Azure Weekly Newsletter Issue #395

powered by endjin

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@HowardvRooijen | @endjin

AI + Machine Learning

Covering: Anomaly detector, Azure Bot Service, Azure Machine Learning, Azure Open Datasets, Bing APIs, Cognitive Services, Computer Vision, Content moderator, Custom vision, Data Science Virtual Machines, Face, Form Recogniser, Immersive Reader, Ink Recogniser, Language Understanding (LUIS), Machine Learning Studio, Microsoft Genomics, ML.NET, Personaliser, Project Cortex, QnA Maker, Speaker Recognition, Speech-to-Text, Speech translation, Text Analytics, Text to Speech , Translator Speech, Translator Text

• The Azure Updates Team announces Azure Machine Learning - Generally availability updates for November 2022
• The Azure Updates Team discusses Azure Machine Learning—Public preview updates for November 2022
• Garfield He talks about Azure Cognitive Services releases new languages and voices for Neural Text-to-Speech
• Hugo Affaticati describes Azure Collaborates with Hazy Research and NVIDIA to Achieve Unmatched MLPerf Results
• Hugo Affaticati provides A Quick Guide to Benchmarking AI models on Azure: Mask R-CNN with MLPerf Training v2.1

Analytics

Covering: Apache Spark for HDInsight, Apache Storm for HDInsight, Azure Analysis Services, Azure Data Explorer, Azure Data Share, Azure Databricks, Azure Stream Analytics, Azure Synapse Analytics, Data Catalog, Data Factory, Data Lake Analytics, Event Hubs, HDInsight, .NET for Apache Spark, R Server for HDInsight, Azure Purview

• The Azure Updates Team announces Generally available: Increasing Azure Synapse Analytics Spark performance up to 77%
• Liliam Leme blogs about Synapse Spark Delta Time Travel
• Pawel Potasinski (@pawelpotasinski) blogs about Azure Synapse MVP Corner - October 2022
• Dany Hoter describes How to identify queries send to Kusto from a specific Power BI report
• On the Microsoft BI Tools blog, Joost van Rossum (@ssisjoost) explains how to Create Data Lake containers and folders via DevOps
• Mohammed Brueckner (@MoeBrueC) shares how to Overcome 50 MB Logic App file size limits - using the power of Azure DataFactory

Compute

Covering: Azure CycleCloud, Azure Dedicated Host, Azure Functions, Azure VMware Solution by CloudSimple, Batch, Cloud Services, Linux Virtual Machines, SAP HANA on Azure Large Instances, Service Fabric, Virtual Machines, Virtual Machine Scale Sets

• The Azure Updates Team announces the General Availablity of: Virtual Machine software reservations, and New cost recommendations for Virtual Machine Scale Sets, announces Functions now supports .NET 7 in an isolated worker process and New node sizing for Azure VMware Solution
• On the Azure blog, Rachel Pruitt says Azure comes to Dallas for Supercomputing
• Ram Gowrishankar announces more Azure VMware Solution enhancements
• Leo Castillote talks about Crafting a Virtual Machine with Proxmox VE

Containers

Covering: Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Azure Red Hat OpenShift, CNAB, CNCF, Container Instances, Container Registry, Porter, WSL, Web App for Containers

• The Azure Updates Team announces Public preview: Rotate SSH keys on existing AKS nodepools
• On the endjin blog, James Dawson (@James_Dawson) covers Adventures in Dapr: Episode 4 - Containerising with Visual Studio
• Also on the endjin blog, Jonathan George (@jon_george1) presents Bye bye Azure Functions, Hello Azure Container Apps: Migration of the existing test environment
• Thomas Thornton (@tamstar1234) walks through Building and deploying to an AKS cluster using Terraform and Azure DevOps with Kubernetes and Helm providers
• Paolo Salvatori writes Can I create an Azure Red Hat OpenShift cluster in Terraform Yes, you can
• Taiseer Joudeh (@TJoudeh) talks about gRPC Communication In Azure Container Apps – Part 1 and covers Invoking Dapr Services in Azure Container Apps using gRPC – Part 2
• Mohammed Brueckner (@MoeBrueC) writes about Offloading FFMPEG to Azure Container Instances
• Amy Colyer presents 5 tips for IIS on containers: 2 IIS App Pools and Websites

Databases

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

• The Azure Updates Team announces the General availability: Azure Database for PostgreSQL – Flexible Server in new China regions and General availability: Retryable writes in Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB
• The Azure Updates Team announces Public preview: Intra-account container copy for Azure Cosmos DB
• The Azure Updates Team discusses Public preview: Azure SQL Database offline migrations in Azure SQL Migration extension
• Kelly OConnor blogs about Azure open-source databases enable businesses to do more with less
• Erin Stellato (@erinstellato) blogs about Azure Data Studio and BDC Retirement
• Karla Escobar blogs about Azure DMS – MySQL Migrate User Accounts and Privileges Now in Preview
• Carlos Robles walks through Introducing Azure SQL Database offline migrations for the Azure SQL migration extension

