All the co-hosts are in the house for a change, having a fascinating discussion with Péter Bozsó, an Azure AppDev Consultant from Microsoft, Hungary. He gives us all the info on how to start writing Chatbots in Azure including tips and tricks, what not do to etc.

 

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode255.mp3

The official MS Bot Framework website: https://dev.botframework.com/
All the open source bot-related MS repositories: https://github.com/Microsoft/botbuilder
Community maintained repos related to the bot framework (stuff is actually getting merged from these into the official repos!): https://github.com/BotBuilderCommunity
Cognitive Services: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/
The official bot framework blog: https://blog.botframework.com/ It’s a must have, a lot of best practices and tips and tricks are posted here.
 
And my personal blog, which is not full of content (yet!), but I am usually posting about Microsoft bots as well since that’s what I am working with every day: https://peterbozso.github.io/

 

Other updates:

Azure SQL Data Warehouse now enables enhanced insights into analytical workloads by integrating directly with Microsoft Azure Monitor diagnostic logs. With this new capability, developers can analyze workload behavior over an extended time period and make informed decisions on query optimization or capacity management.
 
Azure Monitor diagnostic logs support customizable retention periods by saving the logs to a storage account for auditing purposes, the capability to stream logs to event hubs for near real-time telemetry insights, and the ability to analyze logs by using Azure Log Analytics with log queries. Diagnostic logs consist of telemetry views of your data warehouse equivalent to the most commonly used performance troubleshooting DMVs for SQL Data Warehouse.
 
For this initial release, we have enabled views for the following:
 · sys.dm_pdw_exec_requests
 · sys.dm_pdw_request_steps
 · sys.dm_pdw_dms_workers
 · sys.dm_pdw_waits
 · sys.dm_pdw_sql_requests
 
  
AKS now in public preview in China

Announcing the general availability of Azure Event Hubs for Apache Kafka®

you don’t need to run Zookeeper, manage, or configure your clusters.

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

Deploy, develop, and troubleshoot faster with Azure Blockchain Workbench 1.5.0
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/deploy-develop-and-troubleshoot-faster-with-azure-blockchain-workbench-1-5-0/

Get started in minutes: Build your own enterprise grade virtual assistant
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/get-started-in-minutes-build-your-own-enterprise-grade-virtual-assistant/

Getting started with Azure Cognitive Services in containers
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/getting-started-with-azure-cognitive-services-in-containers/

Holiday season is DDoS season
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/holiday-season-is-ddos-season/

Sprint 143 Update of Azure DevOps
https://review.docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/release-notes/2018/sprint-143-update?branch=releases%2FM143%2Freleasenotes#new-work-item-text-editor

With container support, customers can use Azure’s intelligent Cognitive Services capabilities, wherever the data resides. This means customers can perform facial recognition, OCR, or text analytics operations without sending their content to the cloud.

Custom Vision Service support for logo detection

 

Cale Teeter, who was in Prague for DevCon 4, gives us a first-hand update on the latest that Microsoft is bringing to the Blockchain space in Azure.

Microsoft @ DevCon4
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/devcon4/

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode254.mp3

 

Other updates:

Automating SAP deployments in Microsoft Azure using Terraform and Ansible
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/automating-sap-deployments-in-microsoft-azure-using-terraform-and-ansible/

Announcing the general availability of Azure Event Hubs for Apache Kafka®
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-the-general-availability-of-azure-event-hubs-for-apache-kafka/

Azure SQL Data Warehouse introduces new productivity and security capabilities
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-sql-data-warehouse-taking-scalability-security-and-manageability-to-new-heights/

 

James Baker, a Principal PM in the Azure team, talks to us about the latest offering in the Big Data space - Azure Data Lake Service - Gen 2. He gives us the low-down on what's new and why this is such a big deal for existing and new customers.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode253.mp3

 

Other updates:

Use Azure Container Instances in a more secure way. With Virtual Network support, Azure Container Instances now supports deploying containers to new or existing Azure Virtual Networks. Azure Container Instances containers can have secure communication with other resources, such as Azure Kubernetes Service clusters, residing in the same virtual network. 

Azure App Service now supports Virtual Network integration capability is general availability. The upgraded integration capability will enable apps to access resources across ExpressRoute or other connectivity technologies. It also enables apps to access resources secured with service endpoints in a similar manner as with SQL, Storage, and CosmosDB. This capability will only work with Windows Web Apps and in a limited number of regions. 

