Azure Weekly

Issue #164 - 4th March 2018

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The Microsoft Cloud Show was of particular interest to us this week, with hosts Andrew and Chris talking about the new Microsoft support for startups amongst other news.

Otherwise, there have been a number of announcements:

There is also an Introduction to the Microsoft Machine Learning Server 9.3 Release, an article illuminating the fact that the Azure Load Balancer is to become more efficient, and a blog highlighting the new milestones for Microsoft Cognitive Services vision and search services in Azure.

A particularly interesting article this week is "Serverless" CQRS using Azure Event Grid written by Duncan Edwards Jones, where the CQRS architecture teams up with Azure Event Grid to create a farm management application.

Finally, the agenda and registration for the Azure 2018 Global Bootcamp event in Nashville has been posted, so get registering if you're interested, because there are few places left!

⚙️ AI + Machine Learning

On the Azure blog, Joseph Sirosh (@josephsirosh) announces new milestones for Microsoft Cognitive Services vision and search services in Azure
On TechNet, Nagesh Pabbisetty introduces the Microsoft Machine Learning Server 9.3 Release
On MSDN, Buck Woody writes Azure Machine Learning and the Team Data Science Process – Part 1
Also on MSDN, the Nav Team writes Smart solutions 5: Basic integration of Dynamics NAV and an Azure Machine Learning Web Service
On the Azure podcast, the Azure podcast team and guests Royi Ronen and Olivier Nano present Episode 217 - Video Indexer & Custom Speech Service
Also on TechNet, the Scripting Guys (@ScriptingGuys) cover Windows PowerShell and the Azure Text-to-Speech Rest API Part 1
Also on MSDN, Nanduri Ramanujam points to an upcoming webinar: Diving deep with conversational bots using Azure Bot Service
Also on MSDN, Lee Stott (@lee_stott) points to some Microsoft Learn AI webinars in March and April 2018

🔎 Analytics

On the Azure blog, Jenny Jiang reveals HDInsight Tools for VSCode integrates with Ambari and HDInsight Enterprise Secure Package
On MSDN, Ashish Thapliyal (@ashishth) describes HDInsight: How to enable Oozie UI in Ambari
Vincent-Philippe Lauzon describes how to Import Notebooks in Databricks
On the Revolution Analytics blog, David Smith (@revodavid) explains How to set up a sparklyr cluster in 5 minutes
On the MSSQL Tips site, Rahul Mehta walks through Deploying Power BI Reports to SharePoint Online
Also on MSDN, Krishnakumar Rukmangathan describes Using Amazon RedShift with Power BI, writes about the error: Pivot Table Operation failed. We cannot locate a server to load the workbook Data Model error when applying filter in Excel workbook accessed through Power BI Report server and writes that You cannot publish more than 200 Dataset/Report together within a Workspace in Power BI service
Also on MSDN, Samuel Lester describes Importing a .dbf dBase file into Power BI
Devin Knight (@knight_devin) presents Power BI Custom Visuals Class Module 92 – KPI Ticker MAQ Software

🖥️ Compute

On the Azure blog, Shon Shah writes Confidently plan your cloud migration: Azure Migrate is now generally available
On Channel 9, Donovan Brown talks about Serverless APIs with Azure Function Proxies with Alex Karcher
On TechNet, Anshuman Mansingh points to some useful resources regarding Understanding Windows VMs on Azure – Tutorials, Trainings, Screenshots: Creating a Simple VM with PowerShell
Also on TechNet, Theo Browning explains how to Add a custom or non-standard PowerShell module to Azure Functions

🚢 Containers

On the Azure blog, Saurya Das (@sauryadas_) announces that B-series burstable VM support in AKS now available
Mark Heath (@mark_heath) writes about the Serverless Containers with Azure Container Instances and walks through Deploying WordPress with ACI Container Groups
On the .NET Curry blog, Ravi Kiran describes Deploying Angular apps to Azure using Docker
On MSDN, Steve Lasker (@SteveLasker) discusses Docker Tagging: Best practices for tagging and versioning docker images

🗄️ Databases

James van Den Berg writes Use the Azure Cosmos DB Emulator for local development and testing Azure CosmosDB DevOps Docker
On TechNet, Amber Sitko writes Lift and shift your data to the cloud

