Azure Weekly

Issue #231 - 30th June 2019

This week, Kunal Chandratre has written a detailed FAQ about Azure Virtual Machines, and Mads Kristensen has provided some very handy Visual Studio tips and tricks. Our favourite announcement this week is that Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 integration with Azure Event Grid is in preview (we've been waiting for EG integration with ADLS Gen 2 for a long time!) Here are the rest of this week's announcments:

⚙️ AI + Machine Learning

On the Revolution Analytics blog, David Smith (@revodavid) provides the AI, Machine Learning and Data Science Roundup: June 2019
On Microsoft Cloud Blogs, David Houlding (@davidhoulding) writes about Using natural language processing to manage healthcare records and describes Solving the problem of duplicate records in healthcare

🔎 Analytics

The Azure updates team highlights lots of updates: Preserve ACLs when upgrading from ADLS Gen1 to Gen2 using Azure Data Factory, Now available: Ingest data from Oracle database performantly using Azure Data Factory, New connectors available in Azure Data Factory: SAP Table and SAP BW via Open Hub, Clean up files by built-in delete activity in Azure Data Factory, General availability: Azure Data Factory in China East 2, Azure Data Factory enriches PolyBase support for loading data into SQL DW and Security Advisory: Patching Azure HDInsight clusters to address Linux Kernel TCP vulnerabilities

🖥️ Compute

The Azure updates team highlights that Azure Monitor for virtual machine scale sets are now in preview and writes that M-series VMs are now available in the South Africa North region
Kunal Chandratre writes about Azure Virtual Machine – Frequently asked questions – not easily answered
Simon Waight (@simonwaight) writes about Customised Serverless using Azure Functions, Docker and Kubernetes Event-driven Architecture (KEDA)
Henry Been (@henry_been) discusses Loading settings for an Azure Function binding from a Key Vault

🚢 Containers

The Azure updates team writes that Azure Container Registry is now generally available in South Africa North
Mark Heath (@mark_heath) describes Copying Azure Blobs Between Containers the Quick Way

🗄️ Databases

On the Azure blog, Tim Sander, Shweta Mishra and Vinil Menon blog about Azure Cosmos DB: A competitive advantage for healthcare ISVs
The Azure updates team provides a number of updates: Enhanced management capabilities to release unused subnets and create databases available for Azure SQL Database managed instance, New Managed Instance Contributor role enhances security of Azure SQL Database Managed Instance, New Active geo-replication optimization is coming to production soon in Azure SQL DB, Storage auto-grow for Azure Database for MySQL now generally available, Storage auto-grow for Azure Database for PostgreSQL now generally available and Storage auto-grow for Azure Database for MariaDB now generally available
On the MSSQL Tips site, Mohammed Moinudheen explains how to Restore SQL Server Databases on Azure VM (IaaS) using Azure Backup - Part 2

🛠️ Developer Tools

On Microsoft Cloud Blogs, Brenda Lee highlights the Azure Blockchain Workbench 1.7.0 integration with Azure Blockchain Service
On the Visual Studio blog, Xiaokai He (@XiaokaiHe) provides the Java on Visual Studio Code June Update
On the Visual Studio blog, Mads Kristensen (@mkristensen) highlights some Visual Studio tips and tricks
On Channel 9, Donovan Brown (@DonovanBrown) provides An introduction to Azure Tips and Tricks with Michael Crump
On the Azure podcast, The Azure podcast team (@AzurePodcast) presents Episode 285 - The Azure Journey
On Microsoft Cloud Show, Andrew Connell and Chris Johnson (@mscloudshow) present Episode 308 | Cloud News and Giveaways!
Jason Roberts (@robertsjason) writes Microsoft Feature Toggle Feature Flag Library: A First Look

