We talk to Jeremy Hollett, a Principal Service Engineering Manager, about the CXP organization and how it helps both Azure internally as well its customers, gain the ultimate in reliability. Evan also works for the same organization so the two of them share some good insights.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode225.mp3

Other updates:

We have added Azure Databricks notebook activity in Azure Data Factory. You can now operationalize your Databricks notebooks in Data Factory.  

From <https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/support-for-operationalizing-azure-databricks-notebook/>

Azure Stream Analytics customers can now easily build solutions for scenarios such as connected cars, fleet management, and mobile asset tracking.
Developers can use built-in geospatial functions in their stream-processing logic to define geographical areas. Developers can evaluate incoming geospatial data for containment, proximity, and overlap, and then generate alerts or start necessary workflows.
These geospatial capabilities are in alignment with the GeoJSON specification.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/native-support-for-geospatial-functions

With Azure Stream Analytics, customers can combine the power of JavaScript with the simplicity and pervasiveness of SQL.
Historically, Stream Analytics let developers express their real-time query logic by using a simple SQL-like language. To support more expressive custom code and help customers implement advanced scenarios, Stream Analytics now supports user-defined functions (UDFs) via JavaScript. With this feature, customers can write their custom code in JavaScript, and easily invoke it as part of their real-time stream processing query.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/javascript-udf-in-azure-stream-analytics/

The public preview of Azure Stream Analytics tools for Visual Studio includes support for local testing on client machines.

Announcing HTTP/2 support in Azure App Service
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/appserviceteam/2018/04/13/announcing-http2-support-in-azure-app-service

Azure Sphere https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/introducing-microsoft-azure-sphere-secure-and-power-the-intelligent-edge/

Altair democratizes access to computer-aided engineering with Azure
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/altair-democratizes-access-to-computer-aided-engineering-with-azure/

Senior Product Marketing Manager Sonya Koptyev talks to us about the Azure AI Platform and give us some great pointers on how to get started with AI.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode224.mp3

Other updates:

Following last month's announcement of zone-redundant database support, Azure SQL Database is further expanding the power of databases and elastic pools by including read scale-out support in the Premium and Business Critical service tiers. 
This capability redirects the read-only client connections to one of the automatically provisioned HA replicas and effectively doubles the compute capacity of the database or elastic pool at no additional charge. This is ideal for load balancing of complex analytical workloads without affecting the primary OLTP workload.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/public-preview-of-read-scale-out-support/

Azure DevTest Labs is now available in Azure Government.
With this availability, US government agencies and their partners can modernize their legacy infrastructure to build fast, easy, and lean environments.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-source-volume-26/

Offline media import for Azure
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/offline-media-import-for-azure/

Achieving GDPR compliance in the cloud with Microsoft Azure
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/achieving-gdpr-compliance-in-the-cloud-with-microsoft-azure/

Three common analytics use cases with Microsoft Azure Databricks
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/three-critical-analytics-use-cases-with-microsoft-azure-databricks/

Kendall, Cynthia, Evan and Cale discuss a fundamental feature of Azure - Storage! They talk about the various possibilities to store data in Azure and break down the use-cases for each of those options.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode223.mp3

Indexed audio: https://www.videoindexer.ai/media/f5cfe87096/

Resources:

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/storage/databox/

https://www.microsoft.com/handsonlabs/

Other updates:

Public preview: Event Hubs for Go

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/event-hubs-go-preview

Microsoft peering on ExpressRoute Standard SKU now available

Microsoft peering with route filters is now available for Azure ExpressRoute Standard SKU. You can access Azure PaaS services, such as Azure SQL Database and Azure Storage, that are offered on a public IP address within the geopolitical zone of your ExpressRoute circuit. See more information about geopolitical zones.
As a result of this new functionality, can no longer create new Azure public peering configurations. Existing Azure public peering configurations will continue to be supported, though we recommend moving to Microsoft peering with route filters. 
For more information on this new functionality, see the documentation. 

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/microsoft-peering-on-expressroute-standard/

New Microsoft Azure regions available for Australia and New Zealand
Two new Microsoft Azure regions in Australia are available to customers, making Microsoft the only global provider to deliver cloud services specifically designed to address the requirements of the Australian and New Zealand governments and critical national infrastructure, including banks, utilities, transport and telecommunications.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/new-microsoft-azure-regions-available-for-australia-and-new-zealand

2018 Global Azure Bootcamp coming up April 21st, 2018
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/globalazure-bootcamp-2018/
Global Azure is an unstoppable force of thirst for knowledge with 244 locations in 68 countries!

