime Kuma push monitors, Prometheus + blackbox/heartbeat, custom scripts)? - Just mail on failure from the job itself (`MAILTO`, wrapper scripts, etc.)? - Or do you mostly not bother unless it's a critical path? Also interested in what actually matters day to day: - Grace periods vs exact schedules - Success-only heartbeat vs explicit fail signal - Email only vs Slack/Teams/PagerDuty - How many jobs you bother monitoring vs "we'll notice eventually" Not looking for a product pitch — just war stories and what you'd recommend to a small team that doesn't want another heavy observability stack for a handful of crons. submitted by /u/georgi_tsenov to r/sysadmin [link] [comments]

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy . ] submitted by /u/astrodevops to r/FinOps [link] [comments]

I was wondering how many of you are still using legacy client/server apps, and come across challenges when it comes to remote/hybrid workers. We use an application that is rather old school. No web based access, full desktop client and server. It does not work well under any latency, so VPN's and anything similar are unworkable. The other challenge is that the application is heavily tied into MS Word, Outlook, etc. The application uses COM addins for Outlook to generate and send emails and allow interaction with the product. Similar happens with MS word. We've tried publishing the application as a "remote app" on platforms like Citrix, but the issue again is the required integrations with Outlook, Word, downloading of files like PDF's and other documents that are stored within the app. It essentially integrates heavily with other apps. So at the moment, we're using a full desktop experience for users over Citrix. I find this to be rather frustrating. Providing end users with new laptops with reasonable spec, for them to work remotely and use it like a thin client so they can connect to a Citrix desktop. It confuses users, it isn't particularly user friendly, and it just feels like a waste of local resources. Does anyone work in similar situations? Are there any solutions that could help with this? Or are we destined to forever use a full remote desktop solution to support our core, oldschool, clunky-ass product? submitted by /u/Thick-Incident-4178 to r/sysadmin [link] [comments]

So got an odd pickle I'm trying to solve. We have 5 Samsung A11+ devices. These devices need to allow any user to be able to use essentially the following Web browser, camera and probably the ability to browse photos when uploading them. Preferably that when the user closes the web browser it doesn't have any information like their password or session. Most of the apps they'd use would be through a portal where they'd log into for access. But I need to lock it down somehow, without using an MDM solution or spending a dime. So even using intune is out of the question. Really I just need to prevent users from using other apps or installing any apps. Preferably only changing to the android owner account when I need to make changes. I was going to set up a restricted user but for some reason following Samsung's instructions are either old or I guess unavailable in my region for some reason. Still slowly updating one of the devices to see if this actually changes. Guest mode seems useless since it's a fresh instance each time it's opened. EDIT: I might be able to use something that can link to a google account as well for this, but probably not able to link it to a business per-say submitted by /u/waddlesticks to r/sysadmin [link] [comments]

Our reserved instances are up for renewal in about 8 weeks and the easy path is to just renew the same mix we had last year. Before I push back I want to actually have data behind it. What should I be pulling before that conversation? Usage trends over the last 12 months obviously but what else tends to get missed when teams auto-renew RIs without reviewing them first? submitted by /u/isaywhatisee [link] [comments]

I've been doing a lot of vibe coding with Claude Code and Codex, and one thing keeps happening I ask for one small change, then later realize Al changed my code in places I never expected. By the time I notice, I can't remember exactly what changed or when. Is anyone using something besides Git to track Al changes or keep an Al coding activity log, or is this just one of those vibe coding problems we all live with? submitted by /u/pacifio [link] [comments]

Trying to streamline Defender onboarding. About to enable this toggle in Intune. What's the real impact, risk, and any visible changes for end users after it applies? submitted by /u/aPieceOfMindShit [link] [comments]

Hi everyone, I'm a Network & Security Engineer with ~7 years of experience working with Fortinet (FortiGate, FortiAnalyzer, FortiAuthenticator), Cisco, VPNs, HA, Linux, VMware, Hyper-V, and enterprise infrastructure. I want to specialize in AI applied to Cybersecurity (SOC, network security, automation, LLMs, AI agents, etc.), not become a data scientist. If you were in my position today: What learning roadmap would you follow? Which platforms are actually worth paying for (Coursera, TryHackMe, HTB, SANS, Microsoft Learn, etc.)? What's a reasonable monthly learning budget? Which certifications provide the best ROI? What projects would make my resume stand out? I'd love to hear what worked for you and what you'd avoid. submitted by /u/CartoonistAdvanced52 [link] [comments]

