Today, we are announcing the expansion of our mission-critical cloud for US Government with new capabilities in Azure Government, the expansion of Azure Government Secret, and the announcement of a new cloud to serve customers with Top Secret classified data—Azure Government Top Secret.

Announcing Azure Government Top Secret

We have recently completed the buildout of new Azure Government Top Secret regions, and we are working with the US Government on accreditation. As part of our ongoing commitment to commercial parity as driven by government mission requirements, Azure Government Top Secret regions are designed to provide the same capabilities as Azure (commercial), Azure Government, and Azure Government Secret, enabling a continuum of compute from mission cloud to tactical edge.

The broad range of services will meet the demand for greater agility in the classified space, including the need to gain deeper insights from data sourced from any location as well as the need to enable the rapid expansion of remote work. Additionally, mission owners will benefit from greater choice in modernizing legacy systems, with a secure cloud platform that works on open standards and open frameworks with tools that work across a wide range of skill levels, from business analysts to developers to data scientists.

Azure Government Secret new functionality

Azure Government Secret continues to help mission owners unlock new insights, enable secure innovation, achieve greater agility, and further the mission. Customers including those in the US DoD, law enforcement, and other agencies are using Azure Government Secret today. Azure Government Secret is authorized by both Department of Defense Impact Level 6 (IL6) and Intelligence Community Directive (ICD) 503.

“Microsoft is focused on mission enablement. Missions are enabled with workloads. Workloads live within enclaves that house varied levels of data. Microsoft is enabling seamless, secure, cost-contained agility across mission workloads at scale.

The consistency between Azure (commercial), Azure Government, and Azure Government Secret is also starting to change the game as software development may happen from anywhere, while the code itself can be promoted to enclaves with higher classification levels. There it can interact with data of higher classification levels. At the end of the day, this means doing more for the mission at a lower overall cost.” —Carroll Moon, CTO of CloudFit Software.

Today, we are announcing several new services in Azure Government Secret; for application developers, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), and Azure Container Instances help you deploy and manage containerized applications more easily. Intelligent security analytics services Azure Sentinel and Azure Security Center are also now available in Azure Government Secret, enabling unified security across your digital estate and integrated, proactive threat management. Together with Azure Monitor, these services help you collect, analyze, and act on telemetry data from your Azure and on-premises environments.

Azure Government Availability Zones, Windows Virtual Desktop availability, and expanded compliance

Events over the past year have highlighted the importance of securely maintaining critical government operations. We have designed and built our cloud platforms for high availability and resilience, and today, we are announcing Availability Zones in Azure Government, providing high availability for your most demanding mission-critical applications and data. Availability Zones are tolerant to datacenter failures through redundancy and logical isolation of services, assuring that critical customer services and workloads are available, anytime, and anywhere.

In addition to responding to unprecedented events, government agencies are rapidly responding to today’s imperative of remote work, and we’ve seen high demand for solutions that allow teams to work from anywhere while keeping relevant data within a securely managed environment. We recently announced the availability of Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) in Azure Government with FedRAMP High accreditation, enabling agencies to adopt WVD for mission-critical workloads and empowering more secure and productive work-from-anywhere scenarios.

As new services are brought into each of our government-only cloud regions, we are working with our accreditors to ensure these services are authorized at the right level for your workloads. We now offer 137 Azure Government services at FedRAMP High and 97 services at Department of Defense Impact Level 5 (IL5) across all Azure Government regions.¹ Visit our documentation page for a full list of services by audit scope.

Total flexibility at the tactical edge

Today, we are announcing updates to our tactical edge portfolio for US Government customers. Together, these new first-party edge devices help you to do more for the mission, whether that is pre-processing data for low latency response times, bringing AI and machine learning (ML) to the far edge, or harnessing satellite data more rapidly to enable decision-making in disconnected environments.

