In this episode Chris Risner and Thiago Almeida are joined by Stephen Siciliano, Program Manager on the Azure Team. Stephen joins us to talk about the newly announced PowerApps. PowerApps enable people to generate applications that run on mobile devices that connect to resources in both Microsoft Azure, as well as other SaaS providers including SharePoint, Office365, Salesforce, DropBox, and many more. Stephen walks through how PowerApps works and demonstrates creating a PowerApp that is based off of a SharePoint list. Topics Covered: [00:58] - Stephen's Presentation[03:28] - Running an App[04:36] - Creating an App[11:48] - Explaining how a PowerApp works behind the scenes[23:50] - Logic FlowsPowerApps homepagePowerApps blogPowerApps TutorialsSupport and Help CenterLike Cloud Cover on Facebook! Follow @CloudCoverShowFollow @chrisrisnerFollow @haishibai2010Follow @nzthiagoFollow @iscsus

In this episode Chris Risner and Haishi Bai go through a recap of major Azure announcements that have happened in the past few months. Topics Covered: Azure Portal GAIoT Suite AvailabilityAzure Backup ServerRed Hat on AzureAzure Blockchain as a ServiceAzure Powershell 1.0App Service Mobile Apps GAService Fabric PreviewPHP 7 RC 7 - on Cory's BlogAzure Container Service PreviewAzure Redis Cache Premium Tier - on CloudCoverVirtual Machine Scale Set Preview - on CloudCoverAzure Security CenterAzure SDK 8DocumentDB Updates - On CloudCoverCDN Premium FeaturesAzure Power AppsDebian GNU/Linux Distro on AzureLike Cloud Cover on Facebook! Follow @CloudCoverShowFollow @chrisrisnerFollow @haishibai2010

In this episode Chris Risner and Haishi Bai are joined by Pranav Rastogi, Program Manager on the Azure team who joins us to discuss the new Premium Tier for Azure Redis Cache. The premium tier offers support for new functionality including persistence, Redis Clusters, Azure Virtual Networks, as well as better performance. Links from the show: [04:49] - Pranav's presentation[10:03] - Creating a Redis Cache in Premium Tier[17:06] - Redis Clusters[30:47] - Azure Redis Cache PerformanceAzure Redis Cache DocumentationIntro to Azure Redis Cache on Cloud CoverAdvanced Azure Redis Cache on Cloud CoverIn the news: Azure Preview Portal November updatesIn the news: Recommendation Feature for App ServiceIn the news: Azure Powershell 1.0In the news: Azure SDK 2.8 for .NETIn the news: Azure Mobile Apps November UpdatesLike Cloud Cover on Facebook! Follow @CloudCoverShowFollow @chrisrisnerFollow @haishibai2010Follow @rustd

In this episode Chris Risner and Haishi Bai are joined by Piyush Joshi, Program Manager on the Azure Mobile Engagement team. Mobile Engagement just GAed last month and helps you to collect analytics on user behavior, measure those analytics, and then respond using marketing campaigns and push notifications. A great example of this is if you have an eCommerce application, you can track users that add items to their cart but don't make a purchase and trigger a push notification to them with a coupon to encourage them to complete the purchase. The SDKs for Mobile Engagement enable out of app notifications, as well as rich and actionable in-app notifications that are customizable. Furthermore, the Mobile Engagement portal provides an easy interface for marketers to trigger those push notifications without having to understand all of the intricacies of push notifications. Links from the show: [00:26] - Piyush's presentation[08:19] - Creating Mobile Engagement in the Azure Portal[07:24] - The Azure Mobile Engagement Portal[19:22] - The iOS Demo code[24:52] - Triggering Push Notifications from the Portal[31:08] - Emoji Push Notifications![34:29] - In-App SurveysAzure Mobile Engagement OverviewAzure Mobile Engagement forumsIn the News: GA of Cloud Foundry and Preview of Pivotal Cloud FoundryIn the News: RedHat Microsoft Azure PartnershipIn the News: Transactional Replication to Azure SQL DBIn the News: How Halo5 Implemented Social Gameplay with DocumentDB Like Cloud Cover on Facebook! Follow @CloudCoverShowFollow @chrisrisnerFollow @haishibai2010Follow @AzureMobileEng

Updated April 20, 2016: Azure VM Scale Sets are now generally available. The GA announcement is here: Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets GA, and the product page is here: Virtual Machine Scale Sets. In this episode Chris Risner and Haishi Bai are joined by Guy Bowerman, Program Manager on the Azure Compute Engineering team focusing on Linux and Scale. He joins us to talk about Virtual Machine Scale Sets. Scale Sets are a way to deploy and manage a set of identical VMs. Scale Sets handles scaling up and down of your VMs in an intelligent manner so the correct VM is always spun down. Scale Sets also integrate with Azure Autoscale and Azure Load Balancer. Scale Sets are currently in private preview but will very soon be in public preview. Links from the show: [00:41] - Guy's presentation[04:36] - An overview of Azure's Next Gen Cloud Platform[05:31] - Deploying a Scale Set[08:11] - Comparing Using ARM with VMs and with Scale Sets[09:36] - Challenges of Scale[13:40] - Scale Set Scenarios[24:53] - Scripting Scale Sets[28:18] - Exploring Scale Sets in Azure Resource ExplorerAzure Scale Set example on GitHubCloud Cover show on Azure Resource Manager that Guy mentionsLike Cloud Cover on Facebook! Follow @CloudCoverShowFollow @chrisrisnerFollow @haishibai2010Follow @gbowerman

