Azure Weekly

Issue #354 - 7th January 2022

Happy New Year & welcome to issue 353 of Azure Weekly! This is an epic edition, covering most of December. I've highlighted a few articles I found interesting, but I'd strongly suggest making a cup of your favourite beverage and work your way through the newsletter.

From my perspective, the most important new Azure Service in 2021 was Azure Container Apps; we've been doing a number of experiments to kick the tires, and we've started a new blog series covering our journey: Adventures in Dapr: Episode 0 and Episode 1.John Reilly has published a number of posts around DevOps for ACA: Azure Container Apps, Bicep and GitHub Actions, and Azure Container Apps: build and deploy with Bicep and GitHub Actions. The second most important service is Static Web Apps, and there's a good post covering how to Build A Recipe Blog with Azure Static Web Apps & Hugo.

If the CLI is your preferred way of interacting with Azure these articles might be for you: Query deployment outputs with the Azure CLI, Oh My Azure Cloud Shell, and Why is Az 7 an important release for Azure PowerShell

Two features that caught my attention: CosmosDB change feed is supported in ADF now and Automated key rotation in Azure Key Vault is now in public preview.

Finally, there have been a number of storage related features released: Attribute-based Access Control (ABAC) conditions with principal attributes now in public preview, immutable storage with versioning for Blob Storage is now generally available, Soft delete for blobs capability for Azure Data Lake Storage is now generally available, and a how to configure SFTP natively in Azure Storage guide.

⚙️ AI + Machine Learning

Ali Dalloul describes how to Accelerate the in-vehicle digital experience with Azure Cognitive Services
Derek Legenzoff writes about Flexible filtering, faceting, and sorting in Azure Cognitive Search
The Azure Updates Team announces Public preview: Semantic Search update
Foteini Savvidou covers Saving Santa Claus with Azure Custom Vision and Python
On the MSSQL Tips site, Rajendra Gupta (@rajendragupta16) provides An Overview of Azure Cognitive Search Service
Donna Forlin discusses Azure Machine Learning is now integrated with Seeq Workbench
Tom Keane (@tomwkeane) announces that Geospatial imagery unlocks new cloud computing scenarios on Azure and writes about New satellite connectivity and geospatial capabilities with Azure Space
Zachary Cavanell discusses Contact Space Satellites to Access Data — Azure Orbital
The Azure Updates Team announces Azure Machine Learning – December 2021 general availability
Balamurugan Balakreshnan discusses Azure Machine learning Service Designer - Data Engineering and writes about Simple Application to summarize data using GPT-3 Openai model

🔎 Analytics

James Serra (@JamesSerra) talks about Azure Synapse Analytics November updates
Mark Kromer (@kromerbigdata) blogs about Introducing the Flowlets preview for ADF and Synapse
Fikrat Azizov covers Data Engineering with Microsoft Azure Databricks, Synapse and Apache Spark, explains how to Implement Data Enrichment in Lakehouse using Synapse Analytics Mapping Data Flow, and discusses Implementing Deduplication Logic in the Lakehouse using Synapse Analytics Mapping Data Flow, writes about Raw Data Ingestion into Delta Lake Bronze tables using Azure Synapse Mapping Data Flow and explains how to Handle Missing Values in Lakehouse using Azure Synapse Mapping Data Flow.
Daniel Perlovsky writes about Easier filtering and improved PowerBI integration in Azure Purview search
Dave Ruijter (@daveruijter) describes How to prevent concurrent pipeline execution in Azure Data Factory or Azure Synapse Analytics design 1
Koen Verbeeck (@Ko_Ver) describes Choosing Between SQL Server Integration Services and Azure Data Factory
Jose M Jurado (@jmjuradodiaz) discusses Lesson Learned 181: Reading a JSON compressed file from OPENROWSET function from Azure SQL Database
Suraj Thakur explains how to Transform Your Data with Azure Data Factory
Meagan Longoria (@mmarie) writes about When You Can't Change the Connected Git Repo on ADF
Meagan Longoria (@mmarie) discusses Looking at Activity Queue Times from Azure Data Factory with Log Analytics
Balasubramaniam Murugesan explains how to Get the best out of Azure Data Factory – Part 2
Hristo Hristov writes about Why use Python
Dany Hoter writes about Direct Query from Excel to Azure Data Explorer aka Kusto
Michal Bar talks about Help us shape Kusto data exploration experience
Jeremy Tan explains how to Advanced KQL Framework Workbook - Empowering you to become KQL-savvy
Marisa Brasile talks about KQL - The Next Query Language You Need to Learn Data Exposed: MVP Edition
Gabi Lehner writes about Automatically stop unused Azure Data Explorer Clusters
Deepak Agrawal covers Azure Data Explorer offers on AMD SKUs
Mohammed Moinudheen writes about Popular extensions available on Azure Data Studio
Chris Webb (@cwebb_bi) discusses Monitor Power BI Queries And Refreshes With DirectQuery On Log Analytics, Part 1: Creating A Dataset
The Azure Updates Team announces Azure HDInsight 2018-06-01 preview API will be retired on 30 November 2024