Modular Datacenter generally available at Impact Level 5 and 6 with high availability options

The recently announced Azure Modular Datacenter (MDC) provides datacenter scale compute and storage resources for areas in which adverse conditions, disrupted network availability, and limited access to specialized infrastructure would typically prohibit cloud computing. The MDC can run separate security enclaves, allowing mission users to operate workloads across multiple data classifications at the same time in a single unit, and like the other ruggedized devices, can operate in fully connected, occasionally connected, or fully disconnected scenarios. The MDC allows government customers to deploy a single piece of critical infrastructure to meet the needs of a wide variety of mission workloads at various levels of classification, all in a self-contained footprint that reduces logistics overhead.

Today we are announcing:

• The network high availability (HA) module for the MDC that provides network resiliency through multiple satellite communication partners in different orbits. Network resiliency is delivered via SATCOM links through our continuously growing ecosystem of SATCOM partners like SpaceX and SES, for continuity of operations (COOP) during fiber failover.
• The high availability power module, which adds resiliency where customers need it, providing an on-demand way to add additional power stability resources in a form factor that is as transportable as the MDC. For deployments with intermittent or unreliable power, transitioning between multiple power sources will keep MDC workloads up and running.

Azure Stack Hub Ruggedized

Azure Stack Hub Ruggedized from Microsoft is an Azure Hardware and Software solution that brings a cloud-consistent approach to operating environments while addressing limited or no network connectivity, harsh conditions requiring military specifications, and high security requirements with optional connectivity to any Azure cloud. Azure Stack Hub Ruggedized is now generally available for customers in Azure Government and Azure Government Secret.

Azure Stack Edge Pro R and Mini R

The Azure Stack Edge appliances Azure Stack Edge Pro R and Azure Stack Edge Mini R enable you to run applications and leverage hardware-accelerated AI and ML solutions to analyze, transform, and filter data at the edge, right where data is created and collected. You can then aggregate data in Azure for further analytics, with common app logic across both. The appliances also act as a cloud storage gateway, enabling eyes-off data transfers to Azure while retaining local access to files. Azure Stack Edge Pro R and Mini R are generally available for customers in Azure Government and Azure Government Secret.

Learn more

Designed and built for your mission requirements, these rugged edge devices enable scenarios from disaster response to modern fleet management to perimeter security and dangerous object detection. US Government customers and their partners² can use Azure commercial, Azure Government, and Azure Government Secret to advance their missions, depending on their compliance requirements. Providing a broad range of commercial innovation for government across IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS and the most comprehensive compliance, these cloud platforms are designed to help you modernize mission systems and stay in the lead, today and tomorrow.

¹Read the Isolation guidelines for Impact Level 5 workloads.

²Azure Government is available to US federal, state, local, or tribal government entities and their solution providers with eligibility review. Azure Government Secret is available with US Government approval to agencies working with US Government data classified at the Secret level.

⏰ Pre-load of #Cyberpunk2077 on @Steam and @EpicGames is now available!⏰

— Cyberpunk 2077 (@CyberpunkGame) December 7, 2020

The wait is almost over!
If you're looking to play #Cyberpunk2077 as soon as it's available, here's a map with global release timings.
For PC and Stadia players, the release is simultaneous and scheduled for midnight GMT, and for all console players – midnight local time. pic.twitter.com/W0QLIFAhH1

— Cyberpunk 2077 (@CyberpunkGame) December 3, 2020

Python’s built-in bytes(source) function creates an immutable bytes object initialized as defined in the function argument source. A bytes object is like a string but it uses only byte characters consisting of a sequence of 8-bit integers in the range 0<=x<256. The returned byte object is immutable—you cannot change it after creation. If you plan to change the contents, use the bytearray() method to create a mutable bytearray object.

