The Azure Podcast

Russell and Sujit talk to Dave Salvator, Director of Accelerated Computing Products at NVIDIA, about a new offering in Azure via the Marketplace that will make it easier to get NVIDIA's software onto the Azure platform to make it easier for customers to take advantage of their GPU accelerated instances.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode461.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/HcAjq8jAzqo

 Resources:

https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-collaborates-with-microsoft-to-accelerate-enterprise-ready-generative-ai

Other Updates:

Public preview: Azure Cold Storage | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Public preview: Always Serve for Azure Traffic Manager | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

General availability: Inbound ICMPv4 pings are now supported on Azure Load Balancer | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Generally available: Azure Monitor Agent supports Linux Hardening for CIS and SELinux | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Public Preview: Azure Monitor OpenTelemetry Distro for ASP.NET Core, JavaScript (Node.js), Python | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Transforming containerized applications with Azure Container Storage—now in preview | Azure Blog | Microsoft Azure

Cale, Evan and Sujit talk to Neha Rathod, Garv Jasuja, Akshay Gupta and Vijay Chiluveru, who are Graduate Students at Penn State University that have developed a wireless monitoring device to detect cardiac arrest and alert the caretakers. We talk to them about how they developed the product and how Azure helped speed up the development.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode460.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/VQAVhLpzKCE

Resources:

https://alertheart.com/

https://www.psu.edu/news/engineering/story/engineering-graduate-students-named-finalists-microsoft-imagine-cup/

Other updates:

Microsoft Build May 23 - 25 https://build.microsoft.com/en-US/home

Public preview: Rolling Upgrades with MaxSurge for Virtual Machine Scale Sets | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Evan and Sujit talk to Allison Jones, a Group PM for Azure's AIOps System Team. She gives us insights into how Microsoft uses AI/ML to analyze various signals from Azure to provide actionable information about the state of the platform.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode459.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/Ousa2qWQEiQ

Resources: 

Blogs

Advancing Azure Service quality with artificial intelligence: AIOps

Advancing failure prediction and mitigation – introducing Narya

Advancing safe deployment with AIOps – introducing Gandalf

Advancing anomaly detection with AIOps – introducing AiDice 

Webinars

AIOps webinar @ Harvard in Tech Seattle by Dongmei Zhang, Marcus Fontoura, Murali Chintalapati, and Igal Figlin

AIOps Distinguished Industry Lecture by Mark Russinovich at Carneige Mellon University

In addition, the customer can learn more about cutting edge AIOps solutions across industry through participation of Cloud Intelligence / AIOps workshop. 

Other updates:

Generally available: Azure Monitor alerts now suggests signals to alert on | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Azure Advisor VM/VMSS right-sizing recommendations with custom lookback period | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/generally-available-serverless-sql-for-azure-databricks/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/generally-available-azure-event-hubs-dedicated-selfserve-scalable-clusters-for-mission-critical-kafka-amqp-and-https-workload/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/generally-available-ebsv5-and-ebdsv5-nvmeenabled-vm-sizes/

Elizabeth Graham, a Senior Software Engineer in the Commercial Software Engineering group at Microsoft, talks to Evan and Sujit about the various options we have for integrating external systems with Azure. She talks about how messages, files and other input forms can be ingested and processed with some of the services available in Azure.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode458.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/NekugFAh2x8

Resources:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/integration/integration-start-here

Data Mapper

Other updates:

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/azure-service-fabric-91-third-refresh-release-2/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/generally-available-crossregion-service-endpoints-for-azure-storage/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/azurefilessmblinuxad/

The team talks to Ayush Agarwal, Davide Mauri, and Sean Leonard to learn about how the open-source Data API Builder can be used to quickly and easily create CRUD APIs on top of multiple database platforms in Azure for use in many types of applications and languages.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode457.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/pgvMa3tFg7s

Resources: 

https://aka.ms/dab

Other updates:

Public Preview: In-place scaling for enterprise caches | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Hotpatch now available for Windows Server VMs on Azure with desktop experience | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Public preview: Node Resource Group (NRG) lockdown | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/generally-available-kubernetes-126-support-in-aks/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/public-preview-aks-service-mesh-addon-for-istio/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/generally-available-long-term-support-version-in-aks/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/app-service-environment-v1-v2-retirement/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/unleash-the-power-of-apis-strategies-for-innovation/

