Are you having difficulty keeping up to date on all the frequent changes and updates in the Microsoft Azure space? Then the Build Azure Weekly has the solution you’re looking for. Build Azure Weekly is a weekly blog post 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.

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Service Updates

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

• Back up Azure VMs directly from the VM blade
• New Quickstart experience for Web Apps
• General availability: Mobile Apps SDKs for Apache Cordova and JavaScript
• Query Store is turned on by default for Azure SQL Database

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Top Links

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

• How big is the Microsoft Azure Cloud? by Chris Pietschmann
• Provision NVidia GPUs and N-Series Virtual Machines in Azure by Chris Pietschmann via Opsgility
• Free eBook: Containerized Docker Application Lifecycle with Microsoft Platform and Tools by Chris Pietschmann
• Azure IoT Hub Awarded 9 Industry Certifications for Public Cloud Computing via Microsoft IoT
• Sneak peek: A new Azure Cloud Console by Brendan Burns
• New Quickstart experience for App Service Web App by Byron Tardif
•   Real Tooling for Azure Functions in Visual Studio by Andreas Helland

Blog Articles

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

• Azure Subscription Spending Limit Reached! Now What? by Chris Pietschmann via Opsgility
• Create a VSTS Extension that uses Azure Functions by Gouri Sohoni
• Query Store ON is the new default for Azure SQL Database by Borko Novakovic
• Running Python Webjob on Azure App Services using non-default python version by Prashanth Madi
• Copying Azure resource groups between different Azure subscriptions or environments by Jeff Bowles
• How SQL Server 2016 and Power BI empower Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) by Kay Unkroth
• Pushing Data from a Hortonworks Cluster to an Azure HDInsight Cluster by Bryan C Smith
• Azure Media Indexer 2: Japanese support, punctuation improvements, no more time limit by Adarsh Solanki
• Deduplication with message payload by John Taubensee
• Creating your first data model in Azure Analysis Services by Josh Caplan
• Investigating Suspicious Activity in a Hybrid Cloud with OMS Security by The Scripting Guys
• Run a Don’t Starve Together Server on Azure by Sneezry
• Introducing Microsoft R Server 9.0 by Nagesh Pabbisetty
• Using SQL Server 2016 with R Services for Campaign Optimization by Nagesh Pabbisetty
• Project Bletchley – New Blockchain partners come to Azure Marketplace by Christine Avanessians
• New features in Azure Application Insights Metrics Explorer by Vitaly Gorbenko
• New price-performance choices for Azure SQL Database elastic pools by Morgan Oslake
• Azure Machine Learning Cheat Sheet by Lee Stott
• Tip of the day – Test to see an alert in Azure Security Center by Namgyal Nanglo
• C# Bot Builder Samples on GitHub by Benjamin Perkins
• How my chatbot remained statefull using Azure Bot Services by Benjamin Perkins
• Telemetry Platform Features in Azure Media Services by Dwayne George
• Azure Redis Cache diagnostic improvements by Ye Gu
• New Microsoft Azure training and discounted certifications by Julia White
• Clustered Columnstore Index in Azure SQL Database by Sunil Agarwal
• Azure DocumentDB – Understanding key features by Tsuyoshi Matsuzaki
• Kafka Connect for Azure IoT Hub by Sam George
• Secondary Indexes on Column Store accelerate SQL Data Warehouse look up queries by Shivani Gupta
• Visual Studio Team Services, PHP a DevOps by Jan Hajek
• Logic Apps : Blob name is null or empty by Shashidharan Krishnan
• Troubleshooting and developing oauth enabled applications with Dynamics 365 by apurvghai
• Step by step: Set up a Docker host on Azure using CLI on a Mac by Koushik Biswas
•   Running a Mailer Daemon in Azure Functions by Andreas Helland

Videos

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

• Announcing Microsoft Build 2017 via Channel 9
• Introducing Apache Kafka on Azure HDInsight | Azure Friday via Azure Friday
• Episode 220: API Management Updates with Anton Babadjanov | Microsoft Azure Cloud Cover Show via Channel 9
• Streaming Analytics on Microsoft Azure | Connect(); // 2016 via Channel 9
• Get started with Microsoft Cognitive Services | Connect(); // 2016 via Channel 9
• Episode 219: Visual Studio Mobile Center with Thomas Dohmke | Microsoft Azure Cloud Cover 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 156 – IoT Hub & Open Source via The Azure Podcast
• Episode 169 | Azure and Office 365 Cloud News via Microsoft Cloud Show

General Cloud / Related

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

• Scaling a LAMP app using Docker Containers – simple code and architectural discussion by Koushik Biswas
• Building Intelligence into Machine Learning Hardware by Nicole Hemsoth
• All Flash No Longer Has To Compete With Disk by Timothy Prickett Morgan
• Splitting a monolith into microservices by Andrei Dzimchuk
• NEW PRODUCT – BlocklyProp Starter Kit via Adafruit
• Docker is supported on the $9 C.H.I.P. computer via Docker Pirates

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Feedback

Doe 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.

The types of feedback I’m looking for are:

• What do you like?
• What do you dislike?
• What would you change?
• What would you add?

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.

Alternatively, you can join the Build Azure Slack Group as well.

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.