Azure Weekly Issue 246: 13th October 2019
Among the announcements this week, we've been told that Azure Data Factory Mapping Data Flows are now generally available, a tool to address the "T" in ETL, and we've also been told about the 16 new built-in AAD roles - including Global reader, which are now available in preview.
We've been doing a lot with GitHub Actions recently - being religious users of Azure Pipelines, we were interested in the differences between the two. Here's a great article from Mike Larah: Comparing GitHub Actions and Azure Pipelines: High-level concepts. Elsewhere, Simon Waight has written got in interesting solution as to how to deal with spam bots on Meetup.
I wanted to wrap up this editorial by congratulating Carmel Eve, who won Apprentice Engineer of the Year, and Ed Freeman who won Cloud Apprentice of the Year at the Computing Rising Stars Awards in London this week. If you've followed their blogs, it should be obvious why they each won their categories! All your colleagues at endjin are so proud of you! Carmel is also about to embark on a 3 week adventure to trek to Everest base camp - best of luck & safe travels!
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
- Simon Waight (@simonwaight) discusses Using Azure services to deal with spam bots on Meetup
- On the Azure blog, Matthew Calder (@MatthewCalder1) discusses Leveraging Cognitive Services to simplify inventory tracking
- Also on Microsoft Cloud Blogs, Ameet Joshi covers Extending Dynamics 365 Customer Insights with Azure ML-based custom models and provides some Examples of extending Dynamics 365 Customer Insights with Azure ML
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 Azure blog, Mike Flasko (@mflasko) highlights that Azure Data Factory Mapping Data Flows are now generally available
- the Azure updates team writes about the New output options in Azure Stream Analytics—SQL Managed Instance and SQL Server on VM, the New reference data options in Stream Analytics—SQL Managed Instance and SQL Server on VM and the SQL Server Data Tools support for 1500 compatibility level
- On the DEV site, Abhishek Gupta (@abhi_tweeter) provides a Tutorial: Connect to Azure Event Hubs for Kafka using Go
- On the Codit blog, Michiel Vanwelsenaere covers Deploying SSIS packages from Azure Devops with a Microsoft-hosted agent
Compute
Covering: Virtual Machines, Functions, Batch, Service Fabric, Virtual Machine Scale Sets, Cloud Services, Linux Virtual Machines, SAP HANA on Azure Large Instances
- Thomas Maurer (@thomasmaurer) explains How to Manage Updates for Azure IaaS VMs
- On the Azure blog, John Montgomery (@JohnMont) introduces Azure Spring Cloud: fully managed service for Spring Boot microservices
- Richard Seroter (@rseroter) has a First Look: Building Java microservices with the new Azure Spring Cloud
- On the Azure blog, Vincent Greenlee writes about SAP on Azure – Designing for availability and recoverability
- On the Sharegate blog, Leigh Ryan answers How does Azure VM pricing work?
- On the Azure Citadel blog, Richard Cheney (@RichCheneyAzure) talks about Packer and Ansible labs
- Michael Jonsson (@Michael_Jonsson) describes how to Automatically domain join Azure VMs from ARM template deployment with Key Vault secured domain join credentials: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3
Containers
Covering: Container Registry, Container Instances, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Web App for Containers
- On the DEV site, Chris Noring (@chris_noring) explains how to Learn Kubernetes with this 5 part series
- Vincent-Philippe Lauzon (@vplauzon) provides an Introduction to AKS
- Daniel Neumann (@neumanndaniel) writes that Custom naming support for AKS node resource group available
- Michael Crump (@mbcrump) posts Tip 228 - Part 1 - Get started with .NET Core on Kubernetes with Azure Dev Spaces
- On the Azure podcast, The Azure podcast team (@AzurePodcast) presents Episode 299 - Azure Redhat OpenShift with Harold Wong
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, Anna Hoffman (@AnalyticAnna) talks about How to manage R packages in Azure SQL Database with sqlmlutils
Developer Tools
Covering: Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, SDKs, Developer tool integrations, CLIs, Blockchain Workbench
- On the Visual Studio blog, Mads Kristensen (@mkristensen) writes that Visual Studio extensibility is better with IntelliCode
- On the DEV site, Chris Noring (@chris_noring) explains How YOU can create and manage Serverless functions using a CLI
- Pascal Naber explains how to Have a great looking terminal and a more effective shell with Oh my Zsh on WSL 2 using Windows
- Michael Jonsson (@Michael_Jonsson) covers VSCode Extensions for ARM template authoring
- On Microsoft Cloud Blogs, Marc Mercuri (@marcmercuri) explains how to Discover, develop, and deploy smart contracts faster with Blockchain Dev Kit updates
