by Contributed | Jun 23, 2021 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Guest blog Cyrus Wong, Senior Lecturer and and Microsoft Learn for Educators Ambassador from the Department of Information Technology of IVE (Lee Wai Lee) in Hong Kong.
I am Cyrus Wong, senior lecturer from the Department of Information Technology of IVE (Lee Wai Lee) in Hong Kong. I am the programme leader of Higher Diploma in Cloud and Data Centre Administration which is a 2-year fulltime cloud computing major higher diploma offered by IVE IT Discipline. The picture above is my achievement at the Vocational Training Council (VTC) receiving a Teaching Excellence Award 2018/19.
“The IVE Information Technology Discipline (IT Discipline) offers a comprehensive range of IT programmes that provide students with the latest knowledge and skills required to develop exciting careers in this rapidly changing industry in Hong Kong. As a member of the VTC Group, the Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education (IVE) is the leading vocational and professional education provider in Hong Kong, committed to nurturing professionals valued by industries. I love to teach and build hands projects with my students and my courses are very hands-on because we are a technical college, and our course targets to train students for cloud engineer roles.
We have adopted Microsoft Learn curriculum especially because in addition to being high-quality content, it also provides many lab exercises for free. Currently, we have integrated 4 Microsoft Learn courses into the diploma – Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900), Azure Data Fundamentals (DP-900), Azure AI Fundamentals (AI-900), and Azure Administrator(AZ-104). Students learn the 3 Fundamental level curriculums during year one summer semester. It is a core course, and all students must complete all lectures and hand on lab within 8 weeks. Students are also required to take the 3 MS Fundamentals certification exams as part of the course assessment. Microsoft Azure Administrator, which is an Advanced Role Based course, is part of a 2nd year course in semester 1.
VTC and Microsoft Hong Kong have signed an MoU though Innovation & Technology Co-creation Centre and as a result of that we are able to offer our all our students Microsoft Fundamentals certification exam at a significant discount. The three Microsoft Certification exams are part of our course assessment. The big impact for Instructors is that we do not have to spend time in preparing questions and grade them for course assessment. And our students are now graduating with industry recognized certifications, which is adds to their employability prospects.
For the diploma or a course, we need to meet 2 important KPIs – number of students and employment rate. With MSLE, we can promote our diploma to recruit more students easily because all junior students are using Microsoft products every day and integration of Microsoft curriculum and certifications in the program only makes it more attractive. Azure skills are in huge demand in the Hong Kong region, and students can get jobs much more easily after they complete the MS curriculum and certification exams.
Our Plans For The Future
We joined the Microsoft Learn Educators program on June 17th 2021, to date 63 of our students are certified on Microsoft Azure and have collectively received 103 certifications across Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900), Azure Data Fundamentals (DP-900), Azure AI Fundamentals (AI-900), and Azure Administrator(AZ-104).
The graduates of the IT114115 Higher Diploma in Cloud and Data Centre Administration program have demonstrated the latest knowledge and skills in cloud computing. Many companies, including some big enterprises in Hong Kong have shared positive feedback about our student interns in providing effective technical support to their daily operations and development of their cloud systems. This is enabling VTC build longer term relationships and employment pipelines with these employers. Next we plan to collaborate with Microsoft Azure Partners and major customers for internship and employment pipelines for our students by developing relationships with local and regional businesses for direct career pathways
Students proudly demonstrating Microsoft Azure Fundamentals certifications
My teaching team are all Microsoft Azure Certified.
Students Comments
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“I am glad to be able to learn 3 Microsoft Learn courses at school and passed 3 Azure exam in one day at age 18! With those certifications, I got my internship offer at a global consulting firm as a cloud engineer.” |
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“I got my graduate job as a cloud solution developer in one of the Microsoft Azure partners. I complete 4 Microsoft Azure courses at school and passed 3 Azure exams. My boss loves to recruit students with formal Azure training and now I start my MS tech stack career!”
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by Contributed | Jun 23, 2021 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
The ability to scale out a database is a key feature for a modern solution, allowing it to adapt easily and quickly to varying workloads. From implementing complex massive scale-out scenarios that handle highly concurrent OLTP requests, to highly performing HTAP solutions that analyze incoming data in near-real time and with minimum data transformation overhead, elasticity is a winning factor.