🖥️ Compute

Rahul Nath (@rahulpnath) describes How To Setup Dependency Injection With Azure Functions
Justin Yoo (@justinchronicle) blogs about Migrating Azure Functions OpenAPI Extension to V4
Thorsten Hans explains how to Automate Azure with Azure Functions and Go
Juan Manuel Rey explains how to Terraform integration with Azure VMware Solution
Mo Shi explains how to Create Azure Batch Pool with PowerShell
On episode 111 of Ctrl+Alt+Azure, Tobias Zimmergren and Jussi Roine talk about How do you choose the correct Azure compute service?
Braja Rakhal Das discusses Monitoring Service Fabric Services CPU and Memory utilization with Log Analytics
Dinesh Reddy explains how to Protect Azure Virtual Machines from failure and data loss using multi-disk consistent restore points
Reshma Vishwanath explains How to set up Alert notification on Service Fabric Cluster state to receive an email notification

🚢 Containers

On the endjin blog, James Dawson (@James_Dawson) continues his series about Adventures in Dapr: Episode 1 - updating a Dapr sample application to use Azure PaaS services and be hosted in Azure Container Apps.
John Reilly (@johnny_reilly) talks about Azure Container Apps: build and deploy with Bicep and GitHub Actions and blogs about Azure Container Apps, Bicep and GitHub Actions
Paolo Salvatori, Microsoft Open Source explain how to Create an Azure Kubernetes Service cluster with the Azure Application Gateway Ingress Controller - Code Samples
Microsoft Docs publishes an article about how to Build ASP.NET Core applications deployed as Linux containers into AKS/Kubernetes clusters
Episode 114 of the Ctrl+Alt+Azure Podcast covers Options for running containers in Azure
Hanli Ren blogs about Azure Container Apps Dapr Binding Example
Shreya R. Aithal writes about AKS + Azure Database for MySQL - Flexible Server: Deploy applications in 5 easy steps
Sonalika Roy explains how to Restrict Application Access in AKS Cluster and describes How client source IP preservation works for loadbalancer services in AKS
Fabien Dibot (@fdibot) explains How to run kubeflow on AKS
Sam Cogan (@samcogan) explains how to Get to Grips with Azure AD and AKS
Daniel Neumann (@neumanndaniel) discusses Run the Istio ingress gateway with TLS termination and TLS passthrough
Antti K. Koskela (@koskila) describes How to solve Vmmem consuming ungodly amounts of RAM when running Docker on WSL

