Azure Weekly
Issue #423 - 18th June 2023
Lots of little GA and Public Preview announcements this week, and a few interesting blog posts. First up the Generally availability of Azure OpenAI Service in UK South, as well as an interesting podcast about AI ethics: AI Ethics with Matthew Renze.
A detailed look into the public preview of Synthetic GraphQL resolvers: expose your data from Azure Cosmos DB or Azure SQL through a GraphQL API with Azure API Management and a nice post about load testing databases with Azure Load Testing.
We're big fans of ACA, its' become the default choice for hosting web or worker apps, so it's nice to see an investment in a Landing Zone Accelerator for Azure Container Apps. November will be with us soon, so it's also nice to see the Public Preview: App Service support for .NET 8, and finally, Dapr v1.11.0 now available in the Dapr extension for AKS and Arc-enabled Kubernetes.
⚙️ AI + Machine Learning
- The Azure Updates Team announces Generally available: Azure OpenAI Service in UK South
- Chu Lahlou blogs about Understanding Document Hierarchical Structure with Azure Form Recognizer and XML Format Converter
- Alexandre Vilcek walks through Training and Inference of LLMs with PyTorch Fully Sharded Data Parallel and Better Transformer
- On episode 249 of the Azure DevOps podcast, Jeffrey Palermo (@jeffreypalermo) is joined by Matthew Renze (@MatthewRenze) to talk about AI Ethics
- On the Azure Medium blog, Valentina Alto covers Introducing LangFlow: a GUI for LangChain and Introducing LangChain toolkits for Azure Cognitive Services
🔎 Analytics
- The Azure Updates Team announces Azure HDInsight for Apache Spark 3.3 is now available for public preview and covers Azure HDinsight Spark 2.4 approaching EOL
- The Azure Updates Team announces Enhanced autoscale capabilities added to HDInsight clusters
- Jacinda Eng blogs about Missing Fields Added to Dedicated SQL pool Diagnostic Settings Logs
- Abhishek Narain (@narainabhishek) blogs about Securing outbound traffic with Azure Data Factory's outbound network rules
🖥️ Compute
- The Azure Updates Team announces Public Preview: Azure Data Explorer bindings for Azure Functions, and Public Preview: Redis extension for Azure Functions, and General availability: Azure HBv4 Virtual Machines for HPC and General availability: Azure HX Virtual Machines for HPC
- On the Azure blog, Brianna McGovern announces Azure HBv4 and HX Series VMs for HPC now generally available
- Amirreza Rastegari, Jon Shelley, Scott Moe, Jie Zhang, Jithin Jose, Anshul Jain, Jyothi Venkatesh, Joe Greenseid, Fanny Ou, and Evan Burness talks about Performance & Scalability of HBv4 and HX-Series VMs with Genoa-X CPUs
- Sandro Pereira (@sandro_asp) talks about Azure Function: JSON Schema Validation new release
- Gregor Suttie (@gregor_suttie) blogs about AZURE VM EXTENSIONS: PART 3 Refactoring our code
🚢 Containers
- The Azure Updates Team announces Public preview: Add-on and node image in AKS release tracker, and New Instance Types for Azure Red Hat OpenShift are now available and Generally available: Azure Monitor container insights for AKS cluster with ARM64 nodes
- Hannah Hunter covers Dapr v1.11.0 now available in the Dapr extension for AKS and Arc-enabled Kubernetes
- Noah Whitehead announces Removal of Foreign Layers from Windows Container Images
- Cormac Garvey delves intoHPC/AI Storage options for NDmv4 A100 Azure kubernetes service AKS cluster
- On the Octopus Deploy Blog, Matthew Casperson walks through Using the NGINX Docker image
- Aarthi Murugan announces Landing Zone Accelerator for Azure Container Apps
🗄️ Databases
- The Azure Updates Team announces the General Availability of: Troubleshooting guides for Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server, and Read replica HA enabled Azure Database for MySQL - Flexible Server, and Pgvector extension on Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL, and Query performance insights for Azure Database for PostgreSQL – Flexible Server, and 32 TB storage in Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server and MySQL extension for Azure Data Studio.
