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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New r/BuildAzure subreddit

Over time there’s been a few people who’ve emailed or otherwise messaged in blog article links to suggest to add to the Build Azure Weekly newsletter / post. In an effort (and experiment) to make it easier to contribute links and suggested blogs to Build Azure Weekly, I have created the r/BuildAzure subreddit.

If you wish to help contribute to Build Azure Weekly, or just want to keep an eye on link in the Microsoft Cloud and Azure space, then please check out and contribute to the BuildAzure subreddit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/buildazure/

Thanks for the contributions and awesome links!

The Weeks Top Links

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

Microsoft has been talking to GitHub about possible acquisition: Report via ZDNet
Microsoft continues to be a leader in Gartner’s Cloud IaaS MQ by Venkat Gattamneni
Microsoft: Our chatbots can converse like humans, too via ZDNet
New capabilities to enable robust GDPR compliance by Tom Keane
Using Azure Application Gateway WAF’s to secure Azure Web Apps with Traffic Manager for Geo-redundancy Part 2 by Cameron Vetter
Azure AD Authentication for Azure Storage now in public preview by Lavanya Kasarabada
Container Tooling for Service Fabric now available in Visual Studio 2017 via Service Fabric Team
Azure ML Studio Can Accelerate Building Machine Learning Solutions by David Giard
Azure Cosmos DB customer profile: Jet.com by Ed Price
Azure SignalR Service – Getting started by Abhijit Jana
Detect malicious activity using Azure Security Center and Azure Log Analytics via Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center
Announcing SQL Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) and SQL Vulnerability Assessment general availability by Ronit Reger
How Azure IoT helped me buy a new house – Part 3 – ESP8266 Code by Steve St Jean
3 reasons why Azure’s infrastructure is secure by Avi Ben-Menahem
Securing an Azure App Service Website under SSL in minutes with Let’s Encrypt by Scott Hanselman
Azure Management Groups by Aidan Finn

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)

Microsoft continues to be a leader in Gartner’s Cloud IaaS MQ by Venkat Gattamneni
M-Series certified for SAP HANA and available worldwide by Corey Sanders
Accelerate your SAP on Azure HANA project with SUSE Microsoft Solution Templates by Will Bratton
Using Azure Traffic Manager for Private Endpoint Failover – Manual Method by Michael S. Hansen
Using Azure Traffic Manager for Private Endpoint Failover – Automation by Michael S. Hansen
Blue-Green deployments using Azure Traffic Manager by Dilip Lukose
Azure Log Analytics: Disk Space Usage – Part 2 by CliveW
Azure Log Analytics: Disk Space Usage ; Part 3 by CliveW
Adding a Disk to an Azure Virtual Machine by David Giard
VNet service endpoints for Azure database services for MySQL and PostgreSQL in preview by Mark Bolz
Azure Management Groups by Aidan Finn

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Announcing Enhanced Security for Bing Maps API Keys via Bing Team
Using Azure Application Gateway WAF’s to secure Azure Web Apps with Traffic Manager for Geo-redundancy Part 2 by Cameron Vetter
Configure WordPress Database Connection on Azure App Services by Yi Wang
Investigating issues using Web Deploy for Azure App Service by Finbar Ryan
New updates for Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer by Catherine Wang
What is API Management Context Request MatchedParameters? by David Burg
Time sync, synchronization on an Azure App Service by Benjamin Perkins
Azure SignalR Service – Getting started by Abhijit Jana
Exploring Azure App Service – Web Apps and SQL Azure by Andrew B Hall
Azure App Service on Azure Stack Update Two Released by Andrew Westgarth
Azure App Services: Understanding URL Re-write by Madhura Bharadwaj
Receiving and handling HTTP requests anywhere with the Azure Relay by Clemens Vasters
Securing an Azure App Service Website under SSL in minutes with Let’s Encrypt by Scott Hanselman

Serverless and Functions as a Service (FaaS)

