Azure Weekly

Issue #194 - 30th September 2018

Microsoft Ignite 2018 bumper-edition! This edition has overthrown our Build bumper-edition from earlier this year as being the largest ever Azure Weekly newsletter. An influx of announcements has kept us all busy and quite frankly, a little overwhelmed. Not to worry - you've come to the best place to get your weekly round up of Azure news.

Below are the announcements and updates and related articles (deeper dives into the new features) from the last week. Since there are so many, we thought we'd structure this section as we did for our Build bumper-edition. Let's begin!

AI + Machine Learning:

Analytics:

Compute:

Containers:

Databases:

Developer Tools:

DevOps:

Identity:

No announcements

Integration:

Internet of Things:

Management and Governance:

Media:

No announcements

Microsoft Azure Stack:

Migration:

Mobile:

Scaling Your Distribution Workflow with Shared Groups and AAD support

Networking:

Security:

Storage:

Web:

It seems Microsoft has really spoilt us with new features - take your time to sink your teeth into the updates that interest you. Remember, there are more articles from Azure ecosystem included in the main section below, so be sure to check those out, too!

⚙️ AI + Machine Learning

On the Azure blog, Eric Boyd writes about Azure AI – Making AI real for business
Also on the Azure blog, Hai Ning describes What's new in Azure Machine Learning service
Also on the Azure blog, Daniel Schneider describes Experimentation using Azure Machine Learning
Also on the Azure blog, Deepak Mukunthu and Sharon Gillett announce the automated ML capability in Azure Machine Learning
Also on the Azure blog, Blesson John describes how to Release models at pace using Microsoft’s automated machine learning!
Also on the Azure blog, Lance Olson writes about Global scale AI with Azure Cognitive Services
Also on the Azure blog, Mahesh Balachandran writes about the New features and enhancements released in Bing Custom Search V3
On MSDN, a reporter writes Integrate end-to-end speech translation into your products with Microsoft Speech services (Now GA)
Also on the Azure blog, Xuedong Huang writes that Microsoft’s new neural text-to-speech service helps machines speak like people
On the Revolution Analytics blog, David Smith (@revodavid) posts an R developer's guide to Azure

🔎 Analytics

On the Azure blog, Uri Barash introduces Azure Data Explorer
Also on the Azure blog, Ziv Caspi provides a Azure Data Explorer Technology 101
On MSDN, Ben Martens describes Ingesting Your First CSV Into Azure Data Explorer
Also on the Azure blog, Yatharth Gupta blogs about Azure Databricks – Delta in preview, 9 regions added, and other exciting announcements
Also on the Azure blog, Ashish Thapliyal (@ashishth) provides a Deep dive into Azure HDInsight 4.0 (now in PP) and, with Matthew Fuller, announces that Azure HDInsight and Starburst bring Presto to Microsoft Azure customers
Also on the Azure blog, Arindam Chatterjee writes that Azure HDInsight brings next generation Hadoop 3.0 and enterprise security to the cloud
Also on the Azure blog, Jenny Jiang announces the Spark Debugging and Diagnosis Toolset for Azure HDInsight (now in PP)
Also on the Azure blog, Pratim Das writes about What to expect in Spark + AI summit Europe
Also on the Azure blog, Krishna Mamidipaka writes about the Eight new features in Azure Stream Analytics
Also on MSDN, Shubha Vijayasarathy talks about Azure Event Hubs WebSockets and Proxy support
On the Power BI blog, Nikhil Gaekwad introduces Introducing Power BI Home & Global Search (now in PP)
Also on the Power BI blog, Swati Gupta writes about the Premium Capacity Metrics app – query metrics now available
Also on MSDN, Charles Sterling (@chass) highlights the November 2018 Update Webinar for Power BI Embedding with Ted Pattison and on the Power BI blog, highlights the Webinar 10/2: Creative DAX solutions by Philip Seamark

