Azure Weekly Issue 238: 18th August 2019

Although there was a similar announcement buried away in the updates channel last month, this week we've been told that the Azure Cosmos DB .NET SDK v3 is now generally available, with various usability and performance improvements. We've also been told about the general availability of Azure Ultra Disk Storage, "a new Managed Disks offering that delivers unprecedented and extremely scalable performance with sub-millisecond latency" for your demanding VM and container workloads. There is now also the preview of GitHub Actions for Azure, making it easier for devs to build, test and deploy code from GitHub repos to Azure. Remember - the rest of this week's announcements and updates are now part of the main body of the newsletter!

Elsewhere, Seth Juarez and Qun Ying introduce the Azure Anomaly Detector, Newly awarded Azure MVP Gregor Suttie asks and answers How do you become a Microsoft MVP?, and Tom Janetscheck writes about RBAC in a modern DevOps world.

AI + Machine Learning

Covering: Azure Bot Service, Microsoft Genomics, Machine Learning services, Machine Learning Studio, Cognitive Services, Bing APIs, Computer Vision API, Content moderator, Custom Services, Emotion API, Face API, Language Understanding (LUIS), Linguistic Analysis API, QnA Maker API, Speaker Recognition API, Text Analytics API, Translator Speech API, Translator Text API, Web Language Model API

• On Channel 9, Seth Juarez (@sethjuarez) talks about introduces the Azure Anomaly Detector with Qun Ying

Analytics

Covering: Azure Databricks, HDInsight, Data Factory, Stream Analytics, Data Lake Analytics, Event Hubs, Power BI, Azure Analysis Services, Apache Spark for HDInsight, Apache Storm for HDInsight, R Server for HDInsight, Data Catalog

• On the MSSQL Tips site, Fikrat Azizov writes about Azure Data Factory Pipeline Variables
• Kumar Allamraju (@kumarallamraju) posts Tip 217 - Getting started with Azure Databricks

Compute

Covering: Virtual Machines, Functions, Batch, Service Fabric, Virtual Machine Scale Sets, Cloud Services, Linux Virtual Machines, SAP HANA on Azure Large Instances

• On the Azure blog, Diego Tamburini (@DiegoTamburini) describes how to Rapidly develop blockchain solutions, but avoid the complexities
• Also on the Azure blog, Pujitha Desiraju, Anupama Vedapuri and Jim Cavalaris describe Improving Azure Virtual Machines resiliency with Project Tardigrade
• Aidan Finn (@joe_elway) writes about What Impact on You Will AMD EPYC Processors Have?
• The Azure updates team highlights the Public Preview of Managed Identity for Azure Service Fabric applications
• Jason Roberts (@robertsjason) writes Understanding Azure Durable Functions - Part 6: Activity Functions with Additional Input Bindings
• Justin Yoo (@justinchronicle) blogs about Azure Functions SRE on Azure DevOps, The First Cut
• Adam Marczak (@MarczakIO) provides an Azure Function Apps Intro

Containers

Covering: Container Registry, Container Instances, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Web App for Containers

• On the Database Journal site, Marcin Policht writes about the Deployment of SQL Server 2019 Always On Availability Groups on Azure AKS
• On the Premier Developer blog, Julien Oudot (@JulienOudot) provides some Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) Exam Tips
• Daniel Neumann (@neumanndaniel) writes about AKS – Authentication issues real-time container logging solution

Databases

Covering: Azure SQL Database, Azure Cosmos DB, SQL Data Warehouse, Redis Cache, SQL Server Stretch Database, SQL Server on virtual machines, Table storage, Azure Database for PostgreSQL, Azure Database for MySQL

• On Channel 9, Scott Hanselman (@shanselman) talks about Debugging and optimizing Azure Cosmos DB performance with Deborah Chen
• Radu Vunvulea (@RaduVunvulea) provides an Azure Cosmos DB - Security Overview
• On Index out of Range, Szymon Warda (@maklipsa) explains How to choose the partition key
• The Azure updates team writes that an Update to Azure SQL Database serverless increases compute scale limits by 4x
• On the Azure SQL Database blog, Ajay Jagannathan (@ajaymsft) explains how to Meet the SQL Product Team at Data Platform Summit 2019
• Also on Channel 9, Colin Murphy and Rohit Nayak present Data Exposed | SQL Database Connectivity Explained

