Azure Weekly
Issue #315 - 14th March 2021
Congratulations for Ed Freeman who celebrates the 100th issue of Power BI Weekly - which he spun out of Azure Weekly just over two years ago after noticing the Power BI section by far the largest of the newsletter and probably merited its own publication.
This week, Python Durable Functions support in Azure Functions is now generally available, and that Azure DevOps token lifecycle management is now in private preview.
Sam Cogan walks through the Ignite March 2021 Azure announcement highlights. Lee Stott provides an introduction to Microsoft Mesh - a new platform for developing immersive, multiuser, cross-platform mixed reality apps. Angelos Petropoulos runs through what's new with GitHub Actions tooling in Visual Studio. Sarah Lean discusses how to choose the landing zone for your cloud adoption journey.
Mark Kromer highlights the improved support for Delta Lake in ADF and Synapse. Kevin Chant describes how to use Azure DevOps Analytics Views and Power BI to create Sprint review dashboards. And the Student Developer Team showcases the 2021 Imagine Cup finalists and the exceptional contributions they've made in the Earth and Education categories.
Finally, last Monday was International Women's Day so I want to take a moment to give a shout out to all the amazing women in technology, and the contributions they've made over the past year! Along this vein, I want to highlight an event this week - Microsoft Include, a free virtual conference on March 17th which features a range of talks focused on diversity and inclusivity in the industry. It is important for us all to work together to build a world in which everyone feels safe and valued, both in work and outside of it.
⚙️ AI + Machine Learning
- On the DEV site, Henk Boelman (@hboelman) provides an Intro to Azure Machine Learning
- Minsoo Thigpen and Mehrnoosh Sameki cover how to Model understanding with Azure Machine Learning
- William Mendoza highlights how to Put AI into practice with Microsoft's Azure AI Hackathon
- Abe Omorogbe talks about Improving collaboration and productivity in Azure Machine Learning
- Mufajjul Ali blogs about Advance Resource Access Governance for Azure Machine Learning
- Varsha Parthasarathy (@varsha_partha) highlights that Mask detection is now available in preview via Azure Cognitive Services
🔎 Analytics
- Mark Kromer (@kromerbigdata) highlights that Improved support for Delta Lake has been added to data flows in ADF and Synapse
- On the MSSQL Tips site, Ryan Kennedy asks: What is Azure Databricks?
🖥️ Compute
- On the Azure podcast, Anavi Nahar (@AnaviNahar) discusses Azure Load Balancer
- The Azure Updates Team announces that Python Durable Functions support in Azure Functions is now generally available, that Node.js 14 in Azure Functions is now generally available, that Azure Functions now supports .NET 5 in production, and announces New Brazil Southeast region added to Azure HDInsight and New Norway East region added to Azure HDInsight
- Jeff Hollan and Anthony Chu present Azure Functions Live – March 2021
🚢 Containers
- On the MSSQL Tips site, Carla Abanes talks about some Considerations for Running SQL Server on Kubernetes
- The Azure Updates Team announces that Azure monitor for containers now supports Pods & Replica set live logs in AKS resource view
- Elton Stoneman (@EltonStoneman) writes - You can't always have Kubernetes: running containers in Azure VM Scale Sets
- Pixel Robots (@Pixel_Robots) provides a First look at Maintenance Windows on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and Pixel Robots. walks through Building a Raspberry Pi Kubernetes Cluster on Ubuntu 20.04 using kubeadm and Containerd as the runtime.
- Daniel Neumann (@neumanndaniel) delves into how to Run the Envoy Proxy ratelimit service for Istio on AKS with Azure Cache for Redis
- On the DEV site, Aaron Powell (@slace) writes about why Your Open Source Project Needs a devcontainer
- Srikant Sarwa describes Deploying multi-tier applications on Azure Kubernetes Service
- Peter Pogorski highlights the Azure Service Fabric Seventh Refresh Release
- Michael Crump (@mbcrump) explains How to start and stop Azure Kubernetes clusters
🗄️ Databases
- On Tech Community blog, Deepthi Prasad walks through Improving query response times on TEXT fields in Azure Database for MySQL
- Jose M Jurado (@jmjuradodiaz) covers Working with Get-AzSqlDatabaseSecureConnectionPolicy
- Jose M Jurado (@jmjuradodiaz) explains How to reduce the time inserting 10 millions of rows
🛠️ Developer Tools
- On the Visual Studio blog, Angelos Petropoulos describes Whats new with GitHub Actions tooling in Visual Studio
- Damien Caro announces Az Predictor preview 2
🔩 DevOps
- Rob Richardson discusses Database DevOps
- The Azure Updates Team announces that Token lifecycle management is now in private preview
- On the Perficient blog, Nitin Garg explains How to Deploy SQL Scripts Using Azure DevOps
