Preview | Generally available | News & updates | Technical content | Azure shows | Events | Customers, partners, and industries
Now in preview
Announcing the Azure Functions Premium plan for enterprise serverless workloads
We are pleased to announce the Azure Functions Premium plan in preview, our newest Functions hosting model. This plan enables a suite of long requested scaling and connectivity options without compromising on event-based scale. With the Premium plan you can use pre-warmed instances to run your app with no delay after being idle, you can run on more powerful instances, and you can connect to VNETs, all while automatically scaling in response to load.
Windows Server 2019 support now available for Windows Containers on Azure App Service
We are happy to announce Windows Server 2019 Container support in public preview. Using a custom Windows container in App Service lets you make OS changes that your app needs, so it’s easy to migrate on-premises app that requires custom OS and software configuration. Windows Container support is available in our West US, East US, West Europe, North Europe, East Asia, and East Australia regions. Windows Containers are not supported in App Service Environments at present.
Web application firewall at Azure Front Door service
We have heard from many of you that security is a top priority when moving web applications onto the cloud. Today, we are very excited to announce our public preview of the Web Application Firewall (WAF) for the Azure Front Door service. By combining the global application and content delivery network with natively integrated WAF engine, we now offer a highly available platform helping you deliver your web applications to the world, secure and fast!
Azure Media Services: The latest Video Indexer updates from NAB Show 2019
After sweeping up multiple awards with the general availability release of Azure Media Services’ Video Indexer, including the 2018 IABM for innovation in content management and the prestigious Peter Wayne award, our team has remained focused on building a wealth of new features and models to allow any organization with a large archive of media content to unlock insights from their content; and use those insights improve searchability, enable new user scenarios and accessibility, and open new monetization opportunities. At NAB Show 2019, we are announcing a wealth of new enhancements to Video indexer’s models and experiences.
Now generally available
Extending Azure security capabilities
As more organizations are delivering innovation faster by moving their businesses to the cloud, increased security is critically important for every industry. Azure has built-in security controls across data, applications, compute, networking, identity, threat protection, and security management so you can customize protection and integrate partner solutions. Microsoft Azure Security Center is the central hub for monitoring and protecting against related incidents within Azure. We love making Azure Security Center richer for our customers, and were excited to share some great updates last week at Hannover Messe 2019. Read on to learn about them.
Event-driven Java with Spring Cloud Stream Binder for Azure Event Hubs
Spring Cloud Stream Binder for Azure Event Hubs is now generally available. It is now easier to build highly scalable event-driven Java apps using Spring Cloud Stream with Event Hubs, a fully managed, real-time data ingestion service on Azure that is resilient and reliable service for any situation. This includes emergencies, thanks to its geo-disaster recovery and geo-replication features.
Fast and optimized connectivity and delivery solutions on Azure
We’re announcing the availability of innovative and industry leading Azure services that will help the attendees of the National Association of Broadcasters Show realize their future vision to deliver for their audiences: Azure Front Door Service (AFD), ExpressRoute Direct and Global Reach, as well as some cool new additions to both AFD and our Content Delivery Network (CDN). April 6-11, Microsoft will be at NAB Show 2019 in Las Vegas, bringing together an industry centered on the ability to deliver richer content experiences for audiences around the word.
Azure Front Door Service is now generally available
We’re announcing the general availability of Azure Front Door Service (AFD) which we launched in preview last year – a scalable and secure entry point for fast delivery of your global applications. AFD is your one stop solution for your global website/application. Azure Front Door Service enables you to define, manage, and monitor the global routing for your web traffic by optimizing for best performance and instant global failover for high availability. With Front Door, you can transform your global (multi-region) consumer and enterprise applications into robust, high-performance personalized modern applications, APIs, and content that reach a global audience with Azure.
News and updates
Unlock dedicated resources and enterprise features by migrating to Service Bus Premium
Azure Service Bus has been the Messaging as a Service (MaaS) option of choice for our enterprise customers. We’ve seen tremendous growth to our customer base and usage of the existing namespaces, which inspires us to bring more features to the service. We recently expanded Azure Service Bus to support all Azure regions with Availability Zones to help our customers build more resilient solutions. We also expanded the Azure Service Bus Premium tier to more regions to enable our customers to leverage many enterprise ready features on their Azure Service Bus namespaces while also being closer to their customers.