PowerShell in Azure Cloud Shell is now available and adds performance improvements and features to PowerShell:
1. The PowerShell startup experience is now on par with Bash.
2. PowerShell in Azure Cloud Shell offers a consistent tooling experience, since Cloud Shell runs on a Linux Container that uses PowerShell Core.
3. PowerShell in Azure Cloud Shell is portable and equipped with tools such as Azure PowerShell, git, and common text editors. At the same time, user settings can persist across sessions for increased productivity. 
Four new Azure virtual machine remoting cmdlets enable interactive connectivity to an individual or many machines for automated tasks that use PowerShell remoting.

Microsoft AppDev Consultant Stewart Viera talks to us about the power of Azure DevOps and some of the things to watch out for when using it in an Enterprise setting.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode252.mp3

DevOps information @ https://aka.ms/devops
Azure DevOps Solutions @ https://aka.ms/azuredevops
Azure DevOps Documentation @ https://aka.ms/azdevopsdocs
Azure DevOps Projects @ https://aka.ms/devopsprojects
DevSecOps information @ https://github.com/azsk

 

Other updates:

Azure Availability Zones expand with new services and to new region
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-availability-zones-expand-with-new-services-and-to-new-regions-in-europe-and-united-states/

Azure Update Management: A year of great updates
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-update-management-a-year-of-great-updates/

Public preview: Named Entity Recognition in the Cognitive Services Text Analytics API  (Sujit)
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/public-preview-named-entity-recognition-in-the-cognitive-services-text-analytics-api/

ExpressRoute for Azure DevOps—now available
Azure DevOps is now available over Azure ExpressRoute. See the Azure DevOps blog for more details.
Connectivity to Microsoft online services like Azure Storage, Azure SQL Database, Dynamics 365, and now Azure DevOps is through the Microsoft peering configuration of ExpressRoute circuits.
Route filters are a way to consume a subset of supported services through Microsoft peering. Using route filters, you can enable services you want to consume through your circuit's Microsoft peering. Azure DevOps is included in the new Azure Global Services route filter with a BGP community value of 12076:5050.
For more information, see the ExpressRoute documentation for Configuring route filters for Microsoft peering.
https://azure.microsoft.com/services/devops/
http://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/devops/2018/10/23/expressroute-for-azure-devops/

 

Azure Skills Evangelist and Cloud Solutions Architect, Daniel Baker, comes back on the show and this time he is very passionate about the resources, tips and tricks for getting skilled in Azure.

 

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode251.mp3

 

Azure Learn - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/learn/azure

Azure Labs - https://www.microsoft.com/handsonlabs 

Azure Interactives - http://azureinteractives.azurewebsites.net 

Microsoft YouTube -  https://www.youtube.com/user/MSCloudOS 

Citadel - https://azurecitadel.github.io 

Azuredan – http://www.azuredan.co.uk 

Pluralsight - https://www.pluralsight.com 

 

Other updates:

You can now choose which sets of user accounts should be synchronized into a managed domain. You do this by selecting groups in Azure Active Directory whose members should be synchronized to the managed domain. The current experience is PowerShell based.

We’ve improved the sync performance in multiple stages. For large benchmark customers, we’ve been able to bring initial sync down to a few days.
Further, the virtual machine SKU on which Azure AD DS is hosted scales automatically based on the number of objects in the directory. This enables larger customers to get better sync performance—for both initial and ongoing sync from Azure AD.

Accessibility and array support with Azure Blockchain Workbench 1.4.0
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/accessibility-and-array-support-with-azure-blockchain-workbench-1-4-0/

Sweet updates about Truffle on Azure
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/sweet-updates-about-truffle-on-azure/

Improved governance experience with Ethereum Proof-of-Authority 1.2
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/improved-governance-experience-with-ethereum-proof-of-authority-1-2/

Azure IoT Reference Architecture 2.1 release
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-iot-reference-architecture-2-1-release/

Azure Cognitive Services available in new regions
Wednesday, October 17, 2018
New regions are now available for Azure Cognitive Services. The Content Moderator, Computer Vision, Face, Translator Text, and Language Understanding (LUIS) Services are now generally available in US Government regions.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/content-moderator/

