Azure Weekly

Issue #213 - 24th February 2019

We've had a very exciting week at endjin this week, using the new Span<T> and Memory<T> features of .NET to create zero allocation parsers for an IoT protocol we're working with. We've seen an order of magnitude throughput improvement. Sometimes on Azure it's easy to just throw more cores at a problem, while re-engineering core components can deliver bigger performance gains. Hopefully I'll get to write more on this topic soon! Carmel Eve has also finished off her blog series on the Rx operators: Rx operators deep dive Part 5 – Thank you for joining me on this journey

Here are all the other updates and announcements:

⚙️ AI + Machine Learning

On the MSSQL Tips site, Nai Biao Zhou talks about SQL Server 2017 Machine Learning Services Visualization and Data Analysis
On MSDN, Krishna Mamidipaka describes Anomaly detection using machine learning in Azure Stream Analytics

🔎 Analytics

On the MSSQL Tips site, Eduardo Pivaral discusses Getting Started with Power BI - Part 1 and Siddharth Mehta discusses using Power BI Pie Chart Tree to Analyze Hierarchical Distributions
Also on the MSSQL Tips site, Fikrat Azizov explains how to Create an Azure Data Factory Pipeline
On MSDN, John Ehrlinger presents a New Reference Architecture: Batch scoring of Spark models on Azure Databricks
On the Power BI blog, Aviv Ezrachi describes Insights made easy with Power BI Template Apps and Ranin Salameh gives us the Power BI Developer community January update
On the Revolution Analytics blog, Hong Ooi discusses Developments in AzureR
On the Perficient blog, Abhisek Majumdar talks about using Power BI + Azure Data Lake Velocity & Scale to Your Analytics

🖥️ Compute

Jason Roberts (@robertsjason) blogs about Improving Azure Functions Blob Trigger Performance and Reliability - Part 1: Memory Usage
Gunnar Peipman (@gpeipman) asks "What is Windows Sandbox?"
On the Serverless360 blog, Mohan Nagaraj presents Azure Functions Live – Feb 2019
Justin Yoo (@justinchronicle) talks about Performing Constructor Injections on Azure Functions V2

🚢 Containers

On the Microsoft DevOps blog, Edward Thomson (@ethomson) describes Cross-Platform Container Builds with Azure Pipelines
James van Den Berg (@JamesvandenBerg) explains How to monitor your Kubernetes clusters
Tobias Zimmergren explains How to Mount an Azure Storage File Share to containers in Azure Kubernetes Services, walks through Processing data from SQLite hosted in an Azure File share, running in AKS, blogs about Azure Container Instances - C# .NET Core apps running as containers in your private Azure Container Registry, covers Azure Container Instances ACI and Secrets - Using Secure Environment Variables and talks about Azure Container Instances ACI and Secrets - Creating secret volumes and consume secrets using C# .NET Core
On the Azure podcast, Russell Young (@youngr6) presents Episode 266 - Azure Kubernetes Service

🗄️ Databases

Harald Schult Ulriksen (@hsulriksen) talks about Understanding grain references and UniqueKey for Orleans CosmosDB provider
On the Azure blog, Sunil Kamath covers how to Use GraphQL with Hasura and Azure Database for PostgreSQL
Jen Stirrup blogs about an Error converting data type varchar to numeric where ISNUMERIC finds only numbers
Callon Campbell highlights the February release of Azure Data Studio
On the MSSQL Tips site, Ron L'Esteve explains how to Create Azure Data Lake Database, Schema, Table, View, Function and Stored Procedure
On MSDN, David Engel announces that OLE DB Driver 18.2 for SQL Server has been Released

🛠️ Developer Tools

Scott Hanselman (@shanselman) blogs about Exploring nopCommerce - open source e-commerce shopping cart platform in .NET Core
On MSDN, Simon Brand presents the Visual Studio 2019 Preview 2 - Blog Rollup
On the Visual Studio blog, Jamie Young (@jamiedyoung) describes how they are Reflecting your feedback in Visual Studio 2019
On Channel 9, Sayed Hashimi (@sayedihashimi) talks about Visual Studio for Mac: Using Navigate To
On Code Project, Prasad Kulkarni covers a list of Extensions for Visual Studio
On the Premier Developer blog, Fidelis Ekezue shares his AZ-202 Microsoft Azure Developer Certification Transition Study Guide

🔩 DevOps

On the Microsoft DevOps blog, Edward Thomson (@ethomson) lists the Top Stories from the Microsoft DevOps Community
Also on the Microsoft DevOps blog, Zhiqing Qiu explains how to Create a CI/CD pipeline for your Azure IoT Edge solution with Azure Pipelines
On Channel 9, Alex Nichols talks about Using Azure Boards with GitHub
On the Azure blog, Atul Malaviya (@AZooInMyLuggage) explains how to Update to Azure DevOps Projects support for Azure Kubernetes Service

🎭 Identity

On the Premier Developer blog, Nicholas McCollum discusses Handling Error AADSTS54005 and Chris Westbrook explains how to Convert ASP.NET WebForms with Windows Authentication to use AAD
Vincent-Philippe Lauzon (@vplauzon) talks about Azure AD Pod Identity in AKS
On MSDN, Robert Jaffe and Diego Lapiduz write about Six tips for securing identity in the cloud

