Azure Weekly Newsletter Issue #158
powered by endjin
After a couple of bumper issues of Azure Weekly with content from over the Christmas break, we're back to content solely from the last week. To follow on from last week's pointer to the Azure Podcast, which addressed Meltdown and Spectre, it seems fitting to link back to the same podcast where Evan Basilik (Principal Service Engineer at Microsoft) provides some learnings from the crisis, and offers some advice on how to be prepared for such situations in the future. The episode can be found at Episode 212 - Planning for Reliability.
If you are (or know) a Windows Server admin, there is a new, downloadable guide to Windows Server on Azure, which helps define the benefits of moving to the cloud and how it can be done. The pdf can be found through this link: Ultimate Guide to Windows Server on Azure.
In other news, there are a number of exciting announcements this week:
- Azure Analysis Services now available in East US, West US 2, and more
- Azure Security Center adds support for custom security assessments
- Some Exciting New Features in App Service Diagnostics
- A new IoT extension for Azure CLI 2.0
- New Azure IoT services supported by IoT DevKit
Otherwise, there are some more particularly interesting articles from the Azure ecosystem this past week. Lee Stott blogs about the Azure CLI Image Copy Extension, which allows you to copy virtual machine images between regions with a single command. If you're looking forward to the GA of Azure Data Factory V2 (like we are, here at endjin), a good walkthrough of the new interface and capabilities can be found in the video: Visually build pipelines for Azure Data Factory V2. Also from Channel 9, there is a reminder of the function and value of utilizing Azure Backup.
There is also a good article written by Tim Patrick, about his adoption of the much-loved VSTS after a disastrous firewall mishap saw both of his mirrored hard disks taken out. Find this at: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Visual Studio Team Services.
One final article I'd like to point out before cracking on with the bulk of the newsletter, is endjin apprentice Ed's new blog about Using Python inside SQL Server, which is a great feature for those who would benefit from running compute near to their data.
If you have any content you'd like to contribute to the newsletter, please tweet @AzureWeekly or ping an email to AzureWeekly@endjin.com.
Compute
Covering: Virtual Machines, Virtual Machine Scale Sets, Functions, Batch, Service Fabric, Cloud Services
- On MSDN, Julian Atanasoae describes How to install custom dependencies on Azure Functions on Linux
- Also on MSDN, Amit Agarwal Amagar covers Azure Function Apps: Organizing the Azure Function Apps under same Consumption Plan
- On Channel 9, Donovan Brown and Xiaokai He talk about how to Remote debug Azure Functions written in Java using VS Code on Azure Friday
- Lee Stott (@lee_stott) writes about the Azure CLI Image Copy Extension – allows you to copy virtual machine images between regions with just one command.
- On TechNet, Alex Bennett writes Purchase a VM with Azure Reserved Virtual Machine Instances RIs
- Willem Kasdorp writes Azure Batch for the IT Pro – Part 1 and Azure Batch for the IT Pro – Part 2
- Robert Smit (@Clustermvp) writes part 1 & 2 in his Ultimate Step to Remote Desktop Services HTML5 on Azure QuickStart Deployment
Networking
Covering: Virtual Network, Load Balancer, Application Gateway, VPN Gateway, Azure DNS, Content Delivery Network, Traffic Manager, ExpressRoute, Network Watcher
- On MSDN, Michael S. Hansen writes Ensuring HTTP Strict Transport Security HSTS Compliance without System Modification – Powershell Automation
- Also on MSDN, Will IV describes how to Move a VMs Primary NIC from one VNET to another
Storage
Covering: Blob storage, Queue storage, File storage, Disk storage, Data Lake Store, StorSimple, Backup
- On MSDN, Peter Kirchner describes How to handle data type issues of data from Azure Storage blobs
- On TechNet, Srinath addresses: The backup could not be started because of an unexpected error in virtual disk service 0x80070057 0x086C6, walks through Troubleshooting Backup failures when using Microsoft Azure Recovery Services Agent and blogs about Updating Azure Backup agents
- Michael Crump (@mbcrump) writes Azure Tips and Tricks Part 78 - Copy Azure Storage Blobs and Files via C, Part 79 - Creating an Azure Blob Hierarchy, Part 80 - Adding Metadata to a file inside Azure Storage Blob Container and Part 81 - Working with AzCopy and Azure Storage
- On Channel 9, Scott Hanselman and Kelly Anderson talk about Azure Backup on Azure Friday
Web & Mobile
Covering: App Service, Web apps, Mobile apps, API apps, Content Delivery Network, Media Services, Azure Search
- On MSDN, Jennifer Lee writes about the Exciting New Features in App Service Diagnostics
- Also on MSDN, Ben Perkins (@csharpguitar) writes Why is my Azure App Service down?