Azure Digital Twins | Public Preview disclosure

Azure Digital Twins is the first of its kind cloud service that virtually represents the physical world across people, places and devices, and will enter public preview in mid-October. Azure Digital Twins significantly reduces time and complexity for building next generation IoT solutions by automating endpoint actions based on incoming telemetry and using predefined templates that are attuned to specific industries. Azure Digital Twins enables customers to build solutions that analyze how space is used and then optimize it to better serve your needs at every level.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-iot-reference-architecture-2-1-release/ 

Microsoft Developer Advocate Anthony Chu gives us the details on the newly released Azure SignalR Service that allows web and mobile applications to display real-time data with minimal effort,

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode250.mp3

Azure SignalR Service documentation
https://docs.microsoft.com/azure/azure-signalr/?WT.mc_id=signalrservice-azpodcast-antchu

Azure SignalR Service bindings for Azure Functions documentation
https://docs.microsoft.com/azure/azure-functions/functions-bindings-signalr-service?WT.mc_id=signalrservice-azpodcast-antchu

Develop real-time features with Azure SignalR Service
https://myignite.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions/66604?WT.mc_id=signalrservice-azpodcast-antchu

Build real-time serverless apps with Azure Functions and SignalR Service
https://myignite.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions/66631?WT.mc_id=signalrservice-azpodcast-antchu

 

Other updates:

Advanced Threat Protection for Azure Storage now in public preview - Azure Storage Advanced Threat Protection detects anomalies in account activity and notifies you of potentially harmful attempts to access your account. This layer of protection allows you to address threats without the need to be a security expert   or manage security monitoring systems. Threats are surfaced by defining security alerts that trigger when anomalies in activity occur. These alerts integrate with Azure Security Center which include details of suspicious activity and recommendations on how to investigate and remediate threats.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/advanced-threat-protection-for-azure-storage-now-in-public-preview/

Cloud Scale Analytics meets Office 365 data – empowered by Azure Data Factory - Azure Data Factory enables you to bring the rich organizational data in your Office 365 tenant into Azure in a scalable way and build analytics applications and extract insights based on these valuable data assets. Microsoft Graph contains rich data about workers and their workplace, including information about how people work and how they communicate, collaborate, and manage their time. Microsoft Graph data connect brings this data to Microsoft Azure, which gives you access to the best development and hosting tools to work with this data.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-graph-data-connect-empowered-by-data-factory/

Bring Your Own Keys for Apache Kafka on HDInsight - Azure HDInsight includes Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) support for Apache Kafka. This capability lets you own and manage the keys used to encrypt data at rest. All managed disks in HDInsight are protected with Azure Storage Service Encryption (SSE). By default, the data on those disks is encrypted using Microsoft-managed keys. If you enable BYOK, you provide the encryption key for HDInsight to use and manage it using Azure Key Vault.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/bring-your-own-keys-for-apache-kafka-on-hdinsight/

Ephemeral OS Disk in limited preview - Ephemeral OS Disk is a new type of OS disk created directly on the host node, providing local disk performance and faster boot/reset time. Ephemeral OS Disk is supported for all virtual machines (VM) and virtual machine scale sets (VMSS). Ephemeral OS Disk is ideal for stateless workloads that require consistent read/write latency to OS disk, as well as frequent reimaging operations to reset VMs to their original state.

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

Public preview: Azure Database for MariaDB - The Azure Database for MariaDB service is now available in preview. It offers an enterprise-ready, fully managed database service that uses the community edition of MariaDB. The service features open-source compatibility, built-in high availability, dynamic scaling, and flexible pricing. Customers can lift and shift to the cloud and use languages and frameworks of their choice, leveraging the power of MariaDB running on Azure.

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

Provide feedback on detected threats in Azure Security Center - Azure Security Center automatically collects, analyzes, and integrates log data from your Azure resources to detect threats. Machine learning algorithms run against collected data and generate security alerts. A list of prioritized security alerts is shown in Security Center along with the information you need to quickly investigate the problem, as well as recommendations for how to remediate an attack. We have added the Alerts Customer Feedback in public preview to Azure Security Center, which gives the Security Center customers a channel to give feedback on the alerts that they received.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/provide-feedback-on-detected-threats-in-azure-security-center/

YAML for Azure DevOps pipelines https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/yaml-schema?view=vsts

The team talks to Identity PM Arturo Lucatero about Managed Identities, that help make resource access easier to manage in Azure.

