Category: Education

Cisco Live – Attendee Guide(s)

Reading Time: 5 minutes

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I’m writing this from a couple of different perspectives about attending conferences.

  • Cisco Live – This is written based on Cisco Live events but is useful for any vendor / technology (or even other industry/profession) conferences.
  • First time attendee / non social person
  • On-site attendee
  • Remote attendee

I’m going to try and mold these elements together with the obvious point that there are things in person that are different remote so I’ll try and separate those into different groups while keeping a high level ideas/concepts together.

Onsite/In Person Attendance

This can be very overwhelming on many fronts. Depending on the size of the conference it’s a sensory overload. You often have some sort of show room floor like the World of Solutions at Cisco Live. It’s like being at a concert full of people you don’t know as well as a car dealership. Ton’s of conversations, and tons of selling but take a step back and breath. Lot’s of awesome can come out of it.

First off, listen! Ambient learning/queues are great. You’ll hear a lot of very smart people talking, conversations and topics that might peak your interest. Which brings Second!

Dig into that, if a conversation, topic, product, etc. intrigues you dive in. Remember you are all there for the same reasons and it’s highly unlikely you will get pushed out of or denied part of a conversation.

Third, as overwhelming as it is it’s a great way to make connections both in person and eventually remotely through the years to come. The best part is perspectives. You often get to learn different cultural perspectives as attendees come from all over the world. You can gain inspiration on the way things might be done elsewhere and once you build that connection your might even get some great recipes to try out 🙂

Don’t overdo it on learning classes. It’s easy to burn yourself out by making the entire conference about the classes offered. I’m not saying don’t do them as they are wonderful and ran by very smart individuals but you can spend the entire week trying to soak up all that knowledge and miss out on the social interactions/perspectives/fun/learning.

With that keep an eye out for things like the Social Media Hub and Certification Lounge. Let’s not forget the store where often our favorite cert guide authors do meet ups. These are great places to get in on conversations and discussions and as I’ve said there isn’t a conference I’ve went to where people turn you away.

If you get invited to a dinner/happy hour do it! This is part of why I say don’t wear yourself out on just doing classes because these events happen and again, you’ll make awesome connections and have good discussions even if you just passively listen and say a word here and there.

I guess I am trying to say the TLDR: for in person attendance is to leverage the aspect of learning (the classes/sessions) that might be relevant to you right then, but also take a deep breath in the morning, and interact. You’ll meet fellow industry colleagues, industry rock stars, and ultimately make friends and learn a lot along the way.

Remote Attendee

So the stars didn’t align and you can’t attend Cisco Live in person. That doesn’t mean you are going to miss out on all the news and hype coming from the convention center floors. There are a few key ways to stay involved.

Live Broadcasts:

Cisco Live has quite a few live broadcasts of key events such as keynotes, panels, and innovation talks. The best part is……they offer these for free! They don’t even require a login to watch! “How do I watch these?” you ask. Simply go to the homepage for Cisco Live. They conveniently have a page with the schedule and even ICS downloads so you can add it to your calendar and block that time off distraction free! To see the schedule and information go to the Cisco Live broadcasts page linked below!

https://www.ciscolive.com/global/attend/broadcast-agenda.html

There are many other broadcasts that happen during the events. Often broadcasters such as Tech Field Day and various live steamers on platforms such as Twitch and YouTube live stream within the means they are allowed. I can’t speak to any of them with confirmed streams but encourage you to check them out.

Social Media:

I can’t say this enough. JOIN. I’m not asking you to post, or be active (it would be awesome if you did though) but there are a lot of us on platforms that will be barraging twitter with the hashtag #CLUS. Also keep in mind the hashtag #CISCOCHAMPION and possibly even #CISCOLIVE. It’s been a change over the years with more platforms outside of X(Twitter) such as BlueSky, Mastodon, etc, however vendors and the conference itself leverage social media heavily during the events. You can also follow specific individuals and companies you find interesting and will get a lot of information about new technologies from both Cisco and various vendors. A lot will come straight from the World of Solutions floor as well as keynotes and sessions. Keep up with the tags and follow them to keep up on the event.

