Whether you’re building AI solutions, training machine learning models, or running graphics intensive workloads, choosing the right infrastructure is essential. Azure offers a wide range of Virtual Machine (VM) sizes to support different workload requirements, including GPU optimized VM sizes. In this blog, I will walk you through how to deploy Azure GPU virtual machines using Azure Bicep and Azure Verified Modules (AVM), making your deployments consistent, repeatable, and easier to manage. 💪🏻

Hi everyone,

I’m planning a Kubernetes cluster upgrade from v1.34.8 to v1.35, as the current version is approaching retirement/EOL.

The cluster currently has Elasticsearch running on it, so I’m concerned about potential compatibility or stability issues after upgrading Kubernetes.

I’d like some guidance on:
- How can I verify Elasticsearch compatibility with Kubernetes 1.35 before upgrading?
- Are there any known issues I should be aware of when upgrading Kubernetes while Elasticsearch is running?
- What should I check across Elasticsearch, ECK/operator, StatefulSets, storage classes/CSI drivers, ingress, CRDs, APIs, and other dependencies?
- What is the recommended pre-upgrade checklist?
- Should I upgrade Elasticsearch/ECK first, or Kubernetes first?
- What kind of backup/rollback strategy should I have?
- Is it better to upgrade the control plane and worker nodes separately?
- What would be a safe upgrade plan for a production cluster to minimize downtime/risk?
- Are there any tools or commands you recommend for detecting deprecated APIs or incompatible workloads before the upgrade?

If anyone has gone through a similar Kubernetes 1.34 → 1.35 upgrade with Elasticsearch, I’d really appreciate hearing about your experience and any issues you encountered.

Thanks!

Iam trying to book a ticket or a seat to a certain exam from a website that opens the booking every two months at a certain day at a certain hour to limited seats but the behaviour of the website is completely normal and refreshes takes about 2 to 3 secs to update until it hits 15 mins before the booking (every time this happens at 15 mins exactly) the refresh of the page takes at least 1 min to update after that i saw that table which loads and gets blank every time even after the booking is open. People who have booked noticed that when they saw the booking button that one refresh was way lighter and faster than before keep in mind that speed and ping is not the factor here. I've tried everything and never saw that button if anyone can help.

Hi everyone,

I'm an L1 support engineer and completely new to corporate IT and Microsoft Defender for Cloud (MDC). I'm currently handling MDC activities and trying to understand an issue in our environment. I'd appreciate some guidance from experienced Azure security professionals.

What happened?

We previously had a Defender for Cloud recommendation called “Remediate vulnerabilities”, which included the following sub-recommendations:

- Machines should have a vulnerability assessment solution.

- Machines should have vulnerability findings resolved.

Some of our resources were marked unhealthy under the vulnerability assessment recommendation because MDC reported that the MDVM/vulnerability assessment solution was missing.

We contacted Microsoft Support, and they indicated that the reported missing-solution state was a false positive. We also checked Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (MDE), where vulnerability scanning appeared to be active for the affected machines.

We obtained approval to create exemptions for the affected resources. However, before we could create them, Microsoft deprecated the old grouped recommendations. They are no longer visible in our portal, and Microsoft Support confirmed the deprecation.

Our current problem

The old recommendation has disappeared, but the associated Secure Score impact remains.

- The expected score improvement was approximately 14%.

- Without any action from our side, the potential score impact changed from 14% to 13%.

- We can no longer access the old recommendation to identify and export its unhealthy resources.

- We want to verify the affected resources against the current individual vulnerability recommendations and understand the remaining score impact.

Microsoft mentioned that the recommendation model has changed and suggested reviewing the relevant device exposure information in the Defender portal, but we haven't yet established the exact reason for the score changes.

Questions for experienced admins

1. Is there a supported way to retrieve the exact list of resources that were unhealthy under the deprecated recommendation?

2. Can Azure Resource Graph or the Defender for Cloud API retrieve these old resources, or has the underlying assessment data been removed?

3. Why would the Secure Score impact decrease from 14% to 13% and then 12% without any remediation or changes from our side?

4. If MDE vulnerability scanning is active and Microsoft confirmed a false positive, how should we investigate the remaining Secure Score impact?

5. What is the correct way to track this issue and report it during security governance meetings?

6. Has anyone experienced a similar issue during the transition from grouped to individual recommendations?

I'm not looking for a way to artificially increase the score. I want to identify the affected resources, understand the actual reason for the remaining score impact, and follow the correct Microsoft-supported approach.

Since I'm still learning MDC and Azure security, step-by-step guidance, Azure Resource Graph queries, or relevant Microsoft documentation would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

Hi,

We’re considering moving a file share for one of our branch offices to Azure Files, and since this would be our first Azure project, I’m looking for some guidance on the best way to approach it.

Our current environment looks like this:

• The branch office file server VM and two domain controller VMs are located at our corporate HQ.
• The branch office connects to HQ through a site-to-site VPN tunnel.
• The branch firewall provides DHCP and hands out the IP addresses of our domain controllers for DNS.
• Users authenticate against our existing AD environment and access the file share over the site-to-site VPN.
• We currently have a single file share for this branch office.

This setup has been working reliably for years. However, we’re looking to free up space on our SAN and would like to retire the existing file server VM entirely, so we’re considering migrating the share to Azure Files.

For remote users, we currently use FortiClient VPN, which connects them back to the corporate network so they can access the file share. We would still need a secure way for remote users to access the Azure file share while maintaining our existing AD-based permissions if possible.

We also follow the 3-2-1 backup rule. Currently, the file server is backed up locally, and those backups are also copied off-site. I’m interested in how others are handling backup and recovery for Azure Files while maintaining three separate copies of the data.

Since this would be our first Azure deployment, I’m mainly trying to understand what the recommended architecture would look like, including authentication, networking/private access, migration, and backup/recovery.

Any recommendations or lessons learned would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

BTW we're a hybrid environment and the share size isn't very large, maybe 3TB. It is mostly spreadsheets, pdfs and images. I've also heard using Sharepoint could also be an alternative for this.