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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The Weeks Top Links

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

Avere vFXT for Microsoft Azure now in public preview by Rebecca Thompson
Serverless to the Max: Doing Big Things for Small Dollars with Cloudflare Workers and Azure Functions by Troy Hunt
Protect Azure Stack Tenant Workloads with Azure Backup Server by Thomas Maurer
Save money on actuarial compute by retiring your on-premises HPC grids by Nick Leimer
Anti-money laundering – Microsoft Azure helping banks reduce false positives by Howard Bush
Microsoft South Central U.S. datacenter outage takes down a number of cloud services via ZDNet
Using Azure AD B2B collaboration support for Google IDs and Conditional Access by Mike Duddington
Microsoft Azure now supports NVIDIA GPU Cloud for AI, HPC workloads via ZDNet
2018 State of DevOps Report Now Available by Sam Guckenheimer
Serverless: Cold Start War by Mikhail Shilkov
Monitoring environmental conditions near underwater datacenters using Deep Learning by Xiaoyong Zhu, Nile Wilson, Ben Cutler, Lucas Joppa

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)

AKS with Kubenet vs Azure Networking plug-in by Vincent-Philippe Lauzon
Azure 101: Monitoring & Logging Part 1 by Christopher Harrison
Avere vFXT for Microsoft Azure now in public preview by Rebecca Thompson
Get Virtual Machine ScaleSet private IPs by Fabien Dibot
Adding Address Spaces To An Azure Virtual Network by Aidan Finn
Save money on actuarial compute by retiring your on-premises HPC grids by Nick Leimer
Microsoft Azure, the cloud for high performance computing by Brett Tanzer
Monitor all Azure Backup protected workloads using Log Analytics by Kartik P V R
Autoscale Azure Batch pools when running MPI applications by Paul Edwards
Orica’s S/4HANA Foundational Architecture Design on Azure by Cameron
Cross-subscription disaster recovery for Azure virtual machines by Sujay Talasila
DPDK (Data Plane Development Kit) for Linux VMs now generally available by Laxmana Rao Battula
Finding the signal of community in all the noise at Black Hat by Cloud Perspectives Blog

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Changing the Replication Type of an Azure Storage Account by David Giard
Configuring node.js application on Azure App Service with Azure Blob Storage by Kruthi Villivalam
Debugging Node.js applications on Azure App Services Linux/containers by Kruthi Villavalam
Introducing Ghost 2.x on Azure App Service by Radoslav Gatev
Azure App Services: Determine supported dotnet core version by Martin Brandl
Reaching Azure disk storage limit on General Purpose Azure SQL Database Managed Instance by Jovan Popovic

Serverless and Functions as a Service (FaaS)

Building Rest APIs on Top of Azure Cosmos DB Using Azure Functions by BenJarvis
Introduction to Azure Durable Functions by Maxime Rouiller
Serverless to the Max: Doing Big Things for Small Dollars with Cloudflare Workers and Azure Functions by Troy Hunt
Serverless: Cold Start War by Mikhail Shilkov
Logic Apps, Flow connectors will make Automating Video Indexer simpler than ever by Uri Greenberg

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Command-Line / ARM Templates

Using Azure CLI to open Kubernetes dashboard by gpillai
Working with Azure SQL Managed Instance using Azure CLI by Jovan Popovic
Creating a Service Principal with Azure CLI by Vincent-Philippe Lauzon
Using custom SonarQube rules to validate ARM templates by WouterDeKort

Database / Big Data

Exciting new capabilities on Azure HDInsight by Ashish Thapiliyal
Powerful Debugging Tools for Spark for Azure HDInsight by Jenny Jiang
CosmosDB change feed processor – leases and work balancing strategy by Kaduk Frantisek
Azure SQL Data Warehouse Gen2 now generally available in France and Australia by Igor Stanko
How to create a read only user for a SQL Azure database by Benjamin Perkins
Online migration from AWS RDS MySQL to Azure Database for MySQL by Shau Phang
Azure Data Architecture Guide – Blog #2: On-demand big data analytics by Ed Price
Sending emails in Azure SQL Managed Instance by Jovan Popovic
Azure Tips and Tricks 152 – Get the Record Count in Cosmos DB by Michael Crump
Sharing a self-hosted Integration Runtime infrastructure with multiple Data Factories by Abhishek Narain
Automactically move data from Azure Event Hubs to Azure Blob Storage by Abhijit Jana
Act now! Migrate your customers running Windows Server and SQL Server 2008/2008 R2 to Azure by Rob Davies

Internet of Things (IoT)

