Do you find it difficult to keep up-to-date on the frequent updates and changes in the Microsoft Azure cloud? If so, Build Azure Weekly is the solution you’ve been looking for! Build Azure Weekly is a weekly newsletter that includes all the latest Microsoft Azure Service Updates from the week in addition to links to many other blog articles, podcasts and videos from all over the Internet.

If you want to receive the newsletter in your email every week, then you’ll absolutely want to Subscribe!

Application Security Groups are GA!

Application Security Groups (ASG) are now Generally Available in all Microsoft Azure regions! Through Application Security Groups, Azure provides security micro-segmentation for your Virtual Networks (VNets). You can use this to define fine-grained network security policies based on workloads, centralized on applications, instead of explicit IP addresses. This provides the capability to group VMs with monikers and secure applications by filtering traffic from trusted segments of your network.

implementing this granular security traffic controls improves isolation of workloads and protects them individually. If a security breach occurs, this technique limits the potential impact of lateral exploration of your networks from hackers.

You can read more from the official announcement from the “Application Security Groups now generally available in all Azure regions” article on the Microsoft Azure blog.

The Weeks Top Links

Here are some of the most notable links from the week:

Securing Azure Virtual Machines using Network Security Groups (NSGs) by Dan Patrick
Application Security Groups now generally available in all Azure regions by Mario Lopez
Microsoft partners play critical role in transforming national computing fabric with Microsoft’s Azure Australia Central by markleigh
Practical Guide on understanding Common Data Service and PowerApps by Rojy Thomas
Guest Blog | Playing in the Sandbox: How We Created Minecraft’s Multi-Platform Design by Mark Grinols
Service Fabric Customer Profile: SiriusIQ by Service Fabric Team
Microsoft responds to DOJ in Irish datacenter case via ZDNet
Lots of New Region News in Azure by Aidan Finn
Announcing Azure DevTest Labs in Azure Government by Tanmayee Kamath
Microsoft will invest $5 billion in IoT. Here’s why. by Julia White
Introducing a new way to purchase Azure monitoring services by Shiva Sivakumar
New Microsoft Azure regions available for Australia and New Zealand by Tom Keane

Azure Service Updates

Here’s a list of the Microsoft Azure Service Updates from over the past week:

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Blog Articles

Here’s a collection of some of the most note worthy blog articles posted over the past week:

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Application Security Groups now generally available in all Azure regions by Mario Lopez
Part 1: Azure Virtual Machine Scale Set and Windows Containers–Networking Tips by Julien Oudot
Azure Standard Load Balancer with HA ports – what it means for your network and security stack by David-Sanchez
Securing Azure Virtual Machines using Network Security Groups (NSGs) by Dan Patrick

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Deploying My Sites On Azure App Services by Aidan Finn
Practical Guide on understanding Common Data Service and PowerApps by Rojy Thomas

Serverless and Functions as a Service (FaaS)

How to connect to a database from an Azure Function by Benjamin Perkins
How we checked and fixed the 503 error and Performance issue in our Azure Function by mikaelkrief
How to create an Azure Function in Visual Studio by Benjamin Perkins
Azure Function Apps: Performance Considerations by Agarwal (amagar)
Deploy an Azure Function created from Visual Studio by Benjamin Perkins

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Command-Line / ARM Templates

Migrating from Azure Service Manager (ASM) Virtual Machines to Azure Resource Manager (ARM) VM by Wriju Ghosh
Azure Tips and Tricks Part Part 111 – Deployment Slots for Web Apps using the Azure CLI by Michael Crump

Database / Big Data

Troubleshooting data movement latency between synchronous-commit AlwaysOn Availability Groups by Simon Su
Lesson Learned #39: Best Practices using BCP in Azure SQL Database by Jose M Jurado
Lesson learned from an Availability Group performance case by Simon Su
SQL Database: Long-term backup retention preview includes major updates by Alexander (Sasha) Nosov
A flexible new way to purchase Azure SQL Database by Alexander (Sasha) Nosov
Improvements to SQL Elastic Pool configuration experience by Ninar Nuemah
Ready to migrate MySQL workload to Azure Database for MySQL? by Shau Phang
20 Ways to Get The Most Out of Your Data Platform by Thomas LaRock
Ingest, prepare, and transform using Azure Databricks and Data Factory by Gaurav Malhotra

Internet of Things (IoT)

Microsoft will invest $5 billion in IoT. Here’s why. by Julia White
Microsoft Announces a $5 Billion Investment in IoT by Paul Thurrott
Microsoft commits to spending $5B over four years on IoT via ZDNet
Azure IoT Hub is driving down the cost of IoT by Sam George

Machine Learning / Artificial Intelligence

1st year Computer Science project – Food Diary web app powered by Microsoft Cognitive services by Lee Stott
Inventory Optimization Solution in the Azure AI Gallery by Dmitry Pechyoni, Hong Lug, Chenhui Hu, Praneet Solanki, Ilan Reiter
Data-Driven or Insights-Driven? Data Analytics vs Data Science by Jen Stirrup
Intelligent Edge: Building a Skin Cancer Prediction App with Azure Machine Learning, CoreML & Xamarin by Anusua Trivedi
Accelerate Data Warehouse Modernization to Azure with Informatica’s AI-Driven Platform by Kuber Sharma

