Azure Weekly
Issue #51 - 7th November 2015
To celebrate Azure Weekly's 1st anniversary next week, we're giving away 5 Windows IoT Raspberry Pi 2 starter kits. If you're reading this newsletter, you're already entered into the prize draw. Winners will be announced in issue 52.
This week's big news that Azure Data Lake Analytics and Azure Data Lake Store are now in public preview. Guides to Creating big data pipelines using Azure Data Lake and Azure Data Factory and using U-SQL, the C# extensible query language for Azure Data Lake Analytics, are available on the Azure blog.
A new Azure DSCForLinux VM Extension has been released. The extension lets you manage the configuration of your Linux VMs through DSC.
Azure Resource health, a service that exposes the health of individual Azure resources and provides troubleshooting assistance, has been released in preview.
Application Insights is undergoing a refactor aimed at performance, reliability and data scalability improvements, and some temporary limitations on its use are now in place while data is moved to support the changes.
Finally, for gaming fans, the Azure blog describes how Halo 5 implemented social gameplay using Azure DocumentDB.
⚖️ Management and Governance
On the Azure blog, the Dev-Test starts with IT series continues with a post on creating simple, cloud-only dev-test configurations using Resource Manager templates
Also on the Azure blog, Rahul Bagaria talks about Application Insights - Temporary limitations and performance improvements, explaining about limitations imposed from 28 Oct while the service is refactored
Scott Zhang announces the Azure DSCForLinux Extension
Bernardo Muoz announces the preview of Azure Resource health
The Azure podcast celebrate reaching episode 100.
On Channel 9, there's an Early look at containers in Windows Server, Hyper-V and Azure with Mark Russinovich
On MSDN, Powershell Team confirms that the Azure DSC Extension - Versions 1.0-2.3 - is no longer available
On TechNet, Microsoft Server And Cloud Platform Team write part 6 of their Microsoft and Linux deep dive, with a Linux and UNIX Systems Management Overview
Also on TechNet, Sharon Bennett writes a Step-By-Step: Deploying Multiple Services via Azure Resource Manager
🖥️ Compute
On MSDN, Koushik Biswas writes MySQL performance benchmark on Azure Linux: OS disk (ext4) vs RAID 0 array (xfs) and describes how to Set up a MySQL IaaS NDB cluster with 4 nodes on Azure Linux
Also on MSDN, Wriju Ghosh writes that Cloud Services is now Available in Azure Preview Portal
Also on TechNet, on TechNet Radio, part 7 of the to the Cloud Series covers Server Manager in Windows Server 2012 R2 and Azure RemoteApp
Also on TechNet, Anthony Bartolo writes 'Understanding Microsoft Azure Marketplace'
On Brisbane Cloud User Group blog, Aaron Whittaker discusses Microsoft Azure Cloud Security, Compliance and Transparency
On the Microsoft Openness site, Mark Hill writes that Microsoft Azure is hiring open source skills
On TechNet, Sql Server Team talks about Azure Key Vault Integration for SQL Server in Azure VMs
🌐 Networking
- On TechNet, Victor Arzate talks about Creating and Connecting an ExpressRoute Circuit with Azure Resource Manager
On the TechKB blog, Mike Coutanche describes how to Test Network Speed and Latency to Azure
💡 Internet of Things
On the Falafel blog, Adam Anderson writes part 2 of his series on Azure Mobile Apps, covering Writing a Fast Custom DomainManager,
On MSDN, David Staheli announces a preview of the Visual Studio Team Foundation Plugin for IntelliJ
Also on MSDN, Glenn Gailey blogs about Updates to the My Cordova Push Sample and a new Cordova Push Plugin
On TechNet, 'the Scripting Guys' blog about Using PowerShell to Scale Azure Websites
Also on Channel 9, Greg Duncan writes about Using Visual Studio Code as an Arduino IDE
On Code Project, Sacha Barber writes Azure : Event Hub A First Look and discusses Transient Exception Handling for cloud applications
