@Daniel-Loyer , I hope all is well. As we have mentioned in response to your post(s) about this issue/concern in other areas of the forum, the move in general, across ALL vendors is towards skill/experience based assessment and certifications that reflect that.

Gaining one or more of those certifications IN ADDITION TO building a set of core skills through hands-on experience that employers are looking for is vital to ANY I.T. professional's longevity.

The trick is to gain that experience and then tell compelling stories about it... put it proudly on display in your C.V./resume as well as via social media and digital badging.

Employers are looking at you holistically, and if you are narrowly defining yourself, you are ONLY showing them a small piece of a bigger picture, one which may not be enough to entice or interest them.

Write up your experience in a blog posting on LinkedIn... Tweets, etc... Share your knowledge with the world as loudly and proudly as you can...

If you are struggling to gain access to opportunities to build knowledge, see if you can shadow people at work, volunteer to help out with ANY PROJECTS ... no matter how small or trivial... see if friends or peers or colleagues can offer insights and guidance... basically BUG EVERYONE YOU CAN to gain as much knowledge as they are willing/able to share. THE MORE THE BETTER !!!

Keep at it !!!

Good Luck sir...

Cheers,

Adam

@Alex-Evans

I suggest signing up for Linux Academy or A Cloud Guru (A Cloud Guru purchased Linux Academy, but the subscriptions are still separate at the moment, I think.)

Anyway, those two platforms offer virtual labs for Azure, GCE and AWS. They also train you for most of the certifications associated with those cloud platforms. Additionally, they give you a playground to spin up servers, as well (I don't think you can spin up Windows servers, only Linux on the individual subscriptions). You can also generate a sandbox cloud account, too.

The downside is they don't offer any courses on Windows Server specifically and like I said above, I don't think you can spin up Windows server sandbox environments unless you have an enterprise account. It's mostly cloud-based training and then Linux server training, as well as programming. They also don't have any Cisco network training, SCCM, vSphere, and the variety of other platforms that ITPRO.TV offers training on.

Linux Academy does have a network course, but it is Linux-based. I use both platforms.

@John-DeWilde ,

The .img file is a disk image of your home directory. (Like a .vhd) This image file is saved in a file share in Azure storage. It is referred to as a "user disk image"

When you launch Cloud Shell for the first time, Azure will create an image file and store it in a file share. It is then mounted as /home/<user>/clouddrive. You can upload and download files to your user disk image.

The next time you launch Cloud Shell, this image is mounted automatically, so any files you have uploaded will be available (think scripts, SSH keys, etc.)

You can choose to create a new file share when you launch CloudShell. This will also create a new user disk image in this new file share. The previous file share and the user disk image stored in the previous file share are unaffected. They will remain and you can switch back to them if you need to.

Hope this helps!

@S-M-Taslim-Reza ,

Currently, AZ-400 is not on our course roadmap. Be sure to request it via the ITProTV bot, with enough requests, maybe we can change that!

Thank you for the note about the services to distinguish "traditional" and "cloud".

Interesting: I think Microsoft changed all the documentation since the time I asked this, probably in line with that mention they adjusted the exam. At a glance, it looks like they removed the blurb about skills required to operate each type of cloud. The descriptions for each cloud type are also much shorter in general.

@Bradley-Shears ,

Your message just popped up on my feed, sorry I didn't see it sooner!

Hope the exam went well!!

Thank you

@Jim-Ferguson ,

They updated the objectives to reflect the name change. It used to read "Configure a Windows Analytics environment", it now reads "Configure a Desktop Analytics environment"

The issue I foresee is configuring Desktop Analytics requires Configuration Manager, which isn't easy to set up. I would suggest focusing on the documentation, understanding what the requirements are, what the capabilities are, etc.

While all topics are important when preparing for the exam, sometimes you have to weigh the effort vs the benefits, if that makes sense. This seems to me to be one where setting up a lab environment might not be worth the two or three questions you might get on the exam. Just my opinion.

That being said, I am going to look into setting up an environment here that I can use to demo with. I will try to shoot some videos to supplement the current MD-101 content, until we can update the course. We are currently shooting MS-500 and updating AZ-104, so I'm not sure when I can squeeze it in.

In the mean time, use the link I posted earlier, and also on that page, expand the concepts section, and read over those documents as well.

If you have any specific questions, don't hesitate to reach out.

