Azure Weekly
Issue #310 - 7th February 2021
Welcome to issue 310 of Azure Weekly. You may have noticed we've had a bit of a long overdue makeover. If you experience any problems with the new design in your email client, please let us know!
To start off with there are two great articles from us this week; first Jonathan George kicks off his series about Configuration in Azure Functions - What's in the box? and Ed Freeman (curator of Power BI Weekly) shares a recent discovery in How to safely reference a nullable activity output in Azure Synapse Pipelines and Azure Data Factory.
A number of interesting articles in the AI / ML arena; first Build a natural custom voice for your brand using the Custom Neural Voice Text-to-Speech (TTS) feature of Speech in Azure Cognitive Services, Responsible ML updates in Azure Machine Learning is in public preview, and if you are interested in Knowledge Mining, creating QnA functionality with Azure Cognitive Search is very neat.
Finally, a service I've been following closely as a successor to Service Fabric is Dapr, and Mark Fussell provides a great intro to dapr. Check out the GitHub Org, there's a huge amount of community activity.
⚙️ AI + Machine Learning
- Qinying Liao explains how to Build a natural custom voice for your brand, using the very cool new Custom Neural Voice Text-to-Speech (TTS) feature of Speech in Azure Cognitive Services.
- The Azure updates team announces that Responsible ML updates in Azure Machine Learning is in public preview, that Text Analytics' Named Entity Recognition v3 now supports 10 languages with improved AI quality and that Custom Neural Voice, a Text-to-Speech capability within Speech Service is generally available
- Also on Tech Community blog, Neha Rajput covers a QnA with Azure Cognitive Search
🔎 Analytics
- On the endjin blog, Ed Freeman (@edfreeman_) explains How to safely reference a nullable activity output in Azure Synapse Pipelines and Azure Data Factory
- Chris Webb (@cwebb_bi) continues his series on Comparing The Performance Of Importing Data Into Power BI From ADLS Gen2 Direct and Via Azure Synapse Analytics Serverless
- On the MSSQL Tips site, Ron L'Esteve talks about Getting Started with Azure Synapse Analytics Hyperspace for Spark Indexing
- Also on the MSSQL Tips site, Fikrat Azizov explains how to Build Appealing Dashboards using Azure Synapse Analytics
- Chenye Charlie Zhu highlights that Azure Data Factory is HITRUST Certified
- Clinton Ford (@clintonwford) explains how to Accelerate analytics from 4.5 hours to as fast as one hour with Azure Databricks
- On the Azure blog, Daniel Yu covers how to Gain real-time insights on SAP ERP data with Azure and Qlik Data Integration
🖥️ Compute
- On the endjin blog, Jonathan George (@jon_george1) covers Configuration in Azure Functions - What's in the box?
- On Code Project, Duncan Edwards Jones (@Merrion) discusses Event Sourcing on Azure Functions
- On SQL Server Central, Vitor Montalvao explains how to Create an Azure VM from a VHD image
- Ping Wu walks through a troubleshooting solution: Stateless/Stateful Services Cannot Be Started In Service Fabric cluster
- Antti K. Koskela (@koskila) explains How to upgrade your Azure Function app plan when you originally selected Consumption
🗄️ Databases
- The Azure Updates Team announces that Stop/start functionality for Azure Database for MySQL is generally available
- On Channel 9, Erez Atiya talks about how RedisLabs is Accelerating Data Engineering with Azure
- Jakub Szymaszek (@JakubSzymaszek) writes about the Always Encrypted with secure enclaves in Azure SQL Database preview
🛠️ Developer Tools
- Tobias Zimmergren & Jussi Roine (@CtrlAltAzure) discuss End-to-end testing with Playwright on Azure
- On Channel 9, Pierre Roman, Joey Aiello and Jason Helmick provide a PowerShell Deep Dive
🔩 DevOps
- On the Microsoft DevOps blog, Martina Hiemstra highlights a Delivery Plans 2.0 Update
- Bradley Ball discusses CI/CD in Azure Synapse Analytics (Part 4 - The Release Pipeline)
🧬 Hybrid
- Thomas Maurer (@thomasmaurer) highlights some Azure Hybrid Cloud Deep Dive Sessions
- Rick Claus (@RicksterCDN) provides a recording of the All Things Hybrid Event - Mark Russinovich Keynote
🎭 Identity
- Damien Bowden (@damien_bod) explains how to Implement app roles authorization with Azure AD and ASP.NET Core
- Meagan Longoria (@mmarie) covers Granting ADLS Gen2 Access for Power BI Users via ACLs
- On the Azure Developer Community Blog, Andreas Helland walks through Creating a JWT Validation Web App
- Alex Simons (@Alex_A_Simons) explains how to Strengthen your hybrid identity with these new Azure AD Connect releases and highlights that Search, Sort, and Filter for Conditional Access is now in public preview
- Sameer Sitaram highlights that Azure Active Directory IDs are now in Yammer Data Export API
- Yixuan Wang covers how to Use the Azure Portal to enable AAD authentication for Service Fabric management endpoint
🔌 Integration
- The Azure Updates Team announces that Azure Event Grid is now in public preview for Azure Cache for Redis, that IT Service Management Connector ITSMC is now certified with ServiceNow Paris version and that Azure Log Analytics in Australia Central 2 is in public preview
- On the DEV site, Mark Fussell (@mfussell) provides an Intro to daprdev
- Also on the DEV site, Justin Yoo (@justinchronicle) discusses WebSub to EventGrid via CloudEvents, and Beyond...