SQL Database: Long-term backup retention preview includes major updates
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/sql-database-long-term-backup-retention-preview-includes-major-updates/

A flexible new way to purchase Azure SQL Database
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/a-flexible-new-way-to-purchase-azure-sql-database/

Azure IoT Hub is driving down the cost of IoT
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-iot-hub-is-driving-down-the-cost-of-iot/

Azure DevOps Projects now supports Windows VMs as deployment targets (as opposed to Azure Web App, and Web App for containers) for ASP.NET and ASP.NET core web applications. This addition is the first of several planned expansions to Azure DevOps projects scenarios which allow developers to create full CI/CD pipelines in minutes from the Azure portal powered by Visual Studio Team Services. 

A new Azure DevOps project gives you a git repository with application code, automated CI/CD pipeline that for the written framework (.NET, Java, Node.js, PHP, Python), option to add SQL database, and application insight that monitors the application and helps diagnose issues and understand how the application is currently being used.

Sean Watson, a Senior PM in the Azure Portal team, talks to us about the thinking behind the design of the portal and shares tips 'n tricks for getting the most out of the portal.

Media File: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode222.mp3

Indexed audio: https://www.videoindexer.ai/media/e225a07aab/

Azure Portal user voice:
http://aka.ms/azp/uservoice

Azure Portal preview environment:
https://preview.portal.azure.com (Early access to new functionality!)

Azure Portal twitter:
https://twitter.com/azureportal

My twitter:
https://twitter.com/seanwatson3

Other updates:

Soft delete for Azure Storage Blobs now in public preview
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/soft-delete-for-azure-storage-blobs-now-in-public-preview/

How Catania secures public data with Azure SQL Data Warehouse
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/how-catania-secures-public-data-with-azure-sql-data-warehouse/

Azure DNS Private Zones now available in public preview

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-dns-private-zones-now-available-in-public-preview/

General availability: Disable BGP route propagation for virtual network routes
If you're connecting your virtual network by using Azure ExpressRoute or VPN gateways, you can disable routing through BGP by simply adding a property in your route tables.

Public preview: Virtual machine serial console
Virtual machine serial console is now public preview. This feature allows bidirectional serial console access to your virtual machines. The preview is available in global Azure regions.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/azure-serial-console 

Deprecating Service Management API support for Azure App Service

Azure Service Management support will be retired on June 30, 2018. After that, Azure App Service resource management will be supported only through Azure Resource Manager.
The Service Management APIs are not well suited for the modern cloud. Supporting Service Management APIs any longer will hold us back from delivering a premium developer experience and control at plane scale.
Customers currently using the Service Management APIs will be better served by moving to Resource Manager. Resource Manager has many benefits over Service Management, like a robust deployment model, role-based access, and better API support for features. For more information about the difference between Service Management and Resource Manager, see the TechNet blog.
For more information about the deprecation of Service Management APIs, see the App Service blog announcement.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/deprecating-service-management-apis-support-for-azure-app-service

Andrew Liu, a Senior PM on the CosmosDB team talks to us about the Graph API and he is obviously very passionate about it! He gives us some great use-cases for Graphs and how we can use the service to build these types of applications quickly.

Media file: http://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode221.mp3

Indexed audio: https://www.videoindexer.ai/media/93f5cd9cc9/

Other updates:

Improved multi-member Blockchain networks now available on Azure
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/improved-multi-member-blockchain-networks-now-available-on-azure/

SONiC, the network innovation powerhouse behind Azure
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/sonic-the-network-innovation-powerhouse-behind-azure/

The next generation of Azure Alerts has arrived
Today, we are announcing the general availability of the next generation of alerts in Azure. With Azure Monitoring Services, you can set up alerts to monitor the metrics and log data for the entire stack across your infrastructure, application, and Azure platform. With the release of the next generation alerts, we are providing a new consolidated alerts experience and offering a new alerts platform that will be faster and leveraged by other Azure services. Some of our customers have already been using the new alerts in preview and provided us feedback.
“The new unified experience dramatically improves our alert management capabilities. As part of our standard client configuration, we deploy and manage a variety of resource monitors to provide comprehensive coverage of a customer environment. These monitors include PaaS Resource Metrics/Logs, Azure Activity Events, and Log Analytics searches. We can now manage all of these monitors and alerts through a single interface and layer standardized action groups across all of them. This new service means we can offer a more consistent approach to our customers while dramatically reducing the management overhead. 
In addition, the performance improvements have allowed us to respond quicker to critical customer issues. With near real time metrics for things like Heart Beat logs, we can be alerted to a downed server event in record time and take swift action to recover the environment.”
From <https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/blog/the-next-generation-of-azure-alerts-has-arrived/>

