Azure Weekly Newsletter Issue #348

powered by endjin

Welcome to issue 348 of Azure Weekly - an Ignite 2021 special! As ever, a great summary of all things Ignite are covered in the Microsoft Book of News. There are a vast number of announcements. I'm going to take a slightly different approach. There are some great high level vision / positioning posts by senior Microsoft folks, and there are two new services that are worth highlighting. For all the other announcements, they are in organised by the usual categories.

The high level vision posts are: Key foundations for protecting your data with Azure confidential computing by Mark Russinovich, Innovate with cloud-native apps and open source on Azure by Brendan Burns, Powering all your applications from cloud to edge with Azure infrastructure by Erin Chapple, Your hybrid, multicloud, and edge strategy just got better with Azure by Kathleen Mitford, New investments to help you accelerate your Azure migration and modernization journey by Tanuj Bansal and Putting Tools in Your Hands to Improve Developer Productivity by Daniel Carrasco and Alison Yu.

Now onto the two new services! The first is Azure Chaos Studio, a fully managed service which systematically improves resilience with controlled chaos. This another great example of tools the Azure Product Groups use to make the core platform better, being made available to end customers to improve their solution's resilience. I'm really looking forward to testing out some of our apps & services with this tool.

Personally, the only announcement that mattered this week was the unveiling of Azure Container Apps. I've been fortunate to be on the private preview for this service and have been very impressed. Any long time readers will know I'm a huge advocate of serverless (and have delivered a number of large scale solutions using Azure Functions). Functions excels at event processing where cold starts don't really have an impact, but with HTTP based workloads, where the consumer is often a human being, cold starts are really noticeable, especially the compound effect of Functions calling Functions.

One of the Proof of Concepts I ran was to take one of our OpenAPI services which is currently hosted in Functions, and ported that over to Container Apps. Luckily we already added a hosting environment abstraction, so it was really just a case of re-hosting our OpenAPI framework in an Kestrel self-hosted ASP .NET Core app. The whole process took less than 45 minutes. The cold start performance was noticeable lower (700ms) and once "warmed" the responses were in the 115ms range. Many people have asked me via Twitter about why they'd use ACA over other available options, luckily the product group knew this would be a FAQ and have put together some documentation comparing Container Apps with other Azure container options.

My perspective is threefold; 1) many orgs want access to the power of Kubernetes, but aren't capable of the required step change in complexity and management overhead. ACA solves this problem nicely. 2) Many orgs have struggled to find a cost-effective migration path from their legacy on-premise "Windows Services" based architectures into Azure. ACA solves this too. 3) The real value in ACA is that it offers "Dapr as a Service". We've had a managed Service Fabric offerings for a number of years, but if you wanted a production Dapr workload you had to take the burden outlines in 1). Dapr is a fantastic framework (which also joined CNCF as an incubating project this week), and ACA is the perfect environment to host it.

If you want to dig in a little deeper there have been a number of great posts about ACA from the community; Thorsten Hans has been busy test driving the service and has a number of interesting posts: Introduction to Azure Container Apps, How to deploy Azure Container Apps with Bicep, and Traffic split in Azure Container Apps. Geert Baeke also offers his view Taking Azure Container Apps for a spin, as does Sam Cogan: WTH are Azure Container Apps.

As one event finishes, another starts.... remember that the Visual Studio 2022 Launch Event is on the 8th. I'm personally very excited for the Visual Studio 2022 and .NET 6.0 launch - as .NET 6.0 should drastically simplify many of our .NET based projects. Finally, we've published a long in gestation blog post: Flex Your DevSecOps Muscles With Bicep, which includes a FREE Bicep Cheat Sheet. Have a read, download the cheat sheet and please provide us with any feedback so we can improve it!

If you have any content you'd like to contribute to the newsletter, please tweet @AzureWeekly or ping an email to AzureWeekly@endjin.com.

Interested in Power BI? Sign up to our sister newsletter Power BI Weekly to receive all the week's Power BI news.