Hello, I’m trying to understand whether I should classify myself as a trader under the EU Digital Services Act, and I would really appreciate input from developers who have dealt with this. I’ve received conflicting answers from AI tools, so I’m not confident relying on those alone. Apple requires developers to choose one of the following: “I’m a trader under the DSA” “I’m not a trader under the DSA or I don’t plan to distribute in the EU” I haven’t published any apps yet, but I’m preparing to release my first independently developed apps on the App Store and Google Play. App development is currently a hobby alongside my main job, and I’m not operating through a registered company. The apps will be free to download but include ads. One app will also offer a paid option to remove ads, and I may add in-app purchases in the future. I’ve noticed that some similar apps with ads and in-app purchases are published by developers who don’t appear to be marked as traders, though I understand that may not reflect their actual status. Given this, would you consider someone in my situation to be a trader under the DSA, or could it reasonably be treated as non-trader activity since it’s currently a hobby? I also have a few related questions: Does the same approach apply when selecting trader status on Google Play? What typically happens if you declare yourself a non-trader but the platform later disagrees? Are you usually allowed to update your status, or could your account be affected? Is it true that apps from non-trader accounts may be removed in the EU if the classification is later found to be incorrect? Is trader status set per app or per developer account on Apple and Google? I understand this isn’t legal advice. I’m mainly interested in how other independent developers have interpreted and handled this in practice. Thank you very much for your help. submitted by /u/Wsson_ [link] [comments]

I'm wondering what everyone's thoughts are on eol software that is perpetually licensed and whether the risk is minimal enough to run some programs that are eol? In this case I'm specifically referring to Bluebeam - we have a few users that use this program, and since we started using it they stopped offering perpetual licenses and switched to subscription only. We have licenses for a couple different versions as well as one user on the newest subscription option. Our oldest license is for Revu 17 which was eol in 2023. I suspect I'm going to be asked to shuffle it between workstations soon and trying to figure out whether its time for the conversation about purchasing a new license. I think their hesitation is that its used somewhat infrequently for specific tasks, so don't want to pay yearly for that. While not related to the situation that has me asking, I believe we also have a few older, spare machines which have older versions of Adobe. I may also end up running into this soon with Foxit perpetual licenses as we switched to them a couple years ago and they don't usually cover upgrade to the next major version. Any thoughts on how much risk older programs like these create, and how you deal with similar situations? submitted by /u/tr1ckd [link] [comments]

I'm the sole systems engineer for a small US manufacturer (~70 employees, automotive tier-1). I run everything across network, servers, identity, development, etc. I'd like (a) a sanity check, and (b) real talk about the future. What happened : About three weeks ago on a normal workday around noon, some people suddenly noticed that they weren't able to send or receive email. Shrug. Probably Outlook just being Outlook. But wasn't able to figure anything out, so took to the admin portal... But I couldn't even get in to the admin portal: AADSTS5000224: "the tenant you are trying to access has been deauthenticated and is no longer available." Man, I hope none of you ever have to feel the panic I felt when I read this message. I immediately went to try our breakglass unlicensed admin account, but received the same error. The very last email I received (which arrived after attempting these log-ins) was a notification that all of our subscriptions had been cancelled. Obviously, that was not an action I took. On further research it seems to be some sort of backend authorization state set by Microsoft (perhaps algorithmic automatic action in response to a detected security incident? - just blind speculation really). There is nothing client side to try at all. There is literally no admin path into our own tenant. Current status : 20 days down. The case has been passed between at least five different support people. It finally got "escalated to the product team to verify the tenant status," and for a week now the only updates I get are rolling "please allow an additional 48 hours." Meanwhile sign-in logs are on a retention clock, so the forensic record of who cancelled our subs (if anyone? maybe this cancellation is just an artifact of this deauth?) is about to age out while we're locked out of the only portal that could export it and Microsoft won't commit to preserving it server-side. That first day, I cut MX over to a temporary Fastmail tenant to keep email flowing. I was able to restore people's inboxes to these new accounts. Office apps are running in their month grace periods. All our real data is on-prem. Feeling very grateful that we deliberately never integrated more intensely with Microsoft's cloud services... To that end, the business is stable. But there are nevertheless many secondary effects as I'm sure you can all imagine. Okay, now that you know basically the story, it's time for some preemption so we just get it out of the way before I get to my actual questions: "You should have had MFA." We do, on every account. FIDO2- (yubikey) only for most accounts (I was literally mid rollout...) "You should have had CA." We do. Business Premium, Entra P1, CA policies in place, custom auth strength enforcing phishing-resistant (FIDO2) sign-in for admins. Plus all the standard: SMS auth killed off, SSPR locked down, legacy protocols (SMTP AUTH/POP/IMAP/ActiveSync) all disabled, external auto-forwarding blocked, Safe Links + Safe Attachments on, SPF/DKIM/DMARC all passing. "You should have a breakglass account." We do. Doesn't save you from this. "Hire an MSP" Okay, I mean, maybe fair? They'd just be in the same position though, so. If anything this is its own can of worms and there's a reason we don't have one. Alright. Now my questions: Has anyone actually lived through one of these AADSTS5000224 tenant deauthentications? How long did recovery really take, and what finally moved it? A specific support path, an escalation channel, a TAM, a Microsoft account rep, LinkedIn-ing a PM, a partner ticket? Anything? Were you able to discover what triggered the lockout in your case? How do you preserve/obtain audit/sign-in logs? I'm not sure what's going to happen in terms of retention when the tenant is in this state. Is our log data going to get nuked in a week? Trust. After this, how does anyone justify betting a company's ability to function on a platform where a backend flag can vaporize all access overnight, your breakglass account included, and the SLA to undo it is measured in weeks (and counting!) with no communication? I'm not naive enough to think "just leave M365" is free. But it's challenging to design around "Microsoft can turn us off and there's nothing you can do and no one will tell you why." How are you all handling that? Are you even? To be honest, I didn't know this was a thing that could even happen, really. So maybe you all didn't either. Thankfully we weren't super integrated. We basically use M365 for email, product licensing, and Teams, and that's about it. But it literally makes me shudder to think about what could have happened if it were otherwise. submitted by /u/SecaleOccidentale [link] [comments]