🖥️ Compute

On the Azure blog, Eduardo Laureano introduces Azure Functions 2.0
On the .NET Curry blog, Gerald Versluis discusses Serverless Apps with Azure Functions
Herve Roggero (@hroggero) discusses Building a Data Pipeline with Azure Functions
On the Azure blog, Subramanian Ramaswamy covers the Azure Service Fabric updates at Ignite 2018
On MSDN, Charles Young and Russell Young provide a Service Fabric Customer Profile: Solidsoft Reply EMVS
Also on the Azure blog, Corey Sanders (@CoreySandersWA) provides A crazy amount of new Azure infrastructure announcements and writes that the Serial console for Azure VMs now generally available
On Channel 9, Donovan Brown (@DonovanBrown) presents Troubleshoot and diagnose Azure Virtual Machines with Serial Console with Alfred Sin
Also on the Azure blog, Tariq Sharif describes Unlocking innovation with the new N-Series Azure Virtual Machines (PP)
Also on the Azure blog, Evan Burness introduces the new HB and HC Azure VM sizes for HPC
Also on the Azure blog, Daniel Sol announces the private preview of Azure VM Image Builder
Also on the Azure blog, Kay Singh (@singhkays) announces the public preview of Shared Image Gallery
Also on MSDN, Arsen Vladimirskiy (@ArsenVlad) covers Using Azure Shared Image Gallery replicaCount for higher scale concurrent VM deployments
The Azure updates team highlights the General availability: Automatic OS image upgrade in virtual machine scale sets
On the Azure blog, Matthew Kerner discusses Building with blockchain on Azure
Also on the Azure blog, Girish Bablani writes about SAP at Microsoft Ignite: Announcing SAP Data Custodian for Azure

🚢 Containers

On the Azure blog, Steve Lasker (@SteveLasker) blogs about Azure Container Registry: Public preview of Helm Chart Repositories and more
The Azure updates team highlights the Linux preview support of custom virtual networks on Azure Container Instances and writes about Reducing Kubernetes patch versions supported in Azure Kubernetes Service
On MSDN, Atul Verma write about Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS): Deploying Elasticsearch, Logstash and Kibana (ELK) and consume messages from Azure Event Hub and writes about Azure Functions 2.0: Create, debug and deploy to Azure Kubernetes Service AKS
Fabien Dibot (@fdibot) discusses Kubernetes on Azure: Lessons learned from the field
Daniel Neumann (@neumanndaniel) describes how to View AKS kubelet logs via serial console for Azure VMs

🗄️ Databases

On the Azure blog, Rimma Nehme (@rimmanehme) writes about Azure Cosmos DB - database for Intelligent Cloud - Intelligent Edge era and announces the general availability of Azure Cosmos DB reserved capacity
Also on the Azure blog, Dharma Shukla talks about Azure Cosmos DB: Pushing the frontier of globally distributed databases
Also on the Azure blog, Kirill Gavrylyuk (@kirillg_msft) explains how to Try Azure CosmosDB for 30 days free, no commitment or sign up
On MSDN, Julien Oudot (@JulienOudot) writes that Cosmos DB Emulators can also run in the Cloud
Also on the Azure blog, John MacIntyre writes Redefine data analytics with Modern Data Warehouse on Azure
Also on the Azure blog, Casey Karst writes about the Near real-time analytics in Azure SQL Data Warehouse
Also on the Azure blog, Anthony van Gemert writes that Azure SQL Data Warehouse now supports maintenance scheduling (now in PP)
Also on the Azure blog, Kevin Ngo describes the Seamless access to management insights for SQL Data Warehouse with Data Studio
Also on MSDN, Ronit Reger writes that the SQL Vulnerability Assessment now supports Azure SQL Data Warehouse and Azure SQL Database Managed Instance
The Azure updates team highlights the SQL Data Warehouse name change and GUID migration, highlights that Azure Redis Cache now supports a 120-GB cache in the premium tier, highlights the Public preview: Read replicas for Azure Database for MySQL and the Public preview: Read replicas for Azure Database for MySQL
Also on the Azure blog, Mark Bolz and Ron Matchoro announce that Advanced Threat Protection for Azure Database for PostgreSQL in preview and that Advanced Threat Protection for Azure Database for MySQL in preview
Also on the Azure blog, Diana Putnam provides Performance updates and tuning best practices for using Azure Database for PostgreSQL
Also on the Azure blog, Borko Novakovic writes about the Azure SQL Database Managed Instance, General Purpose tier general availability
Also on MSDN, Dimitri Furman and Denzil Ribeiro write about Real-time performance monitoring for Azure SQL Database Managed Instance
Also on MSDN, Jovan Popovic talks about The easiest way to create Azure VM that can access your Azure SQL Managed Instance
Also on MSDN, Mine Tokus Altug covers Storage Configuration Guidelines for SQL Server on Azure VM
Also on the Azure blog, Sudhakar Sannakkayala provides the Latest updates to Open Source Database Services for Azure – Ignite 2018
Also on the Azure blog, Xiaochen Wu announces the Azure SQL Database Hyperscale public preview
Also on the Azure blog, Lindsey Allen provides Three reasons Azure SQL Database is best for SQL Server migrations
Also on MSDN, Shreya Verma announces the Public Preview of Graph Edge Constraints on SQL Server 2019
Also on MSDN, Holger Linke writes that Database Copy may cause Azure SQL Database to run out of transaction log space
Herve Roggero (@hroggero) explains how to Replicate SharePoint Online Lists to Azure SQL Database
On the MSSQL Tips site, Esat Erkec describes How to use SQL Database Query Editor in Azure Portal
Also on MSDN, Kevin Farlee introduces Batch Mode on Rowstore