Developer Tools

Covering: Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, SDKs, Developer tool integrations, CLIs, Blockchain Workbench

• On the Azure blog, Maggie Pint (@maggiepint) talks about the Azure SDK August 2019 preview and a dive into consistency
• On the Visual Studio blog, Andrew Cheung (@AndrewCMSFT) covers Code, Recent Items, and Template Search In Visual Studio
• Also on the Visual Studio blog, Jacqueline Widdis (@JacqWiddis) writes Visual Studio 2019 version 16.3 Preview 2 and Visual Studio for Mac version 8.3 Preview 2 Released!
• On Channel 9, James Montemagno (@JamesMontemagno) talks about Editor Improvements in Visual Studio for Mac with Maddy Leger
• The Azure updates team writes that Azure Service Fabric 6.5 Second Refresh Release is Now Available and discusses FastTrack for Azure
• Also on the Azure blog, Deborah Chen (@ChenDeborah) writes New for developers: Azure Cosmos DB .NET SDK v3 now available
• On Microsoft Cloud Show, Andrew Connell and Chris Johnson (@mscloudshow) present Episode 315 | Catch up on the Latest Microsoft Azure + Office 365 News
• Thomas Maurer (@thomasmaurer) writes about Why you should become Microsoft Azure Certified
• Gregor Suttie (@gregor_suttie) writes about the Microsoft MVP Award – How do you become an MVP?
• Also on Channel 9, Shayne Boyer (@spboyer) talks about What is Cloud Native, Really? with Brendan Burns

DevOps

Covering: Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS), Azure DevTest Labs, DevOps tool integrations, Azure DevOps Projects, Azure Lab Services

• On the Azure blog, Atul Malaviya (@AZooInMyLuggage) announces the preview of GitHub Actions for Azure
• On the IoT Dev blog, Chaoyi Yuan highlights that Azure IoT DevOps Projects now General Available to help you easily initialize a CI/CD ready IoT Edge project
• On the Microsoft DevOps blog, Erin Dormier writes about the August patches for Azure DevOps Server and Team Foundation Server
• Also on the Microsoft DevOps blog, Sasha Rosenbaum (@DivineOps) lists the Top Stories from the Microsoft DevOps Community – 2019.08.09
• On the Black Marble blog, Richard Fennell (@richardfennell) writes about Authentication loops swapping organisations in Azure DevOps
• Peter Rombouts (@prombouts) walks through Migrating from Jira to Azure DevOps
• Gunnar Peipman (@gpeipman) writes about an Azure DevOps release pipeline for Jekyll

Identity

Covering: Azure Active Directory, Multi-factor Authentication, Azure Active Directory Domain Services, Azure Active Directory B2C

• On the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast, Ben Stegink and Scott Hoag (@msclouditpro) present Episode 138 – Slaying PowerShell Dragons
• Tom Janetscheck (@azureandbeyond) writes about RBAC in a modern DevOps world

Integration

Covering: Service Bus, Logic Apps, Event Grid

• On the Azure podcast, The Azure podcast team (@AzurePodcast) talks about Episode 292 - Logic Apps ISE with Kevin Lam

Internet of Things

Covering: IoT Hub, IoT Suite, IoT Edge, IoT Central, IoT solution accelerators, Time Series Insights, Azure Maps, Azure Sphere

• On the Azure blog, Diego Tamburini (@DiegoTamburini) writes Better together, synergistic results from digital transformation
• On Channel 9, Olivier Bloch (@obloch) describes how to Train with Azure ML and deploy everywhere with ONNX Runtime with Manash Goswami
• Radu Vunvulea (@RaduVunvulea) writes about the MQTT protocol inside Azure - RabbitMQ on top of AKS

Management and Governance

Covering: Backup, Site Recovery, App Insights, Azure Advisor, Sceduler, Automation, Log Analytics, Azure Monitor, Security & Compliance, Protection & Recovery, Automation & Control, Insight & Analytics, Azure Service Health, Microsoft Azure portal, Azure Resource Manager, Cloud Shell, the Azure mobile app, Azure Policy, Cost Management, Azure Managed Applications