@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 Applied AI Services Azure Cognitive Search updates and Azure Cognitive Service for Language are both GA.
Sethu Raman writes about New managed online endpoints features in Azure ML: Autoscaling, Debugging, MLflow and more
The Azure Updates Team share the Azure Machine Learning public preview announcements Ignite, November 2021
The Azure Updates Team announces Private preview: Azure OpenAI Service combines access to powerful GPT-3 language models with Azures enterprise capabilities and on the Redmond magazine site, John K. Waters blogs about Microsoft's New Azure OpenAI Service Provides GPT-3 Access
The Azure Data Team blogs about Bringing Feature Store to Azure - from Microsoft Azure, Redis, and Feast Community
Shivani Santosh Sambare talks about NVIDIA Triton Inference Server in Azure Machine Learning with managed online endpoints
Nandakishor Basavanthappa talks about Azure Video Analyzer - Ignite Nov 2021
Ornella Altunyan shares part 1 of how to Build an AI-enabled closet organization app with Power Apps and AI Builder

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 the General Availability of: Stream Analytics now offers support for Availability Zones with Dedicated Cluster, and Event Hubs Premium Azure Synapse Linked Service, and Event Hubs Premium, and New Azure Data Explorer output plugin for Telegraf, and announce the Public Preview of: Additional ML options for Spark on Azure Synapse and Azure Data Explorer is now supported as an output for Azure Stream Analytics job
The Azure Updates Team announce Public preview: Industry-aware analytics with database templates in Azure Synapse
Ashwin Patil discusses Hunting for potential network beaconing patterns using Apache Spark via Azure Synapse – Part 1
Chi Nguyen asks Whats new: Large-scale security analytics with Azure Synapse and Microsoft Sentinel Notebooks
Kaiser Larsen (@kaiserlarsen) shares 5 Reasons to Join Upcoming Webinar: Build a Unified Analytics Platform with Synapse and Power BI
Santosh Balasubramanian announces Database templates in Azure Synapse Analytics
On SQL Server Central, Diponkar Paul explains How to Recover a Corrupted Azure Data Factory Integration Runtime
Somnath Ghosh explains how to Migrate on Premise HBase Cluster to HDInsight
Somnath Ghosh covers Multifactor Authentication with ESP HDInsight Cluster

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

On the Azure blog, Erin Chapple (@erinchapple) covers Powering all your applications from cloud to edge with Azure infrastructure
The Azure Updates Team announces the General Availability of: New orchestration mode for Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets, and Azure trusted launch for Virtual Machines, and New Azure Virtual Machines deliver increased performance for a broad range of workloads, and Azure VMware Solution in the Germany West Central Azure region, and On-demand disk bursting for Azure Premium SSDs.
The Azure Updates Team announces Public preview: Azure Virtual Machines DCsv3 and DCdsv3-series now available
The Azure Updates Team announces New capabilities introduced for disk pool public preview for Azure VMware Solution
The Azure Updates Team announces Limited preview: New Azure Virtual Machines deliver increased storage throughput for data-intensive workloads
Shannon Kuehn covers Video 3 of the Azure VMware Solution Zero to Hero Series

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 blog, Brendan Burns (@brendandburns) explains how to Innovate with cloud-native apps and open source on Azure
The Azure Updates Team announces the General Availability of: AKS support for Secrets Store CSI driver, and Azure Service Operator v2, and Open Service Mesh add-on for AKS, and Run IBM WebSphere Liberty and Open Liberty on ARO and AKS and Run Oracle WebLogic Server on Azure Kubernetes Service
MacKenzie Olson announces public preview of zonal container groups on Azure Container Instances ACI
The Azure Updates Team announces the General availability: AKS support for Secrets Store CSI driver, and Public preview: AKS node pool user start/stop feature, and Public preview: gMSAv2 security policy support for Kubernetes workloads on Windows, and Public preview: NAT gateway integration with AKS, describes Public preview: Dapr extension for AKS and Public preview: Azure Container Apps
Thorsten Hans (@ThorstenHans) shares an Introduction to Azure Container Apps, explains How to deploy Azure Container Apps with Bicep and blogs about Traffic split in Azure Container Apps
Geert Baeke (@GeertBaeke) describes Taking Azure Container Apps for a spin
Sam Cogan (@samcogan) blogs about WTH are Azure Container Apps
On the Dapr Blog, the Dapr project maintainers announce Dapr joins CNCF as an incubating project!
Thorsten Hans (@ThorstenHans) explains how to Distribute WebAssembly modules as OCI artifacts
Steve Buchanan (@buchatech) explains how to Get started with Argo CD & Azure Kubernetes Service
Thomas Maurer (@thomasmaurer) explains how to Modernize Applications with Windows containers and Kubernetes
Srini Padala covers Security considerations for Azure Kubernetes Service
Walter Myers blogs about Considerations for Migrating .NET Applications to App Service or Azure Container Instances ACI

