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!

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)

Azure Log Analytics: Disk Space Usage by CliveW
Azure Log Analytics: Linux Groups by CliveW
cloud-init for RHEL 7.4 and CentOS 7.4 preview by Daniel Sol
Announcing the general availability of B-Series and M-Series by Corey Sanders
Announcing the Lv2-Series VMs powered by the AMD EPYC™ processor by Corey Sanders
Last week in Azure: Location-based services, Azure Migrate, and more by Rob Caron

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Running Node-Red Docker Container on Azure Web App by Simon J.K. Pedersen
Integrate Web App with Azure Virtual Network by Point-to-Site VPN by Wu Shuai
Azure Application Insights Best Practices by Pam Lahoud
How to check if Azure App Service is on 2016, what version of IIS by Benjamin Perkins
Control how your files are cached on Azure CDN using caching rules by Richard Li

Serverless and Functions as a Service (FaaS)

Why a developer should not care about Serverless by Wriju Ghosh
Azure Functions HTTP – Authorization Levels by Vincent-Philippe Lauzon
Azure Tips and Tricks Part 64 – Using a different route prefix with Azure Functions by Michael Crump
Introducing the Liquid connector – transform JSON to JSON, JSON to Text, XML to JSON and XML to Text by Sumit Kumar
Azure brings new Serverless and DevOps capabilities to the Kubernetes community by Gabe Monroy
Azure Tips and Tricks Part 63 – Open an existing Azure Function in Visual Studio by Michael Crump
Announcing Azure Functions Runtime preview 2 by Andrew Westgarth
Azure Tips and Tricks Part 62 – Force HTTPS in Azure Functions by Michael Crump
Use API-M To Mask Async APIs When Moving Implementation to Logic Apps/Functions by Derek Li

Database / Big Data

Azure Tips and Tricks Part 65 – Use Visual Studio Code to work with Cosmos DB by Michael Crump
Lesson Learned #30: How to measure a TSQL execution time against Azure SQL Database by Jose M Jurado
Lesson Learned #31: How to measure a TSQL execution time against Azure Database for MySQL by Jose M Jurado
Talk: SQL Saturday 694 – Azure SQL Database – not just a cloud version of SQL Server by Coding Out Loud
Microsoft Releases First Cross-Platform SQL Operations Studio by IT Pro
Debugging Azure Data Lake Job Failures Made Easy (part 1) – Debug U-SQL job failure of C# custom code by Yanan Cai
#AzureSQLDW cost savings with Autoscaler – part 2 by Ellis Butterfield
Performance best practices for using Azure Database for PostgreSQL by Amit Banerjee
Resumable Online Index Rebuild is generally available for Azure SQL DB by Mirek Sztajno
Database Scoped Global Temporary Tables are generally available for Azure SQL DB by Mirek Sztajno
HDInsight Tools for VSCode supports Azure environments worldwide by Jenny Jiang

Internet of Things (IoT)

Azure IoT Security by Wriju Ghosh
Azure Internet of Things IoT Hands on Labs by Wriju Ghosh
Conquering the Upfront Cost Barrier to IoT by Karina Homme
Azure IoT Hub Device Provisioning Service is generally available by Nicole Berdy
Microsoft IoT Central delivers low-code way to build IoT solutions fast by Marcello Majonchi
Microsoft IoT Central broadens reach with simplicity of SaaS for enterprise-grade IoT by Sam George
Microsoft delivers public preview of its new Azure IoT software as a service via ZDNet

Machine Learning / Artificial Intelligence

Music Generation with Azure Machine Learning by Erika Menezes
An Introduction to Machine Learning through Microsoft ML by Lee Stott
Develop intelligent LINE bot with Microsoft Bot Framework by Kenichiro Nakamura

