Microsoft – Page 11 – Get Practical

Azure Authentication methods – Go Passwordless

Hey guys, in my last post I talked about recovering access/resetting password. So today I will talk about the Azure Authentication Methods which includes a feature to go passwordless.

This feature will bring you greater security, after all passwords are the biggest causes of frauds, ransomwares and hacking nowadays. It will also help reduce the number of password reset tickets and help with the process of creating new user accounts.

The idea of this post will be to explain some concepts/methods and demonstrate how to enable this feature (If you already have MFA, the process will become even easier to be adopted).

Let’s get started: Go to Azure portal go to Security > Authentication Methods

As you can see above, there are 4 different methods and here below is the explanation of each one of them.

FIDO2 Security Key: Among other words, it is based on a USB device that may or may not have Bluetooth, NFC or fingerprint recognition. The vast majority of current devices use standard authentication (WebAuthn) and Microsoft has a list of supported devices. This option will allow the user to authenticate when inserting the device plus their fingerprint or with NFC/Bluetooth approach.

Microsoft Authenticator App: Well known in the market, with this app you can approve your access through a PIN or the insertion of your fingerprint.

Text Message : This method will ask you, instead of entering your username and password, enter your phone number (which must be registered before) and then it will send you an access code.

Temporary Access Pass:
This feature will help band new employee who dont have a password or MFA that is where the new Temporary Access Pass comes in. Basically, when creating a new user’s account, the administrator will be able to provide the TAP (Temporary Access Pass) to the new user. This Temporary Access Pass is a time-limited passcode that the user can apply to register their passwordless sign-in method among the methods enabled for that organization.

That said, let’s configure the passwordless option for a specific user, the option chosen for this scenario will be Microsoft Authenticator App.

Simple, easy and intuitive, save your changes and let’s go to the tests.

Go to the Azure portal, enter your username and click next

You will receive a message as shown below.

Go to the Microsoft Authenticator App and enter the requested number.

And then confirm using your fingerprint (If it’s enabled)

There we go, we’re in passwordless:

That’s all for today guys, see you in the next post.

Joao Costa

Recovering local administrator access in Azure VMs

Hey guys!

Let’s assume that for any reason you have lost the local administrator password of a virtual machine in Azure or even don’t remember the initial user created during the deployment of your virtual machine, well, the idea of this post is to solve this your problem, which just seems silly but not unusual.

Starting with the user, in case you don’t remember, it’s a pretty simple task to find out: Go to Azure and make sure your VM is powered on, then select your VM and go to blade “Operations” and select “Run Command” and finally click on “RunPowerShellScript”. This will cause a dialog box to open and in this box you will type the following command in: “Get-LocalUser” and click “Run”.

The output should be presented as the image above, and at this point you will know which are the local users of that VM.

Ok, now that you know which user to use, just type in the password, correct? But let’s say you also don’t remember which password to use (Bad days happen to everyone lol). Well then, I will present two simple ways to reset this local user password.

The easiest and simplest option would be again with your VM selected, go to the blade “Help” and click on “Reset Password”. You will only need to enter the user you want to reset the password and your new password.

(Ps: You will need to be logged into Azure with an user who gives you this right, “RBAC” is a certification exam topic).

If all goes well, you will have the new password and use your local account without any problems.

But let’s assume that this lost password is the domain controller administrator password in Azure. In this case, you will not be able to reset this password as I just showed you above.

Therefore, we will be using the Extensions function in Azure. Through this extension we will run a script to reset the admin password.

The script is very simple and has only one line and has been uploaded to Azure previously.

The script must have the command above: net user LOCALUSER PASSWORD

After creating the script, saving as ResetPassword.ps1 and uploading it to a storage account on azure, select your VM again and in the blade Settings click on Extensions > Add > CustomScriptExtension > Next > RESETPASSWORD.PS1 > Review + Create > Create.

The Azure extension function will run the script on the VM and your password will be reset as configured in the script.

Voila! You will now be able to access your domain controller as you wish. This script can also be used to reset any account’s password.

Obviously the reset options are not limited to what I presented here in this post, especially when it comes to PowerShell commands.

That’s it for today guys, see you next time!

Joao Costa

Study guide for Azure Administrator

Hey guys! Today I come here to share with you my journey to achieve Azure Administrator certification. To get the title of Azure Administrator, you need to pass the Az-104 exam.

My badge validation link

What is expected from an Azure Administrator?

Azure Administrator implements, manages and monitors identity, governance, storage, compute and virtual networks in a cloud environment. Azure Administrator will provision, scale, monitor and adjust resources as appropriate. Candidates must have at least six months of hands-on experience in Azure administration. Candidates should have a strong understanding of Azure core services, workloads, security, and Azure governance.

Candidates for this exam should have experience using PowerShell, Command Line Interface, Azure Portal, and ARM templates.

The exam content:

Manage Azure identities and governance (15-20%)
Implement and manage storage (15-20%)
Deploy and manage Azure compute resources (20-25%)
Configure and manage virtual networking (25-30%)
Monitor and back up Azure resources (10-15%)

What was asked for on my exam?

Many questions based on RBAC (Role-Based Access Control), basically asked what permissions would be needed to perform certain tasks in Azure. I also remember seeing a lot of questions related to locations, ie whether you can interact between resources located in different Azure’s regions. Questions about minimum computing requirements (Virtual Machines), questions about Azure Monitor, Azure Advisor and general questions related to networking.

