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!

New Azure Portal UI Archive Project

An idea I’ve had for some time now is to create a screenshot archive of the Azure Portal. The reason for this is that the UI of the Azure Portal is constantly changing, and it’s neat sometimes to look at older screenshots to see what the Azure Portal UI used to be at some point in the past. So, I’ve decided to create a new open source project over on Github, title Azure Portal Archive.

Also, instead of just having a folder of screenshots, I’ve created a simple UI to be able to easily navigate the archive of Azure Portal screenshots. This UI is hosted using GitHub Pages at the following URL: https://buildazure.github.io/azure-portal-archive/

There’s only a couple screenshots in the archive right now, as I just created this project a couple days ago. If you would like to submit any screenshots to the archive, please feel free to submit a Pull Request to the project. Also, please make sure there isn’t any sensitive, confidential, or PII information in the screenshots that you don’t have permission to share publicly. I know we all have production deployments running in Azure, so please blur out stuff in the screenshots if necessary.

The Weeks Top Links

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

• Azure DNS Private Zones now available in public preview by Subra Sarma
• Microsoft and Esri launch Geospatial AI on Azure by Joseph Sirosh
• Azure Databricks, industry-leading analytics platform powered by Apache Spark™ by Rohan Kumar, Ali Ghodsi
• Announcing Terraform availability in the Azure Marketplace by Arun Chandrasekhar
• Announcement: Publish markdown files from your git repository to VSTS Wiki by Sandeep Chadda
• Build your next iOS and Android game with $2,500+ of gaming services by David Holladay
• Columnstore support in Standard tier Azure SQL Databases by Kevin Farlee
• Azure Cosmos DB Costs vs Dynamo DB and Neptune by Thomas LaRock
• BizTalk Hybrid Connections going end of life May 31, 2018 by Christina Compy
• Service Fabric Customer Profile: Honeywell by Greg Feiges, Tomas Hrebicek, Richard Sirny, Jiri Kopecky
• Azure vs. AWS Data Services Comparison by Thomas LaRock
• Announcing general availability of Azure database services for MySQL and PostgreSQL by Tobias Ternstrom
• Microsoft creates industry standards for datacenter hardware storage and security by Kushagra Vaid
• SONiC, the network innovation powerhouse behind Azure by Yousef Khalidi
• 7 month retirement notice: Access Control Service by Danny Strockis
• Microsoft joins group working to ‘cure’ open-source licensing issues via ZDNet

Azure Service Updates

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

• Public preview: Low-priority VMs on virtual machine scale sets
• ClearDB removal from the Azure Marketplace 
• Azure portal updates: March 2018
• Simplified process for creating secure Service Fabric clusters
• Deprecating Service Management API support for Azure App Service
• Name changes: Microsoft IoT Central
• Name changes: Azure Database for MySQL
• Name changes: Azure Database for PostgreSQL
• App Service BizTalk Hybrid Connections: end of life on May 31, 2018
• Public preview: Azure DNS Private Zones
• General availability: Disable BGP route propagation for virtual network routes
• General availability: Standard Load Balancer
• General availability: Azure Scheduled Events 
• Azure Data Factory supports Azure AD authentication

Monthly Sponsor

The month of March marks 1 full year of Opsgility sponsoring Build Azure!! If you haven’t checked out what Opsgility has to offer yet, please click the link below and go check out the awesome training offered!

Are you looking for a clear and outlined path to learn Microsoft Azure? No matter if you’re a Developer, IT Pro, or Architect, Opsgility has courses that will help you learn how to build and implement solutions within Microsoft Azure more affectively and efficiently. The on-demand and instructor-led courses from Opsgility offer maximum flexibility to learn how you learn best, and to help your team grow into the cloud experts you need them to be in an efficient manner.

Opsgility is the leading Microsoft cloud technology trainer for developers and IT professionals, built around an esteemed network of industry experts and technical authors that includes Microsoft MVPs and Microsoft Insiders in more than 10 countries.

Get started today with Microsoft Dev Essentials and get 3 months Free of Opsgility on-demand streaming service!

