MartijnBrant.net

Saving money on Azure to spend on gifts! - Festive Tech Calendar 2021

Sun, 19 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Once again this year, as part of the Festive Tech Calendar 2021, I’m joining about 138 (!!!) very talented people in submitting a festive topic. In this blogpost I will how you can save a buck when using the Azure cloud platform so you can spend more on holiday gifts! Be sure to check out the many other sessions, livestreams and blogs over at the Festive Tech Calendar!

Securely email from Azure Automation Runbook Keyvault

Sat, 08 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The other day I was talking to a colleague and evaluating options for modernizing a bunch of on-premises scripts. We discussed Azure Automation Accounts with PowerShell Runbooks as an option when I heard the feedback “it’s hard to email from a runbook” so I dove in, read a number of articles and got to work as I was curious how this can be done in a secure and modern fashion. In this post I’ll walk through the concept and how you can build it yourself using Azure Automation, PowerShell, Microsoft Graph and Keyvault.

Spoke at AzureLive and CTRL+ALT+AZURE

Mon, 03 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

AzureLive is a new virtual event with a physical on-site and virtual sessions presented simultaneously. For it’s first event I was invited to host my session on Azure Cost Management. A physical event in these times? Yes, exciting for sure. I also got the chance to co-host a session of the CTRL+ALT+Azure podcast. Together with regular host Jussi Roine, we talked about all the new Azure stuff announced at Microsoft Ignite 2021.

Making a wishlist for Santa with Azure Static Web Apps - Festive Tech Calendar

Sat, 12 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

As part of the Festive Tech Calendar 2020, I’m joining about 77 (!) very talented people in submitting a festive topic. In this blogpost I will talk about what exactly Azure Static Web Apps are and how we can use them to develop something for this holiday season! Be sure to check out the many other sessions, livestreams and blogs over at the Festive Tech Calendar!

Static website hosting on Azure

Mon, 17 Aug 2020 18:00:00 +0000

In my last blog post, introduced a new blog series around the subject of Static Websites. I strongly recommend reading the introduction if you’re unfamiliar with this. In this post I’ll be looking into the possibilities of hosting your static website on Microsoft Azure. If you already have a static copy of your website at the ready, sign up for $200 in Free Azure credits and follow along. Static web app hosting on Azure Hosting options in Azure In Azure there are a number of options for hosting your website.

Introducing a new blog series: Going Static

Sun, 09 Aug 2020 12:00:00 +0000

As you may have noticed from my last blog post, I’ve been invested into using a static website to serve, among other platforms, my personal blog. This is a shift occurring mostly in the opensource world and specifically content that doesn’t change too often and/or needs to be archived. Think of version documentation of a project or publications. I’m writing a series of blog posts on this subject and how you can use Microsoft Azure to deploy your latest static adventure.

Hosting your static site on Azure and make it superfast!

Sat, 21 Sep 2019 10:37:48 +0000

As of September the 20th, my site is hosted on Microsoft Azure, more specifically an Azure Storage account, using the Static Website feature! By making my site have a static front-end, the need to run it on script-enabled web-servers is gone and it can run on pretty much any host you can think of. Also by removing access to the dynamic scripts (WordPress back-end), the site’s attack surface decreased to 1/10 on an imaginary scale.

The expiration date of the cloud

Fri, 29 Dec 2017 14:45:03 +0000

On a warm summer day I noticed my central heating was on, which was odd to me. After looking at some of the heating elements, it turns out a thermostatic valve was broken. Now would a good as time as ever to make the heating smart, but how? With help of the cloud? New dimension Enthusiastically I looked at all the products I could use to refit my heating system into a per-room cloud controlled system.

Reading / parsing / writing .ini files in Powershell using XML

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 13:59:00 +0000

Last weekend I decided I needed to improve my Powershell scripting skills for a technical training I’m attending this week and started working on a script that could download, install and configure several applications unattended on demand. More on that script in a later blog post, for now I will focus on a specific feature I needed to script in order to make it all work. One of the applications was still using a .

Enabling Wake On WAN/power savings for your home network / server

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 01:27:07 +0000

The following post describes my personal setup in my home network to conserve power and how you can possibly do the same in your own home or small business setup. By implementing advanced standby / hibernation setups, you can have significant savings on power bills and reduce your carbon footprint. I will show how you can use power saving techniques without it becoming impractical. I should warn you this post can get quite technical in the end and may not work in your setup (totally depends on your network router).

Windows 7: Looking ahead at PDC

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 21:00:30 +0000

What can we expect to see of Windows 7 at the upcoming Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (or PDC) next week? I take a sneak peak at some of the features or improvements leaked, discussed or presented the last couple of weeks. This list isn’t accurate as Microsoft has deliberately been quiet about Windows 7 and its main features. Expect to hear about most of the following article next week when Windows 7 is officially uncovered to developers, IT pros, the press and the rest of the public at Microsoft PDC 2008!

