Azure Weekly Newsletter Issue #289

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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

• On the DEV site, Amy Boyd (@AmyKateNicho) provides a Learner's Guide to AI on the Cloud Skills Show
• On the Visual Studio blog, Shengyu Fu talks about The making of Visual Studio IntelliCodes first deep learning model
• On the Premier Developer blog, David Da-Teh Huang provides an Introduction to Supervised Machine Learning
• The Azure updates team highlights that Azure Machine Learning announces output dataset Preview
• On the Azure blog, Anand Raman (@aram09) blogs about Empowering remote learning with Azure Cognitive Services
• The Azure updates team announces Azure Cognitive Services Translator Text— New languages now available, that Simplified Chinese language support is now available in Azure Cognitive Services Computer Vision public preview, highlights the Public Preview of Cognitive Services Form Recognizer v2.1 and that Immersive Reader is now generally available
• On the Microsoft Blog, Ian Finder discusses how Microsoft is Bringing AI supercomputing to customers
• On Azure Medium, Francesca Lazzeri (@frlazzeri) describes how DirectML is Empowering Students and Beginners in Machine Learning
• Also on Azure Medium, Mauro Minella discusses Responsible AI in action, locally and on Azure Machine Learning

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

• On the Azure blog, Kaiser Larsen (@kaiserlarsen) explains How Azure Synapse Analytics can help you respond, adapt, and save
• Mike Donnelly (@SQLMD) asks: What is Azure Databricks?
• On Azure Medium, Patrick Alexander covers: "What is Azure Synapse?"

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 that PowerShell support in Durable Functions is in public preview, and that Azure Virtual Machines DCsv2-series is now available in West US 2 and  Canada East
• On Code Project, Ashirwad Satapathi discusses Routing in Azure Functions
• On the Serverless360 blog, Nadeem Ahamed (@Nadeem_ahamed_r) highlights the main points from Azure Functions Live – August 2020
• Sam Cogan (@samcogan) talks about how to Create VM's From a Marketplace Image That Needs A Plan
• On the DEV site, Jay Gordon (@jaydestro) covers Azure Linux VM Storage
• Jaliya Udagedara (@JaliyaUdagedara) covers Durable Functions and External Events

Containers

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

• On the Azure Academy YouTube channel, Phil Gibson provides an Open Service Mesh (OSM) demo
• Steve Buchanan (@buchatech) discusses Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS) with Kazeem Adegboyega
• The Azure updates team announces that Azure Kubernetes Service node image upgrade is now generally available, that CSI storage driver support in Azure Kubernetes Service is now in public preview, that Ephemeral OS disk support in AKS is now in public preview and that Azure Resource Health support in AKS in in public preview
• On the DEV site, Jay Gordon (@jaydestro) discusses Combining Azure and DataDog and provides a A recap of Kubecon Europe Virtual
• On Channel 9, Anthony Nocentino (@nocentino) talks about How to Deploy SQL Server 2019 in Containers in Just Minutes with Anna Hoffman
• On the Azure blog, Brendan Burns (@brendandburns) explains how to Build resilient applications with Kubernetes on Azure
• On the Azure Developer Community Blog, Stephane Eyskens (@stephaneeyskens) discusses Dapr: a small revolution in the Microservices world
• On Azure Medium, Prabal Deb discusses an Automated Test Environment for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) Applications

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

• James Serra (@JamesSerra) covers Cosmos DB for the SQL Professional – Referencing Tables
• On the Azure blog, Maddy Butzbach describes Power mission-critical applications with Azure Database for PostgreSQL
• The Azure updates team announces that the Serverless offer for Azure Cosmos DB now in preview, describes the Azure SQL Database gateways changes effective September 15, 2020, highlights that you need to Update your Azure Cosmos DB Python SDK by 31 August 2022, and announces that Azure Ultra Disk is now generally available in more regions and Availability Zones and that Azure Backup for SAP HANA databases running on RHEL is now generally available
• On Channel 9, Silvano Coriani (@scoriani) discusses Azure SQL Capacity Planning: DTU or vCore with Anna Hoffman
• Also on the Azure blog, Manoj Raheja blogs about how to Share big data at scale with Azure Data Share in-place sharing for Azure Data Explorer
• The Azure updates team announces that Azure Data Share in-place sharing for Azure Data Explorer now generally available and showcases that you can now Create a table with the new 1-click experience in Azure Data Explorer
• Tim Anderson (@timanderson) discusses Point-in-time restore: a handy built-in feature in Azure SQL
• On the DEV site, Abhishek Gupta (@abhi_tweeter) walks through How to Ingest data from Kafka into Azure Data Explorer
• Also on Channel 9, Erin Stellato (@erinstellato) discusses Improve Query Performance by Managing Statistics in Azure SQL with Anna Hoffman

Developer Tools

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

• On the DEV site, Justin Yoo (@justinchronicle) describes Provisioning an Azure VM as a Streamer Machine with Chocolatey
• On the Visual Studio blog, Jacqueline Widdis (@JacqWiddis) highlights the New Features in Visual Studio 2019 v16.8 Preview 2 Release
• On Code Project, Ashirwad Satapathi explains how to Build and Run your Azure Function Locally using Visual Studio 2019
• Also on the DEV site, Adam Jackson talks about Languages & Frameworks (The Cloud Skills Show)
• On the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast, Ben Stegink and Scott Hoag (@msclouditpro) discuss: Episode 192 – SkyNet Is Real!