More common now with all the interactive streaming/broadcasts are rooms on platforms such as Webex and Discord. Find communities you can join and keep up on the interaction and updates from individuals that are on site or even remote but might be following different channels/websites then you.

Blogs

A lot of individuals in attendance write blog posts. While I will admit that most of the time they aren’t updated daily during Cisco Live many will post within the following week. Also, often blogs from both attendees and companies are scheduled to be published as announcements and releases are made during the conference. These blogs are often linked in social media posts and you can utilize various utilities to keep updated on new posts.

VLOG/Video Content

On top of regular text social media platforms there is a growing number of live streamers and Youtube (etc) content creators. I haven’t talked specifically to any but in years past there have been numerous daily updates from the conference on various medias. Keep an eye out for them!

INTERACT!!!!

I’m stressing this. This is why I also send pleas for you to join Twitter/BlueSky/Mastadon/etc and follow people. You will find that a lot of the most prominent posters on twitter (specifically look for #CiscoChampion) are quite happy to ask questions on your behalf or seek out an answer for you if possible. We don’t bite! We are social for a reason. Secondly, Tweet at @CiscoLive. They have some incentives for remote attendees and I’m not going to lie….that social media team is the best in the biz. They rock and will respond to the best of their abilities!

I look forward to hearing from you! Please do not hesitate to ask me questions on twitter. I can be found by following @mattouellette. Enjoy the show! Don’t forget to block out time on your calendar to watch or catch up on the events you have high interest in!

General Summary

Global ideas that cross both onsite and remote attendance:

  • Don’t overwhelm yourself
  • Listen and join in
  • Interact whether its social, technological, project, vendor, etc related
  • Make connections
  • Hear experiences and share yours with your industry peers

As a bonus a fellow Cisco Champion whom many of you may or may not (okay you probably do) know, our friendly trainer & author Wendell Odom gave me permission to link his video for attendees new to/studying for CCNA with a perspective of remote attendance. Please note I did not watch this video until after I wrote this so there may be crossover but no intention of idea stealing as we share what we do because we like to help but he’s a much more seasoned veteran of this industry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bfea2qOavJM

Additional tip: If you are remote you are likely working on other tasks. This is where the streams from the official event, or live content creators are great because you can have them up in the background and if something perks up your ears, you can stop for a minute to watch/note the topic and visit it later. This leads back to my previous post about learning methods and ambient learning.

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Utilizing Learning Methods – Study Strategy

Reading Time: 3 minutes

It never ends! Once again I’m going to write this from an I.T. perspective however, it’s a strategy and can be molded/adapted to any industry. In I.T. we don’t have a choice but to constantly learn. New phones, new switches, new routers, firewalls, software, etc etc etc. It’s almost every day that something new comes out.

There are two key pieces to this idea for me. First, we all have things to do during the day. Second, we all have a life outside of those daily tasks be that family events, kids sporting events, yard/house work, making dinner and doing dishes. You get what I mean. So how do we maintain this without giving all our friend/family time and hobbies up?

Well there is something I’ve went over before which is burning your lunch time learning/studying but I want to go a bit deeper. I’ll start with three terms I use (and my personal definitions).

  • Ambient Learning: Background information. Think of this like listening to a podcast in the background.
  • Learning by Osmosis: Watching someone who already knows do a task and soaking it in.
  • Tactile Learning: Hands on learning performing a task.

So how do we utilize these? They all play well together to be honest. I’ll give you examples.

I shared an office as a route/switch network engineer with a lead voice/collaboration engineer. There was a lot of Ambient Learning just due to hearing him on the phone walking through things in his role. Be it end user or TAC cases with the vendor(s). Naturally I started to pick up terms/concepts/etc from just hearing it due to sharing an office.

This offered me the chance to ask questions and go shoulder surf him during a task and Learn by Osmosis watching him handle it. After a while, this lead to Tactile Learning. He gave me access to the system and would let me help him on common tickets (voicemail pin resets, directory number changes, etc). With that I still had the Learning by Osmosis on the other hand at my disposal sharing the office. If I wasn’t sure on something he’d either show me or walk me through it.

These tactics applied to other jobs as well getting to shadow my lead engineers in the sense of sitting in on meetings with them (Ambient Learning), Watching their process on tasks (Learning by Osmosis), and asking to take on tasks off their hands I was comfortable with (Tactile Learning).