 

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode249.mp3

 

Other updates:

Preview of AzureRM.Automation cmdlets

We have released a preview version of the AzureRM.Automation cmdlets. This version contains new cmdlets for the Update Management and Source Control features.
You can get the preview modules from the PowerShell Gallery.
https://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/AzureRM.Automation/6.0.0-preview

Building with blockchain on Azure
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/building-with-blockchain-on-azure/

Fuel My Awesome: Celebrating developers and what makes them awesome
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/fuel-my-awesome-celebrating-developers-and-what-makes-them-awesome/

 

A whole bunch of Azure updates were announced at Ignite so Cynthia, Cale and Sujit try to cover as much as possible in 30 minutes!

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode248.mp3

 

 

Azure Policy for Azure DevOps is in preview

Ensure your applications are always compliant with Azure Policy native integration with Azure DevOps. It surfaces policy violations predeployment and policy compliance assessment during post-deployment. Plus, author and create policy in Azure DevOps to take advantage of its source control and versioning capabilities for continuous iteration and improvement. 

 

 

Azure Blueprints is in preview

Design and build apps that meet organizational standards with Azure Blueprints, which enables quick creation of governed subscriptions. Azure Blueprints is composed of artifacts such as templates, policies, scripts, and virtual machine (VM) images. Configure Azure Blueprints to lay foundational blocks like networking and naming conventions while getting flexibility in resource selection and application design. 

 

Azure Resource Graph is in preview

Explore all your cloud resources and more effectively manage your cloud inventory with Azure Resource Graph. Access resource information across all your environments through querying capabilities for deeper insights from your resources. Get insights by using rich aggregation and parsing of detailed properties. Use Resource Graph via the Azure portal, PowerShell, or CLI. 

 

 

Azure Cost Management is in preview in the Azure portal

Take advantage of Azure Cost Management, which is enabled by default in the Azure portal. Use it for free to manage spend on all your Azure resources. 

 

 

Azure Service Fabric and Azure Service Fabric mesh updates

Focus on building mission-critical applications and let Azure solve the distributed microservices system challenges such as reliability, scalability, management, and latency with Azure Service Fabric. With this release, access multiple updates to Service Fabric (Service Fabric, Service Fabric mesh [preview], and Service Fabric standalone), which incorporate new features and improve existing functionality. 

 

 

Video Indexer is generally available

Take advantage of generally available Video Indexer, the artificial intelligence (AI)-based media metadata extraction service. Access additional functionality included with this release such as new machine learning models, a new RESTful API version, and a new connector version for Azure Logic Apps and Microsoft Flow. General availability (GA) pricing will be effective on November 1, 2018. 

 

 

New regions are available for the Av2-series in Azure HDInsight

Use Azure HDInsight for your open source analytics, and then take advantage of an increased range of VM infrastructure with the Av2-series VMs. They're available in all regions where the Av2-series Azure Virtual Machines are available. Read more about HDInsight on Azure updates.

 

 

Azure Key Vault supports new advanced key lengths

Safeguard and control cryptographic keys and other secrets used by cloud apps and services with Azure Key Vault. Then, take advantage of support for new advanced key types that are now generally available in Key Vault. Pricing will be effective on November 1, 2018. 

 

Azure SQL Data Warehouse updates

Quickly implement a high-performance, globally available, and low-cost cloud data warehouse with Azure SQL Data Warehouse. Then, take advantage of these updates.

 

User-defined maintenance windows

This new feature seamlessly integrates the Azure Service Health planned maintenance notifications with Resource Health monitor services. Choose a preferred maintenance window based on your workstreams. Plan around the scheduled maintenance events SQL Data Warehouse uses to roll out new features, upgrades, and patches.

 

Intelligent insights

Access intelligent performance insights within the Azure portal and create rich, customizable dashboard widgets with SQL Operations Studio. With built-in intelligence delivering recommendations from SQL Data Warehouse, ensure your data warehouse is consistently optimized for performance. Get the current state of your data warehouse, telemetry, and recommendations for your active workload on a daily cadence. These free insights are tightly integrated with Azure Advisor and are automatically available through the portal. 

