Azure Weekly
Issue #10 - 24th January 2015
This week, a report by Forbes describes Azure's emergence as a competitor to AWS. Tech Target also covers Azure's rapid feature growth.
There's good news for organisations wanting to test out Azure's Hybrid Integration tool ExpressRoute this week. It's available for free until the end of June, with complementary offers from partners including BT, Verizon and AT&T. For developers, there's the announcement of a new Application Insights extension for Azure Websites, and support for SQL parameterization in the DocumentDB REST API and SDKs.
In community news, Magnus Martensson issues a general invite to the Global Azure Bootcamp on April 25, a world-wide, community-lead day of events. If you have an event you'd like to promote, let us know!
For anyone wanting to catch up on recent Azure services and developments, Bruno Terkaly has written an A-Z of the entire Azure ecosystem.
⚖️ Management and Governance
Endjin's own Richard Kerslake writes about how Endjin cut our Azure based ALM infrastructure costs by 62% by using Azure Automation to turn off VMs outside of core business hours and shows how you can do the same.
Guy Bowerman writes about a new open source data centre migration tool from Persistent Systems, available on GitHub
🖥️ Compute
Lori Woehler provides an update on Azure's compliance accreditations, including renewed ISO 27001 accreditation, an expansion of service in scope for SOC 1 and SOC 2, and new accreditations last year with the Australian Government Information Security Registered Assessors Program, and Singapore Multi-Tier Cloud Security.
Srinath Vasireddy announces that the Migration Accelerator preview now supports linux migrations. CentOS 6.4 and 6.5, and Oracle Linux 6.4 and 6.4 can now be migrated using the MA tool, which automates the migration process.
On Channel 9, Rainer Stropek demonstrates how to run ASP.NET vNext in Azure using Docker containers.
🌐 Networking
- Steve Spencer shares some learning about setting a custom domain for Traffic Manager and Azure Websites
💡 Internet of Things
Byron Tardif announces a new Application Insights extension for Azure Websites, which lets you monitor Azure Website application dependencies such as calls to a SQL dependency. Application Insights is a preview service which provides availability, usage and performance monitoring and alerts. A step by step guide to enabling the extension is available on the visual studio blog.
On Channel 9, there are two videos with Scott Hanselman and Galin Iliev on the topic of Azure Websites Testing in Production. Part 1 is an introduction to the service and covers altering relative traffic volumes between sites. Part 2 covers automating Testing in Production to control how much traffic is routed to each slot.
A useful Visual Studio Extension we've come across this week from Mads Kristensen - open websites from Azure Websites.
Wade Wegner has documented the steps for building and committing a GoLang app into an Azure website. Tools and instructions are available on GitHub.
The Mobile Services team is hiring devs and PMs.
Dan Thyer writes about creating his own IoT home automation system.
⚙️ Data and Analytics
John MacIntyre announces support for SQL parameterization in the DocumentDB REST API and SDKs.
- Scott Klein and Rohit Bakhshi from Hortonworks discuss deploying Hortonworks Data Platform as an IaaS service on Azure. The video also describes how to automate data transfer between on-premise and Azure HDP clusters using Apache Falcon.
- There's a short video demonstrating basic data import and export to and from Data Factory, from Azure on Channel 9.
- Jen Underwood walks through the public preview of new Power BI functionality, describing the dashboards and data sources.
- London readers might be interested in the Cloud Gaming Day event on 19 January. Topics include machine learning in gaming and running game applications with Docker.
📦 Storage
On Channel 9, Shawn Bice, Nigel Ellis and Rohan Kumar discuss the NextGen Azure SQL Database in the first episode of SQL Unplugged.
🎬 Media
On the Azure Podcast, Danny Garder describes how Azure Media Services can encode and stream media at scale.
⚙️ Hybrid Integration
Sameer Sankaran announces a promotion for Azure ExpressRoute - the service is available free from 1 January to 30 June 2015. Partners including BT, Verizon and AT&T have complementary offers.
⚙️ Identity and Access Management
Alex Simons announces Azure Active Directory, Workplace Join now supports Android Devices.