Azure Weekly
Issue #333 - 22nd July 2021
This week is a bumper edition covering the last two weeks of content. So probably worth getting a drink and settling in!
The updates team have made a few exciting announcements:
- Insights and workbooks for Azure Cosmos DB now in general availability
- Session and cache provider using Azure Cosmos DB in general availability
- Azure AD authentication for Application Insights
- Azure Service Bus support for large messages
- New Application Insights standard test for synthetic monitoring (public preview)
- Call recording in public preview for Azure Communication Services
- Migrate your Azure Data Lake Storage from Gen1 to Gen2 using the Azure Portal (limited preview)
- Azure Firewall Premium general availability
- Azure Blob storage - Container Soft Delete generally available
Also on the Azure blog, Daniel Coelho runs through how to accelerate big data analytics with the Spark 3.0 connector for SQL Server.
Elsewhere, Lionel Pénuchot discusses how to partition Stream Analytics output and query it with serverless Synapse SQL. Jakub Szymaszek highlights that Always Encrypted with secure enclaves is now generally available in Azure SQL Database. Kevin Chant runs through using Azure Test Plans for Data Platform deployments.
Thomas Maurer highlights the new Inside Azure for IT program - which provides best practices and tips from the experts and allows you to get the most of of your hybrid cloud environments. Martin Brandl runs through how to approve requests for Azure AD roles in Azure Priveliged Identity Management. Pete Bernard describes building the next smart city with Azure Percept. Katya Trishina introduces the new Azure Communication Services Call Diagnostics feature for web applications.
Jianlei Shen highlights the new support for setting custom metadata when writing to Blob/ADLS Gen2. And finally, Harshada Hole introduces an exciting new feature of VS 2022: debug code with force run to cursor!
⚙️ AI + Machine Learning
- The Azure Updates Team runs through the Azure Machine Learning public preview announcements July 2021
- Dmitry Soshnikov highlights the Introducing PyTorch Courses on Microsoft Learn
- On Code Project, Shweta Lodha blogs about Creating and Training Custom ML Model to Read Sales Receipts Using AI-Powered Azure Form Recognizer
- On the DEV site, Chloe Condon (@ChloeCondon) discusses Making Bots with QnA Maker + Azure Bot Service
- Merna Nashed highlights that you can Learn how to add AI to your mission-critical apps in four weeks
🔎 Analytics
- On the DEV site, Abhishek Gupta (@abhi_tweeter) covers Getting started with Azure Data Explorer and Azure Synapse Analytics for Big Data processing
- On the MSSQL Tips site, John Miner (@JohnMiner3) discusses Supporting multiple data lake file formats with Azure Data Factory
- Also on the MSSQL Tips site, Koen Verbeeck (@Ko_Ver) asks: What are Data Flows in Azure Data Factory?
- Lionel Pénuchot discusses how to Partition Stream Analytics output and query it with serverless Synapse SQL
- Peri Rocha describes how Azure Synapse Analytics Simplifies Discovery of Partner Solutions
- On Code Project, David Norton writes: Azure Synapse Analytics for SQL Server Gurus Part One: Overview, Part Two: Bringing in Data and Creating an ML Model and Part Three: Analyzing and Using the Results
- Also on Code Project, Dawid Borycki writes about Real-Time Data Science and BI with Azure Synapse Analytics
- Also on Code Project, Raphael Mun describes Dazzling Dashboards and Business Intelligence with Azure Synapse Analytics
- On the Azure blog, Daniel Coelho explains how to Accelerate big data analytics with the Spark 3.0 connector for SQL Server—now generally available
🖥️ Compute
- Barbara Forbes (@Ba4bes) explains how to Add custom modules to Azure functions for PowerShell
- June Castillote (@junecastillote) describes How to Enable Hyper-V VMs Access to USB Devices
- On the DEV site, Aaron Powell (@slace) discusses Azure Functions, F# and CosmosDB Output Bindings
- The Azure Updates Team announces:
Azure Bastion Standard SKU public preview,
Azure VMware Solution now generally available in the Australia Southeast region,
Azure VMware Solution now generally available in the Canada East region,
Private preview: New telemetry for SAP Application NetWeaver in Azure portal
and General availability: New West US 3 region added to Azure HDInsight
🚢 Containers
- The Azure Updates Team announces Azure Kubernetes Service AKS smart defaults and that you can now Create AKS clusters without local user accounts