🗄️ Databases

The Azure Updates Team announce AzureSQL - General availability updates for December 2021
The Azure Updates Team announce Azure SQL - Public preview updates for early January 2022
Rajendra Gupta (@rajendragupta16) explains how to Create Index for Full Text Search using Azure Cognitive Service and Azure SQL Database
Aaron Bertrand describes Using GREATEST and LEAST functions in Azure SQL Database
Ahmed Mahmoud discusses Learning from Expertise 6: Where is my server storage taken - Azure MySQL and covers Learning from Expertise 7: Where is my server storage taken - Azure PostgreSQL
Diego Nieto-Arroyo blogs about Learnings from the Trenches - Unable to query sys table via Linked Server
Emily Lisa talks about Auto-failover groups for Azure SQL Hyperscale now in preview
Jose M Jurado (@jmjuradodiaz) blogs about Lesson Learned 180: Creating a retry-logic for TSQL command execution. and blogs about Lesson Learned 182: The server name provided doesn't match the server name on the SQL Server SSL
Madhumita Tripathy describes How to create Linked server from SQL Server to Azure SQL Database
At Data Exposed LIve Marisa Brasile talks about Azure SQL & SQL Server 2022: Intelligent Database Futures Data Exposed Live
Paloma Garcia Martin explains how to Imported database is smaller than original database
Sergiu Ernu explains how to Create a Connectivity Dashboard for Postgres Single Server in Azure and explains how to Deploy a connectivity dashboard for PostgreSQL Flexible Server
Ye Xu covers CosmosDB change feed is supported in ADF now
On Code Project, Glenn Prince (@Glenn_Prince) blogs about Creating a Python Cloud-Native Webapp, Part 2: Adding an Azure Cosmos DB Database
Joe Gavin walks through Adding Users to Azure SQL Databases
Geert van Teylingen talks about Deploying SQL Server on Azure using Azure NetApp Files
Kevin Li describes How to connect Azure SQL database from Python Function App using managed identity or access token
Marisa Brasile covers Data Exposed Live Azure SQL News Update: Year in Review, covers Azure SQL VM: Best Price-Performance with Ebdsv5 Series Ep.6 Data Exposed and covers KQL - The Next Query Language You Need to Learn Data Exposed: MVP Edition
Daniel Calbimonte discusses Introduction to SQL Jobs in Azure Data Studio and asks Is SQL Server Profiler in Azure Data Studio?
Shoham Dasgupta writes about User-Assigned Managed Identity support for TDE BYOK for Azure SQL is in preview
Ahmed Mahmoud shares Learning from Expertise 5: Ops What should I do after accidentally deleted SQL DB Server

🛠️ Developer Tools

John Reilly (@johnny_reilly) discusses Query deployment outputs with the Azure CLI
On the Visual Studio blog, Jordan Matthiesen (@JMatthiesen) writes about Visual Studio 2022 for Mac Preview 4
Dominic Nahous (@DomsterFire) writes that Visual Studio 17.1 Preview 2 is now available
Kendra Havens talks about Test tools for .NET and cross-platform apps
Mika Dumont discusses Whats new in .NET Productivity with Visual Studio 2022
Taysser Gherfal (@taysser) describes Introducing new Git features to Visual Studio 2022
Bala Venkataraman explains how to Updated CLI and ARM REST APIs for Azure Machine Learning
Chandani Prajapati explains How to convert HTML content or file to PDF using the Muhimbi API
Chase Wilson explains how to Streamline configuring Azure CLI with az init
Florian Eiden explains how to Send data to live outputs in VS Code with the Azure Stream Analytics Tools latest release
Marc Goodner writes about Embedded Software Development in Visual Studio
On Code Project, Espen Harlinn blogs about Harlinn.Windows - A Visual Studio 2022 Solution
Gino Messmer describes Design and Implement Complex Business Scenarios using Low Code Tools
Barbara Kess, Saisang Cai, Josh Duffney explain how to Choose the right Azure command-line tool
Justin Yoo (@justinchronicle) writes about Oh My Azure Cloud Shell
Damien Caro writes about Why is Az 7 an important release for Azure PowerShell
Bill Baer discusses Connecting networks of information with Microsoft Graph connector partners
Melanie Hall blogs about Microsoft Graph Authentication in Python