 

 

Resource name change and GUID migration

Effective November 1, 2018, GUIDs and resource names for the storage meters for SQL Data Warehouse customers will change.

 

 

Azure Database for MySQL and Azure Database for PostgreSQL backup storage pricing update

With Azure Database for MySQL and Azure Database for PostgreSQL, easily adjust resources and respond faster to market and customer demands with built-in high availability and the ability to elastically scale compute and storage independently—in seconds. For a limited time, backup storage that exceeds provisioned storage is currently being offered free. Effective November 1, 2018, backup storage that exceeds provisioned storage will incur costs charged in GB per month. Read more about Azure Database for MySQL and Azure Database for PostgreSQL on Azure updates.

 

 

More services protected with Azure Security Center

Strengthen your cloud security posture and protect against threats with Azure Security Center. Protection is now extended to more services across infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) services. Protection for Azure App Service is generally available, and protection for Azure Database for PostgreSQL and Azure Database for MySQL is in preview. Pricing will be effective on November 1, 2018. 

 

M-series in Azure Virtual Machines is generally available in more regions

Take advantage of the M-series VMs in Azure Virtual Machines and get up to 128 cores and 3.8 TiB of memory, which provide unparalleled computational performance to support large in-memory workloads. The M-series is now generally available in UK West and North Europe—find out when it will be in your region. 

 

 

Azure Managed Disks updates

Create a managed disk by specifying the type of storage and the disk size you need. Then, Azure Storage will create and manage it for you. Now, choose among new Azure Managed Disks sizes.

 

Larger sizes are in preview

Get increased storage capacity and performance with larger Managed Disks sizes that are in preview in a limited number of regions. With the new sizes, significantly expand storage capacity while simplifying management and achieving better performance. 

 

 

Azure Ultra SSD is in preview

Take advantage of Ultra SSD (preview) for your most demanding data-intensive workloads. Get unprecedented and extremely scalable performance with sub-millisecond latency. Request access to the preview and learn more. 

 

 

Azure Standard SSD is generally available

Use Standard SSD for low input/output per second (IOPS) workloads that need consistent performance. Get better availability, consistency, reliability, and latency compared to Standard HDD disks. GA pricing for Standard SSD sizes E10–E50 will be effective on November 1, 2018. 

 

 

Speech Service in Azure Cognitive Services is generally available

Use Azure Cognitive Services to infuse your apps, websites, and bots with intelligent algorithms to see, hear, speak, understand, and interpret your user needs through natural methods of communication. Then, take advantage of the generally available Speech Service, which combines these capabilities: Speech to Text, Text to Speech, Custom Speech, Speech Translation, and Custom Voice. GA pricing will be effective on November 1, 2018. 

 

 

Azure Data Box updates

From terabytes to petabytes, choose the Azure Data Box device that works for your migration needs. Your choices now include updated and new options.

 

Azure Data Box is generally available

Use generally available Azure Data Box with 100 TB capacity when transferring over a network isn't an option. Pricing will be effective on November 1, 2018. 

 

 

Azure Data Box Gateway is in preview

Azure Data Box Gateway (preview) is available as a VM for use with Hyper-V or VMware. 

 

Azure Data Box Heavy is in preview

For larger data sets up to 1 PB, use Azure Data Box Heavy (preview). 

 

 

New zone-redundant Azure VPN Gateway and Azure ExpressRoute gateways are generally available

With added support for Azure Availability Zones, there's now increased resiliency, scalability, and higher availability to Azure virtual network gateways. GA pricing will be effective on November 1, 2018. 

 

 

Azure ExpressRoute global reach is in preview

Use Azure ExpressRoute to create private connections between Azure datacenters and infrastructure on your premises or in a colocation environment. Then, connect your on-premises networks via ExpressRoute through the Microsoft global network using ExpressRoute global reach (preview). For example, you'll be able to connect your private datacenters together through ExpressRoute connections and your cross-datacenter traffic will traverse through the Microsoft network.  

 

 

Azure Virtual Network updates

Get an isolated and highly secure environment to run your VMs and applications with Azure Virtual Network. Then, take advantage of new capabilities.

 

 

TAP is in preview

Continuously mirror traffic from a virtual network to a packet collector with Virtual Network terminal access point (TAP) (preview). The mirrored traffic is a deep copy of the inbound and outbound VM network traffic and can be streamed to a destination IP endpoint or an internal load balancer in the same virtual network or peered virtual network. Pricing will be effective on November 1, 2018. 

