Azure Weekly
Issue #31 - 20th June 2015
Azure storage is spreading into new territories this week, with SSD-based Azure Premium Storage now available in Australia East, alongside the existing regions of West US, East US 2, West Europe, Southeast Asia, and Japan West. Premium Storage provides up to 32 TB of persistent storage and more than 64,000 IOPS per VM.
The Azure Backup service has also expanded, becoming available in Central US, North Central US, South Central US, East US2 and Brazil South.
In wider Azure news, Azure announced four new certifications for the platform : DISA, FISC, GCIO and MTCS. The Azure Trust Centre has a useful chart mapping all Azure services and standards, including PCI DSS.
The Support Site Extension for Azure App Service Web Apps, which provides features including auto-healing, live HTTP traffic monitoring, an event viewer, role metrics per Instance, and notifications can now be accessed from the preview portal.
Thanks to Niall Moran (@niallermoran) for submitting an article on running a high volume website on Azure Infrastructure Services this week.
⚖️ Management and Governance
On the Azure blog, Joe Davies provides a step through creating a Resource Manager-based Azure Virtual Machine with PowerShell
Also on the Azure blog, Khalid Mouss, SR Program Manager Azure Compute Runtime, describes Azure Linux VM Infrastructure Monitoring and Diagnostics, explaining the new monitoring capabilities recently released for Linux virtual machines running on Azure. He also explains how to run Azure CLI as a Docker Container, avoiding installation and setup
Richard Fennel shares a lesson learnt on failing Ping tests on Application Insights - even if the site appears to be running fine, a failing ping test indicates something's up
On MSDN, Application Insights Service Team describes recent fixes for experiencing failure for Availability Web Tests and experiencing Data Latency for Many Data Types
🖥️ Compute
On the Azure blog, Tom Keane writes that Microsoft Azure adds a global array of New Certifications, including US DoD DISA Level 2
- On the Just Azure blog, Sandrino Di Mattia discusses Microsoft Azure Cloud Services Part 5: Debug, Monitor & Scale
On episode 81 of the Azure podcast, Krishnachytanya Ayyagari describes the All About Azure App app which provides an Azure Status notification service
On the Redmond magazine site, Jeffrey Schwartz writes that Microsoft extends its global cloud footprint with new datacenters
🌐 Networking
On the TechKB blog, Michael Coutanche discusses creating Self-Signed Root and Client Certificates
- Yossi Dahan (@yossidahan) talks about deploying an internal website using Azure Web Roles
💡 Internet of Things
- On the Azure blog, Apurva Joshi, SR Program Manager - Azure Websites, writes about additional updates to Support Site Extension for Azure App Service Web Apps
Alexandre Brisebois (@Brisebois) writes about moving to Azure DNS
Niall Moran (@niallermoran) discusses a range of considerations for running a High Volume Website on Azure Infrastructure Services, covering availability, scalability, security and software development lifecycle
Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) writes that now you can monitor Have I been pwned performance on Azure in real time, after sharing the live New Relic stats for the site
Davide Benvegn writes part 2 of a series on cloud load testing with Visual Studio Online, where he expands on the simple load test from part 1, describing a more complex solution and integration between Visual Studio and Visual Studio Online
- On MSDN, Charles Sterling delves into deploying an Azure Web Site using the new build system in Visual Studio Online
'Vinoth' describes how to interface an Adafruit Sensor with Raspberry Pi2 and how to push the sensor data to an Azure Event Hub using a Windows Universal Application
⚙️ Data and Analytics
On the endjin blog, Alice Waddicor (@AliceWaddicor) blogs about Azure data services part 2: Stream Insight
On the Azure blog, Stephen Baron announces that querying and Editing DocumentDB Data Just Got Better thanks to Query Explorer Improvements, Document Explorer Improvements, and a new version of the Script Explorer
On the Revolution Analytics blog, there's a recap of blogs and stories relating to R from May
📦 Storage
On the Azure blog, Giridhar Mosay, Program Manager Cloud and Enterprise, writes that Azure Backup is now available in Central US, North Central US, South Central US, East US2 and Brazil South
Also on the Azure blog, Michael Curd announces that Azure Premium Storage is generally available in Australia East
Also on the Azure blog, Borko Novakovic announces Query Store, a new feature for SQL Server 2016, available in preview on the latest version of Azure SQL Database V12. Query Store acts like a 'flight data recorder' for the database, storing historic data about queries
On MSDN, Karthik Krishnamurthy Brahmavar provides a short sample to check connectivity to an Azure SQL Database using Azure PowerShell
Sacha Barber describes how to upload and stream video content to WPF from blob storage
🎬 Media
David Bristol digs into solving getting a 500 error when streaming adaptive bitrate MP4 set content from Azure Media Services
⚙️ Hybrid Integration
The ExpressRoute promotion which offered customers a free Network Service Provider 10Mbps circuit is coming to an end on 30th June, after which standard pricing will apply
⚙️ Identity and Access Management
On Brisbane Cloud User Group blog, Aaron Whittaker (@AaronW2003) takes a look at what's new in the Azure AD Connect Public Preview 2
On the Windows IT Pro site, John Savill (@NTFAQGuy) answers the question how do I delete service principals in Azure AD?