One of the challenges of being a consultant is having to work with a number of clients, and having different login credentials and accounts. In the early days of Azure, this was exceptionally painful, but over time the experience of using the portal with multiple identities and connecting to Azure tenants has gotten much easier. However, when writing PowerShell or Azure CLI code, switching accounts and contexts is slightly more painful. Also, when you are doing automation, you may be touching a lot of resources at one time, you want to be extra careful that you are in the right subscription and tenant.

Enter cloud shell.

If you click on the highlighted icon from the Azure Portal, you will launch cloud shell. This will require you to have an Azure Storage account which will consume a small amount of resources (€$£)–don’t sweat this–it’s literally going to cost pennies per month, unless you decided to upload terabytes of images to your cloud shell (don’t do this). The storage is there so you can maintain a history of commands and even store script files there.

With cloud shell you are automatically logged into the tenant associated with your login–you will still need to select the subscription. As shown below–you can see the subscriptions available to your login.

The other cool thing about cloud shell is that you also have built-in text editors including vim and code. While means you can paste code into a text editor and save it in your shell. Since you have a storage account that data is persisted. So you can have a bunch of scripts saved in your cloud shell. This is great for developing for Azure automation, or just running some ad-hoc scripts.

You can also go full screen with code–as shown above. While all of the examples I’ve shown have been PowerShell, you can also launch a bash shell running the Azure CLI.

Happy New Year!!

Looking back at my Happy New Year! post from the start of 2020, I of course, didn’t realize the brute force of the global pandemic that was about to hit.  Even with the dumpster fire that was 2020, good things still occurred even in the midst of the world burning.  Babies were born.  Relationships started.  New doors opened with new opportunities and the list continues.  2020 is behind us now and in the review mirror.  Let’s focus on making 2021 a vast improvement from 2020.

With that said, I’m going to repeat my thoughts for the new year.  They are still valid and hold true.

Here are some thoughts for the new year:

• Don’t wait to start that project.  Some day never comes around.
• You are perfect the way you are.  However, if you want to get healthy, know that you aren’t alone.  You got this.
• Tell those people close to you how you feel about them.  Tomorrow may not come for some.
• Tell your kids (fur babies count too!) that you love them as often as you can.  My kids hear it from as often as I can.
• Finally, be kind to each other.  The world is harsh enough as it is without us beating each other up.

Hopefully this post comes at a time where we see the Covid vaccine rolling out to the masses.  Until then, keep wearing a mask and stay safe out there.

Peace.

© 2021 – 2020, John Morehouse. All rights reserved.

The post Happy New Year! first appeared on John Morehouse.

Yep, you read that headline correctly. Microsoft is making some Business Premium Office 365 licenses as well as some Business Basic Office 365 licenses available to US-Based 501c3 non-profit organizations, for free.

There’s a few steps to get these licenses.

The first step is to setup an Office 365 / Azure tenant for the nonprofit via https://azure.microsoft.com/

The second step is to register with Microsoft as a nonprofit. Once approved as a nonprofit, the licenses can be provisioned for you.

The third step is to contact DCAC (or another CSP, but we prefer if you go through DCAC) to provision your free Office 365 licenses. There will be some paperwork to sign to get the license setup, but it’s done quickly and easily through DocuSign.

That’s it, once the licenses are assigned you can setup everything that’s needed to move your email domain to Office 365.

If you are a 501c3 and are looking for an email solution, follow these three steps and you’ll be good to go.

Denny

If you are a SQL Saturday, User Group or Virtual Group PASS Chapter Leader, this is for you.

As we all know PASS goes dark on January 15, 2021. Here are some things that you need to do BEFORE January 15, 2021 (like now, not on January 14, 2021).

• User Groups / Virtual Chapters
  • Setup a new webpage somewhere (SQL UGS and the Microsoft Survey (which will include Meetup Pro) are great options)
  • Use the PASS emailing features to email your members about your new group’s homepage and tell people to sign up as you won’t be able to use the PASS email process after Jan 15, 2021
  • If your Twitter account is tied to a pass.org email address, change the email address
  • If your User Group email address is @pass.org you’ll want to create a new email address for it at Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook.com, etc.
  • Review callfordataspeakers.com and get signed up to help find speakers
  • If using PASS licenses for GoToMeeting or GoToWebinar you’ll need another way to hold your virtual meetings. Microsoft has a free Teams offer
  • If your User Group is registered as a 501c3 then you can get some free Office 365 licenses gifted from Microsoft. Contact Denny for more information (it’s a few step process that I’ll outline in a blog post later)
• SQL Saturday Organizers
  • Download your registration lists from sqlsaturday.com
  • Download your sponsor contacts from sqlsaturday.com
  • Review DataSaturdays.com and see if this is a good fit for future events
  • Review callfordataspeakers.com and get signed up to help find speakers

A new non-profit (pending US IRS approval) community organization is being set up. The new organization is in the very early stages at the moment and we’re trying to get the word out to all the PASS members that a new org is being set up. The goal of this new organization is to handle legal matters, licensing, and to give sponsors a single point of contact to reach everyone. We’re envisioning that this new organization will be a very lightweight organization designed to handle the legal needs that come up, licensing of the Intellectual Property for the organization to the user groups, and a single point of contact for sponsors to work through.

At the moment the organization is simply collecting contact information for people that want to get more information once the organization is set up. The website that is set up is www.daug.io. Please ask people to submit their information there.

A summary of the URLs talked about here.

• www.daug.io – New Data and Analytics User Group community (it’s really, really rough at the moment)
• www.sqlugs.com – Free WordPress hosting for User Groups, Virtual Chapters, etc.
• https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2020/12/22/resources-for-the-sql-server-and-azure-data-community/ – Survey (at the bottom) for entry into the Azure Data community (will include Meetup Pro)
• callfordataspeakers.com – Assistance getting speakers for user groups/virtual groups/events
• DataSaturdays.com – New community-run events replacing SQL Saturday
• https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/microsoft-teams/free – Information about the free Microsoft Teams offer

There’s a history of PASS and SQL Saturday and most/all the events that have been run under those names at:

• sqlpasshistory.com
• sqlsathistory.com

More information will be coming about the Data and Analytics User Group in the future.

Denny