Here’s a minimal example that creates a byte from three integers stored in a list:

>>> bytes([1, 2, 3])

b'\x01\x02\x03'

The prefix \x escape sequence means the next two characters are interpreted as hex character codes. For instance, the hex code \x01 is the same as chr(0x01)=16*0+1=1 that’s simply a start of heading SOH character. (source, ASCII table)

Syntax: bytes([source[, encoding[, errors]]])

Argument	source (Optional)	Allows you to initialize the byte in four different ways (from simple to more complex): integer –> array has this size and is initialized with 0 bytes: >>> bytes(4) b'\x00\x00\x00\x00' iterable –> integers in the range 0 <= x < 256 are initial byte contents: >>> bytes([1, 2, 3]) b'\x01\x02\x03'  string and you provide the encoding (and optionally, errors) arguments –> bytes() converts string to bytes using str.encode(): >>> bytes('hi', 'UTF-8') b'hi' object implementing the buffer interface –> initializes the byte object via a read-only object buffer.
Argument	encoding (Optional)	The encoding used in case you provide a string argument. Example: 'UTF-8'.
Argument	errors (Optional)	The action to take when the encoding conversion fails. Only makes sense if source argument is a string.
Return Value	byte	Returns a new object of type byte—a sequence of bytes that is immutable. For a mutable version, consider using the bytearray() function. Without an optional argument, it returns a byte object with one byte 0: >>> bytes() b''

Here are some basic usages of the function:

Input : bytes(4)

Output : b'\x00\x00\x00\x00' Input : bytes([1, 2, 3])

Output : b'\x01\x02\x03' Input : bytes('hi', 'UTF-8')

Output : b'hi'

Want to learn more? We’re going to dive into more examples next!

But before we move on, I’m excited to present you my brand-new Python book Python One-Liners (Amazon Link).

If you like one-liners, you’ll LOVE the book. It’ll teach you everything there is to know about a single line of Python code. But it’s also an introduction to computer science, data science, machine learning, and algorithms. The universe in a single line of Python!

The book is released in 2020 with the world-class programming book publisher NoStarch Press (San Francisco).

Link: https://nostarch.com/pythononeliners

Create Bytes Object From Single Integer Argument — Examples

The following code shows you how to use the bytes() function on simple integer arguments.

# Single Integer Input Argument

print(bytes())

print(bytes(2))

print(bytes(4)) '''

b''

b'\x00\x00'

b'\x00\x00\x00\x00' '''

If you provide only one input argument, it uses this input argument to determine how many bytes should be created. It just uses bytes with value 0, in byte notation x00 to fill the byte.

Create Bytes Object From Iterable of Integers — Examples

You can also provide an iterable argument to obtain a new byte object:

# Iterable Input Argument

print(bytes([1, 1, 1]))

print(bytes([14]))

print(bytes({9, 8, 7})) '''

b'\x01\x01\x01'

b'\x0e'

b'\x08\t\x07' '''

The iterable must consist of a number of integers between 0 and 256. If you fail to do so, Python will throw a ValueError:

How to Fix “ValueError: byte must be in range(0, 256)”

If you use the bytes() function on an iterable that contains at least one integer greater than the maximum number representable by 8 bits, namely 256, or smaller than 0, Python will throw a ValueError: byte must be in range(0, 256). You can fix it by ensuring that each number in your iterable can actually be represented by 8 bits and falls into the interval 0 to 256.

Here’s an example of the ValueError where you use a number larger or equal than 256:

>>> bytes([999])

Traceback (most recent call last): File "<pyshell#15>", line 1, in <module> bytes([999])

ValueError: bytes must be in range(0, 256)

Another example when using a number smaller than 0:

>>> bytes([-10])

Traceback (most recent call last): File "<pyshell#16>", line 1, in <module> bytes([-10])

ValueError: bytes must be in range(0, 256)

Fix it by modifying the numbers to lie within the interval 0 to 256:

>>> bytes([255])

b'\xff'

Summary

Python’s built-in function bytes() allows you to initialize the byte in four different ways (from simple to more complex):

integer –> array has this size and is initialized with 0 bytes:

>>> bytes(4)

b'\x00\x00\x00\x00'

iterable –> integers in the range 0 <= x < 256 are initial byte contents:

>>> bytes([1, 2, 3])

b'\x01\x02\x03'

 string and you provide the encoding (and optionally, errors) arguments –> bytes() converts string to bytes using str.encode():

>>> bytes('hi', 'UTF-8')

b'hi'

object implementing the buffer interface –> initializes the byte object via a read-only object buffer.

Do you want to boost your Python skills in a fun and easy-to-consume way? Consider the following resources and become a master coder!