Development and DevOps

New Git Features in Visual Studio 2017 Update 5 by Kayla Ngan
Amazon Alexa Skills authenticated by Azure Active Directory and backed by ASP.NET Core 2.0 Web API hosted on Azure by Premier Developer
DevOps before and after F1 style by Donovan Brown
DevOps for Data Science – Continuous Integration by BuckWoody
What’s brewing in Visual Studio Team Services: December 2017 Digest by Buck Hodges
DevOps Project in Azure – Automating CI/CD Pipeline on VSTS by Subodh Sohoni
Guest Blog | Zero to App in 20 Minutes: Build Your First Chat App with Microsoft Azure, Visual Studio App Center, and Rapid by David Drobik
Getting Started with Node.js, Angular, and Visual Studio Code by Pam Lahoud
Setting up continuous deployment from Docker Hub using VSTS Release Management by jikuma
Deployment strategies defined by Lior Kamrat

Containers and Service Fabric

Microsoft and Heptio to Bring ‘Ark’ to Azure Kubernetes via IT Pro
Service Fabric Customer Profile: Citrix via Service Fabric Team
Partners enhance Kubernetes support for Azure and Windows Server Containers by Brendan Burns
Java: Manage Azure Container Service (AKS) and more by Asir Selvasingh
Running the Azure Functions runtime in containers on Kubernetes and more by Shayne Boyer
Lift, shift, and modernize using containers on Azure Service Fabric by Subramanian Ramaswamy

Security

Azure IoT Security by Wriju Ghosh
Azure AD, Scope-based authorization by Gianluca Bertelli
Identity Sessions at Microsoft Ignite 2017 by Jef Kazimer

Learning / Certification

Our Best-Kept Secret: Remote Online Exam Proctoring by Selina Winter
Microsoft Cognitive Services: “The real magic is in the API.” –Scott J. Peterson by Matthew Calder
Free eBook – The Developer’s Guide to Microsoft Azure now available by Michael Crump

Azure Government

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure on Azure Government by Steve Michelotti
Migrate user workspaces to Azure Government with Citrix Xenapp/XenDesktop 7.16 by Steve Downs
HDInsight Extension for VS Code now available in Azure Government by Yujin Hong

Azure Stack

Monitor Azure Stack Patch & Update (PnU) by Mark Scholman
Bringing hybrid cloud Java and Spring apps to Azure and Azure Stack by Alessandro Segala

Other

Start your compliance discussion with Azure Blueprint by Wriju Ghosh
Azure Application Architecture Guide by Mike Wasson
Connect your applications to Azure with Open Service Broker for Azure by Sean McKenna
Don’t build your cloud home on shaky foundations by Alvaro Vitta

Videos

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

Azure Availability Zones via Azure Friday
Overview of the Microsoft AI School | AI Show by Sonya Koptyev
Open Service Broker for Azure via Azure Friday
Azure Security Center, Suspicious processes and JIT access | Tuesdays With Corey via Channel 9
Azure Location Based Services via Azure Friday
Hands-on experience to provision real device with IoT Hub Device Provisioning Service | Internet of Things Show by Golnaz
How to provisioning IoT devices at scale with IoT Hub Device Provisioning Service | Internet of Things Show by Olivier Bloch
Enable edge intelligence with Azure IoT Edge | Connect(); 2017 via Channel 9
Durable Functions in Azure Functions | Azure Friday 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 207 – Functions & Serverless via The Azure Podcast
Progressive Web Apps with Tara Manicsic via Hanselminutes
Episode 228 | SharePoint Framework Updates & Office 365 CLI via Microsoft Cloud Show
Show 1500 – the History of .NET via .NET Rocks!
Visual Studio Tools for AI with Seth Juarez and Paige Bailey 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:

Bridging Object Storage And NAS In The Enterprise by Jeffrey Burt
CryptoKitties: 11% of Traffic on the Ethereum Blockchain Is Being Used to Breed Digital Cats via Adafruit
Simplifying the Management of Kubernetes with Docker Enterprise Edition by Banjot Chanana
Announcing the General Availability of containerd 1.0, the industry-standard runtime used by millions of users by Patrick Chanezon
Gartner Says Hire Programmers to Your Infrastructure and Ops Team by Yevgeniy Sverdlik
The Journey to 150,000 Containers at PayPal by Jim Armstrong
Accelerated 3D VR, sure, but impress me with a nice ASCII progress bar or spinner by Scott Hanselman

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.

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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.