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 Fabric is going Open Source

Microsoft Service Fabric originally grew out of the “Azure Fabric” that runs the underlying automation layer of the Azure datacenters. Service Fabric is used internally by Microsoft to host many different Azure services. Over time, Microsoft has released Service Fabric as a separate product that allows for Microservice architectures to be more easily hosted using both Windows and Linux operating systems.

Over the last couple years, there’s been a bit of talk and confusion about where Service Fabric fits within the future of the Microsoft Azure landscape. Most of this has originated from the way that many of the different products within Microsoft Azure are really starting to embrace Docker Containers, and even Kubernetes for orchestration of those containers. With these many services utilizing Containers, it has seemed that Microsoft is possibly shifting focus away from Service Fabric, and maybe Service Fabric will be phased out or deprecated.

Service Fabric deprivation is not something that is happening. Microsoft is continuing to invest in Service Fabric, and will continue to build out it’s features and support. An interesting evolution of this effort is the recent announcement that Microsoft Service Fabric is going open source under the MIT license.

While it’ll be interesting to see what Microsoft does with future versions / releases of Service Fabric, it’ll be just as interesting to see what the Open Source community does with being able to eventually contribute to the project.

You can view the open source project for Microsoft Service Fabric over on GitHub: https://github.com/Microsoft/service-fabric

The Weeks Top Links

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

Service Fabric is going open source via Service Fabric Team
Azure Availability Zones Public Preview by Dan Patrick
Azure CLI 2.0: Convert VM to Managed Disks by Chris Pietschmann
Microsoft and 21Vianet reinforce long-term cooperation on cloud services in China by Microsoft Azure Blog
Microsoft to add new Azure regions in Germany, Switzerland, UAE via ZDNet
Azure Strategy and Implementation Guide – free download by Joachim Hafner
Setting up Application Insights took 10 minutes. It created two days of work for me. by Scott Hanselman
Microsoft and Azure at the Game Developers Conference via Microsoft Azure Blog

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)

Azure Availability Zones Public Preview by Dan Patrick
Using Azure Traffic Manager probes with IP Restrictions protecting the App by Jeff Sanders
How to configure network for Azure SQL Managed Instance by Jovan Popovic
Announcing backup and restore performance improvements and support for large disk backup by Trinadh Kotturu
Azure Batch for oil and gas by Hussein Shel
New isolated VM sizes now available by Joel Pelley
NEW WHITEPAPER: Azure Virtual Datacenter: Lift and Shift Guide by Ed Price

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Azure Tips and Tricks Part 101 – Day 1 – An end to end scenario with Azure App Service, API Apps, SQL, VSTS and CI/CD by Michael Crump
Azure Tips and Tricks Part 102 – Day 2 – An end to end scenario with Azure App Service, API Apps, SQL, VSTS and CI/CD by Michael Crump
Azure Tips and Tricks Part 103 – Day 3 – An end to end scenario with Azure App Service, API Apps, SQL, VSTS and CI/CD by Michael Crump
Azure Tips and Tricks Part 104 – Day 4 – An end to end scenario with Azure App Service, API Apps, SQL, VSTS and CI/CD by Michael Crump
Setting up Application Insights took 10 minutes. It created two days of work for me. by Scott Hanselman
Azure App Service – Options Method (and other HTTPS Verb) disabled / not working in Azure Web App by knethteo
Client Directed Authentication with Azure Mobile Apps by Nicholas McCollum
Updating PHP to latest versions by Eric Stenson
Extensions to Application Insights Telemetry Collection by Isaac Levin
Deprecating Service Management APIs support for Azure App Services by Naveed Aziz

Serverless and Functions as a Service (FaaS)

Use the Serverless Cloud for ETL Scenarios by Jeremy Likness

Command-Line / ARM Templates

Azure CLI 2.0: Convert VM to Managed Disks by Chris Pietschmann
Azure Tip: Running the Azure CLI using Bash on Ubuntu, in Windows 10 by Tobias Zimmergren
Azure Command Line Interface to manage Azure Service Bus resources? by Shubha Vijayasarathy
Serving an HTML Page from Azure PowerShell Function by Martin Brandl
Azure Tip: Installing and using the Azure CLI in VSCode by Tobias Zimmergren
Manage Event Hubs resources using Azure Command Line Interface by Shubha Vijayarasarathy
Manage Event Hubs resources using Azure Command Line Interface by Shubha Vijayasarathy
Convert UnManaged to Managed Disk with Azure PowerShell by Wriju Ghosh

Azure Stack

Azure App Service on Azure Stack Update One Released by Andrew Westgarth

Database / Big Data

Demo – Azure SQL Database Managed Instance in action by Jovan Popovic
Event Processor Host 2.0.1 is now live by Shubha Vijayasarathy
Build Your First Planet-Scale App With Azure Cosmos DB by Johan Ahlen

Internet of Things (IoT)

Azure Content Spotlight – Digital Transformation with Azure IoT by chilberto
nRF24L01 Windows 10 IoT Core Field Gateway #AdafruitIO #IoTuesday via Adafruit Technologies

