We’ve been working out of the office for some time now and, for many, the transition to business-wide remote working has not been a simple one; often at the hands of new-to-you technology, with no training, it’s hard to know how to begin your day.
Full of hints, tips, step-by-step instructions and screenshots, this guide will help you work better as an individual, and as a team within Microsoft Teams.
Whether working in the office, at home and on the move, IT is the make-or-break factor in determining whether employees are able to continue working effectively.
Knowing where to start and finding the right tools can seem daunting, so, we have put together this guide full of advice, tips and tools to help you. You will be implementing a successful hybrid working environment for you and your employees in no time.
If you're new to Teams Phone, our guide is a great place to start. Within the guide, we cover:
Publish Date
26/07/2022
Categories
Blogs
When creating a landing zone for your new Azure resources do you have to repeat the same set of configurations on your Azure subscriptions each time? For example:
Have you wondered if there was a better way to complete this repeatable configuration? There is and it’s called Azure Blueprints.
Azure Blueprints is a Microsoft governance tool which works with Azure Policy and Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates to define a set of Azure configurations. An Azure Blueprint can be used to expedite the deployment and build of an environment to a particular set of standards, in a repeatable way.
With Azure Blueprint you can deploy the following artifacts:
Once a Blueprint has been built and tested it can be exported and redeployed to each new subscription(s) you have in your organisation.
At the time of writing Azure Blueprints is in Preview and is expected to be released into general availability shortly.
The Azure Blueprint package can be built from the Azure Portal and applied to a specific subscription or to Azure Management Groups, including multiple subscriptions. Each Azure Blueprint package contains a group of artifacts, an artifact defines the deployment parameters such as Policy, Role, ARM or Resource Group.
During the build process a Blueprint will go through the following stages:
Once a Blueprint has been built or changed, the Blueprint is saved as a Draft version.
Once the Draft version is complete the Blueprint is Published. This requires a version number and change note to be added to the Blueprint. Azure always defaults to the latest version of the Blueprint.
Once the Blueprint has been published it is ready to be assigned to either a subscription or Management Group. During the assignment process, it is possible to apply a lock to the deployed resources. There are three possible locks for an assignment:
Once the Blueprint has deployed the specified resources, permissions, and policies the Assigned Blueprints section will show the latest version of the Blueprint.
If Azure Policies have been defined in the Blueprint, the specific policies are shown in the Azure Policy section of the Azure Portal. Using the Azure Policy portal, we can see which resources are compliant or not. Azure Policy will be discussed in a future blog.
Azure Blueprints will save you time when deploying your Azure landing zones and ensure your environment meets defined standards for a consistent approach when setting up Azure subscriptions.
If you would like more information on how to use Azure Blueprints for your deployments, please contact hello@cobweb.com for a demonstration and walk-through.
Publish Date
07/07/2022
Categories
Blogs
Microsoft Teams has the potential to transform the way teams within any organisation work. It brings together different elements of team working such as workspace chat and note-taking, and integrates them with the Office 365 platform.
Microsoft Teams makes it possible for teams to work together and liaise in real time, to develop projects more quickly and efficiently by sharing files, notes and attachments, and also enables an organisation to integrate other technologies such as Planner Power and GitHub into the workspace, so team working methods can develop and evolve over time.
Before you set up a new Microsoft Team, check to see whether another team already exists to do the same thing. This is particularly important if you allow for the self-service creation of Teams and Office 365 Groups as the Microsoft Teams software doesn’t check for duplicate team names, and the result could cause confusion. One way around this potential problem is to set up a review of all new Groups or Teams one day after they are created to catch the issue early.
Having a strong naming convention for Teams and Groups is a good idea, but it can be tough to enforce if you allow for self-service Team creation. Enforcing naming conventions across your organisation will still rely on good communication but you can automate it to an extent through the Office 365 Admin Center by blocking certain words from being used or specifying certain suffixes and prefixes to apply to all Group or Team names.
Every Team is also a Group. When you create a new Team you will also create a new Group. If you are already the owner of a Group and you need to add a new Team, remember to connect it to your Group otherwise it will automatically create another Group with the same name as an existing Group but a different ID number.
You may have some of the same people working on different projects, but it is important to ensure that each project has its own Team. This makes it easier for your Teams to stay focused as well as to find and organise documents, and it will become even more important when Microsoft Teams is updated to allow external users to join a Team.
A little upfront planning to establish initial channels is a good idea, but don’t overdo it. Each channel has its own Files tab in the Team’s documents library. Setting up a channel which then remains empty adds to the number of tabs that people have to search through to find documents. Better to start with a few channels and add new channels as the project evolves.