- On Channel 9, Chris Segura (@IoTHybridCloud) talks about Deploying smart contracts to Infura with VS Code with Jason Anderson
DevOps
Covering: Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS), Azure DevTest Labs, DevOps tool integrations, Azure DevOps Projects, Azure Lab Services
- On the endjin blog, Mike Larah (@MikeLarah) compares GitHub Actions and Azure Pipelines: High-level concepts
- On the Microsoft DevOps blog, Sasha Rosenbaum (@DivineOps) lists the Top Stories from the Microsoft DevOps Community – 2019.10.04
- On the Accentient blog, Richard Hundhausen (@rhundhausen) explains how to Find PBIs Without Test Cases
Identity
Covering: Azure Active Directory, Multi-factor Authentication, Azure Active Directory Domain Services, Azure Active Directory B2C
- Roelf Zomerman writes F5 BIG-IP & AAD & KCD Simplified and F5 BIG-IP & AAD & KCD – Cross Forest – Part 2
- On Microsoft Cloud Blogs, Dilip Radhakrishnan writes that Microsoft expands BitLocker management capabilities for the enterprise
- On the Active Directory Identity Blog, Alex Simons (@Alex_A_Simons) writes about the 16 new built-in roles—including Global reader—now available in preview
Integration
Covering: Service Bus, Logic Apps, Event Grid
- Eldert Grootenboer (@egrootenboer) covers Choosing your pub-sub messaging service Service Bus and Event Grid and walks through Calling a versioned API in API Management from Logic Apps
Internet of Things
Covering: IoT Hub, IoT Suite, IoT Edge, IoT Central, IoT solution accelerators, Time Series Insights, Azure Maps, Azure Sphere
- The Azure updates team writes that Azure Sphere 19.09 release adds new use cases for enterprise customers
- On Channel 9, Olivier Bloch (@obloch) talks about Azure IoT Hub integration with Azure Event Grid with Ashita Rastogi
- On Code Project, Roman Kiss has updated the Azure IoT Hub Tester
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
- The Azure updates team highlights the Updates to Azure Cost Management—September 2019, writes that Azure Monitor Log Analytics retention is now configurable by data type, introduces the new Azure Resource Graph functionality – Track changes to your resource properties and highlights that Azure Application Insights is now available in the Brazil South region
- Stanislav Zhelyazkov (@StanZhelyazkov) adds to the Azure Monitor Alert Series – Part 7
- On the Premier Developer blog, Paul King explains How to Alert on Azure BLOB Access
- Stefan Roth (@stefanroth_net) blogs about Azure Policy – Add Date/Time Resource Group Tag
- Roelf Zomerman writes about AZ Cleanup
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
Migration
Covering: Azure Database Migration Service, Azure Migrate, Data Box
Mobile
Covering: App Service (Mobile), Notification Hubs, Mobile apps, API apps, Visual Studio App Centre, Xamarin
- On Channel 9, James Montemagno and Abel Wang talk about Signing & Versioning iOS & Android Apps DevOps for Mobile and talks about Source Control & Developer Builds with App Center DevOps for Mobile On .NET
- Also on Channel 9, James Montemagno (@JamesMontemagno) talks about Launcher (Xamarin.Essentials API of the Week)
- Also on Channel 9, James Montemagno (@JamesMontemagno) talks about XamRight - Richer, Safer XAML Coding Experience with David Sielaff
Networking
Covering: ExpressRoute, Azure DNS, Virtual Network, Traffic Manager, Load Balancer, VPN Gateway, Application Gateway, Network Watcher
- The Azure updates team writes that Azure DNS private zones is now generally available
Security
Covering: Azure Information Protection, Key Vault, Security Center, Azure DDoS Protection, Azure Advanced Threat Protection
- On the Azure blog, Avi Ben-Menahem (@Avibm) writes that CIS Azure Security Foundations Benchmark open for comment
- Also on the Azure blog, David Burt writes about Measuring your return on investment of Azure as a compliance platform
- Tobias Zimmergren (@zimmergren) describes Deleting Azure Sentinel but keep the ingested data
Storage
Covering: Storage, StorSimple, Data Lake Store, Blob Storage, Disk Storage, Managed Disks, Queue Storage, File Storage, Storage Explorer, Archive Storage
- On Microsoft Cloud Blogs, Shalini Pasupneti talks about Customer Provided Keys with Azure Storage Service Encryption
- On Channel 9, Donovan Brown (@DonovanBrown) talks about How to modernize Windows Server File Shares with Azure File Sync with Orin Thomas
Web
Covering: App Service (Web), API Management, Content Delivery Network, Azure Search, Web apps, Azure SignalR Service
- The Azure updates team provides the Azure API Management update—October 2019
- On Channel 9, Seth Juarez (@sethjuarez) talks about Knowledge Mining with Azure Search with Luis Cabrera
- Also on Channel 9, Shayne Boyer (@spboyer) talks about Cloud Native Configuration and Setting in ASP.NET Core with Andrew Stanton-Nurse
- Gunnar Peipman (@gpeipman) explains how to Generalize file access for ASP.NET Core applications using IFileClient implementations
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