Some links from previous posts covering the exam content.

RBAC – https://getpractical.co.uk/2021/03/08/understand-azure-role-based-access-control-rbac/

Azure Advisor – https://getpractical.co.uk/2021/05/03/azures-advisor/

Azure Storage – https://getpractical.co.uk/2021/06/14/creating-a-storage-on-azure/

Az-Copy – https://getpractical.co.uk/2021/05/17/how-to-download-and-install-the-azcopy-tool/

My study method:

I always read the outline of the skills measured in each exam.
If there’s anything I’m not familiar with, I’ll read the documentation available in Microsoft Docs (always free and up-to-date).
If I don’t understand what the documents are saying, I use my tenant for proper validations.
I always dedicate 20 to 40 hours (per exam) to perform the laboratories (On Azure you can have a free tenant for 30 days to do your validations).
When it comes to new technology, I start by watching the training available in Microsoft Learn, Pluralsight and/or Udemy.

Azure Free tenant: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/free/

Microsoft Learning: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/

Exam skills outline Az-104: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/exams/az-104

I would soon renew my Microsoft 365 certifications, after all I have a large part of my background in Microsoft 365 migrations and I will no doubt share my journey here.

Take as much time as you need to prepare and first of all, don’t be afraid to fail. I’ve failed exams before and this is part of any IT professional’s journey, whether you’re a beginner or not.

If you have any questions, let me know in the comments that I will try to help you improve. In 2022 I will try the Azure Solution Architect exam, which will be my next goal with Azure (Until Microsft updates everything again lol =/).

See you soon guys and good luck studying.

Joao Costa

Azure: Creating a Windows 11 VM

Hi Guys,

In today’s article I will be brief, but I want to demonstrate a subject that is well up to date: How to create a vm with Windows 11 through Cloud Shell in Azure portal.

Let’s go straight to practice: Log into the Azure portal and hit the Cloud Shell icon located on the right side of the search bar.

If you have not yet used the Cloud Shell, on the first access a Resource Group will be created for the Cloud Shell to use it. In the left corner it is also possible to choose between PowerShell or Bash commands (In case you are familiar with Linux), for this example I will use PowerShell command.

Okay, the next step will be to create a resource group for this virtual machine.

Now run the following commands to create your virtual machine

az vm create –resource-group GetPractical –name VMWindows11 –image windows-11-Preview –public-ip-sku Standard –admin-username azureuser –admin-password “GetPractical@Windows11”

All other parameters like disk, cpu, vnet and etc will be created automatically. If you need to customize, you will also need to customize the command or create via GUI portal.

This process should take a few minutes, but once it is finished you will be able to see in the portal that the VM was created successfully.

It’s important to say that at the time I deployed this vm, Windows 11 was still in preview. If at the time of this post the preview version is no longer available, access the following Microsoft docs :

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/cli-ps-findimage

Finally, run the mstsc /v <Public IP Address> command to access your virtual machine with Windows 11 and the result should be as follows:

And that folks, if you have any doubts, leave them in the comments.

Joao Costa

Setting up Azure AD Company Branding

In this blog, I’ll show you how to configure Azure AD company branding options. You can see your organization’s logo and custom color schemes, user hints to provide a familiar and friendly look and feel in your Azure Active Directory. The only prerequisite needed for this configuration is Azure P1 licenses

NOTE:
Before obtaining your images to customize your Azure AD login branding, keep in mind the graphic formats and maximum image and file sizes.

Also keep in mind every time you make a change and test it out, your branding will get cached on one of the many global Azure AD Authentication endpoints. As stated in the documentation changes can take up to an hour to be reflected. Be patient (or keep reloading many times until you hit a new endpoint that will get the new config).
It can take up to an hour for any changes you made to the sign-in page branding to appear.

OK let’s get start.

Go to portal.azure.com and open the Active Directory blade or go directly to the AAD (Azure Active Directory) by clicking the following link: (https://aad.portal.azure.com)

Next Navigate to Azure Active Directory -> Company branding and select to Configure icon to Configure / Edit Company branding

Now click on Configure or Edit the branding configuration and type in the information.

Note: The language is automatically set as your default language based on the Azure subscription setup and it can’t be changed. However, you can configure additional languages by select the New Language option.

Finally click Save at the top of the screen and the company’s branding page is saved in Azure Active Directory.

Add your custom branding to pages by modifying the end of the URL with the text, ?whr=yourdomainname. This specific modification works on different types of pages, including the Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) setup page, the Self-service Password Reset (SSPR) setup page, and the sign in page.

Whether an application supports customized URLs for branding or not depends on the specific application, and should be checked before attempting to add a custom branding to a page.

Examples:

Original URL: https://aka.ms/MFASetup
Custom URL: https://account.activedirectory.windowsazure.com/proofup.aspx?whr=contoso.com

Original URL: https://aka.ms/SSPR
Custom URL: https://passwordreset.microsoftonline.com/?whr=contoso.com

After you’ve created the Custom branding, if you want to test it, access the page by https://login.microsoftonline.com/<domain name> and you will see your new custom screen.

This time it was a quick post guys, see you soon, thanks!

Joao Costa