- Pixel Robots. writes about GitOps on Azure Kubernetes Service using the AKS addon preview
- Houssem Dellai (@HoussemDellai) explains Kubernetes Nodepools
- Maninderjit Bindra covers Ensuring Code Changes do not Break Microservice REST APIs, as Part of Pull Request Validation
- Stefan Georgiev (@stg3orgi) talks about Hardening an ASP.NET container running on Kubernetes
🗄️ Databases
- The Azure Updates Team announces:
Confidential computing using Always Encrypted with secure enclaves for Azure SQL Database in general availability,
Insights and workbooks for Azure Cosmos DB now in general availability,
Session and cache provider using Azure Cosmos DB in general availability,
The public preview of Azure Database for PostgreSQL – Flexible Server now supported in new regions
and Azure Database for MySQL – Flexible Server Auto-grow storage in public preview - Jakub Szymaszek (@JakubSzymaszek) highlights Always Encrypted with secure enclaves is now generally available in Azure SQL Database
- Mara Steiu (@MSteiu) runs through how to Stream Data Changes from a CDC-Enabled Azure SQL Database to an External Target Using Striim
- Sudheesh Narayanaswamy explains how to Monitor Azure Database for MySQL using Percona Monitoring and Management (PMM)
- On Code Project, Jeremy Likness (@jeremylikness) discusses Azure Cosmos DB With EF Core on Blazor Server
- On Channel 9, Mara-Florina Steiu (@MSteiu) talks about Using SQL Data Sync for Bidirectional Data Replication in SQL Server and Azure SQL DBs
- On the DEV site, Jay Gordon (@jaydestro) talks about Migrating Your Data - Create Your Cosmos DB
🛠️ Developer Tools
- On the Visual Studio blog, Harshada Hole explains how to Debug code with force run to cursor
- On Stackify Blog, Charris Herrera lists the Top Visual Studio Profiling Tools
- Damien Caro describes some Azure PowerShell updates
🔩 DevOps
- Takashi Takebayashi asks: Why do developers use Azure DevOps Services?
- Henk Boelman (@hboelman) writes about Flexible Deployment
- John Downs (@jdwns) explains How to deploy and manage your Azure resources with Bicep
- Shree Divya describes Deploying an Azure Logic Apps Standard workflow through an Azure DevOps Pipeline
- Srikant Sarwa explains how to Create Private AKS Cluster using Bicep
- Kevin Chant blogs about the Advantages of creating own Azure DevOps organization and walks through Using Azure Test Plans for Data Platform deployments
- Antti K. Koskela (@koskila) runs through a solution: Azure DevOps suddenly 404s for your project Easy fix
- Rick Roché blogs about Bicep Modules: Refactor, Compose, Reuse
- Jaliya Udagedara (@JaliyaUdagedara) describes Building Projects Targeting .NET 6 with Azure DevOps
- Anand Chugh walks through Using templates in Azure DevOps Pipelines: What, Why and How?
🧬 Hybrid
- The Azure Updates Team announces Azure SQL enabled by Azure Arc generally available on July 30, 2021
- Sanjay Satheesh explains how to Manage your hybrid environments consistently with Azure Arc
- Thomas Maurer (@thomasmaurer) covers Azure Arc for Developers
- Zachary Cavanell covers Hybrid cloud migration, modernization and unified management with Azure
- On the Microsoft DevOps blog, JJ Asghar (@jjasghar) talks about OpenShift on Azure
🎭 Identity
- Martin Brandl (@martin_jib) explains how to Approve requests for Azure AD roles in PIM
- The Azure Updates Team talks about Azure Automation support for User Assigned Managed Identities is now in public preview
- On the DEV site, Abhishek Gupta (@abhi_tweeter) writes about how to Securely access Azure SQL Database from Azure Synapse
- On Channel 9, Sydney Morton (@sydneymorton_) runs through how to Issue and accept verifiable credentials using Azure Active Directory
- Graeme Bray blogs about how to Register the Azure AD Connect Health for ADDS Agent via Service Principal
- Also on Channel 9, Christos Matskas (@ChristosMatskas) talks about how to Work with users, groups, and roles in custom apps and APIs
🔌 Integration
- On the Azure blog, Michael Aldridge explains how to Manage RDP and SSH connectivity at scale with Azure Bastion
- The Azure Updates Team announces Event Grid integration with AKS in public preview, API Management and Event Grid integration in public preview and Azure Service Bus support for large messages
- Damien Bowden (@damien_bod) discusses Using an ASP.NET Core IHostedService to run Azure Service Bus subscriptions and consumers
- On the DEV site, Chloe Condon (@ChloeCondon) discusses Making Bots with Azure Logic Apps
