Azure Weekly
Issue #16 - 7th March 2015
This week, we've extracted some of the Azure knowledge from the heads of endjin's Matthew Adams and Howard van Rooijen, and published it in the form of an Azure Technology Selector flowchart which guides you through the process of chosing the best Azure service for your needs. It intended to accompany the official 'What is Microsoft Azure?' poster.
More changes are afoot in the world of Azure, where a new version of the Azure WebJobs SDK was released. Together with Docker, The Azure team announced the beta releases of Docker Machine and Docker Swarm on Azure and Docker Machine support on Hyper-V.
⚖️ Management and Governance
On the New Relic blog, Nick Floyd writes about 4 Reasons Why You Should Be Monitoring Microsoft Azure with New Relic, highlighting the ability to view information gathered by New Relic in the Azure portal or switch over to the New Relic APM directly from the portal, to monitor multiple applications in your stack from one management console, and to set up New Relic for Azure VMs from the Marketplace
The headline news comes from Corey Sanders (@CoreySandersWA), Director of Program Management Azure, who announces that the beta releases of Docker Machine and Docker Swarm on Azure and Docker Machine support on Hyper-V
On Channel 9, Scott Hanselman (@shanselman) talks about real World Site debugging using Application Insights on an Azure Website
Trevor Sullivan (@pcgeek86) covers using using PowerShell to validate Azure Traffic Manager Endpoints
On the Azure blog, Joe Davies explains how to create and preconfigure Azure virtual machines the easy way with PowerShell
On MSDN, Anders Lybecker blogs about how to start and stop Azure VMs at a schedule
On the Docker blog, Evan Hazlett announces Docker Machine Beta and Aanand Prasad announces Docker Compose
Also on the Docker blog, Ben Firshman delves into Orchestrating Docker with Machine, Swarm and Compose and Victor Coisne writes about Your Docker schedule at IBM Interconnect 2015
Even more on Docker from the Redmond magazine site, where Jeffrey Schwartz covers the announcement from BlueStripe software that their FactFinder monitoring suite now supports distributed applications residing in Docker containers
The Brisbane Cloud User Group revisits the new Azure Portal
🖥️ Compute
Alexandre Brisebois (@Brisebois) describes how to move a Windows Service to an Azure Worker Role
On MSDN, Samuel Betts describes creating SharePoint VM Templates for Azure SharePoint Deployments
On Computing.co.uk, Peter Gothard writes a case study of Shropshire Council's use of Lumia, Azure and InTune. Azure is used for storage and host applications
On the Windows IT Pro site, John Savill explains Azure Guest OS Families in Azure
Donovan Brown explains how to avoid broken links when upgrading to BlogEngine.NET 2.9.1.0 in Azure, by checking the 'Redirect to remove .aspx extensions from URLs' option
On the Azure podcast, Evan and Sujit discuss the Gatekeeper Pattern for IaaS
🌐 Networking
yung chou (@yungchou) writes Microsoft Azure 101, Virtual Network Essentials
💡 Internet of Things
On the Azure blog, Pranav Rastogi, Program Manager - Azure ASP.NET and Cache, announces the 1.0.1alpha preview of Microsoft Azure WebJobs SDK
Scott Hanselman (@shanselman) blogs about running the Ruby Middleman Static Site Generator on Microsoft Azure
On Channel 9, Mat Velloso provides an explanation of Cloud Identity, for Developers
On Channel 9, there's a a live Q&A session with members of both the Visual Studio debugging and Azure cloud diagnostic team
Max McCarty (@maxrmccarty) writes 'ever Wonder What Happened to Your Azure Website Connection String', explaining how you can let Azure Websites know your connection string while keeping it out of your source code repository
Nick Randolph (@BTRoam) writes about client Configurations for Different Mobile Service Environments
Felix Rieseberg (@felixrieseberg) walks through deploying Ember Cli to Azure Websites
On the .NET Curry blog, Mahesh Sabnis discusses using Windows Azure Mobile Services in ASP.NET MVC
On Code Project, Sanchet Pachpute explores deploying binaries in azure without using hpcsync
On the Tales from the Evil Empire blog, there's an article introducing the author @bleroy's new CMS, DecentCMS
⚙️ Data and Analytics
On the Microsoft Openness site, Openness Team provides a list of resources for deploying HDInsight on Linux
On the Redmond magazine site, Jeffrey Schwartz talks about Microsoft's open source support for big data services
On the Azure blog, Ron Matchoro talks about limiting the exposure of sensitive data in Azure SQL Database using Dynamic Data Masking, which now available for preview on the new service version of SQL Database (v12)
On the Azure blog, Tiffany Wissner announces that the latest version of Azure SQL Database is now GA in Asia, with improvements to disaster recovery objectives
📦 Storage
On the Just Azure blog, Robin Shahan continues a series on Azure blob storage, covering blob snapshots
Nick Randolph (@BTRoam) provides a code sample for migrating Data Between Blob Storage Accounts in Azure
Marius Sandbu (@msandbu) examines using citrix XenMobile and Azure
🎬 Media
On the Azure blog, Julianne Carroll describes how Azure Media Services enabled the live streaming ofa global robotic surgery event
⚙️ Hybrid Integration
On MSDN, Clay Wesener writes the final blog in his series on Power BI and Dynamics AX, covering the Live Connectivity functionality for On Premise Data which is in preview for Power BI
Marius Sandbu (@msandbu) describes building up a Veeam Cloud Connect infrastructure in Azure, taking advantage of the availability of Veeam Cloud Connect in the Azure Marketplace, for service providers
⚙️ Identity and Access Management
On the Redmond magazine site, Kurt Mackie discusses the preview Azure Active Directory Password Rollover Feature for Social Media accounts. The service enables single sign on access to organisational social media accounts, using the Azure Active Directory Access Panel, My Apps mobile apps, or Azure Active Directory single sign on links
On the Just Azure blog, Rick Rainey continues his series on Azure Active Directory, covering the Azure AD Graph API