Azure Weekly
Issue #22 - 18th April 2015
This week's Azure big news was the announcement of Hyper-V Containers and Nano Server. Hyper-V Containers are a new container deployment option with enhanced isolation. Nano Server is a minimal footprint installation of Windows Server that is highly optimized for the cloud, and ideal for containers. There are more details about the Nano Server from members of the Windows Server Team on MSDN.
In addition, noSQL database service Azure DocumentDB is now Generally Available, with a choice of three performance levels. For anyone wanting a quick catch up on DocumentDB, there's a 15 minute video on DocumentDB available on Channel 9.
In other Azure news, Microsoft's General Counsel & Executive VP, Legal and Corporate Affairs Brad Smith writes about the company's legal challenge to a US government search warrant for a customer’s email stored in an Irish data centre.
Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) has made a new PluralSight course Modernising your website with Azure Platform as a Service with content including provisioning, configuring and deploying to a website, migrating the database to Azure SQL Database, monitoring and diagnostics.
⚖️ Management and Governance
On MSDN, Mike Neil, General Manager for Windows Server, Microsoft announces Hyper-V Containers and Nano Server, the new container technologies for the next generation cloud
On the Docker blog, John Willis continues his tutorial series with Docker Tutorial 4 : More Run With a Couple of Extra Goodies
Trevor Sullivan (@pcgeek86) covers resizing Azure Virtual Machines with PowerShell
🖥️ Compute
On the Azure blog, Mohamed Jeelani talks about 'Service Healing' - the Auto-recovery of Virtual Machines, a mechanism which is enabled on all Azure VMs
On C# Corner, 'Rv' talks about Azure batch task monitoring and cost saving
🌐 Networking
Pierre Roman provides a step-by-step guide to connecting an Azure Web App to an existing Virtual Network
💡 Internet of Things
On the Azure blog, Kyle Wilson announces that Azure Marketplace is now available to more Enterprise Customers. Enterprise Agreement (EA) Direct, web-direct customers and EA Indirect customers in 86 countries can now access the service
Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) explains how to get your SSL for free on a Shared Azure website with CloudFlare. He also shares his learnings from a recent outage, writing about how to fail fast when the cloud fails you
Felix Rieseberg (@felixrieseberg) writes a short guide to the simple process of installing Ghost on Azure
On the Microsoft Open Technologies site, Olivier Bloch blogs about updates to connectTheDots.io, including more samples, and more sensors including Microsoft Band
⚙️ Data and Analytics
On the Azure blog, John Macintyre, Principal Director SQL- DocumentDB, announces that noSQL database service Azure DocumentDB is now Generally Available
DocumentDB is also the topic of this week's Data Exposed on Channel 9. Scott Klein talks to Ryan CrawCour, a Senior Program Manager for Azure DocumentDB, about DocumentDB General Availability and What's New
Mike Lanzetta talks about using the Azure implementation of the data processing pipeline Storm in Storm Bolts Using Reactive Extensions
📦 Storage
On the Azure blog, Michael Curd puts out a request to help us Shape the Azure Storage iOS Library. The article links to a short survey
Also on the Azure blog, Michael Curd announces a new Azure Storage Table Design Guide which has prompted much discussion here at endjin
On the Database Journal site, Marcin Policht writes about automating Image-Based Deployment of SQL Server on Azure IaaS VMs - Preparing the OS Image
On the Just Azure blog, Robin Shahan writes Azure Blob Storage Part 10: Moving your blobs around
On MSDN, Bo Song provides a sample showing how to use a shared access signature in Windows Azure blob storage and extend its expiration
🎬 Media
On the endjin blog, Pascal Arnould (@TheBooleanFrog) writes 'speed kills: decrease page load time and increase conversions with Azure CDN'
Mingfei Yan (@mingfeiy), Program Manager - Azure Media Services, writes about setting up PlayReady encryption using Azure Media Explorer Tool
⚙️ Hybrid Integration
This week's Azure podcast, deals with hybrid networking, and features guest Ganesh Srinivasan, a Senior PM in the Azure team who manages the VPN and Express Route
⚙️ Identity and Access Management
On Channel 9, Robert Green presents part 2 of a series on how to cloud enable a WPF LOB App. This episode deals how to add authentication using Azure Active Directory and require users to sign in
On the WindowsITPro site, John Savill explains how to Federate Azure AD to onpremises without ADFS onpremises, how to Set Azure AD password expiry with PowerShell, and how to Configure Azure AD passwords to never expire
On the Microsoft Open Technologies site, Ericmitt writes that the Cordova Azure Active Directory Plugin is now available