Azure Weekly

Issue #175 - 20th May 2018

Hopefully you had the chance to check out last week's edition, which was a Microsoft Build bumper edition. As you can imagine, it's more-or-less back to business-as-usual this week - noticeably quiter in the Azure space as everyone has taken their feet off the gas after a busy couple of weeks.

Let's browse this week's announcements/updates:

There have been a couple of particulary interesting articles this week: Sacha Barber has written written a detailed examination of the Databricks Apache Spark platform and Steve St Jean has written a multi-part wide-ranging series delving into How Azure IoT helped him buy a new house.

⚙️ AI + Machine Learning

On MSDN, Jennifer Marsman (@jennifermarsman) writes about the Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning News from Build 2018
On the Revolution Analytics blog, David Smith (@revodavid) writes Let me tell you what you missed at BUILD
Also on MSDN, Lee Stott (@lee_stott) writes about the New AI Services in Azure for students and academics announced at Build 2018 and writes that the Azure AI Gallery enables developers and data scientists to share their analytics solutions.
Also on MSDN, Ami Zou describes Using Azure for Machine Learning
On TechNet, Said Bleik provides A Scalable End-to-End Anomaly Detection System using Azure Batch AI
On Channel 9, Seth Juarez (@sethjuarez) talks about Conversational AI: Bot Building Tools with Carlos Castro and Justin Wilaby and talks about Conversational AI and Authentication with Jeff Durstan
Also on TechNet, Sasindu Kavinda (@kaviliya123) explains how to Make Your FAQ Bot Application By Simple Clicks

🔎 Analytics

On Code Project, Sacha Barber covers Azure : Examining Databricks Apache Spark platform
On MSDN, 'petsablog' writes about the Simple and robust way to operationalise Spark models on Azure
On the Azure blog, Dhruv Goel writes about 10 great things about Kafka on HDInsight
Also on the Azure blog, Gaurav Malhotra explains how to Enhance productivity using Azure Data Factory Visual Tools
On the Power BI blog, Nikhil Gaekwad announces Dashboard Theming in the Power BI Service and Christian Wade writes about Incremental refresh in Power BI Premium
On the MSSQL Tips site, Scott Murray describes Power BI Subscriptions
Devin Knight (@knight_devin) posts Power BI Custom Visuals Class Module 103 – Timeline by CloudScope
Also on MSDN, Charles Sterling (@chass) writes about the 5/24 Webinar: Time intelligence for retail and wholesale industries with Power BI by Matt Allington
On TechNet, Rachel Mason writes about the Data Platform & Analytics technical webinars & consultations – May, June & July

🖥️ Compute

On Microsoft Cloud Show, Chris Johnson presents Episode 253 | Azure Compute with Corey Sanders Live from Build
On Channel 9, Corey Sanders (@CoreySandersWA) posts We're talkin' Azure Low Priority VMs with Meagan McCrory
On MSDN, Girish Pillai describes Disk partition in Azure VMs – using ARM Templates to specify disk configurations
On TechNet, Moti Bani blogs about Building a security lab in Azure
Richard Seroter (@rseroter) writes that his latest Pluralsight course—Architecting for High Availability in Microsoft Azure—is out
Also on MSDN, Ben Perkins (@csharpguitar) writes How to Azure Function App with Hybrid Connection

🚢 Containers

Sam Cogan (@samcogan) explains how to Create Custom Azure Kubernetes Clusters with ACS Engine
Vincent-Philippe Lauzon (@vplauzon) writes about More reliable Replica Sets in AKS – Part 1
James van Den Berg describes Deploying Containers on Kubernetes Cluster in Docker for Windows CE and on Azure AKS

🗄️ Databases

On the Azure blog, Ronit Reger announces that SQL Advanced Threat Protection ATP and SQL Vulnerability Assessment general availability
Also on the Azure blog, the Azure updates team writes about the Name changes and GUID migration: Azure SQL Data Warehouse Gen1 US Government
On MSDN, Denzil Ribeiro describes how to Turbo boost data loads from Spark using SQL Spark connector
Also on MSDN, Anna Skobodzinski, Aravind Krishna, Shireesh Thota and Scott Havens provide an Azure Cosmos DB customer profile: Jet.com

🛠️ Developer Tools

On the Azure blog, Yi Zhong talks about Using the Azure IoT Python SDK: make sure you check the version
Also on the Azure blog, Jason R. Shaver writes Help improve our Azure docs

🔩 DevOps

On MSDN, Tanmayee Kamath writes about the Feature update: Resize a lab virtual machine
Also on MSDN, Ji Eun Kwon announces that Azure Lab Services Public Preview Released
Also on MSDN, Lee Stott (@lee_stott) delves into Setting up Azure Classroom Labs for your students with Azure Lab Services
Also on MSDN, Dan Hellem writes about DevOps with VSTS: Build 2018 Recap
Also on MSDN, Willy-P. Schaub lists the Top stories from the VSTS community – 2018.05.11
Also on MSDN, Kristofer Olin writes Utilizing VSTS for Wholistic Organization Management – Should It Be Done?
On the Black Marble blog, Richard Fennell (@richardfennell) writes Making sure when you use VSTS build numbers to version Android Packages they can be uploaded to the Google Play Store