It’s a good idea to avoid customising the default documents library and use this for general use sharing of files so that it’s easy for everyone to access and use these shared documents. For more advanced content, you can set up tailored document libraries on the team site.
If your team members are switching to Microsoft Teams from SharePoint, they will need to change the way they interact with files. In particular, team members need to get used to the idea of using folders, which are an integral part of the Microsoft Teams platform.
With Microsoft Teams it is possible to use two interfaces to connect to files – through the Teams chat facility or through the team site in SharePoint. If you create tabs using SharePoint for every document library on your Team site and another tab with the Website tab connector on the Team site, this will ensure that all members of the Team will be able to see new files wherever they are created.
You can make a two-way connection between your Team and SharePoint by creating a link to the Teams team on SharePoint, copying the URL of the Teams team and add it to the Quick Launch links. This link will then open the Team when you access Microsoft Teams.
It’s important to share tips, great moments, ideas and issues with the Microsoft Tech Community. As Microsoft Teams rolls out to more and more organisations, there is the potential for ever-widening feedback which can help you to get more out of the platform.
Ready to get started with Microsoft Teams? Download our Quick Start Guide to Microsoft Teams now.
Publish Date
30/06/2022
Categories
Company News
Cobweb were delighted last week to be awarded Cyber Solution Provider of the Year at The Business Magazine’s South Coast Tech Awards.
Judges were impressed by our latest security offering Cobweb Secure. Available in multiple configurations, Cobweb Secure has become a one-stop security shop for our customers. Cobweb Secure offers identity protection, email protection against all cyber threats including phishing, malware and ransomware, as well as backing up all your Microsoft 365 data to a secure cloud, device protection, web security and endpoint device security.
The panel stated “A visionary tech business investing in the future, often ahead of industry developments. They have launched many global ‘firsts’ over the years. This business has a strong focus on its people and significant spend on staff training, ensuring excellent quality of service and impressive customer satisfaction.”
Michael Frisby, Cobweb’s Managing Director commented on the achievement, “Innovation is part of our core values – the IT world is one where change is constant so you have to keep innovating to stay ahead of the bad guys. The Covid-19 lockdown saw a massive transition to hybrid and home working, where our customers went from controlled office environments to remote working with employees using their own devices that we needed to help control and protect. We expanded our portfolio of services to protect customers. Ultimately, we are a people business and it is their knowledge, expertise, passion and obsession for serving our customers that makes the difference.”
Publish Date
06/06/2022
Categories
Blogs
Over the last few articles, I’ve wrote about some of the ways to save money in Azure by choosing the right sizes and tiers of Azure resources to meet your current needs and to use Reservations and Azure Hybrid Benefit to switch off pay-as-you-go (PAYG) meters in exchange for 1- or 3-year commitment term. This time I want to cover some of the other ways to save money, that are not big enough subjects to have their own article, but are still useful to know about.
An orphaned resource is a resource that is not assigned to a parent resource. It can be left behind when its parent resource is deleted or it could have been created for a temporary purpose and then left behind, such as a disk snapshot. I often find random Public IP addresses and managed disks, but no VM that they belong to. These resources have a cost, so deleting them will save money. Sometimes they have been left intentionally, such as reserving the IP address for later use or keeping the disk as a backup in case data on it is needed later, but often they are just forgotten about.
Azure has recently taken steps to address this issue and now asks if you want to delete the associated resources when you delete a VM, but it’s still worth checking to see if you have any orphaned resources in your Azure subscription. Similar to orphaned resources are…
Just as orphaned resources may be costing you money, so might unused resources. The number of times I have deployed something as a test or proof of concept and then moved on to the next task, forgetting the resource is running, is too many to count. Identifying unused resources and deleting them will save you money. Thankfully I tend to check my spending frequently and can delete these resources before they cost too much, but I’m sure not everyone is as disciplined. I’ve come across resources running in Azure and no one knows what they are, what they do, who deployed them (or even if they are still an employee) or why. The only thing they do know is they are costing money and that leads into…
In Azure, you can set tags on almost every resource. A tag is a name and value pair that can be anything you want. I’d recommend as a minimum you set tags for “Created by” and “Created on” and ensure these are filled in accurately. Other tags to consider are project codes, cost/department codes, delete by dates, etc. Tags can be updated, so can be used for auditing purposes, but it definitely helps to know the who, what, why and when several months later as you look at the resource and wonder why it’s there and running.
