Azure Weekly
Issue #507 - 16th March 2025
Welcome to Issue 507 of the Azure Weekly Newsletter. In Data & Analytics; there are a number of Fabric related announcements: Optimize Delta Tables with VACUUM in Microsoft Fabric, and Microsoft Fabric RTI:Dataflow and Eventhouse integration, and Operationalize fabric-cicd to work with Microsoft Fabric and Azure DevOps, and Real-Time Intelligence in Microsoft Fabric. There are also some SQL related news: Introducing mssql-python alpha, and The Microsoft.Build.Sql project SDK is now generally available.
In infrastructure: Easily add login to your Azure app with Bicep, and Application Gateway for Containers: a not-so-gentle intro 2, and Application Gateway for Containers: a not-so-gentle intro 3.
Finally, two other articles of note: Building AI Agents on edge devices using Ollama + Phi-4-mini Function Calling, and What's new in FinOps toolkit 0.8 – February 2025.
⚙️ AI + Machine Learning
- On the Azure blog, Steve Sweetman announces the Responses API and Computer-Using Agent in Azure AI Foundry
- Nitya Narasimhan blogs about Introducing Model Mondays - Build Your AI Model IQ With This Weekly Hands-on Series
- Kirk Koenigsbauer talks about Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat – Copilot for all your employees
- On Visual Studio Magazine - Blogs, David Ramel (@dramel) discusses Azure AI Foundry Gets 'Computer-Using Agent' for Autonomous GUI Interaction
- On the Azure Developer Community Blog, Lee Stott explains how to Join the ONNX Generative AI Runtime teams for a discussion on the newest releases
- Joseph Jude blogs about GenAI & Agentic AI: Insights from Industry Reports on Enterprise Adoption
- Gana Chandrasekaran discusses Project Maria: Bringing Speech and Avatars Together for Next-Generation Customer Experiences
- On the Intrazone Podcast, Mark Kashman is joined by Laura Rogers and Noorez Khamis to talk about Deep learning
- Tao Chen discusses The Future of AI: Customizing AI agents with the Semantic Kernel agent framework
- Wassim Chegham explains how to Speed Up OpenAI Embedding By 4x With This Simple Trick
- On the Microsoft Mechanics show, Yina Arenas introduces Azure AI Foundry
- Shivam Goyal covers AI Agents: Exploring Agentic Frameworks - Part 2
- Lo Kinfey (@Ljh8304) writes about Building AI Agents on edge devices using Ollama + Phi-4-mini Function Calling
- On episode 397 of the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast, Scott Hoag (@ciphertxt) and Ben Stegink (@benstegink) discuss Local LLMs: Why Every Microsoft 365 & Azure Pro Should Explore Them
- Theophilus Lincoln (@lincolnowiti) explains How to build Tool-calling Agents with Azure OpenAI and Lang Graph
- Matt Gotteiner covers RAG Time Journey 2: Data ingestion and search practices for the ultimate RAG retrieval system
🔎 Analytics
- On Microsoft Fabric Blog, Estera Kot discusses Fabric Espresso – Episodes about Data Integration and Data Engineering in Microsoft Fabric
- David Callaghan explains How Automatic Liquid Clustering Supports Databricks FinOps at Scale
- James Serra (@JamesSerra) provides an overview of Real-Time Intelligence in Microsoft Fabric
- Kenneth A. Omorodion explains how to Optimize Delta Tables with VACUUM in Microsoft Fabric
- Sander van de Velde (@svelde) discusses Microsoft Fabric RTI:Dataflow and Eventhouse integration
- Jeet Kainth describes Data Factory pipeline failure with a null error message
- John Miner covers Data Streaming Databricks in Azure
🖥️ Compute
- Fernando Aznar Cornejo describes Experience Next-Gen HPC Innovation: AMD Lab Empowers Try Before You Buy on Azure
- Mark Kilimov describes CPU oversubscription and new CPU jitter counters in Windows Server 2025
- Michael Hildebrand writes about Quick Wins - Custom Images for Windows 365
🚢 Containers
