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.

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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)

Virtual Network Service Endpoints and Firewalls for Azure Storage now generally available by Alan Stephenson
Users may experience issues while trying to enable a licensed image inside a Lab. by Tanmayee Kamath
Customer success stories with Azure Backup: Russell Reynolds by Kartik P V R
What is Microsoft’s ‘Polaris’ project? via ZDNet
[Linux] How to login Azure Linux VM’s using SSH key pair by Maheshk
Veeam Recovery to Microsoft Azure Featuring Veeam PN Now Available via IT Pro
SAP on Azure Workshop by Sarah Arnold
Network Watcher Connection Troubleshoot now generally available by Abhishek Pathak
Azure ExpressRoute updates – New partnerships, monitoring and simplification by Yousef Khalidi
Provide Cross Region Low-latency Service based on Azure VNET Peering by Wu Shuai
Reusing Azure Automation Run As Accounts by Jason Wages

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Designing Globally Resilient Apps with Azure App Service and Cosmos DB by Chris Pietschmann
Azure Mobile Apps: Disable Swagger by Jeff Sanders
Azure Tips and Tricks Part 89 – Shared Access Tokens with Azure Storage Blob Containers by Michael Crump
Azure Storage SDKs for Python, Ruby and PHP now generally available by Sercan Guler
Azure Tips and Tricks Part 87 – Avoid Bad Request Errors in Azure Storage Table by Michael Crump

Serverless and Functions as a Service (FaaS)

Azure – Event Grid Architecture in the Cloud with Azure Event Grid by David Barkol
Passing extra HTTP headers to any action in Logic App by David Burg
Sending Your Azure Application Insights Alerts to Team Sites using Azure Logic App by Abhijit Jana
Logic apps Service bus connector not honoring Maximum message count by Shashidharan Krishnan

Software as a Service (SaaS)

New ways to use apps and get more done in Microsoft Teams! by Jose Kingsley Davies
Extend diagramming to IT with network diagrams in Visio Online via Visio Team
OneDrive for iOS Gets Refined Designed With Big New Update by Mehedi Hassan
Microsoft adds new app integrations, app store to Teams via ZDNet
Microsoft Teams is Updated with App Gallery, More by Paul Thurrott

Command-Line / ARM Templates

Azure: PowerShell versus ARM Templates by Aidan Finn
How to create and navigate a directory with a single command. by Donovan Brown

Database / Big Data

Designing Globally Resilient Apps with Azure App Service and Cosmos DB by Chris Pietschmann
Azure #CosmosDB and Microsoft’s Project Olympus honored in InfoWorld’s 2018 Technology of the Year Awards by Rimma Nehme
Announcing the general availability of Azure Event Grid by Corey Sanders
Three new reasons to love the TSI explorer by Andrew Shannon
New Azure Data Factory self-paced hands-on lab for UI by Mark Kromer
Azure Databricks – Transforming Data Frames in Spark by Vincent-Philippe Lauzon
Geo-Disaster-Recovery available in Portal by Ch. Wolf
Lambda Architecture using Azure #CosmosDB: Faster performance, Low TCO, Low DevOps by Denny Lee
Designing a Cosmos DB database by Pam Lahoud
New in Stream Analytics: General availability of sub-streams, query compatibility, and more by Krishna Mamidipaka
How to setup alerts on the new metrics for Azure Event Hubs by Ch. Wolf
Azure Tips and Tricks Part 88 – What’s the purpose of ETag in Azure Storage Table? by Michael Crump
How to setup alerts on the new metrics for Azure Service Bus by Ch. Wolf
Using EXPLAIN to profile slow queries in Azure Database for MySQL by Leon Hao
Using the MySQL sys schema to optimize and maintain a database by Sean Li
Azure Tips and Tricks Part 90 – Part 1 – Implementing Azure Search with SQL Server and ASP.NET MVC by Michael Crump

Internet of Things (IoT)

New Azure service allows easy event management across fleet of devices by maiahhollander

Machine Learning / Artificial Intelligence

Adding Artificial Intelligence (AI) to your Xamarin Apps by Gerald Versluis
Transforming Education using Artificial Intelligence by Kristy Hill
How is AI for video different from AI for images by Milan Gada
Hearing AI: Getting Started with Deep Learning for Audio on Azure by Xiaoyong Zhu, Max Kaznady, Gilbert Hendry

Development and DevOps

Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment: The Future of DevOps Is Now by Matthew Calder
Continuous Quality: Ship Better Apps Faster with Visual Studio App Center by Glenn Wester
Hot Code Replacement for Java comes to Visual Studio Code via Visual Studio Blog
ASP.NET Core 2.1 roadmap by Daniel Roth
Migrating from TFS to VSTS, Part 1 by Michael Taylor
DevOps: Why Don’t Database Developers Use Source Control? by Greg Low
Python in Visual Studio Code – Jan 2018 Release by Dan Taylor
Unraveling the mysteries of DevOps by Subodh Sohoni
VSTS Gems- Three ways to beef up your boards by Rui Melo
A great developer experience for Ansible by Corey Sanders
Jenkins on Azure: from zero to hero by Pui Chee Chan
Stakeholders can now view VSTS Analytics widgets by Gregg Boer
MSTest V2: in-assembly parallel test execution by Pratap Lakshman
Deliver quality apps faster with new features in Visual Studio by Microsoft Cloud Perspectives Team
Visual Studio Toolbox: SmartHotel360 Demo App Overview by Robert Green
Merging conflicts in the browser by Brian Harry
A Microservices implementation journey — Part 3 by Aram Koukia
VSTS CI to Build and Test Node.js app with Gulp and Mocha by Nilay Shah

