Happy New Year. We're back with a new season  of Azure This Week, the show that gives you   the latest cloud news from aggregate everything  [inaudible]. The show that gives you the latest   cloud news from Microsoft Azure every week.  Now, do you remember what happened in 2022 at   all? Yeah, me neither. Which is why this week  we look back at the greatest hits from 2022   as voted by you, by your eyes and views right  here on the channel. So you ready? Here we go.

Let's start with number five. I was gonna do  a top 52, but management said I had to keep it   at five. Sorry. Anyway, number five is one of the  great words in tech. Grafana Grafana. Mm. Back in   September, Brian Roehm shared the story of Azure  Managed Grafana. Grafana is already widely used,   but with this integration into Azure, all your  Azure project dashboards could get the benefit of   Grafana much easier. In particular, developers can  integrate services on Azure as well as off Azure.   So on and off with the managed Grafana instance,  giving just that little bit more flexibility.  

Number four is getting even more use from Azure  logs, in particular Azure Monitor. Almost a year   ago in January, Wayne Hoggett told us about the  usefulness of having alerts from your logs every   minute. And while this might not sound terribly  exciting, it is one of those small improvements   that make a huge impact on your production  availability and stability and reliability and all   of the 'ilities'. Hmm. Knowing as fast as possible  when there is an issue is often critical to both   fixed the issue, but also minimize the impact.  And apparently you thought so too with your views.   Hmm. Where we at? Oh yeah. Number three. This was  one of those stories where you can't look away.  

Azure described their biggest DDoS attacks in  2021, as well as mentioning casually that Azure on   average gets attacked from cyber criminal elements  almost 2000 times a day. Oh, the biggest you ask. Yeah. It was 3.47 Terabits of data per second. Almost 300 gigabytes of data being sent to a  service every single second, which is a lot. And   as far as I know, it's still the biggest attack  on Azure. As I said back in February, DDoS won't   go away anytime soon either. As long as bandwidth  is cheap, plentiful, and accessible, we will see  

larger and larger attacks. They are easy to do.  On the upside, Microsoft does seem to be on top of   the defense, and there hasn't been any successful  attacks for some years...that we know of at least.  If you're after something engaging and  maybe a little different, check out our   always free Cloud Adventures on A Cloud Guru.  For example, 'Deploying Basic Infrastructure   with CLI and Microsoft Azure' taught through  comic strip snapshots starring the 'deployee   of the month' as he works through different  infrastructure deployments. Hmm. Or what about   'An Explorer's Guide to Azure Data Studio'? Yeah. You'll learn about data in Azure through  

A+ storytelling with a driving narrative,  lively visuals, and background music. Who   doesn't want that? It'll make you feel like  a real explorer. And so check 'em out using   the link in the description, and I promise  I am definitely not singing in any of 'em.   All right. Getting to the pointy end. And  at number two is the Azure exam sandbox,   as James Lee explained in January of 2022, you can  now get familiar with the Azure certification exam   format. The exam sandbox shows question types and  formats, as well as lets you do test questions,  

all without the time pressure or fear of failing  it. It's a neat way of getting familiar with the   process before you sit an actual exam yourself.  And if you want even more sandbox experiences,   we have world class...no, we do world class. Yes. Azure Hands-on Labs, on the A Cloud Guru platform   too, which can help you learn a ton of stuff.  Cloud stuff actually, by just doing it. Hmm.   And speaking of exams, by far the most popular  topic on the show has been certifications.  

New certifications, updated certifications,  certification mid-year updates, predictions, you   just love it all. We've got AZ-800 and AZ-801 for  Windows Server Hybrid Administrator Associative,   as well as AZ -720 Azure Support Engineer as  all new shiny, fresh smelling certifications   that you can dig into. And on top of that,  there were updates to: AZ-900, DP-900, AI-900,   AZ-104, DB-300, AZ-600, AZ-305, and AZ-400.  Now I get why certifications are top of the   list to be honest. They transform careers, team  capabilities, and lives of many, many people,   you know, that take them. Which is also why we  put so much time and effort into the courses for  

each of them. If you're interested, why not try  a completely free subscription to the A Cloud   Guru platform? I'll leave a link below. Hmm.  Certifications do them. They're delicious.  Now, there was so much more that happened in  2022, but we only have so much time to dwell   on the past. And with that next week, I'll  give some predictions for Azure in 2023. And   there may be free kittens...maybe.  Okay, I have no more this week,   but if you're after much more cloud content, why  not subscribe to the channel? Press the button. 

Yeah, I know. Follows us on Twitter or maybe even  launch your own satellite into Azure space. Hmm.   In any case, take care. Do more  cloud. And stay awesome Cloud Gurus.