DevOps

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

• On the Daily Dot Net Tips blog, Abhijit Jana (@AbhijitJana) highlights how to set the Default branch name for new repos in Azure DevOps
• Donovan Brown (@DonovanBrown) explains how to Reconnect Azure DevOps Server to SQL after server name change
• Andy Leonard (@AndyLeonard) talks about Azure DevOps and the SSIS Development Lifecycle
• The Azure updates team announces improvements to Azure DevOps Artifacts storage exploration and announces that you can now Configure upstream source for universal Packages with Azure Artifacts
• On the Black Marble blog, Richard Fennell (@richardfennell) blogs about Using the Post Build Cleanup Task from the Marketplace in YAML based Azure DevOps Pipelines, describes Exporting Release Notes and WIKIs as PDFs using a new Azure DevOps Extension and discusses a Fix For: The pipeline is not valid error: Unable to resolve latest version on an Azure DevOps YAML pipeline
• Charbel Nemnom (@charbelnemnom) describes How To Backup Azure DevOps Git Repositories
• On the Microsoft DevOps blog, Dan Hellem highlights what's New in Azure Boards Sprint 174
• Also on the Microsoft DevOps blog, Justin Chung writes about New IP address ranges with Service Tags for Azure DevOps Services
• Also on the Microsoft DevOps blog, Matt Cooper (@vtbassmatt) continues his "Lets Hack a Pipeline" series, covering Argument Injection, Stealing Another Repo and Shared Infrastructure
• Also on the Microsoft DevOps blog, as always, Steven Murawski (@StevenMurawski) lists the Top Stories from the Microsoft DevOps Community – 2020.08.14 and 2020.08.21
• On Channel 9, Pierre Roman (@pierreroman) discusses ARM Template Outputs and Frank Boucher talks about Controlling Deployments with Abel Wang
• Also on Channel 9, Scott Hanselman and Tim Heuer talk about How to deploy .NET Core apps to Azure with GitHub Actions

Hybrid

Covering: Azure Arc, Azure Stack

• Thomas Maurer (@thomasmaurer) covers the Inventory for Azure Arc enabled Servers
• On the Azure SQL Database blog, Danimir Ljepava (@danimir) talks about User initiated manual failover on SQL Managed Instance
• Roelf Zomerman (@RCZ_Jag) discusses Secure hybrid access done right

Identity

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

• Anuj Chaudhary explains how to Connect to Azure AD PowerShell with MFA
• Matthew Soucoup (@CodeMillMatt) talks about Microsoft.Identity.Web, Azure Active Directory, and SPAs
• Robert Smit (@Clustermvp) blogs about Starting with FIDO2 security keys With Azure Active Directory
• Daniel Neumann (@neumanndaniel) talks about how to Deploy an AKS cluster using managed identity and managed Azure AD integration and covers Assigning RBAC permissions with Azure Resource Manager templates
• On the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast, Ben Stegink and Scott Hoag (@msclouditpro) discuss Fortnite, Foldables, and Azure AD, Oh My!
• On Azure Medium, Inderjit Rana talks about Azure MySQL Audit Logs and Azure AD Authentication Learnings

Integration

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

• On the MSSQL Tips site, Mohammed Moinudheen talks about how to Auto Scale Azure SQL DB using Azure Logic Apps
• The Azure updates team announces Ingestion data isolation in Log Analytics
• Tobias Zimmergren (@zimmergren) explains how to Get notified of changes in Azure Key Vault by using Event Grid
• Jeffrey Palermo (@jeffreypalermo) discusses SignalR and More with Brady Gaster
• Jaliya Udagedara (@JaliyaUdagedara) discusses the Azure Functions SignalR Service Output Binding and Console Client

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 has made a few announcements:
  New Azure IoT Central App Template - Video Analytics is now available,
  Azure IoT Central UI new and updated features—July 2020,
  Azure Sphere OS version 20.08 is now available
  and Azure Certified for Plug and Play is now available
• On the Azure blog, Koichi Hirao explains how to Prepare and certify your devices for IoT Plug and Play
• And, on Channel 9, Olivier Bloch (@obloch) also talks about how to Prepare and certify your devices for IoT Plug and Play
• On Channel 9, Vasiya Krishnan discusses "What is Azure SQL Edge?" with Anna Hoffman
• Justin Yoo (@justinchronicle) discusses Home Automation with Power Platform - Part 1 and Part 2

