Azure Weekly
Issue #517 - 1st June 2025
A post-BUILD edition filled with a number of in-depth articles! In AI: The future of AI agents—and why OAuth must evolve, a really good explainer - A visual introduction to vector embeddings, a demo (with code available) about Building Intelligent Data Agents: Unleashing NL2SQL with Semantic Kernel, and a complete example (also with code available) - Introducing Azure AI Travel Agents: A Flagship MCP-Powered Sample for AI Travel Solutions.
Other articles of note: Throughput Testing at Scale for Azure Functions, and Using Azure Service Groups in an Enterprise-Scale Landing Zone, a useful guide to Understanding Idle Usage in Azure Container Apps, and a useful clarification on .NET Aspire & Dapr: What are they and how they complement each other when building distributed applications.
⚙️ AI + Machine Learning
- On the Azure blog, Cyril Belikoff writes about New AI innovations that are redefining the future for software companies
- Bill Wilder (@codingoutloud) covers GitHub Copilot Agent Mode for the Win: I added a new Tool to MCP Server with Single Prompt
- Pamela Fox provides A visual introduction to vector embeddings
- Farzad Sunavala describes Introducing Multi-Vector and Scoring Profile integration with Semantic Ranking in Azure AI Search
- Betsy Linares talks about Empowering Secure AI Innovation: Data Security and Compliance for AI Agents
- Vikas Pandey walks through Building Intelligent Data Agents: Unleashing NL2SQL with Semantic Kernel
- Kenelle Moore walks through Exciting News for Nonprofits: Enhanced Security with Microsoft Enterprise E5 Add-On and writes about An Interactive Exercise: How AI Can Enhance Your Day-to-Day Tasks – A Mini Guide
- Manoranjan Rajguru writes about From Zero to Hero: Build your first voice agent with Voice Live API
- Wassim Chegham covers Introducing Azure AI Travel Agents: A Flagship MCP-Powered Sample for AI Travel Solutions
- Marcin Jimenez discusses Monitoring and Evaluating LLMs in Clinical Contexts with Azure AI Foundry
- Julie Hersum covers Driving adoption and measuring impact with the Microsoft 365 Copilot Dashboard
- Juhi Patel explains how to Orchestrate multimodal AI insights within your healthcare data estate Public Preview
🔎 Analytics
- The Azure Updates Team announces Retirement: Microsoft Fabric Runtime 1.2 and announces Retirement: Azure Synapse Runtime for Apache Spark 3.4
- On Microsoft Fabric Blog, Sindhu Bharadwaj blogs about Azure Data Factory Item Mounting Generally Available, Anshul Sharma talks about Eventhouse Accelerated OneLake Table Shortcuts Generally Available, Swetha Mannepalli walks through Mirroring in Microsoft Fabric explained: benefits, use cases, and pricing demystified, Aaron Merrill talks about Understanding OneLake Security with Shortcuts, Amit Chandra blogs about Integrating Fabric with Databricks using private network and Santhosh Kumar Ravindran talks about Boost performance effortlessly with Automated Table Statistics in Microsoft Fabric
- Panu Oksala covers Estimate Your Fabric Capacity Needs
- Graham Murphy blogs about Getting started with FinOps hubs: Multicloud cost reporting with Azure and Google Cloud
- Kevin Chant (@kevchant) writes about Current state of Microsoft Fabric workloads and explains how to Create Data Pipeline tests with GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio Code
- On SQL Server Central, Additional Articles explains How to Load a Date Dimension in Microsoft Fabric using Macros in dbt
- Rui Cunha walks through Enhancing Team Collaboration in Azure Synapse Analytics using a Git Branching Strategy – Part 2 of 3
- On Microsoft Fabric Blog, Sindhu Bharadwaj writes about New pipeline Activities Now Support OPDG and VNET
- Kenelle Moore discusses Dig Deeper with KQL: Helping Nonprofits Understand Kusto Query Language
🖥️ Compute
- Vivek Singla announces General Availability: Ephemeral OS Disk support for v6 Azure VMs
- The Azure Updates Team writes about In preview Public Preview: Microsoft Planetary Computer Pro
- Xavier Pillons writes about Open OnDemand with Azure CycleCloud Workspace for Slurm
- Ahmed Taha covers Fusing Simulation with Deep Learning: Technical Insights from the Frontlines on Azure
- Ajay Kundnani discusses Preview Trusted launch Default for new Azure virtual machine, Scale set, compute gallery and disk
- Wolfgang De Salvador announces the AI Infrastructure on Azure repository
- Varad Meru talks about Throughput Testing at Scale for Azure Functions
🚢 Containers
- Pixel Robots. writes about AKS Managed Namespaces Now in Preview
- James van Den Berg blogs about Strengthening Container Security with Docker Hardened Images and Azure Container Registry
- On the Azure Developer Community Blog, Ayobami Ayodeji talks about Securing AKS using Palo Alto Networks AI Runtime Security Unified Firewall
- On Hacker Noon, Oleg K writes about Why I Built My Own Ingress Proxy for Docker Swarm - And You Might Want It Too
- Luke Murray (@lukemurraynz) discusses Test KAITO Model Completion on AKS with kubectl & curl and explains how to Deploy & Test KAITO on AKS with Visual Studio Code
- Daniel Neumann (@neumanndaniel) describes How to send Cilium metrics to Azure Managed Prometheus
- On Diagrid Blog, Marc Duiker (@marcduiker) writes about .NET Aspire & Dapr: What are they and how they complement each other when building distributed applications
🗄️ Databases
- The Azure Updates Team announces Launched Generally Available: Azure Cosmos DB JavaScript SDK 4.0 and announces In preview Public Preview: Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB vCore trigger and bindings for Azure Functions
- Attinder Pal Singh blogs about Running SQL Server 2025 on Linux Containers in WSL
- Murat Demirbas describes Chapter 5: Multiversion Concurrency Control Concurrency Control Book
- Koen Verbeeck (@Ko_Ver) highlights that Building the €100 data warehouse with the Azure Data Platform - Techorama 2025 – Slides are now available.
- Alexander Drogin writes about To sort, or not to sort, that is the question
🛠️ Developer Tools
- On the Visual Studio blog, Mads Kristensen (@mkristensen) explains how to Improve the commands in your extensions
- Tina Schrepfer LI blogs about VisualStudio.Extensibility: Editor classification and updates to user prompt
- John Lokerse explains how to Connect Grok from Azure AI Foundry to GitHub Copilot Chat
- On the Azure Developer Community Blog, April Speight explains how to Build AI Agents End-to-End in VS Code
- Cynthia Zanoni (@cynthiazanoni) writes about New GitHub Copilot Global Bootcamp: Now with Virtual and In-Person Workshops
- Rie Moriguchi discusses MVPs Favorite Content: Azure Well-Architected Framework, VS Code, Jamf Pro, Azure SQL Database
- Jeffrey Palermo (@jeffreypalermo) talks about Scott Hunter: AI-driven development - Episode 351
🔩 DevOps
- Richard Fennell (@richardfennell) covers Using GitHub Copilot to write an Azure DevOps Test Plan Export Tool
- On the Microsoft DevOps blog, Aaron Hallberg describes Azure DevOps with GitHub Repositories – Your path to Agentic AI
- Angie Chen describes Introducing a unified future for app updates on Windows
- Kalen Shaw talks about Kalen's Corner: Unlocking the Potential of Azure DevOps for Nonprofits and discusses Kalens Corner: Empower Nonprofits with Azure Artifacts
- Pete Gallagher blogs about DevOps Engineer Expert Renewal – Study Guide – 2025
⚙️ Hybrid + Multicloud
- Robert Smit (@Clustermvp) explains How to Install Azure Arc on an On-Premises Windows Server: Step-by-Step Guide
- Jake Walsh (@jakewalsh90) blogs about Testing the Azure Local Configurator Application Preview, and a few notes from Azure Local 2504 Setup
- Karam Abu Hanna writes about From on-premises to cloud: Graph-powered detection of hybrid attacks with Microsoft exposure graph
- Luxmi Nagaraj discusses Dooap and Eightfold AI offer transactable partner solutions in Azure Marketplace
- Orin Thomas talks about Understanding the Windows Server Event Log
🎭 Identity
- Ashish Jain describes TLS Inspection now in Microsoft Entra Internet Access
- Alex Simons (@Alex_A_Simons) describes The future of AI agents—and why OAuth must evolve
🔌 Integration
- The Azure Updates Team announces Launched Generally Available: App Service Hybrid Connection Manager
- On the Daily Dot Net Tips blog, Abhijit Jana (@AbhijitJana) covers Azure AI Services in a Nutshell – A Developers Mind Map
- On the Ctrl+Alt+Azure Podcast Tobias Zimmergren & Jussi Roine (@CtrlAltAzure) ask What are Service Groups?
- Gia Mondragon describes Ways to simplify your data ingestion pipeline with Azure AI Search
💡 Internet of Things
- Suraj Thakur discusses Azure IoT Operations: Empowering the Future of Connectivity and Automation
- Sander van de Velde (@svelde) talks about Azure IoT Operations: Local dashboard based on TIG stack
- The Azure Sphere Team announces Azure Sphere May 2025 Services release is now available
📚 Learning
- Mindy Rosenthal explains how to AI Courseware Alignment Issues: May 29th update
- Pete Gallagher covers Azure Developer Associate Renewal – Study Guide – 2025
- Shirleyse Haley covers Check out the latest security skill-building resources on Microsoft Learn
⚖️ Management and Governance
- The Azure Updates Team announces Launched Generally Available: Azure Quota Groups
- On the Azure Developer Community Blog, Jeff Chilberto (@JChilberto) talks about Getting started with FinOps in Cloud Computing
- Michael Flanakin describes FinOps: Learning FOCUS: Prices + quantities
- Dan Rios (@danonazure) explains how to Create Azure Monitor Baseline Alerts initiative with Enterprise Policy as Code
- Andrew Luckwell explains How to control your Azure costs with Governance and Azure Policy
- Anjalee Patel discusses Rethinking Data Security and Governance in the Era of AI
- Ron Frenkel delves into Public Preview: Granular RBAC in Azure Monitor Logs
- Luke Murray (@lukemurraynz) blogs about Azure Extended Zones in Perth
- Brady Bumgarner walks through Maximizing the multicloud advantage — Publishing and selling through the Microsoft marketplace
- Miranda Leschke announces Windows Backup for Organizations
- Scott Sawyer blogs about What's new in Microsoft Intune: May 2025
🚌 Migration
- The Azure Updates Team announces In preview Public Preview: Azure Migrate expands support for migrations with Ultra SSD, announces Launched Generally Available: Azure Migrate enhances support with Premium SSD v2 Disks and announces Retirement: Language Understanding LUIS retirement extended to October 31, 2025
- Robert Smit (@Clustermvp) blogs about Using Azure Service Groups in an Enterprise-Scale Landing Zone
- Ankit Sarkar describes Migration planning of MySQL workloads using Azure Migrate
🌐 Networking
- The Azure Updates Team announces Launched Generally Available: Private subnet, announces In preview Public Preview: Azure Front Door now supports origin authentication via Managed Identities, announces Launched Generally Available: Container Apps and Functions as Private Link enabled origins for Front Door Premium, announces In preview Public Preview: Using Server-sent events with Application Gateway and announces Launched Generally Available: Destination Network Address Translation DNAT on Azure Firewall Private IP address
- Aidan Finn (@joe_elway) highlights Day Two Devops – Azure VNets Don't Exist
🔐 Security
- The Azure Updates Team announces Launched Generally Available: Customer-managed keys for Azure NetApp Files volume encryption with Azure Key Vault Managed HSM and announces In preview Public Preview: Azure Backup for Elastic SAN
- Yangchen Zhang discusses Retirement notification for the Azure Information Protection mobile viewer and RMS Sharing App
- Dor Fenigshtein explains how to Discover how automatic attack disruption protects critical assets while ensuring business continuity
- Kaustubh Dwivedi blogs about Demystifying Anomaly Detection in Microsoft Sentinel using KQL
- Kenelle Moore discusses Security and Flexibility: Benefits of Mobile App Management for Nonprofits Using Personal Devices
📦 Storage
- On Hacker Noon, Pawan Jaiswal discusses Set Up a SOCKS Proxy via Azure Blob Storage in Restricted Networks
- Gia Mondragon announces enterprise-grade, Microsoft Entra-based document-level security in Azure AI Search
🔗 Web
- Sam Cogan (@samcogan) covers Understanding Idle Usage in Azure Container Apps
⚙️ Azure Virtual Desktop
- Thomas Trombley highlights Windows news you can use: May 2025