🛠️ Developer Tools

On MSDN, Miao Jiang announces that API Management launches Public Preview in China
On TechNet, Bec Lyons describes how to Turn any API into a RESTful API with Azure API Management
Sam Cogan (@samcogan) writes Using Terraform with Azure – Whats the benefit
Also on MSDN, Alex Nichols gives a VSTS/TFS Roadmap update for 2018 Q1 and Q2
On Stackify Blog, Barry Luijbregts explains How to DevOps with Azure
On the Black Marble blog, Richard Fennell talks about Building private VSTS build agents using the Microsoft Packer based agent image creation model
Wouter de Kort explains how to Build your own Hosted VSTS Agent Cloud in a 2 part blog series: Part 1 – Build and Part 2 – Deploy
Also on MSDN, Lou Sawyer describes Using VSTS Service Hooks in Release Management to add resource cleanup resilience
Also on MSDN, Rui Melo writes about the VSTS Gems – Manual step in release management pipelines
On Channel 9, Donovan Brown and James Montemagno talk about VSTS for Mobile Development on Visual Studio Toolbox
On Channel 9, Damian Brady talks about Deploying Database changes alongside your code with SSDT projects and VSTS with Abel Wang
Callon Campbell points to some Resources for Mobile apps using Xamarin + Azure
Also on Channel 9, James Montemagno discusses Drawing Apps to Life with Ink to Code with George Matthews on the Xamarin Show
Also on Channel 9, Rich Lander and Brandon Minnick talk about async/await best practices On .NET
James van Den Berg discusses Microsoft Azure CloudShell Bash in Visual Studio Code
Michael Crump (@mbcrump) carries on the Azure Tips and Tricks series with Part 97 - Generate a Weekly Digest Email for a Blog using Azure Functions, SendGrid and Azure Storage, Part 98 - Creating an Email Subscription with Azure Functions - Storing Emails and Part 99 - Creating an Email Subscription with Azure Functions - Writing the Frontend
Also on MSDN, Amit Kumar Parida points to a number of upcoming webinars: Continuous-Deployment to Azure, CI-CD with VSTS for Node.js project, VSTS-Workitem Customization, Understanding Access and Authentication options for VSTS and migrating from MSA to AAD based Authentication and TFS to VSTS migration using TFS Migrator-tool

🎭 Identity

On TechNet, Yuri Diogenes (@yuridiogenes) walks through Integrating Azure Function with Azure Security Center Playbook and on the Azure blog, writes about the Security Center Playbooks and Azure Functions Integration with Firewalls
Also on TechNet, Moti Bani describes Detecting Kerberoasting activity using Azure Security Center
Radu Vunvulea (@RaduVunvulea) describes How to secure access to Azure Management Portal
On MSDN, Rajesh Ramamurthy writes about Reducing the latency of permissions inherited through AAD Group memberships
Also on MSDN, Srikantan Sankaran describes how to Secure Your Sensitive Business Information with Azure Key Vault

🔌 Integration

On MSDN, David Burg describes how to Support non-UTF payloads in Logic App with a conversion Azure Function
Also on MSDN, Justin Conway writes about the SSL Cert Renewal Issues Solved On Azure Service Bus and Relay
Sean Feldman writes about Azure EventGrid testing with Azure Relay

💡 Internet of Things

On MSDN, Shubha Vijayasarathy writes that Event Hubs Clients for Java 1.0.0 is now live
On Code Project, Duncan Edwards Jones (@Merrion) covers Serverless CQRS using Azure Event Grid
Also on MSDN, William Zhang writes HOWTO: Develop Azure Functions Monitoring Azure Storage via Azure Event Grid
On Channel 9, Olivier Bloch and Ted Way cover Machine Learning on Azure IoT Edge and Olivier Bloch talks about Developing for IoT devices with Visual Studio with Marc Goodner on the Internet of Things Show
Also on Channel 9, Seth Juarez talks about Edge AI: Skin Cancer Detection App with Anusua Trivedi on the AI Show
Also on MSDN, Wriju Ghosh (@wrijugh) points to some resources: Build Azure IoT Solutions in Minutes and Azure IoT Reference Architecture

⚖️ Management and Governance

On MSDN, Jason Boeshart (@jboeshart) describes Cost Optimization on Azure
Also on MSDN, Holger Sirtl describes how to Use Azure Automation for creating Resource Groups despite having limited permissions only
Callon Campbell provides an Introduction to Application Insights
On MSDN, Amit Kumar Parida points to an upcoming webinar: Monitoring applications using Application Insights
On MSDN, Manuel Garriga - Edu describes how to Use Azure Policy to help enforce compliance standards for your Azure deployments
Also on MSDN, Raj Nemani describes how to Query ASR Replicated Item Status using Powershell
Also on MSDN, Wriju Ghosh (@wrijugh) gives a Quick Tip while working with Azure PowerShell

🌐 Networking

On the Azure blog, Raman Deep Singh describes that Azure Load Balancer to become more efficient
Also on the Azure blog, Abhave Sharma describes how to Monitor network connectivity to applications with NPM’s Service Endpoint Monitor - public preview
On the Azure Findings blog, Rob Kuehfus describes Configuring Azure Cloud Shell to connect using SSH with an existing SSH key

📦 Storage

On the Azure blog, Vivek Darera announces that StorSimple Data Manager now generally available
Robert Smit (@Clustermvp) describes How to Backup Azure file shares with AzureBackup ASR AFSB Azure
On Magic Marty's blog, Martynas Valkunas writes about the Azure Backup feature for Azure File Shares
On TechNet, Anshuman Mansingh writes Azure 10 // Backup, Archive & Disaster Recovery
James van Den Berg writes about the Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer with Support for File Share Snapshots Azure Cloud
On the Catapult Systems blog, Matthew Dowst blogs about a Azure Storage PowerShell Error: Cannot find an overload
Also on MSDN, Wriju Ghosh (@wrijugh) explains how to Find unused Managed Disks

🔗 Web

On MSDN, Michael S. Hansen announces that Azure App Service Environment Available in Azure Government, blogs On the Advantages of App Service Environment ASE for Government Web Apps and covers Using App Service Environment as a Private Reverse Proxy with User Authentication
Also on MSDN, Jennifer Lee provides a Deep Dive into TCP Connections in App Service Diagnostics
On Stackify Blog, Barry Luijbregts talks about Testing in Production with Microsoft Azure
On TechNet, Sasindu Kavinda (@kaviliya123) discusses Enabling Search Abilities to Your Apps with Azure Search