Evan and Sujit talk to Ricardo Villarreal about the new ability to built network-aware applications in Azure. APC provides a unified abstraction layer for accessing network APIs—such as edge discovery, quality on demand, and device location—consistently across operators and connectivity methods. Ricardo offers compelling use-cases for these new APIs in Azure and tips to get started.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode456.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/2XWy2X0WXCQ

Resources:

https://aka.ms/apcblog

Other updates:

New Azure for Operators products and partner programs released | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

General availability: New enhanced connection troubleshoot | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Public preview: Database connections support in Azure Static Web Apps | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Public Preview: Performance Plus for Azure Disk Storage | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

General Availability: Performance workbooks for Azure PostgreSQL - Flexible Server | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Public Preview: PgBouncer monitoring metrics for Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server  | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

In this episode we chat with Andrés Padilla and Meer Alam about practical use of AI and ML systems.  Examples of this are discussed around autonomous drone / delivery models and the various components in Azure that make this a seamless, scalable and sustainable experience.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode455.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/0Y_jeCWZn38

Resources:

https://customers.microsoft.com/en-us/story/1569428314103514552-drone-express-travel-transportation-azure-en-united-states

https://github.com/Azure/KAN

Other updates:

Azure Disks Standard SSD billable transaction cap blog (microsoft.com)

Public preview: Login and TDE-enabled database migrations with Azure Database Migration Service | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

General Availability: Customer Initiated Storage Account Conversion | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

ChatGPT is now available in Azure OpenAI Service | Azure Blog and Updates | Microsoft Azure

Teams premium - conversation recap, chapters, etc.; Viva Sales, Bing Chat

Public preview: Azure Cognitive Service for Vision Powers State-of-the-Art Computer Vision Development | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Image captioning, customisation, improved learning, smaller datasets, higher quality.

Public preview: Illumio for Azure Firewall | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Zero Trust segmentation; single holistic view of traffic with real time visibility of interaction and dependencies; test firewall changes before deploying; across all 3 skus of firewall

Public Preview: Azure Monitor managed service for Prometheus now supports querying PromQL | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Use promql to define alerts to view in the portal

Generally available: App Insights Extension for Azure Virtual Machines and VM Scale Sets | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Installs an agent to your VM through PS, triggered by the portal

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-to-showcase-purposebuilt-ai-infrastructure-at-nvidia-gtc/

Our guest this week, Paul Henwood joins Kendall and Russell to talk about many different aspects of sustainability, and how Azure embraces and supports customers with their sustainability goals.

Media File: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode454.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/HSPeE6Hpmns

Sustainability Resources:

Microsoft Sustainability - Products for a Sustainable Future

What is Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability? | Microsoft Learn

Calculating My Carbon Footprint - Microsoft Sustainability

Sustainability workload documentation - Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Framework | Microsoft Learn

Green Software Foundation | GSF

Azure Update Links:

General availability: Azure Data Explorer Dashboards | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Public Preview: Azure Communication Services Chat for Bot Framework | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Azure SQL—General availability updates for mid-February 2023 | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Azure Backup: Enhanced experience for creating and managing private endpoints for Recovery Services vaults is now available | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Ryan Bostelmann joins the Azure Podcast team to share how the Azure Support function use Azure and Power Platform to be more efficient and deliver a better customer service.

Media File: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Edpisode453.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/mIYTsy6jwVQ

Links:

The team catches up with April Edwards to learn about the benefits of using Bicep to deploy Azure resources.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode452.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/FhniwXjDBe0

Resources: 

IaC Blog: Infrastructure as Code - comparing tools (microsoft.com)

MS Learn path for BIcep: Learn Live: Use Bicep to deploy your Azure infrastructure as code - Events | Microsoft Learn

Learn Live: Building your first Bicep Template: Learn Live - Build your first Bicep template - YouTube

Learn Live: Build Your First Bicep Deployment Workflow using GitHub Actions : Learn Live - Build your first Bicep deployment workflow by using GitHub Actions - YouTube

Other updates:

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/azure-automation-extension/

Public Preview: Azure Cosmos DB to Azure Data Explorer Synapse Link | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

General availability of Azure OpenAI Service expands access to large, advanced AI models with added enterprise benefits

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/general-availability-of-azure-openai-service-expands-access-to-large-advanced-ai-models-with-added-enterprise-benefits

Public preview: Capture Event Hubs data with Stream Analytics no-code editor in Delta Lake format | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure