The Azure Podcast

Good technical chat with Azure PM Arturo Lucatero about Azure Active Directory Domain Services. Media file: http://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode181.mp3 Experimental Cognitive Indexed file: https://www.videoindexer.ai/media/664d29ee13/ Other Updates: Storage accounts available only in the Azure portal from May 15   portal Effective May 15, 2017, storage accounts will be available only in the Azure. Access from the classic portal to storage accounts will no longer be supported. Azure resources that are in classic portal and that depend on storage accounts will continue to be accessible from the classic portal. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/azure-batch-updates-may-2017/ We continue to add new capabilities to our lightweight R package, doAzureParallel, built on top of  Azure Batch that allows you to easily use Azure's flexible compute resource right from your R session. Combined with the recently announcedlow-priority VMs on Azure Batch, you can now run your parallel R jobs at a fraction of the price. We also included other commonly requested capabilities to enable you to do more, and to do it more easily, with doAzureParallel. From I am excited to announce the public preview of disaster recovery for Azure IaaS virtual machines (VMs) using Azure Site Recovery (ASR). You can now easily replicate and protect IaaS based applications running on Azure to a different Azure region of your choice without deploying any additional infrastructure components or software appliances in your subscription. This new capability, along with Azure Backup for IaaS virtual machines, allows you to create a comprehensive business continuity and disaster recovery strategy for all your IaaS based applications running on Azure. From One of the key endeavors of the cloud-first approach of Azure Backup is to empower enterprises to recover from security attacks, corruptions, disasters, or data loss situations quickly, securely, and reliably.  Restoring servers efficiently in the wake of evolving IT threats involves going beyond recovering data alone from backups. Our customers have expressed varying degrees of complexity in how their operating systems and applications are configured. Restoring this dynamic configuration captured in the form of the Windows Server System State, in addition to data, with minimum infrastructure, forms a critical component of disaster recovery. Today we are extending the data backup capabilities of the Azure Backup agent to enable customers to perform comprehensive, secure, and reliable Windows Server recoveries. We are excited to preview the support for backing up Windows Server System State directly to Azure with Azure Backup. From Announcing the preview of Azure’s Largest Disk sizes Tuesday, May 30, 2017 At Build Conference, we announced the addition of new Azure Disks sizes – which provide up to 4TB of disk space. These new sizes allow you to perform up to 250 MBps of storage throughput and 7,500 IOPS. The details of the announcement are captured in the build session here. From Earlier this month at BUILD 2017, we announced the public preview of Video Indexer as part of Microsoft Cognitive Services. Video Indexer enables customers with digital and audio content to automatically extract metadata and use it to build intelligent innovative applications. You can quickly sign up for Video Indexer from https://vi.microsoft.com/ and try the service out for free during our preview period. On top of using the portal, developers can easily build custom apps using the Video Index

HPC/Batch experts Felipe Ayora and Martijn de Vries talk to us about hosting CPU-intensive apps on-premises bursting to Azure.   Media file: http://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode180.mp3 Experimental cognitive analysis of the podcast (allows you search it for keywords/content): https://www.videoindexer.ai/media/31d16ff57c/  - Main HPC site for all HPC solutions: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/high-performance-computing/ - Azure Batch: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/batch/ - Blog post about the 100K cores job with Willis towers Watson: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/what-would-you-do-with-100000-cores-big-compute-at-global-scale/ - Recent announcements:   - Low-priority VMs through Batch at a fraction of the price: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-public-preview-of-azure-batch-low-priority-vms/   - Azure Batch Rendering preview: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/massive-scale-cloud-rendering-with-autodesk-on-azure/   - New Pascal GPUs coming to Azure: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/more-gpus-more-power-more-intelligence/ http://www.brightcomputing.com/whats-new-in-8.0 Twitter: @brightcomputing   Other updates:    New 400GB and 200GB caches available on Azure Analysis Services   In April we announced the general availability of Azure Analysis Services, which evolved from the proven analytics engine in Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services. The success of any modern data-…           Sneak Peek - PowerShell in Azure Cloud Shell   At BUILD 2017, we announced the public availability of Azure Cloud Shell, which supports the Bash shell in a Linux environment. We are working to add PowerShell support to the Azure Cloud Shell. Our goal is to give you the choice to use the shell that you are most comfortable with to get your work done. To sign-up for a limited preview of PowerShell in Azure Cloud Shell, please fill out this sign-up form.       Azure enables cutting edge Virtual Apps, Desktops and Workstations with NVIDIA GRID   Professional graphics users in every industry count on an immersive, photorealistic, responsive environment to imagine, design, and build everything from airplanes to animated films.       Azure Analysis Services new modeling and tooling features   Following the announcement barely a couple of weeks ago that 1400 models are now in Azure Analysis Services, we haven’t stopped there! We are pleased to announce the following further features for 1400 models in Azure.       Use SaaS patterns to accelerate SaaS app development on SQL Database   Announcing availability of a sample SaaS application, management scripts and tutorials that implement a series of SaaS-focused design and management patterns that can used to accelerate SaaS application development on SQL Database.       Price reductions on General Purpose Virtual Machines   We believe in providing the most innovative cloud offering, yet have a longstanding commitment to match AWS on price drops. Today, we are lowering prices on previously launched Dv2 Promo Virtual…       New smaller Windows Server IaaS Image   We continue to find ways to make Azure a better value for our customers. Azure Managed Disks, a new disk service launched in Feb '17, simplifies the management and scaling of Virtual Machines (VM). You can choose to create an empty Managed Disk, or create a Managed Disk from a VHD in a storage account, or from an Image as part of VM creation       Azure IoT Suite adds physical IoT device/gateway tutorials   There are many facets to an IoT Solution - device code, cloud solution code, and application code - all working together to realize a business goal. Azure IoT Suite is designed to get you started quickly and realize business value from IoT.

