Azure Weekly
Issue #44 - 19th September 2015
Azure Media Services has been busy. This week the Media Services team announced the ability to protect video on demand and live streams with Google Widevine. Azure Media Player has been updated to accomodate Widevine protected content. The team also announced support for the Apple ProRes codec and QuickTime .mov files, and the ability to edit live streams, using Azure Media Services Explorer.
Moving on to Web Apps, this week saw the introduction of an open source Node.js SDK for Azure Mobile Apps. There were some improvements to the Web Apps area in the new portal - including the ability to get to Kudu from the Tools menu, a new Networking tile, the ability to delete an app service environment and any resources it contained, and file system storage information.
Over in the world of storage, the Azure SQL Database team announced that the elastic database client library has been open sourced and is available on GitHub. The client library is used to simplify elastic database sharding.
Azure Backup for Azure IaaS VMs has gone into general availability in all regions, with the addition of PowerShell support and improved SLA and monitoring.
On to events, and reminder that the AzureCon virtual event is taking place on 29 September. There will be keynotes from Scott Guthrie, Jason Zander, Bill Staples and T.K Rengarajan. On the subject of events, the videos from Ignite New Zealand at the start of September are available on Channel 9.
Finally, The Azure Machine Learning team announced a free online course - Data Science & Machine Learning Essentials. The 5 week course starts on September 24th 2015.
⚖️ Management and Governance
On MSDN, Charbel Nemnom writes 'why Windows Server Containers and why you need to look at Containers hands on'
- Also on MSDN, Thomas W Shinder talks about securing Remote Access to Azure Virtual Machines over the Internet
- Also on MSDN, Prasad Kerhalkar talks about accessing VM extensions like Chef using Azure sdk for Java programmatically
- Also on MSDN, Brian Farnhill describes cross server DSC dependency options with Azure Resource Manager templates
On TechNet's official Azure Key Vault Team blog, Dan Plastina describes the latest SQL Server Connector Update, with bug fixes, improvements in diagnostic event logging and better resiliency for transient failures
Also on TechNet, Brandon Wilson blogs about scheduling Start and Stop Times for Azure VMs
Also on TechNet, Kevin Remde has posted videos demonstrating deploying a Multi-VM App with a Virtual Network and Load Balancer in Azure Resource Manager, displaying Information about a Virtual Machine in Microsoft Azure with PowerShell, and removing a Resource Group in Azure.
- Clemens Reijnen (@ClemensReijnen) blogs about image / Subscription management for you Dev/Test Lab Environments
On the Database Journal site, Marcin Policht explains how to set up automated Patching of SQL Server IaaS VMs
🖥️ Compute
On the .NET Curry blog, Kunal Chandratre talks about hosting multi ADFS configured ASP.NET MVC Websites in Azure WebApps and Cloud Service Roles, using the new portal
On the Microsoft Cyber Trust blog, Tim Rains, Chief Security Adviser, Microsoft Worldwide Cybersecurity & Data Protection discusses how data in Azure Cloud Services can be encrypted at rest.
On MSDN, Leonardo Villar writes about Cloud Services roles recycling with the error System.IO.FileLoadException: Could not load file or assembly
Also on MSDN, Lee Stott asks why not host your own Minecraft server on Microsoft Azure for £1.50 per month?
On TechNet, the Microsoft Private Cloud Solutions Team writes about work that has taken place to allow the pre-validatation of Microsoft CPS for FedRAMP Compliance
Marius Sandbu (@msandbu) shares his thoughts on what is Microsoft Azure IaaS missing at this point?
🌐 Networking
On TechNet, Diane Golshan discusses Azure ExpressRoute
- Also on TechNet, 'Satyavel ' explains how to find out if your servers are talking to a Malicious IP address with Operations Management Suite
On the WindowsITPro site, John Savill (@NTFAQGuy) explains how to ensure only desired endpoints are open in Azure
💡 Internet of Things
On the Xamarin blog, Steven Yi announces a joint webinar on developing mobile apps with Xamarin and Azure, with Kirill Gavrylyuk from Microsoft’s Azure App Services team, on September 23
Jon Fowler talks about using Azure API Management to secure a Web API hosted as an Azure Web App using client certificates
On MSDN, Henrik F Nielsen blogs about integrating with Slack using ASP.NET WebHooks Preview
Also on MSDN, Lee Stott writes about Continuous Integration and testing using Visual Studio Online and provides an example of Continuous Integration with GitHub and WebSite Deployment
Also on MSDN, 'Gouthamu' shares some Azure Web Apps Best Practices
⚙️ Data and Analytics
Jennifer Marsman delves into choosing an Azure Machine Learning Algorithm and explains how to win a hackathon using Azure Machine Learning
Steve Guggenheimer describes how technologies such as Azure Machine Learning can set us on the road to self-driving business applications
Dipanjan Banik discusses refreshing reference data with Azure Data Factory for Azure Stream Analytics Jobs
Martina White writes about moving Your SQL Databases to Azure - Things to Know
On TechNet, Amy Kate Nicholson writes about the Current Level of #ReasonsTo Happiness - an example of Azure Machine Learning sentiment analysis for the #ReasonsTo hashtag
Also on TechNet, Lisa Liu describes a workaround to the user is not authorized to access this workspace error sometimes experienced for Azure Machine Learning
Also on TechNet, Christopher T Stone writes about modeling the AdventureWorks Inventory Database for Azure Search and multilevel Taxonomy Facets in Azure Search
📦 Storage
On TechNet, Blain Barton shares a video series on backing up your Windows 10 client to Microsoft Azure
🎬 Media
On the Venture Beat site, Jordan Novet covers the general availability of Azure Live Encoding
⚙️ Hybrid Integration
This week's Azure podcast features Charles Joy, a Senior PM from the Azure Stack team
Radu Vunvulea blogs about the newly introduced Azure Service Bus Premium
⚙️ Identity and Access Management
On MSDN, Shawn Cicoria talks about using Multiple Devices for 2-step verification (such as Azure Authentication) to save time
On TechNet, Mark O'Shea writes part 2 of his series on the Windows Server Essentials 2016 technical preview, covering online services integration including integration with Azure Active Directory
On the Unity site, Toni Pohl explains how to Change the Default Directory for an Existing Azure Subscription
On the WindowsITPro site, John Savill (@NTFAQGuy) covers dealing with an expired credential complaint when using Add-AzureAccount, describes how to quickly see all storage keys for Azure Storage accounts and how to interact with Azure AD without using Online Service SignIn assistant, and discusses handling passwords with Azure Automation service accounts