🛠️ Developer Tools

On the Azure blog, Deborah Chen (@ChenDeborah) writes that the Azure Cosmos DB JavaScript SDK 2.0 now generally available and highlights the Azure Cosmos DB Developer Experience updates
Also on the Azure blog, Ricky Brundritt writes about the Data-driven styling and more in the latest Azure Maps Web SDK update
Also on the Azure blog, Stefan Wick writes about the Developer tooling improvements for Azure IoT Edge
On MSDN, Xin Shi announces the Azure IoT Edge Jenkins plugin and introduces the Visual Studio Tools for Azure IoT Edge
Also on the Azure blog, Tyler Fox announces that New Azure HDInsight management SDK now in public preview
Also on the Azure blog, Asir Selvasingh writes that Microsoft and Azul Systems bring free Java LTS support to Azure
Also on the Azure blog, Yitao Dong explains how to Go Cloud-native with Spring Cloud on Azure
Also on the Azure blog, Lili Cheng describes how to Build conversational experiences with Microsoft Bot Framework (SDK now GA)
Also on the Azure blog, Ayesha Ghaffar provides an Azure Quickstart Center update
On the MSSQL Tips site, Mohammed Moinudheen talks about Using Azure Quickstart Templates
Also on MSDN, Lee Stott (@lee_stott) points out the Microsoft Azure Grant Programmes
On Microsoft + Open Source, Kylie Liang explains how to Connect with the Azure team at AnsibleFest
On the Azure podcast, the Azure podcast team (@AzurePodcast) presents Episode 248 - Updates from Ignite 2018

🔩 DevOps

The Azure DevOps team blogs about Pipeline container jobs - Sprint 140 Update
On MSDN, Aaron Bjork describes the Navigation Update for Azure DevOps
Also on MSDN, Lee Stott (@lee_stott) writes about the Microsoft Security Code Analysis (Private Preview)
Also on MSDN, Gregg Boer writes about Azure DevOps Reporting – What reports do you want?
On the Azure blog, Gopinath Chigakkagari writes that Azure Pipelines is the CI/CD solution for any language, any platform, any cloud
Also on MSDN, Justin Marks describes Using AzureAD identities in Azure DevOps organizations backed by Microsoft Accounts
Radu Vunvulea (@RaduVunvulea) talks about Azure DevOps - Spin-up your software development pipeline
Also on MSDN, Aseem Bansal (@aseembansal) blogs about the Liveness in Release Management UI
On Microsoft + Open Source, Xiang Yan provides a Tutorial: Jenkins CI/CD to deploy an ASP.NET Core application to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
On Microsoft + Open Source, Kylie Liang provides a Tutorial: Automate infrastructure and deployment on Azure using Jenkins and Ansible

🎭 Identity

On Microsoft Cloud Show, Andrew Connell and Chris Johnson present Episode 272 | Live from Microsoft Ignite 2018 with Alex Simons
On the Kloud blog, Peter Sybenga describes AAD-Connect PTA with SSO & Kerberos Decryption Key Roll Over
John Savill (@NTFAQGuy) highlights Lots of new Azure Design and Identity free training available
On the TechKB blog, Michael Coutanche (@mum3LE5) writes about Azure Active Directory Business-to-Business (B2B)

