What is Azure Load Testing?

What is Azure Load Testing? In this post, we'll talk about this new tool to optimize your app performance. Plus: FSLogix profiles get a boost, and the newly named Microsoft Defender for Cloud gets a ton of updates. I'm Lars Klint and this is what's new with Azure this week — a post that uses all 8 marzel wanes to engage the retro encabulator fan speed. Let's go!

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I have done a talk on how to test for the cloud, and Azure in particular, on a few occasions. The talk is about all the terrible excuses cloud engineers have for not testing their cloud work, as well as all the ways you can test it.

One of the hardest things to keep track of is testing when thousands of users are using your application at the same time. This is called load testing and has always been tricky. (After all, it isn’t that easy to get 10,000 of your closest friends together to visit your new Hello Kitty image recognition service.)

This week, Azure announced Azure Load Testing, which, well . . . load tests your app.

You start a high-scale load test by using the Azure portal. You can then see live updates of the client and server-side metrics while the test is running. Azure-specific insights show how scenarios impact all the parts of your application, and you can compare test results across different load tests to understand behavior changes over time.

Why should you care, you might ask? Isn’t it Azure’s problem to scale in time?

Sort of. Azure is responsible for making sure resources are available and that SLAs are met. Fixing your bugs and database bottlenecks is not their responsibility.

With load testing you can know which bits of your application might underperform, break or blow up when it takes off. You can even integrate the load testing into your existing continuous integration and continuous delivery flow for automation goodness. You can access the preview now using your existing Azure account.

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FSLogix enhances and enables user profiles in Windows remote computing environments. It allows you to roam user data between remote computing sessions, optimize file I/O between hosts and clients, eliminate roaming profiles and simplify application management among other things. This week, FSLogix profiles for Azure AD-joined VMs in Azure Virtual Desktop was release in a public preview.

If you have experience in Desktop Virtualization, you’ve likely seen all types of profile management solutions — but for many, FSLogix is the favourite. It’s speed and ease of management is second to none.

So what’s so good about the new Azure AD Support for FSLogix Profiles?

Well, up until now you needed to domain-join the storage you’re using for FSLogix, this also meant that you probably needed to deploy domain controllers in Azure.

But recently Microsoft added the ability to join your Azure Virtual Desktop hosts to Azure AD, but you still needed Domain Controllers for FS Logix profiles.

With this update bringing Azure AD support for FSLogix you no longer need domain controllers in Azure to run Azure Virtual Desktop with FS Logix Profiles, you still need some Domain Controllers on-premises, but that may change soon too.

What happens when Azure-loving Lars goes to the dark side and tries his hand at AWS tasks? We challenged Lars to walk (or stumble) through a scenario he'd never seen on a cloud platform he didn't know.

Microsoft loves a name changes as much as, well, Microsoft. In case you missed it, the latest is Azure Security Center now being called Microsoft Defender for Cloud. And perhaps to cement the name change a whole range of updates were announced this week. Ready?

• Native CSPM for AWS and threat protection for Amazon EKS, and AWS EC2. Yes, another Azure service that works with AWS.

• Expanded security control assessments with Azure Security Benchmark v3

• Microsoft Sentinel connector's optional bi-directional alert synchronization. This is really handy for getting the alerts back into Sentinel for someone to action.

• Microsoft Threat and Vulnerability Management added as vulnerability assessment solution

• Inventory display of on-premises machines applies different template for resource name

• And finally two new updates in preview, which are prioritizing security actions by data sensitivity and Snapshot export for recommendations and security findings.

Fun fact in closing: This week marks 52 years since the initial ARPANET was completed with four nodes between UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, SRI, and the University of Utah. This eventually evolved into the Internet we know today.

There you have it! That is all I have for you this week. Check out some of the many other free original series we have on the ACG platform, like cloud provider comparisons and certification guides.

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