- The Azure Updates Team announces Launched Generally Available: Azure Container Apps in Australia SE, France South, Japan West, and Spain Central, and In preview Public Preview: Azure Linux 3.0 Support in AKS, and In preview Public Preview: Windows Support for Virtual Machines Node Pools in AKS, and Launched Generally Available: Node Auto-Repair Kubernetes Events in AKS, and Launched Generally Available: Message of the Day Support in AKS and In preview Public Preview: Control Plane Azure Platform Metrics in AKS
- Thiyagu Selvaraj writes Here's How To Connect an Azure Kubernetes Cluster Using Kubectl
- croffz explains how to Capture a JVM heap dump for Java apps running on Azure Container Apps
- Pratik Sharma writes about Istio Service Mesh Observability in AKS
- Wassim Chegham (@manekinekko) discusses Unlocking the Power of Azure Container Apps in 1 Minute Video
- Aritra Ghosh blogs about Azure Platform Metrics for AKS Control Plane Monitoring
🗄️ Databases
- Sai Kondapalli announces Azure Database for MySQL triggers for Azure Functions Public Preview
- The Azure Updates Team explains how to Launched Generally Available: Azure Database for PostgreSQL – Flexible Server Supports the tdigest Extension, and Launched Generally Available: Azure Database for PostgreSQL Supports pgrepack Extension Version 1.5.1, and Launched Generally Available: Azure Database for PostgreSQL Supports postgresql-hll Extension, and Launched Generally Available: Azure Database for PostgreSQL Support for Topn Extension, and Launched Generally Available: Azure Database for PostgreSQL Support for New Zealand North Region, and Launched Generally Available: Autoscale for vCore-Based Azure Cosmos DB on MongoDB, and Launched Generally Available: Entry-Level Tiers M10/M20 with vCore-Based Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB, and Launched Generally Available: Enhanced Performance Guidance in Azure Advisor for Azure Database for PostgreSQL and Launched Generally Available: Azure Data Factory – Azure Database for PostgreSQL Connector Version 2.0
- Abe Omorogbe explains how to Build AI Agents with Azure Database for PostgreSQL and Azure AI Agent Service
- Kunal Rathi explains how to Deploy DACPAC to Azure SQL Database using Visual Studio
- Jose M Jurado (@jmjuradodiaz) describes Lesson Learned 519: Reusing Connections in Azure SQL DB: How Connection Pooling Caches Your Session
- Perry Skountrianos discusses Introducing mssql-python alpha
🛠️ Developer Tools
- Simona Liao highlights GPT-4o Copilot code completion model available now in Visual Studio public preview
- Makena Barickman announces the release of SSMS 21 Preview 5
- On Visual Studio Magazine - Blogs, David Ramel (@dramel) talks about Microsoft Previews GPT-4o Copilot Code Completion and .NET AI Template in Visual Studio
- Junyu Wang explains how to Make more sense of multithreaded debugging
- Drew Skwiers-Koballa announces The Microsoft.Build.Sql project SDK is now generally available
- Ji Dong discusses Enhancing Infrastructure as Code Generation with GitHub Copilot for Azure
- On the Visual Studio blog, Nayana Srikanth writes about the New, Simpler Solution File Format
- Ricardo Martins (@ricmmartins) blogs about Getting started with Azure Developer CLI azd
🔩 DevOps
- Karol Pieciukiewicz discusses Azure Managed DevOps Pool – Agent Scheduling with Terraform
- Kevin Chant (@kevchant) explains how to Operationalize fabric-cicd to work with Microsoft Fabric and Azure DevOps
- The Azure Updates Team announce Launched Generally Available: Azure Chaos Studio Now in Germany West Central Region and Launched Generally Available: Azure Site Recovery Update Rollup 77 – March 2025
⚙️ Hybrid + Multicloud
- Dr. Danimir Ljepava writes about Seamless end-to-end SQL Server migration to Azure with Azure Arc
- Alex Sidorov describes Migrating to Entra Cloud Sync in a hybrid environment Cloud Sync and Connect Sync coexistence
🎭 Identity