Columnstore support in Standard tier Azure SQL Databases
We are pleased to announce the general availability of columnstore index features for Standard databases in the S3 and above pricing tiers. These features will enable a number of new and valuable…
Announcing general availability of Azure database services for MySQL and PostgreSQL
Today, I am excited to announce the general availability (GA) of Azure Database for MySQL and Azure Database for PostgreSQL. The GA milestone means that, starting today, these services are bringing…

Global performance acceleration with Azure Traffic Manager
Gaining insights to customer traffic is imperative in providing a best in class user experience. With Traffic View, a new capability in Azure Traffic Manager, you can get rich information and…

BACIAD - Build a Company in a Day

Hot off the press is “Build a Company in Azure” a feature packed demonstration taking the audience on a journey through IaaS and PaaS solutions and perfect for those studying Infrastructure Certification.
 
Learn how to navigate the portal and shell, then build Networks and Virtual Machines including Windows and Linux distributions using a variety of deployment methods before diving into the world of Containers and Orchestration.
 
Explore Azure Active Directory as we synchronise accounts with ADConnect before designing DevTest Infrastructures and protecting with BCDR Strategies.
 
Then jump into Social Media, building WebApps, before automating with Logic Apps, Bots and Cognitive Services.
 
Finally learn how to secure your deployments with Azure Security Center, Privileged Identity Management and Just in Time VM Access
 
https://youtu.be/0GvMwCFhk08
 
 
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/azureservicefabric/2018/03/14/service-fabric-is-going-open-source/

Logic Apps Principal PM Kevin Lam is back to give us all the latest and greatest updates on the service. It has definitely come a long way since we had him on the show last about a year and half ago and Kevin is just as excited about the possibilities using Logic Apps.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode220.mp3

Indexed audio: https://www.videoindexer.ai/media/ec66b2fa3b/

Other updates:

Today, we are announcing the public preview of Traffic Analytics, a cloud-based solution that provides visibility into user and application traffic on your cloud networks.
 
Traffic Analytics analyzes NSG Flow Logs across Azure regions and equips you with actionable information to optimize workload performance, secure applications and data, audit your organization’s network activity and stay compliant.
 
With Traffic Analytics, you now can:
 
· Gain visibility into network activity across your cloud networks.
· Secure your network; Identify threats on your network.
· Improve performance of your applications.
 
Check out the documentation and start using Traffic Analytics on your Azure network.

Azure File Sync Preview available in additional regions
Azure File Sync Preview centralizes your file services in a managed cloud service to reduce complexity associated with server sprawl while preserving their on-premises compatibility and performance. File Sync Preview synchronizes files bidirectionally from Windows Server 2012 R2 and 2016 servers into Azure Files, providing:
 
✓ Multi-site access.
✓ Cloud tiering of less frequently accessed data.
✓ Integrated backup.
✓ Direct cloud access without a gateway.
Use File Sync Preview on your existing servers via a downloadable agent. File Sync Preview is now available in the Canada Central and Australia Southeast regions.

SECURITY UPDATES

Announcing Storage Service Encryption with customer managed keys general availability
Today, we are excited to announce the general availability of Azure Storage Service Encryption with customer managed keys integrated with Azure Key Vault for Azure Blob Storage.

Just-in-Time VM Access is generally available
Azure Security Center provides several threat prevention mechanisms to help you reduce surf

ace areas susceptible to attack. One of those mechanisms is Just-in-Time (JIT) VM Access. Today we are…

Introducing SQL Information Protection for Azure SQL Database and on-premises SQL Server!We are delighted to announce the public preview of SQL Information Protection, introducing advanced capabilities built into Azure SQL Database for discovering, classifying, labeling, and protecting…

SQL DATABASE UPDATES
Migrate your databases to a fully managed service with Azure SQL Database Managed Instance

We’re excited to announce the preview of Azure SQL Database Managed Instance, a new deployment option in SQL Database that streamlines the migration of SQL Server workloads to a fully managed…

APP DEV & PLATFORM CAPABILITY

Build Spring Boot 2.0 apps with Azure Starters and new VSCode extensions
Spring fans, we are excited to announce full support of Spring Boot 2.0 on the Spring Boot Starters for Azure, already available on Spring Initializr. Plus, with new Java and Spring extensions for…