🔩 DevOps

On the DEV site, Nitya Narasimhan (@ntiya) writes about 003 Let's Automate Playwright Testing With GitHub Actions
On the Microsoft DevOps blog, Devops Dojo blogs about DevOps Dojo – Culture and Mindset
Gloridel Morales blogs about Azure DevOps and Azure DevOps Server and the log4j vulnerability and discusses December patches for Azure DevOps Server
Jay Gordon (@jaydestro) lists the Top Stories from the Microsoft DevOps Community – 2021.12.10, explains how to Deploy Bicep files by using GitHub Actions, lists the Top Stories from the Microsoft DevOps Community – 2021.12.17, lists the Top Stories from the Microsoft DevOps Community – 2021.12.31 and discusses AzureFunBytes Episode 63 – Getting Started with Azure and WebAssembly with StevenMurawski
Buck Woody (@BuckWoodyMSFT) provides A Data Science Process, Documentation, and Project Template You Can Use in Your Solutions
Jerry Zhang describes How to update/change certificate used in Cloud Service Extended Support
Thomas Thornton (@tamstar1234) explains how to Build and push Docker Images to Azure Container Registry using Azure DevOps Pipelines and provides A DevOps journey using Azure DevOps
Radu Vunvulea (@RaduVunvulea) writes about At a glance: Azure Load Tests Service
Aidan Finn (@joe_elway) covers Azure Firewall DevSecOps in Azure DevOps and writes about Az Module Scripts in DevOps Pipelines
Kevin Chant blogs about Azure DevOps based Training Day at SQLBits 2022 and describes Version control for SQL Server Management Studio templates using Azure Repos
Antti K. Koskela (@koskila) explains How to authenticate against npm registries in Azure DevOps
Praful Itankar explains how to Maintain your Azure Infrastructure with Terraform
Jay Gordon explains how to Deploy Bicep files by using GitHub Actions
Travis Roberts (@Ciraltos) describes Input Variables with Terraform and Azure, describes Modules and Outputs with Terraform and Azure, discusses Use ForEach in a Terraform Module with Azure VNets and Bastion Host and blogs about Use Existing Resources with Data Sources in Terraform and Azure
Episode 115 of Ctrl+Alt+Azure Tobias Zimmergren and Jussi Roine talk about taking the Azure Load Testing service for a spin!
Gary Mullen-Schultz covers Creating a Custom and Secure Azure Portal Offering

🧬 Hybrid

Tracie Zenti explains how to Expand hybrid management tools with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform on Azure
Mohammed Moinudheen describes Azure Data Studio SQL Server Profiler Extension
Yasmeen Jassim describes Introducing the all-new azure stack HCI sizing tool preview
Thomas Maurer (@thomasmaurer) explains how to Extended Security Updates for Windows Server and SQL Server in Azure and Azure Stack, and How to Harden Windows Server 2022, describes Azure Arc Jumpstart Lightning Azure Arc-enabled servers metadata tags with Thomas Maurer, discusses Speaking at Microsoft Cloud Adoption Summit 2022 and Book: Azure Arc-Enabled Kubernetes and Servers: Extending Hyperscale Cloud Management to Your Datacenter

🎭 Identity

Jeff Sanders (@jsandersrocks) writes about Open a support case for an Azure AD Tenant app under a subscription
Thuan Nguyen describes Script to audit managed identities on VM and their role assignment
Elena Neroslavskaya explains how to Connect Azure Kubernetes Java Applications to SQL with Kerberos Integrated Authentication
Alex Simons (@Alex_A_Simons) blogs about End of support for Azure AD Graph permission sign up through portal UX

🔌 Integration

Alan Kinane (@Azure_Alan) says Don't use user accounts for your Logic App connections
Pedro Almeida blogs about Logic Apps: Sending Files Dynamically – A little Christmas gift
Pim Simons discusses Logic App Exception Handling With The Result Function
Jay Gong explains How to verify if Azure Event Hub partition is working by using Azure Service Bus Explorer tool
Umar Mohamed Usman covers Deploying API Management in an Internal mode
Joo Dinis covers Using API Management WebSockets
Thomas Thornton (@tamstar1234) discusses Integrating Azure Application Gateway with multiple custom domains with Azure APIM

💡 Internet of Things

Amira Youssef explains how to Solve common challenges with Azure Percept: Inspirations from Microsoft Hackathon
Juha Luoto blogs about Azure Percept DK brings 5G, Edge and AI together
The Azure Updates Team blogs about Public preview: Azure Percept DK November 2111 software update is available
Michael C. Bazarewsky talks about IoT: Scaling Out an Azure IoT Solution to Support Millions of Devices
Shane Baldacchino covers Bridge Building – Mosquitto MQTT to Azure IOT Using Paho MQTT and the Azure IoT Device SDKs
Wellington Duraes discusses Arduino library for Azure IoT
Antti K. Koskela (@koskila) describes How to fix Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Storage: Server encountered an internal error. Please try again after some time. when using IoTHub trigger for Azure Functions