- Oded Dvoskin writes Demystifying the magic behind App Service OS updates
- On the Daily Dot Net Tips blog, Abhijit Jana (@AbhijitJana) writes about Getting Azure App Services Publishing Profile inside Visual Studio itself
- K. Scott Allen (@OdeToCode) writes The Cloud is a Small World
- Wu Shuai describes How to Start Spring Boot with Azure Media Service
- Christos Matskas (@ChristosMatskas) describes Indexing and searching SQL Server data with Azure Search and blogs about Combining data from multiple sources in Azure Search
Containers
Covering: Container Service, Container Registry
- No content this week
Databases
Covering: SQL Database, Azure Database for MySQL, Azure Database for PostgreSQL, SQL Data Warehouse, SQL Server Stretch Database, Azure Cosmos DB, Table storage, Redis Cache, Data Factory
- On the Kloud blog, John Downs writes Cosmos DB Server-Side Programming with TypeScript – Part 3: Stored Procedures
- On MSDN, 'knethteo' writes a Quick Guide on Importing Data from SQL Server or SQL Azure to Cosmos DB
- Also on MSDN, Yochanan Rachamim describes Automating Azure SQL DB index and statistics maintenance using Azure Automation
- Radu Vunvulea (@RaduVunvulea) describes Managed Instances - Closing the gap between Azure SQL Database and Azure VM with SQL Server
Data + Analytics
Covering: HDInsight, Machine Learning, Stream Analytics, Azure Bot Service, Data Lake Analytics, Power BI Embedded, Data Catalog
- On the Azure blog, Christian Wade (@_christianWade) announces that Azure Analysis Services now available in East US, West US 2, and more
- Chris Webb (@Technitrain) blogs about Using Your Own SQL Queries For Tables With Modern Data Sources In SSAS 2016+ And Azure Analysis Services
- On Channel 9, Donovan Brown and Gaurav Malhotra talk about how to Visually build pipelines for Azure Data Factory V2 on Azure Friday
- On MSDN, Yanan Cai writes Debugging Azure Data Lake Job Failures Made Easy part 2 – Efficiently troubleshoot anomalies in recurring jobs
- On the Revolution Analytics blog, David Smith (@revodavid) provides A simple way to set up a SparklyR cluster on Azure
- On Channel 9, Pranav Rastogi (@rustd) talks about StreamSets on Azure HDInsight and Bharath Sreenivas describes Creating custom applications on Azure HDInsight on Data Exposed
- Vincent-Philippe Lauzon blogs about Azure Databricks – RDD – Resilient Distributed Dataset
- Adlène Sifi writes Innovation at your fingertips
- Lee Stott (@lee_stott) posts an article published by the University of Cambridge Engineering department about the Introductory computing class using Microsoft Azure Notebooks Service powered by Jupyter
- On the Revolution Analytics blog, Le Zhang and Graham Williams writes about the Services and tools for building intelligent R applications in the cloud
- Buck Woody writes DevOps for Data Science – Application Performance Monitoring
- On the MSSQL Tips site, Nat Sundar (@SQLNat) describes how to Analyze UK Petition Data Using Power BI and Siddharth Mehta talks about Segmentation analysis using Mekko Charts in Power BI Desktop
- Devin Knight (@knight_devin) delves into Power BI Custom Visuals Class Module 85 – Image Grid
AI + Cognitive Services
Covering: Computer Vision API, Face API, Bing Web Search API, Customised speech service, Custom Vision Service, Language Understanding Intelligent Service, Bing Custom Search
- No content this week
Internet of Things
Covering: IoT Hub, IoT Edge, Event Hubs, Stream Analytics, Notification Hubs, Time Series Insights
- On the Azure blog, Chrissie Chi announces the IoT extension for Azure CLI 2.0