Device template library in IoT Central
With the new addition of a device template library into our Device Templates page, we are making it easier than ever to onboard and model your devices. Now, when you get started with creating a new template, you can choose between building one from scratch or you can quickly select from a library of existing device templates. Today you’ll be able to choose from our MXChip, Raspberry Pi, or Windows 10 IoT Core templates. We will be working to improve this library by adding more device templates which provide customer value.
Alerts in Azure are now all the more consistent!
Azure Monitor alerts provides rich alerting capabilities on a variety of telemetry such as metrics, logs, and activity logs. Over the past year, we have unified the alerting experience by providing a common consumption experience including UX and API for alerts. However, the payload format for alerts remained different which puts the burden of building and maintaining multiple integrations, one for each alert type based on telemetry, on the user. We released a new common alert schema that provides a single extensible format for all alert types.
GPS Week Number Rollover – Microsoft has you covered!
Microsoft has completed preparations for the upcoming GPS Week Number Rollover to ensure that users of Microsoft time sources do not experience any impact. Microsoft is aware of this upcoming transition and has reviewed devices and procedures to ensure readiness. Azure products and services that rely on GPS timing devices have received declaration of compliance with IS-GPS-200 from the device manufacturers, mitigating risk to users of Microsoft time sources.
Microsoft Azure portal April 2019 update
This month’s updates include improvements to IaaS, Azure Data Explorer, Security Center, Recovery Services, Role-Based Access Control, Support, and Intune.
Updates to geospatial features in Azure Stream Analytics – Cloud and IoT edge
Azure Stream Analytics is a fully managed PaaS service that helps you run real-time analytics and complex event processing logic on telemetry from devices and applications. We announced several enhancements to geospatial features in Azure Stream Analytics. These features will help customers manage a much larger set of mobile assets and vehicle fleet easily, accurately, and more contextually than previously possible. These capabilities are available both in the cloud and on Azure IoT edge.
Self-service exchange and refund for Azure Reservations
Azure Reservations provide flexibility to help meet your evolving needs. You can exchange a reservation for another reservation of the same type, and you can refund a reservation if you no longer need it.
Azure Sphere Retail and Retail Evaluation feeds
Azure Sphere developers might have noticed that we now have two Azure Sphere OS feeds where once there was only one. The Azure Sphere Preview feed that delivered over-the-air OS updates has been replaced by feeds named Retail Azure Sphere OS and Retail Evaluation Azure Sphere OS. The Retail feed provides a production-ready OS and is intended for broad deployment to end-user installations. The Retail Evaluation feed provides each new OS for 14 days before we release it to the Retail feed. It is intended for backwards compatibility testing.
Azure Updates
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Technical content
Step up your machine learning process with Azure Machine Learning service
The Azure Machine Learning service provides a cloud-based service you can use to develop, train, test, deploy, manage, and track machine learning models. With Automated Machine Learning and other advancements available, training and deploying machine learning models is easier and more approachable than ever. Automated machine learning helps users of all skill levels accelerate their pipelines, leverage open source frameworks, and scale easily. Automated machine learning, a form of deep machine learning, makes machine learning more accessible across an organization.
Schema validation with Event Hubs
Event Hubs is fully managed, real-time ingestion Azure service. It integrates seamlessly with other Azure services. It also allows Apache Kafka clients and applications to talk to Event Hubs without any code changes. Apache Avro is a binary serialization format. It relies on schemas (defined in JSON format) that define what fields are present and their type. Since it’s a binary format, you can produce and consume Avro messages to and from the Event Hubs. Event Hubs’ focus is on the data pipeline. It doesn’t validate the schema of the Avro events.
SheHacksPurple: Changes to Azure Security Center Subscription
In this short video Tanya Janca will describe recent changes to Azure Security Center Subscription coverage; it now covers storage containers and app service.
