Technical Program Manager in the Azure Commerce team, Obinna Nwokolo explains exactly what the new Azure Savings Plan is all about and how you can easily take advantage of it via the Portal experience. He digs into the various options for cutting costs in Azure and when the Savings Plan makes sense for you.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode486.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/Qwt728PUz0U

Resources:

• SP product page - Azure Savings Plan for Compute | Microsoft Azure
• SP Recommendations 101 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HV9GT9kX6A&list=PLlrxD0HtieHjd-zn7u09YoGJY18ZrN1Hq&index=2&t=15s&pp=iAQB
• SP Benefit application 101 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZOyh1rl3kU&list=PLlrxD0HtieHjd-zn7u09YoGJY18ZrN1Hq&index=3&t=2s&pp=iAQB

Other updates:

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/generalavailabilityofazuremonitormetricsdataplaneapi/

Santosh Somayajula, a Principal Product Manager in Azure, breaks down the new Copilot for Azure service which is currently in Private Preview in the Azure Portal. Using this feature, administrators and management can perform operations in the Portal using simple verbal commands instead of navigating the UI.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode485.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/Gqv-qOOoK28

Resources: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/copilot/overview

 https://aka.ms/MSCopilotforAzurePreviewRequest

Other updates:

General Availability: Azure Virtual Network encryption | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Public preview: ExpressRoute guided portal experience for multi-site resiliency | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

General Availability: Azure MySQL Import feature for Azure Database for MySQL Single to Flexible Server migrations | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure 

Public Preview: Circuit Breaker in Azure API Management | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure  

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/general-availability-azure-topology/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/mount-azure-storage-as-a-local-share-in-app-service-linux-now-supports-nfs/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/generally-available-continuous-model-monitoring-in-azure-machine-learning/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/public-preview-azure-api-center-features/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/public-preview-new-major-version-of-durable-functions-extension/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/generally-available-outbound-type-migration-in-aks/

Sean Klein joins Evan, Sujit, and Cale to talk about the Production LiveSite Review (PLR) process used by Azure Engineering for modern incident analysis and learnings.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode484.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/EsRrxguRn2Y

Resources:

How Complex Systems Fail

Etsy Engineering | Blameless PostMortems and a Just Culture

Other updates:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/load-testing/quickstart-create-and-run-load-test

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/load-testing/how-to-parameterize-load-tests#secrets

Azure Cloud Solution Architects Elena Krasteva and Sabine Blair help us understand what the Azure VMWare Solution is all about and how the Landing Zone Accelerator helps make it easier for customers looking to migrate VMWare workloads to Azure.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode483.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/Onj876JxOaw

Resources:

1) Product page: https://aka.ms/avs 

2) LinkedIn: (20) Azure VMware Solution Pros | Groups | LinkedIn

3) Well Architected Workload Guidance: https://aka.ms/avswafdocs 

4) Landing Zone Accelerator: https://aka.ms/avsaccelerator

4) TechCommunity Blog: Azure Migration and Modernization Blog - Microsoft Community Hub

5) Learn Modules: Run VMware resources on Azure VMware Solution - Training | Microsoft Learn

6) Discovery Assessment: Azure VMware Solution assessment calculations in Azure Migrate - Azure Migrate | Microsoft Learn

Other updates:

Microsoft puts Azure Quantum Elements to work

https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/09/microsoft-puts-azure-quantum-elements-to-work/

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/apps-on-azure-blog/azure-spring-apps-enterprise-is-now-eligible-for-azure-savings/ba-p/4021532

Cale, Evan and Sujit discuss the often-overlooked Network Watcher service in Azure and how it can be used for monitoring, troubleshooting and logging of network operations in your VNETs.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode482.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/CYLtFrbXGck

Resources:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/network-watcher/network-watcher-overview

Other updates:

Application Insights Availability Tests TLS 1.3 Enablement | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Standard and High-Performance VPN Gateway SKUs will be retired on 30 September 2025 | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Generally Available: Azure Chaos Studio supports new faults for Service Bus | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Store and manage medical imaging data with Azure Data Lake Storage (Preview) | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/public-preview-free-sql-managed-instance/