Machine Learning / Artificial Intelligence

Demystifying Docker for Data Scientists – A Docker Tutorial for Your Deep Learning Projects by Shaheen Gauher
Comparing Deep Learning Frameworks: A Rosetta Stone Approach by Ilia Karmanov
Machine Learning in SQL Server by Riley Major
Azure cloud data and AI services training roundup by Eric Hudson
Exploring the Microsoft Graph with Python and AI by sendmarsh
Cognitive Services Hands-On Lab by David Giard
How Three Lines of Code and Windows Machine Learning Empower .NET Developers to Run AI Locally on Windows 10 Devices by Rosane Maffei Vallim
Choosing a Channel for the Microsoft Bot Framework by They Call Me Mister James
Pixel-Level Land Cover Classification Using the Geo AI Data Science Virtual Machine and Batch AI by Mary Wahl, Kolya Malkin, Siyu Yang, Patrick Flickinger, Wee Hyong Tok, Lucas Joppa, Nebojsa Jojic
New machine-assisted text classification on Content Moderator now in public preview by Ashish Jhanwar

Development and DevOps

How to organzie VSTS build output into seperate folders? by Tarun Arora
GVFS for Mac by Saeed Noursalehi
Build your own Hosted VSTS Agent Cloud: Part 4 – Customize by WouterDeKort
DevOps – Azure API Management and VSTS, better together by stephane eyskens
#HOWTO – Continuous delivery from GitHub to Azure AppService by Nico LD
How VSTS is Accelerating the Engineering Group Behind Windows by Martin Woodward
Configure Continuous Delivery(CD) to Azure right from the Visual Studio by Abhijit Jana

Quantum Computing

Quantum Computing – Scenarios by Vincent-Philippe Lauzon

Containers / Service Fabric

Service Fabric is going open source via Service Fabric Team
Deploying Your Dockerized Angular Application To Azure Using VSTS (Part II) by Wael Kdouh
Monitoring your Kubernetes cluster running on Azure Container Service (AKS) using Log Analytics by Tobias Zimmergren
Azure Container Services (AKS) – Getting Started with AKS and a private Azure Container Registry by Tobias Zimmergren
Azure Container Services (AKS) – Upgrading your Kubernetes cluster by Tobias Zimmergren
Azure Tip: List of supported VM Sizes in Azure Container Services (AKS) by Tobias Zimmergren
Azure Tip: List of supported VM Sizes in Azure Container Services (AKS) by Tobias Zimmergren

Security

GDPR Violations Are Hiding In Your Database – Here’s How To Find Them by Thomas LaRock
Creating Wildcard SSL Certificates with Let’s Encrypt by Michael S. Hansen
Heuristic DNS detections in Azure Security Center by John Booth

Learning / Certification

LinkedIn Learning Unlocked 15 MVP-Authored Courses At The MVP Global Summit. Check Them Out Here. by MVP Award Program
Four IT skills with sky-high prospects by Teresa Conte

Azure Government

Private Function Apps in Azure Government using App Service Environment (ASE) by Michael S. Hansen
New and improved Azure Log Analytics is now available in Azure Government by Sachin K Dubey
Announcing Microsoft Jenkins Solution Template for Azure Government Cloud by Gerardo Saca

Events

Building Relationships & Providing Feedback: Top Highlights From The 2018 MVP Global Summit! via MVP Award Program
Microsoft and Azure at the Game Developers Conference via Microsoft Azure Blog
Five webinars to catch you up on hybrid cloud by Venessa Alvarez

Other

Five Ways the Cloud is Helping Cities Become More Sustainable via Microsoft Cloud Perspectives Blog Team
New offers in Azure Marketplace – February 2018 by Christine Alford
Microsoft and 21Vianet reinforce long-term cooperation on cloud services in China by Microsoft Azure Blog
Microsoft to add new Azure regions in Germany, Switzerland, UAE via ZDNet
Introduction to Azure App Consults by Noel Morris
Azure Strategy and Implementation Guide – free download by Joachim Hafner
Episode 3: IT IQ Series – How the cloud multiplies Australian schools’ resources by Microsoft Australia Education
Debian, Kali Linux distributions now available in the Microsoft Store via ZDNet

Videos

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

SmartHotel360 – Modernizing Existing Apps with Azure Service Fabric | Visual Studio Toolbox via Channel 9
Get started with the Azure SDK for Go | Azure Friday via Channel 9
The Simplest Machine Learning | AI Show via Channel 9
Internet of Things Patterns And Azure IoT Updates | Internet of Things Show via Channel 9
Setting Up Azure ML Services and Data wrangling using Azure ML services [Part 2/4] | AI Show via Channel 9
Time Series Insight for IoT apps | Internet of Things Show via Channel 9
Local storage on Azure IoT Edge devices | Internet of Things Show via Channel 9
Deploying Node to Docker on Azure | The DevOps Lab 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 220 – Logic Apps Update via The Azure Podcast
Demystifying Serverless with Cecil Phillip via Hanselminutes
Episode 54 – Microsoft 365 Government with Brian Levenson via Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast
Azure Success Stories with Christos Matskas via .NET Rocks!
Episode 242 | Office 365 Updates and New Azure Features via Microsoft Cloud Show
The .NET Core 2 Road Map with Scott Hunter via .NET Rocks!
Episode 219 – What’s New in Azure Backup? via The Azure Podcast

General Cloud / Related

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

A Faster New Raspberry Pi 3 is Now Available by Paul Thurrott
AWS Documentation is Now Open Source and on GitHub by Jeff Bar
Serious quantum computers are finally here. What are we going to do with them? via Adafruit Industries

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.

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.

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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.