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 Load Balancer – A new Standard SKU for Premium Capabilities by Igor Pagliai
• Azure DNS Private Zones now available in public preview by Subra Sarma
• Beginner’s Guide to Azure Automation by ganesh alalasundaram
• Announcing Terraform availability in the Azure Marketplace by Arun Chandrasekhar
• Migrating data On-Premises to Azure with the new Azure Database Migration Service (VPN Site-to-Site) by Andre Cesar Rodrigues
• The next generation of Azure Alerts has arrived by Kiran Madnani
• Faster & Bigger Azure Backup for Azure VMs by Aidan Finn
• SONiC, the network innovation powerhouse behind Azure by Yousef Khalidi
• Changing the License Type for an existing Virtual Machine Scale Set to use the Azure Hybrid Use Benefit by Pete Rodriguez
• Azure WAF to protect your Web Application by David Sanchez
• Global performance acceleration with Azure Traffic Manager by Dilip Lukose

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

• Renaming our “new” command to “up” by Ahmed Elnably
• Getting started with Azure App Services Development by Vijetha Marinagammanavar
• Azure Active Directory Authentication (Easy Auth) with Custom Backend Web API by Michael S. Hansen
• BizTalk Hybrid Connections going end of life May 31, 2018 by Christina Compy

Serverless and Functions as a Service (FaaS)

• Terraform and Azure Better Together! (Deploying Azure Function via Terraform) by Ali Mazaheri
• Serverless computing recipes for your cloud applications by Raman Sharma

Command-Line / ARM Templates

• Export Azure SQL Database to local path by Mohamed Baioumy
• Stop / Cancel ongoing Azure SQL DB scale operation by Yochanan Rachamim

Database / Big Data

• Lesson Learned #34: Does Azure SQL Database support OPENJSON? by Jose M Jurado
• Troubleshoot Site-to-Site VPN Connectivity Issues with On-Premises Source DB for Azure Database Migration Service by gennady kostinsky
• Getting Behind the 9-Ball: CosmosDB Consistency Levels by Jeremy Likness
• Analytics on the go with Power BI by Natalie Afshar
• Migrate SQL Server databases from a Google Cloud Engine instance to Azure SQL Database using the Azure Database Migration Service by gennady kostinksy
• Unlock your data’s potential with Azure SQL Data Warehouse and Azure Databricks by John Macintyre
• Azure Databricks, industry-leading analytics platform powered by Apache Spark™ by Rohan Kumar, Ali Ghodsi
• Azure Event Hubs integration with Apache Spark now generally available by Sabee Grewal
• All about PaaS PostgreSQL and MySQL in Azure by Wriju Ghosh
• Columnstore support in Standard tier Azure SQL Databases by Kevin Farlee
• Azure Cosmos DB Costs vs Dynamo DB and Neptune by Thomas LaRock
• Azure vs. AWS Data Services Comparison by Thomas LaRock
• Compliance offerings for Azure Database for MySQL and Azure Database for PostgreSQL by Mark Bolz
• Securing Azure Database for MySQL and Azure Database for PostgreSQL by Mark Bolz
• Announcing general availability of Azure database services for MySQL and PostgreSQL by Tobias Ternstrom
• Azure Redis Cache feature updates by Ye Gu
• Get up and running with SQL Server on Linux in a matter of minutes by Matthew Calder
• Modernize index maintenance with Resumable Online Index Rebuild by Joshua Gnanayutham

Internet of Things (IoT)

• Now in Public Preview: Visual Studio tools for Azure Stream Analytics on IoT Edge by Jie Su

Machine Learning / Artificial Intelligence

• Microsoft and Esri launch Geospatial AI on Azure by Joseph Sirosh
• YOLO on Azure Deep Learning Virtual Machine (Windows) by Jamie Dalton
• Computer Vision API–Methods and Models by Anthony Marsiglia
• Training State-of-the-Art Neural Networks in the Microsoft Azure Cloud by Adrian Rosebrock
• Beyond The Obvious With API Vision On Cognitive Services by Victor Moreno
• Preparing to build write your 1st Program utilizing Cognitive Services by Anthony Marsiglia
• Text Recognition for Video in Microsoft Video Indexer by More Geva
• ESRI GEO AI Data Science Virtual Machine by Lee Stott

Development and DevOps

• Automatic Unit Testing in .NET Core plus Code Coverage in Visual Studio Code by Scott Hanselman
• Azure Tips and Tricks Part 105 – Day 5 – An end to end scenario with Azure App Service, API Apps, SQL, VSTS and CI/CD by Michael Crump
• Azure Tips and Tricks Part 107 – Day 6 – An end to end scenario with Azure App Service, API Apps, SQL, VSTS and CI/CD by Michael Crump
• Announcement: Publish markdown files from your git repository to VSTS Wiki by Sandeep Chadda
• Build your next iOS and Android game with $2,500+ of gaming services by David Holladay
• Use Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) to host your private package server by Keith Beller
• End-to-end from Code Project, to VSTS CI/CD, to Azure by Crystal Tenn
• Deploying WordPress Application using Visual Studio Team Services and Azure – Part two by Yaron Prigal
• A Microservices implementation journey — Part 5 by Aram Koukia
• How Microsoft Does DevOps – an Interview with Aaron Bjork, Microsoft Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) by Dave Harrison, Aaron Bjork
• Azure DevOps: automate App Service slot swaps in your VSTS release pipeline by gdavi