Azure Stack

70-537 Configuring and Operating a Hybrid Cloud with Azure Stack Exam (20537) by Chris Pietschmann

Security

Serious about security? Check out Azure Security Center by Kim Spilker
Integrate Azure Security Center alerts into SIEM solutions by Miri Landau
Supporting AzureAD Conditional Access Policy across VSTS by Justin Marks
Managing Azure Secrets on GitHub Repositories by Brijesh Desai
VS Subscriptions and linking your VSTS account to AzureAD by Justin Marks
Restrict public access to your Azure Web Apps with the IPSecurityRestrictions option by Christos Matskas

Learning / Certification

Microsoft Exams Scheduled to Retire in Early 2018 by Chris Pietschmann
Save up to 55% on Microsoft Press exam prep titles by Kim Spilker
Book: Exam Ref 70-532 Developing Microsoft Azure Solutions, Second Edition by Chris Pietschmann
Book: Exam Ref 70-533 Implementing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions, Second Edition by Chris Pietschmann
Book: Exam Ref 70-535 Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions by Chris Pietschmann
New book: Exam Ref 70-347 Enabling Office 365 Services, Second Edition via Microsoft Press Blog
70-537 Configuring and Operating a Hybrid Cloud with Azure Stack Exam (20537) by Chris Pietschmann
Take Beta Exam 70-537: Configuring and Operating a Hybrid Cloud with Microsoft Azure Stack by Liberty Munson

Containers and Service Fabric

How to set up Kubernetes on Windows 10 with Docker for Windows and run ASP.NET Core by Scott Hanselman
Working with ACR Geo-replication notifications by Steve Lasker
Stand Alone Service Fabric Error=EndpointProviderPortRangeExhausted by Pam Lahoud
Service Fabric 6.1 Release by Service Fabric Team

Azure Government

Microsoft Azure Government leader honored with FCW 2018 Federal 100 Award via Azure Gov Team
Full MeitY accreditation enables Indian public sector to deploy on Azure by Stevan Vidich
Team Foundation Server 2015 CI/CD Pipeline for Web App in Azure Government by Michael S. Hansen

Events

2/6 Webinar: Flow With Microsoft Graph API by Ashish Trivedi by Charles Sterling

Other

Enhancements to Azure Budgets API supporting Resource Groups and Usage Budgets by Vinod Kurpad
Enhancements to Cost Management APIs by Vinod Kurpad
Last week in Azure: New Zone Redundant capabilities now in preview, and more by Rob Caron
Microsoft Acquires Cloud Gaming Backend Platform PlayFab by Mehedi Hassan

Videos

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

TWC9: Azure Event Grid Goes GA, Kubernetes on Windows 10 with Docker, and more | This Week On Channel 9 by Cameron Tomisser, Christina Warren
Azure IoT C SDK insights | Internet of Things Show via Channel 9
Custom Vision – Machine Learning Made Easy with Jim Bennett | The Xamarin Show via Channel 9
SmartHotel360 Demo App Web Site | Visual Studio Toolbox via Channel 9
Running Ansible on Azure | Azure Friday via Channel 9
Real World Mobile DevOps with VSTS and App Center | The DevOps Lab via Channel 9
Machine Learning with Azure Notebooks | AI Show via Channel 9
Dataiku DSS on Azure HDInsight for Data Science | Data Exposed via Channel 9
Serverless and Internet of Things | Internet of Things Show via Channel 9
Azure Functions and Logic Apps | Tuesdays With Corey via Channel 9
Azure IoT Hub Integration with Azure Event Grid | Internet of Things Show via Channel 9
AtScale on Azure HDInsight | Data Exposed via Channel 9
SmartHotel360 Demo App Overview | Visual Studio Toolbox 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 214 – Functions Microservices via The Azure Podcast
Running Ansible on Azure via Azure Friday
Episode 236 | Office 365 News, Goings on and Sheep in Space 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:

In a Big Kubernetes Play, Red Hat Gobbles Up CoreOS for $250M by Yevgeniy Sverdlik
Red Hat Shakes Up Container Ecosystem With CoreOS Deal by Timothy Prickett Morgan
Public Cloud Service Earnings: 5 Highlights You Must Know by Nicole Henderson
OpenMP Has More in Store for GPU Supercomputing by Nicole Hemsoth
Microservices Are Great, But Only if You Solve These Challenges by Christopher Tozzi
How to protect against and recover from ransomware attacks on your backups via IT Pro
The Machine Learning Opportunity in Manufacturing, Logistics by Jeffrey Burt
Adafruit’s Top 10 Blog Posts of January 2018 #StateOfTheFruit #AdafruitTopTen by Stephanie
The Key IoT Security Questions You Need To Ask by Olivia Burgess
How AlphaGo Sparked a New Approach to De Novo Drug Design by Nicole Hemsoth
CodePlex has been archived by Martin Woodward
GE Exec on Digital Twins, Predix Platform and Diversity by Brian Buntz
Google to Create a Cloud App Marketplace, Chasing Amazon via IT Pro
Building a Raspberry Pi Car Robot with WiFi and Video by Scott Hanselman

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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.