The Azure Podcast

Jason Stevens, a Software Engineer in the Commercial Software Engineering group at Microsoft, explains how Pivotal software can be deployed on Azure and gives us fascinating insights into some of the magic behind the scenes that makes it happen.   Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode311.mp3 Transcript: https://eus2.videoindexer.ai/accounts/e0eee289-7730-4999-978b-eb7f63be8cb5/videos/c1d626922f/?location=EUS2 Resources: https://www.cloudfoundry.org/ https://pivotal.io/partners/microsoft-azure https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/campaigns/pivotal/   Other updates: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/security/solving-tls1-problem Azure Lab Services—Virtual machine shutdown for Windows users From   Azure Lab Services—Multiple owners for lab and lab management From Azure DevTest Labs—Browser connect now generally available From Learning from cryptocurrency mining attack scripts on Linux https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/learning-from-cryptocurrency-mining-attack-scripts-on-linux/

In this round-table discussion, Cynthia, Kendall, Cale, Evan and Sujit weigh-in on what Azure features they are most excited about for 2020. Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode310.mp3 Transcript: https://eus2.videoindexer.ai/accounts/e0eee289-7730-4999-978b-eb7f63be8cb5/videos/8c5dfae1ef/ Resources: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/guide/technology-choices/load-balancing-overview   Other Updates: Azure SQL Database Gen 4 hardware approaching end of life in 2020 To address customer security and manageability requirements, managed instance, a deployment capability of Azure SQL Database, is transitioning from a manual to service-aided subnet configuration. Advancing no-impact and low-impact maintenance technologies https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/advancing-noimpact-and-lowimpact-maintenance-technologies/ Azure Lighthouse: The managed service provider perspective https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-lighthouse-the-managed-service-provider-perspective/ Tips for learning Azure in the new year https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/tips-for-learning-azure-in-the-new-year/

Paulo Renato, a Principal Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft works with large GISVs and he tells us about the massive scale to which these customers have to consume Azure and how best to manage this consumption.   Resources: Azure Architecture Center: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/; Azure Security Fundamentals: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/security/fundamentals/; Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/cloud-adoption-framework/ Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode309.mp3 Transcript: https://eus2.videoindexer.ai/accounts/e0eee289-7730-4999-978b-eb7f63be8cb5/videos/c9c5ebea80/?location=EUS2   Other updates: Proximity placement groups—an Azure Virtual Machine logical grouping capability to decrease inter-VM network latency—is now available. From Azure Private Link support in AKS now in preview https://aka.ms/aks/docs/private-cluster Microsoft recently announced plans to establish a new cloud datacenter region in Qatar to deliver its intelligent, trusted cloud services and expand the Microsoft global cloud infrastructure to 55 cloud regions in 20 countries. The new region is anticipated to be available starting with Microsoft Azure in 2021, and Office 365, Dynamics 365 and Power Platform to follow. New enhancements for Azure IoT Edge automatic deployments "https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/new-enhancements-for-azure-iot-edge-automatic-deployments/"https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/new-enhancements-for-azure-iot-edge-automatic-deployments/ Better performance with bursting enhancement on Azure Disks "https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/better-performance-with-bursting-enhancement-on-azure-disks/"https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/better-performance-with-bursting-enhancement-on-azure-disks/ Announcing the preview of Azure Spot Virtual Machines https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-the-preview-of-azure-spot-virtual-machines/"https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-the-preview-of-azure-spot-virtual-machines/ https://www.marketplace.org/2019/11/25/what-is-a-cryptocurrency-anyway/  

Jie Feng, a Senior PM in the Azure Data team, gives us the low-down on the new Data Share service that went GA at Ignite. She provides use-cases for the service, tells us how it works and how to access it.   Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode308.mp3 Transcript: https://eus2.videoindexer.ai/accounts/e0eee289-7730-4999-978b-eb7f63be8cb5/videos/2442844626/?location=EUS2 Resources: Demo videos: https://channel9.msdn.com/Tags/azure-data-share Product website: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/data-share/ Documentations: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-share/ Other updates: Azure Sphere guardian module simplifies & secures brownfield IoT https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-sphere-guardian-module-simplifies-secures-brownfield-iot/ Introducing maintenance control for platform updates https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/maintenance-control-for-platform-updates/ Networking enables the new world of Edge and 5G Computing https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/networking-enables-the-new-world-of-edge-and-5g-computing/ Building Xbox game streaming with Site Reliability best practices https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/building-xbox-game-streaming-with-site-reliability-best-practices/  