- On the Microsoft DevOps blog, April Edwards, Jay Gordon, Steven Murawski, and Eric Sorenson discuss Infrastructure as Code
- Also on the Microsoft DevOps blog, Parsa Zand discusses Mitigating leaked personal access tokens (PATs) found on GitHub public repositories
- Travis Roberts (@Ciraltos) runs through how to Deploy a Windows Server with a DevOps Pipeline and Key Vault
- Kevin Chant discusses Using Azure DevOps Analytics Views and Power BI to create Sprint review dashboards
🧬 Hybrid
- Aaron Nelson (@SQLvariant) explains How to Run SQL Assessment Checks in Azure SQL Managed Instance
- Christopher Hoard talks about The Hybrid Workplace
🎭 Identity
- John Reilly (@johnny_reilly) discusses Managed Identity, Azure SQL and Entity Framework
- Caleb Baker writes about Granular Conditional Access for sensitive data and actions
- Sonia Cuff (@soniacuff) talks about Microsoft 365 user management versus Azure Active Directory
- William Zhang writes about API Management Policy for Access Token Acquisition, Caching and Renewal
- Zeinab Mokhtarian Koorabbasloo describes Access management in Azure Purview - RBAC
- Joonas Westlin (@JoonasWestlin) describes Building Azure AD B2C custom policies part 2: Azure DevOps automated build and deployment
🔌 Integration
- On the Azure Developer Community Blog, Derek Li announces the Logic Apps Public Preview Refresh
- Also on the Azure Developer Community Blog, Ricardo Duncan provides A Deep Dive into Serverless Applications on Power Apps and Azure
- On BizTalk Gurus, Gyanendra Gautam (@ggauta) gives the Weekly Update on Microsoft Integration Platform & Azure iPaaS
💡 Internet of Things
- Sander van de Velde discusses IoT on Microsoft Ignite, March 2021
- On the Whizlabs blog, Sudip Sengupta provides An Introduction to Microsoft Azure IoT Hub
- Lee Stott (@lee_stott) provides an Introduction to Microsoft Mesh
- The Student Developer Team provides a 2021 Imagine Cup category feature, in Earth and Education
📚 Learning
- On the Azure Developer Community Blog, Cliff Simpkins (@cliffsimpkins) explains how to Build new skills in 30 days
- Sarah Lean (@TechieLass) discusses Studying for the SC-900 Exam - Day 1
- Gregor Suttie (@gregor_suttie) provides a Azure DP-300 Exam Study guide
- Charbel Nemnom (@charbelnemnom) provides an AZ-204 Study Guide: Developing Solutions for Microsoft Azure
⚖️ Management and Governance
- Sarah Lean (@TechieLass) blogs about Azure Unblogged - Azure Cost Management
- Thomas Maurer (@thomasmaurer) describes how to Audit server settings with Azure Policy Guest Configuration
- Tobias Zimmergren (@zimmergren) explains how to Exclude failing dependencies from Application Insights logging
- Mark Russinovich (@markrussinovich) walks through Advancing failure prediction and mitigation with project Narya
🚌 Migration
- John Chirapurath explains how to Drive successful data-driven transformation
- Also on the Azure blog, Locky Ainley highlights an event: Extend to the cloud with Azure VMware solution
- The Azure Updates Team announces that the Azure VMware Solution now generally available in the Southeast Asia region
🌐 Networking
- Jose Moreno (@erjosito) covers Connecting your NVAs to ExpressRoute with Azure Route Server
- The Azure Updates Team announces that Azure Routing Preference is now generally available and HDInsight Apache Kafka REST Proxy is now generally available
- Henry Yan highlights that Technical Sessions are now available on key Azure Networking services
- Jose Moreno (@erjosito) describes a Route Server Multi-Region Design
- On the Azure blog, Mahesh Nayak talks about how to Architect and optimize your internet traffic with Azure routing preference
🔐 Security
- On the Azure blog, Hasan Abo-Shally describes Azure Defender for Storage powered by Microsoft threat intelligence
- Mark Russinovich (@markrussinovich) announces the preview of Azure Trusted Launch for virtual machines
- Joanna Harding explains how to Uncover your blind spots: seamlessly control cloud usage risks to your organization and Label and Protect your sensitive information: discover, classify and deploy policy
- On Azure Sentinel blog, Ely Abramovitch describes Whats new in Azure Sentinel and Microsoft 365 Defender incident integration
- Also on Azure Sentinel blog, Jeremy Tan discusses Alert Enrichment – Custom Details and Entity Mapping
- On Microsoft Security blog, Lauren Goodwin talks about Azure LoLBins: Protecting against the dual use of virtual machine extensions
- Pete Bryan walks through Monitoring the Software Supply Chain with Azure Sentinel
- On the DEV site, Justin Yoo (@justinchronicle) writes about Event-Driven KeyVault Secrets Rotation Management
- Stanislav Belov talks about Security Control: Encrypt data in transit
📦 Storage
- The Azure Updates Team announces that Routing Preferences now generally available in Azure Storage
- Ankit Sharma runs through Using a Service Principal with AzCopy & Azure CLI to manage blobs in Storage Account
- Yuemin Lu discusses how to Scale your critical applications cost-effectively with Azure Disk Storage