In this episode Chris Risner and Mustafa Kasap are joined by Torsten Grabs, Program Manager on the Azure SQL Database team. Torsten joins us to talk about Elastic Azure SQL Databases. Using Elastic Databases, you are able to use multiple databases with the same application in order to store data for different tenants in those different databases. Torsten uses the Entity Framework's Blogs sample to demonstrate each blog being placed into it's own database. Torsten then walks through how you can use the Elastic Scale Client library to manage mappings of tenants to databases using a catalog database, and then how to use that mapping to write queries against databases. Also demonstrated is how to build views that allow you to execute queries that are executed across multiple databases in your pool. Links from the show: [03:58] - Torsten's presentation[08:52] - Elastic Database Pools[13:04] - Writing Apps that use Elastic Databases[24:58] - Querying across many databases[35:23] - Using Dapper ORM with Elastic Databases[38:38] - Managing App Lifecycle at Scale[39:30] - Elastic Database Jobs in the portalTosten's Demo CodeElastic Database Client overviewElastic Scale Client on NuGetElastic Query overviewElastic Jobs overviewMore about Cross Database QueriesIn the news: Azure PowerShell 1.0 PreviewIn the news: Azure App Service Ask Me AnythingIn the news: Azure Site Recovery with Azure Pack UpdateIn the news: Last week's show with Haishi demonstrating 2FA from the CLIIn the news: Azure SQL Database Security UpdatesIn the news: The new GALs show on on Channel 9Like Cloud Cover on Facebook! Follow @CloudCoverShowFollow @chrisrisnerFollow @haishibai2010Follow @mustafakasap

In this episode Chris Risner and Haishi Bai take a look at some tips and tricks for Azure Resource Manager (ARM). ARM enables you to capture a deployment in Azure into a JSON file which you can use to provide consistent deployments of your applications in Azure. Haishi takes us through some of the basics of ARM as well as tips and tricks for getting the most out of ARM and ARM templates. Links from the show: [04:51] - Haishi's presentation[06:59] - ARM Template Basics[08:30] - Deploying an Availability Set with ARM Templates[17:18] - Deployment History[19:47] - Helper Functions[22:21] - Dependencies[24:53] - Loops[26:04] - Sub-deployments[28:49] - Branches and conditions[30:36] - Diagnostics[30:59] - Additional Tips and TricksAzure Resource Manager overviewARM Rest API ReferenceAuthoring ARM TemplatesARM Template FunctionsARM Preview SDKsARM SchemasAzure Quick Start Templates on GitHubAzure QuotasIn the news: AzureCon announcementsLast week's Azure IoT Hubs ShowLike Cloud Cover on Facebook! Follow @CloudCoverShowFollow @chrisrisnerFollow @haishibai2010

In this episode Mat Velloso is joined by Elio Damaggio and Oliver Bloch from Azure IoT. Elio and Oliver give us an introduction of the new IoT Hub service, and show us how to write both management code and on-device code leveraging the IoT Hub SDK. IoT Hub allows you to manage millions of devices, to collect telemetry from these devices and to send commands back to them. It provides all necessary features for you to manage devices at scale, including features like bi-directional messaging, device authentication & security, device connectivity monitoring and device resource optimization. Links from the show: [00:25] - Elio'spresentation and demo[18:23] - Oliver's presentation and demoDev micro siteMicrosoft Azure IoT SDKsFollow @CloudCoverShowFollow @chrisrisnerFollow @haishibai2010Follow @matvellosoFollow @eliodamaggioFollow @obloch

In this episode Haishi Bai and Elliott Miller are joined by Chris Anderson from the Mobile Apps team. Chris shares with us about the newly released Node SDK for Azure Mobile Apps. The SDK allows you to build and run Node.js-based mobile backends. This gives you the full power of Node.js without sacrificing the turnkey experience the community has been enjoying. Moreover, with the integration with App Services, you can leverage features such as continuous integration and multiple deployment slots. Last but not least, the whole project is open source (please see the link to the GitHub repository below) to embrace feedbacks and contributions from the community. Links from the show: [02:02]-Chris's presentation[06:10]-Chris's demo[22:23]-Open source call-for-actionGitHub repositoryAnnouncement BlogFollow @CloudCoverShowFollow @chrisrisnerFollow @haishibai2010Follow @ewtsmFollow @AzureMobileFollow @crandycodes

In this episode Haishi Bai and Thiago Almeida are joined by Doug Lora from the Azure Enterprise Operations Group and Jufeng Zhang from the Azure Enterprise System team. Doug and Jufeng join us to give us an overview of the updated Azure Enterprise Portal and the new Azure Enterprise Portal Billing API. Doug begins by giving us an overview of the updated Azure Enterprise Portal including Usage Summary, Usage Details, Departments and Accounts, Reporting and Usage download options, manipulating the usage download in Excel, and a sample Excel spreadsheet that uses Power BI against the API. Then Jufeng talks to us about the Azure Enterprise Portal Billing API. He goes over where to get more details about the API, the API return codes, the HTTP headers needed for authorization and version, and also shows a sample that uses the API's GetUsageList and GetUsageByMonth interfaces to download billing data. Links from the show: [02:00]-Doug's presentation and demo[18:23]-Jufeng's presentation and demo[35:05]-Further resources and feedbackFrom the news: Azure AD B2C and B2B are now in Public Preview!Channel9 Enterprise Azure BlogEd Mondek CSA blogEA Portal API DocumentationEnrollment 100 API Access KeyFollow @CloudCoverShowFollow @chrisrisnerFollow @haishibai2010Follow @nzthiagoFollow @jzhang28