Developer Tools

Covering: App Configuration, Azure Lab Services, CLIs, Developer tool integrations, SDKs, Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio Online

• Iain Holmes announces Visual Studio for Mac 17.4 is now available
• Marc Goodner announces Visual Studio 2022 17.4 is now available
• Mark Downie (@poppastring) announces Arm64 Visual Studio is officially here
• Christine Ruana explains how to Deploy Visual Studio updates to devices enrolled in Windows Update for Business
• Pui Chee presentes a series on the Azure Developer CLI: Part 1 - Azdev-ify what? and
  Part 2 – Observability for your azd-compatible app

DevOps

Covering: Azure Artifacts, Azure Boards, Azure DevOps, Azure Pipelines, Azure Repos, Azure Test Plans, Azure DevTest Labs, DevOps tool integrations

• On episode 218 of the Azure Devops Podcast, Jeffrey Palermo (@jeffreypalermo) is joined by Dave McKinstry to discuss The Evolution of DevOps
• Gerasimos Alexiou discusses Azure DevOps inventory – export data for devops organization
• Richard Fennell (@richardfennell) talks about GitVersion task fails on a cloned Azure DevOps YAML Pipeline
• Praveen Kumar Sreeram (@PrawinSreeram) covers Azure DevOps – Tips and Tricks – 19 – How to reuse Templates across Projects
• Jin Lee talks about Azure DevOps - Leveraging Pipeline Decorators for Custom Process Automation
• Tyler Hakes covers Azure DevOps Velocity: A Guide to Data-Driven Sprint Management in Agile
• Antti K. Koskela (@koskila) explains How to fix Azure DevOps Variable reference is not valid. : was not followed by a valid variable name character. Consider using $ to delimit the name
• Hammed Babatunde provides an Introduction to Infrastructure as Code on Azure
• Stanislav Zhelyazkov (@StanZhelyazkov) writes about Azure Monitor Workspace, Managed Prometheus and Prometheus via Bicep
• Boris Baryshnikov (@BorisB2015) shares how to Find an item in an array of objects in Azure bicep

Hybrid + Multicloud

Covering: Azure Arc, Azure Stack

• Niko Neugebauer explains how to Join Azure SQL Managed Instance Product Group at PASS Summit 2022
• Alysa Taylor explains how to Improve your energy and carbon efficiency with Azure sustainability guidance
• James van Den Berg covers Security Baseline for Azure Arc enabled Servers and Arc Kubernetes AzureHybrid Security
• Thomas Maurer (@thomasmaurer) explains how to Manage Azure Arc-enabled Azure Stack HCI from Azure

Identity

Covering: Azure Active Directory (AD), Azure Active Directory B2C, Azure Active Directory Domain Services

• Mohammed Brueckner (@MoeBrueC) writes about Managed Identity on Azure
• Sue Bohn explains how to Embrace and Secure Multicloud with Entra Permissions Management
• David Giard (@DavidGiard) covers Creating an Azure Active Directory B2C Tenant and covers Registering an Azure Account Subscription
• Nicholas Kondamudi announces Automated Key Rotation Generally Available on Azure Key Vault Managed HSM
• Patrick van Kleef (@patkleef) shares Automatically rotate the password of a service principal

Integration

Covering: Azure API for FHIR, Event Grid, Logic Apps, Service Bus

• The Azure Updates Team announces General availability: Azure Automation supports Availability zones
• The Azure Updates Team announces Public preview: Exporting ISE and Consumption Logic Apps to Standard SKU
• Kent Weare and Praveen Srivastava write about .NET Framework assembly support added to Azure Logic Apps Standard XSLT transformations Preview

Internet of Things

Covering: Azure Digital Twins, Azure IoT Central, Azure IoT Edge, Azure IoT Hub, Azure IoT solution accelerators, Azure Maps, Azure Sphere, Azure Time Series Insights, IoT DevKit, WildernessLabs, Windows 10 IoT Core Services

• The Azure Updates Team announces Generally available: Azure IoT Edge for Linux on Windows EFLOW update

Learning

Covering: Microsoft Certifications, Azure Certifications, Microsoft Learning Paths, Certification Pathway Information

• Nancy Tandy presents Discover Microsoft Certified: Power Automate RPA Developer Associate
• Mark Heath (@mark_heath) announces LINQ Best Practices
• Lee Stott (@lee_stott) talks about Getting top marks for your next academic assignment
• Adam Jackson covers Upcoming Developer & Technical Events in the UK
• Nina Sui explains how to Earn a Digital Badge: 5G Modern Connected Apps Cloud Skills Challenge
• Japhlet Nwamu says Build the Take a break reminder app with Microsoft Graph - November 14th
• On episode 159 of the Ctrl+Alt+Azure podcast Tobias Zimmergren and Jussi Roine talk about Celebrating 3 years of Ctrl+Alt+Azure

