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:

Featured Book

In an effort to promote the greatness that a good tech book can be, here’s the weeks featured book:

Microservices with Docker on Microsoft Azure

Written by Boris Scholi, Trent Swanson, Daniel Fernandez

Microservice-based applications enable unprecedented agility and ease of management, and Docker containers are ideal for building them. Microsoft Azure offers all the foundational technology and higher-level services you need to develop and run any microservices application. Microservices with Docker on Microsoft Azure brings together essential knowledge for creating these applications from the ground up, or incrementally deconstructing monolithic applications over time.

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 Backup and Azure Site Recovery now available in UK by Andres Juarez
Microsoft adds Cisco UCS to short list of servers that will run Azure Stack via ZDNet
StorSimple Virtual Array available for Cloud Solutions Provider (CSP) partners by Murali K Keloth
Azure CLI: Managed Disks by Aaron Roney
Announcing the release of StorSimple Virtual Array Update 0.4 by Harsha Kiran Kanna
Instant File Recovery from Cloud using Azure Backup by Kartik P V R
How to connect a PowerShell client to the German Cloud by Benjamin Perkins
New Lower Prices on Azure Virtual Machines and Blob Storage by Venkat Gattamneni
Azure CLI ‘config’ is not an azure command by Benjamin Perkins

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Automating Azure Analysis Services processing with Azure Functions by Orsolya Gal
Azure IoT Hub Connector to Cassandra now available by Sam George
Enable logging for your Hybrid Connection Manager, troubleshooting by Benjamin Perkins
Azure Functions on 64 bit by Benjamin Perkins
Service Hooks Integration with VSTS and Azure Function by Gouri Sohoni
Announcing Continuous Delivery Tools for Visual Studio 2017 by Andrew B Hall
Integrating OData and DocumentDb with Azure Functions by Adrian Hall
Announcing custom domain HTTPS support with Azure CDN by Manling Zhang
Azure Traffic Manager probe degraded due to 401 from Azure Web App by Jeff Sanders
Using Azure Xplat-CLI with Azure App Services in the German Cloud by Benjamin Perkins
Common workloads on Azure Service Fabric by Mahesh M Kshirsagar

Certification

70-774 Perform Cloud Data Science with Azure Machine Learning Certification Exam by Chris Pietschmann

Development

Java: Manage Azure Managed Disks by Asir Selvasingh
.NET: Manage Azure Managed Disks by Asir Selvasingh
January 2017 Leaderboard of Database Systems contributors on MSDN by Rahul Venkatraj

Database / Big Data

Load Data from Azure Data Lake into Azure SQL Data Warehouse at 3TB/Hour via Cortana Intelligence and ML Blog
10 GitHub samples with Azure DocumentDB you shouldn’t miss! by Rimma Nehme
Automate Export Azure SQL DB to blob storage use Automation account by Mohamed Ahmed Baioumy
Microsoft R Server – Using Hive data source in Spark compute context by Eqbal Zaffar
Big Data Tools in Azure by David Giard
Announcing preview of Storage Service Encryption for File Storage by Lavanya Kasarabada
Cloud computing guide for researchers – eBird big data analysis using Microsoft Azure by Dr Kenji Takeda
SQL Data Warehouse now supports seamless integration with Azure Data Lake Store by Casey Karst

Internet of Things

IoT White Paper: How OEMs and ISVs can lead the way in digital transformation via Microsoft IoT
How IoT and AI are transforming cars with intelligent mobility via Microsoft IoT

Machine Learning

Microsoft to make more Cognitive Services tools available to developers via ZDNet
Botcamp: Building smart bots with Capita using the Microsoft Bot Framework by Jamie Dalton
Microsoft Student Partners – Azure Machine Learning Workshop at University of Cambridge by Lee Stott
Introduction to Deep Learning- Bianca Furtuna by Lee Stott

Other

Scale your deep learning workloads on MXNet R (scoring phase) by Tsuyoshi Matsuzaki
Keeping up with Azure Government – January Highlights by Spenser Bullock
Azure Content Spotlight – Azure CAT by chilberto
Azure Government Documentation: January update by Ryan GH
Using the Azure Billing API and calculate the costs by Armin Reiter

Videos

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

Tuesdays with Corey: checking out the new Marketplace portal | Tuesdays With Corey via Channel 9
2. Azure Compute for Games | Gaming Services on Azure via Channel 9
SQL tools for Linux, Mac OS, and Windows | Data Exposed via Channel 9
Uncover insights rapidly from petabytes of data in Azure Data Lake Store with SQL Data Warehouse PolyBase support by Sachin C Sheth
Abi Iyer and Jen Anderson on Azure support for Red Hat Linux by David Giard

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 179 | AvePoint Citizen Services with Dux Raymond Sy and Paul Olenick via Microsoft Cloud Show
Chatbots with Galiya Warrier via DotNetRocks!

General Cloud / Related

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

Getting Down To Bare Metal On The Cloud by Jeffrey Burt
Microsoft to release Visual Studio 2017 on March 7 via ZDNet
Announcing the DockerCon speakers and sessions by Jenny Burcio
Solving the Challenges of Scientific Clouds by Nicole Hemsoth
Using US Census data with Bing Maps via Bing Team

Monthly Sponsorship

I am currently looking to sign up additional sponsors of Build Azure. If you’re interested, please go here for more information, or contact me directly. If you want to see some information about the traffic and audience reach of Build Azure, please read the “2016: Build Azure Year in Review” post.

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.