Azure Weekly Issue 66: 6th March 2016

Microsoft confirmed its long-expected purchase of cross-platform mobile development tool Xamarin this week. The story was covered on Ars Technica among other sources. The partnership so far has led to collaborations such as Visual Studio integration, tutorials and code samples.

There are several new or updated Azure Quickstart templates on GitHub: Azure Container Service (Mesos), Azure Container Service (Swarm), Set up SQL Server Credentials using Azure Key Vault, Subnet-driven deployment, Secure VM password with Key Vault, Deploy a CoreOS cluster hosting Fleet, Deploy a VM Scale Set with Linux VMs behind an ILB, Deploy Shibboleth Identity Provider on Windows.

The Application Insights team have published a Powershell script for creating Release Annotations, opening annotations up to people who don't use Visual Studio Team Services.

There are several updates for Azure Security Center this week; new partners, expanded detection algorithms based on crash event data, centralised security management via Security Policies at Resource Group level, and PowerBI dashboard for Security Center.

Cloud Foundry on Azure now supports Diego and open source service brokers such as brokers for MySQL and MongoDB.

There's been an update to the Service Fabric SDK, introducing features including Windows 7 support for development, the ability to delete actors, the ability to query the set of actors in a partition and cancellation token suport for IService/IActor. The blog from the Service Fabric team also announced the adoption of VM Scale Sets in Azure-hosted clusters.

There's a new Azure IoT Hub extension for Visual Studio.

The DocumentDB team announced updates to Document Explorer and the Script Explorer in the portal, which enable filtering on JSON documents and executing stored procedures.

Finally, to mark FinTech week in the UK, endjin's @ythos and @HowardvRooijen wrote about regulatory compliance and Cloud Adoption, the 100 year Start Up - embracing disruption in financial services, and how Blockchain is revolutionising Financial Services. The topic is covered in more depth in the Financial Services and the Microsoft Cloud booklet.

AI + Machine Learning

Covering: Azure Batch AI, Azure Bot Service, Microsoft Genomics, Machine Learning services, Machine Learning Studio, Cognitive Services, Bing APIs, Computer Vision API, Content moderator, Custom Services, Emotion API, Face API, Language Understanding (LUIS), Linguistic Analysis API, QnA Maker API, Speaker Recognition API, Text Analytics API, Translator Speech API, Translator Text API, Web Language Model API

Analytics

Covering: Azure Databricks, HDInsight, Data Factory, Stream Analytics, Data Lake Analytics, Event Hubs, Power BI, Azure Analysis Services, Apache Spark for HDInsight, Apache Storm for HDInsight, R Server for HDInsight, Data Catalog

Compute

Covering: Virtual Machines, Functions, Batch, Service Fabric, Virtual Machine Scale Sets, Cloud Services, Linux Virtual Machines, SAP HANA on Azure Large Instances

• Radu Vunvulea covers Azure Development Environment - Event Hub and Throughput Units
• Kristin L. Griffin delves into Azure RemoteApp – Publish Applications to Individual Users Preview
• Freek Berson (@fberson) explains how to Publish applications to specific users in Azure RemoteApp Heres my experience
• Marius Sandbu (@msandbu) explains how to Create a custom resource in Azurestack marketplace example XenDesktop

Containers

Covering: Container Registry, Container Instances, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Web App for Containers

Databases

Covering: Azure SQL Database, Azure Cosmos DB, SQL Data Warehouse, Redis Cache, SQL Server Stretch Database, SQL Server on virtual machines, Table storage, Azure Database for PostgreSQL, Azure Database for MySQL

Developer Tools

Covering: Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, SDKs, Developer tool integrations, CLIs, Blockchain Workbench

DevOps

Covering: Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS), Azure DevTest Labs, DevOps tool integrations, Azure DevOps Projects, Azure Lab Services

Identity

Covering: Azure Active Directory, Multi-factor Authentication, Azure Active Directory Domain Services, Azure Active Directory B2C

• On TechNet, Jeffrey Rosen writes about No more passwords
• Also on TechNet, Kirill Kotlyarenko talks about Microsoft Azure and CSP
• Also on TechNet, Mark Oshea discusses Invitation to Windows 10 webinars
• Also on TechNet, Tim Macaulay writes about NOTESCONNECTOR-INFO Full Import returns stopped-extension-dll-exception
• Donovan Brown walks through Creating an Azure Service Endpoint with Credentials
• On Brisbane Cloud User Group blog, Brisbane Cloud User Group talks about Azure AD Connect 1.1 is now GA- Lets kick the tyres

Integration

Covering: Service Bus, Logic Apps, Event Grid

Internet of Things

Covering: IoT Hub, IoT Suite, IoT Edge, IoT Central, IoT solution accelerators, Time Series Insights, Azure Maps, Azure Sphere

Management and Governance

Covering: Backup, Site Recovery, App Insights, Azure Advisor, Sceduler, Automation, Log Analytics, Azure Monitor, Security & Compliance, Protection & Recovery, Automation & Control, Insight & Analytics, Azure Service Health, Microsoft Azure portal, Azure Resource Manager, Cloud Shell, the Azure mobile app, Azure Policy, Cost Management, Azure Managed Applications

• On MSDN, Sergey Babkin blogs about PowerShell remoting & DNS
• On TechNet, Hezequias Vasconcelos describes Vendredi Mise jour International - Faits saillants de la communaut canadienne.
• Also on TechNet, Shannon Gowen covers Cloud Tip of the Day: Manage Azure with two new features
• On the Microsoft Openness site, the Openness Team describes Improving airports using open source tools on Microsoft Azure

Media

Covering: Media services, Encoding, Live and On-Demand Streaming, Azure Media Player, Content Protection, Media Analytics, Video Indexer

Microsoft Azure Stack

Covering: Azure Stack

Migration

Covering: Azure Database Migration Service, Azure Migrate, Data Box

Mobile

Covering: App Service (Mobile), Notification Hubs, Mobile apps, API apps, Visual Studio App Centre, Xamarin

Networking

Covering: ExpressRoute, Azure DNS, Virtual Network, Traffic Manager, Load Balancer, VPN Gateway, Application Gateway, Network Watcher

Security

Covering: Azure Information Protection, Key Vault, Security Center, Azure DDoS Protection, Azure Advanced Threat Protection

Storage

Covering: Storage, StorSimple, Data Lake Store, Blob Storage, Disk Storage, Managed Disks, Queue Storage, File Storage, Storage Explorer, Archive Storage

Web

Covering: App Service (Web), API Management, Content Delivery Network, Azure Search, Web apps, Azure SignalR Service

• On MSDN, Lee Stott covers Windows Platform Developer Updates Feb 2016
• Also on MSDN, Visual Studio Team Services talks about Investigating issues with Continuous Deployment from Classic Azure Management Portal - 3/5 - Investigating
• On the Perficient blog, Chris Pietschmann discusses Azure ARM Template: Define Web App Connection Strings
• Chris Risner (@chrisrisner) blogs about Creating a Node.js Azure Mobile App from OS X or Linux and discusses Going from Mobile Services to Mobile Apps
• Simon J.K. Pedersen talks about Azure Event Hub with Resource Manager Template
• Donovan Brown discusses Deploying a Maven Project to an Azure Web App
• Alexandre Brisebois (@Brisebois) blogs about Getting to Know Azure Mobile App