The guys have an amazing talk with Brendan Burns, Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft, about the future of Kubernetes in Azure.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode215.mp3

Indexed audio: https://www.videoindexer.ai/media/f46a8b23c6/

Other updates:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ansible/ansible-run-playbook-in-cloudshell

OpenSSH is a collection of client/server utilities that enable secure remote login, remote file transfer, and public/private key pair management. Originating as part of the OpenBSD project and commonly used across the BSD, Linux, macOS, and Unix ecosystems, you can now use OpenSSH from PowerShell in Cloud Shell.
The SSH quickstart for PowerShell includes examples on how to create VMs with your SSH public key, as well as how to persist SSH configs and key files across Cloud Shell sessions.

From <https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/openssh-now-available-in-powershell-in-cloud-shell/>

Designing Distributed Systems - Brendan Burns new book (plug?)

Brand Detection in Microsoft Video Indexer
We are delighted to announce a new capability in Microsoft Video Indexer: Brand Detection from speech and from visual text! If you are not yet familiar with Video Indexer, you may want to take a look at a few examples on our video portal.

From <https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/blog/>

Bing Speech API extends its text to speech support to 34 languages
05 February 2018
The Speech API, a Microsoft Cognitive Service, now offers six new TTS languages to all developers, bringing the total number of available languages to 34.

From <https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/blog/>

A great developer experience for Ansible

Ansible (from RedHat) now available directly in the Cloud Shell, as well as supported from VS Code
"Ansible makes it easy to scale automation, manage complex deployments and speed productivity".  Supports workflows to streamline jobs, and tools to share devops solutions within teams.

From <https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/blog/topics/announcements/>

Go serverless for your IoT needs
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/go-serverless-for-your-iot-needs/

Taken from the Twitter Feed: Listener feedback on future shows
 • ARM template deployments, specifically with regard to taking an existing set of resources and repeating them in another subscription.
 • SQL Server Managed Instances
 • Low-priority VMs - there is whole economy behind them look @spotinstUK
 • Media Services and specifically Media Analytics
 • Certification changes - no more Azure Solutions Architect?
 • Azure Stack upd and ReverseDSC ex aequo
 • Azure Automation
 • API Management
 • How to handle data and security compliance for different regions
 • Service Bus
 • Event Hubs
 • Application Gateway
 • Azure architecture patterns especially for LOB applications running on prem;
 • Security and management of API within Azure Webapp to WebApi.
 

Nir Mashkowski, Product Management Director for various Azure PaaS services, talks to us about his favorite - Functions! He shares his thoughts around using Functions as a 'Practical Microservices Platform' using some of the new features in the service.

Some resources:
Azure Functions Linux: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/appserviceteam/2017/11/15/functions-on-linux-preview/
Some success stories: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/case-studies/?service=app-service&term=Azure+Functions+
Hacks with startups and ISVs: https://microsoft.github.io/techcasestudies/#SearchPhraseText=Azure Functions
Azure Functions Proxies: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/appserviceteam/2017/11/15/azure-functions-proxies-is-now-generally-available/
Contact the team on Twitter @AzureFunctions or @nirmsk

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode214.mp3

Indexed audio: https://www.videoindexer.ai/media/8943c94906/

Other updates:

We announced the general availability of Azure App Service on Linux and Web App for Containers in September 2017. Today, we’re adding additional language runtime support for built-in images. You can now create a Linux web app by using .NET Core 2.0 as a runtime stack.

From <https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/net-core-2-0-support-for-app-service-on-linux/>

Network Watcher in Germany and AzGov

Announcing the general availability of Azure Event Grid

Azure ExpressRoute updates – New partnerships, monitoring and simplification

ITSM Connector for Azure is now generally available

Azure Search enterprise security: Data encryption and user-identity access control

Tara Raj, a PM who has been on the show before, talks to us about her latest endeavor, the Windows Subsystem for Linux and how it can be used for various tasks including Azure Development!

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode213.mp3

Indexed audio: https://www.videoindexer.ai/media/cad3664336/

Resources: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/wsl/

Other updates:

Region expansion: Global VNet Peering
At Ignite, we announced that you can use Global VNet Peering to peer virtual networks across Azure regions. Today, we're expanding to more support regions—enabling direct VM-to-VM connectivity without any public internet involvement or any extra hops.
With just a few clicks, you can use Global VNet Peering to connect virtual networks across Azure regions to share resources or create a global, private peered virtual network. This enables a variety of scenarios such as data replication, disaster recovery, and database failover through private IPs alone.
You can now peer across the following regions:
□ Korea South
□ UK South
□ UK West
□ Canada East
□ India South
□ India Central
□ India West
The new regions add to the previously announced regions:
□ US West Central
□ Canada Central
□ US West 2

From <https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/global-vnet-peering-region-expansion/>

New Python solutions for Web App for Containers
Wednesday, January 24, 2018
Get started with ready-to-use Python-based web app templates from Flask, Bottle, or Django. They can be customized to build a web app for a small business or a personal web app.

