Azure Weekly Issue 113: 5th March 2017

On the Azure blog this week, Nitin Soneji shares the public preview of the Azure Site Recovery Deployment Planner for VMware.

Buck Hodges covers what's brewing in Visual Studio Team Services in March and Matt Rathbun announces that Azure Blueprint supports the UK Government's Cloud security principles.

Samartha Chandrashekar unveils real-time geospatial analytics in Azure Stream Analytics, while Sam George explains the Azure IoT Suite has added device management capability updates. 

Finally, Pranav Rastogi reveals the preview of Azure HDInsight 3.6 with Apache Spark 2.1.

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 MSDN, Lingxi Li writes about how the new Azure Feature Pack release is updating HDInsight support.

• On MSDN, Charles Sterling (@chass) writes about easily creating histograms of measures in Power BI. 

• Lee Stott (@lee_stott) discusses Azure Machine Learning and loading external data sets into your experiment.

• On the Azure blog, Jaya Mathew explains how to optimize rolling feature engineering for time series data.

• Josh Caplan (@JoshCaplan1984) explains how to connect Tableau to an Azure Analysis Services server.

• Also on the Azure blog, Pranav Rastogi (@rustd) announces the preview of Azure HDInsight 3.6 with Apache Spark 2.1.

• Devin Knight (@knight_devin) brings you a Power BI Custom Visuals Class on Long Text Viewer.

Compute

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

• On MSDN, Brijraj Singh (@brijrajsingh) walks through installing Azure CLI 2.0 on Windows.

• Mahesh M Kshirsagar explains how to implement rolling updates in Azure Container Service with Docker Swarm using VSTS.

• Steven Edouard (@sedouard) describes how to schedule Azure VMs to resize.

• Christine Hall (@BrideOfLinux) talks about how Docker ups its game with 'Enterprise Edition'

• On the Microsoft site, Reporter (@MicrosoftUK) talks about how Azure Blueprint slashes the time it takes to move to the cloud from weeks to hours and explains how Azure changes will put hybrid customers on cloud nine.

• On the Azure blog, Chelsea Carter reveals Azure has brought 5 new services to Canada.

• Kamaljit Bath reveals Azure Command Line 2.0 is now generally available.

• Jeffrey Snover (@jsnover) writes about Azure Stack TP3 delivering hybrid application innovation and introducing a pay-as-you-use pricing model. 

• On TechNet, Shannon Gowen blogs about an Azure VM single instance SLA.

• On Channel 9, Matt McSpirit (@mattmcspirit) talks about using Stack to bring Azure Services on-premises. 

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

• On the Kloud blog, Simon Waight (@simonwaight) writes about securing your VSTS release management Azure VM deployments with NSGs and PowerShell. 

• On MSDN, Helge Mahrt (@helgemahrt) blogs about reducing the volume and cost of data sent to Application Insights.

• On Channel 9, Michael Stonis (@michaelstonis) talks about ReactiveUI.

• On the Azure blog, Buck Hodges (@tfsbuck) covers what's brewing in Visual Studio Team Services in March.

• Scott Hanselman (@shanselman) explores the new DevOps - Azure Command Line Interface 2.0 (CLI). 

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

• Rik Hepworth covers setting Enroll Permissions on ADCS Certificate Template using DSC.

• Also on MSDN, Maheshk (@MahesKBlr) describes how to retrieve Key Vault secrets using C# code. 

• On TechNet, Elliott Fields Jr covers domain joining servers to Azure AD Domain Services.

• Karim Buzdar covers migrating your Active Directory Domain Controller from Windows Server 2012 R2 to Windows Server 2016.

• On MSDN, Wen-Jun Zhang explains how to check if there are a great deal of deferred messages in Service Bus container DB generated by your workflow.

• Richard Hay covers Windows Defender and Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection.

• On the Azure blog, Matt Rathbun announces that Azure Blueprint supports the UK Government's Cloud security principles.

Internet of Things

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

• On MSDN, Daniel Meixner covers talking to Azure IoT Hub from VSTS.

• Formulahendry (@formulahendry) explains the Azure IoT Toolkit supports Event Hub now. 

• Lee Stott (@lee_stott) writes about the Internet of Things with Azure.

• On Channel 9, Greg Duncan (@gduncan411) talks about IoT Azure starter kits.

• On the Azure blog, Sam George (@samjgeorge) explains the Azure IoT Suite has added device management capability updates. 

• Samartha Chandrashekar announces real-time geospatial analytics in Azure Stream Analytics. 

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

• On TechNet, Shannon Gowen announces auto-shutdown for VMs using Azure Resource Manager. 

• On the Azure blog, Nitin Soneji shares the public preview of the Azure Site Recovery Deployment Planner for VMware. 

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 Channel 9, Corey Sanders (@CoreySandersWA) talks about the cool new functionality of Azure Network Watcher. 

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 TechNet, Kirill Kotlyarenko discusses StorSimple in CSP.

• On Channel 9, Steve Lindsay (@MicrosoftTE) talks about using REST with DocumentDB. 

• James Serra (@JamesSerra) compares Azure Data Factory and SSIS.

• On the Azure blog, Joshua Gnanayutham blogs reveals an Azure Data Sync update.

• On the Tallan blog, Tallan Partner discusses how Microsoft's SQL Platform continues to lead the market with advanced data security.

Web

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

• On MSDN, Ben Perkins (@csharpguitar) talks about Troubleshooting an Azure App Service WebJob and explains how to run a WebJob when the Web App isn't running.

• Edison Garca explains how to enable PHP LDAP in Azure Web Apps.

• Nick Pinheiro (@nickpinheir) writes about 7 steps to getting started with Facebook App development. 

• On the Azure blog, Andres Juarez announces that Azure Search is now available in the UK.

• Marley Gray (@HiroMarleyG) discusses the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. 

• On the Microsoft site, Reporter (@MicrosoftUK) talks about how Blockchain banking gets a boost from Azure.