Azure Weekly
Issue #144 - 1st October 2017
This week, we have some exciting announcements from Microsoft Ignite, as well as all the usual Azure developments from the last few days.
First, I was on holiday two weeks ago and read Simon Sinek's "Start With Why", this week I read Satya Nadella's "Hit Refresh"; even though the books were written 8 years apart the first is a great prologue for the second - I wrote an article explaining why (and this is the reason why the newsletter is being published so late today!).
There were a mind-boggling number of annoucements at Ignite this week. I could try and cover them in this editorial, but several others have already done a fantastic job. The best I've come across is James Serra's summary.
The annoucements that I am most exicited about are the new Azure Data Factory capabilities in public preview - I've been saying for a number of years that ADF is the glue that holds many of the Azure Services together (Functions is also increasingly becoming another "glue" service). Next it's the the public preview of PowerShell in Azure Cloud Shell, and finally the public announcement of Azure Machine Learning WorkBench.
Other items of note this week are the Azure Interactives microsite, the GeekWire article How Microsoft become a destination for a new generation of open-source developers, the AnsibleFest session Automate And Configure Azure Cloud Resources Using Ansible, and the always fascinating Mark Russinovich 75 minute session called inside Microsoft Azure datacenter hardware and software architecture.
⚙️ AI + Machine Learning
Lisa Schmeiser explains that at Ignite 2017, Microsoft Updated Its AIs.
Lee Stott (@lee_stott) talks about the Microsoft Deep Learning Virtual Machine.
🔎 Analytics
On MSDN, Wesley Backelant (@WesleyBackelant) covers Cloud, Data and AI Announcements Ignite 2017.
Lee Stott (@lee_stott) covers the Azure Machine Learning WorkBench.
On MSDN, Krishnakumar Rukmangathan covers ARM Resource Manager Template Deployment with Azure Analysis Services.
On the Azure blog, Kay Unkroth reveals Azure Analysis Services has added firewall support.
On the Azure blog, Ashish Thapliyal (@ashishth) unveils the General availability of HDInsight Interactive Query.
Pranav Rastogi (@rustd) reveals that Paxata has launched Self-Service Data Preparation on Azure HDInsight to accelerate Data Prep.
On the Azure blog, Pranav Rastogi (@rustd) covers WANdisco enabling continuous data replication on Azure HDInsight for Big Data applications.
Ronit Reger introduces the SQL Vulnerability Assessment for Azure SQL Database and on-premises SQL Server.
🖥️ Compute
Devendra Tiwari announces the Azure Disk Encryption Preview for Virtual Machine Scale Sets.
On the Azure blog, Ziv Rafalovich announces A new Planned Maintenance experience for your virtual machines.
Roberto (@soyroberto) writes about Upgrading the Kernel of a Linux VM hosted in Azure.
On Channel 9, Mani Ramaswamy talks about Azure Service Fabric on Linux.
On MSDN, Larry Wall blogs about a Full/Incremental backup and restore sample.
Armin Reiter (@arminreiter) writes about Weekly Azure billing report per mail with Azure functions.
On MSDN, Chris Gillum (@cgillum) writes about Microsoft Graph Bindings for Azure Functions.
Bill Wilder covers A Gentle Intro to Serverless Azure.
🚢 Containers
On the Azure blog, Asir Selvasingh talks about Bringing Java and Kubernetes together in Azure.
Elton Stoneman writes about The Container Filesystem and talks about Why Not To Use curl or iwr for Docker Healthchecks.
Prasad Kerhalkar walks through Debugging Java containers.
🗄️ Databases
On the MSSQL Tips site, John Miner talks about Bulk Inserting Data into a Azure SQL Database with PowerShell.
On the Azure blog, Dhruv Malik announces that Azure SQL Database VNET Service Endpoints are now in public preview.
Mark Kromer announces new Azure Data Lake capabilities in public preview.
On the Azure blog, Luis Vargas (@LuisVargas_SQL) announces new Azure VM sizes for more cost-effective database workloads.