Learning

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

• Sarah Lean (@TechieLass) discusses Studying for DP-900
• Adam Marczak (@MarczakIO) continues the learning guide for AZ-900, covering: Compute Services Vms, VM Scale Set, App Service, Functions, ACI, AKS and Networking Services Virtual Network, VPN Gateway, CDN, Load Balancer, App GW
• Mike Pfeiffer (@mike_pfeiffer) discusses Learning Azure with Gwyneth Pena
• On Channel 9, Scott Hanselman (@shanselman) discusses Getting started as a cloud engineer with Gwyneth Pea
• On the DEV site, Jay Gordon (@jaydestro) provides A Guide to Skills Measured for the Azure Fundamentals Exam AZ-900
• On the Azure Developer Community Blog, Shayne Boyer (@spboyer) highlights the first Mixed Reality Learn Module!

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, Sceduler

• The Azure updates team announces that Azure Policy Compliance Scan Action for GitHub Workflows is in public preview, provides a Azure Site Recovery update rollup for August 2020, announces that Cost optimization enhancements are now available in Azure Advisor and announces Log Analytics REST APIs general availability
• Thomas Maurer (@thomasmaurer) blogs about how to Force Hyper-V Virtual Machine VMs to turn off
• Also on the DEV site, Frank Boucher describes how to Create Your First ARM Template
• Also on the DEV site, Frank Boucher provides an Introduction to ARM Templates
• Andy Leonard (@AndyLeonard) discusses how Azure Resource Groups Save Money
• Also on the DEV site, Jay Gordon (@jaydestro) discusses IaC, HashiCorp Terraform, and Azure ARM Templates
• Marcel Zehner (@marcelzehner) highlights that The live stream recording Terraform basics for Microsoft Azure is now available
• On the Sharegate blog, Elle Crosby covers some Azure cost best practices: Resources that can cause surprises in your Azure bill
• On the Azure Blog, Mark Russinovich (@markrussinovich) discusses Advancing the outage experience—automation, communication, and transparency

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

• The Azure updates team announces that Support to assess physical, AWS, GCP servers now generally available in Azure Migrate
• On the Azure blog, Rani Borkar highlights that Microsoft and TSMC have announced a Joint Innovation Lab to accelerate silicon design on Azure

Mobile

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

• On Channel 9, James Montemagno (@JamesMontemagno) talks about Xamarin.Forms New Drawing API (Part 1)

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

• On the Azure podcast, Reshmi Yandapalli talks about Virtual WAN

Security

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

• On the MSSQL Tips site, Ron L'Esteve walks through Using Azure Blueprints to deploy Azure SQL Server and Database with Key Vault Secrets
• Sarah Lean (@TechieLass) blogs about the Azure Security Centre Recommendation Refresh

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

• Rick Vanover (@RickVanover) covers how Azure Blob Storage Lifecycle Management Rules Make Cleanup Easy
• Thuan Nguyen talks about Everything you need to know about allowBlobPublicAccess on Storage Account
• Charbel Nemnom (@charbelnemnom) describes How To Lower Your Azure File Shares Cost With Hot and Cool Tiers
• Travis Roberts (@Ciraltos) writes about how to Back Up an Azure File Share with Azure Backup
• On the MSSQL Tips site, Ron L'Esteve describes Getting Started with Delta Lake Using Azure Data Factory for ACID compliance
• The Azure updates team announces the Azure Blob – Soft Delete for Containers public preview, that Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 access control list recursive update is in public preview and on the Azure blog, AzCopy v10.6 released with updated sync features and larger blob size support
• On the Whizlabs blog, Neeru Jain provides an Azure Storage Tutorial – Learn the Details

Web

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

• Radu Vunvulea (@RaduVunvulea) talks about a Misconfiguration of Azure auto-scaling feature
• Martin Brandl (@martin_jib) walks through how to Programmatically invite Users to Azure API Management
• On the DEV site, Anthony Chu blogs about Running headless Chromium in Azure Functions with Puppeteer and Playwright
• Tobias Zimmergren & Jussi Roine (@CtrlAltAzure) discuss some Common approaches to building an API in Azure
• The Azure updates team announces the Release of new Azure CDN Microsoft Standard capability

Windows Virtual Desktop

Covering: Windows Virtual Desktop

• No content this week

Useful Links

• 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!
• Azure Quickstart Templates - Learn how to deploy to Azure using ARM Templates. Over 850 examples in this repo.
• 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.
• A-Z of the Azure ecosystem - a slide deck outlining current Azure services.
• 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"!