Development and DevOps

New extensions streamline app updates, testing and releases by teresa
Important changes to OpenAPI import and export by Vlad Vinogradsky
Hosting an Angular Progressive Web Application (PWA) with Azure by Premier Developer
Office Developer: Difference between Office Web addin vs COM/VSTO addin by Deva
Guest Blog | Playing in the Sandbox: How We Created Minecraft’s Multi-Platform Design by Mark Grinols
Learn How To Unit Test Your Database Changes With The DevOps Lab Show by MVP Award Program
Azure Tips and Tricks Part Part 110 – Day 9 – An end to end scenario with Azure App Service, API Apps, SQL, VSTS and CI/CD by Michael Crump

Containers / Service Fabric

Deploying containerised Asp.net Core Applications to Azure by Srikantan Sankaran
Docker Blog Series Part 6 – How to use Service Fabric Reverse Proxy for container services by Monu Bambroo
Create Service Fabric clusters from Visual Studio and more good stuff by Vaclav Turecek
Service Fabric Customer Profile: SiriusIQ by Service Fabric Team
Building Microservices with AKS and VSTS — Part 2 by Andreas Helland
Overview of Docker Containers in Azure by Vincent-Philippe Lauzon

Security

Azure Active Directory Authentication (Easy Auth) with Multiple Backend APIs by Michael S. Hansen

Learning / Certification

Microsoft Technical content for students and educators http://aka.ms/azurestudentlabs for easy access by Lee Stott
Microsoft adds AI course to its certification program via ZDNet
Artificial Intelligence and Entry Level Software Development: Join the Microsoft Professional Program Educational Community by Microsoft Learning

Azure Government

Power BI Premium and Power BI Embedded available for Azure Government by Azure Gov Team
Azure Government AAD Authority Endpoint Update by Bernardldo Ellis
Announcing Azure DevTest Labs in Azure Government by Tanmayee Kamath

Other

Kali Linux for Windows by Benjamin Perkins
New Microsoft Azure regions available for Australia and New Zealand by Tom Keane
Lots of New Region News in Azure by Aidan Finn
Microsoft responds to DOJ in Irish datacenter case via ZDNet
Microsoft partners play critical role in transforming national computing fabric with Microsoft’s Azure Australia Central by markleigh
Azure Security Center – Custom Alerts by thudandblunder
Monitoring Azure Analysis Services with Log Analytics and Power BI by Christopher M Schmidt
Microsoft Immersion Program: Bringing Microsoft Product Engineers to your Team by Katie Konow
Introducing a new way to purchase Azure monitoring services by Shiva Sivakumar

Videos

Here are links to some of the videos that have been posted over the past week:

Metaparticle – A standard library for cloud-native applications on Kubernetes | Azure Friday via Channel 9
Azure IoT Toolkit extension for Visual Studio Code | Internet of Things Show via Channel 9
How to get support for Azure IoT SDKs | Internet of Things Show via Channel 9
Understanding Text using Cognitive Services | AI Show via Channel 9
Backup and Recovery with Azure Files via Channel 9
Open Sourcing Microsoft Service Fabric | Tuesdays With Corey via Channel 9
Episode 12: Five Things About Docker | Five Things via Channel 9
Part 4 of 4: Use Azure Container Registry | The Open Source Show via Channel 9

Audio / Podcasts

To complete the collection of different mediums to allow you to consume your Azure news / info in any way you want, here’s a list of the podcasts released this week:

Episode 57 – News and Updates for Azure and Office 365 via Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast
Christine Spang’s Open Source Journey from Teen OSS Contributor to CTO of Nylas via Hanselminutes
The End of Windows as we Know it? Plus a News Roundup via Microsoft Cloud Show
Episode 245 | The End of Windows as we Know it? Plus a News Roundup via Microsoft Cloud Show
The Microsoft Business Application Platform with Vishwas Lele via .NET Rocks!

General Cloud / Related

Here’s some noteworthy links about Cloud computing and other related topics that aren’t necessarily specific to Microsoft Azure:

Three ways to learn Serverless with OpenFaaS this season by Alex Ellis
How IoT can Change Cities Run More Efficiently by Shahid Mansuri
Webinar Recap: The Docker Platform on Windows – from 101 to Modernizing .NET Apps by Elton Stoneman
Windows on ARM Getting Support for 64-Bit ARM Apps by Mehedi Hassan
MapD Fires Up GPU Cloud Service by Timothy Prickett Morgan
Inside Nvidia’s NVSwitch GPU Interconnect by Timothy Prickett Morgan
U.S. Soccer Strikes Wearables Deal Worth Over $1.5 Billion #WearablesWednesday by Jessie Mae
Improved Docker Container Integration with Java 10 by Sophia Parafina
IoT Adoption Is Weaker Than It Should Be by Kevin Williams
Another Step Toward FPGAs in Supercomputing by Nicole Hemsoth
The MIPS R4000, part 1: Introduction by Raymond Chen
The MIPS R4000, part 2: 32-bit integer calculations by Raymond Chen

Feedback

Do you have any suggestions or general feedback on the Build Azure Weekly blog series? Please contact me and send it on over! Or tweet it over to @BuildAzure.

Please feel free to reach out and let me know your feedback on the Build Azure Weekly series. I post this weekly post as a service to others and really want to make it the best it can be.

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About the Author

Chris Pietschmann

Chris Pietschmann is a Microsoft MVP, HashiCorp Ambassador, and Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) with 20+ years of experience designing and building Cloud & Enterprise systems. He has worked with companies of all sizes from startups to large enterprises. He has a passion for technology and sharing what he learns with others to help enable them to learn faster and be more productive.