Management and Governance

Covering: Automation, Azure Advisor, Azure Backup, Azure Blueprints, Azure Lighthouse, Azure Managed Applications, Azure mobile app, Azure Monitor, Azure Policy, Azure Resource Manager, Azure Service Health, Azure Site Recovery, Cloud Shell, Cost Management, Microsoft Azure portal, Scheduler, Azure Purview

• The Azure Updates Team announces General availability: Manage your Log Analytics Tables in Azure Portal
• James Havens talks about Purview in the Real World Blog November 8, 2022
• On the Azure blog, Farzana Rahman explains how to Accelerate your cloud-native journey with Azure Monitor
• Stanislav Zhelyazkov (@StanZhelyazkov) discusses Azure Monitor Workspace, Managed Prometheus and Prometheus Alerts via Bicep
• Bruno Gabrielli talks about Azure Monitor: Calculating Chargeback to Split Monitoring Costs Across Projects
• Travis Roberts (@Ciraltos) descirbes how to Save Money with an Azure Savings Plan for Compute

Media

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

• Mohammed Brueckner (@MoeBrueC) writes about Using Azure Media Services to encode videos

Migration

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

• Kajol Patel discusses Simplifying the cloud data migration journey for enterprises

Mobile

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

• No content this week

Networking

Covering: Application Gateway, Azure Bastion, Azure DNS, Azure ExpressRoute, Azure Firewall, Azure Firewall Manager, Azure Front Door, Azure Internet Analyzer, Azure Private Link, Content Delivery Network, Load Balancer, Network Watcher, Traffic Manager, Virtual Network, Virtual WAN, VPN Gateway, Web Application Firewall

• The Azure Updates Team announces General availability: Default Rule Set 2.1 for Azure Web Application Firewall and Generally available: Block domain fronting behavior on newly created customer resources

Security

Covering: Azure DDoS Protection, Azure Information Protection, Azure Sentinel, Key Vault, Security Center

• Didier Danloy explains how to Update to Microsoft Sentinels Technical Playbook for MSSPs is now available v1.5.1
• Mike Browning talks about Defender TI Empowers Organizations to Get More Done With Less

Storage

Covering: Archive Storage, Avere vFXT for Azure, Azure Data Lake Store, Azure FXT Edge Filer, Azure HPC Cache, Azure NetApp Files, Blob Storage, Disk Storage, File Storage, Managed Disks, Queue Storage, Storage Accounts, Storage Explorer, StorSimple

• The Azure Updates Team announces Generally available: Azure NetApp Files datastores for Azure VMware Solution

Web

Covering: API apps, API Management, App Service (Web), Azure Cognitive Search, Azure SignalR Service, Azure Spring Cloud, Web apps

• The Azure Updates Team announces the General Availability of Azure Static Web Apps now fully supports .NET 7, and Static Web Apps support for skipping API builds, and Static Web Apps support for Gitlab and Bitbucket, and Static Web Apps support for stable URLs for preview environments, and Static Web Apps support for preview environments in Azure DevOps and announce the Public preview: Azure Static Web Apps now Supports Node 18
• Melony Qin announces the .NET 7 for Azure Functions isolated worker process is generally available
• Phil Jirsa walks through how to Deploy a React app to Azure Static Web Apps
• On the Azure blog, Jessie Jia announces that Zero downtime migration for Azure Front Door - now in preview

Azure Virtual Desktop

Covering: Azure Virtual Desktop

• David Belanger announces General Availability of FSLogix profiles for Azure AD-joined VMs in Azure Virtual Desktop
• Lior Bela covers Whats new in Windows Autopatch: November 2022