- Pamela Fox shows how to Easily add login to your Azure app with Bicep
- Irfan47 writes about Modern Authentication Oauth/OIDC
- Shobhit Sahay introduces Microsoft Entra Health alerts: An enhancement to tenant health monitoring
- Tiffiany Law writes Continuing with Microsoft Entra: Advanced Identity Management
- Jonas Ohmsen explains How-To Sync EntraID Group Memberships Into Any System
🔌 Integration
- Omar Abu Arisheh describes how to Access Logic Apps / App Services Site Files with FTPS using Logic Apps
💡 Internet of Things
- On The New Stack, Chris Brown blogs about Kubernetes Fleets: Beyond the IoT Edge
- Justine Coates (@iotgirl) writes about Geocoding and Reverse Geocoding in Modern GIS
📚 Learning
- Jeana Jorgensen announces the Microsoft AI Skills Fest: Save the date
- On the Azure blog, Jeremy Winter says Microsoft named a leader in The Forrester Wave: Public Cloud Platforms, 2024
- On episode 340 of the Azure DevOps podcast, Jeffrey Palermo (@jeffreypalermo) is joined by Daniel Roth to discuss .NET 10 Preview 1
- On the Visual Studio blog, Jim Harrer discusses Unlock Free Access to Cloud Academy: A New Benefit for Visual Studio Subscribers
⚖️ Management and Governance
- On the Azure blog, Sameer Doultani discusses Microsoft Cost Management updates—March 2025
- The Azure Updates Team announces Support for Application Insights Status Monitor v1 will End on March 31, 2025
- Michael Flanakin covers What's new in FinOps toolkit 0.8 – February 2025
- Mahesh Sundaram talks about Azure Monitor Network Security Perimeter - Features available in 56 Public Cloud Regions
- Stanislav Zhelyazkov (@StanZhelyazkov) writes about Monitoring canceled Azure Subscriptions
- Dirk Brinkmann talks about Microsoft Cost Management: Billing & trust relationships explained
🚌 Migration
- The Azure Updates Team announces In preview Public Preview: MySQL Discovery and Assessment in Azure Migrate
🌐 Networking
- The Azure Updates Team announces Launched Generally Available: Azure Virtual Network Manager Network Verifier and Launched Generally Available: API Management as a Private Link-Enabled Origin for Front Door Premium
- Jose Moreno (@erjosito) delves into Application Gateway for Containers: a not-so-gentle intro part 2 and part 3
- Richard M. Hicks (@richardhicks) writes about Always On VPN Load Balancing with Loadbalancer.org
🔐 Security
- Heike Ritter writes about Microsoft Defender XDR Monthly news - March 2025
- Tim Addison explains how to Improve your DLP maturity with DLP Analytics
- Xinye Tang blogs about Advancing Security Copilot with MAGIC: Automating Self-Correction in NL2KQL and Beyond
- On episode 281 of the Ctrl+Alt+Azure podcast, Tobias Zimmergren & Jussi Roine (@CtrlAltAzure) talk about Securing Microsoft Entra
- Eric Lawrence covers Authenticode in 2025 – Azure Trusted Signing
- Pratibha Shenoy walks through Storing Azure Function Keys in Key Vault Using User Assigned Managed Identity
📦 Storage
- The Azure Updates Team explains how to Launched Generally Available: Default Ephemeral OS Disk Sizing in AKS
- Achraf Ben Alaya provides a Step-by-Step Guide: Azure Front Door + Storage Account Static Website + Custom Domain with Terraform
- Travis Roberts (@Ciraltos) blogs about Azure Storage Explained: Blob, File, and Disk – Choosing the Right Option
🔗 Web
- Abhishek Reddy walks through Transitioning from Non-managed to Managed WordPress on App Service Linux
- Denver Brittain blogs about Getting Started with Linux WebJobs on App Service
- Hieun Hu shows how to Use Azure OpenAI and APIM with the OpenAI Agents SDK
- Poojitha walks through Enhancing API Security: Implementing OAuth 2.0 with PKCE in API Management
- Ringe Chen writes Superfast using Web App and Managed Identity to invoke Function App triggers
⚙️ Azure Virtual Desktop
- Hilary Braun discusses Windows App to replace Remote Desktop app for Windows