Azure Weekly

Issue #250 - 10th November 2019

It's our 5th Anniversary! 250 issues young! I hope all those who attended Microsoft Ignite this week had a great time! There were a huge amount of announcements and updates from the conference, some highlights include:

One of our favourite announcements was the new What-If support in ARM templates. If you're interested in this preview feature, you can sign-up here.

Two highlights of Ignite for us was the session on OAM and dapr, and the session on CNAB & Porter (which we've been working on for the past few months - more on this soon!)

And finally, here's a round up of all of the Azure Announcements from Microsoft Ignite.

⚙️ AI + Machine Learning

On the Revolution Analytics blog, David Smith (@revodavid) writes about the New R Support in Azure Machine Learning
On the Azure blog, Anand Raman (@aram09) talks about Azure Cognitive Services for building enterprise ready scalable AI solutions
Also on the Azure blog, Venky Veeraraghavan (@venkyv) blogs about Azure Machine Learning - ML for all skill levels
The Azure updates team discusses Azure Cognitive Services Text Analytics—New languages added to sentiment analysis and announces that Azure Database for MariaDB support for intelligent performance is now available
On Microsoft Cloud Blogs, Eric Boyd (@eric_boyd) talks about how Companies of all sizes tackle real business problems with Azure AI
On Channel 9, Shivani Patel talks about No Code Deployment and Enriched Model Registry with AML Service and Santhosh Pillai discusses Azure Machine Learning Pipelines
On the Azure blog, Lili Cheng writes about Delivering increased productivity for bot development and deployment

🔎 Analytics

On the Database Journal site, Marcin Policht discusses Implementing SQL Server Integration Services with Azure Data Factory
The Azure updates team announces that U-SQL runtime upgraded to .NET Framework v4.7.2 and that Azure HDInsight—Autoscale is now generally available
On the SQL Server Blog, Kevin Ngo writes New in Azure Synapse Analytics: CICD for SQL Analytics using SQL Server Data Tools
On the DEV site, Kees Schollaart talks about Device Offline detection with Durable Entities

🖥️ Compute

On the MSSQL Tips site, Koen Verbeeck (@Ko_Ver) explains how to Create an Azure Function to execute SQL on a Snowflake Database (Part 2)
The Azure updates team announces that Serial Console for Azure Government Cloud is coming, Python 3.7 support and remote build are now generally available and that a New version of Durable Functions available now
On Microsoft Cloud Blogs, Navneet Joneja discusses Azure infrastructure as a service IaaS for every workload, Erin Chapple writes about how New Azure investments deliver unprecedented performance for all your business-critical applications and Jeff Hollan discusses Serverless for the enterprise with Microsoft Azure
Also on Microsoft Cloud Blogs, the Quantum Team talks about Experience quantum impact with Azure Quantum
On the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast, Julie Love presents Episode 150 – Azure Quantum

🚢 Containers

The Azure updates team announces Live performance metrics and live deployments in Azure Monitor for containers and that Dev Spaces connect for Azure Kubernetes Service is now in preview
On Channel 9, Rob Caron and Lara Rubbelke explain How to expedite container startup with Project Teleport and Azure Container Registry
Daniel Neumann (@neumanndaniel) writes about Terraform – Deploy an Azure Kubernetes Service cluster with multiple node pools and Azure Resource Manager templates – Deploy an AKS cluster with multiple node pools

🗄️ Databases

On the .NET Curry blog, Tim Sommer gives us a Azure Cosmos DB - Deep Dive
The Azure updates team announces New memory and compute optimized hardware options in Azure SQL Database, UTF-8 support for Azure SQL Database is now available, Transparent data encryption with customer-managed keys for Azure SQL Database managed instance is now generally available, Azure Database for MySQL support for intelligent performance is now available, writes that Azure SQL Database—Billing for managed instance backup storage is now in effect and that Azure HDInsight now enables you to customize Azure SQL Database for Ambari
On Microsoft Cloud Blogs, John MacIntyre announces that Azure SQL Data Warehouse is now Azure Synapse Analytics
On the Azure SQL Database blog, Morgan Oslake explains how to Optimize price-performance with compute auto-scaling in Azure SQL Database serverless
On the Azure SQL Database blog, Davide Mauri (@mauridb) lists 10 Reasons why Azure SQL is the Best Database for Developers
Also on Microsoft Cloud Blogs, the SQL Server Team announces that The November 2019 release of Azure Data Studio is now available
On the SQL Server Blog, Vicky Harp discusses the State of the SQL Server tools
On Code Project, Sergey Syrovatchenko blogs about SQL Index Manager – A free GUI Tool for Index Maintenance on SQL Server and Azure
On the Azure blog, Rohan Kumar writes - Simply unmatched, truly limitless: Announcing Azure Synapse Analytics
the Azure updates team discusses Azure Private Link is now available in all regions

