I'm back. How good were James and Wayne though? Yeah, I know. So thanks fellow Azure dudes for
championing the show when I went away on a little break. Yep. Now this week I have some
excellent stories for you as well. The biggest DDoS attack in internet history,
Azure does space and quantum at the same time, and Azure Arc gets a really cool update. And
now I would normally tell you an interesting tech fact, but there's too much to get through. Sorry.
This week, Microsoft released some stats on how they are mitigating distributed denial of service,
or DDoS, attacks. They're not only describing how they protected Azure services, but also
how many attacks there were. And this blew my mind. Yeah. Now we all know that internet
services experience attacks frequently and the bigger the service, well the bigger the target,
I just didn't know it was this much. In August, 2021 there was an average of 1,955 attacks per
day, that Azure prevented or mitigated with the highest being 4,296 on August 10. That's over
4,000 in a single day. In the second half of 2021, there were 359,713 attacks in total. Holy Batman.
That's like an attack now and now and now. So last October on this show, I did tell you about a huge
DDoS attack of 2.4 Tbps. That's 300 gigabytes per second of rubbish data being hurled at a service.
Now, since then three larger attacks have been mitigated Azure. The biggest being in November
and measuring 3.47 Tb on the DDoS-o-meter. That is probably the biggest in DDoS and internet history,
and Azure was able to squash that one too. Now while the numbers I impressive and quite frankly,
hard to comprehend, I think the main message here is that DDoS attacks are not going away
nor getting any smaller. Because they are so easy to mount and cheap to buy, yes, you can buy a DDoS
as a service. You can. We'll only see more of them and bigger ones. However, taking advantage
of cloud platforms like Azure means you will most likely never have to worry about it. That is one
of the reasons I love cloud. You can get all the details in the link in the description as well.
Have you heard of Azure Open Source day? This predominantly Linux event is free to attend and is
all online on 15th of February. Microsoft has put together a list of
seven reasons why you should attend, which I have linked below.
Okay. This is another favorite story from the past week, mainly because the headline had quantum
and space in it. I make no excuses. So "NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, JPL,
has turned to Azure Quantum to explore ways to communicate more efficiently with spaceclaft,
spacecraft, spacecraft exploring our solar system and beyond." That's what Microsoft
said in a blog post. Now, JPL are using quantum-inspired optimization algorithms
on Azure to increase the fidelity they can use for missions such as the Mars Rover
and the James Webb space telescope. The quantum service on Azure is complimenting
the JPL Deep Space Network, a network of large radio telescopes in California, Spain,
and right here in Australia. In this specific example, Microsoft is describing how they reduce
the time needed for a scheduling optimization from two hours to, ready for this, 16 minutes.
When you're dealing with messages going to Mars, optimizing the process time for each update or
schedule to the Rover, telescope, or whatever you're controlling, an almost tenfold decrease
in time is huge. For those that still doubt the value of space exploration and technology,
remember that scheduling problems are not unique to NASA and space. These problems
exist in most industries and they will benefit from this advance too. Love it.
I said NAASA, is it NASA or. It's NASA isn't it? I'm sorry. Let's say NASA. NASA. Yes.
And now the plug. Is 2022 the year of picking up cloud computing knowledge,
then check out ACG’s free plan. It gives you access to free courses and quizzes, plus learning
paths and original series content. The entire month of February the full course “Introduction
to the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure” is free as well as a bunch of other
content. And you don’t need a credit card to sign up. I’ll include links in the description below.
Azure Arc lets you include your on-premises and "other cloud" VMs,
SQL servers and Kubernetes clusters in Azure. With Arc you can control them and monitor them
as if they were on Azure. It's one of those key tools on Azure to facilitate an efficient
hybrid infrastructure. Now Azure Landing Zones are the output of a multi-subscription
Azure environment that accounts for scale, security, governance, networking, and identity.
In other words, it's a recommended approach to get the best out of Azure in a secure and scalable
way. Putting this together with the Cloud Adoption Framework, you get a Landing Zone Accelerator,
which can now take Arc into account. Yeah, it's pretty cool. As Microsoft puts it, "The
Landing Zone Accelerator provides best practices, guidance, and automated reference implementations
so that customers can get started with their deployments quickly and easily." Now the quickly
and easily parts should be taken with a grain of salt. As hybrid environments are not always
straightforward. But at least the Landing Zone Accelerator will provide an initial approach
and way forward. We got no more for you this week. Covering huge internet attacks, quantum,
space and hybrid is no small feat though. So I hope you enjoyed the episode. If you want more
cloud knowledge, ACG has a ton of no, no, no, it's an actual ton cos I measured it. A ton
of cloud content on both the ACG platform and YouTube. Check it out and consider signing up
for a free account too. We'd love to have you join our friendly learner community.
I'll see you in the clyde, in the clyde? I'll see you in the clyde.
I'll see you in the cloud. Keep being awesome Cloud Gurus. I'll see you in the clyde cloud.