- On MSDN, Liya (Liki) Du writes about the New Azure IoT services supported by IoT DevKit
- Lee Stott (@lee_stott) writes about the Azure Internet of Things Edge Development Resources
- Jie Su writes about the Improved Stream Analytics output support in Visual Studio
- On Siliconvalve, Simon Waight (@simonwaight) describes Easy Filtering of IoT Data Streams with Azure Stream Analytics and JSON reference data
Enterprise Integration
Covering: Logic Apps, Service Bus, API Management, BizTalk Services
- No content this week
Security + Identity
Covering: Security Center, Azure Active Directory for developers, Key Vault, Azure Active Directory, Azure Active Directory B2C, Azure Active Directory Domain Services, Multi-Factor Authentication
- On the Azure blog, Miri Landau writes that Azure Security Center adds support for custom security assessments
- Also on the Azure blog, Ajeet Prakash explains How Azure Security Center helps analyze attacks using Investigation and Log Search
- On MSDN, Kim Spilker introduces a new Azure Security Center course on Microsoft Virtual Academy with the blog: Serious about security? Check out Azure Security Center
- On TechNet, Yuri Diogenes (@yuridiogenes) describes Detecting attempts to run untrusted code by using trusted executables in Azure Security Center and writes about the Azure Advisor Integration with Azure Security Center
- Stanislav Zhelyazkov (@StanZhelyazkov) gives some Tips and Tricks of Setting up Azure Security Center
- Jason Boeshart (@jboeshart) writes about Azure Administrator Account Security
- Courtenay Bernier writes Microsoft Flow and Azure AD – lets automate
- Sean McLaren and Imad Balute describe How to enable Bitlocker and escrow the keys to Azure AD when using AutoPilot for standard users
- On the risual blog, Matthew Clarke writes about Modern Authentication Tokens
- Donovan Brown describes How to copy a SSH key from Windows to a Subsytem
Developer Tools
Covering: Visual Studio Team Services, Azure DevTest Labs, HockeyApp, Developer tools and SDKs, Xamarin, Storage Explorer
- On Visual Studio Magazine - Columns, Tim Patrick writes How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Visual Studio Team Services
- Tomas Restrepo (@tomasrestrepo) talks about ARM Extensions for Visual Studio Code
Monitoring + Management
Covering: Microsoft Azure portal, Azure Resource Manager, Application Insights, Log Analytics, Automation, Site Recovery, Scheduler
- On MSDN, Michael S. Hansen walks through Managing Github URLs for Azure Resource Manager Template Deployments
- On TechNet, John Knightly (@johnaknightly) discusses Using Azure Automation, OMS and Storage Tables to capture Configuration Data of Azure VMs Part Two
- Also on TechNet, Srinath describes Troubleshooting No latest App Consistent Snapshot issues for Hyper-V to Azure when using Azure Site Recovery
- On the MSSQL Tips site, Joe Gavin explains how to Create an Alert in Microsoft Azure Log Analytics
Thought Leadership from endjin
- 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.
Solutions from endjin
- Modern Data Platform Blueprint - our opinionated architecture over Azure Data Lake, which solves common security, ingestion, and data processing requirements.
- API Economy Platform Blueprint - our solution accelerator for building an API first architecure on Azure.
Useful Links
- 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.
- SQL Database Migration Wizard - a very useful tool for migrating existing SQL databases to SQL Azure; will fix some common conversion errors automatically.
- 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
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