- The Azure Updates Team announces the Public Preview of: Azure Cosmos DB Vercel integration, and GraphQL resolvers for Azure Cosmos DB, Azure SQL in Azure API Management, and Azure Cache for Redis trigger for Azure Functions, and Power BI integration with Azure Database for PostgreSQL – Flexible Server and Azure Cache for Redis now supports up to 30 shards
- David Engel explains how to Update: Hotfixes released for ODBC and OLE DB drivers for SQL Server
- Andrei Kamenev explains how to Expose your data from Azure Cosmos DB or Azure SQL through a GraphQL API with Azure API Management
- On the Data Exposed show, Anna Hoffman and Umachandar Jayachandran (@AnalyticAnna) discuss How do you use JSON data in Azure SQL Database & SQL Server 2022 Data Exposed
- Nikita Nallamothu covers Load testing databases with Azure Load Testing
- Jose M Jurado (@jmjuradodiaz) shares more Lesson Learned: Query Antipattern and Ring Buffer in Azure SQL Database, and Connection Retry-Logic using ODBC API code, and Size NNN from table 'XYZ' cannot fit within the specified batch size of 24576KB, and SQL Server Error Code '0' and SQL state 'The connection is closed' and Playing with the ODBC tracing file: connecting to the database
🛠️ Developer Tools
- The Azure Updates Team announces General availability: Azure Event Hubs SDK for Go
- On the Visual Studio blog, Christine Ruana covers Installing Visual Studio from an Internal Intranet Website and explains how to Configure Visual Studio policies using Microsoft Endpoint Manager Intune
- Erin Stellato (@erinstellato) talks about SQL Server Management Studio SSMS 19.1 and Recent Changes, Part 2
- On the Visual Studio blog, Taysser Gherfal (@taysser) announces Visual Studio 2022 17.7 Preview 2 is here
- Freek Berson (@fberson) talks about Bicep param files now available, upgrade to v0.18.4
- Panu Oksala talks about GitHub Copilot and Visual Studio Intellisense
🔩 DevOps
- The Azure Updates Team announces Microsoft Azure Load Testing - additional Azure components for server-side monitoring, and Microsoft Azure Load Testing supports setting up quick start tests using requests per second, and Retirement notice: Move to Azure Load Testing GA API versions by 10 September 2023 and Microsoft Azure Load Testing - configure auto stop criteria
- On the Microsoft DevOps blog, Gloridel Morales highlights June patches for Azure DevOps Server
- On the Twilio blog, Matija Vrzan walks through Creating a CI/CD Pipeline for Twilio Flex Plugins with Azure DevOps
- Sarah Lean (@TechieLass) walks through Using Azure Export for Terraform to import existing Azure resources into Terraform
- On the Microsoft DevOps blog, Silviu Andrica describes Updates to Approvals and Checks
⚙️ Hybrid + Multicloud
- Tanayankar Chakraborty discusses Impact of Memory Grant Feedback on Azure SQL Managed Instance
🎭 Identity
- James Mantu describes Action required: Last chance to migrate ADAL apps
- Kristopher Bash writes about Important: Azure AD Graph Retirement and Powershell Module Deprecation
- The Azure Updates Team writes about Generally Available: Managed identity authentication in Azure Monitor container insights
- The Intune Support Team walks through Configuring Microsoft Intune just-in-time admin access with Azure AD PIM for Groups and explains how to Update to enrollment pre-requisites for Windows devices managed by Defender for Endpoint with Intune
- Brooke Lynn Weenig and Sean Metcalf (@PyroTek3) discuss Strategies for securing identities in Azure Active Directory with Sean Metcalf
- Bas van Bennekom describes how to Use Azure Functions to Remove Unauthorized Role Assignments
🔌 Integration
- On Code Project, Leszek Koc writes about Automatic Subscription of Azure Functions to Event Grid
- Sandro Pereira (@sandro_asp) covers Logic App Best Practices, Tips, and Tricks: 30 How to validate if a JSON structure is an Array or a single object and 31 Specifying JSON Schema elements nullable
- Also, Sandro Pereira (@sandro_asp) writes about Natural Language Message Validation with Logic Apps and ChatGPT, explains How to Create an Integration Account Project in Visual Studio 2019 and covers Microsoft Integration and Azure Stencils Pack for Visio: New version available v8.0.0
💡 Internet of Things
- The Azure Updates Team writes about General availability: Azure Sphere version 23.05 is delayed to 20 June, and the updated OS has been issued to Retail Eval