I might have found the cause for this. Our domain registered with Azure is an .org domain, but our local AD uses a .local domain. To get the user accounts to sync, we setup an alternate UPN in local AD using that .org name. As far as I know, the alternate UPN does not apply to computers, and the computers would not be synced to Azure. Might that explain why all devices are registered and not joined?

@Matthew-Smallwood

Thanks! Yes, I think the coverage was great.

I used a combination of the video course here and the Microsoft Learn paths for AZ-104. If you haven't used them yet, I'd def check them out. Completely free.

Hey @Ryan-Kular ,

I hope you are finding the videos helpful!

You shouldn't have to do anything to OneDrive, unless you've changed the default location. By default OneDrive creates a folder in the users profile, such as C:\Users\aubri\OneDrive - ITProTVDemo. It looks like a local path to the user, but the session host is mounting the VHD that contains the user profile. So it's not really on the C drive of the VM.

To verify this is working, you can add a second session host to your host pool. Then turn on drain mode on the first session host to force the user to connect to the second session host. Then verify the OneDrive files are available.

Let me know if this works. If not we can troubleshoot more.

@Ryan-Kular ,

I hope all is well. Have you taken a look at the following Azure Service offering?

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/storage/import-export/

It is designed to address the issues you are having, and is relatively easy to deploy and use.

@Neil-Clark ,

Glad to help.

You might consider a hybrid scenario. With an Azure subscription, you could sync your on-premises accts with Azure AD. Everything would still be managed with local AD (Group policy, security groups, password policy, etc.) But you could begin to use conditional access policies to enforce MFA.

When the time comes, if you have questions, let me know!

Cheers!

Please close the call. I have created Windows 10 machines. indvidually. hopefully when there are more specific guides I an revisit.
Rgds

Hi @Gordon-Anker ,

Kaplan Exams provides our practice tests, and unfortunately they don't tell us when they plan on updating/releasing a new practice test.

You can still find the AZ-103 course in our library under the legacy category. You should be able to launch the AZ-103 practice test from there. I would use this until they release an AZ-104 practice exam.

Hi Adam,

Thanks for the reply and found the content as well.

You guys are doing a great job.

@Ryan-Kular ,

I wouldn't spend too much time on the differences.

For the AZ-900 It's more important for this exam to understand the types of databases Azure offers. Understanding that if you are considering migrating a workload that uses PostgreSQL, Azure supports that. If your developers want to create a new app that uses MySQL, Azure supports that.

Brilliant. It is VNET peering. I created a test environment in Azure and was able to use VNet peering to connect the two VNETs together. Just got to remember that VNETs cannot span subscriptions and regions.

Thanks Mike.

@Ryan-Kular ,

I hope all is well. Traditionally, the performance issues that we attempt to address when deploying/using a database server arise from the limitations of the disk subsystem and our ability to access information quickly enough to allow for acceptable performance under load.

Databases can be heavy users of the disk(s) in/on the system(s) where they are installed, and as a result you need to plan for the type of usage that you are likely to experience over the lifetime of the database and it's usage.

The standard approach is to separate the data and logging functions of the database by installing and configuring them to use separate physical/virtual drives. This allows the system to use 1 drive for accessing/storing/processing data and any requests/needs around those activities, and a distinctly different drive for the logging that will take place as part of the use of the database.

If you choose to further optimize your configuration, you can decide to deploy with SSD drives instead of traditional HDD drives, as these will allow for much better read and response times for writes.

There are additional issues to consider, such as the amount of RAM (memory) that you are allocating to the VM/machine that will run the database(s). The simple rule is the more RAM, the better the performance, BUT the real secret is to understand that you need to have enough RAM available to load the entire database into memory so that it is able to run faster.

In addition, the real trick ultimately to database optimization is the data itself and the queries used to access it, along with the structure(s) used to store and work with the data across the database (the tables).

You can take a look at the URL's below for some basic introductory guidance on how to examine and optimize your data and queries as well as longer term performance monitoring to ensure everything stays healthy once you optimize:

How to optimize SQL Server query performance:
https://solutioncenter.apexsql.com/how-to-optimize-sql-server-query-performance/

How to Check and Improve Server Performance With SQL Query Optimization and Tuning:
https://www.dnsstuff.com/sql-server-query-optimization

SQL and Database Performance Tuning Guide and Checklist: Expert Tips:
https://www.dnsstuff.com/sql-and-database-performance-tuning-guide-and-checklist-expert-tips

Good Luck !!

Cheers,

Adam