📚 Learning

Jen Looper explains how to Get ahead in 2022: Developer learning opportunities from Microsoft
Sandeep Bhanot explains how to Choose curiosity, embrace challenges: A learning culture prepares Unit4 for the future
Laura Redfern discusses Azure CycleCloud Learning Circle Series for Academic and Industry Customers
Liberty Munson writes about Available now: Exam AZ-800 beta and Exam AZ-801 beta

⚖️ Management and Governance

Thuan Nguyen blogs about Notes on Azure Policy Exemption
Sonia Cuff (@soniacuff) describes How to update Azure Policy parameters in Azure Blueprints
The Azure Updates Team announces Public preview of Snowflake connector for Azure Purview
Linda Wang discusses Azure Purview advances support for SaaS applications – Salesforce scan, describes Azure Purview expands relational database support - IBM DB2, MySQL and PostgreSQL and Azure Purview adds support for SAP HANA
Naga Yenamandra covers Overlay business context using Business Glossary in Azure Purview
Charbel Nemnom (@charbelnemnom) explains how to Integrate Azure Purview with Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Daniel Perlovsky explains how to use Advanced resource sets in Azure Purview
Snaheth Thumathy announces Azure Resource Manager metrics in Azure Monitor
Tobias Zimmergren (@zimmergren) explains how to Create Azure Monitor Alert Rules with Azure Bicep
On SQL Server Central, Mike Wood (@mikewo) describes Azure Policies and Management Groups
Claudia Zhou describes AD Joined Hybrid Windows 365 management in Intune
Thuan Nguyen talks about Play with Tag on Azure Subscriptions
Also on Tech Community blog, Roshna Nazir explains how to Get creation dates of all Azure resources under an Azure subscription
Thomas Maurer (@thomasmaurer) writes about An introduction to the Cloud Adoption Framework Manage methodology and An introduction to the Cloud Adoption Framework Ready methodology

🎬 Media

On Microsoft Docs, new Azure Media Services v3 Node.js TypeScript Code Samples are available.
The Azure Updates Team announces General availability: UI Library for Azure Communication Services

🚌 Migration

Zachary Cavanell talks about Cloud Migration - Options for virtual machines, databases, web apps and containers explained
Mark Brimble (@BrimbleMark) explains How do you use New-AzIntegrationAccountCertificate
On Microsoft Docs, a new article explaining how to Migrate databases to SQL Managed Instance using Log Replay Service - Azure SQL Managed Instance
Mohammed Moinudheen covers Options to migrate on-premises SQL Server database to Azure SQL Database

📱 Mobile

Thuan Nguyen blogs about Acquire Access Token from Azure App Service Linux System-Assigned Managed Identity
The Azure Updates Team announces General availability: Azure Communication Services interoperability with Microsoft Teams
On the Microsoft Open Technologies site, Scott McKay And Guoyu Wang explains how to Add AI to mobile applications with Xamarin and ONNX Runtime
On the Trailhead blog, Rodrigo Juarez covers Control Templates in Xamarin.Forms
On the Xamarin blog, Mike Parker describes Machine Learning in Xamarin.Forms with ONNX Runtime

