Azure Weekly Newsletter Issue #414

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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 - General Availability for April
• Dave Glover (@dglover) describes Mastering Azure AI: 30DaysOfAzureAI Week Two Recap
• John Alfaro (@j_alex_alfaro) blogs Terraforming the Azure Open AI service Deployment via AzAPI and AzureRM providers for the Enterprise… and ChatGPT model
• Daniel Calbimonte explains How to work with ChatGPT in Visual Studio Code
• David Giard (@DavidGiard) writes What is ChatGPT and How Can it Help Me and Using ChatGPT to Make Your Work Easier
• Zachary Cavanell explains how to Automate document analysis with Azure Form Recognizer using AI andOCR
• Ruth Yakubu explains How to expose data biases from debugging your model with responsible AI and explains How to find model performance inconsistencies in one data group vs another with Responsible AI
• Rudeon Snell says The future of healthcare is data-driven
• Ksenya Kveler blogs about Enhancing health equity by extraction of Social Determinants of Health from unstructured text
• Bert Hoorne walks through Extending Azure Health Bot with Azure OpenAI Service
• Amit Lal highlights Powering Your Business with AI: 7 Unbelievable Whiteboard Scenarios for SAP S/4HANA & Azure OpenAI
• Laziz Turakulov blogs about Asteroid Hunting with Synthetic Data

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 explains how to Connect Azure Stream Analytics to Azure Data Explorer using managed private endpoint. and say Use Stream Analytics to process exported data from Application Insights
• Alex Lin provides A Guide to the Developer Journey in Azure Stream Analytics
• Jonathan D'Aloia shares a walkthrough of Fully Automating the Deployment of a Self-Hosted Integration Runtime

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 Availability of: Improved scaling model for Azure Functions with Target Based Scaling, and Azure VMware Solution Stretched Clusters with customer-managed keys, and Hotpatch now available for Windows Server VMs on Azure with desktop experience and Azure VMware Solution now available in Qatar with AV36P
• The Azure Updates Team announces Public preview: Azure Functions V4 programming model for Node.js
• The Azure Updates Team announces Private Preview: Enable Trusted launch on your existing Azure Gen2 VMs, and Public Preview: Azure Chaos Studio is now available in Sweden Central region and Azure SQL—Public preview updates for mid-April 2023
• Charbel Nemnom (@charbelnemnom) explains how to Migrate Azure Functions From Consumption Plan To Higher Plans – Comprehensive Guide
• Denver Brittain describes How to Use Azure Functions with MongoDB Atlas in Java
• Kent Altena writes that MatLab and Azure: A Match Made in Performance Heaven
• Rachel Pruitt describes Ramp up with me...on HPC: What is high-performance computing HPC
• Kent Altena walks through Saying Goodbye to HPC Pack 2012 R2: End of Life Date Reached April 11th 2023
• Travis Roberts (@Ciraltos) writes about New Azure Image Builder Portal Integration

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 the Public Preview of: Azure Container Apps supports user defined routes UDR and smaller subnets, and Azure Container Apps offers new plan and pricing structure and Node Resource Group NRG lockdown
• The Azure Updates Team announces Azure Monitor managed service for Prometheus has updated our AKS add-on to support Windows nodes
• Hannah Hunter discusses Dapr extension for AKS is available in 7 new regions
• Mike Morton (@BigMorty) covers Azure Container Apps Announces New Pricing Plan and Enhanced Networking
• Anthony Chu (@nthonyChu) writes about This Month in Azure Container Apps: March/April 2023
• Saverio Proto discusses Journey to Containers
• Keith Grima covers Securing Azure Container Services: Best Practices and Tips
• Ala Raddaoui discusses Building Secure Container Images with GitHub Actions, Azure Container Registry and Microsoft
• Ayobami Ayodeji writes about 7 security best practices for managing containerized workloads in AKS with Calico
• Eric van Wijk blogs about Service Connection guidance for AKS customers using Kubernetes tasks
• Akarsh Mishra announces Image Signing for Windows Containers
• Rick Kemery talks about Creating an AKS Cluster in Azure: Considerations for Migrating from EKS Workloads