Azure policies can also be applied to subscriptions that can be used to limit the size of resources that can be created and the regions they can be created in – this can save money by stopping someone from accidentally deploying an expensive resource. Policies can also be used to enforce tags, stopping the resource from being deployed if the tag hasn’t been set.
Azure managed disks are attached to Azure VMs to provide persistent storage to the VM. All VMs must have one OS disk and may optionally have one or more data disks. Managed disks are available in several tiers, including Standard HDD, Standard SSD and Premium SSD. Microsoft recommends Premium SSD for production workloads as they have better/more consistent performance characteristics, but these are the most expensive of the three. If the VM is turned off overnight or at the weekend, the disk continues to incur cost, even though it’s not using the Premium SSD’s premium performance. If your VM is going to be stopped for a while, you can save money by converting it to a Standard HDD (cheapest) while it’s off and then back to a Premium SSD again when the VM needs to be turned back on. You can do this manually each time, but far better to script it as part of the on/off automation.
This one is a bit limited use, but if you’re deploying resources into a lab or running a PoC and the resources are only needed for short periods at a time, bear in mind that it’s not just VMs that can be turned off to save money, many other resources can be too, so it’s worth searching the Microsoft documentation for each resource type that you have deployed to see if there is a way to stop or de-allocate it. Just because there is no way to do so in the Portal, doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t be done via PowerShell or the Azure CLI.
Azure Cost Management is a tool in the Portal that can be used to drill into your Azure costs and break them down by timeframe, region, resource group, resource type or even individual resources. While using it won’t save you money itself, it lets you visualise your spending in various ways and hunt for opportunities to save money. You can create custom views and then have them emailed to you each day, week or month. This saves you from having to regularly visit the Portal to view these reports, allows you to forward them to other people who may not have access to the Portal, and also include them in presentation or reports.
Azure offers many ways to save money and it’s definitely worth looking into each of them to see if you can benefit. However, it can take a fair bit of time and effort to get it right and that where Cobweb can assist. We can advise on the recommended resource SKUs and tiers for your needs, the best use of Reservations and CSP Software Subscription licensing, and our cost assessments can highlight other areas where you could save money in Azure.
Publish Date
25/05/2022
Categories
Company News
This week we are supporting National Epilepsy Week. Our Group Billing Manager David Barnsley-Parsons has first-hand experience of epilepsy, through his daughter Harriet. He kindly agreed to answer some questions about their story.
When Harriet was around 10 months old, we started to have concerns about her development. She was missing milestones and seemed to have plateaued in her development. After conversations with Community Paediatrics and several blood tests later, Harriet was diagnosed with a genetic disorder. The type of disorder she has is completely unique to her, caused by an unbalance in genes on chromosomes 9 and 10. Whilst very little is known about the extent to which this will affect her, the genes involved are linked to mild to moderate learning difficulties and global development delay.
As part of the investigation process into Harriet’s genetic disorder, an MRI scan of her brain was carried out and this highlighted a number of changes which we needed to be aware of. One of these made her more susceptible to developing epilepsy, however, it wasn’t until she was 2.5 years old when she had her first seizure.
Harriet’s seizures are prolonged (around 15-20 minutes each in length) so after her first episode, we were given rescue medication to administer to her after 5 minutes of the seizure. After her second episode, preventative medication was started. To date, she has had 4 prolonged seizures in 8 months. Each time she has a seizure it involves an ambulance trip to hospital and monitoring to make sure she is recovering from the episode as expected and then a review of her medication dosage. She is very lethargic after a seizure (in part due to the rescue medication administered) and she will often then miss the next day’s activities. She is kept under regular review by Neurology and Community Paediatrics.
Harriet’s seizure to date have happened whilst she is asleep. Which adds another layer of worry around monitoring her, especially through the night. It’s also hard as seizures come without warning and there’s no predicting if and when the next one will be. You can’t wrap her in cotton wool, but equally it’s something always at the back of your mind.
After Harriet’s first seizure, we were scared and unsure that what we were doing was right for her. We didn’t even know how long a seizure lasted for, how long was too long and at what point we had to call an ambulance. Now with the support of Roald Dahl nurses, we feel informed, reassured and empowered to make the right decisions to ensure the best outcome for Harriet.
We were referred to the epilepsy specialist nurses at Queen Alexandra Hospital, Portsmouth (funded by Roald Dahl) in August 2021. It was after we had received the results of the MRI scan, so we were on the lookout for signs of seizures and Harriet had what is described as an absent seizure. It only lasted a matter of minutes, but we alerted her Paediatrician who put us in contact with Becs (Roald Dahl epilepsy nurse).
