Azure Weekly Issue 191: 9th September 2018
Here are this week's announcements and updates:
- General availability: Event Hubs for Python
- General availability: Virtual network service endpoints for Azure Key Vault
- General availability of Azure IoT Hub integration with Azure Event Grid
- SQL Data Warehouse now available in Government Cloud
- Avere vFXT for Microsoft Azure now in public preview
- Public preview: Data Box Disk now available in Australia and Canada
- Public Preview for Azure Active Directory Integration with Azure Files
- Azure Cosmos DB Emulator build task for Azure DevOps now in preview
- BulkExecutor for Azure Cosmos DB Gremlin API now available
- Azure Security Center update August 29
- Python in Visual Studio Code – August 2018 Release
- Azure IoT Toolkit supports C#, Go, Java, Node.js, PHP, Python and Ruby to develop Azure IoT application in VS Code
- Azure Data Box: Expanded availability, plus support for NFS and RBAC
- Exciting new capabilities on Azure HDInsight
- Powerful Debugging Tools for Spark for Azure HDInsight
- Azure Database Migration Service: PostgreSQL to Azure DB for PostgreSQL migrations support
- Azure SQL Data Warehouse enables streaming solutions with Azure Databricks
Of the above links I'm most excited about the Cosmos DB emulator for VSTS; running large amounts of integration tests against Cosmos in your CI/CD environment can become very expensive, as you tend to need to increase your RU/s to run your tests quickly and in parallel!
In other interesting content this week; I love how the Azure Event Hubs team are integrating popular open source technologies / protocols with proprietary Azure services (I wish more of the Azure product groups would take this approach; enriching rather than either / or) - see Azure Event Hubs with Kafka coolness with Dan Rosanova, A powerful cloud service from Microsoft has been rolled out to another UK region, a very interesting post about Connected Arms – Can AI Revolutionize Prosthetic Devices & Make them More Affordable and finally two really good articles about Azure (Durable) Functions: an Introduction to Azure Durable Functions and Correlated Structured Logging on Azure Functions
It's also time to get our monthly round-up of all the Microsoft Azure Industry Experiences team's content:
Firstly there's a nice overview of how to drive industry transformation with Azure – Getting started – Edition 1
Retail
- Current use cases for machine learning in retail and consumer goods
- Delivering innovation in retail with the flexible and productive Microsoft AI platform
- Keeping shelves stocked and consumers happy (and shopping!)
Manufacturing
- Extracting actionable insights from IoT data to drive more efficient manufacturing
- Describe, diagnose, and predict with IoT Analytics
- Where is the market opportunity for developers of IoT solutions?
Health & Life Sciences
- Four trends powering healthcare AI, and what you can do about it
- Accelerate healthcare initiatives with Azure UK NHS blueprints
- Accelerating Artificial Intelligence (AI) in healthcare using Microsoft Azure blueprints
Banking
- Two seconds to take a bite out of mobile bank fraud with Artificial Intelligence
- Anti-money laundering – Microsoft Azure helping banks reduce false positives
Insurance
- Finish your insurance actuarial modeling in hours, not days
- Reduce costs by optimizing actuarial risk compute on Azure
- Save money on actuarial compute by retiring your on-premises HPC grids
Finally, it was an important week at endjin as we announced that Ian Griffiths has join as our first Technical Fellow. We took the opportunity to write a 5 part Q&A with Ian. The two topics that may be of interest to subscribers of this newsletter are part 2 - The .NET Ecosystem & The Cloud, and part 3 - Data & AI, although I'd highly recommend reading all 5 parts!