Where to Go From Here?

Enough theory, let’s get some practice!

To become successful in coding, you need to get out there and solve real problems for real people. That’s how you can become a six-figure earner easily. And that’s how you polish the skills you really need in practice. After all, what’s the use of learning theory that nobody ever needs?

Practice projects is how you sharpen your saw in coding!

Do you want to become a code master by focusing on practical code projects that actually earn you money and solve problems for people?

Then become a Python freelance developer! It’s the best way of approaching the task of improving your Python skills—even if you are a complete beginner.

Join my free webinar “How to Build Your High-Income Skill Python” and watch how I grew my coding business online and how you can, too—from the comfort of your own home.

Join the free webinar now!

The post Python bytes() Function first appeared on Finxter.

Today we are taking a look at 3 Blender 2.9 tips that every Blender user should know but probably don’t including enabling experimental mode, undo/redo stack and preventing UI from loading. There is a step by step video embedded below if you get lost on a step in the written version.

Tip 1: Enabling Undo/Redo Stack

If you’re are a error prone as I am, or are the type that likes to experiment, you probably find yourself using undo and redo all the time. If you want to jump forward multiple steps or flip forward and back in the undo history, this feature is for you.

To turn Undo History on, select Edit->Preferences…

Now select Keymap on the left, then locate Screen->Screen(Global) scroll down and locate Add New.

Now in the Add New window, expand the arrow, click the Select a Key button and enter Z. Also toggle Ctrl and Alt on, then in the text box area replace “none” with “ed.undo_history” then hit enter, like so:

Now if you hit Ctrl + Alt + Z in Blender, you will get an on screen menu to jump forward and back in the undo/redo history stack.

You can now move forward and back in undo by selecting the state from the window.

Tip 2: Enabling Developer Extras/Experimental Options

With each new release of Blender, especially alpha and beta releases, there are several experimental features. You do however need to enable them. Once again select Edit->Preferences…, then select the Interface tab. Toggle the option next to Developer Extras and the Experimental tab will now be displayed.

Clicking the Experimental Tab, you can now turn off and on experimental features by clicking the check box next to each feature. Most features will also have an info link to learn more, which will open the development page in a web browser.

Keep in mind these features are marked as experimental for a reason, do not use them in production.

Tip 3: Preventing UI from Loading When Opening A Blend File

This tip is probably the most obvious, but also the most life changing if you didn’t already know it. When you open a .blend file you download from online you will notice you also get the UI settings of the author of that Blend file. If you’d rather have it load with your own UI settings there are two ways to do it.

First is on a case by case basis. When you open a Blend file using File->Open, in the open dialog, click the gear icon, and unselect Load UI.

Now if you would prefer to have this setting disabled by default, you can also do it via Edit->Preferences… select the Save & Load tab then disable Load UI.

Also remember, if you want to keep these settings each time you load Blender, you need to save your changes. Simply click the Hamburger icon in the Preferences window and select Save Preferences, you shouldn’t have to perform this step if you have Auto-Save Preferences turned on.

You can see all three to these tips in action in the video below.

Sometimes there is a need to add another disk to your system. This is where Logical Volume Management (LVM) comes in handy. The cool thing about LVM is that it’s fairly flexible. There are several ways to add a disk. This article describes one way to do it.

Heads up!

This article does not cover the process of physically installing a new disk drive into your system. Consult your system and disk documentation on how to do that properly.

Important: Always make sure you have backups of important data. The steps described in this article will destroy data if it already exists on the new disk.

Good to know

This article doesn’t cover every LVM feature deeply; the focus is on adding a disk. But basically, LVM has volume groups, made up of one or more partitions and/or disks. You add the partitions or disks as physical volumes. A volume group can be broken down into many logical volumes. Logical volumes can be used as any other storage for filesystems, ramdisks, etc. More information can be found here.

Think of the physical volumes as forming a pool of storage (a volume group) from which you then carve out logical volumes for your system to use directly.

Preparation

Make sure you can see the disk you want to add. Use lsblk prior to adding the disk to see what storage is already available or in use.

