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 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, Pri