Azure Weekly Newsletter Issue #432

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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 - Public Preview for August
• Matthew Anderson presents a webinar: Want to build a Copilot for your app? Semantic Kernel & Prompt Flow for Beginners
• David Giard (@DavidGiard) provides A Brief Overview of Responsible AI
• Jennie Cady talks about Copilot in Teams: August 2023 Updates
• On episode 199 of the Ctrl+Alt+Azure podcast, Tobias Zimmergren (@zimmergren) and Jussi Roine (@JussiRoine) talk about Refreshing our knowledge on Azure AI
• Ben Roberts covers Azure MLOps Challenge Blog: Part 2
• Gia Mondragon writes Azure Cognitive Search and LangChain: A Seamless Integration for Enhanced Vector Search Capabilities

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, Microsoft Purview, Microsoft Fabric

• Barry Smart (@barry_j_a_smart) shares the next post in the series about Microsoft Fabric for Technology Leaders: Developing a Data Mesh Inspired Vision Using Microsoft Fabric
• Batuhan Tuter delves into SAP CDC on Azure
• Dany Hoter discusses Relationships between ADX tables on two databases or two clusters
• John Folberth (@j_folberth) covers Part 4 - Unlock the Power of Azure Data Factory: A Guide to Boosting Your Data Ingestion Process

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 Generally Available: Durable Functions for Python v2 Programming Model
• Aysha Keen announces public preview of new Mv3 Medium Memory Virtual Machines
• Brian Lepore describes Introducing New Performance Tiers for Azure Managed Lustre: Enhancing HPC Workloads
• Mengyang Chen blogs about Azure PowerShell Functions - connect SFTP and Storage Account
• Glaucia Lemos (@glaucia_lemos86) provides a Step by Step Guide: Migrating v3 to v4 programming model for Azure Functions for Node.Js Application
• The Azure Updates Team announces Generally Available: SDK type bindings in Azure Functions

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 Generally Available: Cross Origin Resource Sharing CORS in Azure Container Apps, and Generally available: Session affinity for Azure Container Apps, and Generally available: Azure Key Vault references for secrets in Azure Container Apps, and Generally available: Init containers in Azure Container Apps and Generally available: Secrets volume mounts for Azure Container Apps
• The Azure Updates Team announces Generally Available: Kubernetes 1.27 support in AKS

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 General availability: Terraform support for Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL and General availability: 99th percentile latency metric in Azure Cache for Redis
• The Azure Updates Team announces Public Preview: Storage auto-grow & online disk scaling for Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server and Public Preview: Azure Active Directory integration with Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL
• Nevena Nikolic writes about Your max log rate on SQL Managed Instance Business Critical is now doubled
• Shreya R. Aithal talks about Azure Database for MySQL - July 2023 updates and latest feature roadmap
• Aidan Finn (@joe_elway) explains Cosmos DB Replicas With Private Endpoint
• Erin Stellato and Subhojit Basak (@erinstellato) talk about Unleashing SQL Sorcery: Increasing Performance and Complexity with GitHub Copilot
• Mustafa Ashour discusses Tips & Tricks 5: Unable to login to Azure SQL Managed Instance using AAD Integrated

Developer Tools

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

• The Azure Updates Team announces General Availability : Help API provides access to self-help diagnostics
• Jessie Houghton writes about Multi-Branch Graph Available for General Audiences
• On the Visual Studio blog, Nayana Srikanth writes about Visual Studio 2022 – 17.7 Performance Enhancements
• Also on the Visual Studio blog, Mads Kristensen (@mkristensen) describes his favorite features in Visual Studio 17.7
• On the Visual Studio blog, David Li talks about Unleashing the Power of Visual Studio 2022 for C++ Game Development
• Ken Ross (@kzhen) blogs about Using ChatGPT to learn how to use JMeter
• Swati Mehta covers Microsofts Azure Kinect Developer Kit Technology Transfers to Partner Ecosystem
• Henry Yan covers Ubuntu Server to Ubuntu Pro in-place upgrade now available in public preview
• Verah Ombui walks through Discovering System Center Virtual Machine Manager SCVMM
• On episode 258 of the Azure DevOps podcast, Jeffrey Palermo (@jeffreypalermo) and Damian Brady (@damovisa) talk aboutGitHub Copilot