Evan and Russell talk to Giles Davies, an Azure specialist from the UK, about the Dev/Test Labs service. Media file: http://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode179.mp3  Resources: Azure DevTest Labs link: http://aka.ms/dtl Azure DevTest Labs Service Updates feed: http://aka.ms/DtlUpdates Video summary: https://channel9.msdn.com/events/Build/2017/P4071   Other updates: WannaCrypt attacks: guidance for Azure customers https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/wannacrypt-attacks-guidance-for-azure-customers/ Application Insights support for Microservices and Containers https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/app-insights-microservices/ New Azure Quickstart template - Cloudera CDH and Tableau Server by Slalom https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-integrated-cloudera-cdh-with-tableau-server-solution-on-azure/ Migrating to Azure Data Sync 2.0 https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/migrating-to-azure-data-sync-2-0/    

All the latest Azure updates from Build 2017 (just day 1!). Media file: http://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode178.mp3  

Meghan Liese from HashiCorp tells us about their Azure-related offerings and services and provides her perspective on cloud development in a hybrid environment. About HashiCorp and the suite: https://www.hashicorp.com/   Open Source Tools: Vagrant: https://www.vagrantup.com/ Packer: https://www.packer.io/intro/ Terraform: https://www.terraform.io/ Vault: https://www.vaultproject.io/ Nomad: https://www.nomadproject.io/ Consul: https://www.consul.io/ Applying Graph Theory to Infrastructure as Code (YouTube) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce3RNfRbdZ0 Media file: http://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode177.mp3   Other resources: Newly created Azure SQL DBs will be encrypted at rest by default Announcing Azure Time Series Insights https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-azure-time-series-insights/ New Power BI content pack for Azure Enterprise users https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/new-power-bi-content-pack-for-azure-enterprise-users/ Azure IoT Gateway SDK packages now available https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-iot-gateway-sdk-packages/

Evan and Sujit talk to Jared Ross, an Azure Consultant who specializes in Networking, Compliance and Security, on why customers should be aware of the network within Azure and tips on how to protect their resources. Media file: http://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode176.mp3 Yousef Khalidi's great 7-part blog post is Jared's recommended reading. The first part is listed below and you can follow along.  https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/networking-innovations-that-drive-the-cloud-disruption/ Another favorite is Olivier Martin https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/networking-to-and-within-the-azure-cloud/   Other resources and updates: https://thebitcoinnews.com/microsoft-drives-forward-with-the-blockchain-btcmanagers-week-in-review-april-24/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-azure-time-series-insights/ Today we are excited to announce the public preview of Azure Time Series Insights, a fully managed analytics, storage, and visualization service that makes it incredibly simple to interactively and instantly explore and analyze billions of events from sources such as Internet of Things. Today, we are announcing the general availability of the new, simplified Azure management libraries for .NET for Compute, Storage, SQL Database, Networking, Resource Manager, Key Vault, Redis, CDN and Batch services. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-management-libraries-for-net-generally-available-now Today, we are announcing the general availability of the new, simplified Azure management libraries for Java for Compute, Storage, SQL Database, Networking, Resource Manager, Key Vault, Redis, CDN and Batch services. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-management-libraries-for-net-generally-available-now/   Back in November, we announced the general availability of the Azure IoT Gateway SDK. We’ve already heard from a number of customers who are leveraging the open source Gateway SDK to connect their legacy devices or run analytics at the edge of their network. It’s great to see quick adoption! With the Gateway SDK’s modular architecture, developers can also program their own custom modules to perform specific actions. Thanks to its flexible design, you can create these modules in your preferred language – Node.js, Java, C#, or C. (NuGet, Maven etc. packages) https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-iot-gateway-sdk-packages Azure Billing Reader role and preview of Invoice API Tuesday, April 25, 2017 Today, we are pleased to announce the addition of a new in-built role, Billing Reader role. The new Billing Reader role allows you to delegate access to just billing information with no access to services such as VMs and storage accounts. Users in this role can perform Azure billing management operations such as viewing subscription scoped cost reporting data and downloading invoices. Also, today we are releasing the public preview of a new billing API that will allow you to programmatically download subscription’s billing invoices. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-billing-reader-role-and-preview-of-invoice-api/  

