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Articles by Robert Smit
The Hidden Laws of Cloud Transformation
Over the last few years I’ve been involved in many Azure migration and modernization assessments. Different industries. Different technologies. Different business drivers. Yet I keep seeing the same patterns. Not technical patterns. Human patterns. The more assessments I do, the more I believe successful cloud transformations are driven by a few surprisingly simple laws. ✅ Kidlin’s Law A problem clearly defined is a problem half solved. This is exactly what our assessment does.
Azure Service Groups: The Missing Layer Between Governance and Operations
Azure governance has traditionally relied on Management Groups, Subscriptions, Resource Groups, and Tags. While these constructs work well for governance, billing, and lifecycle management, they often fail to represent how modern engineering teams actually operate.
Shoppers Drug Mart review: Rude Pharmacist at Yonge Eglinton Shoppers
This review was chosen algorithmically as the most valued customer feedback. Call me old fashioned, but what happened to service with a smile? There are no smiles from Clement, the bad-temepered pharmacist at Yonge Eglinton. She has no service skills. I asked her what eye drops I should buy to clear up my daughter's red-eye. Clement pointed out three different boxes on the shelf.
Stay in Control of your Data Customer Lockbox for Microsoft Azure
One of the questions I often ask customers during Azure security and governance workshops is: “What happens if Microsoft Support needs access to your data to troubleshoot a critical issue?” Most organizations assume Microsoft engineers can simply access their environment whenever needed. In reality, Microsoft has extensive internal controls, telemetry, and just-in-time access processes.
Windows Admin Center: Virtualization Mode #WAC The Next Evolution in Hyper-V Management
If you’ve been watching the evolution of Windows Admin Center (WAC) Microsoft’s web based management platform for Windows Server you’ve probably noticed that it’s more than just a modern replacement for legacy MMC snap-ins. With the introduction of Windows Admin Center: Virtualization Mode (vMode), Microsoft is reshaping how virtualization administrators manage Hyper-V environments.
Optimal Deployment and Infrastructure Navigator for Azure Local deployments
Odin for Azure Local: The Community Tool That Absolutely Changes the Game There are moments in the Azure Hybrid world when a tool appears out of nowhere and makes you stop, smile, and think: “Finally… this is exactly what we needed.” That’s what happened when I opened Odin for Azure Local for the first time. If you work with Azure Local, Azure Stack HCI, hybrid infrastructure, or anything that touches Arc‑enabled workloads, this tool is about to become your new best friend.
Migrating a SQL Server Database to Azure SQL
SQL Server migrations to Azure are no longer isolated infrastructure projects. They are increasingly part of broader cloud modernization initiatives driven by scalability, reliability, operational efficiency, and security requirements. While many migration paths exist, one often overlooked but still relevant approach is the “Deploy Database to Microsoft Azure” task in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS).
ALICE IN CHAINS - ” The Albums “
American rock band Alice in Chains has released six studio albums, three extended plays (EP), three live albums, Alice in Chains was formed in 1987 by guitarist Jerry Cantrell and drummer Sean Kinney, who then recruited bassist Mike Starr and singer Layne Staley. The band was first formed in 1987. The group hails from the area of Seattle, Washington.
TEENAGE CANCER TRUST GIGS - Albert Hall London Curated By Robert Smit
The line-up for the Teenage Cancer Trust at the Royal Albert Hall in 2026 has been revealed, and it is topped by the likes of My Bloody Valentine, Garbage, and Wolf Alice. The Royal Albert Hall has been hosting concerts in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust since 2000. Perfectly matching the charitable spirit of the holidays, the line-up for the 2026 edition has been released. On March 23rd, Elbow and English soul group MRCY will kick things off.
Architecting for Resiliency on Azure Infrastructure
How to Build Cloud-Native Reliability for Mission-Critical Workloads Resiliency has become one of the most critical architectural principles in modern cloud environments. In an era defined by global operations, constant availability requirements and increasing digital dependency, downtime is simply not an option. Architecting for resiliency on Azure Infrastructure means designing systems that anticipate failure, absorb impact, recover quickly and maintain continuity without human intervention.
Microsoft Sovereign Cloud & Azure Local: The Future of Trusted AI & Infrastructure
In today’s digital era, especially across Europe, trust, compliance, data residency, and operational transparency are now as critical as performance, scalability, and innovation.