🔩 DevOps

On the Microsoft DevOps blog, Anisha Pindoria (@anishapindoria) describes What's new in Azure DevOps Sprint 153 with Alex Nichols
The Azure updates team describes how to View linked GitHub activity from the Kanban board - Sprint 153 Update
Also on the Microsoft DevOps blog, Edward Thomson (@ethomson) lists the Top Stories from the Microsoft DevOps Community – 2019.06.21
Also on the Microsoft DevOps blog, Octavio Licea Leon (@olicea) writes that Auditing for Azure DevOps is now in Public Preview
Justin Yoo (@justinchronicle) blogs about Building Azure DevOps Extension on Azure DevOps – Design
On the DragonSpears blog, David Henry (@DragonSpearsApp) provides A CI/CD Pipeline with Azure DevOps and AWS Managed Kubernetes
Jessica Deen (@jldeen) writes about Azure Pipelines: Featuring Bash, YAML, JFrog and a custom Slack app
Sam Cogan (@samcogan) talks about Testing Packer Images with Pester
Donovan Brown (@DonovanBrown) describes Using Release Gates to verify DNS Propagation

🔌 Integration

On the Azure blog, Sumant Mehta writes about Event-driven analytics with Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2
Mark Brimble (@BrimbleMark) talks about Azure – cXML DTD Messages
On the Serverless360 blog, Nadeem Ahamed discusses a Azure Logic Apps Use Case – Black Friday

💡 Internet of Things

The Azure updates team writes that Update 19.06 for Azure Sphere public preview now available for evaluation
On Channel 9, Olivier Bloch (@obloch) talks about Engineering Azure IoT Solutions with L&T TS with Hari Natarajan
Daniel Neumann (@neumanndaniel) talks about Installing Helm and Azure IoT Edge on a k3s Kubernetes cluster on Raspbian

⚖️ Management and Governance

Also on Microsoft Cloud Blogs, Lily Kim writes that the New PCI DSS Azure Blueprint makes compliance simpler
On Microsoft Cloud Blogs, Nick Leimer (@LeimerNick) writes about A solution to manage policy administration from end to end
The Azure updates team provides a number of updates: Log Analytics Agent for Windows 10.20.18001 now available, Log Analytics Agent for Linux 1.11 now available, Public preview: Azure Log Analytics in SOUTH AFRICA NORTH, BRAZIL SOUTH, UK WEST and NORTH CENTRAL US and Application Insights Availability in Central US Region
Also on Microsoft Cloud Blogs, Rosemary Wang (@joatmon08) covers Migrating to HashiCorp Terraform 0.12 on Microsoft Azure

🚌 Migration

The Azure updates team writes that Azure Data Box Disk now available in Southeast Asia and Azure Government

📱 Mobile

On the Xamarin blog, Adam Patridge (@PatridgeDev) explains how to Get Started with Free Xamarin Training on Microsoft Learn
Also on the Xamarin blog, Jonathan Peppers (@JonathanPeppers) writes about Faster Xamarin.Android Builds & Smaller Dex Files
On Channel 9, James Montemagno (@JamesMontemagno) talks about Email (Xamarin.Essentials API of the Week)
Also on Channel 9, James Montemagno (@JamesMontemagno) talks about 4 Awesome Things In Xamarin.Forms 4.0 with David Ortinau
Also on the Xamarin blog, David Ortinau (@davidortinau) walks through Migrating MacOS Apps to 64-bit Before the Apple Transition

🌐 Networking

The Azure updates team announces Preview Refresh for Azure DNS Private Zones
David O'Brien (@david_obrien) blogs about Azure Bastion for RDP and SSH Access
Richard M. Hicks (@richardhicks) writes about Always On VPN Options for Azure Deployments
Christiaan Brinkhoff (@Brinkhoff_C) talks about Heads up! The future of storing your Microsoft / FSLogix Profile Container on Azure Files as platform service (lowest TCO) for Windows Virtual Desktop

🔐 Security

Charbel Nemnom (@charbelnemnom) describes How to Configure Just-In-Time VM Access for Azure Firewall in Azure Security Center

📦 Storage

On the Azure blog, Tad Brockway (@tadbrockway) announces the general availability of Azure premium files

🔗 Web

On the Azure blog, Liam Cavanagh (@liamca) covers Leveraging complex data to build advanced search applications with Azure Search
Michael Crump (@mbcrump) shares Tip 203 - Delivering static content via Azure CDN