🎭 Identity

Also on MSDN, Tyler Pollak provides an ACS Migration Guide

🔌 Integration

On MSDN, Christian Wolf writes that AMQP transaction support and Send Via are now generally available
Also on MSDN, Justin Conway writes that Azure Service Bus Deprecating Entity Metrics REST API and describes Premium Messaging: High Performance Without Partitions
On the Kloud blog, Asish Padhy describes Automation and Creation of Office 365 groups using Flow, Microsoft Graph and Azure Function – Part 2
On TechNet, the Intune Support Team describes Using Azure runbooks to get Intune messages delivered on a schedule

💡 Internet of Things

On MSDN, Steve St Jean (@stevestjean) writes a number of IoT blogs in the series: How Azure IoT helped me buy a new house
On Channel 9, Olivier Bloch (@obloch) talks about IoT Projects by the Azure CAT E2E team with Ruhan and JD, talks about Azure IoT Central and Devices with Marcello Majonchi, and provides A tour of the IoT booth at Build 2018
Michael Crump (@mbcrump) writes Azure Tips and Tricks Part 122 - Configuring and Exploring the IoT Button Part 1 and Part 123 - Configuring and Exploring the IoT Button Part 2
On the Daily Dot Net Tips blog, Abhijit Jana (@AbhijitJana) explains how to Learn Azure IoT solutions from Azure IoT School
On the Azure blog, the Azure updates team blogs about Name changes: Azure Maps

⚖️ Management and Governance

On MSDN, Ben Perkins (@csharpguitar) explains How to deploy to Azure using an ARM template with PowerShell
Also on MSDN, 'CliveW' covers Azure Log Analytics: Queries, Are you looking for a pattern? RegEx and writes Azure Log Analytics: Disk Space Usage – Part 2
Also on MSDN, Sravan Rengarajan covers Service Fabric with OMS Log Analytics
Marcel Zehner (@marcelzehner) writes about Terraform – a first introduction
Daniel Neumann (@neumanndaniel) describes how to Monitor Azure Kubernetes Service with Azure Monitor container health
On the Catapult Systems blog, Larry Swonke writes Up your Azure Game with Azure Monitor
On TechNet, Laura Park provides A high-level comparison of monitoring Windows OS with SCOM / OMS and Azure
Also on MSDN, Najib Z blogs about Monitoring Python Applications with Azure App Insights
On the Kloud blog, Syed Naqvi describes Removing Specific Azure Tags – PowerShell
Also on TechNet, Justin Manning discusses Azure Backups and Site Recovery – Encrypted SQL Backups
On the Daily Dot Net Tips blog, Abhijit Jana (@AbhijitJana) describes how to Access Azure resources quickly that are used recently, covers Uploading files to cloud drive using Azure Cloud Shell, describes How to enable Azure cloud backup for Azure file shares, discusses Azure Cloud Backup – Start and Stop Backup Quickly and describes How to share Azure portal dashboard

📱 Mobile

On MSDN, Ahmed Salijee writes Use Nuget package 2.2 for VS App Center testing
On Channel 9, James Montemagno (@JamesMontemagno) presents Snack Pack: Configure iOS & Android Architecture Types

🌐 Networking

On the Azure blog, Matt Reat writes about the New Azure Network Watcher integrations and Network Security Group Flow Logging updates

🔐 Security

On the Azure blog, Miri Landau describes how to Protect virtual machines across different subscriptions with Azure Security Center
Also on the Azure blog, the Azure updates team writes about the GUID migration: Azure Security Center unit-of-measure change
Also on the Azure blog, the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center explains how to Detect malicious activity using Azure Security Center and Azure Log Analytics
Also on the Azure blog, Ben Grynhaus writes about Why developers should enable Azure Security Center's Just-in-Time VM Access
On the Kloud blog, Syed Naqvi describes Key Vault Secrets and ARM Templates
On TechNet, Kevin McKinnerney (@kemckinnMSFT) describes Creating Labels for Azure Information Protection

📦 Storage

On the Azure blog, the Azure updates team highlights the GUID migration: Storage Managed Disks and Storage Managed Disks, US Government regions

🔗 Web

On the Azure blog, the Azure updates team writes that HTTP/2 configuration available in the Azure portal
On MSDN, David Burg (@david_burg) writes What is API Management Context Request MatchedParameters?
On the Daily Dot Net Tips blog, Abhijit Jana (@AbhijitJana) writes about the Azure SignalR Service – Getting started
Also on MSDN, Ben Perkins (@csharpguitar) describes Creating an Azure App Service Hybrid Connection, describes Troubleshooting App Service Hybrid Connection Manager and blogs about Time sync, synchronization on an Azure App Service
Also on MSDN, Byron Tardif (@bktv99) provides an April 2018 App Service update