Azure Weekly
Issue #529 - 31st August 2025
Firstly, it is worth highlighting that registration for Microsoft Ignite is now open. Then, we have a few updates and announcements: In Azure Foundry, The Responses API is now generally available. Here are the latest GA Azure SQL updates. The Visual Studio August Update is here - providing smarter AI, better debugging, and more control, and this is the Roadmap for AI in Visual Studio - September.
BYO Model + MCP in Visual Studio Copilot is now generally available, and here is the August 2025 Fabric Feature Summary! Elsewhere, Shreyan Fern provides a great introduction to POML: The Markup Language for Prompts. On the Microsoft Security blog, Igor Sakhnov discusses Securing and governing the rise of autonomous agents, and, Rob Lefferts highlights that Microsoft has ranked number one in modern endpoint security market share third year in a row.
Continuing a bit of a trend from this year, here are some great examples of Agentic AI in Healthcare. And finally, an interesting look at Why Databricks Is Worth $100 Billion.
BYO Model + MCP in Visual Studio Copilot is now generally available, and here is the August 2025 Fabric Feature Summary! Elsewhere, Shreyan Fern provides a great introduction to POML: The Markup Language for Prompts. On the Microsoft Security blog, Igor Sakhnov discusses Securing and governing the rise of autonomous agents, and, Rob Lefferts highlights that Microsoft has ranked number one in modern endpoint security market share third year in a row.
Continuing a bit of a trend from this year, here are some great examples of Agentic AI in Healthcare. And finally, an interesting look at Why Databricks Is Worth $100 Billion.
⚙️ AI + Machine Learning
- AJ Bajada writes about Agentic DevOps Safe Mode: A Practical Framework for Secure GitHub Copilot Agents
- On Microsoft + Open Source, Ryan Waite talks about Microsoft's open source journey: From 20,000 lines of Linux code to AI at global scale
- Bala Venkataraman announces that The Responses API in Azure AI Foundry is now generally available
- Cormac Garvey blogs about the Performance of Llama 3.1 8B AI Inference using vLLM on ND-H100-v5 and cprovides a Performance analysis of DeepSeek R1 AI Inference using vLLM on ND-H100-v5
- Dave Miller talks about Capturing the market opportunity (Cloud & AI Platforms series, part one)
- Lo Kinfey (@Ljh8304) covers Building Enterprise-Grade Local RAG Applications with Semantic Kernel and Foundry Local
- Michael Gannotti writes about Agentic AI in Healthcare
- Nandini Muralidharan covers What's New in Azure AI Foundry Fine-tuning: August 2025 and announces that Fine-tuning gpt-oss-20b is Now Available on Managed Compute
- Utkarsh Maheshwari discusses Exploring Speech AI in Azure AI Foundry (Model Mondays S2E11)
- Zachary Cavanell explains how to Build autonomous agents in CopilotStudio - Your MCPs, your models & multi-agent
- Shreyan Fernandes discusses how to Unlock the Full Potential of LLMs with POML: The Markup Language for Prompts
- Pranav Bahadur describes Scale and secure enterprise GenAI orchestration with Astro from Astronomer via Azure Marketplace
- Omar Khan discusses Transforming scientific discovery with Microsoft Azure and NVIDIA
- Bryan Lopez writes about Why FedRAMP Adherence Matters for AI in Government—and How Microsoft Makes It Practical
- Farhan Hussain explains how to Build Your AI Email Agent with Microsoft Copilot Studio
- Colby T. Ford runs through 5 Tips for Fine-Tuning Protein Language Models (PLMs) on Azure Machine Learning
🔎 Analytics
- On Microsoft Fabric Blog, Marisa Mathews provides the Fabric Influencers Spotlight - August 2025
- Sairam Yeturi blogs about Mastering Declarative Data Transformations with Materialized Lake Views
- Connie Xu announces Copy job Activity in pipelines (Preview)
- On Hacker Noon, William Guo discusses: Here's Why Databricks Is Worth $100 Billion
- Patrick LeBlanc (@patrickdba) provides a August 2025 Fabric Feature Summary
- Jenny Jiang describes how to Use Fabric User Data Functions with Pandas DataFrames and Series in Notebooks
- Christian Henrik Reich discusses Microsoft Fabric: Getting started with building MCP servers for your data in Python
- Jenny Jiang explains how to use Enhanced Monitoring for Spark High Concurrency Workloads in Microsoft Fabric and how to Gain Deeper Insights into Spark Jobs with JobInsight in Microsoft Fabric
🖥️ Compute
- The Azure Updates Team announces Azure Functions support for Node.js 22 (GA) and Roslyn Analyzer for Durable Functions in .NET isolated (Public Preview)
- Goutham Bandapati covers Designing for Certainty: How Azure Capacity Reservations Safeguard MissionCritical Workloads
- Jagatjit Turuk highlights that Azure Machine Learning now supports Large-Scale AI Training and Inference with ND H200 v5 VMs
- Travis Roberts (@Ciraltos) writes: Master the Cloud - Create an Azure Virtual Machine Now!