DevOps

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

• John Reilly (@johnny_reilly) blogs about Azure Pipelines meet Vitest and covers Azure Open AI: handling capacity and quota limits with Bicep
• John Kilmister (@johnkilmister) walks through Controlling Azure DevOps Pipelines through Teams Integration and Manual Intervention Steps
• Kevin Chant walks through Using Azure DevOps Analytics views and Microsoft Fabric to create Sprint review reports
• Antti K. Koskela (@koskila) talks about Azure DevOps pipelines suddenly failing with error0 building with default instance using docker driver
• Thomas Thornton (@tamstar1234) blogs about Using Terraform Providers To Deploy Resources To Different Azure Subscriptions

Hybrid + Multicloud

Covering: Azure Arc, Azure Stack

• Zoran Rilak talks about Scenarios with private endpoints to Azure SQL Managed Instance

Identity

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

• Gerasimos Alexiou describes How to implement Managed Identity on Service Fabric
• On episode 347 of the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast, Scott Hoag and Ben Stegink (@msclouditpro) are joined by Merill Fernando (@merill) to cover All your Entra.news
• Ravikanth Chaganti (@ravikanth) blogs about Azure SDK for Go - Authentication methods - Chained Credentials

Integration

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

• No content this week

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 Azure Sphere Integrated Public Preview

Learning

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

• No content this week

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 Generally Available: Application Insights integration for the Azure Functions .NET worker
• The Azure Updates Team announces Public Preview: Azure Backup now supports Cross Region Restore for PostgreSQL backups
• Kyle Callahan writes about Further customize your SaaS and VM product plans in a private offer
• Mark Brimble (@BrimbleMark) explains how to Disable Azure Metric Alerts
• Panu Oksala explains How to Name Your Azure Resources
• Andrew Coughlin explains how to Move Backups In Recovery Service Vault From LRS/GRS To ZRS While Preserving The Data and how to Move backups in Recovery Service Vault from LRS/GRS to ZRS while not preserving the data
  
• Robert Smit (@Clustermvp) blogs about Move a Recovery Services vault across Azure subscriptions and resource group

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

• Karla Escobar writes about General Availability: Azure DMS – Migrate MySQL user accounts and privileges

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: New Monitoring and Logging Updates in Azure Firewall, and Public preview: New Monitoring and Logging Updates in Azure Firewall and Public preview: Azure VNet flow logs
• Suren Jamiyanaa talks about Azure Firewall: New Monitoring and Logging Updates and Azure Firewall: New Monitoring and Logging Updates
• Adarsh Venkataraman discusses Azure Elastic SAN updates: Private Endpoints & Shared Volumes

Security

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

• Mukta Agarwal announces mobile device tagging for iOS and Android
• Loren Lachapelle writes about Latest functionalities uplevel asset management and enhance data visibility
• Charbel Nemnom (@charbelnemnom) talks about Mastering Azure Key Vault: An Informative Guide
• Vasavi Pasula explains how to Proactively secure your AWS Cloud Resources with Microsoft Defender for Cloud
• Rudnei Oliveira walks through Implementing Microsoft Sentinel and Two simulated threats from scratch Then see Sentinel in action

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 writes about General Availability: Incremental snapshots for Premium SSD v2 Disk and Ultra Disk Storage
• The Azure Updates Team announces Public Preview: Azure NetApp Files Cloud Backup for Virtual Machines, and Public Preview: Azure Elastic SAN Updates: Private endpoints & shared volumes and Public Preview: Custom NFSv4.1 ID Domain in Azure NetApp Files
• Geert van Teylingen (@teylemans) covers SAP on Azure NetApp Files Sizing Best Practices
• Daniel Falkner blogs about Azure Storage Mover can now migrate your SMB shares to Azure file shares.
• Shailja Tripathi walks through Troubleshooting InvalidBlock Exception during upload operation

Web

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

• Muhammad Samiullah blogs about Exploring the Synergy between Web Development and Artificial Intelligence: A Beginner's Guide
• Thomas Gauvin describes how to Access network isolated APIs and databases from Azure Static Web Apps

Azure Virtual Desktop

Covering: Azure Virtual Desktop

• Jason Parker announces FSLogix release changes and Windows multi-session updates in Azure Marketplace

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"!