Azure Weekly
Issue #43 - 12th September 2015
This week, cloud technologists the world over shared a cautionary tale told by a South African developer who got a huge AWS bill as a result of a bug in the GitHub Extension for Visual Studio 2015. The bug made a repo which should have been private public. Scary stuff. Within minutes, nefarious Bitcoin miners who scan GitHub for AWS credentials had begun to exploit his account, eventually generating a bill of $6,500.
The story highlights the need to store configuration details outside of source control, preferably in a secure store such as Azure Key Vault.
Back in the world of Azure, there were a number of announcements this week.
The GS-Series VM has arrived, combining G-Series compute power with Premium Storage. The largest GS has 32 cores and 448 GB memory, up to 80,000 disk IOPS and 2,000 MB disk bandwidth per second, alongside 6.59 TB of local SSD-based storage. There are also price cuts to D-Series and DS-Series machines.
The compute team also announced new boot diagnostics features - console output and screenshot support.
Azure Service Bus Premium Messaging was introduced. Premium Messaging is intended to offer greater predicability and performance, using reserved processing and memory per Service Bus messaging namespace. The premium service is charged at a flat daily rate per Messaging Unit.
There were updates to the Azure WebJobs SDK, providing more extension triggers and binders and a Singleton feature for restricting the number of instances running a particular job function to one.
DocumentDB was also moving this week, with general availability in Australia, and better LINQ support.
Microsoft have created some architectural patterns & practices blueprints for Azure that are well worth taking a look at.
Aaron Lightle has written a useful post sharing the learning materials he used to pass Exam 70-534: Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions.
For people coming back from holiday who may have missed the announcement over the last few weeks; Microsoft is holding a free, virtual, 1-day AzureCon on September 29th.
⚖️ Management and Governance
Thomas Shinder provides an interesting insight to security logging and analysis options in Azure
Alexandre Brisebois (@Brisebois) describes some tests he performed on disk UUIDs and Linux on Azure, explains how to create a simple CentOS Virtual Machine using Azure Resource Manager and digs into a bit more detail on provisioning a Data Disk on a CentOS Virtual Machine on Azure
On the MSDN blogs, Ben Armstrong looks at Windows Container Resources, DSC and VMM Templates
On TechNet, Kevin Remde shares a number of videos: log onto a Azure VM running Windows Server, deploy a Windows Virtual Machine with Azure Resource Manager Templates and PowerShell and create a Custom Virtual Machine Image in Azure Resource Manager with PowerShell
On the Daily Dot Net Tips blog, Abhijit Jana describes how to disable the Application Insights while in Debug mode
The Powershell Team anounces the release of the Azure DSC Extension v2.4
Rik Hepworth continues his complex Azure Template Odyssey with three posts on creating; Domain Controller, ADFS Server and WAP Server
Continuing his series on Dev/Test Lab Management in the Cloud, Clemens Reijnen (@ClemensReijnen) covers versioning
On MSDN, Greg Oliver covers developing DSC scripts for the Azure Resource Manager DSC Extension
🖥️ Compute
Cameron Fuller kicks the tires on Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 3 using an All-In-One OpsMgr virtual machine in Azure IaaS
On the WindowsITPro site, John Savill (@NTFAQGuy) explains why some resources in Azure say "classic"
🌐 Networking
On TechNet, Meir Mendelovich provides details on a new troubleshooting tool which validates connector networking prerequisites for Azure Active Directory
💡 Internet of Things
On the New Relic blog, Nick Floyd takes an inside look at Microsoft Azure WebJobs
Felix Rieseberg (@felixrieseberg) explains how to use Travis to Deploy Apps to Azure
On MSDN, Student Developer Evangelism Team covers using Continuous Integration with Azure & GitHub
Lee Stott describes how to use your DreamSpark Azure accounts with GitHub to build a Node.js application which uses Azure Mobile Services
Sarah Jeanne Sexton covers building Your First Node.js App and Publishing to Azure
Joe Healy has written two video tutorials on creating a blog using Azure Web Apps and the Azure Gallery covering the BlogEngine.NET and WordPress platforms
Sara Silva (@saramgsilva) explains how to try Web Apps and Mobile Apps for Free
⚙️ Data and Analytics
Andrew Fryer has written a great article that clarifies the difference between Cortana the digital assistant and the Cortana Analytics Suite
The Power BI Team announce the Best Visual Contest - a $9,000 prize fund for amazing new Power Bi Visuals
The Machine Learning Team have posted to articles; the first announces a new free Excel Addin for Azure ML, the second explains which algorithm family can answer my question
On MSDN, 'Gouthamu' delives into the differences between traditional RDBMS and Hadoop
Also on MSDN, 'Saw1234' has created a useful little flowchart to help you answer the question what type of SQL on Azure is right for me?
Radu Vunvulea explains how to improve restoring time of BACPAC during load tests on SQL Azure, while on TechNet, Robert Mitchell provides two SQL Tip of the Day; how to Import and Export with SQL Azure v12 and how to ensure business continuity during a SQL Azure Outage
📦 Storage
The Azure Storage Team highlight an issue in Azure Storage Client Library 5.0.0 and 5.0.1 preview where the CloudAppendBlob.AppendTextAsync() method may override, rather than append content
Radu Vunvulea explores the recently announced Azure Storage Client Side Encryption
On MSDN, Nitin covers the situaiton where a virtual machine protected using Azure Site Recovery keeps on going to Resynchronization State randomly and then ReSynch will also fail
🎬 Media
- None this week
⚙️ Hybrid Integration
On MSDN, Dan Rosanova (@DanRosanova) writes about the Service Bus Premium Messaging Public Preview, while on On Channel 9, Clemens Vasters provides an introduction to the service
Radu Vunvulea describes how to extend the lock of a message using RenewLock in Service Bus
On PowerShell Magazine, in the final part in his series "Journey to a Windows Azure Pack VM Role DSC Resource", Ben Gelens takes a look inside the module
⚙️ Identity and Access Management
On MSDN, Vittorio Bertocci provides a very useful Azure AD Permissions summary table
The Machine Learning Team provides a walkthrough showing how to log on To Azure Machine Learning with Your Work Or School Account