 

 

Public IP prefix capability is in preview

Create a range of static public IP addresses with the public IP prefix capability (preview). Azure allocates a contiguous range of addresses based on the size of the prefix you specify. When you create a public IP address from the prefix, you're then assigned a static IP address from the range.

 

 

Azure Firewall is generally available

Protect your Azure Virtual Network resources with Azure Firewall, a managed cloud-based network security service. It's a fully stateful service with built-in high availability and unrestricted cloud scalability. GA pricing will be effective on November 1, 2018. 

 

Standard Microsoft tier in Azure Content Delivery Network is generally available

Send audio, video, apps, photos, and other files to your customers faster and more reliably, using the servers closest to each user with Azure Content Delivery Network. Then, use the Standard Microsoft tier to get 62 content delivery network (CDN) POPs in 57 countries with 16 regional caches from the Microsoft global edge and CDN. GA pricing will be effective on November 1, 2018. R

 

Azure Virtual WAN is generally available

Use a simple, unified, global connectivity, and security platform for deploying large scale branch infrastructure with Azure Virtual WAN. In addition to using your preferred SDWAN or security appliance vendor to automate branch connectivity, there's now client-side support through OpenVPN (preview) along with the ability to access resources that are connected to an Azure ExpressRoute circuit (preview)—such as an on-premises datacenter or virtual networks connected to the ExpressRoute circuit. 

 

 

Azure Front Door Service is in preview

Get a scalable and secure entry point for fast delivery of your global, microservice-based web applications with Azure Front Door Service. Control and monitor your service’s traffic and global backends with one central control plane and dashboard. Pricing will be effective on October 1, 2018. 

 

 

Hyperscale service tier in Azure SQL Database is in preview

Use Azure SQL Database—an intelligent, fully managed relational cloud database service that provides the broadest Microsoft SQL Server engine compatibility—to migrate your SQL Server databases without changing your apps. Then, take advantage of the hyperscale service tier and its ability to adapt on demand to your workload's needs. It auto-scales up to 100 TB per database and eliminates the need to preprovision storage resources. Pricing will be effective on October 1, 2018.

 

 

New updates to Azure Machine Learning Preview

Take advantage of several updates in Azure Machine Learning Preview, including the ability to integrate with your favorite Python development environment like Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, PyCharm, Azure Databricks notebooks, or Jupyter notebooks. Also, identify the most efficient algorithms faster with automated machine learning and fine-tune it with intelligent hyper-parameter tuning. 

 

 

Delta in Azure Databricks is in preview

Simplify your pipelines with delta, a transactional storage layer in Azure Databricks. With it, it’s easier to build high performance analytics solutions at scale using Azure Databricks. Plus, get better reliability and higher performance on Apache Spark jobs and queries. 

 

 

Archive storage tier in Azure Blob storage is generally available in more regions

Take advantage of the archive storage tier—in addition to the hot and cool tiers—in Azure Blob storage. Seamlessly move your data among the three tiers as all archive operations are 100 percent consistent with the hot and cool tiers. The archive storage tier is now generally available in 11 additional Azure regions, and is supported by many leading storage industry partners. 

 

 

Azure IoT Central is generally available

Take advantage of rapid innovation, design, configuration, and integration of smart products with Azure IoT Central, a market-differentiated SaaS solution that's now generally available. Pricing will be effective on November 1, 2018. 

 

Next version of the Microsoft Bot Framework SDK is generally available

Using a highly modular and extensible architecture, pick the specific components you need with the next version of the Microsoft Bot Framework SDK, which is now generally available. Take advantage of a rich ecosystem of pluggable extensions that can help with tasks like machine translation, dialog management, and scheduling meetings. 

 

 

Improvements to usage meter names

In August 2018, we standardized Azure Virtual Machines usage meter names. We'll make the final update the first week of October 2018, which will include changes for all other Azure services to the meter category, meter subcategory, meter name, region names, and units of measure. Download a spreadsheet to see all attribute updates to prepare for any necessary reporting changes. 

 

Cynthia, Evan and Cale talk to Leo Giakoumakis, head of Snowflake's Seattle Development Center, about their Data warehouse platform built for the cloud (and now available on Azure).