How else can you utilize these concepts? A simple thing is to think of it like listening to a podcast/audio book on your drive to work. For me, I like to have webinars/youtube/podcasts/etc up in the background during my daily tasks. This is Ambient learning for me. I’ll naturally pick up things just hearing it in the background while still working on my tasks. Kind of like the things/sayings you pick up from your parents as you grow up. The benefit of doing this is if something perks up my ears I can either move back to the webinar and/or go to a recorded demonstration and take on the Learning by Osmosis idea. Think of that as watching your parents driving the car, you slowly absorb their actions and movements for said action.

That may go even further to where I end up trying it myself via either a lab environment or in certain scenarios a full on hands on mentored attempt at that task.

Every environment is different but I hope you can utilize these ideas as a way to keep moving forward during the day. Hopefully it can help give a bit of personal time back in your personal/family life. I realize some situations such as a call center/help desk/NOC role may restrict having something playing in the background due to the nature of the role but you can still leverage the idea while cooking dinner, doing dishes, mowing the lawn and so forth.

In summary I like to utilize this process:

  • Ambient Learning: Something on in the background
  • Learning by Osmosis: If something peaks my interest in hearing it, see it done
  • Tactile Learning: If it sticks, go try it myself (lab, mentored/coached hands on)

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Using your notes for a purpose, build a quick reference/cheat sheet – Study Idea

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Continuing my series of posts about study tactics I use I’d like to offer this one to you all. As usual in this case I’m going to base it off of an I.T. related topic but it can most certainly be expanded to any topic/studying scenario.

Unless you are blessed with eidetic(idetic)/photographic memory (if you are I’m jealous) a lot of us take notes as we study. Of course many of us are taught “Write it down, you’ll remember it better” or similar throughout our growing up and education. The question becomes more of what do you do with those notes?

Personally, I have a certain skill of forgetting about them in a long lost world of chaos and just running around like a toddler. So the other night falling asleep I came up with an idea (Okay, no surely I’m not the first one but passing it along). The purpose of notes is to look back at them. Sure, I may remember about something at a point and write it down but this post is in the nature of studying for some sort of practical situation/exam or written exam.

My idea to force myself to look back at them is this, make a quick reference/cheat sheet based on your notes. Here are my thoughts behind this. First off, it makes you look back at those notes. The concept of quick reference/cheat sheet is it’s the key pieces of information. To build one means reading through your notes and picking out highlight items. This first has you reading your notes again, second getting that highlight item out of it, third maybe going off “I forgot all about that section/topic” which leads you to revisit it. Fourth, you build that sheet.

So now, you’ve revisited everything, found out things you forgot and went back to, but now you also have a nice quick reference for the day(s) before/of your scenario of practical/written situation as a fast refresher on key items.

This is just an idea I’m using and trust me some of my ideas are flawed 🙂 However, I wanted to share it as it may be a good tactic others can use to assist in their learning paths. Below is an example of a quick reference/cheat sheet I’m building off my notes for AZ-700. Please let me know if you have any other concepts/ideas/tactics for learning and if you’d like to share as a guest post.

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Cisco Network Academy – Leveraging Free Learning Resources

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In the end we all know that in this industry we have to keep learning……all…….the……time……forever….
Cisco Network Academy has some great free courses and learning paths.

Over the last month or so I went through two of the learning paths on the platform:
1) Junior Cybersecurity Analyst – Multiple courses covering the basics of Cybersecurity from a networking perspective with a final exam over all courses.

2) Network Technician – Multiple courses covering the basics of a Network Technician with a final exam over all courses

This was a great refresher on a lot of topics. Humbling as well as I was missing answers on things I feel I should have remembered. In the end you achieve a course completion badge for each course on credly and once passing the learning path a badge for that as well. It’s a great way to either get introduced or refresh your knowledge and be able to share it on platforms like linkedin to show motivation.

There are plenty of other platforms and vendors offering free courses similar. It’s a good way to keep moving forward and keep our crazy I.T. industry minds active! Good luck on all your studies everyone!

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Just Write (Type) It Down: A Note Taking – Study Strategy!

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Okay sorry about that! The title is (but also isn’t) misleading. I’m going to write this from an I.T. perspective but in all truth it applies to anything you may be studying.

In the field of I.T. it’s a given…You will always be studying/learning new things. Only always as some would say. Things move so fast, and tasks, technologies, plans, procedures, etc are always changing. It’s really the same in any field to be honest.

One thing I was taught well back in early elementary school was to write it down because writing it down helps you remember it. Well in my case two things, I’m a south paw (aka left handed) and yes I have that stereotypical left handed writing that even if I write the word “the” on a piece of paper odds are tomorrow I can’t even read it 🙂

The second thing is it’s such a digital world and well, I’m kind of a technology guy so I choose to type out my notes. For a few reasons such as be able to search them, and the ease of sharing them with others. Or even collaborating on note taking. And as noted above to be honest, so I can actually read them later!

I’m going to write this as my strategy for note taking using a specific platform/software, as well as based on a self paced course. At the end I will outline at a high level the same(ish) strategy for things like exams or specific technology or books. I’m hoping to get a guest write up from someone that still prefers to hand write their notes because I think that’s a super fun way to do it I just can’t because my handwriting looks like I gave PacketPup a pen and piece of paper.

In my case I prefer to use Microsoft OneNote. For me it makes it simple to share across devices, collaborate, organize, and search. Also allowing me to export to PDF’s or whatnot for storage/archive purposes. I’d like to hear from others what platforms/software you use for digital notes and how you use them. If you’d like, we can set up a guest post to share.

My outline for this is going to based on the (currently) free Junior Cybersecurity Analyst self paced course on Cisco’s Networking Academy (NetAcad).

One of the first things I do is create a new OneNote notebook titled the same as the course (etc) I’m following. This helps because then I have a notebook for every Topic/Course/Book/Exam/Technology I study.

I won’t bore you with the first step of creating a notebook in OneNote as I have a hunch I can put a Benjamin on a bet you all know how to do that even if you don’t use the application. So we’ll start with my process of organizing.

First thing is first I peek at the courses outline or (exam blueprint/book chapter/topic structure). Usually (not always) the self paced learning plans anywhere are organized into a hierarchy of the course as a whole, with sub courses and within the sub courses modules (whatever term they use) and within a module topic areas.

That’s how I like to organize my notes. I build a notebook, within the notebook I create what Microsoft OneNote calls section groups for each course in the learning path in the case of this Cisco NetAcad course. Then within the section group I create a section for each module. In the section I then create individual pages for each sub section within that module. At that point I use bulleted notes on the individual page for the sub topics. That sounds complicated but can be modified/adjust for the different types of studying as mentioned above with book chapters/topics, exam blueprints, days of instructor led training etc. As an example look at the screenshot below outlining the notebook/section group/section/page/bulleted notes hierarchy. (Note titles based off Cisco NetAcad course not my own)

I’m curious to your organization structure while note taking. I would also as mentioned enjoy a handwritten note taker to do a guest post. I know some like individual notebooks for every topic/course/book and some like to use those adhesive flags to separate sections in said notebook but would love to share those strategies as well but as I said…..I have Dr.s handwriting being a southpaw so I can’t read what I wrote down yesterday 🙂

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Basics to Begin With

Reading Time: 4 minutes

So glancing through various social media a few weeks ago an industry friend posted this:

After asking he was okay with me kind of stealing this topic to make this post. Of course please follow Rowell. He’s a great asset to the community, always sharing topics and advice to everyone and overall just a nice dude. https://rowelldionicio.com/

I’m going to take a step back from his post for a minute. I was lucky enough to grow up in a household where my father spent his entire career working for the telephone company. That kind of gave me a head start. We were early adopters of computing and due to his employment at the telco we had early access to dial-up internet. Also, albeit just fun and games when we’d go out on a fishing trip we’d often stop at the central office’s as he knew of issues and while he fixed them gave me wire and a punch down tool with an empty block to play around with. Kind of gave me a spark later on.

So it became time to graduate high school and go to my local community college. Plenty of degree options but they had one they called “Network Administration”. However, as you looked at the outline of courses involved it was more basic computers and networks. Which in hindsight I’m happy about.

Of course during college I had all the odd jobs: construction/roofing/lumberjack/sandwich shop/etc but they way the degree was structured was this. Microsoft computing foundations, courses build around CompTIA A+, and courses built around CompTIA Network+. Aside from MS foundations it wasn’t really built around any vendors. It was build around the ideas and concepts of computer and networking technology to lay out the fundamentals.

This was great. As a natural progression of those courses I of course took up studying for those exams which helped build study strategies for learning and ultimately obtaining certifications to try and help spark my career.

So where does that actually take me. Well, after building up from those courses and studying those basics for the CompTIA exams it eventually got me into an EasyTech roll at Staples. Eventually I moved away from my parents house and over time got a help desk roll at a healthcare company. It was a small team of 2 helpdesk/deskside support people (one of them me), 1 guy that ran the network, and a couple app analysts for the EMR apps. Slowly I started to get involved into the networking and eventually was able to get sent to a CCNA class. Let me tell you sideways to none knowing networking basics from the Network+ studying/coursework/exam made learning the Cisco way so much easier.

Overtime I ended up working for VAR’s/Consulting and began to learn more and more vendor deployments. To Rowell’s point in his post. Knowing the networking basics made learning that so much easier. While they all might do things a little different the base of technology follows protocols and concepts.

Overall a route is a route, an IP Address is an IP Address, a VLAN is a VLAN. Sure every vendor might call it something different or have some fancy marketing name for it but if you get the concept the only hard part about moving on is memorizing the nuance marketing. Hello in English is different then hello in German but if you understand a hello you can get going.

I learned a lot about this at one VAR I worked at when SD-WAN was a big push. Some customers wanted vendor A, others wanted to use vendor B. So I had to read up and understand them. When it boiled down to it the basic concepts were the same and you know what never truly changed other than implementation? The basic networking concept of routing.

I’m following the same logic as I choose to chase Microsoft Azure Networking AZ-700 but thought to myself, start with a foundation first. So the first thing I did was study the Azure Fundamentals AZ-900 and take that exam. Glad I did. The Fundamentals outlined Microsoft’s Azure VNets which are literally a huge foundational concept as part of all of the Azure Networking. As I study I learn how these basics are key. Funny enough, general networking basics play a huge role as networks/routing/subnetting/IP addresses are all pivotal to know and understand.

Understanding the basics helps you in troubleshooting issues as well. As networking folk we often get pulled into trouble situations. Knowing how to diagnose the core concepts of networking is important in helping rule out network issues vs client/server and application issues. I’ve used those basics all the time to verify end to end connectivity so we could collectively as a team lean on the app or server or workstation to figure out what was causing the issue.

People do it, just go head first into things like CCNA/CCNP and other vendors exams, but in the long run. Understanding the basics aids you first in troubleshooting and verifying, but as to Rowell’s point, makes learning a new technology easier since they are built on those foundations.

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I’ll take two or more at a time please – A study method

Reading Time: 3 minutes

We Information Technology folks (e.g. Network Engineers, Security Engineers, Cloud Engineers, Software Engineers, etc. the list goes on) are always in a predicament. I can’t speak for everyone but a lot, if not most of us, kind of do it to ourselves in a sense. What is that predicament?

Well, I guess it has multiple elements to it in my opinion. To start as technology changes, grows, expands, whatever you want to call it we often get geeked out about the new. It’s kind of in our blood. The problem is we have to maintain what we already know while keeping up with and learning whats new.

This maintenance comes in a few forms. One is keeping up with the environment we work in. It’s elements, configurations, upcoming changes, etc. Another large thing is keeping our credentials up to date and valid. Some things stay the same which gets tedious to go over again and again and constantly paying to uphold certifications. These change over time, but often hold onto a lot of technology that gets tiresome to re-study time and time again to put it back in your brain just for an exam. As time goes, new elements are added yes, and that’s a fun part of repeating these exams to re-certify but that is the same reason I got burnt out allowing expiry of a lot of credentials I’ve held.

Now there is learning something new. This is exciting and a lot easier to maintain focus and a study schedule. No, I’m not saying you have to study for an exam or certification but I find using those as outlines a good way to organize forward progress and small achievements/goals covering broken down topics that fall under a “section” or “category”. For me I usually do this and take the exam/certification because if I break down studying using those as outlines I might as well attempt it.

So whats with the “I’ll take two or more” thing. It’s an idea I use to keep from the burnout. The thought process is to study for two or more (obviously allowable open/available time based) things at once. Personally my plan is to pick one credential I want to maintain/renew (or in my case obtain again from having it active previously) and pick another that is something new to spark that excitement back into learning/studying.

This allows me to work a bit on that tedious task of going over the same content again and again so when I get that study exhaustion I can bounce to the new and more fun to me thing I’m studying.

This takes some dedication as you can imagine. Organization is also key, not just in note taking and planning time, sections/category breakdowns, but most importantly keeping things separate in your head as well. This is different for everyone but I like using OneNote for note taking and utilizing the training books/videos/course/exam blueprints sections and categories as an outline.

This strategy isn’t for everyone but I figured I’d share it in hopes it can help someone. Also, don’t think this is limited to Information Technology. It could certainly be used in other arenas or even as a way to break away from the doldrums of the field you are maintaining knowledge in. For instance, maybe you are an electrician and need to maintain journeyman statuses but are burning out, you could pick up learning a new language as your second topic as a getaway, or maybe a good getaway is picking up culinary or BBQ skills.

Let’s keep the train wheels moving in this exciting, constantly changing and evolving landscape we call life. High fives and best of luck!

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Microsoft AZ-700: Module 8 Additional Resource

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Notes from MS Learn AZ-700 Module 8: Design and Implement Network Monitoring – Unit 5: Additional Resources

Resources from MS Learn

Network monitoring solutions

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Microsoft AZ-700: Exercise – Monitor a Load Balancer Resource Using Azure Monitor

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Notes from MS Learn AZ-700 Module 8: Design and Implement Network Monitoring – Unit 3: Exercise – Monitor a Load Balancer Resource Using Azure Monitor

Tasks (taken from MS Learn: Items without “Task” in front of them are personal additions)

