Azure Weekly Issue 111: 12th February 2017

Starting off on a note of self-publicity - we're running a free 1 day workshop with the Azure App Service Black Belt team in the UK, at the Microsoft Campus in Reading on Feb 27th; lots of people are talking about "Digital Transformation", but are vague on the details of what this actually means, so we're going to examine it through the lens of  the API Economy, Modern Data Platform & DevOps. and will be talking about what a Modern Cloud Business Architecture looks like and how you build it on Azure. Register using this link to book your place. If you can't make it, don't fret, as we're looking to record a version of the content that we can share online.

Casey Karst unveils SQL Data Warehouse now supports seamless integration with Azure Data Lake Store, and Harsha Kiran Kanna reveals the release of StorSimple Virtual Array Update 0.4.

Orsolya Gal covers automating Azure Analysis Services processing with Azure Functions, whilst Sam George explains the Azure IoT Hub Connector to Cassandra is now available.

Sarah Fender previews the new enhancements to the Azure Security Center, and Andres Juarez announces that Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery are now available in UK.

Corey Sanders Announces the general availability of Managed Disks and larger Scale Sets, Venkat Gattamneni reveals new lower prices on Azure Virtual Machines and Blob Storage.

Finally, Adam Pedley takes a look at the Cognitive Services Language Understanding Intelligent Service.

AI + Machine Learning

Covering: Azure Batch AI, Azure Bot Service, Microsoft Genomics, Machine Learning services, Machine Learning Studio, Cognitive Services, Bing APIs, Computer Vision API, Content moderator, Custom Services, Emotion API, Face API, Language Understanding (LUIS), Linguistic Analysis API, QnA Maker API, Speaker Recognition API, Text Analytics API, Translator Speech API, Translator Text API, Web Language Model API

Analytics

Covering: Azure Databricks, HDInsight, Data Factory, Stream Analytics, Data Lake Analytics, Event Hubs, Power BI, Azure Analysis Services, Apache Spark for HDInsight, Apache Storm for HDInsight, R Server for HDInsight, Data Catalog

• On Azure Mobile Help blog, Adam Pedley (@adpedley) covers the Language Understanding Intelligent Service.

• On the Azure blog, Orsolya Gal covers automating Azure Analysis Services processing with Azure Functions.

• On MSDN, Charles Sterling (@chass) discusses the Power BI Publish to Web Iframe stealing focus, covers Status Icons in Power BI Tables and talks about Power BI, Flow and PowerApps Webinars.

• Premier Developer (@MicrosoftPSfD) shares a Power BI case study to end homelessness.

• Devin Knight (@knight_devin) discusses Power BI Custom Visuals and Gap Analysis.

Compute

Covering: Virtual Machines, Functions, Batch, Service Fabric, Virtual Machine Scale Sets, Cloud Services, Linux Virtual Machines, SAP HANA on Azure Large Instances

• Venkat Gattamneni writes about new lower prices on Azure Virtual Machines and Blob Storage.

• On the Azure blog, Corey Sanders (@CoreySandersWA) announces the general availability of Managed Disks and larger Scale Sets, Aaron Roney shares CLI support for Managed Disks, Asir Selvasingh talks about .NET Managed Disks and covers Java Managed Disks. 

• On MSDN, Mahesh M Kshirsagar writes about common workloads on Azure Service Fabric.

• On TechNet, Paulo Marques walks through creating an Ubuntu Server 16.10 specialized image on Azure and deploying a new VM based on this image using Azure CLI 2.0.

• On Channel 9, Olivia Klose (@OliviaKlose) talks about Azure Compute for Games and Stacey Haffner covers getting started with SadConsole. 

• On the Redmond magazine site, Jeffrey Schwartz (@JeffreySchwartz) reveals Cisco UCS is to Join Microsoft's Azure Stack Roster.

Containers

Covering: Container Registry, Container Instances, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Web App for Containers

Databases

Covering: Azure SQL Database, Azure Cosmos DB, SQL Data Warehouse, Redis Cache, SQL Server Stretch Database, SQL Server on virtual machines, Table storage, Azure Database for PostgreSQL, Azure Database for MySQL

Developer Tools

Covering: Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, SDKs, Developer tool integrations, CLIs, Blockchain Workbench

• Clemens Reijnen (@ClemensReijnen) shows you how to provision AWS Resources with a VSTS release pipeline.

• On the .NET Curry blog, Gouri Sohoni talks about Service Hooks Integration with VSTS and Azure Functions.