- On the Microsoft site, a reporter describes how the NHS moves millions of mailboxes to Microsofts Azure cloud, giving staff access to the latest digital tools and services that support modern ways of working
- On the Azure Developer Community Blog, Ricardo Duncan provides A Deep Dive into Serverless Applications on Power Apps and Azure
- On Azure Sentinel Blog, Cristhofer Munoz explains how to Centralize your security response with Azure Sentinel & PagerDuty
- Mark Brimble (@BrimbleMark) walks through A Custom Tracking ID & Service Bus Triggers in Azure Logic Apps
- Michael Crump (@mbcrump) walks through How to use the VS Code Logic Apps extension to create stateless workflows
💡 Internet of Things
- On Channel 9, Sudeep Gowrishankar and Sudhanshu Kashyap talk about "When industrial AI meets IoT"
- Sander van de Velde describes IoT Plug and Play, modeling IoT Central devices
- Richard Taylor highlights The new, flexible, and programmable Azure Sphere CLI
- Charlie Han discusses how HoloLens 2 Industrial Edition brings mixed reality to regulated environments
📚 Learning
- On the DEV site, Jay Gordon (@jaydestro) highlights a live session: Learn Cloud Elasticity with Microsoft Learn (Feb 19th)
- Sandra Marin discusses the Azure Database Administrator Associate Certification
- Radu Vunvulea (@RaduVunvulea) discusses The journey to get all Microsoft Azure Certifications in 6 months time
- Adam Marczak (@MarczakIO) continues his series on AZ-900, covering The core tenets of Security, Privacy, and Compliance
- Lee Stott (@lee_stott) highlights Azure Digital Twins on Microsoft Learn
- Lee Stott (@lee_stott) explains how to Automate your Cloud with Carnegie Mellon University & Microsoft Learn
⚖️ Management and Governance
- The Azure Updates Team has made some announcements:
Support for more workloads, tag based policies now in Backup Center public preview,
Support for SAP Application NetWeaver and Operating System Linux telemetry in Azure Monitor for SAP Solutions, General availability: Azure Log Analytics in UAE Central & Japan West,
New Azure Monitor Agent available on latest Linux distros and new regions,
and General availability: Application Insight in UAE Central & Japan West - Daniel Perlovsky walks through Friendly display names for Resource Sets in Azure Purview Data Map
- Paul Lee describes How to debug unexpected Azure Policy compliance status for Azure resources
- Scarlett Liu discusses: Whats the length of Azure Policy assignments name?
- Sam Cogan (@samcogan) discusses Using Multiple Accounts with Azure
- Pantelis Apostolidis (@papostolidis) provides a template for Deploying a VM from Azure SIG in new Resource Group
- On Channel 9, Siddharth Deekshit talks about Zone to Zone Disaster Recovery with Azure Site Recovery
- Yvette O'Meally highlights the Manage console extensions in Configuration Manager Technical Preview 2101
- Aidan Finn (@joe_elway) covers Everything You Need to Know About Azure Infrastructure
- Sandro Pereira (@sandro_asp) describes How to create robust monitor solutions with PowerShell, Azure Functions and Logic Apps
- Richard Burrs describes how to use Azure Policy to Deny Creation of All Resources
🚌 Migration
- Radu Vunvulea (@RaduVunvulea) covers Things to consider during a transition to Azure China Regions
- Jim Toland discusses PostgreSQL to Azure DB for PostgreSQL – Hyperscale Citus online migrations now generally available
- Vamshi Polasa talks about Migrating SAP on Oracle Workloads to Azure
- Sachin Ghorpade asks Which service or product is perfect for my requirements?
📱 Mobile
- On Channel 9, Javier Suarez Ruiz explains why Templated Controls are Awesome and talks about TabView (Xamarin Community Toolkit)
- Saumitra Agarwal discusses Evolution of Microsoft Lens
🌐 Networking
- Brad Watts covers Network Security Group Monitoring
- On the Azure podcast, Vishal Munde discusses Streaming telemetry for NVAs
🔐 Security
- On the Azure blog, Alethea Toh describes Azure DDoS Protection—2020 year in review
- The Azure updates team has made a few announcements:
Azure Security Center—Public preview updates for January 2021,
Azure Security Center—General availability updates for January 2021,
Support for Azure API Management certificates in Azure Key Vault has reached general availability.,
Microsoft Azure Attestation is now generally available,
Azure achieves its first PCI 3DS certification
and 172 Azure offerings achieve HITRUST certification - On Azure Sentinel blog, Cristhofer Munoz talks about Support for formatted comments and comments editing and deleting in Azure Sentinel
- Also on Azure Sentinel blog, Hesham Saad describes the Azure Sentinel All-In-One Accelerator
- Tiander Turpijn writes: New Year - New Official Azure Sentinel PowerShell Module
- Matt Lowe talks about how to Move Your Azure Sentinel Logs to Long-Term Storage with Ease
📦 Storage
- Mark Heath (@mark_heath) talks about Archiving Blobs with the Storage SDK
- Frank Pan explains How use Azure Data Lake Store REST API to upload file via AAD access token
🔗 Web
- On .NET Rocks, Jeff Fritz discusses Blazor Static Web Apps with Jeff Fritz
- Kylie Liang discusses Whats New in Azure Spring Cloud after GA
- Charbel Nemnom (@charbelnemnom) explains how to Serve Static Content in Azure Files With Nginx