Evan talks about a recent support case he worked on and how it's easy to blame Azure for everything that goes wrong when moving to the Cloud. Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode307.mp3 Transcript:   Other updates: Support to assess physical servers is now available in Azure preview, in addition to existing support for VMware and Hyper-V servers. The appliance for physical servers can be installed on an existing Windows server. This feature can be used to assess virtual machines where there is no access to the hypervisor, as well as virtual machines on any cloud. For more details, refer to the documentation   Azure HDInsight now supports the use of service tags to simplify inbound network security group (NSG) rule management. Azure service tags group multiple IP addresses under a single user friendly tag. Administrators need to only create rules by referring to the tags while Microsoft takes the responsibility of keeping the IP addresses up to date. Administrators maintaining Azure HDInsight clusters can now benefit from this manageability improvement.   Now in preview for the East US and UK South regions only, Azure Database for MariaDB, PostgreSQL, MySQL provides support for service health notifications for planned maintenance. Web Application Firewall—New bot protection rule now in preview Updated: December 09, 2019 A new bot protection ruleset (Microsoft_BotManagerRuleSet_1.0) is now in preview for Azure Web Application Firewall with Azure Front Door service. Adding to this updated ruleset are three bot categories—good, bad, and unknown. There are multiple bot groups within each category. Bot signatures are managed and dynamically updated by Web Application Firewall service. The default action for bad bot groups is set to Block, for the verified search engine crawlers group it’s set to Allow, and for the unknown bot category it’s set to Log. Customers may overwrite the default action with Allow, Block, Log, or Redirect for any type of bot groups.  For more details, see bot protection overview.  https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/new-bot-protection-rule-set-in-public-preview-for-web-application-firewall-waf-with-azure-front-door-service/

Senior PM and all-round identity guru Jef Kazimer talks about the various Identity solutions in Azure and gives us some great tips and tricks in utilizing Azure AD effectively to safeguard our Azure resources.   Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode306.mp3 Transcript: https://eus2.videoindexer.ai/accounts/e0eee289-7730-4999-978b-eb7f63be8cb5/videos/390d93117c/?location=EUS2  Resources: http://aka.ms/azureadblog http://aka.ms/enableMFA http://aka.ms/resilientaad   Other resources: Monitor health of Kubernetes clusters: • Managed Kubernetes clusters hosted on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) • Azure Container Instances • Self-managed Kubernetes clusters hosted on Azure Stack or on-premises • Azure Red Hat OpenShift From https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/understand-kubernetes-cluster-health-with-azure-monitor-for-containers/ Azure DevTest Labs : Azure managed identities to deploy lab environments https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/azure-devtest-labs-azure-managed-identities-to-deploy-lab-environments/ Introducing Azure Cost Management for partners As a partner, you play a critical role in successful planning and managing long-term cloud implementations for your customers. While the cloud grants the flexibility to scale the cloud infrastructure to the changing needs, it does become challenging to control the spend when cloud costs can fluctuate dramatically with demand. GitHub Actions for Azure is now generally available GitHub Actions make it possible to create simple yet powerful workflows to automate software compilation and delivery integrated with GitHub. These actions, defined in YAML files, allow you to trigger an automated workflow process on any GitHub event, such as code commits, creation of Pull Requests or new GitHub Releases, and more. Democratizing agriculture intelligence: introducing Azure FarmBeats At Microsoft Ignite, we launched the preview of Azure FarmBeats, a purpose-built, industry-specific solution accelerator built on top of Azure to enable actionable insights from data. Azure Migrate—Assessment of imported servers is now supported in preview From    

Senior PM Andrew Liu from the Azure Cosmos DB Team, is back on the show to share his passion for Cosmos DB and gives us all the service updates announced at Ignite 2019.   Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode305.mp3 Transcript: https://eus2.videoindexer.ai/accounts/e0eee289-7730-4999-978b-eb7f63be8cb5/videos/ce89868c53/?location=EUS2   Other updates: Autoscale for Azure HDInsight is now generally available across all regions for Apache Spark and Hadoop workloads. This feature makes it possible to operate your big data analytics workloads in a more cost-efficient and productive way, so you can drive higher use of your HDInsight clusters and pay only for what you need. Support is now available for up to 16 TB of storage and up to 20,000 IOPS in Azure Database services for MySQL and PostgreSQL. https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2019/11/07/new-in-azure-synapse-analytics-cicd-for-sql-analytics-using-sql-server-data-tools/ The highest requested feature for Azure Synapse Analytics is now available—SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) Database projects. This release includes support for SSDT with Visual Studio 2019, along with native platform integration with Azure DevOps, providing built-in continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) capabilities for enterprise level deployments.    

