Issue 438: 1st October 2023
An end of month issue, means there are quite a few product announcements. I'm quite excited by the announcement that Azure Functions extension for Dapr is in public preview. There's also an interesting post about Infrastructure as Code Testing with Azure Policy.
In Analytics: Sending data to Synapse Real-Time Analytics in Fabric from Apache Kafka Ecosystems using Java and Parameterize your Databricks notebooks with widgets, and Azure Databricks Tables - Delta Lake, Hive Metastore, TempViews, Managed, External.
In the AI space highlights include: Azure Open AI: generate article metadata with TypeScript (I did something similar with the endjin blogs last month!), Using Azure Database for PostgreSQL as a vector store, and finally a particularly interesting use case: Revolutionizing Requirement Gathering: Azure DevOps Meets Azure OpenAI using Semantic kernel.
Issue 437: 24th September 2023
A relatively short edition this week. Highlights include: Deploy a Custom Vision App on Azure App Service with Zero Downtime Deployment using Deployment Slots and Demystifying Azure OpenAI Networking for Secure Chatbot Deployment
There's an interesting guide to certificate management in: Get certificates with Azure Key Vault extension to your Linux VMs and a walkthrough for Establishing Data Mesh architectural pattern with Domains and OneLake on Microsoft Fabric.
Finally two posts highlighting the power of Azure CLI and Cloud Shell: Taking the leap - Unleashing the power of Azure CLI and Managing Azure Databricks with the Azure Cloud Shell Command Line Interface.
Issue 436: 17th September 2023
Lots of interesting articles this week. In AI: Deploy ChatGPT Next Web to Azure Container Apps with Individual Account Login in 3 minutes and Azure Docs Copilot – A Generative AI App for Searching Azure Documentation, and Use Azure OpenAI Add your data vector search from code.
In DevOps: Introduction to Azure DevOps Workload identity federation OIDC with Terraform and Boost your CI/CD automation for Synapse SQL Serverless by taking advantage of SSDT and SqlPackage CLI. In analytics: Calling Durable Functions From Fabric Pipelines and From Blobs to Insights: Your Guide to Smart Storage Lifecycle Policies and A Beginners Guide to getting started with the Kusto Query Language in Azure.
Finally, an interesting assortment: Mastering Azure Point-to-Site VPN and DNS Private Resolver, and Access Managed Identity from container inside VM – Azure, and Azure App Service Limit 1 - Remote Storage Windows, and AKS Egress Traffic Demystified
Issue 435: 10th September 2023
To start off, two conference reminders; Microsoft Ignite is on from the 14th - 17th November in Seattle and Online, and Microsoft Data & AI Conference in Las Vegas 10-15th December. Sticking with Data & AI, if you keep hearing about embeddings and vectors but don't know what they are, Episode 472 of the Azure Podcast covers Azure Vector Search Unveiled, and there's also a Step-by-Step Guide for Bringing your own Data to Azure OpenAI.
Two AKS posts of interest: AKS: Login with Azure CLI and Workload Identity, and How to install an AKS cluster with Azure Managed Prometheus and Azure Managed Grafana via Bicep.
Three other articles of interest Intrusion Detection and Prevention System IDPS Based on Signatures, a very useful tool: AzSaveMoney - Clean-up unused resources and save money and energy in your Azure environment. and a dive into Upgrading to container app environment workload profiles - or not?
Finally, a few weeks ago I mentioned The Green Software Foundation and that code = energy (= carbon) = cost. The more efficient the code, the less energy it uses, the less carbon it emits, and the less it costs to run. Jon George has written a series of blog post looking at Optimising .NET code (using an Advent of Code challenge as an example): Introduction, Hunting for allocations, Let's blame LINQ, and Avoiding allocations using Span<T>.
Azure Weekly Archive
If you would like to read more interesting articles from the Azure ecosystem check out our archive where you will find all of the back issues.
Contribute Content
If you would like to contribute any content to the Azure Weekly newsletter, please email azureweekly@endjin.com