Capabilities
Today with the introduction of Azure SQL Hyperscale named replicas, it is possible to create up to 30 secondary read-only replicas that:
- Appear as regular (read-only) Azure SQL databases in the portal and in API (CLI, PowerShell, T-SQL) calls.
- Can have a database name different from the primary replica, and optionally be located on a different logical server.
- Have their own Service Level Objective that can be set and changed independently from the primary replica.
- Support different authentication and authorization for each named replica by creating different logins on logical servers hosting named replicas.
- Use Azure Hybrid Benefit: it is possible to save a substantial amount of money by taking advantage of the ability to scale-out instead of scaling-up.
Named replicas take advantage of Hyperscale native cloud architecture, so that a database replica is created without copying data around. As a result, a named replica can usually be created in less than a minute, no matter the size of the primary database.
Use Cases
The main goal of named replicas is to allow massive OLTP read scale-out scenario and to improve Hybrid Transactional and Analytical Processing (HTAP) workloads.
Aside from the main scenarios listed above, named replicas offer flexibility and elasticity to also satisfy many other use cases:
- Access Isolation: grant a login access to a named replica only and deny it from accessing the primary replica or other named replicas.
- Workload-Dependent Service Objective: as a named replica can have its own service level objective, it is possible to use different named replicas for different workloads and use cases. For example, one named replica could be used to serve Power BI requests, while another can be used to serve data to Apache Spark for Data Science tasks. Each one can have an independent service level objective and scale independently.
Workload-Dependent Routing: with up to 30 named replicas, it is possible allowing workload isolation even within the same solution. For example, four named replicas could be used to serve requests coming from mobile applications, while other two named replicas can be used to serve requests coming from a web application. This approach would allow a fine-grained tuning of performance and costs for each use case: taking advantage of the ability to easily and quickly create named replicas, their number can be adjusted over time to keep the performance and cost ratio always at optimum level.
User Experience
Azure SQL Hyperscale named replicas in all regions where Azure SQL Hyperscale is available. They can be created from the portal, using the new Replica blade available for each database:
This new Replica blade has been introduced to harmonize the user experience for all types of secondary replicas, including named replicas and geo replicas. Beside the portal, full support for named replicas has been added also via REST API, Powershell or AZ CLI.
Next Steps
More details on Azure SQL Hyperscale named replicas, the related use cases, and general information on all secondary replicas supported by Azure SQL Hyperscale here: Hyperscale secondary replicas.
You’ll find full documentation, samples with GitHub repo ready to be used, along with answers to common FAQ, so that you can start to take advantage of Azure SQL Hyperscale named replicas right away.
by Contributed | Jun 23, 2021 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Create Bespoke Chart Designs without Programming, Charticulator requires the use of a mouse or touch screen and is compatible with Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox. Free and Open Source from Microsoft Research
Interested in trying Charticulator try it online at Launch Charticulator
Interactive Chart Creation
Charticulator enables you to create bespoke and reusable chart layouts without writing any code.
Infinite Design Possibilities
Charticulator enables you to compose a wide range of visual representations.
Reusable Chart Designs
Charticulator lets you export chart designs into reusable templates including Microsoft Power BI custom visuals.
What people say about Charticulator
The Charticulator – an amazing way to generate totally new/original/amazing custom visuals for Power BI without writing a single line of code. Fantastic work by the folks at Microsoft Research here.— Amir Netz (Technical Fellow at Microsoft, CTO of Power BI & Intelligence Platform)
See more examples in the Charticulator gallery.
Follow along with these step-by-step video tutorials as you learn how to use Charticulator.