🛠️ Developer Tools

Scott Hanselman (@shanselman) describes Trying out Visual Studio Online - Using the cloud to manage and compile your code is amazing
On the Visual Studio blog, Amanda Silver (@amandaksilver) covers Re-imagining developer productivity with AI-assisted tools
Also on the Visual Studio blog, Anthony Cangialosi writes about All Things Developer Tools at Microsoft Ignite
Also on the Visual Studio blog, Nik Molnar (@nikmd23) announces Visual Studio Online Public Preview
On Channel 9, Cecil Phillip and Rich Lander discuss Working with Entity Framework & Docker

🔩 DevOps

The Azure updates team gives us a Azure DevOps roadmap update
On the Microsoft DevOps blog, Atul Malaviya (@AZooInMyLuggage) highlights the new feature: Review Apps in Azure Pipelines
Also on the Microsoft DevOps blog, Gloridel Morales announces Azure DevOps Server 2019 Update 1.1 RC
Also on the Microsoft DevOps blog, Roopesh Nair highlights Improved Continuous Delivery capabilities and caching for Azure Pipelines
Also on the Microsoft DevOps blog, Vishal Jain writes about how to Secure software supply chain with Azure Pipelines artifact policies
The Azure updates team explains how to Enforce artifact policies for Azure Pipelines and New deployment strategies and caching for Azure Pipelines

🎭 Identity

The Azure updates team announces Native Azure Active Directory authentication support in point-to-site VPN and that Azure Active Directory B2C now supports monthly active users billing
Radu Vunvulea (@RaduVunvulea) gives us a Azure AD and AWS Cognito side-by-side
Noreplyblogger.com Anuj Chaudhary provides a PowerShell sample for Privileged Identity Management PIM for Azure Resources
On the Azure SQL Database blog, Mirek Sztajno writes about the General availability for Azure AD server principals logins for SQL Managed Instance

🔌 Integration

On the Azure blog, Julia White (@julwhite) blogs about how Azure services now run anywhere with new hybrid capabilities: Announcing Azure Arc
The Azure updates team announces Azure Blob Storage on IoT Edge integration with Event Grid in preview and Workflow automation with Logic Apps
Justin Yoo (@justinchronicle) walks through Getting the Latest Array Item in Logic App
On the Codit blog, Michiel Vanwelsenaere talks about Running Azure API Management anywhere with Azure Arc for API Management
Travis Roberts (@Ciraltos) explains how to Send Email with SendGrid and PowerShell
On the Tech Radar site, Anthony Spadafora blogs about Azure Arc lets Microsoft cloud run on AWS and Google Cloud
Thomas Maurer (@thomasmaurer) discusses Azure Arc – Cloud-native Management for Hybrid Cloud
Also on the Azure blog, Jeremy Winter writes about Azure Arc: Extending Azure management to any infrastructure
Also on the Azure blog, Rohan Kumar discusses how to Bring Azure data services to your infrastructure with Azure Arc
The Azure updates team announces that Azure Arc enabled API Management is now available in preview
On Microsoft Cloud Blogs, Skyler Hartle (@skylerhartle) writes about Secure and compliant APIs for a hybrid and multi-cloud world
Also on Microsoft Cloud Blogs, Tanuj Bansal writes about Growing partner opportunity with Azure innovation

💡 Internet of Things

The Azure updates team announces that Azure Sphere will be generally available in February 2020, covers Azure Stream Analytics—Extensibility with C# custom code UDFs and announces that Update 19.10 for Azure Sphere now available
On Bennett Adelson blog, Bennett Adelson Consulting (@Bennett_Adelson) walks through Bringing digital transformation to the supply chain with Azure IoT Suite
On the Azure blog, Yousef Khalidi (@YousefkAzure) discusses Enabling and securing ubiquitous compute from intelligent cloud to intelligent edge

⚖️ Management and Governance

Aidan Finn (@joe_elway) talks about Extending Azure Resource Manager (ARM), Azure's Control Plane (Microsoft Ignite 2019)
On the Azure blog, Leon Welicki (@lwelicki) walks through 10 user experience updates to the Azure portal
The Azure updates team announces: New Azure Monitor Application Insights agent is now available, Azure Monitor Workbooks is now generally available, Azure Monitor Logs—Stream every type of activity log for your subscription, Azure Site Recovery update rollup 41—October 2019, Updates to Azure Cost Management—October 2019, Azure Monitor Prometheus integration is now generally available, Updates to profiler and tracing capabilities in Azure Monitor Application Insights, Azure Monitor—Application change analysis updates, Troubleshoot network issues faster with Azure Monitor, Azure Functions integration with Azure Monitor Logs is now in public preview and Azure Site Recovery now cleans up deallocated failed back VMs and NICs
Tobias Zimmergren (@zimmergren) covers how to Use Azure Monitor to get Network Insights and Storage Insights
Aidan Finn (@joe_elway) gives us a Deep Dive on Azure Governance (Microsoft Ignite 2019)
Aidan Finn (@joe_elway) blogs about Top 10 Azure Governance and Adoption Best Practices (Microsoft Ignite 2019)
Vincent-Philippe Lauzon (@vplauzon) explains how to produce Alerts on Azure Function failures
On Microsoft Cloud Blogs, Shiva Sivakumar discusses What's new with Azure Monitor