- On the Microsoft DevOps blog, Chloe Condon (@ChloeCondon) talks about Azure Logic Apps
- Mohammed Barqawi provides a Sample API that supports Logic App chunking using Node js
- Tareq Saifi blogs about Paging using continuation token to return large list of items in Azure Logic App
- On Visual Studio Magazine - Blogs, David Ramel (@dramel) highlights some New Azure Kubernetes and Event Grid Integrations Unveiled at Microsoft Inspire
- On BizTalk Gurus, Sandro Pereira (@sandro_asp) explains how to Find Orphaned Azure API Connectors in all Resource Groups with PowerShell
💡 Internet of Things
- The Azure Updates Team highlights that Azure Maps Creator v1 preview will be retired on 6 September 2021, announces Azure IoT Central new and updated features, the IoT Edge Metrics Collector module 1.0.1 release in public preview and Azure Sphere version 21.07
- Sander van de Velde walks through Getting weather information and predictions from Azure Maps API and describes Getting started with Azure IoT Plug and Play
- On the Azure Developer Community Blog, Chris Noring (@chris_noring) discusses IoT for Beginners
- Also on the Azure Developer Community Blog, Nina Sui highlights that the Azure IoT Hack for Sustainability Winners have been Announced
- On Tech Community blog, Dave Glover (@dglover) discusses Bringing new life to the Altair 8800 on the Azure Sphere and highlights some Community tools to kick start your Azure Sphere projects.
- Kaushik Roy walks through how to Design a Azure IoT Indoor Air Quality monitoring platform from scratch
- Pete Bernard describes Building the next smart city with Azure Percept
- Zin Thein Kyaw describes A Future With Safer Roads: Automatic Wheel Lug Nut Detection Using Machine Learning at the Edge
- The Azure Sphere Team announces Azure Sphere version 21.07 new and updated features
- On the Azure blog, John Chirapurath explains how to Innovate from cloud to edge on your terms with Azure
📚 Learning
- On Channel 9, Kristen Baker talks about Azure Enablement
- Lee Stott (@lee_stott) discusses how Microsoft Certification and Education is leading to Employment
- Thomas Maurer (@thomasmaurer) blogs about The new Inside Azure for IT program
- On the Azure blog, Erin Chapple (@erinchapple) explains how you can Enhance your cloud skills and accelerate digital transformation with Inside Azure for IT
- Lee Stott (@lee_stott) discusses how when Incorporating Microsoft Learn into IE University programmes students receive industry certificates
⚖️ Management and Governance
- The Azure Updates Team announces
Now available: Azure Purview product glossary,
General availability: New Azure Monitor built-in policy for Log Analytics workspace and linked automation account,
Public preview: New Application Insights standard test for synthetic monitoring,
Public preview: Alerts, Pacemaker cluster RHEL OS and data-size for SAP HANA,
Public preview: Scan and view lineage of data stored in Erwin Mart, Google BigQuery and Looker using Azure Purview,
General availability: Azure Monitor Agent and Data Collection Rules now support direct proxies and Log Analytics gateway,
General availability: Better integration between Azure Monitor and Grafana,
General availability: Python Functions now support custom telemetry in Application Insights,
General availability: Built-in Azure Policy support for Network Watcher Traffic Analytics
and General availability: Application Insights integration with App Services for Java & Node.js apps - Charbel Nemnom (@charbelnemnom) explains how to Enable Azure Site Recovery ASR on VMs using Azure Policy
- Kavya Chandra highlights that Azure Purview now supports Erwin, Google BigQuery and Looker
- Qiyang Li explains how to Protect your organizations growth by using Metrics Advisor
- Simone Frigerio talks about How to audit Management Groups in Azure Sentinel
- On System Center Automation, Billy York runs through how to Monitor SSL Certificates with Azure Monitor
- Simon Waight (@simonwaight) describes How to build and run a free link tracker using VS Code, Java, GitHub, MongoDB and Azure
- On the DEV site, Shannon Kuehn (@shankuehn) describes how to Deploy With ARM Templates
- Jeff Brown covers Setting up an Azure Availability Set
- On the Azure blog, Mark Russinovich (@markrussinovich) describes Advancing application reliability with the Azure Well-Architected Framework
- Richard Burrs (@richardburrs) covers how to Move an Azure VM to Another Tenant
- Tao Yang (@MrTaoYang) covers Azure Bicep, Deployment Script and Static Private IP Allocation