Cale and Sujit discuss the new Fleet Manager service which allows customers to better manage groups of AKS clusters and perform updates, deployments and network access.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode481.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/mpUfpRtqnEE

Resources:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kubernetes-fleet/overview

https://github.com/Azure/fleet

Other updates:

Public Preview: Accelerated logs in Azure Database for MySQL - Flexible Server | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Public Preview: Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server, enhanced disaster recovery features | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Generally Available: Azure Functions support on Apple Silicon Macs | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Microsoft and Oracle announce that Oracle Database@Azure is now generally available | Microsoft Azure Blog

Mark Eisenberg joins Cale and Sujit to dissect the Azure-related updates announced at the Ignite Conference in November 2023.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode480.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/bbt4wTjo7G4

Resources:

https://news.microsoft.com/ignite-2023-book-of-news/

Mark Russinovich - Inside AI Innovations

Today the team chat to Keith Howling, a Principal Technical Specialist at Microsoft, on the topic of Platform Engineering with Radius, an open source app deployment engine.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode479.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/JWCaXfTf77A

Resources:

Radius:

• RadApp
• Introducing Radius: A new open-source application platform for cloud-native apps

Other news:

• General availability: Rate limit rules for Application Gateway web application firewall
• Export cost using focus
• Azure support for TLS 1.0 and 1.1 will end by 31 October 2024
• Experiment templates now available in Azure Chaos Studio
• General availability: Start and stop load testing faults in Azure Chaos Studio
• General availability: Azure Functions supports .NET 8 in the isolated worker model
• App Service end-to-end encryption for Linux multi-tenant (preview)
• Azure Monitor Logs archive provides up to 12 years of retention

The team catches up with Nithya Sivam and Joshua Min who explain how Azure is democratizing access to the self-help content accessible in the Azure Portal. The Help API makes it easier to integrate this self-help into your own workflow.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode478.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/Depmijm4YUg

Resources:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/help/?view=rest-help-2023-09-01-preview

Other updates:

Realize the full potential of your cloud investment with Azure optimization

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/realize-the-full-potential-of-your-cloud-investment-with-azure-optimization/

Building for the future: The enterprise generative AI application lifecycle with Azure AI

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/building-for-the-future-the-enterprise-generative-ai-application-lifecycle-with-azure-ai/

Join Microsoft at Azure Day & KubeCon North America 2023 in Chicago!

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/apps-on-azure-blog/join-microsoft-at-azure-day-amp-kubecon-north-america-2023-in/ba-p/3958610

Azure Elastic SAN updates: Snapshots, Security, and Usability | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Preview: Azure Container Storage in AKS | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Public preview: Application Gateway IPv6 support | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure 

General Availability: Azure Advisor recommendation improves the reliability of Azure Disks with Zone Redundant Storage | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Software Engineers Ian Jensen and Michael Litman from Microsoft's ISE group, explain the other 'clouds' in Azure. They dive into the Power Platform and Dynamics 365 suite and explain the use-cases for each of them and how you can use low-code or high-code to take advantage of these clouds without having to worry about specific resources in Azure.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode477.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/9EAl_tCAoMs

Resources:

• Power Platform Terraform Provider: https://aka.ms/PowerPlatTerraformQuickstarts
• SolutionOps Playbook: https://playbook.microsoft.com
• Power Platform Pipelines: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/alm/pipelines
• ALM Accelerator for Power Platform: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/guidance/alm-accelerator/overview
• Updated ERP Development Experience: https://aka.ms/ERPDevDeploy , then https://aka.ms/ERPDevConfig
• ERP Git guidance: https://aka.ms/XppGit

Other updates:

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/public-preview-update-channel-for-basic-standard-and-premium-caches/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/public-preview-builtin-azure-monitor-alerts-for-azure-site-recovery/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/azure-bastion-developer-public-preview/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/general-availability-default-rule-set-21-for-regional-waf-with-application-gateway/