Microsoft and Esri launch Geospatial AI on Azure
Integrating geography and location information with AI brings a powerful new dimension to understanding the world around us. This has a wide range of applications in a variety of segments, including…

Public preview of Java on App Service, built-in support for Tomcat and OpenJDK
A couple of months back, we announced the general availability of App Service on Linux, starting with support for .NET Core, Node.js, Ruby, PHP, and custom Docker containers. Today, we are glad to…

We have a very enthusiastic Sonia Gupta, Azure Backup PM, talking to us about the service. She gives us a quick refresher and some very interesting updates on this important but often neglected Azure service.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode219.mp3

Indexed audio: https://www.videoindexer.ai/media/135d358da9/

Resources:

Azure Backup’s Cloud-First Approach
https://azure.microsoft.com/blog/azure-backup-cloud-first-architecture/

Azure Backup blogs
http://blog.azure.com/tag/azure-backup/

Azure Backup landing page
http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/backup/

Feedback (UserVoice)
https://feedback.azure.com/forums/258995-azure-backup-and-scdpm/

Other updates:

Preview of Soft Delete for Storage blobs
 
We’re excited to announce Azure for Students. Designed uniquely with student-focused cloud usage in-mind, this offer gives verified students full access to 25+ free Azure products as well as US$100 monetary credit for use toward our paid products with no credit card requirement. If you’re seeking to grow your cloud dev skills – you’re in the right place.

Based on feedback from our listeners, we chat with Richard Cheney, a Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft. He give us a loads of advice to help our listeners get ramped up on developing ARM templates, including 'Project Citadel' - a whole set of resources to help you craft the best templates.

Resources:

http://Aka.ms/armref
http://Aka.ms/armfunc
http://Aka.ms/citadel

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode218.mp3

Indexed audio: https://www.videoindexer.ai/media/998bafacd4

Other updates:

Introducing backup for Azure file shares
Today, we are excited to announce the public preview of backup for Azure file shares. Azure Files is a cloud-first file share solution with support for industry standard SMB protocol.
 • File level restore - instantly (from snapshots)
 • No infrastructure required
 • Control retention via policies
 • Uses Recovery services vault

You can back up file shares automatically based on policy and restore instantly to a point in time by using the Azure portal.

New option to try out Web App for Containers
Thursday, February 22, 2018
Web App for Containers is a fully managed platform to deploy, run, and scale your apps hosted in containers. There's now an option to try it out, with no credit card required.
Sign in to the Try Azure App Service page and select Web App for Containers. You can use one of the built-in containers or enter your own image name to work with. You're asked for a Microsoft sign-in, which will grant Azure portal access for 30 minutes to try out the feature.

From <https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/new-options-to-try-out-web-app-for-containers-2/>

General availability: Application consistent backup for Linux VMs by using Tuesday, February 27, 2018
We're excited to announce the general availability (GA) of application consistent backup for Linux VMs running in Azure by using Azure Backup. This feature helps ensure that your application backup data is transactionally consistent.

From <https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/application-consistent-backup-for-linux-vms-using-azure-backup-is-generally-available/>

Confidently plan your cloud migration: Azure Migrate is now generally available!
28 February 2018
A few months ago, we announced Azure Migrate – a new service that provides guidance and insights to help you migrate to Azure. Today, we're excited to announce that Azure Migrate is generally available.

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

Azure Migrate service is now GA - guest (Richard) to discuss, he's looked into this a lot this week

VNet Service Endpoints for Azure SQL Database now generally available
We are excited to announce the general availability of Virtual Network (VNet) Service Endpoints for Azure SQL Database in all Azure regions. This ability allows you to isolate connectivity to your logical...

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

Preview of Log Alerts feature for Application Insights
14 February 2018
Log Alerts for Application Insights (Preview) Application Insights is an extensible Application Performance Management (APM) service for web developers on multiple platforms.

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

Azure Service Bus now integrates with Azure Event Grid!
26 February 2018
Azure Service Bus now sends events to Azure Event Grid. The key scenario this feature enables is for Service Bus queues, topics, or subscriptions with low message volumes to not require a receiver...