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 of: Cost saving recommendations in Azure Advisor for Azure Cosmos DB, and Provisioned throughput spending limit for Azure Cosmos DB, and New indexing metrics for Azure Cosmos DB, and Azure Cosmos DB: Partial document update.
The Azure Updates Team announces Azure Managed Instance for Apache Cassandra service now generally available
The Azure Updates Team announces Public preview updates to Azure SQL Managed Instance boosts performance, scale, and flexibility
The Azure Updates Team announces Azure Cosmos DB: Server side retries for Cassandra API in public preview
The Azure Updates Team announces Azure Synapse Link for Azure Cosmos DB: Custom partitioning support in public preview
The Azure Updates Team announces Link feature in Azure SQL Managed Instance now in limited public preview
On SQL Server Central, Arjun Sivadasan discusses Azure Cosmos DB – HTAP using Azure Synapse Link
The Azure Updates Team announces Azure Cache for Redis: Redis 6.0 supported in general availability
The Azure Updates Team announces Azure SQL—general availability updates for early November 2021
On the SQL Server Blog, Peter Carlin announces SQL Server 2022 preview: Azure-enabled with continued performance and security innovation
The Azure Updates Team announces Azure SQL: Public preview updates for early November 2021
On the MSSQL Tips site, Mohammed Moinudheen talks about Options to Export of Azure SQL Database Part 2
Bashar Hussein explains how to Achieve up to a 50% performance boost in Azure Database for MySQL Flexible Server using thread pools
Maria Zakourdaev blogs about Cosmos DB Data Migration Between Containers using Databricks and PySpark

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 explains how to Install Azure Service Operator via Visual Studio Code extension for AKS
On the Visual Studio blog, Andy Sterland writes about Visual Studio 2022 Launch Event Agenda
On Channel 9, Matt Wojo talks about WSL: Mount USB devices Tabs vs Spaces
Omar Khan writes about 3 ways to enhance your cloud journey: break, prepare, and optimize your apps in Azure
Chase Wilson talks about Azure CLI Microsoft Ignite Highlights

DevOps

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

On the endjin blog, Barry Smart says Flex Your DevSecOps Muscles With Bicep (and get started with our FREE cheat sheet)
Adam Bertram (@adbertram) discusses Getting Started with Azure Bicep Step-by-Step
On the Azure Medium blog, Ivan Porta provides A side-by-side comparison of Azure DevOps and GitHub
On the Azure Developer Community Blog, Alison Yu blogs about Putting Tools in Your Hands to Improve Developer Productivity
Richard Fennell (@richardfennell) describes How to fix Azure Pipeline YAML parsing errors seen after renaming the default Git branch
On the Microsoft BI Tools blog, Joost van Rossum (@ssisjoost) writes about ADF Release - Create YAML CICD Pipeline - part 2 and ADF Snack: Set global params during deployment
Sonia Yu writes about Your target end-state: Azure landing zones conceptual architecture
Jeffrey Chilberto covers GitHub Actions - Azure Function Apps zip deployment - ERROR: 'str' object has no attribute 'value'
On the Azure Developer Community Blog, Samit Jhaveri explains how to Build secure apps on hardened dev environments with secure DevOps workflows
.NET Rocks episode 1764 focuses on Azure Infrastructure as Code with Eduard Keiholz, Erwin Staal and Henry Been
The Azure Updates Team announce the Public preview: OpenID Connect integration between Azure AD and GitHub Actions