Also on Code Project, 'Joaosousa23' describes How to Publish ASP.NET MVC Web Application to Azure using the Publish Wizard in Visual Studio
⚙️ Data and Analytics
On the Azure blog, Oliver Chiu announces that Azure Data Lake is in Public Preview and blogs about U-SQL, the new big data language for Azure Data Lake
- Also on the Azure blog, Gaurav Malhotra walks through Creating big data pipelines using Azure Data Lake and Azure Data Factory
- Also on the Azure blog, Aravind Ramachandran describes How Halo 5 implemented social gameplay using Azure DocumentDB
On Channel 9, Chris Risner, Mustafa Kasap and Torsten Grabs talk about Elastic Azure SQL Databases in episode of 190 of the Cloud Cover Show
On MSDN, 'Brimit' writes an End-to-End Data Processing using Azure Data Factory Overview, and writes part 2 their Event Hubs / Stream Analytics / AzureML / PowerBI End-to-End demo, covering Real-time Prediction
Also on MSDN, Jack Richins shares a Reminder to Update Your SQL Server Key Vault Connector
Also on MSDN, Mustafa Kasap discusses Machine Learning and R
Also on MSDN, the Visual Studio engineering team describe Writing and Using user defined functions in U-SQL
Also on MSDN, Joseph Idziorek writes about how to Query Azure SQL DB from Mac OS X
Also on MSDN, 'Jydevant.msft' writes that Transactional Replication to Azure SQL DB is now in public preview.
On the Kloud blog, Simon Waight writes about Azure Security Fundamentals for Azure SQL Database
On TechNet, Tom S writes about Excel Online - Refreshing Data to a SQL Azure Database
Also on TechNet, the Azure ML Blog Team write that Microsoft expands availability of Project Oxford intelligent services, shares materials from a Cortana Analytics Workshop, and writes about the Microsoft Information Management & Machine Learning (IMML) team's presence at the Grace Hopper Conference, Houston and Announcements from the PASS Summit
Also on TechNet, Andrew Fryer explains why not to leave Azure SQL Data Warehouse running
Also on TechNet, Sql Server Team announces SQL Server 2016 CTP 3.0 and Azure Data Lake
On the Microsoft Openness site, Openness Team writes about More resources for deploying HDInsight on Linux
📦 Storage
On MSDN, Dimitri Furman describes a workaround for database restore failure when restoring from URL
On Code Project, Sacha Barber describes how to upload and stream video content to WPF from blob storage
Also on Code Project, 'Rahulsahay20' writes about Getting Live Data from Twitter and Storing it in Azure Blob Storage using Azure Logic Apps
On the TechKB blog, Mike Coutanche writes about Installing Microsoft Azure Backup
🎬 Media
None this week.
⚙️ Hybrid Integration
On MSDN, Hema Senthilkumar writes a primer on Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS)
On Channel 9, Rick, Joe Levy, and Jeffrey Snover discuss new features of Azure Automation, as part of the Microsoft Operations Management Suite
⚙️ Identity and Access Management
On MSDN, Neil Mackenzie (@mknz) talks about Service Principal Authn/Authz for Azure PowerShell and Using Azure Policy to Deny or Audit Management Operations
Also on MSDN, Wriju Ghosh explains how to Delete an Azure Active Directory
On TechNet, 'Meirm' shares a link to a paper: 'The complete guide for troubleshooting Azure AD Application Proxy' and writes that Unattended installation of the Azure AD Application Proxy connector is now possible
Also on TechNet, Alex Simons writes that Azure AD Domain Services preview is now available in Europe
Also on TechNet, The Scripting Guys share a tip on how to use PowerShell to List all Azure Subscription Websites
On the Windows IT Pro site, John Savill (@NTFAQGuy) writes Understanding Azure AD Domain Services, Can trusts be created between Azure AD Domain Services and normal AD domains, Are password hashes required for Azure AD Domain Services authentication?, Can a custom OU structure be created in Azure AD Domain Services? and Understanding Azure B2C