Cale and Sujit talk to Azure PMs Amit Bapat and Dave McPherson about how data can be encrypted when it is stored in Azure.   @amitbapat   Media file: http://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode175.mp3   Other updates:  https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/mt797651.aspx Some interesting updates to ASE. Specifically:   Max workers is now 100 You can also have up to 100 app service plans Use all V2 compute resources with SSDs making them much faster to startup and carry more workloads for higher app density. Simplified portal to create apps and manage plans and not worry about workers (workers get spun up automatically). Portal is on parity with the multi-tenant version of App Services. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/new-azure-batch-capabilities-march-2017/   Every virtual machine in Azure now supports two or more network interfaces. Information on specific numbers for different sizes can be found for Windows and Linux.   This is available in all Azure regions, including:  Germany Central, Germany Northeast USGov Iowa, USGov Virginia, US DoD Central, UsDoD East China North, China East  

Good update on Azure Gov from PM Steve Michelotti Media file: http://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode174.mp3   Resources: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/overview/clouds/government/ Link for free trial for Azure Government: https://azuregov.microsoft.com/trial/azuregovtrial Azure Government blog: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/azuregov/ Azure Government documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-government/ Azure Government video library: https://channel9.msdn.com/blogs/azure-government   Other updates: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/global-customer-access-and-additional-services-now-available-for-azure-in-india/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/appserviceteam/2017/04/10/new-integrated-portal-for-azure-functions/ Azure SQL Data Warehouse: Support for Visual Studio Code Wednesday, April 12, 2017 In the latest release of the mssql extension for Visual Studio Code, Azure SQL Data Warehouse is now supported. You now have the full experience within a graphical code editor to connect, query, and manage SQL Data Warehouse on Linux, macOS, and Windows. Specifically, you can:  • Create and manage connection profiles and most recently used connections.  • Execute your scripts and view results in a simple-to-use grid.  • Save the result to .json or .csv file format and view in the editor.  • Write T-SQL script with IntelliSense and T-SQL error validations. To begin, you can download the editor and extension and follow the mssql extension tutorial.