  • Task 1: Create the virtual network.
    • Search and click Virtual networks in portal
    • Select Create
      • Select or Create New under Resource Group (create new in this example)
        • Enter unique name and click OK
      • Enter Unique name in Instance details Name box
      • Choose appropriate Region from dropdown
      • Click Next : IP Addresses >
        • Delete default IPv4 address space
        • Enter new IPv4 address space
        • Click add subnet
          • In right panel enter unique name
          • Enter appropriate Subnet address range
          • Click Add
      • Click Next : Security >
      • Toggle BastionHost to Enable
      • Enter Bastion Name in box
      • Enter AzureBastionSubnet address space in box
      • Select or create new Public IP address (create new in this example)
        • Enter unique name in dialog
        • Click OK
    • Click Review + create
    • Once validation succeeds click Create
  • Task 2: Create the load balancer.
    • Search and choose Load Balancers in portal
    • Click Create
      • Choose Resource Group from dropdown
      • Enter unique name in Instance details name box
      • Click Next : Frontend IP Configuration >
      • Click Add a frontend IP configuratioin
        • In right panel Enter unique name
        • Choose backend subnet from dropdown
        • Click add
    • Click Review + Create
    • Once validated click Create
  • Task 3: Create a backend pool.
    • On Deployment complete page from above click Go to resource
    • In left panel click Backend pools
      • Click Add
        • Enter Unique Name
        • Click Save
  • Task 4: Create a health probe.
    • In left panel choose Health Probes
    • Select Add in menu bar
      • Enter Unique name
      • Change Protocol to HTTP in dropdown
      • Change Interval to 15
      • Click Add
  • Task 5: Create a load balancer rule.
    • In left panel click Load balancing rules
    • Click Add in menu bar
      • Enter unique name
      • Choose Frontend IP Address from dropdown
      • Choose Backend Pool from dropdown
      • Enter Port Number in box
      • Enter backend port number in box
      • Choose created health probe from dropdown
      • Adjust Idle timeout slider to 15 min
      • Click Add
  • Task 6: Create backend servers.
    • Open PowerShell in Azure Portal cloudshell
    • Upload template and parameters files as done in previous exercises
    • Verify account and set subscription and Resource Group variable as done in previous exercises
    • Deploy the 3 VMs using the 3 different parameters files using the same tasks as previous excercises
  • Task 7: Add VMs to the backend pool.
    • Under Load balancers settings in the left pane select Backend Pools
    • Click myBackendPool
    • Click Add under IP configurations
    • Check all three new VMs checkboxes and click add
    • Click Save
  • Task 8: Install IIS on the VMs.
    • Navigate to Virtual Machines in Portal
    • Connect via Bastion to the first VM
    • Open PowerShell in session
      • (Install-WindowsFeature -name Web-Server -IncludeManagementTools)
      • (Remove-Item C:|inetpub\wwwroot\iisstart.htm)
      • Add-Content -Path “C:\inetpub\wwwroot\iisstart.htm” -Value $(“HelloWorld from ” + $env:computername))
      • Repeat for other VMs
  • Task 9: Test the load balancer.
    • Under Virtual Machines Page click Create
    • Choose Azure Virtual Machine
      • Choose appropriate Resource group from dropdown
      • Enter Unique Virtual machine name in box
      • Choose Windows Server 2019 Datacenter – x64 Gen2 from dropdown under image
      • Under size dropdown choose Standard_D2s_v3 – 2 vcpus, 8GiB memory ($137.24/month)
      • Enter creds
      • Click Next : Disks >
      • Click Next : Networking >
        • Under Public IP dropdown select None
        • Toggle NIC network security group to Advanced
          • Under Configure network security group dropdown choose myNSG
    • Click Review + Create
    • Once validated click Create
    • Navigate to Load Balancer (search under portal)
      • Click new LB (myIntLoadBalancer)
      • Click See more
      • Copy private IP
    • Connect to test Virtual Machine via Bastion
      • Open Internet Explorer
      • Browse to LB IP
      • Refresh
        • Should show diff VMs during refreshes
        • Close IE
  • Task 10: Create a Log Analytics Workspace.
    • Search and select log analytics workspaces in portal
    • Click Create
    • Choose appropriate resource group from dropdown
    • Enter Unique Name
    • Choose appropriate region from dropdown
    • Click Review and Create
    • Once validated click Create
  • Task 11: Use Functional Dependency View.
    • In portal navigate to previously create LB
    • Choose Insights in left panel
    • Close metrics pane
    • Click zoom button to zoom in
    • Hovering offers details
    • Click Download Topology
    • Click View Metrics to reopen pane
  • Task 12: View detailed metrics.
    • After closing Metric pane select view detailed metrics
    • Click Frontend & Backend Availability to view response
    • Click Data Throughput
  • Task 13: View resource health.
    • Search and click Monitor in portal
    • Click Service Health in left panel
    • Click Resource Health in left panel
      • In Resource type dropdown choose load balancer
      • Choose new load balancer
  • Task 14: Configure diagnostic settings.
    • Navigate back to new load balancer page
    • Click diagnostic settings in left panel
    • Select Add diagnostic setting
      • Enter unique name
      • Check All Metrics box
      • Click Save
      • Close page
  • Task 15: Clean up resources.
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Microsoft AZ-700: Monitor Your Networks Using Azure Network Watcher

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Notes from MS Learn AZ-700 Module 8: Design and Implement Network Monitoring – Unit 4: Monitor Your Networks Using Azure Network Watcher

Azure Network Watcher is regional service enabling you to monitor/diagnose network conditions. Allows to diagnose problems at end-to-end network level. Network dianostic and visual tools are available with Network Watcher helping understand, diagnose, and gain. Insight to your Azure network. Designed to monitor/repair network health of IaaS including VMs, VNets, App Gateways, and LB