$ lsblk

NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT

zram0 251:0 0 989M 0 disk [SWAP]

vda 252:0 0 20G 0 disk

├─vda1 252:1 0 1G 0 part /boot

└─vda2 252:2 0 19G 0 part

└─fedora_fedora-root 253:0 0 19G 0 lvm /

This article uses a virtual machine with virtual storage. Therefore the device names start with vda for the first disk, vdb for the second, and so on. The name of your device may be different. Many systems will see physical disks as sda for the first disk, sdb for the second, and so on.

Once the new disk has been connected and your system is back up and running, use lsblk again to see the new block device.

$ lsblk

NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT

zram0 251:0 0 989M 0 disk [SWAP]

vda 252:0 0 20G 0 disk

├─vda1 252:1 0 1G 0 part /boot

└─vda2 252:2 0 19G 0 part

└─fedora_fedora-root 253:0 0 19G 0 lvm /

vdb 252:16 0 10G 0 disk

There is now a new device named vdb. The location for the device is /dev/vdb.

$ ls -l /dev/vdb

brw-rw----. 1 root disk 252, 16 Nov 24 12:56 /dev/vdb

We can see the disk, but we cannot use it with LVM yet. If you run blkid you should not see it listed. For this and following commands, you’ll need to ensure your system is configured so you can use sudo:

$ sudo blkid

/dev/vda1: UUID="4847cb4d-6666-47e3-9e3b-12d83b2d2448" BLOCK_SIZE="4096" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="830679b8-01"

/dev/vda2: UUID="k5eWpP-6MXw-foh5-Vbgg-JMZ1-VEf9-ARaGNd" TYPE="LVM2_member" PARTUUID="830679b8-02"

/dev/mapper/fedora_fedora-root: UUID="f8ab802f-8c5f-4766-af33-90e78573f3cc" BLOCK_SIZE="4096" TYPE="ext4"

/dev/zram0: UUID="fc6d7a48-2bd5-4066-9bcf-f062b61f6a60" TYPE="swap"

Add the disk to LVM

Initialize the disk using pvcreate. You need to pass the full path to the device. In this example it is /dev/vdb; on your system it may be /dev/sdb or another device name.

$ sudo pvcreate /dev/vdb

Physical volume "/dev/vdb" successfully created.

You should see the disk has been initialized as an LVM2_member when you run blkid:

$ sudo blkid

/dev/vda1: UUID="4847cb4d-6666-47e3-9e3b-12d83b2d2448" BLOCK_SIZE="4096" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="830679b8-01"

/dev/vda2: UUID="k5eWpP-6MXw-foh5-Vbgg-JMZ1-VEf9-ARaGNd" TYPE="LVM2_member" PARTUUID="830679b8-02"

/dev/mapper/fedora_fedora-root: UUID="f8ab802f-8c5f-4766-af33-90e78573f3cc" BLOCK_SIZE="4096" TYPE="ext4"

/dev/zram0: UUID="fc6d7a48-2bd5-4066-9bcf-f062b61f6a60" TYPE="swap"

/dev/vdb: UUID="4uUUuI-lMQY-WyS5-lo0W-lqjW-Qvqw-RqeroE" TYPE="LVM2_member"

You can list all physical volumes currently available using pvs:

$ sudo pvs

PV VG Fmt Attr PSize PFree

/dev/vda2 fedora_fedora lvm2 a-- <19.00g 0

/dev/vdb lvm2 --- 10.00g 10.00g

/dev/vdb is listed as a PV (phsyical volume), but it isn’t assigned to a VG (Volume Group) yet.