PowerShell Basics: Finding the right VM size with Get-AzVMSize
Finding the right virtual machine for your needs can be difficult especially with all of the options available. New options seem to come around often so you may need to regularly check the VMs available within your Azure region. Using PowerShell makes it quick and easy to see all of the VM sizes so you can get to building your infrastructure, and Az-VM will help you determine the VM sizes you can deploy in specific regions, into availability sets, or what size a machine in your environment is running.
Hands-on Lab: Creating an IoT Solution with Kotlin Azure Functions
Dave Glover walks through building an end-to-end IoT Solution with Azure IoT Hub, IoT Hub, Kotlin based Azure Functions and Azure SignalR.
An Ambivert’s Guide to Azure Functions
Chloe Condon will walk you through how to use Azure Functions, Twilio, and a Flic Button to create an app to trigger calls/texts to your phone.
Making Machine Learning Approachable
Often we hear about machine learning and deep learning as a topic that only researchers, mathematicians, or PhDs can be smart enough grasp. It is possible to explain seemingly complex fundamental concepts and algorithms of machine learning without using cryptic terminology or confusing notation.
Monitoring on Azure HDInsight Part 2: Cluster health and availability
This is the second blog post in a four-part series on Monitoring on Azure HDInsight. Monitoring on Azure HDInsight Part 1: An Overview discusses the three main monitoring categories: cluster health and availability, resource utilization and performance, and job status and logs. This blog covers the first of those topics, cluster health and availability, in more depth.
Azure shows
Episode 273 – Application Patterns in Azure | The Azure Podcast
Rasmus Lystrøm, a Senior Microsoft consultant from Denmark, shares his thoughts and ideas around building applications that take advantage of Azure and allow developers to focus on the business problem at hand.
Azure Blob Storage on Azure IoT Edge | Internet of Things Show
Azure Blob Storage on IoT Edge is a light-weight Azure Consistent module which provides local Block blob storage. It comes with configurable abilities to: Automatically tier the data from IoT Edge device to Azure; Automatically delete the data from IoT edge device after specified time.
Azure Pipelines | Visual Studio Toolbox
In this episode, Robert is joined by Mickey Gousset, who takes us on a tour of Azure Pipelines. He shows how straightforward it is to automate your builds and deployments using Azure Pipelines. They are a great way to started on your path to using DevOps practices to ship faster at higher quality.
Deploy WordPress with Azure Database for MariaDB | Azure Friday
Learn how to deploy WordPress backed by Azure Database for MariaDB. It is the latest addition to the open source database services available on the Azure platform and further strengthens Azure’s commitment to open source and its communities. The service offers built-in high availability, automatic backups, and scaling of resources to meet your workload’s needs.
Hybrid enterprise serverless in Microsoft Azure | Microsoft Mechanics
Apply serverless compute securely and confidently to any workload with new enterprise capabilities. Jeff Hollan, Sr. Program Manager from the Azure Serverless team, demonstrates how you can turn on managed service identities and protect secrets with Key Vault integration, control virtual network connectivity for both Functions and Logic Apps, build apps that integrate with systems inside your virtual network using event-driven capabilities and set cost thresholds to control how much you want to scale with the Azure Functions Premium plan.
Virtual node autoscaling and Azure Dev Spaces in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) | Microsoft Mechanics
Recent updates to the Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) for developers and ops. Join, Program Manager for Azure Kubernetes Service, Ria Bhatia as she shows you the new autoscaling options using virtual nodes as well as how you can use Azure Dev Spaces to test your AKS apps without simulating dependencies. Also, check out the and new ways to troubleshoot and monitor your Kubernetes apps with Azure Monitor.
How to host a static website with Azure Storage | Azure Tips and Tricks
In this edition of Azure Tips and Tricks, learn how you can host a static website running in Azure Storage in a few steps.
How to use the Azure Activity Log | Azure Portal Series
The Azure Activity Log informs you of the who, the what and the when for operations in your Azure resources. In this video of the Azure Portal “How To” Series, learn what activity logs are in the Azure Portal, how to access it, and how to make use of them.