Azure Logic Apps with Visual Studio Cloud Explorer by Abhijit Jana
Which SAP NCo version to pick for Azure Logic Apps SAP Connector by David Burg
A Penny Saved is a Ton of Serverless Compute Earned by Jeremy Likness
Web App Instance Name and ARR affinity Mapping using Function App – Part-1 by Paras Patidar
Web App Instance Name and ARR affinity Mapping using Function App – Part-2 by Paras Patidar
Web App Instance Name and ARR affinity Mapping using Function App – Part-3 by Paras Patidar
Web App Instance Name and ARR affinity Mapping using Function App – Part-4 by Paras Patidar
Web App Instance Name and ARR affinity Mapping using Function App – Part-5 by Paras Patidar
Serverless real-time notifications in Azure using Azure #CosmosDB by Matias Quaranta
Create Your First ‘No Code’ Logic App in Microsoft Azure by Timothy Warner
Azure Functions: Cold Starts Beyond First Request by Mikhail Shilkov
Azure Tips and Tricks Part 125 – Using Azure Function to call our Logic App with the IoT Button by Michael Crump
Azure Durable Functions by Prashant Pratap
Azure Container Registry Global Webhooks–with a helping of Azure Durable Functions by stuartle
Cloning Azure Logic App to create a new one by Abhijit Jana
Quickly rollback Azure Logic Apps to the Previous Version by Abhijit Jana
Making of weather-alert (1): Create Azure Functions with Visual Studio Code by FitGeekGirl

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Transact capabilities for SaaS apps now available in Azure Marketplace by Rajesh Ramabathiran
Azure/Office 365 Graph API developer: RefreshToken, AccessToken, IdentityToken by Deva

Command-Line / ARM Templates

API Management CI/CD using ARM Templates – Versioned API by Eldert Grootenboer
Best Practices for Azure App Service ARM templates by Finbar Ryan
ARM automated deployment for Logic App SOAP Custom Connector by David Burg
Azure API Management PowerShell Cmdlets update by Vlad Vinogradsky
Disk partition in Azure VMs – using ARM Templates to specify disk configurations by gpillai
Azure Cloud Shell in Visual Studio Code by Abhijit Jana
Changes coming to PowerShell (preview) in Azure Cloud Shell by Danny Maertens
Deploy Azure Web Apps from Visual Studio Code using Azure Cloud Shell by Abhijit Jana
Remove all Jobs from an Azure Batch Account with Powershell by Lukas Steindl
Change size of Azure SQL Managed Instance using PowerShell by Jovan Popovic
Azure Tips and Tricks Part 127 – Mount a drive and upload files to Cloud Shell by Michael Crump

Database / Big Data

Load confidently with SQL Data Warehouse PolyBase Rejected Row Location by Casey Karet
Control Azure Data Lake costs using Log Analytics to create service alerts by Jose Lara Silva
Import a Power BI Custom Visual by Sarah Jeanne Sexton
Creating New Power BI Custom Visuals by Sarah Jeanne Sexton
How to seamlessly migrate MySQL and PostgreSQL apps to Azure Database for MySQL and PostgreSQL with minimum downtime by Shau Zhang
Azure Cosmos DB customer profile: Jet.com by Ed Price
Taming the fire hose: Azure Stream Analytics by Vincent-Philippe Lauzon
Announcing SQL Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) and SQL Vulnerability Assessment general availability by Ronit Reger
Cosmos DB Bulk Executor Library – Performance Comparison by BenJarvis
Tips & Tricks : What you need to do to creat SQL Login to authenticate to Azure SQL DBs members in Auto-Failover Group by Mohamed Baioumy
Sharing provisioned throughput across multiple containers in Azure #CosmosDB by Ramnandan Krishnamurthy
Connecting to Blob Storage with a Shared Access Signature in Power BI by Chris Mitchell

Internet of Things (IoT)

Azure Tips and Tricks Part 126 – Getting Started with Azure IoT Central by Michael Crump
Bring Custom Vision into Azure IoT Edge by Wu Shuai
How Azure IoT helped me buy a new house – Part 1 by Steve St Jean
Azure IoT Reference Architecture update by Tim Laverty
Azure Tips and Tricks Part 124 – Creating the Azure Logic App for our IoT Button by Michael Crump
How Azure IoT helped me buy a new house – Part 3 – ESP8266 Code by Steve St Jean
Make Azure IoT Hub C SDK work on tiny devices! by Yi Zhong
Enable deeper connections with patients through medical IoT by David Turcotte
Azure Content Spotlight – Azure IoT Interactive Development Guide by Sjoukje Zaal

