Azure News (July 2018)

This blog post is conceived so that in a few minutes you can get an overview of what has been going on in Azure last month, with a compilation of Azure announcements. My highlight this month are (again) the storage news (WORM, Netapp, Data Box Disk, File Sync GA), followed closely by the innovations in Azure Networking (Azure Firewall, Azure virtual WAN). I guess I cannot hide my IaaS background 😊. Which ones are your favorites?

Azure generic

• Check the sessions of the latest Microsoft Inspire conference.
• How Microsoft Azure Stack means transformation and opportunities for partners
• Announcing the Expert Managed Service Provider program

Management

• Ansible 2.6: What’s new for Azure: four new modules and tutorials including AKS and VMSS
• Azure management groups now in general availability: for easier management of multiple subscriptions
• New recommendations in Azure Advisor, including Reserved Instances and Traffic Manager parameters, amongst others
• Announcing availability of Azure Managed Application in AzureGov
• Azure cost forecast API and other updates in Cost Management, including PowerShell support
• Announcing the Azure Cloud Shell editor in collaboration with Visual Studio Code

IaaS

• Compute:
  • Decision tree for Azure compute services
  • How to upgrade your financial analysis capabilities with Azure: two documents describing the Risk Grid Computing solution:
    • Risk Grid Computing Overview
    • Risk Grid Computing Solution Guide
  • Agile SAP development with SAP Cloud Platform on Azure
• Storage:
  • Azure NetApp Files now in public preview
  • Azure File Sync is now generally available!
  • Microsoft Azure launches tamper-proof Azure Immutable Blob Storage for financial services
  • Welcome our newest family member - Data Box Disk: SATA/USB disks for offline data migration to Azure
  • Build richer applications with the new asynchronous Azure Storage SDK for Java
• Networking:
  • Announcing public preview of Azure Virtual WAN and Azure Firewall
  • Azure Event Hubs and Service Bus VNET Service Endpoints in public preview

Containers

• Azure Service Fabric Mesh is now in public preview
• Orchestrating production-grade workloads with Azure Kubernetes Service
• Introducing Dev Spaces for AKS

Security and IAM

• Azure Monitor: Route AAD Activity Logs using diagnostic settings
• Azure AD Managed Service Identity updates: user-assigned identities, GA for App Services and Functions, Azure Storage support and much more
• Security Center’s adaptive application controls are generally available
• Azure Security Center is now integrated into the subscription experience: new Security tab in the subscription blade in the portal

Apps

• How to move your e-commerce infrastructure to Azure
• Azure App Service now supports Java SE on Linux
• New Features in Event Grid: Dead Lettering, Retry Policies, ACR Events
• General availability of user behavior analytics tools in Azure Application Insights
• IP filtering for Event Hubs and Service Bus

Data

• SQL:
  • Intelligent Healthcare with Azure Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) technology: Azure SQL TDE BYOK and Azure Key Vault
  • Announcing new options for SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 End of Support
  • Securing the connection between Power BI and Azure SQL Database
  • Latest updates to Azure Database for MySQL: virtual network service endpoints (preview), 4TB servers, Data-In replication for hybrid clusters, cross-region DR, Data Migration Service support and more
  • Latest updates to Azure Database for PostgreSQL: PostgreSQL v10.3, virtual network service endpoints, DMS support, 4TB servers, cross-region DR and more
  • Accelerated and Flexible Restore Points with SQL Data Warehouse
  • Lightning fast query performance with Azure SQL Data Warehouse
  • Azure sets new performance benchmarks with SQL Data Warehouse
• Cosmos DB:
  • New Azure #CosmosDB Explorer now in public preview
  • Spring Data Gremlin for Azure Cosmos DB Graph API
  • Responsibilities of a partner/system integrator in managing Azure Cosmos DB
• HDInsight:
  • Build secure Oozie workflows in Azure HDInsight with Enterprise Security Package
  • Kafka 1.0 on HDInsight lights up real time analytics scenarios
  • Azure HDInsight now supports Apache Spark 2.3
• Streaming analytics use cases with Spark on Azure
• Globally replicated data lakes with LiveData using WANdisco on Azure
• Power BI Embedded dashboards with Azure Stream Analytics
• Azure Databricks provides the best Apache Spark™-based analytics solution for data scientists and engineers
• Monitor Azure Data Factory pipelines using Operations Management Suite

IoT

• What’s new in Azure IoT Central: subscriptionless trials, location and map services, bulk device import/export, event monitoring template, state measurement and more
• Azure IoT Central available for partners to manage and extend customer solutions
• Getting started with IoT: how to connect, secure, and manage your “things”
• Announcing public preview of Azure IoT Hub manual failover feature
• Feeding IoT device telemetry data to Kafka-based applications
• IoT: the catalyst for better risk management in insurance

Blockchain

• Top feature requests added with Azure Blockchain Workbench 1.2.0
• Blockchain as a tool for anti-fraud
• R3 on Azure: Launch of Corda Enterprise v3.1

AI

• Current use cases for machine learning in healthcare
• Foretell and prevent downtime with predictive maintenance
• Speech services July 2018 update: SDK v0.5.0, more training formats for Custom Voice, and custom pronunciation documentation.
• Route Matrix, isochrones, IP lookup, and more added to Azure Maps
• Azure Search – Announcing the general availability of synonyms
• Spoken Language Identification in Video Indexer

Created by the German CSA-P team.

Have fun!
Daniel