AI + Machine Learning
Covering: Azure Batch AI, Azure Bot Service, Microsoft Genomics, Machine Learning services, Machine Learning Studio, Cognitive Services, Bing APIs, Computer Vision API, Content moderator, Custom Services, Emotion API, Face API, Language Understanding (LUIS), Linguistic Analysis API, QnA Maker API, Speaker Recognition API, Text Analytics API, Translator Speech API, Translator Text API, Web Language Model API
- Michael Crump (@mbcrump) writes Azure Tips and Tricks 154 - How to quickly check the EndPoint API of QnA Maker
- On the Revolution Analytics blog, David Smith (@revodavid) writes about In case you missed it: August 2018 roundup
- On MSDN, an announcement about AI Discovery Days at a Microsoft Location Near You
- On the Xamarin blog, Jim Bennett (@jimbobbennett) covers Using Object Detection from inside your Xamarin app and on Channel 9, James Montemagno talks about Custom Vision – Object Detection Made Easy The Xamarin Show
- On TechNet, the ML Blog Team explains how to Connected Arms – Can AI Revolutionize Prosthetic Devices & Make them More Affordable
Analytics
Covering: Azure Databricks, HDInsight, Data Factory, Stream Analytics, Data Lake Analytics, Event Hubs, Power BI, Azure Analysis Services, Apache Spark for HDInsight, Apache Storm for HDInsight, R Server for HDInsight, Data Catalog
- On Channel 9, Corey Sanders (@CoreySandersWA) presents Azure Event Hubs with Kafka coolness with Dan Rosanova
- Also on Channel 9, Scott Hanselman & Gaurav Malhotra talk about Enhanced productivity using Azure Data Factory visual tools Azure Friday
- The Azure updates team highlights the General availability: Event Hubs for Python
- On the Azure blog, Ashish Thapliyal (@ashishth) writes about the Exciting new capabilities on Azure HDInsight
- Also on the Azure blog, Jenny Jiang introduces the Powerful Debugging Tools for Spark for Azure HDInsight
- On the Kloud blog, Vikas Madan writes about Microsoft Azure Consumption Insights with Power BI
- On the Power BI blog, Kay Unkroth covers Celebrating our first community contribution to the Power BI management cmdlets
- Chris Webb (@cwebb_bi) provides A Quick Look Some Power BI And SSAS-Related Products And Books
- On the Power BI blog, Charles Sterling (@chass) writes about the 9/11 Webinar with Seth Bauer and Mike Carlo: New Power BI tools and new templates including a walk through of Cool Blue and the layout Purple Haze
Compute
Covering: Virtual Machines, Functions, Batch, Service Fabric, Virtual Machine Scale Sets, Cloud Services, Linux Virtual Machines, SAP HANA on Azure Large Instances
- On MSDN, Maxime Rouiller (@MaximRouiller) provides an Introduction to Azure Durable Functions
- On the Mexia blog, Pacomexia.com.au Paco de la Cruz explains how to Correlated Structured Logging on Azure Functions
- On the Azure blog, Nick Leimer explains how to Reduce costs by optimizing actuarial risk compute on Azure
- On the Azure blog, Rebecca Thompson announces that Avere vFXT for Microsoft Azure now in public preview
- On the Microsoft site, a reporter writes that A powerful cloud service from Microsoft has been rolled out to another UK region
- Fabien Dibot (@fdibot) explains how to Get Virtual Machine ScaleSet private IPs
- Also on MSDN, Scott Semyan (@scott_semyan) provides A Serverless ToDo List
- Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) writes Serverless to the Max: Doing Big Things for Small Dollars with Cloudflare Workers and Azure Functions
- On the Mexia blog, Paco de la Cruz (@pacodelacruz) writes about Correlated Structured Logging on Azure Functions
- Mark Heath (@mark_heath) introduces the new Pluralsight course: Create Serverless Functions
- Also on MSDN, Ben Perkins (@csharpguitar) writes Function ({name}) Error: The binding type(s) ‘{triggerType}’ are not registered
- Also on MSDN, David Burg (@david_burg) writes that Escape characters illegal in XML with hex character reference through an Azure Function V2
- Also on MSDN, Steve Read describes how to Set up IBM Z Development and Test Environment 12.0 in Azure
Containers
Covering: Container Registry, Container Instances, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Web App for Containers
- James van Den Berg covers Installing Azure Service Fabric Cluster on Windows Server 2019 Insiders
- On MSDN, Girish Pillai walks through Using Azure CLI to open Kubernetes dashboard
- On Microsoft + Open Source, the Aporeto Team blogs about Securing Kubernetes workloads in hybrid settings with Aporeto
- Julien Corioland (@jcorioland) describes how to Use Azure managed identities with Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS)
- Vincent-Philippe Lauzon (@vplauzon) writes AKS with Kubenet vs Azure Networking plug-in
Databases
Covering: Azure SQL Database, Azure Cosmos DB, SQL Data Warehouse, Redis Cache, SQL Server Stretch Database, SQL Server on virtual machines, Table storage, Azure Database for PostgreSQL, Azure Database for MySQL
- The Azure Updates Team highlights SQL Data Warehouse is now available in Government Cloud, Azure SQL Data Warehouse enables streaming solutions with Azure Databricks and covers that the BulkExecutor for Azure Cosmos DB Gremlin API now available
- On MSDN, Kaduk Frantisek delves into CosmosDB change feed processor – leases and work balancing strategy
- Matthew Soucoup (@CodeMillMatt) describes Connecting to Cosmos DB Without Connection Strings
- On the Azure blog, Alice Kupcik asks Transparent data encryption or always encrypted?
- James Serra (@JamesSerra) talks about Azure SQL Database Read Scale-Out
- On MSDN, Ben Perkins (@csharpguitar) describes How to create a read only user for a SQL Azure database
- Also on MSDN, Jovan Popovic discusses Sending emails in Azure SQL Managed Instance and Working with Azure SQL Managed Instance using Azure CLI
- Barry Luijbregts (@azurebarry) writes to Learn about caching in Azure in my new Pluralsight course
- the Azure updates team covers Migration support for PostgreSQL to Azure DB for PostgreSQL and blogs about Azure Database Migration Service: PostgreSQL to Azure DB for PostgreSQL migrations support
Developer Tools
Covering: Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, SDKs, Developer tool integrations, CLIs, Blockchain Workbench
- On MSDN, Dan Taylor blogs about Python in Visual Studio Code – August 2018 Release
- K. Scott Allen (@OdeToCode) writes about .NET Core Opinion 2 - Managing a Repository Structure
- Also on MSDN, Jun Han (@formulahendry) writes that Azure IoT Toolkit supports C#, Go, Java, Node.js, PHP, Python and Ruby to develop Azure IoT application in VS Code
- On Channel 9, Cameron Tomisser Christina Warren talks about Meet Chad Fowler Developer Life
- On the Azure podcast, Doug Strother and John Miller talk about Azure Certifications in episode 245
DevOps
Covering: Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS), Azure DevTest Labs, DevOps tool integrations, Azure DevOps Projects, Azure Lab Services
- The Azure Updates Team highlights the Azure Cosmos DB Emulator build task for Azure DevOps now in preview
- Radu Vunvulea (@RaduVunvulea) describes How to calculate the cost of CI/CD on top of Azure VSTS
- On MSDN, Edward Fry highlights the Kanban Board Tools Extension for VSTS
- On the Black Marble blog, Richard Fennell (@richardfennell) writes that Videos do not play in VSTS WIKI via relative links – workaround
Identity
Covering: Azure Active Directory, Multi-factor Authentication, Azure Active Directory Domain Services, Azure Active Directory B2C
- On Channel 9, Rich Lander (@runfaster2000) talks about Customer Identity Management with Azure AD B2C with Parakh Jain
- Julien Corioland (@jcorioland) describes how to Use Azure managed identities with Azure Kubernetes Services AKS
- On MSDN, SailingRock talks about Federation patterns using Azure AD
- The Azure Updates Team announces the Public Preview for Azure Active Directory Integration with Azure Files
Integration
Covering: Service Bus, Logic Apps, Event Grid
- On the Serverless360 blog, Eldert Grootenboer (@egrootenboer) describes How Event Grid could enhance your listening activity to your messaging entities
- The Azure Updates Team announces general availability of Azure IoT Hub integration with Azure Event Grid
- Also on the Serverless360 blog, Nadeem Ahamed discusses Messaging Scenarios in Azure
- On TechNet, the Intune Support Team writes Coming soon: New Intune support experience for Premier customers
- On the Kloud blog, Lucian Franghiu (@lucianfrango) discusses Office 365 URLs and IP address updates for firewall and proxy configuration, using Flow and Azure Automation
- Sean Feldman describes Dealing with large Azure Service Bus messages part 2
Internet of Things
Covering: IoT Hub, IoT Suite, IoT Edge, IoT Central, IoT solution accelerators, Time Series Insights, Azure Maps, Azure Sphere
- On Channel 9, Olivier Bloch (@obloch) talks about IoT In Action - Introducing Azure Sphere with Tom O'Reilly
- On MSDN, Jeff Chilberto (@JChilberto) blogs about Azure Content Spotlight – Where is the market opportunity for developers of IoT solutions
- The Azure updates team announces the General availability of Azure IoT Hub integration with Azure Event Grid
- Also on MSDN, Robert Green - Mfst writes about Visual Studio Toolbox: Getting started with Windows IoT Episode 5
- Also on MSDN, Wu Shuai explains How to Control Downstream Device from IoT Edge
- On Channel 9, Dmitry Lyalin Robert Green talks about Windows IoT 5: Using Device Methods with IoT Hub Getting Started Series Visual Studio Toolbox
- Also on Channel 9, Olivier Bloch (@obloch) talks about Monitoring And Diagnostics of an IoT Solution with Azure IoT Hub Internet of Things Show
Management and Governance