- Radial Bar Chart
- Mobile OS Market Share
- Character Co-occurrence in Les Misearbles
- 200 Samples of Mushrooms
- Boston Weather in a Year
- Fertility Rate v.s. Life Expectancy
- Monthly Weather Radial as a Charticulator Template
- Power BI Custom visual
- Bar Chart with Error Bars
- Daily Weather for Four Cities
- Gender Earnings Disparity
Chart Templates
There are also lots of available chart templates including
by Contributed | Jun 22, 2021 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
The June 2021 Windows 10 Security update (KB5003637) includes a pre-requisite for the Servicing Stack Update which is included in the May 2021 Windows 10 Security Update (KB5003173). If you use Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager with Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) to manage and deploy your monthly cumulative updates, you must install the May 11, 2021 update (KB5003173) before you can install the latest cumulative update.
Because the June 2021 security update supersedes the May 2021 security update, it is possible that the May 2021 security update is no longer deployable in your Configuration Manager environment if you have changed the supersedence rule from the default. This could impact your ability to meet the pre-requisites for the June 2021 security update.
Workarounds
The May 2021 Windows 10 Security Update is not yet expired: To prevent the May 2021 security update from being marked as expired before all your devices are updated, ensure that the supersedence rule’s “Months to wait before a superseded software update is expired” setting is set to the default of 3 months, or to an interval long enough to get the update installed on all required devices.
The May 2021 Windows 10 Security Update has already been expired: If you still need to deploy the May 2021 security update and it has been marked as expired, follow the directions in Supersedence and Expired Software Updates to recover an expired update.
TIP: Use the Software updates deployment re-evaluation behavior upon restart user experience setting. Select this setting to configure software updates deployments to have clients run a software updates compliance scan immediately after a client installs software updates and restarts. This enables the client to check for additional updates that become applicable after the client restarts, then installs them during the same maintenance window. This setting could reduce potential delays between the May 2021 security update install and the June 2021 security update being returned as applicable and installed. By default, software update deployments are reevaluated every 7 days. |
by Contributed | Jun 22, 2021 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Typically, a software update that supersedes another software update does one or more of the following actions:
- Enhances, improves, or updates the fix that was provided by one or more previously released updates.
- Improves the efficiency of the superseded update file package, which is installed on clients if the update is approved for installation. For example, the superseded update might contain files that are no longer relevant to the fix or to the operating systems that are supported by the new update. Those files aren’t included in the superseding file package of the update.
- Updates newer versions of a product. In other words, it updates versions that are no longer applicable to older versions or configurations of a product. Updates can also supersede other updates if modifications were made to expand language support. For example, a later revision of a product update for Microsoft 365 Apps might remove the support for an older OS, but it might add additional support for new languages in the initial update release.
Consider the following scenarios in which you might need to deploy a superseded software update:
- A superseding software update supports only newer versions of an OS. Some of your client computers run earlier versions of the OS.
- A superseding software update has more restricted applicability than the software update it supersedes. This behavior would make it inappropriate for some clients.
- If a superseding software update wasn’t approved for deployment in your production environment.
Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager current branch provides control for how superseded software updates are handled. Supersedence rules allow you to decide if superseded software updates are immediately expired or expired after a defined period. “Expired” software updates in the context of Configuration Manager are no longer deployable. They can’t be added to new deployments and will also be removed from any existing deployments.
Supersedence rules default to waiting 3 months before superseded updates are expired. It is recommended that you do not assume that superseded updates should be immediately expired in favor of the new, superseding updates. As noted above, there is no guarantee that supersedence is absolute. You should allow enough time to make sure superseded updates are no longer needed by any of your client computers.
Recovering an Expired Update
If you need to deploy a superseded update that has been marked as expired in Configuration Manager, follow the steps below.
- Change the Months to wait before a superseded software update is expired value on the Supersedence Rules tab of the Software Update Point Component properties page, to an interval that is greater than the supersedence age for the update. For example, if the update marked as expired was superseded six months ago, the months to wait interval would need to be greater than six months.
NOTE: If the “Decline expired updates in WSUS according to supersedence rules” option is enabled, the software update(s) may need to be reinstated prior to synchronizing software updates. Also, the interval change is global, meaning any expired update meeting the changed criteria could result in a state change, not just the desired software update(s). |
- Synchronize software updates (scheduled or manual). See Synchronize software updates for more information.
References
Supersedence Rules
Expired Icon
Superseded Icon
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