Azure Weekly

Issue #20 - 4th April 2015

The mystery Azure development that we were recently teased with was unveiled this week as the Azure App Service, an integrated service emcompassing Web Apps (a re-brand of Azure Websites), Mobile Apps, Logic Apps and API Apps.

Mobile Apps offers the core functionality of Mobile Services but also opens out features such as staging slots for deployment, traffic manager support and better scaling options.

Logic Apps offers basic workflow functionality with a visual designer and integration with data and services from SaaS apps like DropBox, Oiffice 365 and Salesforce. API Apps provides a way to use existing APIs in the Azure App Service.

The week's big announcements are summarised on the Azure blog by Vibhor Kapoor.

On the Azure podcast, Mark Grimes describes the new certification exams for Azure

endjin are hiring a Senior Developer in London, to help build out their Azure Practice.

⚖️ Management and Governance

On Channel 9, David Tesar gives a demo of Chef Provisioning to Azure
Trevor Sullivan (@pcgeek86) shares a PowerShell script to connect to an Azure VM using RDP
On the Docker blog, John Willis writes the second in a series of Docker tutorials, explaining how to run Command Basics

🖥️ Compute

On the Azure blog, Kundana Palagiri announces a single click solution for deploying SaltStack Enterprise on Azure from the Azure Marketplace
On the Azure blog, Guy Bowerman (@gbowerman) announces that the Azure VM OS drive limit has octupled and on TechNet, Srinath Vasireddy explains that it's now possible to migrate an OS disk greater than 127GB to Azure with the Migration Accelerator
Alexandre Brisebois (@Brisebois) writes A Dev and Test Adventure on Azure
There's a new step by step guide to troubleshooting Remote Desktop connections to a Windows-based Azure Virtual Machine on the Azure docs
On MSDN, Srikanth Sureddy talks about performance Tuning a MySQL Database on Azure Linux VMs
On the WindowsITPro site, John Savill explains how to create a new template to be used with Azure RemoteApp

🌐 Networking

On the WindowsITPro site, John Savill answers the questions 'I created an Azure Virtual Network with a small virtual address space and now I need to expland it, is this possible?' and 'can I use a single Virtual Network in Azure across two different subscriptions?'

💡 Internet of Things

On Channel9, Scott Guthrie presents this week's big news on the new Azure App Service
On Code Project, Dr A. Bell writes about perpetuumM: Realtime NY bus tracking app for Win7/8 - his Microsoft Azure IoT contest submission.
Following on from the announement of Azure App Services, Vishal Sood announces Media APIs for Azure App Service. The Azure Media Service Connector offers a simple REST API to upload and stream videos to a wide range of devices
Also on the Azure blog, Anton Babadjanov announces the General Availability of API Management Premium Tier, which offers multiple geo deployment, Azure Virtual Network/ VPN support and Azure Active Directory support
On Code Project, Gaurav Kumar Arora wrties about getting Started with Azure API Management
The Openness Team announces Azure for students developers, a free package for students which includes the Azure App Service, Application Insights and Visual Studio Online...
... and you can hear the announcement of Azure for Students from Scott Guthrie himself on Channel9
There's more on the new Azure App Services and free offering for students from Jeffrey Schwartz on Redmond Mag
Simon Timms (@stimms) talks about WebJobs and Deployment Slots in Azure
Donovan Brown explains how to log into different Azure websites using FTP via Windows Explorer, using different credentials