Add the pysical volume to a volume group

You can find a list of available volume groups using vgs:

$ sudo vgs

VG #PV #LV #SN Attr VSize VFree

fedora_fedora 1 1 0 wz--n- 19.00g 0

In this example, there is only one volume group available. Next, add the physical volume to fedora_fedora:

$ sudo vgextend fedora_fedora /dev/vdb

Volume group "fedora_fedora" successfully extended

You should now see the physical volume is added to the volume group:

$ sudo pvs PV VG Fmt Attr PSize PFree

/dev/vda2 fedora_fedora lvm2 a– <19.00g 0

/dev/vdb fedora_fedora lvm2 a– <10.00g <10.00g

Look at the volume groups:

$ sudo vgs

VG #PV #LV #SN Attr VSize VFree

fedora_fedora 2 1 0 wz–n- 28.99g <10.00g

You can get a detailed list of the specific volume group and physical volumes as well:

$ sudo vgdisplay fedora_fedora

--- Volume group ---

VG Name fedora_fedora

System ID

Format lvm2

Metadata Areas 2

Metadata Sequence No 3

VG Access read/write

VG Status resizable

MAX LV 0

Cur LV 1

Open LV 1

Max PV 0

Cur PV 2

Act PV 2

VG Size 28.99 GiB

PE Size 4.00 MiB

Total PE 7422

Alloc PE / Size 4863 / 19.00 GiB

Free PE / Size 2559 / 10.00 GiB

VG UUID C5dL2s-dirA-SQ15-TfQU-T3yt-l83E-oI6pkp

Look at the PV:

$ sudo pvdisplay /dev/vdb --- Physical volume --- PV Name /dev/vdb VG Name fedora_fedora PV Size 10.00 GiB / not usable 4.00 MiB Allocatable yes PE Size 4.00 MiB Total PE 2559 Free PE 2559 Allocated PE 0 PV UUID 4uUUuI-lMQY-WyS5-lo0W-lqjW-Qvqw-RqeroE 

Now that we have added the disk, we can allocate space to logical volumes (LVs):

$ sudo lvs

LV VG Attr LSize Pool Origin Data% Meta% Move Log Cpy%Sync Convert

root fedora_fedora -wi-ao---- 19.00g

Look at the logical volumes. Here’s a detailed look at the root LV:

$ sudo lvdisplay fedora_fedora/root

--- Logical volume ---

LV Path /dev/fedora_fedora/root

LV Name root

VG Name fedora_fedora

LV UUID yqc9cw-AvOw-G1Ni-bCT3-3HAa-qnw3-qUSHGM

LV Write Access read/write

LV Creation host, time fedora, 2020-11-24 11:44:36 -0500

LV Status available

LV Size 19.00 GiB

Current LE 4863

Segments 1

Allocation inherit

Read ahead sectors auto

- currently set to 256

Block device 253:0

Look at the size of the root filesystem and compare it to the logical volume size.

$ df -h /

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on

/dev/mapper/fedora_fedora-root 19G 1.4G 17G 8% /

The logical volume and the filesystem both agree the size is 19G. Let’s add 5G to the root logical volume:

$ sudo lvresize -L +5G fedora_fedora/root

Size of logical volume fedora_fedora/root changed from 19.00 GiB (4863 extents) to 24.00 GiB (6143 extents).

Logical volume fedora_fedora/root successfully resized.

We now have 24G available to the logical volume. Look at the / filesystem.

$ df -h /

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on

/dev/mapper/fedora_fedora-root 19G 1.4G 17G 8% /

We are still showing only 19G free. This is because the logical volume is not the same as the filesytem. To use the new space added to the logical volume, resize the filesystem.

$ sudo resize2fs /dev/fedora_fedora/root

resize2fs 1.45.6 (20-Mar-2020)

Filesystem at /dev/fedora_fedora/root is mounted on /; on-line resizing required

old_desc_blocks = 3, new_desc_blocks = 3

The filesystem on /dev/fedora_fedora/root is now 6290432 (4k) blocks long.

Look at the size of the filesystem.

$ df -h /

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on

/dev/mapper/fedora_fedora-root 24G 1.4G 21G 7% /

As you can see, the root file system (/) has taken all of the space available on the logical volume and no reboot was needed.

You have now initialized a disk as a physical volume, and extended the volume group with the new physical volume. After that you increased the size of the logical volume, and resized the filesystem to use the new space from the logical volume.

Apple has released a video promoting the Up Next “Class of 2020,” new artists championed by the Apple Music initiative throughout the year.