From <https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/new-python-solutions-for-web-app-for-containers/>

Partnering for a path to digital identity
https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2018/01/22/partnering-for-a-path-to-digital-identity/

Start replicating in under 30 minutes using Azure Site Recovery's new onboarding experience
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-a-new-simplified-onboarding-experience-for-azure-site-recovery-vmware-to-azure/

Launching the Azure Storage Solution showcase
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-the-azure-storage-solution-showcase/

Azure Zone Redundant Storage in public preview
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-zone-redundant-storage-in-public-preview/

Evan is back after a couple of stressful weeks dealing with the fallout from "Meltdown". He shares some of his learnings and things customers can do to be better prepared for such situations.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode212.mp3

Indexed audio: https://www.videoindexer.ai/media/1c1d95469e/

Resources:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/sql-database/sql-database-business-continuity
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/sql/virtual-machines-windows-portal-sql-availability-group-overview
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/sql/virtual-machines-windows-sql-high-availability-dr

Other updates:

NPR's Market-Blockchain-place

General availability: Service tags for NSGs
Service tags simplify security for Azure virtual machines and Azure virtual networks by enabling you to easily restrict network access to just the Azure services that you use.
You can use service tags in your network security group (NSG) rules to allow or deny traffic to a specific Azure service globally or per Azure region. Azure provides the maintenance of IP addresses underlying each tag. This preview includes Storage, Sql, and AzureTrafficManager tags. 

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/service-tags-nsgs-ga

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/expanded-options-for-accessing-cloud-shell/

Cale and Sujit talk about one of the unsung heroes of Azure, the Monitor service.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode211.mp3

Indexed audio: https://www.videoindexer.ai/media/ed4588081e/

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/monitoring-and-diagnostics/monitoring-get-started

Other updates:

Augmented rules for network security groups (NSGs) simplify the security definition for virtual networks, so you can define larger, more complex network security policies with fewer rules. Multiple ports, multiple explicit IP addresses, service tags, and application security groups can all be combined into a single, easily understood security rule. 

From <https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/agumented-rules-ga-nsg/>

You can use application security groups to configure network security as natural extension of an application’s structure, by arbitrarily grouping virtual machines and defining network security policies based on those groups. 
You can reuse your security policy and scale without manual maintenance of explicit IP addresses. The platform handles the complexity of explicit IP addresses and multiple rule sets, so you can focus on your business logic. 

From <https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/public-preview-for-asg/>

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-network/security-overview#application-security-groups

Manage and Auto-scale your IoT solution with a predictable IoT Cloud
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/iot-hub-dotnet-autoscale/

Azure Security Center and Microsoft Web Application Firewall Integration
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-security-center-and-microsoft-web-application-firewall-integration/

Evan talks about the hot issue of the CPU vulnerability that's been addressed by Microsoft in Windows on Azure and on-premises. He discusses the reason for the reboots of all the Azure servers and how customers can alleviate the impact of these reboots.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/securing-azure-customers-from-cpu-vulnerability/

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode210.mp3

Indexed audio: https://www.videoindexer.ai/media/3869c863fb/

Other updates:

Preview version 12.0.0-beta of the Azure SDK for Go is now available to help you use Azure services from Go applications. To get it, run `go get -u github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-go/...` or use dep.

The Azure Container Networking Interface (CNI) plug-in is now generally available for Kubernetes clusters deployed using acs-engine.
You can use the plug-in to deploy and manage your own Kubernetes cluster with native Azure networking capability, by default. Azure CNI allows your containers to be part of an Azure virtual network and leverage the rich set of capabilities that a virtual network offers.

As part of our Partner Spotlight series, we have Dan Garfield from CodeFresh.io and Jessica Deen, a Cloud Developer Advocate at Microsoft talking about DevOps in a Kubernetes world. Good timing too considering we recently did a show on Kubernetes!

https://codefresh.io/
Kubernetes Guides - https://codefresh.io/kubernetes-guides/
Docker Guides - https://codefresh.io/docker-guides/

Brief Description of Codefresh - Codefresh is a DevOps platform built for Kubernetes. It includes CI/CD, a free private Docker registry, and on-demand test environments. It's available as SaaS, or run it on your own infrastructure.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode209.mp3

We chat with Kendal Roden, an Azure Consultant at Microsoft, about the journey she went through, graduating from college to getting ramped up on Azure and working on real engagements with customers.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode208.mp3

Indexed media: https://www.videoindexer.ai/media/8ce4dda768/

Other updates:

Automation runbooks available in action groups to take actions from alerts

An Azure Automation runbook is a new action type available in Azure action groups. 
When you create an action group, you can select to run an Automation runbook in addition to any other actions that you configure. You can choose a built-in runbook that's supplied by Azure for common tasks, or you can choose a custom runbook that you've created in your Automation account.
This capability greatly extends the possible actions that you can take when an alert (activity log alert or near-real-time metric alert) triggers an action group on an Azure resource. For example, you can use a runbook that will gather additional troubleshooting information from the affected resource and then send it for review. Or the runbook can take immediate remediation actions to fix the issue or limit its extent.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/automation-runbooks-available-in-action-groups/

To provide a single, streamlined experience for Azure portal users, we will be sunsetting the Azure classic portal on January 8, 2018.

