Microsoft News – 3 March 2015 | Aidan Finn, IT Pro

Here’s the latest in the Microsoft world!

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Real World Site debugging using Application Insights on an Azure Website: Video where they cause some real errors in an Azure Website and then root-cause the issues by instrumenting the production site with Application Insights.
Azure Disk IOPS and Virtual Machines in IaaS Part II: How many IOPS can be squeezed out of these machines.
Configure Single Sign-On to Enterprise Apps using Azure Active Directory: VERY useful for controlled access to third-party SaaS.
Microsoft Azure Network Security Whitepaper version 3 is now available: This updated white paper provides information on how customers can use Azure’s native network security features to help protect their information assets.
Create Reports of Your Automation Activity: Due to the importance of the automated tasks, it’s important for you and your team to be up-to-date on how your runbooks are performing.
Announcing Azure Preview Portal Improvements (February Update): This post contains a detailed description of the changes.
SQL Server High Availability in Windows Azure Iaas: When deploying SQL Server in Windows Azure you must consider how to minimize both planned and unplanned downtime.
Using Azure Key Vault to Encrypt Data in the Cloud: Azure Key Vault gives organizations access to Hardware Security Module (HSM) appliances in the cloud, providing the ability to better secure VMs and SQL Server data.

3 Ways to Connect to the Office 365 Reporting Service from Excel: One option for viewing Office 365 reports using Microsoft Excel.
Microsoft cracks down on sell-and-go Office 365 VARs: Microsoft is worried about O365 implementation rates at large customer sites where O365 is sold as a bundle, and not necessarily seen as essential by the customer/partner.