The guys have a great chat with Ellis Butterfield, a PM in the Azure team, on the nuts and bolts behind the SQL Data Warehouse service. Media file: http://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode173.mp3   Other updates: Azure MFA cloud based protection for on-premises VPNs is now in public preview!   Azure MFA provides a hybrid multifactor authentication solution for Windows 10 VPN. Using a first-party auth extension, an on-premises NPS server provides the primary auth, forwarding RADIUS-encrusted REST calls to an Azure MFA tenant for the secondary authentication.   Azure Service Bus: Hybrid Connections feature of Azure Relay generally available Pricing | Service Bus webpage The Azure Relay Hybrid Connections feature in Azure Service Bus is generally available. For more information about pricing, please visit the Service Bus Pricing webpage. Hybrid Connections lets you use open standards like HTTPS and WebSockets to securely connect resources sitting behind a firewall on-premises with other cloud-based services or assets. To learn more about this service, please visit the Service Bus webpage. Azure HDInsight available in additional regions Pricing | HDInsight webpage Azure HDInsight is now available in the West US 2 region, and Azure HDInsight for Linux is also now available in the Central India region. For more information about pricing, please visit the HDInsight Pricing webpage. HDInsight is a fully managed cloud Hadoop offering that provides open-source analytic clusters for Spark, Hive, MapReduce, HBase, Storm, Kafka, and R Server, backed by a 99.9 percent service-level agreement (SLA). To learn more about this service, please visit the HDInsight webpage. Azure Advisor generally available Now generally available, Azure Advisor will continue to offer access to Advisor recommendations at no additional cost. Advisor analyzes your resource configuration and usage, and then recommends solutions that can help you improve high availability, security, performance, and cost-effectiveness of your Azure resources. To learn more about this service, please visit the Advisor webpage. To begin using it, please visit the Azure portal. L-Series instances in Azure Virtual Machines generally available, price reduced Pricing | Virtual Machines webpage L-Series instances in Azure Virtual Machines are now generally available in the following regions: East US 2, West US, Southeast Asia, Australia East, Canada Central, and Canada East. Effective with subscription cycles starting on or after April 1, 2017, prices are reduced up to 69 percent on the now generally available L-Series instances in Virtual Machines. These price reductions vary by region and are applicable in all regions where L-Series Virtual Machines are available today. For more information about pricing, please visit the Virtual Machines Pricing webpage. To learn more about this service, please visit the Virtual Machines webpage. Azure DocumentDB: Aggregate support, Emulator in Docker, and Azure Search integration Pricing | DocumentDB webpage Azure DocumentDB now supports aggregates at global scale in public preview. DocumentDB has also reduced the number of request units (RUs) charged for queries by 20 percent, to serve more queries per second for the same price. For more information about pricing, please visit the DocumentDB Pricing webpage. The DocumentDB query engine has built-in support for SQL aggregate operators COUNT, MIN, MAX, AVG, and SUM. For more information, please visit the Aggregate Functions section of the SQL query and SQL syntax in DocumentDB documentation webpage and the Use the Azure DocumentDB Emulator for development and testing documentation webpage, and for information about Azure Search integration, visit the Azure Blog. Azure DocumentDB: API for MongoDB generally available Pricing | DocumentDB webpage The API for MongoDB is now generally available, inheriting the same 99.99 percent financially backed service-level agreement (SLA) as

Cale, Evan and Sujit get into an interesting discussion around containers in Docker, ACS and Service Fabric, their use-cases and container registries. Cale shares some of his experiences using them for his work. Media file: http://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode172.mp3   Other updates: Azure DevTest Labs is now available in Korea South and Korea Central, in addition to the other regions it has supported. The support includes the full Azure DevTest Labs capabilities, as well as the auto-shutdown option for all Azure Resource Manager–based VMs in these regions. To see the other supported regions, check out the Azure products available by region matrix. Since the launch, DevTest Labs has been helping customers to quickly get “ready to test” with a worry-free self-service environment. The reusable templates can be used everywhere after they're created. The public APIs, PowerShell cmdlets, and Visual Studio Team Services extensions make it easy to integrate your dev/test environments from labs to your release pipeline. In addition to the dev/test scenario, DevTest Labs can be used in scenarios like training and hackathon. Effective April 5, 2017, Azure API Management will be available only in the Azure portal. Access from the classic portal will no longer be supported. Azure DevTest Labs supports Managed Disks in newly created labs, including VM OS disks, data disks, and custom images. Managed Disks helps you manage storage accounts for large-scale VM deployments. Web Application Firewall (WAF) is now generally available in all public cloud regions as part of the Azure Application Gateway WAF SKU. WAF helps protect web applications from common web-based attacks like SQL injection, cross-site scripting attacks, and protocol anomalies. It comes preconfigured with Core Rule Sets to provide protection from many of the threats identified by the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) as the top 10 common vulnerabilities. Now, instantly restore files from Azure Linux VM backups with no additional cost or new infrastructure by using Azure Backup. You can quickly mount an iSCSI-based recovery volume and browse and copy the files to the destination of your choice. With this feature, users can: Instantly recover files. Whether it’s accidental file deletion or simply validating the backup, instant restore drastically reduces the time to recover your data. Mount application files without restoring them. You can use our iSCSI-based approach to open/mount application files directly from cloud recovery points to application instances, without having to restore them. For example, in case of backup of an Azure Linux VM running MongoDB, you can mount BSON data dumps from the cloud recovery point. You can then quickly validate the backup or retrieve individual items such as tables without having to download the entire data dump. Up your SaaS application game https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/up-your-saas-application-game/ Large-Scale Analysis of DNS Query Logs Reveals Botnets in the Cloud https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/large-scale-analysis-of-dns-query-logs-reveals-botnets-in-the-cloud/