🔌 Integration

On the Azure blog, Julia White and Brad Anderson announce that Microsoft 365 adds modern desktop on Azure
On MSDN, Villars Gimm describes how to Automatically Protect Your App with Visual Studio App Center and Intune
On Microsoft Cloud Blogs, Mayunk Jain writes about What's New with Microsoft Intune and System Center Configuration Manager: MSIgnite 2018 Edition
Nicolas Bonnet explains how to Renew IOS Certificate
The Azure updates team describes FastTrack for Azure, writes that Logic Apps are available in Azure China cloud and writes about the Azure Logic Apps enhancements
Vincent-Philippe Lauzon (@vplauzon) writes about a Service Principal for Logic App Connector and describes Handling recursivity in Logic Apps
Michael Crump (@mbcrump) writes Azure Tips and Tricks Part 159 - Use Azure Logic Apps and CosmosDB to monitor and archive Twitter hashtags
On the Serverless360 blog, Eldert Grootenboer (@egrootenboer) writes about Throttling conditions to be considered in Messaging platform – Service Bus
Callon Campbell covers BRK3341 – Architect your solution with queues, grids, and hubs: When to use which and for what

💡 Internet of Things

On the Azure blog, Peter Provost announces the general availability of Azure IoT Central
On MSDN, 365blog announces the Connected Field Service for Azure IoT Central
Also on Channel 9, Olivier Bloch (@obloch) announces that Azure IoT Central is now Generally Available with Marcello Majonchi and Larry Jordan, presents Dial up your MXChip Azure IoT starter kit with Clayton Fernandez, talks about Routing Messages in Azure IoT Hub based on Device Twin with Paul Montgomery and talks about the First Anniversary for Azure IoT Hub Device Provisioning Service with Nicole Berdy
Also on the Azure blog, Nicole Berdy (@nberdy) writes Happy anniversary: New IoT Hub Device Provisioning Service features out today
At Ignite 2018, Anthony Bartolo (@WirelessLife) talks about Deploying and Managing IoT From an Ops Perspective with Olivier Bloch
Also on the Azure blog, Ed Nightingale writes that Azure Sphere is here - public preview and dev kits now available and, on Channel 9, provides an Azure Sphere Overview with Olivier Bloch
On the Kloud blog, Darren Doc Robinson blogs about Azure Sphere – Initial Setup, Configuration and First Impressions
Also on the Azure blog, Venkat Yalla blogs about Extended offline operation with Azure IoT Edge (now in PP)
On TechNet, Arpita Duppala (@arnuwish) announces the Public Preview of Azure Blob Storage on IoT Edge
Also on the Azure blog, Emmanuel Bertrand describes how to Publish your Azure IoT Edge modules in Azure Marketplace
On Code Project, Allen O'Neil (@ajsondev) writes What is IoT Edge?
Also on the Azure blog, Ashita Rastogi writes about A powerful and intuitive way to route device messages in Azure IoT Hub
Also on the Azure blog, OP Ravi writes that Allego offers electric vehicle smart charging solutions powered by Azure Digital Twins
On the Codit blog, Luis Delgado writes about the Azure Data Explorer and Industrial IoT
Also on Channel 9, Scott Hanselman (@shanselman) and Julie Kohler talk about Batch and matrix routing with Azure Maps, Batch geocoding and polygons for administrative areas with Azure Maps, Mapping IP to location with Azure Maps and Calculating isochrones in Azure Maps