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 Availablity of: Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL cluster compute start and stop and Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server in the Australia Central region, and Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL REST APIs, and Azure Cosmos DB serverless container with 1 TB storage, and Read replicas for Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server and New burstable SKUs for Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server
• The Azure Updates Team announces the Public Preview: Database-is-alive metrics for monitoring Azure Postgres Flexible Server database availability, and Performance troubleshooting workbooks for Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server and query performance insight for Azure Database for PostgreSQL- Flexible Server
• Aditya Badramraju describes Announcement: New Features and changes to SQL IaaS Agent Extension
• The Azure Updates Team announces Azure SQL - General availability updates for mid-April 2023
• Kanchan Bharati covers March 2023 Recap: Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server
• Greg Low (@greglow) describes Cosmos Down Under podcast 7 with guest Rodrigo Souza is now published
• Alicja Kucharczyk explains how to Empower Your Troubleshooting with Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server Guides
• Anna Hoffman (@AnalyticAnna) shares the latest in the SQL Insider Series: Get Started with Azure Cognitive Search for Azure SQL Data Exposed
• Anthony Bartolo (@WirelessLife) discusses DP-900: Microsoft Azure Data Fundamentals Study Guide
• Jose M Jurado (@jmjuradodiaz) describes Lesson Learned 343:DISABLEVERSIONING wait type and ALLOWSNAPSHOTISOLATION
• Karthik Yella blogs about Understanding Connectivity Issues in Azure SQL Database
• Ganapathi Varma Chekuri discusses Streaming data in real time from Azure Database for MySQL - Flexible Server to Power BI
• Niko Neugebauer explains how to Optimize Costs in Azure SQL Managed Instance and explains how to Enable hassle-free migration between SQL Server and Azure SQL Managed Instance
• Sakshi Gupta blogs about Custom solution to Omit Azure SQL Auditing Data

Developer Tools

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

• Nik Karpinsky covers Improving Visual Studio performance with the new Instrumentation Tool
• Erin Stellato (@erinstellato) announces Azure Data Studio 1.43
• Meera Haridasa writes about New Azure Extensions in VSCode.dev
• Drew Skwiers-Koballa announces General Availability of Azure Data Studio extension SQL Database Projects

DevOps

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

• The Azure Updates Team announces General Availability: App Configuration geo-replication
• The Azure Updates Team announces General availability: Azure DevOps 2023 Q1
• On the Microsoft DevOps blog, Dan Hellem writes about New Boards Hub Update, Sprint 220
• Gloridel Morales describes Azure DevOps 2023 Q2 Roadmap update and announces Azure DevOps Server 2022.0.1 RC
• On the Octopus Deploy Blog, Terence Wong talks about Deploying to Azure with GitHub Actions and Octopus
• Rachel Irabor describes Azure DevOps for Beginners: How to Set Up Your Account, Organization, and Repository
• Sarah Lean (@TechieLass) writes about What are Azure DevOps Boards
• Vinicius Apolinario (@vrapolinario) explains How to contribute to the ITOpsTalk repo on GitHub
• Mauricio Blanco blogs about Azure landing zones custom archetypes using Terraform
• Nagarjuna Vipparthi explains how to Automated and customized dashboards for Azure Load Testing

Hybrid + Multicloud

Covering: Azure Arc, Azure Stack

• Silvio Di Benedetto describes Azure Stack HCI: restore storage after failing of node

Identity

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

• The Azure Updates Team announces Retirement notice: transition to the Authentication methods policy for Azure Active Directory
• Sravani Saluru talks about User Managed Identity support for Auditing Azure SQL Database is Generally Available Now.
• Jay Simmons writes about By popular demand: Windows LAPS available now
• On the Redmond magazine site, Kurt Mackie (@kurmac) writes Microsoft Details Attack Methods Using Azure AD Connect and Microsoft To Tighten Azure Storage Default Permissions
• Ankur Patel blogs about Introducing a new way to verify your workplace on LinkedIn with Microsoft Entra Verified ID

Integration

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

• Umesh Panwar talks about Azure Logic Apps plans: Consumption based vs Standard
• Sandro Pereira (@sandro_asp) talks about Logic Apps Consumption: How to get the Logic App error detail message guide and Azure Function: Loopback API
• On the Azure blog, Fernando Mejia explains how to Manage your APIs with Azure API Managements self-hosted gateway v2
• Steffen Mueller describes DR scenario for SAP Windows application servers with the focus on ASCS/ERS using Azure Files SMB