Quantum Computing

• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Quantum Computing and Q# Blog by Anita Ramanan

Containers / Service Fabric

• Service Fabric Customer Profile: Honeywell by Greg Feiges, Tomas Hrebicek, Richard Sirny, Jiri Kopecky
• Scaling Azure Container Service Clusters by Danial Grecoe
• Container/Docker Blog Series Part 6–How to use Service Fabric Reverse Proxy for internal container services by Monu Bambroo

Blockchain

• Blockchain Azure samples and resources for building interesting Blockchain projects and solutions by Lee Stott
• Improved multi-member Blockchain networks now available on Azure by Cody Born
• Using Microsoft Azure to setup ARK Blockchain for Hacks and Blockchain Challenges by Lee Stott

Security

• Microsoft Security Intelligence Report volume 23 is now available by teresa
• Multi-tenant apps and Azure AD by SailingRock
• Accelerate Your GDPR compliance with Microsoft Cloud by Latha Natarajan, Sujith Nair
• Adding users to an Azure Active Directory domain by Benjamin Perkins
• 7 month retirement notice: Access Control Service by Danny Strockis
• Azure Security Center and discovery of partner solutions by Shalini Pasupneti

Learning / Certification

• Microsoft MCSE Ranks in the 15 Top-Paying IT Certifications by Liberty Munson
• Provide your students with Future Ready Skills with Imagine Academy by Kristy Hill
• Azure Labs are Free for you by Wriju Ghosh

Azure Government

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Azure Government Now Consumes EA Monetary Commitment by Sarah Weldon
• Expanding Azure Government Marketplace – March 2018 by Sarah Weldon
• How to get started with Azure Government by Stuart McKee
• Using Postman with Azure Resource Manager API – Commercial and Government by Michael S. Hansen

Events

• Join Microsoft at the GPU Technology Conference by Ben Cotton
• Microsoft Canada Events Site by Ken Cenerelli

Other

• Making sense of Microsoft’s Common Data Service makeover via ZDNet
• Azure Tips and Tricks Part 106 – Introducing Azure Tips and Tricks Video! by Michael Crump
• Video–Azure File Sync by Aidan Finn
• How to get more leads and close deals faster with Microsoft’s Marketplaces by Christine Alford
• Microsoft creates industry standards for datacenter hardware storage and security by Kushagra Vaid
• Microsoft readies new cloud SSD storage spec for the Open Compute Project via ZDNet
• Microsoft joins group working to ‘cure’ open-source licensing issues via ZDNet

Videos

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

• Building Security into your DevOps Pipeline | The DevOps Lab via Channel 9
• Using Habitat in Azure | Azure Friday via Channel 9
• Scalable + Secure Data with CosmosDB for Mobile | The Xamarin Show via Channel 9
• Codit share their experience building IoT applications with Azure IoT Edge | Internet of Things Show via Channel 9
• Experimentation using Notebooks in Azure ML with remote compute [Part 3/4] | AI Show via Channel 9
• Connecting Windows IoT Devices To Microsoft IoT Central | Internet of Things Show via Channel 9
• Part 2 of 4: Create an Azure Container Instance with the container image | The Open Source 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 221 – Graph API via The Azure Podcast
• F# and the functional SAFE Stack with Krzysztof Cieślak via Hanselminutes
• Episode 55 – Visio Online via Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast
• The Ethics of Big Data with Cathy O’Neil via .NET Rocks!
• Episode 243 | Managing your Azure costs with Overcast’s Christian Merat via Microsoft Cloud Show
• Episode 243 | Managing your Azure costs with Overcast’s Christian Marat via Microsoft Cloud Show
• Surviving Microservices with Michele Bustamante via .NET Rocks!

General Cloud / Related

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

• Do You Have What it Takes to Be an IoT Developer? by Ryan Ayers
• Microsoft bullish on Congress’ inclusion of CLOUD Act in funding bill via ZDNet
• From Lip Reading to Google Glass and Beyond: The Evolution of Wearable IoT Devices by Ryan Ayers
• Turn your Raspberry Pi into a portable Touchscreen Tablet with SunFounder’s RasPad by Scott Hanselman
• How To Install and Cleanup Visual Studio 2017 Instances by Daniel Cazzulino
• Five tips to move your project to Kubernetes by Alex Ellis
• FPGA Maker Xilinx Says the Future of Computing is ACAP by Jeffrey Burt
• How I use Minecraft to help kids with autism | Stuart Duncan via TED Talks Daily

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.

You can also join the Build Azure Slack Group as well.

About the Author