⚖️ Management and Governance

On the Azure blog, Leon Welicki (@lwelicki) announces Azure user experience improvements at Ignite 2018
Also on the Azure blog, Shiva Sivakumar writes about the New full stack monitoring capabilities in Azure Monitor
Also on the Azure blog, Noa Kuperberg writes that Azure Monitor is providing a unified logs experience
Also on the Azure blog, Kiran Madnani writes that Azure Monitor alerting just got better!
Also on the Azure blog, Anirudh Cavale talks about A new way to send custom metrics to Azure Monitor (PP)
Also on the Azure blog, David Seidman talks about the Rich insights for virtual machines from Azure Monitor (PP)
Marcel Zehner (@marcelzehner) writes about Azure Monitor for VMs
Also on the Azure blog, Jeremy Winter writes Get speed and control with new free Azure governance services
Steve Buchanan (@buchatech) describes how to Architect your Cloud with Azure Blueprints
Also on the Azure blog, David Tepper writes that Azure Deployment Manager now in public preview
Also on the Azure blog, Dushyant Gill explains how to Get notified when your Azure resources become unavailable
On MSDN, Steve Michelotti describes Service Health on Azure Government with Sami Kubba
Also on the Azure blog, Kaitlyn Corazao writes that Azure Advisor has new recommendations for you
Also on the Azure blog, Adam Wise announces the EA preview release of management group cost APIs
The Azure updates team highlights the Public preview: Azure Cost Management and the Public preview: Guest Configuration feature for Azure Policy
Daniel Örneling (@DanielOrneling) writes Monitoring the VMware environment – Part 1
On TechNet, Laura Park blogs about SCOM Gray Agents in VMM – Report & Email
Charbel Nemnom (@charbelnemnom) describes Protecting Your Windows Servers With Azure Backup In Windows Admin Center AzureBackup ServerMgmt
On the Catapult Systems blog, Cameron Fuller describes How to add a news flash to your Azure dashboards

⚙️ Microsoft Azure Stack

On the Azure blog, Arpan Shah (@arpanshah) talks about Microsoft Azure: The only consistent, comprehensive hybrid cloud
Also on the Azure blog, Natalia Mackevicius says that the New investments in Azure Stack extend Microsoft’s hybrid cloud leadership
Also on the Azure blog, Bradley Bartz writes that Azure ISVs expand the possibilities with Azure Stack
Also on the Azure blog, Natalia Mackevicius writes that Red Hat OpenShift and Microsoft Azure Stack together for hybrid enterprise solutions
On MSDN, Shubha Vijayasarathy introduces Event Hubs for Azure Stack
Thomas Maurer (@thomasmaurer) writes Microsoft and OEMs working on Azure Stack GPU Support
On the Black Marble blog, Rik Hepworth (@rikhepworth) describes Deploying the ASDK for effective development use
On MSDN, Ed Price (@UserEd_) has written a series of blogs around Design considerations for hybrid applications – Overview, Scalability, Availability, Placement, Resiliency, Security, Manageaility and Summary & Learn more

🚌 Migration

On the Azure blog, Jeremy Winter and Tanuj Bansal write that Now is the time to migrate all your apps, data, and infrastructure to Azure
Also on the Azure blog, Dean Paron (@deanparon) writes about Expanding the Azure Data Box family
Also on Channel 9, Donovan Brown (@DonovanBrown) introduces the Azure Data Box family with Mathew Dickson and talks about Azure Data Box Edge with Andrew Mason
Also on the Azure blog, Sudhakar Sannakkayala writes about the Azure Database Migration Service and tool updates – Ignite 2018
On MSDN, Nikhil Patel announces the Preview of MongoDB migrations to Azure Cosmos DB MongoDB API using Azure Database Migration Service
James Serra (@JamesSerra) blogs about the Azure Database Migration Service (DMS)
On TechNet, Tim Tetrick describes the Azure Cloud Migration and Modernization Partner Journey

📱 Mobile

On MSDN, Zakeel Muhammad blogs about Scaling Your Distribution Workflow with Shared Groups and AAD support
On the Xamarin blog, Bret Johnson blogs about Using the Android Designer Split View
On Code Project, Silvia Campo describes How to Display a Battery Charge Level in Xamarin Forms using Font Awesome