Ted Neward on the ‘Ops’ Side of DevOps | Azure DevOps Podcast
Ted Neward and Jeffrey Palermo are going to be talking about the ‘Ops’ (AKA the operations) side of DevOps. They discuss how operations is implemented in the DevOps movement, the role of operations, how Dev and Ops should work together, what companies should generally understand around the different roles, where the industry is headed, and Ted’s many recommendations in the world of DevOps.
Episode 5 – CodeCamping with Philly.NET founder Bill Wolff | AzureABILITY
Philly.NET founder and coding-legend Bill Wolff visits the podcast to talk about both the forthcoming Philly Code Camp 2019.1 and the user-group experience in general.
Events
Welcome to NAB Show 2019 from Microsoft Azure!
At NAB Show 2019 this week in Las Vegas we’re announcing new Azure rendering, Azure Media Services, Video Indexer and Azure Networking capabilities to help you achieve more. We’ll also showcase how partners such as Zone TV and Nexx.TV are using Microsoft AI and Azure Cognitive Services to create more personalized content and improve monetization of existing media assets.
Deliver New Services | Hannover Messe 2019
With intelligent manufacturing technology, you can deliver new services, innovate faster to reduce time to market, and increase your margins. At the Hannover Messe 2019 event, discover how Microsoft and partners are empowering companies to create new business value with digital services to develop data-driven and AI-enhanced products and services.
Database administrators, discover gold in the cloud
Data is referred to these days as “the new oil” or “black gold” of industry. If the typical Fortune 100 company gains access to a mere 10 percent more of their data, that can result in increased revenue of millions of dollars. Recently, one of our teams discovered new technology that enables us to do more with less—like agile development helping us deploy new features and software faster to market, and DevOps ensuring it was done with less impact to mission-critical systems. To learn more, attend a free webinar where we’ll be sharing more on the many advantages of managing data in the cloud, and how your company’s “black gold” will make you tomorrow’s data hero.
Customers, partners, and industries
IoT in Action: Enabling cloud transformation across industries
The intelligent cloud and intelligent edge are sparking massive transformation across industries. As computing gets more deeply embedded in the real world, powerful new opportunities arise to transform revenue, productivity, safety, customer experiences, and more. According to a white paper by Keystone Strategy, digital transformation leaders generate eight percent more per year in operating income than other enterprises. Here we lay out a typical cloud transformation journey and provide examples of how the cloud is transforming city government, industrial IoT, and oil and gas innovators.
Enabling precision medicine with integrated genomic and clinical data
Kanteron Systems Platform is a patient-centric, workflow-aware, precision medicine solution. Their solution to data in silos, detached from the point of care integrates many key types of healthcare data for a complete patient longitudinal record to power precision medicine including medical imaging, digital pathology, clinical genomics, and pharmacogenomic data.
Spinnaker continuous delivery platform now with support for Azure
Spinnaker is an open source, multi-cloud continuous delivery platform for releasing software changes with high velocity and confidence. It is being chosen by a growing number of enterprises as the open source continuous deployment platform used to modernize their application deployments. With this blog post and the recent release of Spinnaker (1.13), we are excited to announce that Microsoft has worked with the core Spinnaker team to ensure Azure deployments are integrated into Spinnaker.
The future of manufacturing is open
At Hannover Messe 2019, we launched the Open Manufacturing Platform (OMP) together with the BMW Group, our partner on this initiative. Built on the Microsoft Azure Industrial IoT cloud platform, the OMP will provide a reference architecture and open data model framework for community members who will both contribute to and learn from others around industrial IoT projects.
Azure Stack HCI solutions, Premium Block Blob Storage and new capabilities in the Azure AI space! | Azure This Week – A Cloud Guru
This time on Azure This Week, Lars discusses Microsoft’s hybrid cloud strategy which gets another push with hyper-converged infrastructure, Azure Premium Block Blob Storage is now generally available, and AI developers get more goodies on the Azure platform.
Be sure to check out the new series from A Cloud Guru, Azure Fireside Chats.