u/brianveldman

​I’ve just published a new blog for anyone working with Azure Virtual Desktop and Infrastructure as Code. In my previous blog, I covered deploying stateful AVD session hosts using the new Azure Virtual Desktop Session Host Configuration feature together with Azure Bicep. This time, I’m taking it a step further and looking at stateless session hosts combined with Ephemeral OS Disks. Instead of maintaining individual VMs, session hosts can be treated as disposable resources that are recreated from a standardized image. Link to blog

​I’ve just published a new blog for anyone working with Azure Virtual Desktop and Infrastructure as Code. In my previous blog, I covered deploying stateful AVD session hosts using the new Azure Virtual Desktop Session Host Configuration feature together with Azure Bicep. This time, I’m taking it a step further and looking at stateless session hosts combined with Ephemeral OS Disks. Instead of maintaining individual VMs, session hosts can be treated as disposable resources that are recreated from a standardized image. Link to blog

​I’ve just published a new blog for anyone working with Azure Virtual Desktop and Infrastructure as Code. In my previous blog, I covered deploying stateful AVD session hosts using the new Azure Virtual Desktop Session Host Configuration feature together with Azure Bicep. This time, I’m taking it a step further and looking at stateless session hosts combined with Ephemeral OS Disks. Instead of maintaining individual VMs, session hosts can be treated as disposable resources that are recreated from a standardized image. Link to blog

VM Applications are a resource type in Azure Compute Gallery that provide a flexible way to manage and deploy applications across Azure VMs and Virtual Machine Scale Sets. The main benefit is that you can separate application installation from your base VM images. Instead of rebuilding and republishing an image every time an application changes, you can update the VM Application independently. This can significantly reduce image maintenance, speed up deployments, and make it easier to roll out application updates across your VMs and scale sets.

For those interested in this approach, I wrote a blog post about deploying VM Applications using Azure Bicep and Azure Verified Modules. Link to blog

VM Applications are a resource type in Azure Compute Gallery that provide a flexible way to manage and deploy applications across Azure VMs and Virtual Machine Scale Sets. The main benefit is that you can separate application installation from your base VM images. Instead of rebuilding and republishing an image every time an application changes, you can update the VM Application independently. This can significantly reduce image maintenance, speed up deployments, and make it easier to roll out application updates across your VMs and scale sets.

For those interested in this approach, I wrote a blog post about deploying VM Applications using Azure Bicep and Azure Verified Modules. Link to blog

I wanted to thank you all for your support throughout the past year. It means a lot, and I'm happy to share that it resulted in another year as a Microsoft MVP! 😍

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🚨If you are using Azure Files with Active Directory Domain Services authentication, there is an important change you should not ignore. Microsoft has announced that future Windows Server updates will change the default Kerberos ticket encryption from RC4 to AES-256. While this is a welcome security improvement, it also means that Azure Files deployments still relying on the older configuration may experience authentication failures if they are not upgraded in time. In this blog, I will explain how to identify Azure Files storage accounts that still require an upgrade, how to verify your current configuration, and how to safely migrate to AES-256 using the latest AzFilesHybrid tooling.

🚨If you are using Azure Files with Active Directory Domain Services authentication, there is an important change you should not ignore. Microsoft has announced that future Windows Server updates will change the default Kerberos ticket encryption from RC4 to AES-256. While this is a welcome security improvement, it also means that Azure Files deployments still relying on the older configuration may experience authentication failures if they are not upgraded in time. In this blog, I will explain how to identify Azure Files storage accounts that still require an upgrade, how to verify your current configuration, and how to safely migrate to AES-256 using the latest AzFilesHybrid tooling.

Azure Virtual Desktop Session Host Configuration introduces a modern way to deploy and manage session hosts by defining their configuration directly within the Host Pool. Instead of manually provisioning virtual machines and configuring them individually, Session Host Configuration enables a standardized and automated deployment experience. This helps ensure that every session host is deployed with the same settings, image, networking, identity, and security configuration, making Azure Virtual Desktop environments easier to manage at scale. In this blog, we will explore how to automate the deployment of Azure Virtual Desktop by using the new Session Host Configuration feature together with Azure Bicep.

With Microsoft Entra Workload Identity Federation, Azure now supports a fully secretless authentication flow between managed identities and multitenant applications. This enables Azure Container Apps, Functions, Automation Accounts, and other workloads to securely access resources in another tenant without storing credentials at all. In this blog, we will build a native cross tenant authentication setup.

With Microsoft Entra Workload Identity Federation, Azure now supports a fully secretless authentication flow between managed identities and multitenant applications. This enables Azure Container Apps, Functions, Automation Accounts, and other workloads to securely access resources in another tenant without storing credentials at all. In this blog, we will build a native cross tenant authentication setup.

With Microsoft Entra Workload Identity Federation, Azure now supports a fully secretless authentication flow between managed identities and multitenant applications. This enables Azure Container Apps, Functions, Automation Accounts, and other workloads to securely access resources in another tenant without storing credentials at all. In this blog, we will build a native cross tenant authentication setup.

With the release of Azure Bicep v0.44.1, extendable parameter files have reached General Availability (GA). This feature introduces the extends keyword for .bicepparam files, making it easier to reuse parameter configurations across environments while reducing duplication and improving maintainability. In this blog, I will explain how extendable parameter files work and showcase a practical scenario where they can simplify your Bicep deployments. 💪🏻

With the release of Azure Bicep v0.44.1, extendable parameter files have reached General Availability (GA). This feature introduces the extends keyword for .bicepparam files, making it easier to reuse parameter configurations across environments while reducing duplication and improving maintainability. In this blog, I will explain how extendable parameter files work and showcase a practical scenario where they can simplify your Bicep deployments. 💪🏻