She contacted us within a number of hours, talked through the episode Harriet had and gave us lots of information about what to look out for and how to manage any seizures. When Harriet had her first prolonged seizure, Becs was notified by the hospital and she was in contact with us directly within hours, getting plans in place for any subsequent episodes.
Becs and Liz (nurses) have been amazing at helping us as parents feel slightly more in control with what is ultimately an out-of-control experience. They are always notified after Harriet has a seizure, and within hours they are emailing us to advise on any changes to medication dosage and requesting this from the GP. On one occasion Harriet had a seizure in the early hours of the morning, but we weren’t discharged until lunchtime the following day. By the time the consultant visited us in the morning to discuss next steps, we had already had a conversation with Becs and agreed the next steps with her medication which ultimately led to a (slightly!) speedier discharge from hospital.
Becs and Liz are always on hand to answer any questions we have about Harriet’s epilepsy. We’ve recently had difficulty obtaining Harriet’s usual brand of medication, but one phone call to them and we were reassured about what alternatives there were.
Whilst it’s never going to be easy as a parent to see your child having a seizure, knowing there’s a plan in place to deal with it, and to follow up on next steps afterwards, helps us to know we’re doing all we can for Harriet in that situation.
We’re learning with epilepsy (and her genetic disorder in general) that once you get a diagnosis, that’s when the real journey begins. We learn more about Harriet each day, what she will be capable of and what support we need to put in place for her. As she grows, her medication will need to be under constant review to make sure it’s at the right level to prevent her seizures ongoing, but Roald Dahl nurses will be there to support us all along this journey.
You can find out more about the charity here: https://www.roalddahlcharity.org/
You can donate to David’s fundraising here: Harriet’s Story
Publish Date
18/05/2022
Categories
Blogs
Last time I wrote about how Reservations can be used to save money by trading the flexibility of Azure’s pay-as-you-go (PAYG) pricing model by committing to that resource being deployed and running for a fixed term. I focused on Reserved Instances (RIs), which can reduce the cost of the compute component of an Azure VM. This time I want to focus on Azure Hybrid Benefit as an additional way to save money in Azure.
When a VM gets deployed in Azure, depending on which Operating System (OS) is chosen, the VM may cause more than one PAYG meter to tick up. Windows VMs and some Linux VMs have chargeable licenses and if SQL Server is installed on the VM, that license is chargeable too. All of these licenses will cause the relevant PAYG meters to tick up.
Just as RIs can be applied to stop the compute meter, Azure Hybrid Benefit (AHB) can be enabled to stop the OS and SQL Server meters. Unlike RIs, Azure does not manage the assignment of licenses for you – AHB must be enabled on each specific VM and the license cannot readily move from one VM to another.
AHB requires you to have unused licenses available and that those licenses meet certain eligibility requirements, so do check to ensure your licenses are valid if you plan to use AHB. One way to ensure your licenses are eligible is to purchase them through Cobweb via CSP Software Subscriptions. Licenses can be purchased for a 1- or 3-year term and have the equivalent benefits of Software Assurance. While they can be used in Azure, they can also be used for your on-premises servers, and Microsoft even allows the same license to be used twice at the same time (once on-premises and once in Azure) for up to 180 days for the purposes of migrating servers into Azure.
There are several factors that determine how much you can save when using AHB, but in general, the best savings will be made against VMs that are running 24/7, because the license meters only tick up when the VM is running. A 3-year term offers bigger equivalent monthly savings over a 1-year term and the size and family of the Azure VM will also impact the savings that can be made.
Microsoft licensing can be complex and the rules around AHB are no exception, but I will try to simplify it. For Windows Server Standard, Microsoft stipulates a minimum of 16-cores must be licensed per physical on-premises server, but that covers two instances of Windows running as VMs on that physical server. When that 16-core license is instead used with AHB, Microsoft allows it to be assigned to a single Azure VM of up to 16 vCPUs or two Azure VMs of up to 8 vCPUs each.
This means that the Windows license cost when using AHB for an 8 vCPU VM in Azure is the same price as for a 1 vCPU VM. Contrast that with PAYG licensing which is charged per vCPU that the VM has and you’ll see that bigger savings can be made over PAYG with bigger VMs that have more vCPUs – two 8 vCPU VMs using 3-year term licenses may break even after just a few months!
Due to the way SQL Server is licensed, the rules are different. There are several editions to choose from and the biggest savings usually come from highly available deployments or where disaster recovery has been configured. SQL licenses aren’t just for VM-based SQL either, they can also be assigned to other SQL services in Azure, such as Single or Elastic SQL Databases or SQL Managed Instances.