📚 Learning
- Angie Chen provides a Skilling snack: Do more with Microsoft Graph
⚖️ Management and Governance
- The Azure Updates Team announces Generally Available: Azure Monitor Alert resources now visible in the Azure portal and GA: Application Insights Distributed tracing support for Java Function Apps
- The Azure Updates Team talks about Public Preview: IT Service Management Connector ITSMC is now certified with ServiceNow Utah version, and Public preview: Assess impact of service retirements workbook template in Azure Advisor and Swati Devgan covers Public Preview: Windows Services & Daemons support for Change Tracking & Inventory with AMA
- Tom Moser discusses Encryption algorithm changes in Microsoft Purview Information Protection
- Werner Rall delves into Avoiding Disk Export and VHD Download in Azure
- On the Microsoft Mechanics show, Daniel Hidalgo covers Fixes & Reporting Multicloud Vulnerability Detection with Microsoft Purview
- Elliot Pearl-Sacks announces multicloud assessments in Compliance Manager
- Erin Miyake announces a new Purview feature and explains how to Manage insider risks in multicloud environments
- On Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast, Scott Hoag and Ben Stegink (@msclouditpro) present Episode 338 – Wrangle your inbox after vacation
- JeremyhMS announces the public preview of Service Retirement Workbook in Azure Advisor
🎬 Media
- Farrukh Ghaffar talks about Azure Communication Services Virtual Rooms is now Generally Available
- Lola Bryan blogs about Whats new in Windows Holographic, version 23H1
- The Azure Updates Team announces Available: Reduced pricing for Azure Video Indexer
- David Giard (@DavidGiard) and Nikki Conley discuss Video Indexer
🚌 Migration
- The Azure Updates Team announces General Availability: Online migrations for Azure Database for MySQL instances
- Thomas Maurer (@thomasmaurer) talks about Azure Cloud management in the Cloud Adoption Framework
🌐 Networking
- The Azure Updates Team announces the General Availability of: Azure Front Door upgrade from standard to premium, and Azure Front Door Migration from classic to standard/premium and Azure Front Door integration with managed identities
- Jessie Jia announces Azure Front Door Migration Tool General Available
- Eliran Azulai announces Azure Firewall Upgrade/Downgrade General Availability and Azure Firewall Structured Logs General Availability
- The Azure Updates Team writes 'Azure DNS is zero-day resilient with a diverse, multi-stack DNS infrastructure platforms.'
- On the Redmond magazine site, Kurt Mackie (@kurmac) blogs about Azure Firewall Gets Easier Product Upgrades and Structured Logs
- Wired for Hybrid - Deep Dive 3 - Michael Bender (@MichaelBender) and Andrea Michael take a deep dive on Azure Virtual Network Manager
- Travis Roberts (@Ciraltos) explains how to Verify Azure IP Flow with Azure Network Watcher
🔐 Security
- Episode 190 of the Ctrl+Alt+Azure podcast with Tobias Zimmergren Jussi Roine - Let's take Defender for APIs for a spin
- Ryan Hausknecht talks about Detection Engineering in Azure & Introducing AzDetectSuite
- Shilpa Bothra announces a new Purview feature and explains how to Prevent data leak through web apps with Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention
- Paul Bergson, Matt Lopinto, and Brian Delaney walk through Introducing the Microsoft Sentinel Triage Assistant STAT
📦 Storage
- The Azure Updates Team announces the General Availability of Azure Blob Storage SDK for Go and Azure Queue Storage SDK for Go
- The Azure Updates Team announces Public Preview: Azure NetApp Files Availability zone volume placement enhancement – Populate existing volume
🔗 Web
- The Azure Updates Team discusses Public Preview: App Service support for .NET 8
- David San Filippo writes Skip the Sitecore Upgrade, Go Straight to XM Cloud
- Damien Bowden (@damien_bod) explains how to Reset user account passwords using Microsoft Graph and application permissions in ASP.NET Core
- On the Azure Medium blog, Ala Raddaoui talks about Securing Client-Server Communication: Choosing the Right Cipher Suite for Your Web Application and Azure Services
- Pablo Lopes explains How to Easily Make Web Applications with Code-to-Cloud, Getting Apps in the Cloud