Azure Weekly
Issue #503 - 16th February 2025
Starting with Analytics: What are Schemas in the Microsoft Fabric Lakehouse?, and a really useful and detailed Guide to Azure Data Transfer Pricing, and Private ADLS Gen2 access made easy with OneLake Shortcuts: a step-by-step guide.
In Networking and Identity: continuing the fascinating series Private Link reality bites: Azure Firewall app rules and Private Link reality bites: NXDomainRedirect. There's also an interesting post on Entra Private Access, and also Securing API to API calls in Azure with Entra and API Management, and another covering Four Methods to Access Azure Key Vault from Azure Kubernetes Service AKS.
Finally, two interesting AI posts: Empowering AI innovation with Azure AI Foundry and The security benefits of structuring your Azure OpenAI calls – The System Role.
⚙️ AI + Machine Learning
- Sharmila Chockalingam discusses Introducing Stability AI Generative Visual Models to Azure AI Foundry
- Olivia Shone explains how to AI agents at work: The new frontier in business automation
- Herain Oberoi writes Securing DeepSeek and other AI systems with Microsoft Security
- Lo Kinfey (@Ljh8304) decribes how to Use GitHub Copilot Agent Mode to create a Copilot Chat application in 5 minutes and walks through Using Advanced Reasoning Model on EdgeAI Part 2 - Evaluate local models using AITK for VSCode
- Roy Kim (@roykimyyz) covers Permissions with Azure AI Foundry: Safety And Security
- Andrew Ditmer talks about GenAI Search for Retail
- Azadeh Nia describes how to Use generative AI to extract structured data out of emails
- AJ Bajada covers DevOps and AI Series: Managing AI Models
- On the Microsoft Mechanics show, Jeremy Chapman (@deployjeremy) describes How to set up agents and Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat
- Alec Harrison discusses What I Learned About Building a Custom Copilot with Sam Nasr
- Bipul Raman discusses Building an OpenAI powered Recommendation Engine
- Manoranjan Rajguru walks through Fine-Tuning DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-8B with PyTorch FSDP, QLoRA on Azure Machine Learning
- Jhoanna Machado talks about Empowering AI innovation with Azure AI Foundry
- On the Microsoft Mechanics show, Dan Taylor (@qubitron) talks about Using Azure AI Foundry SDK for your AI apps and agents
- On The New Stack, Janakiram Msv provides a Tutorial: Build a RAG Agent With Azure AI Agent Service SDK
- Aasaf Harari discusses The security benefits of structuring your Azure OpenAI calls – The System Role
🔎 Analytics
- Marc Bushong writes Private ADLS Gen2 access made easy with OneLake Shortcuts: a step-by-step guide
- Jakub Szymaszek (@JakubSzymaszek) explains how to Govern your data in SQL database in Microsoft Fabric with protection policies in Microsoft Purview
- Yael Biss asks How can I decide which protection method to use to protect my sensitive data in Fabric?
- On episdoe 10 of the Fabric Down Under show with Greg Low (@greglow) and Minni Walia
- Jovan Popovic (@jocapc) talks about BULK INSERT in Fabric Data Warehouse Preview and about Fabric OPENROWSET function Preview
- Michal Bar writes about New ADX Dashboards Customization Features: More Control, Better Usability, and Improved Performance
- Koen Verbeeck (@Ko_Ver) covers What are Schemas in the Microsoft Fabric Lakehouse?
- Radu Vunvulea (@RaduVunvulea) discusses Cloud Modernization for AI: Data and Workflows Pill 2 of 5 / Cloud Pills
- John Kerski talks about Making Your Power BI Teams More Analytic - Tracking Changes
- Panu Oksala covers Fabric Security: How to Access Private Network Azure Resources
- David Callaghan discusses SAP and Databricks: Better Together
🖥️ Compute
- Andy Jia announces General Availability of Azure Dl/D/E v6 VMs powered by Intel EMR processor & Azure Boost
- The Azure Updates Team announces In preview Generally Available: 6th generation Intel-based VMs - Dv6/Ev6 and In preview Public Preview: Upgrade Existing Azure Gen1 VMs to Gen2-Trusted Launch
- Andy Howard highlights Using Azure CycleCloud with Weka
- Dieter Gobeyn delves into Azure Function Flex Plan Migration – Steps, Benefits, and Practical Tips
- Steven Ekren blogs about Optimizing your Hyper-V hosts
🚢 Containers
- Carlos Mendible (@cmendibl3) walks through Installing kro on AKS with Terraform
- Paolo Salvatori writes about Four Methods to Access Azure Key Vault from Azure Kubernetes Service AKS
- Frank Boucher (@FBoucheros) How I build NoteBookmark using C# and Azure Container App
🗄️ Databases
- The Azure Updates Team announces In preview Public Preview: Virtual Canary Maintenance Program, and In preview Public Preview: Azure SQL Updates for Mid-February 2025 and Launched Generally Available: Azure Database for PostgreSQL pgsignalautovaccumworker role
- The Azure Updates Team announces Launched Generally Available: Discovery of PostgreSQL Installed on Azure Arc-enabled Servers and In preview Public Preview: Modernization Advisor for SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines
- Adam Wołk writes Postgres horizontal scaling with elastic clusters expands to more regions
- Balmukund Lakhani discusses Improving the conversion to Hyperscale with greater efficiency
