Azure Weekly

Issue #171 - 22nd April 2018

We hope that anyone involved in the global Azure bootcamp yesterday had a fun and beneficial time. We hope that the organizers, volunteers and sponsors got the recognition they deserved - these events can't happen without them. We, at endjin, were otherwise engaged yesterday at DDD South West in Bristol, UK, where we hosted a couple of talks on CosmosDB and Data Lake, and sponsored the event as part of a wider company initiative to support and contribute more deeply to the developer community. We'd like to take the time to thank all of our subscribers for taking the time to read our newsletter, especially the new subscribers we reeled in from the event yesterday! You've come to the best place to receive your weekly fix of Azure news. Let's crack on and begin this week's edition...

In one of the most interesting pieces of news this week we see Microsoft embracing a Linux kernel for its new IoT security solution: Introducing Microsoft Azure Sphere: Secure and power the intelligent edge. How times change!

There has been a barrage of GUID/Name alterations to numerous Azure services this week. Let's start by explicitly pointing all these out for those who may be affected:

Now onto the more interesting announcements:

In last week's edition we congratulated the winning team of the Imagine cup who created a Bot that helps with job interviews. This week another finalist's work was detailed. Team Soothey created an RNN-Powered Mental Healthcare Bot using the Microsoft Bot framework along with various other tools. A brilliant submission.

Ever wondered how the VSTS team does branching? Edward Thomson answers that question in this intriging article. Elsewhere, John Downs has nicely demystified Managed Service Identities on Azure.

Finally, here's an update on Azure Saturday 2018 if you're planning to attend!

⚙️ AI + Machine Learning

On MSDN, Lee Stott (@lee_stott) writes about An RNN-Powered Mental Healthcare Bot – Team Soothey from Oxford University Imagine Cup 2018 Finalists
Also on MSDN, Jennifer Marsman (@jennifermarsman) writes about A new challenge: Joining the AI for Earth team at Microsoft
On Channel 9, Anna Thomas and Rodrigo Souza present Learn AI-Bootcamp for Emerging AI Developers: Computer Vision API, Custom Vision Service, LUIS Part 1/2 on the AI Show
On the Azure podcast, the Azure podcast team and guest Sonya Koptyev present Episode 224 - The AI Platform
On Code Project, Andy Edmonds writes about the Instant Conversational Bots with the MS Bot Service and DARL

🔎 Analytics

On MSDN, Lee Stott (@lee_stott) discusses Microsoft Azure Data Bricks–Collaborative Apache Spark Analytics Platform
Vincent-Philippe Lauzon (@vplauzon) writes about the Python Version in Databricks
On the Azure blog, Gaurav Malhotra, Program Manager - Azure Data Factory, writes about Iterative development and debugging using Data Factory and on Channel 9, Scott Hanselman talks about Continuous integration and deployment using Azure Data Factory with Gaurav Malhotra on Azure Friday
Devin Knight (@knight_devin) presents Power BI Custom Visuals Class Module 99 – Drill-Down Donut Chart
On the Power BI blog, Charles Sterling (@chass) writes Last Chance for the Data & BI Summit 24-26 April in Dublin Ireland and Corina Radovanovocih writes that USAFacts breaks down government financial data with Power BI
On TechNet, Rachel Mason highlights some Data Platform & Analytics technical webinars & consultations – April, May & June

🖥️ Compute

On MSDN, Kyle Deeds announces the launch of Azure M-series VMs with up to 4TB RAM in USGov Virginia region
Richard Seroter (@rseroter) walks through Creating an Azure VM Scale Set from a legacy, file-sharing, ASP.NET app
On the risual blog, Jamie Hunt describes Azure Backup Failing for Linux VM with VMSnapshotLinux Extension in Transitioning State
Christos Matskas (@ChristosMatskas) walks through Using HTTPS with Azure Functions in local development
On Code Project, Sarmaad Amin (@sarmaad) provides an Azure Functions Tutorial – SQL Database
On the Kloud blog, Darren Robinson (@darrenjrobinson) describes How to quickly copy Azure Functions between Azure Tenants and implement Run From Zip

🚢 Containers

On the Azure blog, Subramanian Ramaswamy writes about Azure Service Fabric – announcing Reliable Services on Linux and RHEL support
On Channel 9, Alena Hall (@lenadroid) presents Part 2 of 4: Use Azure Resource Manager to create managed Kubernetes cluster on the Open Source Show
On MSDN, Monu Bambroo writes Docker Blog Series Part 6 – How to use Service Fabric Reverse Proxy for container services
Also on MSDN, Freddy Kristiansen (@freddydk) writes Which Docker Image is the right for you?

🗄️ Databases

On the Azure blog, Alice Kupcik announces that Transparent Data Encryption with customer managed keys in Azure SQL Database generally available
Also on the Azure blog, Yitao Dong writes about Spring Data Azure Cosmos DB: NoSQL data access on Azure
Radu Vunvulea (@RaduVunvulea) writes about Read-only replicas - Taking advantage of free DTUs
On MSDN, Karim Moussa (@kmoussa) writes about Getting SQLSTATE[28000] [1045] Access denied for 'user'@'IPaddress' (using password: YES) when trying to restore mySQL dump to Azure MySQL DB PaaS
On the MSSQL Tips site, John Martin (@SQLDiplomat) blogs about Migrating SQL Server Databases to Azure Managed Instances with Native Backups
On Channel 9, Cecil Phillip and Chris Anderson speak about Using resource tokens with Azure Cosmos DB
Also on Channel 9, Donovan Brown (@DonovanBrown) explains how to Deploy Bitnami Node.js HA Cluster with Azure Cosmos DB with Rick Spencer
Also on Channel 9, Damian Brady covers Moving your Data Warehouse to the Cloud with Deepak Kaushik