Hybrid

Covering: Azure Arc, Azure Stack

On the Azure blog, Kathleen Mitford writes about Your hybrid, multicloud, and edge strategy just got better with Azure
The Azure Updates Team writes about General availability: Azure Monitor container insights for Azure Arc enabled Kubernetes, and Public preview: New Azure Arc capabilities in November 2021 and Private preview: New Azure Arc capabilities in November 2021
The Azure Updates Team announce HCI Azure Machine Learning - Ignite, November 2021 public previews
Ben Armstrong writes about AKS on Azure Stack HCI - October 2021 update
Harpreet Kaur explains how to Update to Azure Stack HCI, version 21H2 using new update experience
On Channel 9, Paul Secord talks about Armchair Architects: Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Architectures - Observability Azure Enablement Show
Thomas Maurer (@thomasmaurer) blogs about Microsoft Ignite Ask the Experts: Protecting Azure Data, Easier than Ever and writes about Deep Dive on AKS on Azure Stack HCI at Microsoft Ignite
Hanli Ren talks about App Service on Kubernetes with Azure Arc

Identity

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

The Azure Updates Team writes about General availability: Bastion Standard SKU and Azure Automation support for Managed Identities is now generally available
Alex Simons says Microsoft Authenticator app – easier ways to add or manage enterprise accounts, and a cool new icon
Stephane Lapointe (@s_lapointe) discusses Looking for activities triggered only by humans in Azure Activities in Kusto or Log Analytics

Integration

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

The Azure Updates Team writes about General availability: API Management and Event Grid Integration, and Azure Service Bus large message support reaches general availability, and Logic Apps Standard Plan updates in general availability and Azure Cosmos DB Logic Apps Standard Connector in public preview
The Azure Updates Team announces Azure Backup: Multi-user authorization for Backup is now in public preview
Drac Zhang explains how to Create CSV files with BOM marker in Logic App
Mohammed Barqawi discusses Logic App Http pagination deeper look, build custom paging wrapper without loop

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 announce Public preview: Azure Container Registry connected registry for IoT Edge and General availability: IoT Central - Organizations
On Channel 9, Scott Hanselman, Toddy Mladenov, and Jeanine Burke talk about how to Enable advanced IoT Edge scenarios with ACR connected registry Azure Friday
Saravanan Varadharajan writes about Hierarchical Deployment of IoT Edge with ACR Connected Registry
On Code Project, Matt Scarpino talks about Developing for Azure Sphere, Part 1: Getting Started and Part 2: Building High-Level Applications
Kaushik Roy explains how to Deploy video workflows on the edge using Azure IoT and AVA

Learning

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

Sandeep Bhanot explains how to Learn, connect, and explore your future at Microsoft Ignite
On the Azure podcast, Kendall Roden, Evan Basalik, Sujit D'Mello give an Ignite 2021 Wrap-Up on Episode 401 of the Azure Podcast
Tobias Zimmergren and Jussi Roine chat about Digesting announcements from Microsoft Ignite in November 2021 - Ctrl+Alt+Azure Episode 106

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 talks about Public preview: Azure Chaos Studio - Systematically improve resilience with controlled chaos
The Azure Updates Team announces the General Availability of EventHub action in Azure Monitor action groups, and Log Analytics Workspace Insights in Azure Monitor, and Near real-time analytics for telemetry, time series, and log data on Azure Synapse and Azure Site Recovery now supports failover of multiple IP configurations
The Azure Updates Team announces the Public Preview of: Manage your Log Analytics data export rules in Azure portal, and Self-service Access Management in Azure Purview, and Near real-time analytics for telemetry, time series, and log data on Azure Synapse, and Azure Purviews Integration with Microsoft Defender for Cloud, and Metrics and Metric alerts for Azure Backup, and Explore your Amazon RDS data in Azure Purview, and Azure Monitor OpenTelemetry Exporters and PowerShell 7.1 runbook support in Azure Automation
Charbel Nemnom (@charbelnemnom) explains how to Automate Azure VMs Restore with Azure Backup
Stanislav Zhelyazkov (@StanZhelyazkov) talks about Azure Monitor Log Alert V2
Albert Cabello Serrano provides A data-driven approach to managing devices in your organization

Media

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

Itai Norman blogs about Azure Video Analyzer for Media is now available as an Azure resource

Migration

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

On the Azure blog, Tanuj Bansal writes about New investments to help you accelerate your Azure migration and modernization journey
Anmol Varma explains how to Accelerate cloud migrations using Azure Migrate: Server Migration

Mobile

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

Zachary Cavanell covers Power Apps Pay-as-you-go Model, Standalone Mobile App Packages & Azure Integration