🔌 Integration

On the Azure podcast, Sujit D'Mello presents Episode 267 - What the Hack
On the Azure blog, Bahram Banisadr writes about More reliable event-driven applications in Azure with an updated Event Grid
On MSDN, David Burg (@david_burg) describes Logic App SAP trigger: ERROR Gateway not connected to local R/3 and announces the Logic Apps EDIFACT connector update to support padding interchange qualifier
Also on MSDN, Sandy Winarko writes about Deeper integration and the new connector for SSIS in ADF
Radu Vunvulea (@RaduVunvulea) describes How to run Azure Functions on AWS and on-premises
On the Serverless360 blog, Nadeem Ahamed describes Hybrid Integration for the Enterprise with Azure Integration Services
On the Codit blog, Tom Kerkhove (@TomKerkhove) walks through Running Kong on Microsoft Azure
Vincent-Philippe Lauzon (@vplauzon) covers Flex Volume in AKS
Christiaan Brinkhoff (@Brinkhoff_C) discusses how to Use Azure File Sync to bridge your storage SMBs and NFS needs with Azure Files Cloud Storage for Windows Virtual Desktop, Citrix Virtual Desktops and other DaaS workloads on Azure

💡 Internet of Things

On the Azure blog, John Lian announces the Preview: Distributed tracing support for IoT Hub
the Azure updates team announces Azure Sphere 19.02 Release
On Channel 9, Olivier Bloch (@obloch) presents: Third Party Azure IoT solution accelerators
On the IoT Dev blog, Rukmani Gopalan explains how to Diagnose issues with Distributed Tracing for Azure IoT Hub preview in Visual Studio Code
Also on the IoT Dev blog, Xin Shi writes about how to Easily build and debug IoT Edge modules on your remote device with Azure IoT Edge for VS Code 1.9.0.

⚖️ Management and Governance

On the Database Journal site, Marcin Policht describes Using Azure Resource Manager Templates To Provision Azure SQL Databases
On the Azure blog, Francis Yu explains how to Modernize alerting using Azure Resource Manager storage accounts
The Azure updates team explains how to Protect Azure VMs by using Storage Spaces Direct with Azure Site Recovery and announces that Azure Monitor status blog is now available
On TechNet, Shannon Gowen highlights the Microsoft Azure portal January 2019 updates
On the Premier Developer blog, Charbel Nemnom (@charbelnemnom) walks through Using Azure CloudShell as a Dev Sandbox
Also on the MSSQL Tips site, Haroon Ashraf covers Azure Data Catalog Tutorial and Overview - Part 1
Peter Rombouts (@prombouts) describes Cost optimization in Azure
Also on TechNet, Chuck Timon discusses Logical\Standard Switch Deployment Failures in System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2016
Charbel Nemnom (@charbelnemnom) blogs about the error: Azure VM Could Not Start – The BEK Volume For BitLocker Is Missing
On Channel 9, Gopinath Chigakkagari talks about Inception with Azure DevOps
On Code Project, Chandru BK discusses Application Deployment Strategy – Virtual Machine vs. Containers
On the Azure blog, Kirthi Krishnamraju describes Class schedules on Azure Lab Services
On Channel 9, Scott Hanselman and Supriya talks about Azure Instance Metadata Service updates for attested data Azure Friday
Also on TechNet, Aaron Guilmette walks through Getting Around the Basics of Azure Automation for Office 365
On Channel 9, Michael Milirud (@micwebnet) talks about Application Insights integrations and service updates
The Azure updates team announces that Application Insights is now available in Australia East and Japan East
Michael Crump (@mbcrump) talks about how to Optimize what you spend on the cloud with Azure Cost Management

🎬 Media

On the Azure blog, Xavier Pouyat explains how to Live stream analysis using Video Indexer
Jen Stirrup walks through Moving WordPress websites between Azure Subscriptions
Also on MSDN, the App Center Team writes that Microsofts Developer Blogs are Getting an Update
On the Xamarin blog, Jayme Singleton (@JaymeSingleton1) talks about how the Xamarin Developer Blog is Getting an Update

🚌 Migration

On MSDN, Angelos Petropoulos discusses Migrating your existing on-prem SQL Server database to Azure SQL DB
Also on MSDN, Jim Toland explains how to Migrate your Oracle database to Azure SQL Database Managed Instance using SSMA 8.0
Also on MSDN, Larry Mead writes about the new Mainframe Migration on the Azure Cloud Adoption Framework
Also on MSDN, Leo Chen writes about Migrate from ACS to SAS – troubleshooting

📱 Mobile

On the Xamarin blog, James Montemagno (@JamesMontemagno) describes Persisting Settings and Preferences in Mobile Apps with Xamarin.Essentials
Also on the Xamarin blog, Matt Soucoup (@CodeMillMatt) covers a Xamarin and Azure Office Hours Recap from December 2018 and January 2019
On Channel 9, David Ortinau talks about Secure Storage Xamarin.Essentials API of the Week
On Code Project, Chandru BK describes Xamarin Forms - Theming Made Simple
Also on Channel 9, David Ortinau describes Five Things to Love About Xamarin.Forms 3.5

🌐 Networking

The Azure updates team announces Enhancements to NSG flow logs (v2) for Azure Network Watcher

🔐 Security

On Channel 9, Marc Mercuri and Chris Segura talk about Blockchain based registries
On the Hanu blog, Dave Sasson covers Implementing Azure Security Best Practices with Identity Management
On Microsoft Cloud Blogs, Mayunk Jain anounces: Microsoft Intune introduces MDM Security Baselines to secure the modern workplace

📦 Storage

James Serra (@JamesSerra) highlights that Azure Data Lake Store Gen2 is Generally Available
On MSDN, Lee Stott (@lee_stott) writes: 'Blobfuse is an open source project developed to provide a virtual filesystem backed by the Azure Blob storage.'

🔗 Web

On the Kloud blog, Darren Doc Robinson describes Configuring the Lithnet REST API for the FIM/MIM Service post MIM Version 4.4.x.x
The Azure updates team announces the Azure API Management update February 14