🌐 Networking

On the Azure blog, Yousef Khalidi provides an Azure Networking Fall 2018 update
Also on the Azure blog, Daniel Gicklhorn and Sharad Agrawal announce the public preview of Azure Front Door Services
On Channel 9, Lara Rubbelke (@sqlgal) talks about the Azure Front Door Service (Preview) with Sharad Agrawal
Also on the Azure blog, Subra Sarma announces Alias records for Azure DNS
The Azure updates team highlights the Public preview: Virtual network service endpoint policies for Azure Storage, writes about Virtual network peering across Azure Active Directory tenants, writes about Azure Load Balancer TCP resets on idle in preview and writes about the Azure Load Balancer—Outbound Rules for Standard Load Balance GA
Also on the Azure blog, Subra Sarma writes about Application Gateway Analytics via GoAccess
Also on the Azure blog, Anupam Vij writes about DDoS Protection Attack Analytics and rapid response
Jose Moreno covers Reading Azure NSG logs with Python
Also on MSDN, Steve Michelotti talks about Secure development on Azure Government – Part 1 with Joseph Bloom
Roelf Zomerman writes Exclusive: Azure Gateway OpenVPN P2S profile creator

🔐 Security

On the Azure blog, Gilad Elyashar explains how to Strengthen your security posture and protect against threats with Azure Security Center
Also on the Azure blog, Ronit Reger explains how to Manage your SQL Information Protection policy in Azure Security Center
Also on the Azure blog, Avi Ben-Menahem describes how to Strengthen security with key Azure innovations
On Microsoft Cloud Blogs, Gagan Gulati announces the availability of information protection capabilities to help protect your sensitive data
Also on Microsoft Cloud Blogs, Jason Wilson writes that Azure Advanced Threat Protection Expands Integrations, Detections, and Forensic Capabilities and describes how to Secure your hybrid-cloud environments with Azure AD Identity Protection and Azure ATP
Also on Microsoft Cloud Blogs, Kim Kischel talks about What's new with Microsoft Cloud App Security - MS Ignite edition 2018 and writes Microsoft Cloud App Security and Windows Defender ATP - better together
Also on the Azure blog, Christine Alford writes that Healthcare Cloud Security Stack now available on Azure Marketplace
On MSDN, Karina Homme (@karinalhomme) provides a Meetup replay: Future of Gov Security – Automated ATOs, Revamped TIC & Beyond

📦 Storage

On the Azure blog, Gunjan Jain writes that Premium Files pushes Azure Files limits by 100x!
Also on the Azure blog, Yuemin Lu announces that Azure Active Directory authentication for Azure Files SMB access now in public preview
Also on the Azure blog, Tad Brockway writes about A new era for Azure Files: Bigger, faster, better, announces Announcing Ultra SSD – the next generation of Azure Disks technology (preview) and introduces the public preview of larger Managed Disks sizes
Also on the Azure blog, Kay Singh (@singhkays) writes that Move Managed Disks and VMs now available
Also on the Azure blog, Sirius Kuttiyan announces the general availability of Standard SSD Disks for Azure Virtual Machine workloads
Ed Elliott (@EdDebug) writes about Azure Premium Managed Disks, how fast are they over an extended period (24 hours)
On the Azure blog, Claus Joergensen introduces Introducing Azure Premium Blob Storage (limited public preview)
Radu Vunvulea (@RaduVunvulea) writes about Immutable blobs inside Azure Storage (WORM)

🔗 Web

On the Azure blog, Jason Freeberg writes about the General availability of Tomcat and Java SE on App Service on Linux
On MSDN, Ahmed Elnably announces the Webapps Undelete (Public Preview)
Also on MSDN, Ranjith Ramachandra announces Bring your own Storage to App Service
Also on the Azure blog, John Montgomery (@JohnMont) writes that Azure SignalR Service now generally available
Also on the Azure blog, Maxwell Gattuso announces that Microsoft's Content Delivery Network is now generally available
The Azure updates team provides an Azure API Management update September 24
Also on MSDN, Brad Edwards describes How to change memorylimit on WordPress Web App for Linux on Azure
Also on MSDN, Milind Belhe describes How to set node version for Windows node.js webapp from Azure Portal
Also on MSDN, Wael Kdouh covers Uncovering The Details Of Hosting a Node Application On Azure
Also on MSDN, Ben Perkins (@csharpguitar) writes What is self-contained deployment mode, works locally but not after deploying and explains How to securely connect to Azure from C# and run REST APIs
On Microsoft + Open Source, Xiang Yan provides a Tutorial: Jenkins CI/CD to deploy an ASP.NET Core application to Azure Web App service