🚢 Containers
- Chaminda Chandrasekara explains how to Deploy Redis Insight on AKS to View/Update Data in Redis Cluster Deployed on AKS
🗄️ Databases
- The Azure Updates Team announces Azure SQL updates for late-August 2025 (GA), Azure SQL updates for late-August 2025 (Public Preview), Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB vCore—add shards and rebalance data (Public Preview) and Azure Database for PostgreSQL Entra ID group login using user credentials (Public Preview)
- Vipul Prajapati covers Implementing Hybrid Search in Azure Cosmos DB: Combining Vectors and Keywords
- Jared Meade writes about New Azure PostgreSQL Solution Accelerator: AgenticShop
- M. Hyon highlight that Replication lag metric for Azure SQL DB is now in public preview
- Varun Dhawan explains how to Prevent Accidental Deletion of an Instance in Azure Postgres
🛠️ Developer Tools
- On the Visual Studio blog, Mads Kristensen (@mkristensen) highlights that The Visual Studio August Update is here – smarter AI, better debugging, and more control
- Rhea Patel provides the Roadmap for AI in Visual Studio - September
- Yun Jung Choi highlighs that GitHub Copilot for Azure (Preview) Launches in Visual Studio 2022 with Azure MCP Support
- Erik Ejlskov Jensen presents T-SQL Analyzer - live best practices analysis of your SQL scripts in Visual Studio
- On the MSSQL Tips site, Haroon Ashraf provides a comparison of Visual Studio Code Polyglot Notebooks vs Azure Data Studio SQL Notebooks
- On the GitHub blog, Michael Stepankin describes Safeguarding VS Code against prompt injections
- On Visual Studio Magazine - Blogs, David Ramel (@dramel) highlights Visual Studio Copilot: BYO Model + MCP GA and GitHub Copilot for Azure Previews in Visual Studio 2022
- Ning Wei talks about Connecting an Agent in Copilot Studio to an MCP Server
🔩 DevOps
- Darryl Taft (@darrylktaft) writes - Microsoft: AI Agents Are Winning the DevOps Relay Race
⚙️ Hybrid + Multicloud
- Mutemwa Masheke writes about System-Assigned Identity-based Access for Machine Configuration Packages – GA on both Azure and Arc
- On The New Stack, Matthias Biehl writes about Why Federated API Management Is Essential for Hybrid Cloud
- Sarah Lean (@TechieLass) explains How to enable automatic upgrades for Azure Arc Agent (Public Preview)
🎭 Identity
- The Azure Updates Team announces Entra ID and RBAC support for GetAccountInfo and other supplemental APIs for Azure Storage (GA)
- Tobias Zimmergren & Jussi Roine (@CtrlAltAzure) discuss Group Source of Authority in the cloud (Finally here)
- Rahul PR talks about What's New in AI for Security from Microsoft Entra
🔌 Integration
- Noya Blanga explains how to Automate Your Log Analytics Workflows with AI and Logic Apps
- Praveen Srivastava discusses Hybrid Logic Apps deployment on Rancher K3s Kubernetes cluster
- Pravin T. writes about Token Cache Service Inside D365 CE Plugin Base, Scaling Dynamics 365 CRM Integrations in Azure: The Right Way to Use the SDK ServiceClient and Seamless mix of ILogger with ITracingService inside D365 CE Plugins
- Wagner Silveira (@WSilveiraNZ) announces: Setup CD in Azure Logic Apps Standard with Deployment Center
- Luke Murray (@lukemurraynz) discusses MCP Server with Azure Functions & Communication Services