We currently have Veeam in a Hyper-v environment. I backup to a local host, as well as do cloud copy jobs. In the vain of 3-2-1 backup philosophy, I would like to setup an additional redundant backup solution and our old Veeam host hardware. The server is just setting there. What additional redundant backup solution would everyone recommend to run adjacent to Veeam? submitted by /u/Ok_SysAdmin [link] [comments]

Going from VMware to hyper V at the moment. But once I finalize this I want to implement hot patching for servers. Is there any way to do so without azure VMs? submitted by /u/h9xq [link] [comments]

Not affiliated or selling. https://www.aikido.dev/blog/axios-npm-compromised-maintainer-hijacked-rat submitted by /u/possibilities69 [link] [comments]

We use them sparingly for foriegn contractors rather than shipping them a corporate laptop -- so that's the only nice part. But in the few months we've been using them I've noticed the following: Slower than hell to provision, like really slow even with Microsoft's stock images... Doesn't play well with Intune even though it is an Intune native solution. Configs/Apps/Compliance are hit or miss compared to actual local hardware like a laptop. Some stuff just doesn't even load, or you have to reboot the machine constantly They suffer horribly from performance issues, if you don't reboot these things daily (which there's no option in the OS to do a restart) you have to do it from the Windows App or Intune which is dumb as hell. Resizing, I've pushed the resize in Intune, added a bigger license, removed the old smaller license and it's been almost an HOUR and its still just sitting in "pending". Other little things suck with these as well, yet Microsoft has pushed these things at Ignite the past 2-3 years like they are IT God's gift to customers. These things are absolute ASS. submitted by /u/Dtrain-14 [link] [comments]

submitted by /u/N4Naman [link] [comments]

Somehow, it's hard to comprehend the networking costs in AWS. People see instances and databases as 'real resources' but totally miss out on networking costs. The following account is spending $500 per month while not using AWS. All instances stopped, DB paused, but networking remains. Just flushing this all out to save 70%. https://preview.redd.it/mt0zuouv3dhh1.png?width=782&format=png&auto=webp&s=f6eb4b84219fa37124fe78ed35439753c4204c07 submitted by /u/skpratik [link] [comments]

Been doing security audits for a while (I’m a secops engineer) and the same patterns keep showing up. Regardless of the vendor, so these are the same whether it’s Akamai, Cloudflare, AWS WAF. **1.** Origin is directly reachable! Traffic bypasses the CDN/WAF (check cert transparency logs for leaked origin hostnames) **2.** They've got bypass rules that were meant to be temporary but never got removed **3.** Cache key too broad (cache poisoning risk) or too narrow (kills hit ratio, looks like a DDoS) **4.** WAF rule sets are treated as “once and done”. Rules deployed once and never tuned, so there are a lot of silent false positives on real traffic. **5.** TLS/cert management with no clear owner, resulting in expired certs, weak ciphers left on etc. Wrote up a longer breakdown with a checklist if anyone wants to run through their own setup, happy to share. submitted by /u/witchlike-monkey [link] [comments]

I spent way too long trying to fix something recently before realizing nothing was actually wrong. It turned out to be a configuration mistake that I had made myself. It got me wondering how much time people in ML and software spend debugging their own setups rather than actual code. What's the dumbest "bug" you've ever chased? submitted by /u/Crypton228 [link] [comments]