- Tobias Zimmergren & Jussi Roine (@CtrlAltAzure) discuss Managing virtual machines with Azure Automanage
- On SQL Server Central, Mahendran Purushothaman covers Autoscaling in Microsoft Azure
- Charbel Nemnom (@charbelnemnom) describes how to Audit Publicly Accessible Azure App Services with Azure Policy
- James Dumont le Douarec explains how to Enable resource logs in Virtual Machine Scale Sets with an Azure Policy
🎬 Media
- Katya Trishina introduces Azure Communication Services Call Diagnostics feature for web applications
- The Azure Updates Team announces Call recording in public preview for Azure Communication Services
🚌 Migration
- The Azure Updates Team announces that you can now Migrate your Azure Data Lake Storage from Gen1 to Gen2 using the Azure Portal (limited preview) and announces Azure App Service Migration Assistant PowerShell-based experience
- On the Azure blog, Tanuj Bansal explains how to Accelerate your Azure migration and modernization journey with expanded programs and offers
- Vinicius Apolinario (@vrapolinario) provides A closer look into Azure Migrate App Containerization
📱 Mobile
- On the Xamarin blog, Brandon Minnick (@TheCodeTraveler) discusses The Future of Xamarin Community Toolkit
- Also on the Xamarin blog, James Montemagno (@JamesMontemagno) discusses Xamarin.Essentials 1.7 and introducing .NET MAUI Essentials
- On the Trailhead blog, Masha Altukhova covers Using the Xamarin REPL Tool
- On Visual Studio Magazine - Blogs, David Ramel (@dramel) writes about .NET MAUI Preview 6: SDK Workload Installation, Gestures, Clipping, Alerts, More
🌐 Networking
- The Azure Updates Team announces the Azure Firewall Premium general availability and Public IP information and inter-zone traffic among many new insights in Traffic Analytics
- On the Azure blog, Eliran Azulai runs through the Next-generation firewall capabilities with Azure Firewall Premium
- Camila Martins runs through the New Improvements on Azure WAF for Application Gateway
- Jose Moreno (@erjosito) writes about CLI-based analysis of an ExpressRoute private peering
- Aidan Finn (@joe_elway) discusses Service Definitions in Azure Firewall
🔐 Security
- The Azure Updates Team announces that Azure Automation Customer Managed Keys are generally available and Free Extended Security Updates only on Azure for Windows Server 2012 /R2and SQL Server 2012
- Thuan Nguyen explains how to Create an Azure Role Assignment Watchlist in Azure Sentinel and demystifies Azure DDoS Protection Azure Policy
- Israel Cohen-Pavon announces The live response API public preview
- On Azure Sentinel blog, Preeti Krishna (@PreetiKr007) covers Azure Sentinel Solutions for Partners: Build Combined Value for a Wider Audience
- On Azure Sentinel Blog, Ben Nick highlights that Azure Sentinel Hunting now supports ADX cross-resource queries
📦 Storage
- The Azure Updates Team announces:
HPC Cache on E-Series VMs Support of Blob NFS 3.0 now generally available,
Azure Blob storage - Container Soft Delete generally available,
Disk pool for Azure VMware Solution now in public preview
and Shared disks on Azure Disk Storage are now generally available on all Premium SSD and Standard SSD sizes - On the Azure blog, Yuemin Lu highlights how to Deliver scalable, cost-effective Disk Storage for Azure VMware Solution
- DJ Bartles describes Simplifying the Options When Creating an Azure File Share
- Jianlei Shen highlights that there is now Support for setting custom metadata when writing to Blob/ADLS Gen2
- Silvio Di Benedetto covers Azure File Sync v13
🔗 Web
- The Azure Updates Team highlights the Azure API Management updates - July 2021, announces that the Azure Spring Cloud Pricing Model Change is generally available and that Azure Spring Cloud New Relic One integration and additional feature updates are in public preview
- On the DEV site, Aaron Powell (@slace) describes Adding User Profiles to Static Web Apps
- On The Azure Podcast, Rob Vettor discusses Cloud Native apps in Azure
- Aaron Powell (@slace) walks through Calling Static Web Apps authenticated API endpoints
- Zehui Li explains How to create url-wise authentication for your web app
- Michael Crump (@mbcrump) runs through How to build Blazor and C APIs in Azure Static Web Apps
💻 Windows Virtual Desktop
- The Azure Updates Team highlights how to Deliver a secure hybrid workplace with Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365
- Aidan Finn (@joe_elway) discusses Understanding the Azure Virtual Desktop Resources