How to Control Downstream Device from IoT Edge by Wu Shuai
Azure Content Spotlight – Where is the market opportunity for developers of IoT solutions? by chilberto
TOMRA Leverages IoT to Revolutionize Recycling by Peter Cooper
Where is the market opportunity for developers of IoT solutions? by Diego Tamburini
Describe, diagnose, and predict with IoT Analytics by Diego Tamburini
Announcing general availability of Azure IoT Hub’s integration with Azure Event Grid by Ashita Rastogi
Extracting actionable insights from IoT data to drive more efficient manufacturing by Diego Tamburini
Azure IoT Toolkit supports C#, Go, Java, Node.js, PHP, Python and Ruby to develop Azure IoT application in VS Code by formulahendry
Introducing yet another approach for iot compiler toolchains – iotz by Oguz Bastemur
Hardening the security of Azure IoT Edge by Eustsace Asanghanwa
Azure IoT Edge support for Raspbian 8.0/Debian 8.0 by Laurelle

Machine Learning / Artificial Intelligence

Connected Arms – Can AI Revolutionize Prosthetic Devices & Make them More Affordable? by ML Blog Team
Creating and Testing a Bot with the Microsoft Bot Framework by David Giard
Current use cases for machine learning in retail and consumer goods by Marty Donovan
See How AI is Inspiring the Next Generation of Developers by Nile Wilson
Microsoft touts AI, circular microphone advances in overlapped speech recognition work via ZDNet
Finish your insurance actuarial modeling in hours, not days by Scott Seely
Delivering innovation in retail with the flexible and productive Microsoft AI platform by Mariya Zorotovich
Microsoft Azure now supports NVIDIA GPU Cloud for AI, HPC workloads via ZDNet
Two seconds to take a bite out of mobile bank fraud with Artificial Intelligence by Kate Baroni
Turn Whiteboard UX Sketches into Working HTML in Seconds – Introducing Sketch2Code by Tara Shankar Jana
Four trends powering healthcare AI, and what you can do about it by David Houlding
Keeping shelves stocked and consumers happy (and shopping!) by Mariya Zorotovich
Accelerating Artificial Intelligence (AI) in healthcare using Microsoft Azure blueprints by David Starr
Monitoring environmental conditions near underwater datacenters using Deep Learning by Xiaoyong Zhu, Nile Wilson, Ben Cutler, Lucas Joppa
Getting the Swagger.JSON file from #AzureML by Jen Stirrup

Development and DevOps

What happens when you mix Asp.Net Core, different versions of Docker and Azure for the first time by Frank Boucher
VSTS Impact due to Datacenter Outage in South Central US via Visual Studio Team Services
How to get started with Azure and .NET by Andrew B Hall
2018 State of DevOps Report Now Available by Sam Guckenheimer
Helping Go developers build better cloud apps faster by Josh Gavant
WebJobs in Azure with .NET Core 2.1 by Sander Rossel

Containers / Service Fabric

Deploying AKS with ARM Template – Network integration by Vincent-Philippe Lauzon
Microsoft Azure Service Fabric 6.3 Refresh Release (CU1) Notes by Service Fabric Team

Blockchain / Smart Contracts

Azure Blockchain Workbench, Object Detection, and More on The Friday Five! via MVP Award Program
Multi-member consortium support with Azure Blockchain Workbench 1.3.0 by Zeyad Rajabi

Security / Privacy

Federation patterns using Azure AD via SailingRock
Implementing Multiple Identities in your .NET Core Web App — Part 1 by Andreas Helland
Anti-money laundering – Microsoft Azure helping banks reduce false positives by Howard Bush
How to Add an Azure AD Role to a Enterprise Application (Service Principal) by Frank Hu
Using Azure AD B2B collaboration support for Google IDs and Conditional Access by Mike Duddington
Protecting privacy in Microsoft Azure: GDPR, Azure Policy Updates by Pradeep Nair
A Microsoft DevSecOps Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Exercise by Michael C. Fanning

Learning / Certification

MCT Monthly Newsletter – September 2018 via Born to Learn Blog
New Beta Exam! 70-777: Implementing Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB Solutions by Liberty Munson

Azure Stack

Azure Stack cloudapp name resolution by Mark Scholman
Adding SQL IaaS extension into a disconnected Azure Stack by gpillai
Protect Azure Stack Tenant Workloads with Azure Backup Server by Thomas Maurer
Sync Azure Blob Storage with Azure Stack Blob Storage by Thomas Maurer

Azure Government

How to configure TLS versions in App Service and Functions apps in Azure Government by Sachin Dubey

Events

Join the Bing Maps APIs team at Microsoft Ignite 2018 in Orlando, Florida by Bing Team
Microsoft Azure Data welcomes attendees to VLDB 2018 by Rohan Kumar

Other

New! Azure Starter Packs now available by Karina Homme
Azure Maps Simplified by Premier Devleoper
Windows Server 2019 – What is coming Next by Thomas Maurer
Reduce costs by optimizing actuarial risk compute on Azure by Nick Leimer
Azure Media Services: Live Streaming by David Giard
Azure Tips and Tricks 154 – How to quickly check the EndPoint API of QnA Maker by Michael Crump
Azure Tips and Tricks Part 150 – Use the Mac Touch Bar to launch the Azure Portal by Michael Crump
Microsoft South Central U.S. datacenter outage takes down a number of cloud services via ZDNet
Driving industry transformation with Azure by Premier Developer
Azure Content Spotlight – Migrate Apps to Azure by Sjoukje Zaal
Why it is important to create Azure support requests by Kirill Kotlyarenko
Adding Closed Captions to a Video with Azure Media Services by David Giard
Azure Tips and Tricks 153 – How to get the Azure Account Tenant Id? by Michael Crump
A quick take on the State of Hybrid Cloud survey by Ellen Ernstberger
Expanded Azure Blueprint for FFIEC compliant workloads by Alan Ross