 

https://www.snowflake.com/

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode247.mp3

 

Other updates:

Troubleshoot connectivity issues in a virtual network
Thursday, August 30, 2018
The Virtual Network blade in the Azure portal has been enhanced to troubleshoot connectivity and performance issues or continually monitor your network endpoints from virtual machines (VMs) in a virtual network. You can:
• Check for connectivity between source (VM) and destination (VM, URI, FQDN, IP address).
• Identify configuration issues that are affecting reachability.
• Provide hop-by-hop paths from source to destination; hop-by-hop latency; minimum, maximum, and average latency between source and destination; and a topology (graphical) view from source to destination.

From <https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/troubleshoot-virtual-network-connectivity/>

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/features/azure-cyclecloud/

 

Securing your Azure workloads has become easier with the release of Azure Security Center (ASC) official PowerShell Module!
 
Many organizations are looking to automate more tasks, as manual work is prone to human error and creates a potential for duplicative work. The need for automation is especially prevalent when it comes to large scale deployments that involve dozens of subscriptions with hundreds and thousands of resources – all of which must be secured from the beginning.
 
To streamline the security aspects of the DevOps lifecycle, ASC has recently released its official PowerShell module. This enables organizations to programmatically automate onboarding and management of their Azure resources in ASC and adding the necessary security controls.

General availability: Immutable storage for Azure Blob storage
Tuesday, September 18, 2018
Financial services organizations regulated by SEC, CFTC, FINRA, IIROC, FCA, etc., are required to retain business-related communications in a Write-Once-Read-Many (WORM) or immutable state to ensure that they're non-erasable and non-modifiable for a specific retention interval. The immutable storage requirement is not limited to financial organizations. It also applies to industries such as healthcare, insurance, media, public safety, and legal services.
To address this requirement, immutable storage for Azure Blob storage is now generally available in all Azure public regions. Through configurable policies, users can keep Azure Blob storage data in an immutable state where blobs can be created and read, but not modified or deleted.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/general-availability-immutable-storage-for-azure-storage-blobs/

 

Deep dive into Azure Test Plans
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/deep-dive-into-azure-test-plans/

Jenkins Azure ACR Build plugin now in public preview
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/jenkins-acr/

Last week the South Central US datacenter experienced a significant outage which resulted in many Azure services and customers being impacted. Kendall, Evan and Sujit break down the outage and try to understand how Microsoft and its customers can be better prepared from such unplanned events.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode246.mp3

Preliminary RCA: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/status/history/

 

Other updates:

Azure Stack is now integrated with the Azure Government cloud, enabling connections to Azure Government identity, subscription, registration, billing, backup/DR, and Azure Marketplace. Azure Stack unlocks a wide range of hybrid cloud use cases for government customers, such as tactical edge and regulatory scenarios.

Now in preview, you can migrate PostgreSQL databases to Azure Database for PostgreSQL with minimal downtime by using the Azure Database Migration Service (DMS). Use the Azure CLI to provision an instance of the DMS service to perform migrations from PostgreSQL on-premises or on virtual machines to Azure Database for PostgreSQL.

Azure SQL Data Warehouse Gen2 is now available in government cloud
Azure SQL Data warehouse is a fast, flexible and secure analytics platform. The Compute Optimized Gen2 tier of Azure SQL Data Warehouse is now available in US Government cloud. We recently made the service available in US Government Virginia and US Government Arizona regions. Compute Optimized Gen2 tier, using adaptive caching and instant data movement, brings at least 5x better performance for all our customers, compared to before. To find out more, go to Azure.com/sqldw.

Azure DevOps

The single service that was Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) is now becoming a new set of Azure DevOps services. Throughout our documentation and websites, and in the product, you'll start to notice new icons and names for Azure DevOps and each of the services within it:
 · Azure Pipelines to continuously build, test, and deploy to any platform and cloud.
 · Azure Boards for powerful work management.
 · Azure Artifacts for Maven, npm, and NuGet package feeds.
 · Azure Repos for unlimited cloud-hosted private Git repos.
 · Azure Test Plans for planned and exploratory testing.
With the launch of Azure Pipelines, we've introduced a new app to the GitHub Marketplace, refreshed a number of the experiences to help you get started, and begun to offer unlimited CI/CD minutes and 10 parallel jobs for open-source projects.