Azure Weekly
Issue #545 - 21st December 2025
This is the final newsletter of 2025. Highlights this week include: Microsoft and NASA apply AI agents to key hydrology data, deepening our understanding of Earth — NASA and Microsoft are using AI agents powered by Azure OpenAI to make complex hydrology datasets accessible through natural language queries, helping address water scarcity, flooding, and agricultural planning challenges. From Simple Prompts to Complex Insights: AI Expands the Boundaries of Data Transformation (Preview) — Dataflow Gen2 in Microsoft Fabric introduces AI Prompt, enabling teams to apply AI-powered transformations like summarization, classification, and sentiment analysis using simple natural language prompts. Microsoft Fabric IQ Puts Ontology Back on the Map — and Back in the Confusion — An analysis of how Microsoft Fabric IQ is reintroducing ontology-based approaches to data modeling, exploring both the potential benefits and the complexity this brings to enterprise data management. 2025 Year in Review: What's new across SQL Server, Azure SQL and SQL database in Fabric — A comprehensive recap of 2025's SQL announcements including SQL Server 2025 GA, new vector and JSON data types, Azure SQL improvements, migration tools, and SQL database in Microsoft Fabric reaching general availability.
⚙️ AI + Machine Learning
- Marco Casalaina explains How Microsoft Used Its Own Tech To Lead The Gartner Magic Quadrant for AI Application Development
- Rashaud Savage introduces DeepSeek-V3.2 and DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale in Microsoft Foundry
- Dave Jacobs introduces Updated GPT Voice Models in Microsoft Foundry
- Naomi Moneypenny writes about Black Forest Labs FLUX.2 Visual Intelligence for Enterprise Creative now on Microsoft Foundry and introduces OpenAIs GPT-image-1.5 in Microsoft Foundry
- Lysa Young-Bates explains how to Improve Healthcare Quality with Data + AI: Key Takeaways for Industry Leaders Webinar
- On IT Next, Dave Rendon describes How Microsoft Foundry Makes AI Agents Unstoppable with Fine-Tuning and RFT., provides a Microsoft Foundry - AI Agent Service Deep Dive and on IT Next, talks about Research You Can Actually Run: A Deep Dive into Microsoft Foundry Labs.
- J. Lopez highlights how Microsoft and NASA apply AI agents to key hydrology data, deepening our understanding of Earth
- Tiffiany describes How AI Is Helping Patients Access Life-Saving Treatments Faster
- "vytran" writes about Beyond the Model: Empower your AI with Data Grounding and Model Training
- Rodrigo Juarez covers Sentiment Analysis in C#: Azure AI Language or LLMs
- Manoj Kumar covers Using natural language to build healthcare imaging cohorts for research
- Nick Greenfield describes Building Reliable AI Travel Agents with the Durable Task Extension for Microsoft Agent Framework
🔎 Analytics
- On Microsoft Fabric Blog, Connie Xu discusses Run Spark Job Definitions in Pipelines with Service Principal or Workspace Identity
- Jovan Popovic (@jocapc) covers the DATEBUCKET function in Fabric Data Warehouse (GA)
- Arshad Ali blogs about Fabric Runtime 2.0 (Preview)
- Alex Powers covers the Microsoft Fabric 2025 holiday recap: Unified Data and AI Innovation
- George Anadiotis talks about how Microsoft Fabric IQ Puts Ontology Back on the Map — and Back in the Confusion
- Raki Rahman writes about SQL Telemetry & Intelligence – How we built a Petabyte-scale Data Platform with Fabric
- Miguel Escobar (@EscobarMiguel90) announces - From Simple Prompts to Complex Insights: AI Expands the Boundaries of Data Transformation (Preview)
- Shuaijun Ye highlights a Fabric Environment Library Management Performance Improvement
🖥️ Compute
- Radu Vunvulea (@RaduVunvulea) discusses Azure Spot VM Billing, Pricing, and Eviction Behaviour
- Jaliya Udagedara (@JaliyaUdagedara) discusses Azure Functions: Running with Production App Settings Locally
🚢 Containers
- On IT Next, Dave Rendon writes: From Zero to Kubernetes: A Deep Dive into AKS Automatic.,
Kubernetes Ops, Simplified: Headlamp + Inspektor Gadget + Drasi in One Practical Toolchain.