• On the Azure blog, Yashesvi Sharma writes about Six ways we're making Azure reservations even more powerful
• Also on the Azure blog, Saket Gupta highlights Your single source for Azure best practices
• The Azure updates team posts a number of updates: Azure Monitor Application Insights Status Monitor v2 is now generally available, Email notifications available for Azure Government alerts, New PowerShell scripts to streamline Azure Monitor Logs query and data collection, Service Fabric Azure Resource Manager ARM application and service deployment is now generally available, Disaster recovery of Azure Disk Encryption-enabled virtual machines and Azure Backup limited public preview support for large disks up to 30TB size
• Stanislav Zhelyazkov (@StanZhelyazkov) writes Azure Monitor Alerts Series – Part 1
• Gregor Suttie (@gregor_suttie) covers Azure Cost Management – 8 tools to help optimise spending and maximise potential in the cloud
• Meagan Longoria (@mmarie) walks through Using Azure Automation to Shut Down a VM only if a SQL Agent Job is Not Running.

Media

Covering: Media services, Encoding, Live and On-Demand Streaming, Azure Media Player, Content Protection, Media Analytics, Video Indexer

Microsoft Azure Stack

Covering: Azure Stack

• Charbel Nemnom (@charbelnemnom) explains How To Convert Azure Stack VM From Unmanaged Disks To Managed Disks

Migration

Covering: Azure Database Migration Service, Azure Migrate, Data Box

• The Azure updates team writes that Azure Migrate is now available in Australia, Canada, India, and Japan

Mobile

Covering: App Service (Mobile), Notification Hubs, Mobile apps, API apps, Visual Studio App Centre, Xamarin

• On Channel 9, Maddy Leger (@maddyleger1) provides another Xamarin.Forms 101: Design Time Data
• On Code Project, Alen Toma walks through Using ConfuserEx to protect your xamarin.forms app

Networking

Covering: ExpressRoute, Azure DNS, Virtual Network, Traffic Manager, Load Balancer, VPN Gateway, Application Gateway, Network Watcher

• The Azure updates team highlights that Azure Datacenter IP ranges XML files will be deprecated by June 30, 2020 and writes that the Service Tag Discovery API is now available in preview

Security

Covering: Azure Information Protection, Key Vault, Security Center, Azure DDoS Protection, Azure Advanced Threat Protection

• On Microsoft Cloud Blogs, the Dynamics 365 Team writes about the Changes in Secret Management in Dynamics 365 Business Central

Storage

Covering: Storage, StorSimple, Data Lake Store, Blob Storage, Disk Storage, Managed Disks, Queue Storage, File Storage, Storage Explorer, Archive Storage

• On the Azure blog, Art Khlobystin highlights that Geo Zone Redundant Storage in Azure now in preview
• Aidan Finn (@joe_elway) writes about Inter-Region Resiliency for Zone Redundant Storage
• Also on the Azure blog, Tad Brockway (@tadbrockway) announces the general availability of Azure Ultra Disk Storage
• Also on the Azure blog, Mark Russinovich (@markrussinovich) talks about Azure Ultra Disk Storage: Microsoft's service for your most I/O demanding workloads

Web

Covering: App Service (Web), API Management, Content Delivery Network, Azure Search, Web apps, Azure SignalR Service

• On Channel 9, Scott Hanselman (@shanselman) talks about Testing in production with Azure App Service with Byron Tardif
• The Azure updates team writes that Azure SignalR Service introduces Event Grid integration feature
• Gunnar Peipman (@gpeipman) covers Taking Jekyll static blog live with Azure CDN and custom domain, talks about Getting started with Jekyll blog hosted on Azure static website and blogs about Setting up Azure storage static website for Jekyll
• Kunal Chandratre writes Azure API Management Disaster Recovery in Standard – Part 1 – Backup and restore configuration and Part 2 – Traffic Manager with custom domain and way forward
• Michael Crump (@mbcrump) posts Tip 216 - How to deploy ASP.NET application to Docker Hub and Azure