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

• On the Azure blog, Stephen Kitay describes Azure Space technologies advance digital transformation across government agencies

Learning

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

• Tobias Zimmergren and Jussi Roine publish Ctrl+Alt+Azure episode 181 - Keeping skills relevant and renewing your certifications
• Allie Thompson (Wieczorek) talks about Skill up on Modern Work: Quarterly recap
• On the Azure blog, Priyanka Rawat describes Boost your data and AI skills with Microsoft Azure CLX

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

• Shreevijayakumar Nayak writes about Few platform logs and metrics go missing when streaming them from Diagnostic Setting to Event Hub...
• Sam Cogan (@samcogan) talks about Resource Group Location Matters
• Felipe Binotto delves into Cost Governance with Azure Policy
• James Havens blogs about Microsoft Purview in the Real World April 14, 2023
• Gerasimos Alexiou explains how to Inherit tags on Azure resources
• Rick Kemery describes How to Add a Trial Subscription to Your Azure Account: Step-by-Step Guide, and Step-by-Step Guide: Creating an Azure Resource Group on Azure Portal and explains How to Increase Quota for Specific Types of Azure Virtual Machines
• Vantage (@joinvantage) announces Vantage Launches Azure Cost Recommendations
• MindByte, Michiel van Oudheusden (@mivano) shares Maximizing Your Azure Cost Savings: Strategies, Tools, and License Benefits and releases Azure Cost CLI - a beautiful utility (using Spectre.Console) that uses the Azure Cost Management API to retrieve and visualise your Azure Subscription costs.

Media

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

• No content this week

Migration

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

• Chhavi Nijhawan writes about 5 reasons to join us at Securely Migrate and Optimize with Azure
• On the SQL Server Blog, Chhavi Nijhawan writes about 5 reasons to join us at Securely Migrate and Optimize with Azure
• Alma Bencomo discusses Microsoft Priva: Helping you build a privacy resilient workplace.
• Bartosz Jarkowski explains how to SAP CDC Connector and SLT - Part 3 - Let's get that data

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: NGINXaaS - Azure Native ISV Service

Security

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

• On Arinco Blog, Rob McNaught covers Azure firewall basic is now generally available
• Aashish Ramdas describes Retirement notification for the Azure Information Protection Unified Labeling add-in for Office
• Andre Camillo discusses Microsoft Defender for Endpoint — Part 1
• Peter Frem describes Microsoft Purview Information Protection in Microsoft 365 Apps - April 2023
• Jeffrey Palermo (@jeffreypalermo) talks about Bojan Magusic: Azure Security - Episode 240

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

• Prashant Khandelwal explains How To Host Your React Application For Cheap With Azure Blob Storage
• Haitham Qaffesha discusses Monitor Object Replication Status For Storage Account
• J. Tower talks about Dos and Don'ts for Streaming File Uploads to Azure Blob Storage With .NET MVC

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 General Availability: Azure App Health Extension - Rich Health States
• The Azure Updates Team announces Generally available: Static Web Apps support for Python 3.10
• John Reilly (@johnny_reilly) writes about Deep linking with Azure Static Web Apps and Easy Auth
• Emma Yen writes about Remote certificate is invalid when calling an external endpoint from web app
• Sonja Gu covers Boost efficiency with Power Platform and Azure API Management
• Naga Surendran announces that New Azure App Service plans fuel greater choice and savings
• Abhishek Reddy describes How to setup Multisite in WordPress on Azure App Service
• Mayunk Jain (@mayunkj) covers Java to the cloud in minutes: JBoss EAP on Azure App Service
• Roosevelt Nelson Jr describes Troubleshoot Failed External Calls Between App Services Using AppServiceIPSecAuditLogs

Azure Virtual Desktop

Covering: Azure Virtual Desktop

• John Kelbley writes about Secure Linux Access Using Azure Virtual Desktop
• Ankur Biswas blogs about Windows 365 Cloud PCs: now secured with encryption at host

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"!