Azure Weekly
Issue #46 - 3rd October 2015
This week, Microsoft and DataStax announced their collaboration to create DataStax Enterprise on Azure. DataStax Enterprise is Big Data platform, built on the Apache Cassandra distributed database.
There was also news for Azure's HDInsight, DocumentDB and SQL Database services. The big data team are offering a week's free HDInsight trial. DocumentDB has introduced new storage metrics available thorugh the preview portal or Application Insights: data size, index size, storage capacity and available capacity. Scott Guthrie announced some changes to the pricing structure for Elastic Database Pools, including the end of the per-database fee.
In response to requests for access to AzCopy, Azure have released a new open source Azure Storage Data Movement Library, based on a core component of AzCopy.
There have been some updates to Azure Mobile Apps Server SDK, introducing support for Azure Table Storage, and some breaking changes around OWIN setup, authentication middleware setup, database schema setup and requesting system properties.
There have been several recent updates to the preview portal, and a 'Performance Buckets' feature has been added to Application Insights, allowing you to see a breakdown of responses by time brackets.
The virtual Azure conference AzureCon is taking place from 9am (PDT)/ 12pm (ET)/ 5pm (GMT) on Tuesday 29 September. There will be an accompanying 'AzureCon Challenge' with prizes of subscriptions & hardware.
⚖️ Management and Governance
- On MSDN, 'Gpillai' covers Increasing CORE quota limits in Azure
Also on MSDN, 'Brimit' discusses Protecting Sensitive Data with Azure Key Vault
On the WindowsITPro site, John Savill (@NTFAQGuy) answers the question Is there anything to help author and test Azure Automations on my local machine
The Powershell Team announced the release of the Azure DSC Extension v2.6
- On Channel 9, Rickstercdn Ahmet Alp Balkan describes Docker Swarm Clusters on Azure
On the Daily Dot Net Tips blog, Abhijit Jana shares how to easily recognize the Type of your Application Insights inside Azure Portal
🖥️ Compute
On the Azure podcast, episode 95 deals with Azure Service Fabric
- On MSDN, Service Fabric Team writes about Stateful Services: A New Paradigm
Also on MSDN, Adarsha Datta (@AdarshaDatta) shares his experience of Migrating from AWS to Azure
On TechNet, there are case studies of Rejjee, a start up which helps recover stolen bikes using Microsoft Cloud Services and the Pikura app
There are two more case studies on Channel 9's Tuesdays with Corey, which features an interview with Ben Hindman, co-founder of Mesosphere and Eli Collins, CTO of Cloudera
On the WindowsITPro site, John Savill (@NTFAQGuy) answers the question how do I stop accidental Azure resource deletion?
🌐 Networking
On the TechKB blog, Mike Coutanche writes about Changing an Azure Virtual Network connection from site-to-site VPN to ExpressRoute
On the Insider Technologies blog, Silvio Di Benedetto talks about Balancing Azure Traffic with Kemp LoadMaster
💡 Internet of Things
On MSDN, Yi Wang describes how to use a MySQL persistent database connection for WordPress on an Azure App
⚙️ Data and Analytics
- On the endjin blog, Alice Waddicor (@AliceWaddicor) writes about Azure Machine Learning - experimenting with training data proportions using the SMOTE module
On MSDN, Brian Raymer discuss how an international customer can ingest millions of events per hour in 'Big Data on Azure: A Real-World Implementation Using Cortana Analytics'
Also on MSDN, Kolli Kiran explains about loading partitions for HIVE external tables
On TechNet, the Azure Machine Learning Team explain How to Find an Algorithm that Fits, shares a case study of how Cortana Analytics Suite Helps Diebold Predict ATM Failures, promotes a Free Webinar: Using Jupyter/IPython Notebooks in Azure ML and blogs about Data Exploration with Azure ML
📦 Storage
On MSDN, Windows Azure Storage introduces the Azure Storage Data Movement Library Preview
On TechNet, J.C. Hornbeck describes an issue where a VM that Azure Site Recovery helps protect goes into a resynchronization state
On the WindowsITPro site, John Savill (@NTFAQGuy) answers the question What are the maximum number of Recovery Points for Azure Backup?
Yung Chou (@yungchou) describes Moving Data In, Out and Between Azure Storage Accounts Using AzCopy
🎬 Media
None this week
⚙️ Hybrid Integration
On Computing.co.uk, John Leonard covers the news of DataStax on Azure, in 'Microsoft Azure - DataStax partnership focuses on hybrid cloud and IoT applications'
On PowerShell Magazine, Ben Gelens writes part 4 of his series 'Journey to a Windows Azure Pack VM', the DSC resource
⚙️ Identity and Access Management
On the Perficient blog, Michael Toole introduces Azure Application Proxy for Web Applications
On TechNet, Robert Mitchell shares a tip to set password policies for AAD user accounts
Also on TechNet, Mark Oshea writes part 1 and part 2 of a series on Windows 10, covering Azure Active Directory Join and Microsoft Intune Enrolment
Also on TechNet, Adrian Moore discusses Configuring Azure Active Directory Connect with an Exchange Resource Forest Topology