Covering: Backup, Site Recovery, App Insights, Azure Advisor, Sceduler, Automation, Log Analytics, Azure Monitor, Security & Compliance, Protection & Recovery, Automation & Control, Insight & Analytics, Azure Service Health, Microsoft Azure portal, Azure Resource Manager, Cloud Shell, the Azure mobile app, Azure Policy, Cost Management, Azure Managed Applications
- On MSDN, Brian Christopher Harrison (@briancharrison) provides an Azure 101: Monitoring & Logging Part 1
- On TechNet, Kevin Justin writes MMA Agent, cross platform, and Azure, talks about Service Map SCOM pack configuration errors, walks through Adding Management Solutions in Azure and discusses MMA Agent and SCOM Agent version numbers
Media
Covering: Media services, Encoding, Live and On-Demand Streaming, Azure Media Player, Content Protection, Media Analytics, Video Indexer
Microsoft Azure Stack
Covering: Azure Stack
- Thomas Maurer (@thomasmaurer) explains how to Protect Azure Stack Tenant Workloads with Azure Backup Server
- On MSDN, Girish Pillai describes Adding SQL IaaS extension into a disconnected Azure Stack
- Charbel Nemnom (@charbelnemnom) explains how to Configure Azure Stack Automatic Infrastructure Backup With PowerShell and provides a (Solution) Failed To Create Backup in Azure Stack Development Kit 1807 Update
Migration
Covering: Azure Database Migration Service, Azure Migrate, Data Box
- The Azure updates team writes about the Azure Data Box: Expanded availability, plus support for NFS and RBAC and talks about the Public preview: Data Box Disk now available in Australia and Canada
- The Azure updates team writes about the Azure Database Migration Service: PostgreSQL to Azure DB for PostgreSQL migrations support and writes about the Migration support for PostgreSQL to Azure DB for PostgreSQL
Mobile
Covering: App Service (Mobile), Notification Hubs, Mobile apps, API apps, Visual Studio App Centre, Xamarin
- On Visual Studio Magazine - Columns, Peter Vogel talks about The 5 Essential Patterns in Xamarin Applications
- On the Xamarin blog, Jayme Singleton highlights the Xamarin and .NET Developer Events in September
Networking
Covering: ExpressRoute, Azure DNS, Virtual Network, Traffic Manager, Load Balancer, VPN Gateway, Application Gateway, Network Watcher
- On the Kloud blog, Michael Roger blogs about Azure Application Gateway WAF tuning
- Aidan Finn (@joe_elway) describes Adding Address Spaces To An Azure Virtual Network
- Roy Kim (@roykimyyz) discusses Penetration Testing Your Web App with Azure Application Gateway WAF Part 1: Intro
- On TechNet, Schumann Ge lists the Top 10 Networking Features in Windows Server 2019: #3 Azure Network Adapter
- Sam Cogan (@samcogan) writes Azure for the AWS User Part 3: Networking
Security
Covering: Azure Information Protection, Key Vault, Security Center, Azure DDoS Protection, Azure Advanced Threat Protection
- The Azure Updates Team highlights the General availability: Virtual network service endpoints for Azure Key Vault
- On TechNet, Amit Bapat (@amitbapat) talks about the Virtual Network Service Endpoints for Key Vault
- The Azure updates team provides an Azure Security Center update August 29
- Also on TechNet, Dirk Brinkmann talks about Installing and testing the new Azure Security Center Preview Cmdlets
- On the Catapult Systems blog, David Broussard writes about Azure RMS Super Users
Storage
Covering: Storage, StorSimple, Data Lake Store, Blob Storage, Disk Storage, Managed Disks, Queue Storage, File Storage, Storage Explorer, Archive Storage
- Mark Heath (@mark_heath) explains how to Convert an Azure Managed Disk to Standard SSD with Azure CLI
- On Geeks with Blogs, Gino Abraham talks about Azure Blobs Vs Azure Files wrt Azure Search
- On Code Project, sanathjs write about Azure Storage : Azure Blob Storage for developers
Web
Covering: App Service (Web), API Management, Content Delivery Network, Azure Search, Web apps, Azure SignalR Service
- K. Scott Allen (@OdeToCode) describes Using npm During ASP.NET Core Git Deployments in Azure App Services
- Roy Kim (@roykimyyz) covers Penetration Testing Your Web App with Azure Application Gateway WAF Part 3: Log Analytics and Penetration Testing Your Web App with Azure Application Gateway WAF Part 2: OWASP ZAP Tool
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