and Fast, Private, and Cheap: Running Open-Source LLM Inference on Azure at Scale. - Mark Fussell (@mfussell) writes: No Workflow is an Island
- Bilgin Ibryam (@bibryam) blogs about Dapr Deployment Models
- Fernando Rocha describes - Dapr meets GitOps: A Guide to Dapr and Argo CD (Part 2)
- Bilgin Ibryam (@bibryam) writes: From Deterministic to Agentic - Creating Durable AI Workflows with Dapr and covers Authoring Workflows in the Age of AI with Dapr
- Bilgin Ibryam (@bibryam) talks about Choosing and Tuning Dapr Scheduling for Production Jobs API, Cron, and More
- Shannon Hicks describes Azure Policy: Required Actions for Docker Content Trust Deprecation in Azure Container Registry
🗄️ Databases
- The Azure Updates Team announces that you can now Use Azure SRE Agent with Azure Cosmos DB (Public Preview) and runs through the Azure SQL updates for early December 2025 (GA)
- On Microsoft Fabric Blog, Anna Hoffman (@AnalyticAnna) covers 2025 Year in Review: What's new across SQL Server, Azure SQL and SQL database in Fabric
- Ange Salsaa blogs about Azure PostgreSQL Lesson Learned 11: Major Version Upgrade Failure Due to Unsupported Extensions
- Morgan Oslake explains how to Identify causes of auto-resuming serverless workloads in Azure SQL Database
- Shashikant Shakya (@shashikantshakya) discusses Performance Tuning for CDC: Managing Replication Lag in Azure Database for PostgreSQL with Debezium
- Vinay Sarangam delves into Troubleshooting Replication Performance Issues
- Ggauri Kasar provides a November 2025 Recap: PostgreSQL on Azure
- Anna Hoffman (@AnalyticAnna) provides a 2025 Year in Review: Whats new across SQL Server, Azure SQL and SQL database in Fabric
- Abhishek Gupta (@abhi_tweeter) highlights Azure Cosmos DB vNext Emulator: Query and Observability Enhancements
🛠️ Developer Tools
- On the Visual Studio blog, Harshada Hole covers Debugging, but Without the Drama - A Visual Studio 2026 Story
- On Visual Studio Magazine - Blogs, David Ramel (@dramel) describes how VS Code 1.107 November 2025 Update Expands Multi-Agent Orchestration, Model Management and highlights that Microsoft Quietly Kills IntelliCode as AI Strategy Shifts to Subscription Copilot
- AJ Bajada writes about Beyond Planning: How GitHub Spec Kit Transforms Ideas into Implementation
- Bruce Petillo writes: Software Santa Arrives Early for the SAP on Azure Community
- Seth Patton talks about What's New in Microsoft 365 Copilot November & December 2025
- Mads Kristensen (@mkristensen) writes about Behind the scenes of the Visual Studio feedback system
- Geert van Teylingen (@teylemans) explains how to Streamline Azure NetApp Files Management - Right from Your IDE
- Jaliya Udagedara (@JaliyaUdagedara) discusses DefaultAzureCredential: Troubleshooting Local Development Issues
- Andy Wilson discusses Manufacturing Certainty: Load Testing with Azure Load Testing
- On Visual Studio Magazine - Blogs, David Ramel (@dramel) highlights: Microsoft Again Named a Leader in AI AppDev Platforms Research
- Radu Vunvulea (@RaduVunvulea) covers Vibe Coding and how it changes the way we build and maintain our systems
🔩 DevOps
- Harsha Satpute explains how to Deploy Microservices On AKS using GitHub Actions
- On the Microsoft DevOps blog, Angel Wong covers the Retirement of Global Personal Access Tokens in Azure DevOps
- Dan Hellem blogs about the Azure Boards integration with GitHub Copilot
- Dodd Willingham blogs about Adopting Copilot: Improving Response Quality via Connectors
⚙️ Hybrid + Multicloud
- Yunis Hussein provides the Azure Arc Monthly Forum Recap – November 2025
🎭 Identity
- Tobias Zimmergren & Jussi Roine (@CtrlAltAzure) discuss Three free tools to help you with Azure and Entra ID
- Farooque Mohammad explains how to Empower Your Cloud Identity: How to Convert User SOA from AD to Entra ID
- On Microsoft Fabric Blog, Yaron Pri Gal explains How to Connect Microsoft Fabric to Azure DevOps Using Service Principal