Useful Links

• Azure Resource Inventory - Azure Resource Inventory is a powerful script written in PowerShell to generate an Excel report of any Azure Environment you have read access
• Azure Quickstart Templates - Learn how to deploy to Azure using ARM Templates. Over 850 examples in this repo.
• Azure CNAB Quickstarts Library - You can deploy to the Cloud, on Prem and on the Edge using CNAB & Porter. This library provides a number of quickstart templates to help you get started, fast!
• Power BI Weekly - Interested in Power BI? Sign up to our sister newsletter Power BI Weekly to receive all the week's Power BI news.
• Azure Resources - A fantastic collection of resources contained in this repo. Issue a PR if you have resources to share. Managed by Azure MVP Gregor Suttie.
• Azure Charts - Azure Charts is a set of auto-rebuilt charts to keep you updated on Azure changes, news, stats. Public updates, RSS channels and web pages are used as data sources
• The Developer’s Guide to Microsoft Azure (2nd Edition) - ebook from Microsoft showcasing architectural approaches and common design patterns you face when building modern applications.
• Azure Virtual Datacenter - ebook from Microsoft highlighting an approach to isolation, security, and trust in the Microsoft cloud.
• Cyber Security Demystified - ebook from Microsoft describing how to keep your organisation safe.
• Microsoft's What is Azure poster - a visual overview of Azure's services and features.
• Microsoft Azure Essentials: Fundamentals of Azure - a free ebook from Microsoft Press, by Michael S. Collier and Robin E. Shahan.
• Data Science in the Cloud with Microsoft Azure Machine Learning and R - a free ebook on Azure Machine Learning, by Stephen F. Elston.
• Protecting Data in Microsoft Azure - a whitepaper that describes the various mechanism you can you can leverage for managing sensitive data in the Azure platform.
• Azure Architecture Center - guidance from the Patterns & Practices team covering API Design, API implementation, Autoscaling, Background jobs, CDN, Caching, Data partitioning, Monitoring and diagnostics, Retry, Scalability and availability.
• Azure Architect's Reference - if you are an architect responsible for building an application on Azure, or are trying to figure out how you could migrate an application and need to dig deep into the workload, cost, security, capacity, availability, deployment and operational modelling this invaluable resource should be your first stop. An open source project, with contributions from several experienced architects, it gathers data from many different references into a single, useful guide that is constantly updated by the community.
• Azure Table Storage Design Guide - a guide from the storage team.
• Azure infrastructure services implementation guidelines - key design and implementation guidelines for deploying an IT workload in Azure infrastructure services.
• Azure Speed Test - a simple web tool that measures the latency between you and Azure Datacenters to suggest which might be fastest for you location.
• Azure Websites Cheatsheet - everything you need to know about configuring & managing Azure Websites on a single page.
• Data Migration Assistant - enables you to upgrade to a modern data platform by detecting compatibility issues that can impact database functionality on your new version of SQL Server and Azure SQL Database. It recommends performance and reliability improvements for your target environment.
• Azure SQL DTU Calculator - a tool to help you determine the number of DTUs for your existing SQL Server database(s) as well as a recommendation of the minimum performance level and service tier that you need before you migrate to Azure SQL Database.
• Microsoft Azure Symbol/Icon Set - a set of Visio and PowerPoint shapes for use in architecture diagrams / presentations.
• Service Bus Explorer - a free and open source tool for managing and exploring Azure Service Bus(including Event Hubs).
• Best practices for designing Azure Resource Manager Templates - guidance based on the whitepaper 'World Class ARM Templates Considerations and Proven Practices'.
• Microsoft Cloud Networking for Enterprise Architects - a downloadable guide to Azure networking, covering topics such as cloud migration and networking for PaaS and SaaS services
• Whitepapers for Power BI - numerous whitepapers ranging various Power BI topics
• Azure Serverless Computing Cookbook - ebook from Microsoft, including use cases, hands-on steps, and tutorials for quickly configuring your own serverless environments.
• Executive Summary: Enterprise Cloud Strategy - executive summary of the 140-page e-book from Microsoft. Learn about the basics of adopting a cloud computing strategy for your enterprise.
• Migrating SQL Server to Azure SQL Database Managed Instance—A Step-by-Step Guide - ebook from Microsoft providing breakdown of tactical steps for implementing a quick, simple, and low-impact data migration with Azure SQL Database Managed Instance.
• Azure Backup Deep Dive Whitepaper - a deep dive by Adin Ermie and Charbel Nemnom describing Azure Backup
• Azure Stack: An extension of Azure - whitepaper from Microsoft detailing how you can extend Azure Stack to make Azure services available on-premises
• Azure Strategy and Implementation Guide - For Azure users - ebook from Microsoft outlining recommended general architecture and cloud design principles, DevOps, approaches to service management, and overall governance.
• Azure Data Factory: SSIS in the Cloud - eBook from Microsoft explaining why you would want to migrate your existing SSIS workloads to Azure Data Factory and addressing common considerations and concerns. Includes technical details of creating an Azure-SSIS IR and then walk-throughs of how to upload, execute, and monitor your packages through Azure Data Factory
• Parallel Virtual File Systems on Microsoft Azure - ebook from Microsoft documenting the results of a series of performance tests on Azure to see how scalable Lustre, GlusterFS, and BeeGFS are
• Build and deploy a multi-container application in Azure Service Fabric - ebook from Microsoft which shows how to create a sample multi-container application using ASP.NET Core and Docker and deploy it on an Azure Service Fabric cluster.
• Azure ebook/whitepaper resources - White papers, analyst reports, and e-books landing page with an abundance of extra resources.
• Farmer - This is a DSL for ARM template creation - "Making repeatable Azure deployments easy"!