Microsoft releases quantum computing development kit preview
https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/quantum/2017/12/11/announcing-microsoft-quantum-development-kit

Cloud storage now more affordable: Announcing general availability of Azure Archive Storage
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/cloud-storage-now-more-affordable-announcing-general-availability-of-azure-archive-storage/

How cloud speed helps SQL Server DBAs
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/how-cloud-speed-helps-sql-server-dbas/

In this special All-UK episode, Russell Young has an in-depth discussion with Christos Matskas, a Senior Azure PFE in the UK, about the growing popularity of serverless computing in Azure using services like Functions and Event Grid.

Social Media: https://cmatskas.com  https://twitter.com/christosmatskas
Resources on Azure bits:
- Architecture best practices: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-functions/functions-best-practices
- Function Proxies: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-functions/functions-proxies
- Functions Runtime: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-functions/functions-runtime-overview
- Durable Functions: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-functions/durable-functions-overview
- Functions & Containers: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/appserviceteam/2017/11/15/functions-on-linux-preview/

DDDScotland: http://dddscotland.org

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode207.mp3

Indexed audio: https://www.videoindexer.ai/media/5bd125a054/

Other updates:

Enabling Storage Service Encryption at rest for all new data coming to Azure Backup from on-premises and in cloud

In DevTest Labs, you can post announcements to notify users about recent changes or additions to your lab, and custom images with licensing terms are now enabled

Azure Migrate service launched in preview https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/blog/launching-preview-of-azure-migrate/

Provides guidance, insights and mechanisms to help you migrate to Azure (IaaS)

• Readiness of an azure VM
• Right sizing of VMs
• Cost
• PLUS - Enables ASR and Database Migration Service (SQL).
• Free of charge, supported for production environments.

Azure Advisor - new dashboard and some new functionality (best practices advisor) gives recommendations on high availability, security, performance and cost across your subscription

Elastic DB tools for Java (support for cross shard query, aimed at multi-tenant SaaS apps), routing of data to correct shards based on keys and shard map management.

Location Based Services public preview - geospatial services for mapping, iot, logistics, asset tracking type solutions.  Services include mapping, routing, search, time zones and traffic (partnering with TomTom).  RESTful service APIs plus a javascript mapping control - cost all managed to your subscription

Able to run Azure CLI within VS Code now directly

Azure functions runtime preview 2 - functions as a service on-prem if you want, and on Windows Nano containers.

B and M series now GA - lowest cost by giving flexible vCPU - good for small web servers, small db's, dev/test environments that have spikey workloads/util.  Build up credits when cpu usage is low, to be spent when you spike.  M Series are the largest VMs, up to 128 vCPUs, 4TB RAM, hyper-threading.   Great for SAP HANA and SQL Hekaton

Iot Hub device provisioning now GA

Sunset of classic portal, Jan 8th 2018

The guys talk about the rise of Kubernetes and discuss the architecture and how it can be run in Azure.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode206.mp3

Indexed audio: https://www.videoindexer.ai/media/6cc89f6458/

Resources:

https://kubernetes.io

https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube

Other resources:

Azure Developer eBook by Barry Luijbregts and Michael Crump

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/campaigns/developer-guide/

Beginning November 30, 2017, you will need to use the Azure portal to manage your Visual Studio Team Services accounts, instead of using the Azure classic portal.

P15 size for Azure Managed Disks generally available
Azure Managed Disks is the recommended disk storage offering for use with Azure Virtual Machines for persistent storage of data. Managed Disks provides secured disk storage as well as simplified management and industry-leading durability and availability. P15 disks are 256 GB Premium Managed Disks that provide:
 
✓ 1,100 input/output operations per second (IOPS) per disk.
✓ Throughput of 125 MB per second.
The P15 disk size is now available in all Azure regions. Learn more about Managed Disks on the overview and pricing webpages.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/managed-disks/

Azure Analysis Services integration with Azure Diagnostic Logs
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-analysis-services-integration-with-azure-diagnostic-logs/

Last week in Azure: Migrating VMWare environments to Azure, and more
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/last-week-in-azure-week-of-2017-11-20/

Announcing Azure Location Based Services public preview
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-azure-location-based-services-public-preview/

Automatic tuning introduces Automatic plan correction and T-SQL management
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/automatic-tuning-introduces-automatic-plan-correction-and-t-sql-management/