  • Azure Network Watcher scenarios (example)
    • Automate remote network monitor with packet capture
      • Monitor/Diag network issues without logging into VMs
      • Trigger PCAP by setting alerts
      • Gain real-time perf info at packet level
      • Investigate in detail when issue observed
    • Gain insight into network traffic using flow logs
      • Build deep understanding of traffic patterns using NSG flow logs
      • Info helps gather data for compliance,auditing,monitoring of sec profile
    • Diagnose VPN connectivity
      • Provides ability to diagnose most common VPN GW/Connection issues
      • Allows identifying issue using details logs for further investigation
  • Azure Network Watcher Tools
    • Network Topology
      • Generates visual of resources in VNet as well as relationship between resources
    • Verify IP Flow
      • Diagnose connectivity issues from/to INET and from/to On-prem
    • Next Hop
      • Determine if traffic directed as intended
      • Info helps determine routing
      • Next hop could be INET/VirtualAppliance/Virtual Network Gateway/VNet/VNet Peering/None
    • Effective Security Rules
      • NSG are associated at subnet or NIC.
      • Effect rules returns all configured NSGs/rules associated to VM
      • Allows accessing things like open ports
    • VPN Diags
      • Returns info to aid tshoot of Gateways and connections
      • Summary info includes
        • Connection statistics
        • CPU Info
        • Memory Info
        • IKE errors
        • Packet Drops
        • Buffers
        • Events
    • Packet Capture
      • Capture sessions to track traffic to/from VM
      • Aids in diagnosing network anomalies
      • Gather network stats
      • Info on network intrusions
      • Debug client-server comms
    • Connection Troubleshooting
      • More recent addition to Watcher suite
      • Provides net perf data
    • NSG Flow Logs
      • Maps IP traffic through NSGs
        • Network Monitoring
          • Identify unknown or undesired traffic
          • Monitor traffic/bandwidth consumption
          • Filter logs by IP & port to understand app behavior
          • Export Flow Logs to tools for dashboards
        • Usage Monitoring/Optimization
          • Identify top talkers
          • Combine with data to identify cross-region traffic
          • Understand traffic growth for forcasting
          • Use to remove overtly restrictive rules
        • Compliance
          • Use flow data to verify isolation/compliance with enterprise rules
        • Network forensics/security analysis
          • Flows analyzed from compromised IP/NICs
          • Explort logs to SIEM/IDS tools
  • Connection Monitor Overview
    • Provides unified e-to-e monitoring in Network Watcher
    • Connection Monitor supports hybrid and Azure cloud
    • Provides tools to monitor/diagnose/view connectivity related metrics for Azure deployments
    • Benefits of Connection Monitor
      • Unified, Intuitive experience in Azure and Hybrid
      • Cross-region/workspace connectivity monitoring
      • High probing freq and better viz into network perf
      • Faster alerting for hybrid
      • Support connectivity checks based on HTTP/TCP/ICMP
      • Metrics/Log Analytics for both Azure and non-Azure tests
    • Example Use Cases
      • Front end web server VM communicating with DB in multi-tier app
        • Test connectivity between the two VMs
      • VMs in East US ping VMs in Central US
        • Compare cross-region latency
      • Multi on-premises office in diff locations
        • Office connect to MS 365 Url
        • Compare latency between locations
      • Hybrid app required connectivity to Azure storage
        • On-prem site and Azure app connect to same endpoint
        • Compare latency between the two
      • Check connectivity between on-prem and Azure VM’s hosting cloud app
  • Connection Monitor Components
    • Connection Monitor Resource
      • Region specific Azure resource
      • All following entities are properties of this
    • Endpoint
      • SRC/DST participating in connectivity checks
        • VM
        • On-prem agent
        • URL
        • IP’s
    • Test config
      • Protocol-specific config for test
      • Based on chosen protocol
      • Define port/threshold/frequency/etc
    • Test group
      • Group containing SRC/DST endpoints and test configs
      • Connection Minotir can contain multiple test groups
    • Test
      • Combo of SRC/DST endpoint and test config
      • Most granular
      • Includes percentage of checks failed and RTT
  • Traffic Analytics
    • Cloud-based providing visibility into user/app activity in cloud networks
    • Traffic Analytics looks at Network Watcher NSG flow logs to provide insight into traffic flow
    • Abilities
      • Visualize network activity across subscriptions and identify hot spots
      • Identify sec threat to and secure network with info such as
        • Open Ports
        • Apps attempting INET access
        • VMs connecting to rouge nets
      • Determine traffic flow patterns over Azure regions and INET
      • Pinpoint misconfigs leading to failed connections
  • How Traffic Analytics Works
    • Examines raw NSG flow logs
    • Aggregated and then enhanced
    • Enhancements
      • Geography
      • Security
      • Topology Info
    • Info stored in Log Analytics workspace
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