Azure Weekly Issue 73: 1st May 2016

It's been a busy week at endjin HQ; first off we launched a refreshed endjin.com which now contains two new lovely customer case study videos created by Microsoft about the work we've done with Watchfinder and Hymans Robertson to help them adopt The Microsoft Cloud. Secondly we have a guest blog post, by Barry Smart IT Director of Hymans Robertson, which is the first in a three-part series on the topic of "Cloud Adoption: Risks & Mitigations Analysis" which charts the process they undertook to derisk the adoption of Azure. To coincide with this series of posts we're also releasing, under Creative Commons, The Swiss Cheese Model; a poster which visualises the process.

In the wider Azure ecosystem, the Azure Storage team announce Cool Blob Storage a new low-cost storage option for backups, media content, scientific data, compliance and archival data.

Xiaoying Guo reveals Azure DevTest Labs are now available in six more regions, and Ketan Ghelani shares customer success stories with Application Insights Analytics. 

Juan Perez introduces Azure IoT Hub device management, while Joshua Weber explains how to migrate your Application Insights mobile app to HockeyApp.

Ryan CrawCour announces that Azure Stream Analytics is now available in Germany, Sam George introduces the Azure IoT Gateway SDK Beta, and Aravind Ramachandran tells you 10 things to know about DocumentDB Partitioned Collections. 

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

• On the Azure blog, Aravind Ramachandran (@arkramac) writes about 10 things to know about DocumentDB Partitioned Collections and Kirat Pandya discusses DocumentDB now supports Time-To-Live TTL

• Also on the Azure blog, Ryan CrawCour reveals Azure Stream Analytics is now available in Germany. 

• On the Azure blog, Alexander Sasha Nosov announces that Azure SQL Database now supports powerful geo-replication features for all service tiers

• And finally in this section, Marius Sandbu (@msandbu) looks at running the RDS 2016 TP5 Connection Broker Database in Azure AD. 

Compute

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

• James van Den Berg (@JamesvandenBerg) has a guide on Cloud Storage for Enterprise Architects. 

• On TechNet, Refaat Issa (@refaat_issa) looks at the Nano Server TP5 IaaS image in the Azure Gallery. 

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

• Meanwhile on Channel 9, Richard Dizerega (@richdizz) explores the AD Converged Authentication and the Microsoft Graph. 

• For Windows IT Pro, John Savill (@NTFAQGuy) blogs about using Azure AD Privileged Identity Management and explains how to solve problems logging in after Azure AD to standard authentication. 

Integration

Covering: Service Bus, Logic Apps, Event Grid

• In this section, @Azure announces an incremental update to Azure Stack PaaS services. 

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 TechNet, Pierre Roman (@pierreroman) has a step-by-step guide for exporting a Resource Group as an ARM Template.

• Trevor Sullivan (@pcgeek86) has some updates on Azure PowerShell extensions. 

• Xiaoying Guo reveals Azure DevTest Labs are now available in six more regions. 

• First up on Channel 9, Ahmet Alp Balkan (@ahmetalpbalkan) talks about using the Docker Machine with Azure. 

• John Savill (@NTFAQGuy) shows you how to find the resource group name for a resource with PowerShell and how to remove a role using PowerShell for Windows IT Pro.

• Over on the Azure blog, Arpan Shah (@arpanshah) announces the Azure support upgrade for enterprises. 

• Also, Dr Tom Shinder (@tshinder) discusses the Azure Services SSL/TLS cipher suite update and the removal of RC4. 

• Lastly from Azure in this section, Ketan Ghelani (@followKetan) shares customer success stories with Application Insights Analytics. 

• Back on the Azure blog, Joshua Weber (@JoshuaWeberMSFT) explains how to migrate your Application Insights mobile app to HockeyApp. 

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

• Back on Windows It Pro, John Savill (@NTFAQGuy) answers questions on Office 365 and Azure sharing an ExpressRoute circuit. 

• Meanwhile Marius Sandbu (@msandbu) looks at load balancing features in Azure. 

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

• In this section, Sriprasad Bhat introduces the Azure Cool Blob Storage. 

Web

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

• James Mann (@BlackMarble) describes Azure Web Apps-Deploying Java Servlets to Azure App Service Web Apps

• Over on Channel 9, Greg Duncan (@gduncan411) writes about the MyDriving application. 

• On Code Project, Sibeesh Passion (@SibeeshVenu) creates an Azure Mobile App using Visual Studio.

• Also on Azure, Juan Perez (@juanage) introduces Azure IoT Hub device management. 

• Chris den Arend (@chrisdenarend) blogs about the Azure IoT Hub from Raspberry Pi 3

• On the Azure blog, Sam George (@samjgeorge) introduces the Azure IoT Gateway SDK Beta. 

• On TechNet, Shannon Gowen has a tip on the Azure App Service supporting V2 virtual networks. 

• And finally on the Azure Podcast (@AzurePodcast), there's talk about Cloud IPs Web API.