Videos

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

Enhanced productivity using Azure Data Factory visual tools | Azure Friday via Channel 9
Go on Azure: Part 4—Cloud-native Go apps | Azure Friday via Channel 9
Monitoring And Diagnostics of an IoT Solution with Azure IoT Hub | Internet of Things Show via Channel 9
Azure Event Hubs with Kafka coolness | Tuesdays With Corey via Channel 9
Windows IoT #5: Using Device Methods with IoT Hub (Getting Started Series) | Visual Studio Toolbox via Channel 9
Custom Vision – Object Detection Made Easy | The Xamarin Show via Channel 9
Douglas Crockford on Clutter in Programming Languages by David Giard
Azure Event Hubs with Kafka coolness | Tuesdays With Corey by RicksertCDN
IoT In Action – Introducing Azure Sphere | Internet of Things Show via Channel 9
Customer Identity Management with Azure AD B2C | On .NET via Channel 9
Azure Media Services – Uploading, Encoding, and Sharing a Video via David Giard
Azure IoT Hub and Azure Event Grid | Internet of Things Show via Channel 9
Go on Azure: Part 3—Go on Web Apps and Azure Kubernetes Service | Azure Friday via Channel 9
Azure Automation via Azure Friday
Azure Stack – An extension of Azure | Azure Friday via Channel 9
Azure Site Recovery between Regions | Tuesdays With Corey via Channel 9
Go on Azure: Part 5—Build apps with the Azure SDK for Go via Azure Friday
Go on Azure: Part 4—Cloud-native Go apps via Azure Friday
Go on Azure: Part 1—Build Go apps with Visual Studio Code | Azure Friday via Channel 9
Go on Azure: Part 6—Events and messaging via Azure Friday
Go on Azure: Part 7—Build a Go app with Buffalo and deploy to Azure via Azure Friday
Go on Azure: Part 2—CI/CD, Docker, and Kubernetes with VSTS | Azure Friday via Channel 9
Awesome Demo of Azure Migrate tool | Tuesdays With Corey via Channel 9
Microsoft Smart IoT Campus | 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 245 – Azure Certifications via The Azure Podcast
Accelerate: The State of Dev Ops with Dr. Nicole Forsgren via Hanselminutes
Episode 81 – Microsoft Intune and Mobile Device Management via Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast
Episode 269 | LIVE at SharePoint Fest Seattle Day 2 and ACs Continuous Collaboration Keynote via Microsoft Cloud Show
Episode 268 | LIVE at SharePoint Fest Seattle via Microsoft Cloud Show
Episode 244 – Azure Container Instances via The Azure Podcast
Episode 80 – Hybrid Azure Active Directory Join via Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast
Power BI 43: What’s new in the August 2018 update via The Microsoft Business Applications Podcast
PowerApps Podcast 5: PowerApps in Education with Brian Dang from Microsoft via The Microsoft Business Applications Podcast
Episode 267 | Future of App Development with Azure AD via Microsoft Cloud Show
Episode 79 – Azure Application Gateway via Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast
Episode 243 – Azure File Sync via The Azure Podcast
The Nine Knights of Azure with Adam Cogan via .NET Rocks!
Inside Linux on Windows with WSL and Tara Raj via Hanselminutes
Episode 242 – Azure FastTrack 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:

Dynamic Programming Language Julia 1.0 Released by nicknormal
Are Hyperscalers And Clouds Builders Smashing Up An IT Pangea? by Timothy Prickett Morgan
How IoT is Powering the Fourth Industrial Revolution in Broadcasting by Jeisica Lapsiwala
Future Clouds Could Be Just Containers On Bare Metal by Timothy Prickett Morgan
Apple Autonomous Test Vehicle Involved in Accident on August 24 by Juli Clover
Are Containers Replacing Virtual Machines? by Jenny Fong
Intel’s Exascale Dataflow Engine Drops X86 And Von Neumann by Timothy Prickett Morgan
System And Chip Architecture Shifts To A Heterogeneous World by Jeffrey Burt
Dell EMC Leans On VMware In The Cloud by Jeffrey Burt
Xilinx Unveils xDNN FPGA Architecture for AI Inference by Nicole Hemsoth
NVIDIA Announces its new RTX GPUs, 2080 and 2080Ti Coming Next Month by Brad Sams
Arm Says Future Chips to Offer Desktop-Class Performance by Paul Thurrott

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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.