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!

The Weeks Top Links

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

Analyzing Facebook’s recent access token exploit impact on Azure AD B2C customers by Vikram Kakumani
U.S. Air Force awards $30M+ Enterprise IT-as-a-Service contract to Microsoft by Azure Gov Team
Windows Server 2019 released, get it now! by Thomas Maurer
Announcing Orleans 2.1 by Reuben Bond

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)

Use Hybrid Connections to Incrementally Migrate Applications to the Cloud by Andrew B Hall
Ephemeral OS Disk in limited preview by Jing Xu
Windows Server 2019 released, get it now! by Thomas Maurer
Announcing Orleans 2.1 by Reuben Bond
Ansible 2.7: What’s new for Azure by Kylie Jiang
Backup Windows 10 to Microsoft Azure Backup by Thomas Maurer
Azure 101: Networking Part 1 by Christopher Harrison

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

PHP Minor Version Update for November 2018 by Jennifer Lee

Serverless and Functions as a Service (FaaS)

Azure Tips and Tricks Part 161 – Change the Azure Function runtime version after Deployment by Michael Crump
Dependency injection for Azure Function v2 by Boris Wilhelms
Twitter AMA with the Azure Functions team #FunctionsAMA! by Oded Dvoskin
Azure Functions 2.0 demo: A Python + GitHub webserver by sendmarsh

Database / Big Data

Expanding to more Azure regions for online migration by Shau Phang
Announcing Azure database services for MySQL and PostgreSQL for Azure Government customers by Bryan Dsouza
Bring Your Own Keys for Apache Kafka on HDInsight by Dhruv Goel
Cloud Scale Analytics meets Office 365 data – empowered by Azure Data Factory by Shirley Wang
Enabling real-time data warehousing with Azure SQL Data Warehouse by Ellis Butterfield
HDInsight Enterprise Security Package now generally available by Omid Mola

Internet of Things (IoT)

Ignite 2018: cloud meets intelligent edge by Microsoft Cloud Perspectives Blog Team
IoT solutions for manufacturing: build or buy? by Diego Tamburini
Gaining insights from industrial IoT data with Microsoft Azure by Ercenk Keresteci

Machine Learning / Artificial Intelligence

Accelerating healthcare AI startups in the cloud by David Houlding
Deep Learning Without Labels by ML Blog Team
Spark + AI Summit Europe – Developing from cloud to the edge by Rohan Kumar
Eight use cases for machine learning in insurance by Scott Seely
Cooling down storage costs in the healthcare AI blueprint by David Starr
World-class PyTorch support on Azure by Minna Xiao
How DeepMind Plans to Build Safe AI by Stephanie

Development and DevOps

Getting started with Universal Packages by Mitch Denny

Containers / Service Fabric

Microsoft Azure Service Fabric 6.3 Second Refresh Release Notes by Service Fabric Team

Blockchain / Smart Contracts

GoChain blockchain available on Azure by Cale Teeter

Security / Privacy

Analyzing Facebook’s recent access token exploit impact on Azure AD B2C customers by Vikram Kakumani
Provide feedback on detected threats in Azure Security Center by Tamer Salman
Azure AD App Tracking with Logic Apps by Jason Venema
Protecting banks through cloud-based sanction screening solutions by Howard Bush
Advanced Threat Protection for Azure Storage now in public preview by Ron Matchoro

Learning / Certification

Passed Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator by Thomas Maurer
Microsoft Certification: Simplifying the Journey by Allison Kraker

Azure Government

U.S. Air Force awards $30M+ Enterprise IT-as-a-Service contract to Microsoft by Azure Gov Team
Announcing Azure Security Center availability for Azure Government customers by Azure Gov Team

Azure Stack

Download Microsoft Ignite 2018 Azure Stack Sessions by Kristopher Turner
How to Call Azure Stack API via Client Credential Grant by Wu Shuai

Other

Microsoft joins LOT Network, helping protect developers against patent assertions by Erich Andersen
Microsoft takes another step to fight patent trolls by joining the LOT Network via ZDNet
Fuel My Awesome: Celebrating developers and what makes them awesome via Microsoft Azure Blog
Microsoft releases MS-DOS v1.25 and v2.0 Source Code as Open Source on GitHub by Mike Barela
Microsoft open sources MS-DOS again, this time on GitHub via ZDNet
Azure Marketplace new offers – Volume 20 by Christine Alford
Time synchronization for financial services in Azure by Alan Ross
Azure Lab Services: Enable multi-VM environments through nested virtualization by Tanmayee Kamath

Videos

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

Full-stack end-to-end monitoring with Azure Monitor via Azure Friday
Azure CosmosDB with SQL API by David Giard
What’s new in the IoT Toolkit extension for VS Code | Internet of Things Show via Channel 9
Full-stack end-to-end monitoring with Azure Monitor | Azure Friday via Channel 9
Secure Development on Azure Government – Part 2 by Steve Michelotti
S02 E01: Five Things About Azure DevOps | Five Things via Channel 9
Azure Sphere Architecture Discussion | Internet of Things Show via Channel 9
Introducing Microsoft Learn | Channel 9 Live at Microsoft Ignite 2018 via Channel 9
Get cloud-scale analytics of Office 365 data with Azure Data Factory | Azure Friday 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 249 – Managed Identities via The Azure Podcast
Episode 87 – The Business of Azure Blockchain with Paul Swider via Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast
Refresh the Cache 2: Future of Dynamics 365 Portals with Dileep Singh and Smith Codio from Microsoft via The Microsoft Business Applications Podcast
Episode 273 | Live from Microsoft Ignite 2018 with Julia White 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:

Full Qubit Access a Game-Changer for Quantum Development by Nicole Hemsoth
In A Parallel Universe, Data Warehouses Run On GPUs by Timothy Prickett Morgan
Wi-Fi Alliance Simplifies Wi-Fi Naming Scheme With Upcoming ‘Wi-Fi 6’ Release by Juli Clover
Headless CMS and Decoupled CMS in .NET Core by Scott Hanselman
Inferring The Future Of The FPGA, And Then Making It by Timothy Prickett Morgan
Boosting the Clock for High Performance FPGA Inference by Nicole Hemsoth
Deep Learning Just Dipped into Exascale Territory by Nicole Hemsoth
Apple Further Refutes Bloomberg Report Suggesting Chinese Spies Tampered With iCloud Servers by Juli Clover

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.