🛠️ Developer Tools
On the Azure blog, Buck Hodges (@tfsbuck) talks about Whats brewing in Visual Studio Team Services.
On MSDN, Gregg Boer blogs about Burndown and Burnup Widgets available for the VSTS Analytics Extension.
Joseph Bourne explains Chef brings Habitat to VSTS, and Agile Extensions makes editing your backlog a breeze.
Jenny Jiang discusses Running you Hive LLAP & PySpark Job in Visual Studio Code.
Leon Welicki (@lwelicki) explains how to Get the most out of your Azure portal experience.
🎭 Identity
On MSDN, Nick McCollum covers Getting Started with the Azure AD B2B Invite API.
On TechNet, John Craddock talks about Integrating with on-prem AD and AD FS.
On the Azure blog, Jeremy Winter writes about Built-in security and operations management for Azure and hybrid environments.
On the Azure blog, the Azure Teams previews the Azure DDoS Protection Service.
🔌 Integration
On MSDN, Matt Farmer provides A look under the hood of our Power BI solution template for Azure API Management.
Tim Anderson (@timanderson) writes about Which Azure Stack is right for you.
💡 Internet of Things
On the Azure blog, Cory Newton-Smith expains that The next generation of Azure IoT Suite accelerates IoT solutions.
⚖️ Management and Governance
Also on the Azure blog, David Seidman shows you how to Get started with Monitoring in Azure.
On the Azure blog, Anirudh Cavale announces that New services and capabilities for Azure Monitor metrics.
Noa Kuperberg writes about the new query language for Log Analytics.
Ashish Thapliyal (@ashishth) Introduces the HDInsight integration with Azure Log Analytics Preview.
Francis Yu announces the public preview of Azure Storage metrics in Azure Monitor.
On the Stackify Blog, Matt Watson explains How to Monitor Azure WebJobs for Performance, Errors and Usage.
Kirill Gavrylyuk explains how to Get insights into your Azure CosmosDB with partition heatmaps, OMS, and more.
Hemant Mahawar talks about the public preview of PowerShell in Azure Cloud Shell.
Joshua Gnanayutham describes Monitoring Azure SQL Data Sync using OMS Log Analytics.
Mayank Nayar talks about Azure Site Recovery powers new Managed DR offerings by Microsoft Partners.
Shiva Sivakumar announces End-to-end monitoring solutions in Azure for Apps and Infrastructure.
Rossano Vitulli explains How to monitor and alert potential Disk and VM Level IO Throttling on Linux VMs using ARM.
Gaurav Bhatnagar announces the general availability of Azure Managed Applications Service Catalog.
🌐 Networking
Yousef Khalidi talks about Azure Networking announcements for Ignite 2017.
On the Azure blog, Anitha Adusumilli announces Virtual Network integration for Azure Storage and Azure SQL.
Sam Cogan (@samcogan) writes about Virtual Network Service Endpoints.
Adam Raffe writes about Secure Connectivity from Azure VNets to Public Services.
📦 Storage
On the Azure blog, Klaas Langhout announces the public preview for Azure File Sync.
Chris Brooks announces the Preview of Azure Storage Firewalls and Virtual Networks.
Vincent-Philippe Lauzon walks through Moving from Standard to Premium disks and back.
On TechNet, Shannon Gowen discusses Online training for Azure Data Lake.
On MSDN, Lee Stott (@lee_stott) delves into the Azure Data Box Preview.
🔗 Web
Stella Lin shares news of the general availability of the new App Service Premium Plan.
On MSDN, Ben Perkins (@csharpguitar) explains How to configure log4net on Azure App Service and discusses Using FTPS with Azure App Services.
Michael Crump (@mbcrump) discusses Deployment Slots for Web Apps using Azure App Service, Testing Web Apps in Production with Azure App Service and Adding logic to your Testing in Production sites with PowerShell.
Shankar Sivadasan writes about Five more reasons why you should download the Azure mobile app.
Sunitha Muthukrishna announces the Kentico Cloud Solution in Azure Marketplace.