🎬 Media

The Azure updates team announces that Azure Shared Image Gallery now supports specialized images in preview and Azure Shared Image Gallery now available in Azure Government and Azure China

⚙️ Microsoft Azure Stack

On Microsoft Cloud Blogs, Talal Alqinawi discusses Expanding the Azure Stack portfolio to run hybrid applications across the cloud, datacenters, and the edge

🚌 Migration

Aidan Finn (@joe_elway) blogs about Microsoft Ignite 2019 – Windows Server on Azure Overview, Lift-and-Shift Migrations for Enterprise Workloads
On the Azure blog, Jeremy Winter blogs about Accelerating customer success with Azure migration
Also on the Azure blog, Evelyn Padrino writes Success in the cloud: Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure
Also on the Azure blog, Gabe Monroy describes Accelerating cloud-native application development in the enterprise

🌐 Networking

Richard M. Hicks (@richardhicks) writes about Always On VPN Load Balancing with Kemp in Azure
Bill Wilder (@codingoutloud) talks about Running Azure DNS Securely
Aidan Finn (@joe_elway) blogs about Whats New In Azure Networking, covers Global Transit Network Architectures With Azure Virtual WAN, discusses Building and Managing Distributed Micro-Perimeters With Azure Firewall, describes Securing Your Cloud Perimeter With Azure Network Security and covers how to Deliver Highly Available Secure Web Application Gateway and Web Application Firewall
The Azure updates team announces that IPv6 for Azure Virtual Network is now generally available, Azure ExpressRoute for satellites is now available, Azure Firewall Manager is now in preview, enhancements to Azure Virtual WAN, Azure HDInsight—Restrict outbound network traffic clusters by using Firewall and Azure Internet Analyzer is now in preview
Aidan Finn (@joe_elway) covers Delivering Services Privately in Your VNet with Azure Private Link (Microsoft Ignite 2019)

🔐 Security

On the Azure blog, Gilad Elyashar writes about New Azure Security Center and Azure platform security capabilities
The Azure updates team announces that you can now Scan container images for vulnerabilities in Azure Security Center, writes about Extending Azure Security Center coverage with platform for community and partners, announces Azure Security Center updates - Advanced integrations with export of recommendations and alerts, Onboard on-prem servers to Security Center from Windows Admin Center, Additional regulatory compliance standards in Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center Quick Fix for bulk resources generally available, Vulnerability assessment in Azure Security Center, Threat Protection for Azure Kubernetes Service AKS Support in Security Center, Advanced data security for SQL servers on Azure Virtual Machines and Azure Security Center—Support for custom policies
On Bennett Adelson blog, Bennett Adelson Consulting (@Bennett_Adelson) discusses Using shielded virtual machines to help protect high-value assets
Eldert Grootenboer (@egrootenboer) explains how to Retrieve Azure Key Vault secrets from API Management policies
On Microsoft Cloud Blogs, Kim Kischel (@KimKischel) discusses Microsoft Cloud App Security news at Ignite 2019
Also on Microsoft Cloud Blogs, Mayunk Jain (@mayunkj) discusses how Microsoft Intune brings mobile threat defense to unenrolled BYO devices
On Microsoft Cloud Blogs, Brad Anderson (@Anderson) writes about Modern management and security principles driving our Microsoft Endpoint Manager vision
Also on Microsoft Cloud Blogs, Mayunk Jain (@mayunkj) talks about how Privacy gets a boost with support for Apple User Enrollmentin Microsoft Endpoint Manager

📦 Storage

On the MSSQL Tips site, Mohammed Moinudheen describes Securing Azure Storage Account with Shared Access Signature
Radu Vunvulea (@RaduVunvulea) discusses Azure Storage Synchronization between Azure Regions from China and the rest of them
On the Premier Developer blog, Omer Amin covers Azure VM and Disk Throttling
Travis Roberts (@Ciraltos) writes about Windows Virtual Server and Active Directory Requirements (and Azure Files While Im At It)
The Azure updates team blogs about how to Leverage Azure premium file shares for high availability of data

🔗 Web

On the DEV site, Chris Noring (@chris_noring) describes How YOU can learn to build real-time Web Apps that scale, using .NET Core, C#, Azure SignalR Service and JavaScript