Machine Learning / Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence Mentoring with Teens in AI by Jen Stirrup
Microsoft’s Approach to AI by Guggs
PASS Marathon: Deep Learning and Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace with Microsoft CNTK, Tensorflow and CaffeOnSpark by Jen Stirrup
YOLO on Azure Deep Learning Virtual Machine (DLVM – Linux) by Jamie Dalton
Project Kinect for Azure @Microsoft #Kinect #Adafruit by Mike Barela
Accelerate data warehouse modernization with Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services for Azure by Kuber Sharma
Microsoft partners with Accenture and Avanade to build vertical AI services via ZDNet
Microsoft: Our chatbots can converse like humans, too via ZDNet
Azure Content Spotlight – What’s New with Cognitive Services by Sjoukje Zaal
Azure ML Studio Can Accelerate Building Machine Learning Solutions by David Giard
Hey Cortana, Microsoft is Buying a Conversational AI Startup by Paul Thurrott
Replacing Values in Azure ML Studio Data by David Giard
Getting Started with Machine Learning Services in SQL Server by Kyle Weller
AI and ML updates across the cloud securely improve efficiencies by teresa
Learn Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning from AI School by Ahbhijit Jana
Improving Medical Imaging Diagnostics Using Azure Machine Learning Package for Computer Vision by Ye Xing, Tao Wu, Patrick Buehler
Enterprise Deployment Tips for Azure Data Science Virtual Machine (DSVM) by Gopi Kumar
Accelerating AI on the intelligent edge: Microsoft and Qualcomm create vision AI developer kit by Henry Jerez
Content Moderation using Azure Custom Vision and Xamarin by Gerald Versluis

Development and DevOps

What’s new in VSTS Sprint 134 Update by Alex Nichols
Devs imagine, create, and code the future at Microsoft Build via Microsoft Azure Blog
Visualize Code with Visual Studio by Ed Tovsen
Do more with Chef and Microsoft Azure by Jeremy Winter
DevOps and Appification by Ron Vincent
Assigning Work Items to a Group in Visual Studio Team Services by Mark Meadows, Everett Yang
One Week Left to Take State of DevOps Survey by Sam Guckenheimer

Containers / Service Fabric

New container images in Azure Marketplace by Rajesh Ramabathiran
New Service Fabric client library for .NET by Vaclav Turecek
Container Tooling for Service Fabric now available in Visual Studio 2017 via Service Fabric Team
More reliable Replica Sets in AKS – Part 2 by Vincent-Philippe Lauzon

Security / Privacy

How to Create and Add Keys to Enterprise Applications for Expired Keys by Frank Hu
Using Postman to call the Microsoft Graph API using Authorization Code Flow by Frank Hu
Azure AD Authentication for Azure Storage now in public preview by Lavanya Kasarabada
ACS Migration Guide by Tyler Pollak
Finding the Correct Permissions for a Microsoft or Azure Active Directory Graph Call by Frank Hu
Securing Azure Storage for the Software Architect by Keith Anderson
Using Postman to Call the Microsoft Graph API Using Client Credentials by Frank Hu
Detect malicious activity using Azure Security Center and Azure Log Analytics via Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center
New Azure Network Watcher integrations and Network Security Group Flow Logging updates by Matt Reat
Azure Security Center can identify attacks targeting Azure App Service applications by Ram Pliskin
3 reasons why Azure’s infrastructure is secure by Avi Ben-Menahem

Learning / Certification

New Exam Study Groups by Microsoft Learning
Help Microsoft Shape the Future of Certification! by Liberty Munson

Azure Government

Private Kubernetes Cluster in Azure (Government) by Michael S. Hansen

Events

Explore Build 2018 content with playlists by Rob Caron
Azure the cloud for all – highlights from Microsoft BUILD 2018 by Julia White