HP harddisk encryption software and me…

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 00:43:54 +0000

As you may now, I usually use a HP Compaq business notebook (the 15” 8510p to be exact). For the last 9 months I have been using this model for both work and personal usage and it’s my weapon of choice when needing a mobile powerhouse without breaking my back. Performance is great (you can get better these days, I got one of the last pre-Penryn models) and overall it’s a reliable and sturdy device.

Emergency Patch.. The effect on installations?

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 23:46:04 +0000

This post is about the emergency patch release today on Thursday 23rd of October. For more info: Bink.nu. This a re-posting of the Bink story. Microsoft has been quick to act on informing IT pros and the general public on the security issue in nearly every NT-based Windows version out in the wild however more details are still lacking. The bug concerns the Server service found in all NT-based Windows OS responsible for communication between computers in a Windows based Network allowing for remote execution of code.

Microsoft NL confirms Windows Server 2008 R2 is in fact Windows 7?

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:42:48 +0000

This morning the monthly newsletter from the Technet team in the Netherlands was send out to thousands of Dutch IT Pros. Usually these have little news to me as it is mostly a summary of things going on and happening within Microsoft and new products released last few weeks. Every month Microsoft-vet Tony Krijnen writes this letter and sends it out. However … this month I noticed something different and consulted co-writer Raymond Comvalius.

Hardware ramblings

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 15:05:43 +0000

Ugh. As if the summer heat wasn’t bad enough in my home office (26C with AC, 32C+ without), it now officially killed one of my HDDs. About 3 months ago I bought three new 750GB Samsung F1 disks and had put them all in RAID. All was sailing smooth and the speeds were amazing. However this last Wednesday I was working with multiple virtual PC’s whilst downloading and extracting large files in the background.

About me

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:53:00 +0000

Who am I? Hi, my name is Martijn, an IT Professional, Cloud Architect, Infrastructure Engineer or DevOps specialist, whichever role title you prefer. Basically I like to mess with IT to create new projects, automate the hell out of it or just to design something cool. I live and work the beautiful country of the Netherlands. What do I do? I work for an IT consultancy firm and help my clients get the most out of their investments or suggest how to improve ever more.

Most meaningfull image all month…

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:27:24 +0000

This is one of the most meaningfull images I’ve seen all month.. Reservation Email Why? you might ask.. Well .. just a little while ago I wrote about Sherweb eating my email and how it kinda pissed me off. One example was my hotel reservation I made about a month ago. Didn’t recieve the email at all. Even if I forwarded it myself using Windows Live Mail… As DNS is updating (after correcting some server-side errors for the MX records) most of my email is coming in at the new server.

Moving Exchange away from Sherweb, to ItSolutionsNow

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 01:07:38 +0000

I’ve had it with Sherweb. If you didn’t know, I had my 3GB hosted Exchange account hosted at Sherweb for about 5 to 6 months now and overall the overall experience was great. However, there was one thing that was bothing me: I didn’t get all my email. Let me explain.. I set up my account and made sure the DNS settings for my domain were properly set. They were and in no time the account was up and running using Microsoft Outlook 2007 and Windows Mobile 6.

TechEd 2008 for IT Pro – travel blog – day 3

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:31:24 +0000

Woke up at 6:30AM. Met colleague Sumeeth Evans at breakfast. Sumeeth and I will be working together to write up on articles for Bink.nu. We left for the center by half past 7 and walked all the way over. It was a bit warm but doable. Upon arrival we quickly regged up Sumeeth, and we headed over to the special press room. DAMN! I’m loving my presscard! A nice large room with nice leather seats, couches and special workdesktops for pressmembers to work at.

TechEd 2008 for IT Pro – travel blog – day 2

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 13:49:53 +0000

Woke up this morning around 8:30AM after sleeping very sound for over 9 hours straight. Felt great just to lie down and get off your feet. Checked out my room.. it’s a very nice hotel. Room is OK .. it’s clean and large enough. 4 people could sleep here but I wouldn’t recommend it. Bathroom is good and all services provided are great. Grabbed breakfast real quick here in the hotel.

TechEd 2008 for IT Pro – travel blog – day 1

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 01:41:44 +0000

I left home today at 04:00AM after not sleeping. Shortly after my friend Rick drove me to Schiphol Amsterdam airport where we arrived at around 6AM, checking in wasn’t starting until 06:30AM so we stopped for a drink. Shortly after 06:30AM, I checked my bag and I was ready to go. Well .. ready to wait to go that is. My flight didn’t go until 09:30AM. Ultimately I was on my way with a 757-200 plane.

Leaving for Orlando, Florida!

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 14:17:26 +0000

Microsoft Tech-Ed for IT Pros 2008 Leaving tommorow for Orlando, Florida. I will be reporting on Microsoft TechEd for IT Professionals on behalf of partner blog: Bink.nu. Will update this blog on more personal matters. Check out Bink.nu for latest updates on TechEd 2008!