Azure Weekly
Issue #18 - 21st March 2015
This week sees the introduction of email notifications for Azure Site Recovery, the general availability of IoS Offline Sync for Mobile Services, and an update to Azure SQL Database Elastic Scale preview including a client library update the enables asynchronicity and a split-merge service update.
There was also an update to the Azure AD conditional access preview, the introduction of attribute-based dynamic group membership for Azure AD Premium.
Cisco announced an extension of its partnership with Microsoft to launch the Cisco Cloud Architecture for the Microsoft Cloud Platform, a solution combining Azure Pack and Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure, an API-based tool for network management, monitoring, storage and virtualization.
There's a tantalising pre-announcement announcement on the Azure blog - on 24 March, a virtual event with Scott Guthrie and Bill Staples will "unveil the latest work from the Application Platform team". The blog includes a link to a free Azure Websites sandbox.
There's also new functionality for Azure Government - Media Services, Regional Virtual Networks, Oracle Images, Traffic Manager, Service Bus, and Azure Files.
Singapore readers might be interested in attending the Singapore Azure Bootcamp on 25 April. The UK Azure User Group is hosting a session on HDInsight on Azure in Birmingham on Thursday 16th of April.
⚖️ Management and Governance
On TechNet, Rhoderick Milne shows how To Get Azure VM IP Addresses Using PowerShell
Yung Chou (@yungchou) provides a slide deck with instructions for installing and Configuring Azure PowerShell
Fabien Dibot (@fdibot) explains how to manage an Azure virtual machine using Chef
On the Azure blog, Harel Broitman introduces the Application Insights SDK for Java
On the Azure blog, Kundana Palagiri issues an invitation to a webinar on Open Source Automation on Azure using Chef, taking place on 19 March at 9am PST
On the Docker blog, there's a video of Ben Firshman's talk about the release of Machine, Swarm and Compose, open source tools for orchestrating distributed applications
Also on the Docker blog, Steve Francia announces the expansion of the Docker 2nd birthday 'open-source-athon' to online and community events
On the Azure blog, Kundana Palagiri writes about how to simplify virtual machine troubleshooting using Azure Log Collector
On TechNet, Mario Brandan explains how to shut down Azure VMs Automatically with Azure Automation
🖥️ Compute
On the endjin blog, Richard Kerslake (@kerslakerichard) writes about reporting errors to New Relic from an Azure Worker Role
On the Azure blog, Joe Davies points us to his new guide for setting up a simulated hybrid cloud environment for testing.
This week's Azure podcast features an interview with Robin Shahan and Michael Collier, authors of the free Fundamentals of Azure ebook
On Channel 9, there's a video from Baldwin Ng of Microsoft's Developer Experience Team, and Bob Monio from ReadSoft, profiling a financial process automation app, which uses Windows 8.1 tablets and the Dynamics AX/Azure backend
On the Redmond magazine site, Jeffrey Schwarts writes about Microsoft's partnership with Sphere3D To Develop Windows Containers for Azure
Mike Hacker (@mphacker) writes that Microsoft Azure Government is now CJIS-compliant for California
On the WindowsITPro site, John Savill shares a tip about how to fix unstartable Azure VMs
🌐 Networking
- Alexandre Brisebois (@Brisebois) walks through scaling an FTP Ingestion Service Using Azure Traffic Manager
Yung Chou (@yungchou) writes about Azure Virtual Network essentials
Kevin Remde answers the question 'can I put a Active Directory Domain Controller in my Virtual Network?'
💡 Internet of Things
On TechNet, Alex Simons (@Alex_A_Simons), Director of Program Management Microsoft Identity and Security Division, provides a developer News Roundup, covering announcements about identity features in Visual Studio 2015 CTP6, and some new features for the ADAL.NET preview
On the Azure blog, Donna Malayeri (@lindydonna), Program Manager - Azure Mobile Services, announces the General Availability of the iOS Offline Sync SDK
On the Azure blog, Piyush Joshi, Program Manager - Azure Mobile, provides links to new samples and guidance for using Azure Notification Hubs
On the Microsoft Open Technologies site, Martin Sawicki announces a MultiPlatform release for the Azure Toolkit for Eclipse - it now runs on Mac and Linux
⚙️ Data and Analytics
On the power and utilities blog on MSDN, there's a case study of an IoT solution using Azure and PowerBI to manage the water supply in the city of Breda
On the Azure blog, Ryan Crawcour demonstrates two ways of searching for text with DocumentDB
📦 Storage
On the .NET Curry blog, Mahesh Sabnis discusses using the Azure Storage API in an ASP.NET MVC Application
On the Just Azure blog, Robin Shahan writes Azure Blob Storage Part 9: Shared Access Signatures
On the Edge Show on Channel 9, Rick Clause talks to Matt McSpirit about disaster Recovery using Azure Site Recovery, with a focus on Hyper-V to Azure protection
On the Azure blog, Sivaprakash Saripalli, Program Manager - Azure Site Recovery, introduces email notifications for Azure Site Recovery
On the Azure blog, Stuart Ozer announces an Azure SQL Database Elastic Scale preview update, including an Elastic Scale client library update which enables asynchronicity and a split-merge service update
On the WindowsITPro site, John Savill answers the question 'what is the longest time I can store data in Azure Backup, and what workloads are supported from Data Protection Manager?'
🎬 Media
Ben Foster (@benfosterdev) describes how to configure Azure to use HTTPS with the Azure CDN, via the portal
⚙️ Hybrid Integration
Cisco announced an extension of its partnership with Microsoft to launch the Cisco Cloud Architecture for the Microsoft Cloud Platform, a solution combining Azure Pack and Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure, an API-based tool for network management, monitoring, storage and virtualization.
Radu Vunvulea describes setting up an active-passive failover mechanism over Azure Service Bus
⚙️ Identity and Access Management
On the Active Directory Team blog, an announcement from Alex Simons (@Alex_A_Simons), Director of Program Management Microsoft Identity and Security Division, that the Azure AD conditional access preview now supports on-premise and custom LOB applications
There's also another annoucement from Alex Simons this week - Attribute Based Dynamic Group Membership for Azure Active Directory is now available in preview for Azure AD Premium