Partner Development Manager Rob Davies gives us insights into how we should optimize Azure resources in our subscriptions.   Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode304.mp3 Transcript: https://eus2.videoindexer.ai/accounts/e0eee289-7730-4999-978b-eb7f63be8cb5/videos/05e62b9782/?location=EUS2 Resources: Nerdio’s overview of cloud Cost Models: https://getnerdio.com/academy/8-reasons-to-move-your-data-center-to-microsoft-azure/ US Datacenter Optimization (Rob’s team): https://aka.ms/usdco   Other updates: Ignite announcements: https://news.microsoft.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/563/2019/11/Ignite-2019-Book-of-News.pdf   87 pages of announcements - 175 separate announcements! Ignite sessions https://myignite.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions Enterprise Grade Hyperledger Fabric on AKS https://forms.microsoft.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=v4j5cvGGr0GRqy180BHbR7qjd5hfTu5PodOg2ZvLp7BUMElGTFRCSjdaTzNGMzcwRjJDUUROVkYzUS4u Blockchain Data Manager https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/blockchain/service/data-manager Azure Blockchain Tokens https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/blockchain/tokens/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/tokenization-establishing-digital-representations-of-val-ue-as-the-medium-of-exchange/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/web-apps-migration-experience-now-available-in-azure-migrate/ New Azure Dav4-series and Eav4-series virtual machines (VMs) based on AMD EPYC™ are now available. They are ideal for general purpose and memory intensive workloads. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/azure-kubernetes-service-aks-support-for-authenticated-ips-is-now-available/ Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) support for authenticated IPs is now availableAzure Kubernetes Service (AKS) support for authenticated IPs is now availableAzure Kubernetes Service (AKS) support for authenticated IPs is now available https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/azure-kubernetes-service-aks-support-for-azure-availability-zones-is-now-available/ Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) support for Azure Availability Zones is now available https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/azure-spot-vms-are-now-in-preview/ Azure generation 2 virtual machines (VMs) are now generally available Azure Sphere will be generally available in February 2020. General availability will mark our readiness to fulfill our security promise at scale, and to put the power of Microsoft’s expertise to work for our customers every day. Azure Sphere’s mission is to empower every organization on the planet to connect and create secured and trustworthy IoT devices. To deliver on this, we’ve made several strategic investments and partnerships that make it possible to meet our customers wherever they are on their IoT journey. General availability will be an important milestone for Azure Sphere as we continue our work to give our customers and partners greater opportunities to securely shape the future.  From Azure Serial Console is coming to Government Cloud, with the same functionality and same GUI.

Vijay Sistla, a Principal PM in Azure Backup, gives us a sneak peak at some exciting announcements that will be announced at Ignite 2019 next week.   Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode303.mp3 Transcript: https://eus2.videoindexer.ai/accounts/e0eee289-7730-4999-978b-eb7f63be8cb5/videos/8b7ebb582c/?location=EUS2   Other updates: Azure Event Grid is now available on Azure IoT Edge https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/service-map-available-in-south-central-us-west-us-central-us-north-central-us-east-asia-and-central-india-regions/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/new-azure-iot-central-features-available/

Senior Azure PM Sumeet Mittal does an awesome job explaining the brand new and hotly anticipated feature, Azure Private Link. Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode302.mp3 Transcript: Resources: Blog:  https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-azure-private-link/ Product page: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/private-link/ Documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/private-link/private-link-overview#availability   Other updates: In the latest update of Azure DevOps, we've added user assignment-based billing. With this feature, the number of Basic or Basic + Test Plan licenses will change as you add or remove users. This means that you’ll only pay for the licenses you’re using. We’ve also added a new setting that lets you choose whether new users get full Basic access or limited/free Stakeholder access. See the list of new features for more information. Managed instance, a deployment capability of Azure SQL Database, is transitioning from a manual to service-aided subnet configuration, now in preview. SR-IOV availability schedule on NCv3 Virtual Machines SKU Posted on Thursday, October 17, 2019 As part of Azure’s ongoing commitment to providing industry-leading performance, we are enabling support for all MPI types and versions, and RDMA verbs for InfiniBand-equipped virtual machines, beginning with NCv3 coming in early November 2019.  The upgrade WILL INVOLVE SERVER DOWNTIME on a regional basis and, if you intend to utilize the InfiniBand network using MPI, this REQUIRES AN UPDATE TO YOUR VMs. Please read the following post for full details. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/sr-iov-availability-schedule-on-ncv3-virtual-machines-sku/   Microsoft integrates OpenZeppelin Contracts into Microsoft Azure https://blog.openzeppelin.com/microsoft-integrates-openzeppelin-contracts-into-microsoft-azure-vscode-plugin/ October 2019 unified Azure SDK preview https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/october-2019-unified-azure-sdk-preview/ Announcing the general availability of larger, more powerful standard file shares for Azure Files https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-the-general-availability-of-larger-more-powerful-standard-file-shares-for-azure-files/ Trusted Cloud: security, privacy, compliance, resiliency, and IP https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/trusted-cloud-security-privacy-compliance-resiliency-and-ip/