DevOps

Covering: Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS), Azure DevTest Labs, DevOps tool integrations, Azure DevOps Projects, Azure Lab Services

Identity

Covering: Azure Active Directory, Multi-factor Authentication, Azure Active Directory Domain Services, Azure Active Directory B2C

Integration

Covering: Service Bus, Logic Apps, Event Grid

• Herve Roggero (@hroggero) introduces the Azure Key Vault.

• On the Azure blog, Sarah Fender (@sarahfender) previews the new enhancements to the Azure Security Center.

• On TechNet, Ian Farr blogs about enabling and disabling MFA on an Azure AD Admin Account.

• Bill Kral explains how to convert a managed domain in Azure AD to a Federated Domain using ADFS for on-premises authentication.

• Tim Macaulay describes how to deprovision an Azure AD CS object.

Internet of Things

Covering: IoT Hub, IoT Suite, IoT Edge, IoT Central, IoT solution accelerators, Time Series Insights, Azure Maps, Azure Sphere

• On Channel 9, Greg Duncan (@gduncan411) talks about an IoT virtual bootcamp.

• James Serra (@JamesSerra) pits the IoT Hub against the Event Hub.

• On the Azure blog, Sam George (@samjgeorge) reveals the Azure IoT Hub Connector to Cassandra is now available.

Management and Governance

Covering: Backup, Site Recovery, App Insights, Azure Advisor, Sceduler, Automation, Log Analytics, Azure Monitor, Security & Compliance, Protection & Recovery, Automation & Control, Insight & Analytics, Azure Service Health, Microsoft Azure portal, Azure Resource Manager, Cloud Shell, the Azure mobile app, Azure Policy, Cost Management, Azure Managed Applications

• Richard Hay shares the news that Microsoft offers Intellectual Property Protection for Azure Cloud customers.

• On the Azure blog, Andres Juarez announces that Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery are now available in UK.

• On TechNet, Lynne Taggart (@MSFTZombie) discusses the Microsoft System Center 2016 Management Pack for Azure.

• On MSDN, Mohamed Ahmed Baioumy explains how to automate Export Azure SQL DB to blob storage.

• Shannon Gowen explains Azure has achieved CSA STAR Certification.

Media

Covering: Media services, Encoding, Live and On-Demand Streaming, Azure Media Player, Content Protection, Media Analytics, Video Indexer

Microsoft Azure Stack

Covering: Azure Stack

Migration

Covering: Azure Database Migration Service, Azure Migrate, Data Box

Mobile

Covering: App Service (Mobile), Notification Hubs, Mobile apps, API apps, Visual Studio App Centre, Xamarin

Networking

Covering: ExpressRoute, Azure DNS, Virtual Network, Traffic Manager, Load Balancer, VPN Gateway, Application Gateway, Network Watcher

• On MSDN, Jeff Sanders (@jsandersrocks) explains what to do if your Azure Traffic Manager probe is degraded due to 401 from Azure Web App. 

• On the Azure blog, Manling Zhang announces custom domain HTTPS support with Azure CDN. 

Security

Covering: Azure Information Protection, Key Vault, Security Center, Azure DDoS Protection, Azure Advanced Threat Protection

Storage

Covering: Storage, StorSimple, Data Lake Store, Blob Storage, Disk Storage, Managed Disks, Queue Storage, File Storage, Storage Explorer, Archive Storage

• On MSDN, Sachin C Sheth explains how to uncover insights rapidly from petabytes of data in Azure Data Lake Store with SQL Data Warehouse PolyBase support. 

• On the Azure blog, Arnaud Comet announces the DocumentDB entry point for partitioned collections is now 75% cheaper and Rimma Nehme writes about 10 GitHub samples with DocumentDB you shouldn't miss.

• Casey Karst unveils SQL Data Warehouse now supports seamless integration with Azure Data Lake Store.

• Ron Matchoro announces that Azure SQL Database threat detection general availability is coming in April 2017.

• Harsha Kiran Kanna reveals the release of StorSimple Virtual Array Update 0.4.

• Murali K Keloth reveals StorSimple Virtual Array is available for Cloud Solutions Provider partners.

• Kartik P V R covers instant file recovery from the Cloud using Azure Backup.

Web

Covering: App Service (Web), API Management, Content Delivery Network, Azure Search, Web apps, Azure SignalR Service

•  Karan Singh blogs about automating Application restart using Web Job.

• On the codeit blog, Massimo Crippa (@mas_que_crippa) discusses Azure API Management, Logic Apps and ARM. 

• On MSDN, Ben Perkins (@csharpguitar) explains how to enable logging for your Hybrid Connection Manager.