Running AI Foundry Local on Windows Server 2025 - A Fully Offline AI Model Deployment Guide
In today’s AI-driven world, many organizations and IT professionals are looking for local, offline, secure AI deployments rather than relying solely on the cloud. With Microsoft’s Azure AI Foundry Local, you can now run models on-premises or on-device, keeping your data private, performance high, and latency low.
Microsoft-Managed Conditional Access Policies: What You Need to Know
As organizations strive to stay ahead of evolving cyber threats, Microsoft has introduced Microsoft-managed Conditional Access policies—a powerful way to enforce security best practices with minimal administrative overhead. These policies are pre-configured by Microsoft and designed to protect your environment by enforcing controls like blocking legacy authentication, requiring MFA, and preventing risky sign-ins.
Using Azure Service Groups in an Enterprise-Scale Landing Zone
Introduction Azure Service Groups are a new governance feature designed to simplify network rule management across services in your Azure environment. When adopted properly, Service Groups become a powerful component of your enterprise-scale landing zone, supporting consistent, scalable, and policy-driven governance — which is essential in any cloud migration journey. What Are Azure Service Groups?
Pedestrian crossing switch needs to be fixed
What could possibly be the delay in replacing the pedestrian crossing alert switch on the ocean side of Carpinteria Avenue? (In front of Bikesmiths; across from Tyler’s Donuts.) The pole-mounted switch was apparently damaged many weeks ago, and as such there is no way for pedestrians to activate the traffic alert for (safer) crossing of Carpinteria Avenue. I made a maintenance request on the city of Carpinteria App two weeks ago and never received any response from the city.
Windows Server 2025 SMB Compression #ws2025 #winserv #SMB
In the ever-evolving landscape of IT infrastructure, efficient data transfer is paramount. Windows Server 2025 introduces a game-changing feature: SMB Compression. This innovation is designed to streamline data transfers, reduce network congestion, and enhance overall system performance. SMB (Server Message Block) Compression allows files to be compressed as they are transferred over the network. This eliminates the need to manually compress files before transfer and decompress them afterward.
Probing the in‐plane dipole moment vector between ground and excited state of single molecules by the Stark effect
Supporting Information As a service to our authors and readers, this journal provides supporting information supplied by the authors. Such materials are peer reviewed and may be re-organized for online delivery, but are not copy-edited or typeset. Technical support issues arising from supporting information (other than missing files) should be addressed to the authors. Filename Description cphc202300881-s1-SI_Tr_BTBT_rev1.pdf1.9 MB Supplementary
Probing the in‐plane dipole moment vector between ground and excited state of single molecules by the Stark effect
1 Introduction The sensing of electric fields at the nanoscale using molecular probes is a well-studied phenomenon that started with cell membranes1 and hole-burning experiments.2 The response of the optical frequency of a single molecule to an electric field manifests itself by means of a linear and/or quadratic shift with field intensity.
Sharp zero-phonon lines of single organic molecules on a hexagonal boron-nitride surface - Nature Communications
Abstract Single fluorescent molecules embedded in the bulk of host crystals have proven to be sensitive probes of the dynamics in their nano environment, thanks to their narrow (about 30–50 MHz or 0.1–0.2 μeV) optical linewidth of the 0-0 zero-phonon line (0-0 ZPL) at cryogenic temperatures.
Understanding Microsoft Azure Virtual Machine sizes
May 03 2021 03:00 AM Having an on-premises infrastructure background, I’m used to scoping hardware by defining the specifications (CPU, memory etc) we’ll need to run the applications and expected concurrent users and allowing for some growth. Then we’d often buy a box that would give us room to upgrade further, so for example we’re not putting the maximum amount of RAM in that server today.
Migrate VHD Disks to Azure Disks - Direct-upload to Azure managed disks #Azure #Upload #Disk #Migrate #VHD #storage #MVPBuzz #WIMVP
When I saw this new option I thought well could be interesting, prep some disks in advance and upload later the disk. Looks quicker than staging the vhd first. There are two ways you can bring an on-premises VHD to Azure as a managed disks: Stage the VHD into a storage account before converting it into a managed disk. Attach an empty managed disk to a virtual machine and do copy.
Microsoft Azure September 2017 Software Defined Data Infrastructure Updates
September was a busy month for data infrastructure topics as well as Microsoft in terms of new and enhanced technologies. Wrapping up September was Microsoft Ignite where Azure, Azure Stack, Windows, O365, AI, IoT, development tools announcements occurred, along with others from earlier in the month. As part of the September announcements, Microsoft released a new version of Windows server (e.g. 1709) that has a focus for enhanced container support.
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