As we approach the end of one of the most tumultuous years in recent memory marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, we have an opportunity to take stock of how the challenges faced by governments, businesses and individuals have tested us collectively, and how we have responded. While this pandemic has taught us that no one is 100 percent resilient, government agencies focused on the notion of mission resiliency, including agile infrastructure, ongoing digital transformation and topline security, have proven more capable of quickly pivoting and adapting in the face of a crisis.  We saw government customers embracing innovation at an accelerated rate and expect this to continue – as leaders shift their mindsets and operations to be more agile, anticipating the needs of citizens and government workers.

This pandemic has been tragic and devastating to so many citizens, across the U.S. and globally. As a result of the increasing reliance on technology to support remote “everything,” this period has demonstrated the most accelerated shift to digital transformation in decades. At our third annual Government Leaders Summit, Microsoft’s premier event for U.S. federal government officials, we showcased examples of government customers who have reimagined new ways of working, as they navigate the changing landscape. These stories include:

Digital transformation at the Department of Veterans Affairs – Our teams helped the VA deploy AI-based chatbots, so veterans have 24/7 access to COVID-19 testing, scheduling telehealth visits, refilling prescriptions and even assistance payments. We also helped the VA implement cloud-based dashboards, powered by Microsoft’s Power BI, Bing Maps Platform and Azure App Service to help the agency have near real-time information on bed utilization and even open access to civilians as local hospitals reached capacity with COVID-19 patients.

Rapid shift to remote work for the Department of Defense – In less than a month, the DOD and Microsoft created a Commercial Virtual Remote (CVR) work environment built on Azure Government, Microsoft 365 Government and Microsoft Teams. CVR delivers secure chat, meetings, calls, collaboration and other telework functionality for 3.2 million DOD employees to ensure seamless continuity of operations.

Implementing zero-trust solutions at the Small Business Administration –To help securely manage the nearly 20,000 newly remote workers, the SBA leveraged Microsoft’s cloud security capabilities to enable dynamic security access controls based off of user risk scores, location, user behavior, device, identity and other data. This zero trust-like approach, developed under challenging circumstances, allowed the SBA to operate and meet critical needs like distributing pandemic-related funding while ensuring security and trust in its systems.

Facilitating mission resiliency for government

Microsoft is committed to helping agencies adapt to new ways of work and serve the public and facilitating the goals of mission resiliency. As part of this effort, today we announced a number of advances to our government cloud offerings, including:

Delivering enhanced capabilities for Azure Government – We offer broadest range of commercial innovation for mission at all data classifications, and today my colleague Tom Keane, corporate vice president of Azure engineering, shared an update on new capabilities. We’ve recently completed the buildout of our Azure Government Top Secret regions and we’re working with the U.S. government on accreditation. We’re also expanding the rugged edge portfolio to bring cloud intelligence and compute anywhere you need. And to further mission resiliency, we are offering two additional modules for the Azure Modular Datacenter (MDC): Network High Availability module and the High Availability power module, both add-on feature options for the MDC.

Microsoft 365 Government committed to support U.S. government data requirements – As part of our commitment to supporting federal government agencies, the defense industrial base, and the DOD, we are committed to delivery of Microsoft 365 Government to support U.S. secret and top-secret data. We’ll have more details to share in the new year.

Dynamics 365 and Power Platform update – To support the DOD’s goals of moving mission-critical applications to the cloud, Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform have received an IL4 Provisional Authority. This is an important step in our ability to serve defense agencies as it allows them to transfer previously supported datacenters to Microsoft’s managed cloud.

Re-imagining the future together

We’re incredibly excited about this progress and our continued partnership to provide the federal government with the platform it needs to deliver on its diverse and complex missions, whether it’s a rapid shift to remote work or supporting COVID-19 vaccine distribution. Agencies operating with the necessary courage, culture and capabilities have been able to accelerate in the face of adversity. At Microsoft, we are committed to supporting our government customers with trusted technology solutions and people-centric partnerships, which help advance continuity of services and the highest mission resiliency as we build into the future together. For more details about our work, please visit the Microsoft Government page here.

Tags: Azure Government, Dynamics 365 Government, Government, Microsoft 365 Government