🛠️ Developer Tools

On the Azure blog, the Azure updates team highlights the VSTS Sprint 133 Update - Deployment for Azure MySQL, Kubernetes Helm, and Ruby
On MSDN, Alex Nichols describes What's new in VSTS Sprint 132 Update
Also on MSDN, Edward Thomson writes about Release Flow: How We Do Branching on the VSTSTeam
On the Black Marble blog, Richard Fennel (@richardfennell) writes Opps, I made that test VSTS extension public by mistake, what do I do now
Also on MSDN, Rui Melo blogs about VSTS Gems – Marketplace, the one stop location for added functionality
Also on MSDN, Willy-P. Schaub lists the Top stories from the VSTS community – 2018.04.13
On Code Project, John Kuriakose writes about the Step by Step Process to Deploy Web Application to Azure with VSTS-CI/CD Pipeline
Michael Crump (@mbcrump) writes Azure Tips and Tricks Part 115 - Remove Azure Secrets committed to GitHub
On the Daily Dot Net Tips blog, Abhijit Jana (@AbhijitJana) explains how to Learn to interact with Azure services through code – Azure Code Samples and points to some Azure Solution Reference Architectures

🎭 Identity

On the Azure blog, Gilad Elyashar announces the new Azure Security Center capabilities at RSA 2018
Also on the Azure blog, Arpan Shah (@arpanshah) discusses The 3 ways Azure improves your security
On the Kloud blog, John Downs demystifies Managed Service Identities on Azure
On MSDN, Bac Hoang writes about the Query String is not allowed in redirect_uri for Azure AD

🔌 Integration

On the Azure blog, John Lian writes about the Preview: programmatically create Azure enterprise subscriptions using ARM APIs
On MSDN, Vlad Vinogradsky provides the Azure API Management Release notes – April 18, 2018
On the Codit blog, Tom Kerkhove (@TomKerkhove) writes about the Changes to OpenAPI interpretation in Azure API Management
On MSDN, Sanjeev Gogna and Charles Ofori write about Azure Rapid Response and benefits for Premier customers

💡 Internet of Things

On the Azure blog, Galen Hunt introduces Microsoft Azure Sphere: Secure and power the intelligent edge
Tim Anderson (@timanderson) writes What is Azure Sphere
On MSDN, Lee Stott (@lee_stott) writes about the Microsoft Azure Sphere and teaching students about the next generation of security for MicroControllers
On Channel 9, Olivier Bloch (@obloch) talks about Retry logic in device SDKs for Azure IoT Hub with Pierre Cauchois on the Internet of Things Show
Michael Crump (@mbcrump) writes Azure Tips and Tricks Part 114 - Send JSON to Azure IoT Hub with C
On Channel 9, Olivier Bloch (@obloch) provides an Introduction to the new IoT Workbench extension for VS Code with Liya Du

⚖️ Management and Governance

On the Azure blog, the Azure updates team talks about What's new in Azure Log Analytics - April 2018 and writes that Alerts created in the Operations Management Suite portal can extend into Azure
On MSDN, 'CliveW' writes that The most basic basic of OMS / Log Analytics is...
On the Azure blog, Tom Keane blogs about Streamlining GDPR requests with the Azure portal
Also on TechNet, Dale Kirby talks about Azure Migrate: Simplifying VMWare to Azure Migrations
On the Daily Dot Net Tips blog, Abhijit Jana (@AbhijitJana) describes How to quickly refer all available Azure services
Also on TechNet, Anthony Watherston describes Azure Service Principal in Jenkins

⚙️ Microsoft Azure Stack

On TechNet, Ed Baker (@edbaker1965) writes about Azure Stack – What, why, and how
Thomas Maurer (@thomasmaurer) writes that he is Speaking about Azure Stack and Hyper-V at Techorama 2018 in Antwerp Belgium

🌐 Networking

On the Azure blog, Anupam Vij announces that Azure DDoS Protection for virtual networks generally available
On the Azure blog, the Azure updates writes about What's new in Azure DNS - Metrics and alerting and highlights the Region expansion: Global VNet Peering
On the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast, Ben Stegink and Scott Hoag present Episode 59 – Azure Network Security

📦 Storage

On the Azure blog, Sonia Gupta announces that the Recovery Services vault limit increased to 500 vaults per subscription per region and announces that Azure Backup now supports storage accounts secured with Azure Storage Firewalls and Virtual Networks

🔗 Web

On the Azure blog, the Azure updates team announces that the Configuration of TLS versions in App Service and Functions apps now available
On MSDN, Ben Perkins (@csharpguitar) blogs about Web Server Logging, IIS logs, deployment slots and swaps, describes How to disable/enable HTTP/2, Azure App Service and explains how to Make changes to Azure App Service setting using Postman
Also on MSDN, Michael S. Hansen writes about the iTop (ITSM) in Azure Web App with AAD Authentication and describes Reverse Proxy with Basic Authentication in Azure Web App
Also on MSDN, B Surabhi writes about the Azure App service: Using Custom domain with Azure Traffic Manager
On the Kloud blog, Darren Robinson (@darrenjrobinson) explains How to quickly copy an Azure Web App between Azure Tenants using Zip Push Deploy