- Ggauri Kasar describes pg_signal_autovacuum_worker Role for Managing Autovacuum in Azure Database for PostgreSQL
- Kevin Gatimu (@_kevincomba) delves into Adopting Hybrid Search with Azure Cosmos DB
- Tanayankar Chakraborty explains How to skip external data source references while doing export/Restore of an Azure SQL DB
- Daniel Calbimonte writes about SQL Database Project in Azure Data Studio
- Utsav Verma discusses Implementing Vector Datatype with Azure SQL Server
- Josephine Bush walks through Migrating from Azure PG Single Server to Flex with Azure VM and pgdump/restore
🛠️ Developer Tools
- On the Visual Studio blog, Mads Kristensen (@mkristensen) announces Visual Studio 2022 v17.13 is Now Available and the First preview of Visual Studio 2022 v17.14
- On Visual Studio Magazine - Blogs, David Ramel (@dramel) writes about VS Code Copilot Gets Closer to Tab, Tab, Tab Coding and Visual Studio 2022 v17.13 Ships: 'Meet GitHub Copilot Free'
- Tina Schrepfer LI covers VisualStudio.Extensibility: Managing .NET runtime versions
- Sudarsan Lakshminarayanan describes Prototyping Agents with visual tools
- Ryan Molden writes about New restrictions on package loading
- Makena Barickman announces the Release of SSMS 21 Preview 4
- Radu Vunvulea (@RaduVunvulea) discusses GitHub Copilot Saving in IT Projects
🔩 DevOps
- The Azure Updates Team announces Launched Generally Available: Scheduled Load Tests in Azure Load Testing
- John Lokerse explains how to Automate pull request descriptions in Azure DevOps with Azure OpenAI
- Roy Kim (@roykimyyz) provides An Intro For Using Azure Verified Modules With Terraform
- Tao Yang (@MrTaoYang) covers Updated Azure Policy Definition for Storage Account Minimum TLS Version
⚙️ Hybrid + Multicloud
- Kees Hertogh writes Azure for mission-critical workloads in healthcare: EHR and beyond
- Ajith Krishnan discusses PostgreSQL installation identification by Azure Arc-enabled servers
- Richard M. Hicks (@richardhicks) writes about Always On VPN and Entra Conditional Access
🎭 Identity
- Travis Roberts (@Ciraltos) covers Secure Web Access with Entra Internet Access
🔌 Integration
- Parth Shah writes about New & Improved Data Mapper UX in Azure Logic Apps – Now in Public Preview
- Mohammed Barqawi explains how to Collect ETW trace in Logic App Standard
- Pedro Almeida describes how to Download Logic App content for Consumption and Standard Logic App in the Portal, writes about Typical Storage access issues troubleshooting and walks through Running Powershell inline with Az commands- Logic App Standard
- Serena Li explains how to Deploy Logic App Standard with Application Routing Feature Based on Terraform and Azure Pipeline
- Jose Barreto explains the Microsoft Graph Error: Consent not found
📚 Learning
- Vinayak Hegde highlights AI Sparks: AI Toolkit for VS Code - from playground to production
- Liberty Munson writes about New Certification for Microsoft information security administrators
⚖️ Management and Governance
- Sameer Doultani covers Microsoft Cost Management updates—February 2025
- On episode 336 of the Azure DevOps podcast Jeffrey Palermo (@jeffreypalermo) is joined by Matt McCleary to talk about Telemetry & Observability in .NET Aspire
- Ricardo Martins (@ricmmartins) explains How to automatically shut down idle VMs in Azure and talks about Building a cost-effective & resilient Azure Infrastructure
- Bob Mital describes how to Deploy Datadog Agent to AKS clusters with Datadog Azure Native ISV Service
🎬 Media
🌐 Networking
- The Azure Updates Team announces In preview Public Preview: Azure Firewall Updates - BYOIP Support for Secured Virtual Hubs, and Launched Generally Available: Azure Firewall Updates - Increased IP Group Limits and Launched Generally Available: New Pricing for Azure Virtual Network Manager
- Jose Moreno (@erjosito) writes about Private Link reality bites: Azure Firewall app rules and writes about Private Link reality bites: NXDomainRedirect
- Nicolas Bonnet (@nico_bonnet) delves into Entra Private Access
- Cynthia Treger provides A Guide to Azure Data Transfer Pricing
🔐 Security
- Kaustubh Dwivedi walks through Importing AWS Security Hub Findings into Microsoft Sentinel
- Paul Bergson walks through Deploying Microsoft Defender for Identity
- Santosh Pargi walks through End-to-End automation of Onboarding a Virtual Mahine to a Defender for servers.
- On episode 277 of the Ctrl+Alt+Azure podcast, Tobias Zimmergren & Jussi Roine (@CtrlAltAzure) discuss Five things you should start doing for operational security
📦 Storage
- The Azure Updates Team announces Launched Generally Available: Azure Premium SSD v2 Disk Storage Is Now Available in One More Region and Launched Generally Available: The Modern Version of the Azure Storage Data Movement Library
- Praveen Kumar Sreeram (@PrawinSreeram) covers Azure Storage Account – Disaster Recovery: Planned Failover
🔗 Web
- Dan Rios (@danonazure) walks through Securing API to API calls in Azure with Entra and API Management
⚙️ Azure Virtual Desktop
- On episode 395 of the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast, Scott Hoag and Ben Stegink (@ciphertxt, @benstegink) talk about Getting Started with VDI in Azure with Azure Virtual Desktop