- Alex Simons (@Alex_A_Simons) talks about Surfing the AI Wave: Manage, Govern, and Protect AI Agents with Microsoft Entra Agent ID
- Priyanka Gangal writes about Secure, Seamless Access using Managed Identities with Azure Files SMB
- On Diagrid Blog, Joni Collinge writes about Universal Application Identity in distributed applications with Dapr
🔌 Integration
- The Azure Updates Team announces Service Bus SDK type bindings in Azure Functions for Node.js (Public Preview)
- Eldert Grootenboer (@egrootenboer) discusses Message brokers as the cornerstone of the next generation of agentic AI backends and announces the General Availability of Geo-Replication for Azure Service Bus Premium
- Collin Brian writes about Event-Driven to Change-Driven: Low-cost dependency inversion
📚 Learning
- Elisa Graceffo writes: Verified skills, real impact: Microsoft Credentials help you get AI-ready
- Carlotta Castelluccio discusses AI Upskilling Framework Level 3 Building
⚖️ Management and Governance
- Rick Claus (@RicksterCDN) describes Anatomy of an Outage: How Microsoft focuses on Transparency during and post incident
- Stanislav Zhelyazkov (@StanZhelyazkov) talks about Azure Policy Little Secrets
- Orin Thomas explains how to Configure a log analytics workspace to collect Window Server Event log, IIS and performance data.
- Samer Baroudi writes about New capabilities for AI admins from Ignite 2025
- Shannon Kuehn (@shankuehn) talks about Azure Resource Mover: What Actually Moves, What Doesn't
🚌 Migration
- The Azure Updates Team announces Cross-tenant Orchestrated User Data Migration
- Radu Vunvulea (@RaduVunvulea) blogs about Cloud Modernization in Days using GitHub Copilot
🌐 Networking
- The Azure Updates Team provides an Update: The retirement date for default outbound access has been extended to March 31, 2026.
- On Tech Community blog, Abhishek Tiwari covers Azure Front Door: Implementing lessons learned following October outages
- Also on Tech Community blog, Elendil Zheng announces Azure Database for MySQL Support for Resource Move with Private Link
- Also on Tech Community blog, Sudha Mahajan covers Azure Networking 2025: Powering cloud innovation and AI at global scale
🔐 Security
- The Azure Updates Team announces Azure NetApp Files advanced ransomware protection (Public Preview)
- Charbel Nemnom (@charbelnemnom) explains how to Accelerate Microsoft Sentinel data lake deployment
- Aaron Singh provides Security Guidance Series: CAF 4.0 Threat Hunting From Detection to Anticipation
- Abhi Singh covers Unified Security Intelligence - Orchestrating GenAI Threat Detection with Microsoft Sentinel
- Herain Oberoi highlights: Microsoft named an overall leader in KuppingerCole Leadership Compass for Generative AI Defense
- Marc de Droog blogs about Network Detection and Response (NDR) in Financial Services
- Sai Kishor describes Application layer DDoS protection using the HTTP DDoS Ruleset in Azure WAF
- Zeinab Mokhtarian Koorabbasloo writes about how to Efficiently process high volume logs and optimize costs with Microsoft Sentinel data lake
- Matt Lichtinger announces AI Entity Analyzer in Microsoft Sentinel MCP Server - Public Preview
- Andreas Semmelmann describes Preparing for Azure PostgreSQL Certificate Authority Rotation: A Comprehensive Operational Guide
- Zachary Cavanell writes about New Agents in Microsoft Purview
📦 Storage
- The Azure Updates Team announces Azure NetApp Files cross-zone-region replication CZRR (GA) and Azure Blob-to-Blob migration made simple with Azure Storage Mover (Public Preview)
- On the Check your Logs blog, Cary Sun (@SifuSun) explains How to add Microsoft Azure Blob Object Storage Repositories without Immutability at Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 8.2
🔗 Web
- Yutang Lin writes about Industry-Wide Certificate Changes Impacting Azure App Service Certificates
- Pierre Roman discusses JSON Web Token (JWT) Validation in Azure Application Gateway: Secure Your APIs at the Gate