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

The Video Indexer is one of our favorite services which we use right here at the Podcast to offer indexed audio insights into our shows. We are fortunate to have Royi Ronen, a Principal Data Science Manager of the Media Artificial Intelligence group and Olivier Nano, a Principal Development Manager for the Cognitive Speech Service about the details of Video Indexer and the Custom Speech service that makes it even better.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode217.mp3

Indexed Audio: https://www.videoindexer.ai/media/db0be280c2/

Other updates:

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/powershell/2017/12/15/using-the-openssh-beta-in-windows-10-fall-creators-update-and-windows-server-1709/

Support for automatic OS image updates in virtual machine scale sets
Virtual machine scale sets are a way to manage Azure VMs as a group. They provide easy deployment and management options, and simple ways to integrate with support for autoscale and load balancing. Patching thousands of VMs in scale sets is a critical management task that we recommend our customers to perform for the continued security, performance, and stability of the applications those VMs support.  
A new capability is in preview: automatic guest OS image updates in scale sets. After you enable this feature for your scale sets, when a new OS image is published with the latest features, security patches, and performance improvements, your scale sets and Azure Service Fabric clusters can receive these updates automatically, without your intervention. 
The new image will roll out to the VMs in your scale sets in batches based on preconfigured health probes to check for application issues. So your app can remain highly available even if there are incompatibilities between your app and the new OS image. You can monitor the status of upgrades programmatically or through an out-of-the-box experience in the Azure portal. 

From <https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/auto-os-upgrades/>

Azure Event Grid generally available
Easily subscribe and react to interesting events happening in any Azure service or in your own apps with Azure Event Grid, a fully managed event routing service. Event Grid removes the need to continuously poll by reliably routing events at high scale and low latency. In addition, take advantage of the rich coverage and reactive event model enabled by Event Grid in your serverless architectures.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/event-grid/

Senior PM Pranav Rastogi is really passionate about all things Big Data and Open Source in this episode. He dives into the various open source tools that Microsoft has invested in to make it super-easy for our customers to work with Big Data in Azure.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/hdinsight/
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-hdinsight-announcements-significant-price-reduction-and-amazing-new-capabilities/

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode216.mp3

Indexed audio: https://www.videoindexer.ai/edit/debb22432f

Other updates:

We are pleased to announce the release of "Refactor an Azure Service Fabric Application migrated from Azure Cloud Services", the second article in a series about migrating an existing application from Azure Cloud Services to Service Fabric. The focus of the first article in the series was performing a direct port of the application making only the changes necessary to get the Cloud Service application running in Service Fabric. This newly released second article focuses on refactoring the ported application to a more granular service architecture to take advantage of Service Fabric benefits such as easier application management, service versioning, and independent service scaling to respond to changes in load.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/service-fabric/refactor-migrated-app

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/databricks/
  ->Now in Public Preview
  ->Apache Spark-based platform on Azure

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/azuregov/2018/01/24/federal-agencies-continue-to-advance-capabilities-with-azure-government/
  ->ICE and USAF

Azure Standard support now offers the highest value support for production workloads amongst major cloud providers
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-standard-support-now-offers-the-highest-value-support-for-production-workloads-amongst-major-cloud-providers/

https://www.infoworld.com/article/3251828/application-development/infoworlds-2018-technology-of-the-year-award-winners.html
Windows Subsystem for Linux award!

Virtual Network Service Endpoints and Firewalls for Azure Storage now generally available
Today we are announcing the general availability of Firewalls and Virtual Networks (VNets) for Azure Storage along with Virtual Network Service Endpoints. Azure Storage Firewalls and Virtual Networks uses Virtual Network Service Endpoints to allow administrators to create network rules that allow traffic only from selected VNets and subnets, creating a secure network boundary for their data...

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

Azure Search service upgrades: New hardware, unlimited document counts, and more!
Starting in late 2017, all new paid Azure Search services started using brand new, more powerful underlying hardware in select regions. The upgraded search services offer significantly higher performance and remove document count limits, at no additional cost…
Now using SSD's instead of HDDs under the hood.  Removed document counts from basic and standard tiers, so now it's just storage capacity limits that are enforced.  Should result in faster indexing and query performance for the same price.  Limits in terms of number of indexes has gone up from 5 to 15 in Basic, and one of the limits of 200 million documents per partition on Standard 3 High Density pricing tier has been removed.  (Limits per index still exist).

Decentralized Digital Identities and Blockchain – The Future as We See It.
https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/enterprisemobility/2018/02/12/decentralized-digital-identities-and-blockchain-the-future-as-we-see-it/

Build Go apps for Azure with the Go SDK, now generally available
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/build-go-apps-for-azure-with-the-go-sdk-now-generally-available/