In most cases using Software Subscriptions will save money over PAYG, but it’s worth checking how big those savings will be and Cobweb can assist you with this.
Next time I will be rounding out this series of articles by covering more of the ways to save money in Azure that don’t quite deserve their own article, but are still useful to know.
Publish Date
28/04/2022
Categories
Blogs
Last time I wrote about Azure’s consumption-based, pay-as-you-go (PAYG) pricing model and the importance of choosing the right sizes and tiers of Azure resources to meet your current needs, rather than future needs, in order to save money. I also explained that Azure resources can be resized fairly easily to meet variations in demand or turned off altogether when not needed, to further reduce costs.
Some workloads are fairly constant and can’t be turned off when not needed and this limits the cost savings that can be made by exploiting the elasticity of Azure. For this type of workload, Azure offers solutions, the general name for which is “Reservations”.
Not all Reservations work the same way, but the general principle is that you commit to your resource being deployed and running for a period of time and in exchange Azure offers a discounted cost for it. I like to think of it like a coffee through-the-mail subscription – I can buy ad-hoc packs of coffee at full price as and when I need to, but if I commit to a set number of packs each month, I get them at a discounted price. Reservations are available for many Azure resources and more keep getting added, but the most commonly purchased type that I see are Virtual Machine (VM) Reserved Instances.
When a VM needs to be turned on 24/7, a Reserved Instance (RI) can be purchased to trade the flexibility of the PAYG pricing on the VM’s compute component, for a reduced, fixed equivalent monthly cost. RIs come with a choice of a 1-year commitment term, reducing the monthly PAYG price by about 40%, or a 3-year commitment term reducing it by about 60%. RIs can be paid for either up-front at the start of the term or monthly and there is no cost penalty for choosing the monthly option.
Azure manages the assignment of RIs to applicable VMs automatically and in the most utilisation-efficient way. As soon as the RI is assigned to a VM, the meter for the PAYG compute component stops ticking up. If the VM is powered off and another applicable VM is running, the RI is moved to cover that VM instead.
Due to the discounts being offered over PAYG prices, VMs don’t even need to be running 24/7 for savings to be seen when using RIs. A commonly seen VM size is a D4as_v4 which has a cost of $0.222 per hour or $162.02 per month. A 1-year RI has a cost of $95.25 per month and a 3-year RI has a cost of $60.95 per month. Putting these numbers into Excel gives us the following graph:
This shows that if this VM is running for about 415 hours or more each month, it’s cheaper to purchase a 1-year RI rather than pay for it using PAYG, and if this VM is running for about 275 hours or more each month, it’s cheaper to buy a 3-year RI.
Even if this VM were only being turned on each workday from 6am until 8pm (that is 14 hours per day, 5 days per week) then in an average month it would be running for about 300 hours and a 3-year RI would be cheaper. Factor in the extra costs of having the VM running for out-of-hours maintenance, any automation to turn it on and off and the administrators’ time for configuring and monitoring and it may be possible to justify an RI for this VM even if it’s powered on for fewer than 275 hours.
So, I’ve covered what can be good about RIs, but what are the downsides? Firstly, PAYG is very flexible, but RIs are not. RIs are purchased for a specific VM family so it is not possible to use a RI from one family against a VM in a different family. You can however change the VM’s size within the same family. Increase the size and the existing RI will cover part of the cost and PAYG will cover the other part, or two smaller RIs can be combined to cover one bigger VM.
RIs are also purchased for a specific Azure region, so one for the UK South region cannot be used against a VM located in the UK West region. It is possible to cancel a RI part way through the term and purchase a different one, but you may need to pay an early termination fee for doing so.
RIs are a commitment for whole months only, you cannot get an RI that only commits to a certain number of hours each month. In effect, this means you’re paying for the VM to be running during the night and at the weekend. You can still turn the VM off if you need to, but it won’t extend the duration of the RI or make it any cheaper. That being said, if you have two VMs in the same family that are never turned on at the same time, a single RI can cover both of them. If both VMs are ever powered on together, one will be covered by the RI and the other will be covered by PAYG.
Lastly, it’s important to note that RIs only cover the VM’s compute cost – the licensing components and disks continue to be charged for as per PAYG. Next time I will be writing about how the licensing costs can be reduced through the use of Azure Hybrid Benefit.
In short, Reservations can be used to achieve some big cost savings in Azure, but be aware of the caveats when deciding to purchase them.
And don’t forget that Reservations are available for many more Azure resources than just RIs for VMs. If you’re wanting to know more about Reservations or RIs and if they can help you reduce your Azure costs, get in touch with us.
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