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!

Microsoft Build Conference Next Week!

Next week, May 7, 2018, is when Microsoft’s Build Conference kicks off this year! You may have noticed by watching the Build Azure Weekly newsletter / blog post the last few weeks there have been a ton of new feature and service announcements recently. It appears the different product teams are gearing up for Build releases and announcements. In addition to the recent announcements, we will likely see quite a few new announcements and product releases made either directly at Build during the keynote talks, or online surrounding the event. This is something that generally happens every year at the event.

There are some great “Featured” speakers lined up for the Build Conference, which include the following. Rather than list job titles, the following lists topic areas, just as the official Microsoft Build information does.

Satya Nadella, Intelligent Cloud & Intelligent Edge
Scott Guthrie, Cloud & Artificial Intelligence
Joe Belfiore, Windows
Scott Hanselman, Visual Studio & .NET
Elaine Chang, Intelligent Bots
Mark Russinovich, Cloud & Microsoft Azure
Cindy Alvarez, UX Design
Aaron Gustafson, Progressive Web App Development

If you are not able to attend Build in-person next week, you can attend virtually through the Microsoft Build Live stream online for Free!

The Weeks Top Links

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

Gartner recognizes Microsoft as a leader in enterprise integration by Ch. Wolf
Cosmos DB Solves Common Data Challenges in App Development by Jasmine Greenaway
Organizing subscriptions and resource groups within the Enterprise by Lyle Dodge
Storage scenarios for Cray in Azure by Ben Cotton
Join Microsoft Build Live for the ultimate digital experience by Microsoft Azure
Migrating your apps, data and infrastructure to Azure is easier than ever by Julia White
Azure Container Instances now generally available by Corey Sanders

Azure Service Updates

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

Monthly Sponsor

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)

Storage scenarios for Cray in Azure by Ben Cotton
Azure Analysis Services integration with VNets via On-Premises Data Gateway by Christian Wade
Feature update: Redeploy a Lab Virtual Machine by Tanmayee Kamath
Azure Load Balancing Solutions: A guide to help you choose the correct option by Fidelis Ekezue
Migrating your apps, data and infrastructure to Azure is easier than ever by Julia White
Per disk metrics for Managed & Unmanaged Disks now in public preview by Kay Singh
OS Disk Swap for Managed Virtual Machines now available by Kay Singh

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Azure Tips and Tricks Part 119 – Determine the outbound IP addresses of your Azure App Service by Michael Crump
Application Insights in Disconnection Mode by Adel Ghabboun
Azure Tips and Tricks Part 117 – Enable HTTP 2.0 support for Azure App Service by Michael Crump

Serverless and Functions as a Service (FaaS)

Gartner recognizes Microsoft as a leader in enterprise integration by Ch. Wolf
Customize Your Workflow Notifications with App Center and Azure Logic Apps by Simina Pasat
Reusable PowerApps Control Templates by David Nissimoff
Azure Functions: Cold Starts in Numbers by Mikhail Shilkov
Serverless Text Moderation with Azure Functions and the Azure Cognitive Services by Christos Matskas
Microsoft Azure becomes Magic Quadrant leader in Enterprise iPaaS by Eldert Grootenboer

Command-Line / ARM Templates

Schedule VM Downtime With Azure Automation And PowerShell by Timothy Warner

Database / Big Data

HDInsight# Hive Frequently Asked Questions by Ashish Thapliyal
Accidentally deleted all my production data in Azure Table Storage!!! What now? by rickcau
Modelling your Data in Azure Data Lake by Jen Stirrup
New features in Azure Data Factory v2 SSIS Integration Runtime : Enterprise Edition, Custom Setup and 3rd party extensibility by Faruk Celik
Cosmos DB Solves Common Data Challenges in App Development by Jasmine Greenaway
Azure Toolkit for Eclipse integrates with HDInsight Ambari and supports Spark 2.2 by Jenny Jiang
Azure SQL Database – scalability by Jovan Popovic
Azure Toolkit for IntelliJ integrates with HDInsight Ambari and supports Spark 2.2 by Jenny Jiang
Bing Custom Search: Build a customized search experience in minutes by Mahesh Balachandran
Replicated Tables now generally available in Azure SQL Data Warehouse by Ron Ortloff
Accelerate real-time big data analytics with Spark connector for Microsoft SQL Databases by Xiaochen Wu
Azure #CosmosDB: Secure, private, compliant by Rafat Sarosh
Azure SQL Database – the database engine that cannot die by Jovan Popovic
HDInsight tools for VS Code now supports argparse and Spark 2.2 by Jenny Jiang
How Azure SQL Database makes database management easier? by Jovan Popovic

