Author: Link State

Senior System Engineer in an Enterprise Telecommunications Company. Over 25 years of experience in IT, Virtual environments, Datacenter & Cloud (Azure) with Microsoft focus :MCP,MCTS, MCITP,MCSA x3, MCSE x2 Core Infrastructure & Coud Platform - Azure Administrator Associate - Vmware: VCP-DCV 2022, specialized in data protection & DR systems - Veeam: Veeam Legend - VMCE - VMCA. Security-oriented. (Backups are never enough!).

Hardening Veeam Backup & Replication on Windows 2025: A CIS-Compliant Walkthrough

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Hardening Veeam Backup & Replication on Windows 2025: A CIS-Compliant Walkthrough

Acknowledgments & Project Inspiration: This guide and implementation walkthrough are inspired by the open-source hardening framework developed by Lukas Klostermann. A special thanks goes to Lukas for creating and sharing the excellent veeam-win-hardening-script on GitHub (https://github.com/lukas-kl/veeam-win-hardening-script). His work provides an invaluable foundation for automating CIS-compliant security baselines tailored specifically for Veeam infrastructure on Windows. Backup…

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Backup, Windows, Windows Server

Unattended Gold Image & Hardened MSCB & CIS – Windows Server 2025 Image for Veeam Infrastructure

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Unattended Gold Image & Hardened MSCB & CIS – Windows Server 2025 Image for Veeam Infrastructure

1. Overview & Architecture: Creating a baseline Golden Image for Windows Server 2025 ensures consistency, security, and rapid deployment across your infrastructure. This guide provides a complete, production-ready workflow to build, harden, and generalize a Windows Server 2025 template specifically optimized for enterprise environments and Veeam Backup & Replication workloads. 2. VMware Virtual Machine Prerequisites…

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Network | Monitoring

Azure Resource Inventory (ARI) for Engineers: Improving Control and Compliance

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Azure Resource Inventory (ARI) for Engineers: Improving Control and Compliance

In the context of increasingly complex and distributed cloud environments, visibility over resources becomes a fundamental requirement to ensure governance, security, and compliance. In Microsoft Azure, the wide range of services and the dynamic nature of the infrastructure often make it difficult to maintain an up-to-date, consistent, and easily accessible inventory of active resources. Please…

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AWS/Azure/OpenShift

Azure Load Balancer: Configuring for SQL Server Always On Availability Group Listener on Azure Virtual Machines

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Azure Load Balancer: Configuring for SQL Server Always On Availability Group Listener on Azure Virtual Machines

High availability is a critical requirement for mission-critical workloads running on Azure Virtual Machines. When deploying SQL Server Always On Availability Groups (AGs), the Availability Group listener provides a single, highly available endpoint that transparently redirects client connections to the current primary replica. To read more, take a look at this link and also see…

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AWS/Azure/OpenShift

Azure Virtual Desktop: Build Custom Session Host Images Using Image Builder Templates [Part 07]

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Azure Virtual Desktop: Build Custom Session Host Images Using Image Builder Templates [Part 07]

In enterprise Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) deployments, standard marketplace images are often insufficient to meet organizational requirements for security, compliance, application consistency, and operational efficiency. Creating custom session host images enables administrators to deploy standardized virtual desktops that include preconfigured operating system settings, corporate applications, security baselines, and optimizations, significantly reducing deployment time while ensuring…

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AWS/Azure/OpenShift

How to implement Azure Private Link for Azure Virtual Desktop [Part 06]

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How to implement Azure Private Link for Azure Virtual Desktop [Part 06]

In this guide, we shall discuss “How to implement Azure Private Link for Azure Virtual Desktop [Part 06]”. It explains how to implement Azure Private Link within an existing Azure Virtual Desktop environment, with the goal of improving security and control of network traffic to management and access services. Please see Azure Virtual Desktop: Connect…

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AWS/Azure/OpenShift

Azure Virtual Desktop: Autoscaling Implementing and Monitoring Session Hosts [Part 05]

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Azure Virtual Desktop: Autoscaling Implementing and Monitoring Session Hosts [Part 05]

In modern enterprise environments, efficient management of virtual desktop resources is critical to controlling costs while maintaining consistent service levels. Workloads in Azure Virtual Desktop typically follow variable usage patterns throughout the day and week, making static scaling models inefficient. Please see Azure Virtual Desktop: How to set Up Azure Virtual Desktop Insights Monitoring [Part…

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AWS/Azure/OpenShift

Azure Virtual Desktop: How to set Up Azure Virtual Desktop Insights Monitoring [Part 03]

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Azure Virtual Desktop: How to set Up Azure Virtual Desktop Insights Monitoring [Part 03]

In this guide, you will work with an existing Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) environment and focus on implementing a comprehensive monitoring solution. Effective monitoring is essential to ensure the health, performance, and availability of AVD resources, as well as to gain visibility into user sessions and system activities. Please see Azure Virtual Desktop – Connect…

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AWS/Azure/OpenShift

Azure Virtual Desktop: Manage Azure Virtual Desktop host pools and session hosts using the Azure portal [Part 02]

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Azure Virtual Desktop: Manage Azure Virtual Desktop host pools and session hosts using the Azure portal [Part 02]

This guide is designed within the context of managing and optimizing Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) environments, with a particular focus on the use of Microsoft Entra ID–joined session hosts (formerly Azure AD). In constantly evolving business scenarios, it is often necessary to adapt virtual infrastructure to support growth, improve user experience, and ensure security, availability,…

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AWS/Azure/OpenShift

Azure Virtual Desktop: Deploy host pools and session hosts in the Azure [Part 01]

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Azure Virtual Desktop: Deploy host pools and session hosts in the Azure [Part 01]

Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) is a strategic solution for modernizing application and desktop delivery, providing a scalable, secure, and fully integrated Desktop-as-a-Service platform within the Microsoft ecosystem. In this context, Microsoft Entra ID plays a central role in enabling a consistent, streamlined, and secure identity model for accessing resources. Please see Azure Virtual Desktop –…

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AWS/Azure/OpenShift

Upgrading Azure AD Connect to Microsoft Entra Connect Sync

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Upgrading Azure AD Connect to Microsoft Entra Connect Sync

In this guide, we shall discuss “Upgrading Azure AD Connect to Microsoft Entra Connect Sync”. Keeping your identity infrastructure up to date is essential for ensuring security, performance, and compatibility with Microsoft cloud services. Microsoft Entra Connect Sync (formerly Azure AD Connect) continues to evolve with new features, improvements, and deprecations that require administrators to…

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AWS/Azure/OpenShift

Azure Application Gateway: Practical Configuration Guide

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Azure Application Gateway: Practical Configuration Guide

In this article, we shall discuss “Azure Application Gateway: Practical Configuration Guide”. This post provides a practical, real-world inspired walkthrough for configuring an Azure Application Gateway. The goal is to help engineers quickly understand how to design, name, and connect all required components for a production-ready setup. Please see Azure Managing Subscriptions with PowerShell: From…

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AWS/Azure/OpenShift