📚 Learning
- Gretchen La Belle talks about Certifications refresh: AI-focused and fundamentals updates
- Mindy Rosenthal talks about Course Title Updates: What You Need to Know
- Ilan Nyska talks about Navigating Azure Certifications with Copilot and Azure Course Blueprints
⚖️ Management and Governance
- On Microsoft Fabric Blog, Yael Biss explains how to Meet Your Healthcare Regulation and Compliance Requirements with Purview Data LossPrevention (DLP) Policies
- Karl Abbott highlights the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Billing Meter ID Updates on Azure
- Chad Stout discusses Microsoft deployment blueprint - Address oversharing concerns for your M365 Copilot deployment
- Ricardo Martins (@ricmmartins) blogs about Azure Quota Alerts Preview: Still overlooked, but incredibly useful
🚌 Migration
- The Azure Updates Team announces that Azure Migrate now supports migration to disks with Zone-Redundant Storage ZRS redundancy (GA) and Schema migration is now available in Azure Database Migration Service DMS (GA)
- Christophe Herrbach announces more Azure VMware Solution enhancements
🌐 Networking
- The Azure Updates Team announces Custom block response code and body for Application Gateway WAF (Public Preview) and CNI Overlay for Application Gateway for Containers and AGIC (GA)
- Cindy Wan talks about Windows Server 2025 Software Defined Datacenter: Networking Deployment Series 4/6
- Rey Jordi covers how to Unlock enterprise AI/ML with confidence: Azure Application Gateway as your scalable AI access layer
🔐 Security
- On the Microsoft Security blog, Igor Sakhnov discusses Securing and governing the rise of autonomous agents
- On the Azure blog, Mark Russinovich, Omar Khan and Bryan Kelly discuss Protecting Azure Infrastructure from silicon to systems
- Sayed Shazeb Ali describes Automating Azure Key Vault Secret and Certificate Expiry Monitoring with Azure Function App
- George Rozo covers Staying Ahead of Compliance: Keep Up with Key Insights from our Quarterly Compliance Update
- Hagai Kestenberg covers Exposing hidden threats across the AI development lifecycle in the cloud
- Shannon Kuehn (@shankuehn) describes How to Remove Microsoft Sentinel Security Insights from a Log Analytics Workspace
- Elias Estevao writes about how Copilot Makes Azure Security Crystal Clear
- Subhangi blogs about Ingesting .CSV log files from Azure Blob Storage into Microsoft Sentinel
- Jonathan Bar Or, Raae Wolfram and Sam Gardener discuss Post-breach browser abuse: a new frontier for threat actors
- Rob Lefferts highlights: Microsoft ranked number one in modern endpoint security market share third year in a row
📦 Storage
- Luke Murray (@lukemurraynz) delves into Azure Function App Host Runtime Error with Azure Storage
- The Azure Updates Team announces Azure NetApp Files short-term clones (Public Preview)
- Tobias Zimmergren (@zimmergren) describes How to populate Azure Storage Accounts with demo data
🔗 Web
- On App Service Blog, Azure App Service announces Bring Your Own License (BYOL) Support for JBoss EAP on Azure App Service and .NET 10 Preview Now Available on Azure App Service
⚙️ Azure Virtual Desktop
- Stefan Kinnestrand describes Reimagining work: Microsoft's vision for the future of Desktop as a Service