Internet of Things (IoT)

Welcome to the Azure IoT, Devices and Cognitive Services CSS Team Blog by Doug Stewart
The edge of possibility: best practices for IoT-driven infrastructure transformation by Olivier Bloch
Azure IoT Hub SDK officially provides native iOS support by Yi Zhong
Train an IoT-equipped drone and compete to win at Microsoft Build by Microsoft Azure
Propel your IoT platform to the cloud with Azure Time Series Insights! by Chandrika Shankarnayan

Machine Learning / Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence Learning Resources by FitGeekGirl
Deep Learning for Emojis with VS Code Tools for AI by Erika Menezes
Transfer Learning for Text using Deep Learning Virtual Machine (DLVM) by Anusua Trivedi, Wee Hyong Tok

Development and DevOps

Azure DevOps: Use VSTS conditions to control build or release flow by gdavi
VSTS Public Projects Limited Preview by Jamie Cool
Azure Tips and Tricks Part 118 – FREE E-book titled Azure Quick Start Guide for .NET Developers by Michael Crump
Get the Azure Quick Start Guide for .NET Developers by Barry Luijbregts

Containers / Service Fabric

How to create a docker image with a node js express website, push it to azure container registration(ACR), create a linux web app for containers and configure it to run the docker image stored in the ACR. by Lukas Steindl
Directly deploy non-containerized application to Azure App Service on Linux From Visual Studio by Abhijit Jana
Getting started with Docker Containers in Azure by Vincent-Philippe Lauzon
Azure Container Instances now generally available by Corey Sanders
Azure Container Instance – Getting Started by Vincent-Philippe Lauzon
Monitoring Service Fabric clusters with Dynatrace by Deep Kapur
Second update on the Service Fabric 6.2 release via Service Fabric Team

Blockchain / Smart Contracts

Blockchain in the Enterprise by Farah Deendar, Chile Okor

Security / Privacy

How to Get to the Keys/Secrets From Azure Active Directory by Frank Hu
The 3 ways Azure improves your security by Arpan Shah
Certificate Transparency by Thomas W Shinder
How Azure Security Center helps detect attacks against your Linux machines by Russell McDonald
Azure Content Spotlight – Password-less Sign-in to Azure & Windows 10 by Sjoukje Zaal

Learning / Certification

Prove Your Office 365 Skills, and Reap the Benefits by Selina Winter

Events

Join Microsoft Build Live for the ultimate digital experience by Microsoft Azure
Slides from Global Azure Day Milwaukee by Cameron Vetter

Azure Government

Application Security Groups now generally available in Azure Government by Mike Ketchum
How to use Azure Monitor for Azure Government by Steve Michelotti

Other

Azure Tip: Global Subscription Filtering in Azure Portal by Abhijit Jana
Organizing subscriptions and resource groups within the Enterprise by Lyle Dodge
Microsoft HoloLens: Partner Spotlight with PTC & BAE via Microsoft HoloLens

Videos

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

Ingest, prepare, and transform using Azure Databricks and Data Factory | Azure Friday via Channel 9
Microsoft Build 2018: Seattle Sights | Microsoft Build 2018 via Channel 9
iOS SDK for Azure IoT Hub | Internet of Things Show via Channel 9
Microsoft Azure Sphere Leadership Vision via Microsoft YouTube
Interview with TQ (Microservices Versioning) via Channel 9
Get started with Azure for .NET developers | Azure Friday via Channel 9
Virtual Kubelet Introduction | Azure Friday via Channel 9
Analyzing your applications with Application Insights | On .NET via Channel 9
Azure Container Instances GA: A new compute primitive via Azure Friday
Part 3 of 4: Create and use Azure Key Vault Secrets | The Open Source Show via Channel 9
A tour of the Microsoft AI & IoT Insider Labs | Internet of Things Show via Channel 9
Azure Service Bus and the .NET Standard SDK | On .NET 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 226 – API Management Best Practices via The Azure Podcast
Episode 60 – Azure Cloud Shell (or 30 Minutes About A Text Box) via Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast

General Cloud / Related

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

Introducing OpenFaaS Cloud by Alex Ellis
Enhancing Pwned Passwords Privacy by Exclusively Supporting Anonymity by Troy Hunt
What Is API Testing and Why Should We Be Using It? by Kristin Jackvony
Docker for Desktop is Certified Kubernetes by Gareth Rushgrove
How Blockchains Are Revolutionizing Gaming by Takara
A printable, flexible, organic solar cell | Hannah Bürckstümmer 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

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.