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 troubleshooting experiences in Network Insights for VPN Gateway & Azure Firewall, and Public Previews of ExpressRoute FastPath improvements, and Azure Virtual Network Manager and Gateway Load Balancer
The Azure Updates Team discusses Public preview: ExpressRoute private peering support for BGP communities
Rongxun Wang walks through Introducing Private Link in Hyperscale Citus for Postgres on Azure
Joe Carlyle (@wedoAzure) describes How to – Build a Test Azure Network with Bicep

Security

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

On the Azure blog, Mark Russinovich (@markrussinovich) discusses Key foundations for protecting your data with Azure confidential computing
Thuan Nguyen blogs about Azure Sentinel Analytics Rule ARM Template, and Azure Sentinel custom alert named based on detected resource and Azure Sentinel near-real-time NRT Analytics Rule ARM Template
Ron Marsiano blogs about Detection tuning – Making the tuning process simple - one step at a time.
Sylvie Liu explains how to Detecting Emerging Threats with Microsoft Sentinel Fusion
Radu Vunvulea (@RaduVunvulea) describes Automation Rules inside Azure Sentinel
Joe Carlyle (@wedoAzure) describes How to – Control Azure DDoS Plan Deployment using Azure Policy
Zachary Cavanell explains how to Stop Cloud & Hybrid Apps from being Cyber Attack Entry Points

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 the General Availability of: Provisioned throughput increase for Azure Ultra Disk Storage, and Centralized management of keys for encrypting Azure disks, and the Public Preview of Live resize of Azure Disk Storage and Cross-region snapshot copy for Azure Disk Storage
Anthony Watherston talks about Azure Policy Guest Configuration – Using Tags for Configuration of Features
Hai Yue delves into Use Azure Notification Hub Lab tool to import/export registration.
Silvio Di Benedetto blogs about Azure File Sync v14

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 Native support for WebSocket APIs, and Azure App Service - Diagnostic settings feature, and Azure App Service Environment v3 support for Windows Containers and the Public preview of GraphQL passthrough support in Azure API Management
Tobias Zimmergren (@zimmergren) writes about Quickly discover any expiring certificates for Azure App Services

Azure Virtual Desktop

Covering: Azure Virtual Desktop

The Azure Updates Team announces Autoscale public preview is now available for Azure Virtual Desktop and Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI public preview is now available

Thought Leadership from endjin

📃 Flex Your DevSecOps Muscles With Bicep - FREE cheat sheet.
📺 How to safely reference a nullable activity output in Azure Synapse Pipelines and Azure Data Factory.
📺 Building a secure data solution using Azure Data Lake Store.
📺 Navigating the Bewildering Array of Data Services in Azure.
📺 Data Exploration & Experimentation with Notebooks in Azure.
📺 Detecting Anomalies in IoT Telemetry with Azure Synapse Analytics.
📺 Azure Synapse - On-Demand Serverless Compute and Querying.
📺 Custom C# Spark Jobs in Azure Synapse.
📺 Custom Scala Spark Jobs in Azure Synapse.
📺 Unlocking Digital Transformation with Azure API Management - a training session from endjin, explaining what Digital Transformation is, and how to use Azure API Management to take your first steps. Three versions are available: 5 minute exec summary, 20 minute overview or 50 minute deep dive.
How to plan your cloud transformation journey - an article explaining how you should use the various bits of thought leadership content from endjin to plan your cloud journey.
API Maturity Matrix - a spreadsheet to help you assess your organization's ability to build, test, deploy, manage and monetize an API Platform.
Azure Technology Selector - a flowchart which guides you through the process of chosing the best Azure service for your needs.
Cloud Comparison Poster - a free poster, comparing the three major cloud platforms - Azure, AWS & Google Cloud Platform. For more information, see the accompanying blog series.
Cloud Migration Process - a free poster, outlining our process for cloud adoption.
Cloud Adoption: Risk & Mitigations - The Swiss Cheese Model - a free poster from endjin & Hymans Robertson outlining the risk and mitigations of adopting public cloud.
Embracing Disruption: Financial Services & the Microsoft Cloud - a free ebooklet from endjin describing how companies in FS can take advantage of Azure.

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"!

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☁️ Azure Weekly #348 - Ignite 2021 Special! - 7th November 2021