Other

10 Azure Portal Tips & Tricks that you should know by Abhijit Jana
Cloud Simplified: A practical webcast to demystify Azure features by Ryan Berry
New capabilities to enable robust GDPR compliance by Tom Keane
Did you plan for accidental deletion of your critical data in Azure? by Rick Caudle
An update on the integration of Avere Systems into the Azure family by Tad Brockway
Create enterprise subscription experience in Azure portal public preview by Tommy Nguyen
Import Azure Portal Dashboard by Abhijit Jana
Microservices – Disaster Recovery, GeoHA and GDPR by chilberto
Quick Navigation using Azure Portal Keyboard Shortcuts by Abhijit Jana
At Microsoft, every day is Global Accessibility Awareness Day by Microsoft Accessibility Blog
How I choose which services to use in Azure by Barry Luijbregts
Configure Azure Portal auto logout after period of inactivity by Abhijit Jana
Activate Microsoft Free $200 Credit – You gateway to Azure cloud by ChengBinTham
Microsoft has been talking to GitHub about possible acquisition: Report via ZDNet
Report: Microsoft in Talks to Buy GitHub by Paul Thurrott

Videos

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

TWC9: Container Images Come to Azure, CI/CD Goodness, SignalR Service, and more | This Week On Channel 9 via Channel 9
IoT White Boarded for the Top Floor | Internet of Things Show via Channel 9
How I choose which services to use in Azure | Azure Friday via Channel 9
Episode 17: Five VS Code Extensions You Should Know About | Five Things via Channel 9
Azure Maps intro for developers | Internet of Things Show via Channel 9
Visual Studio Futures: IntelliCode and Live Share | Microsoft Build 2018 via Channel 9
We’re talkin’ Azure Low Priority VMs | Tuesdays With Corey via Channel 9
Azure IoT Central and Devices | Internet of Things Show via Channel 9
Traffic in Azure Maps | Azure Friday via Channel 9
An Introduction to Blockchain with Mark Russinovich | Microsoft Build 2018 via Channel 9
Bing Developer Updates | Microsoft Build 2018 via Channel 9
Mixed Reality + Azure | #ifdef WINDOWS via Channel 9
Deploying Node.js Applications from VS Code to Kubernetes via Azure Friday
Azure IoT Hub automatic device configuration | Internet of Things 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 65 – Live from SharePoint Conference 2018 with Mark Kashman via Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast
Episode 256 | SharePoint Search and On-Premises with Adam Harmetz Live from SPC via Microsoft Cloud Show
Episode 255 | SharePoint Spaces & More with Dan Holme and Omar Shahine Live from SPC via Microsoft Cloud Show
Episode 64 – SQL, Coffee, and Rotary Phones via Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast
Episode 230 – Moving apps to Azure via The Azure Podcast
Episode 254 | Microsoft Graph with Yina Arenas Live from Build via Microsoft Cloud Show
Episode 63 – Ding, Dong, Skype for Business ACP Is Dead via Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast
Episode 229 – Live from Build with Jessica Deen via The Azure Podcast
Episode 231 – IaaS VM options via The Azure Podcast
A new life for old software – DasBlog Core with Mark Downie via Hanselminutes
Episode 67 – The Year of the List with Adam Harmetz via Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast
Episode 66 – OneDrive for Business with Stephen Rose via Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast
Episode 257 | SharePoint Developer Ecosystem with Microsoft Engineering Live from SPC 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:

U.S. Senate Votes to Restore Net Neutrality, Now Expected to Face Major Hurdle in House by Mitchel Broussard
How Building a Platform Changed my Career as a Programmer by Lou Bichard
Blockchain Beyond Banking by K.R. Sanjiv
Do you need to speak English to Code? Noor – An Arabic Programming Language with Ahmed Abdalla via Hanselminutes
A Peek Inside That Intel Xeon-FPGA Hybrid Chip by Timothy Prickett Morgan
Introducing Play with Kubernetes by Mano Marks
Cross-Platform Scaling: The Way Forward for Businesses on Blockchain by Reuben Jackson
IoT World 2018 – Innovation, Startups, And Awards by Kyle Elliott
Microsoft Remote Assist and Microsoft Layout available today as limited-time free preview by Lorraine Bardeen
The 5 Ways IoT Is About to Change Healthcare as We Know It by Frank Landman
Windows Containers in Docker Enterprise Edition 2.0 – Top 7 Questions from the Docker Virtual Event by Jenny Fong
Blockchain in Retail: Changing the Shopping Experience by Brad Anderson
How to Delete Yourself From the Internet by Frank Landman
List of Third-Party Git GUI Tools and Clients | #git by nicknormal
OpenFaaS round-up: CloudEvents, AWS Fargate and OpenFaaS Operator by Alex Ellis

Feedback

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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.