🌐 Networking

Thuan Nguyen explains how to Detect NSG inbound rule updated to allow All
The Azure Updates Team announces Azure Storage: Secure access to storage account from a virtual network/subnet in any region now in public preview and discusses Azure Traffic Manager: Additional IP addresses for endpoint monitoring service.
Richard M. Hicks (@richardhicks) writes about Always On VPN and TLS 1.3
Tao Yang (@MrTaoYang) describes Azure Resource Graph Query For Network Security Group Rules
Aidan Finn (@joe_elway) discusses Enabling DevSecOps with Azure Firewall
Bankim Patel writes about Zero Trust Networking and the Cloud heavy ConfigMgr – Part 1
Jose Moreno (@erjosito) describes ExpressRoute Global Reach under the covers
Thuan Nguyen explains how to Scan Azure VMs in the same subnet with Nmap
Thuan Nguyen explains how to Detect Azure VM with a Public IP associated
The Azure Updates Team announces India Central Availability Zones now generally available
The Azure Updates Team announces Placement polices now generally available for Azure VMware Solution
On The Azure Podcast, Isabelle Morris and Tanu Balla talk about Episode 406 - Azure Bastion
Sander van de Velde talks about Jump box part 1: Secure access to private cloud VM using Azure Bastion and discusses Jump box part 2: Azure VNet connection with a point-to-site VPN Gateway

🔐 Security

Thuan Nguyen discusses Query vulnerable VMs against Log4Shell vulnerability and blogs about Bulk upload Log4Shell IoC to Microsoft Sentinel Threat Intelligence
Sarah Young (@_sarahyo) asks Whats New: Detecting Apache Log4j vulnerabilities with Microsoft Sentinel
Andreas Wolter (@AndreasWolter) blogs about Guidance on Apache Log4j Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
Thuan Nguyen discusses Query vulnerable VMs against Log4Shell vulnerability in Azure
Aurelia Arnett presents Ask the product experts live: Azure Confidential Computing Inside Azure for IT
Chris Hallum explains how to Protect printers, cameras and the rest of your IoT devices with Microsoft 365 Defender
Microsoft Detection and Response Team talks about Leveraging the Power of KQL in Incident Response
Georgiana Gainariu Pache writes about Cannot enable Advanced Threat Protection on Managed Instance server
The Azure Updates Team announces Automated key rotation in Azure Key Vault is now in public preview
Sonia Cuff (@soniacuff) explains How to configure automatic key rotation preview in Azure Key Vault
Shoham Dasgupta covers Azure Key Vault Managed HSM support for TDE BYOK now available for Azure SQL
Radu Vunvulea (@RaduVunvulea) writes 'COVID-19 is a cloud security catalyst'
Andy Jaw describes how to Block USB in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Intune
Paul Bergson describes how to Forward On-Premises Windows Security Event Logs to Microsoft Sentinel

📦 Storage

The Azure Updates Team announces Azure Storage: Attribute-based Access Control ABAC conditions with principal attributes now in public preview
The Azure Updates Team announces Immutable storage with versioning for Blob Storage is now generally available, and Azure HPC Cache now generally available in Germany West Central and US West 3 and Soft delete for blobs capability for Azure Data Lake Storage is now generally available
Rena Shah (@renamshah) blogs about Updates to Azure Files: NFS v4.1, higher performance limits, and reserved instance pricing
Praveen Kumar Sreeram (@PrawinSreeram) describes how to Configure SFTP natively in Azure Storage
Charbel Nemnom (@charbelnemnom) explains how to Enable Diagnostic Settings for Storage Accounts to Event Hub
Amrinder Singh walks through Analyzing Storage Account Capacity
Niko Neugebauer writes about How-to find out addressable Disk Space & Files Number on General Purpose service tier on SQL MI
Silvio Di Benedetto blogs about Azure File Sync v14.1
Charbel Nemnom (@charbelnemnom) explains how to Protect an Azure Trusted Launch VM with Azure Backup and explains how to Enable Multiple Backups Per Day for Azure VM

🔗 Web

Thuan Nguyen discusses Audit Azure Web App against NotLegit vulnerability
On the DEV site, Nitya Narasimhan (@ntiya) explains how to Let's Build A Recipe Blog with Azure Static Web Apps & Hugo
Liangying Wei explains how to Expand your application with real-time messaging API capability with Web PubSub and API Management
Shefali Birla explains how to Visualize your team structure with org charts in Microsoft Visio for the web
Glenn Prince (@Glenn_Prince) blogs about Creating a Python Cloud-Native Webapp, Part 1: Deploying to Azure App Service

⚙️ Azure Virtual Desktop

Daniel Carroll covers Azure Virtual Desktop, ADFS SSO The Case of the Trailing Slash