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Cloud Platform Release Announcements for September 6, 2017

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This is a blog post for a new, ongoing series of consolidated updates from the Cloud Platform team.

We’re here to help you embrace the cloud. Realize your true potential with our unique innovations, comprehensive mobile solutions, and developer tools across the breadth of our product portfolio. To help you stay current, here are our latest releases.

  • Azure App Service | Azure App Service on Linux general availability (GA)
  • Azure Analysis Services—Introducing new web designer
  • Azure SQL Database protects and secures data | Transparent Data Encryption with bring your own key (BYOK) support preview
  • Azure SQL DB scales on the fly | New Perf. Levels +Storage add-ons - Public Preview
  • Azure API Management | Service update
  • Team Foundation Server 2018 | Feature highlights
  • Visual Studio Team Services | GA
  • Azure Active Directory - Azure Gov | Public Preview

Azure App Service | Azure App Service on Linux GA

We're pleased to announce that Azure App Service is now generally available on Linux, including its Web App for Containers capability. With this, we now offer built-in image support for ASP.NET Core, Node.js, PHP and Ruby on Linux, as well as provide developers an option to bring their own Docker formatted container images supporting Java, Python, Go, and more. Learn more from the announcement blog. You can also sign up for an October webcast focusing on containerized application. You will be able to try out the service and use our documentation for a simple tutorial.

Open Source Summit—September 11–14, 2017

LinuxCon, ContainerCon, CloudOpen and the new Open Community Conference combine under one umbrella name in 2017—the Open Source Summit. At the Open Source Summit, you will collaborate, share information, and learn across a wide variety of topics, with 2,000 technologists and community members. Learn more.

Azure Analysis Services—Introducing new web designer

In July 2017, Microsoft released a preview of the Azure Analysis Services web based model designer. This new browser-based experience allows you to start creating and managing Azure Analysis Services semantic models quickly and easily. The new getting started experience also lets you import an existing data model from a Power BI Desktop file data directly into your Azure Analysis Services instance, enabling you to instantly build on and grow your Power BI modelling investments. In August 2017, Microsoft added additional features to the modeling tool including the ability to edit Azure Analysis Services models visually right within the new web based model editor. While SQL Server Data Tools and SQL Server Management Studio are still the primary tools for developing user-friendly data models, this new experience is intended to make modeling fast and easy, including getting started on a new model.

Built on the analytics engine in Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services, Azure Analysis Services lets you host semantic data models in the cloud, so users in your organization can connect to your data models using tools such as Excel, Power BI, and others to create reports and perform ad hoc data analysis. For more information, please visit the Azure Blog. To learn more about this service, please visit the Azure Analysis Services webpage.

Azure SQL Database protects and secures data | Transparent data encryption with bring your own key (BYOK) support

Bring your own key (BYOK) for encryption in Azure SQL Database and SQL Data Warehouse, with Key Vault integration for SQL Transparent Data Encryption, is now in preview. With this added support, your organization can assume higher control over key management by using a key from Key Vault for encryption at rest, and control who has access to your data and when. To learn more about this feature, visit the Azure blog.

Azure SQL DB scales on the fly | New Perf. Levels +Storage add-ons - Public Preview

Azure SQL Database new performance levels and storage add-ons in preview
New Standard tier performance levels S4, S6, S7, S9, and S12 are well-suited for CPU intensive workloads that don’t require the IO performance provided by the Premium tier. New storage add-ons enable you to purchase extra storage without having to increase DTUs or eDTUs. Purchase extra storage for S3–S12, P1–P6, and PRS1–PRS6 databases up to 1 TB, for Standard elastic pools up to 4 TB, and for smaller eDTU Premium pools up to 1 TB. Visit the Azure blog for more information on these new performance levels and storage add-on options.

Azure API Management | Azure API Management service update

Pricing page | API Management web page

Azure API Management now provides developers with new features to manage the API lifecycle, extend additional capabilities to business applications, and more. Highlights from the August service release include the following:

  • API revisions and versions (in preview) allow API publishers to make changes to APIs in a controlled and safe fashion. API publishers use revisions to make changes to APIs without disturbing API consumers. Versions encapsulate breaking changes, and are identified by a version string and can use one of the following versioning scheme path, query string, or header.
  • Export Azure API definitions to Microsoft Flow and Microsoft PowerApps environments. These APIs are registered as custom APIs in Flow and PowerApps, making it easier for users to consume Azure APIs.
  • Import certificates from Azure Key Vault via Azure Resource Manager templates.

More details can be found in the Release Notes.

Team Foundation Server 2018 | Feature highlights

Team Foundation Server  is an on-premises product that provides a set of collaborative software development tools that integrate with your existing IDE (such as Eclipse, IntelliJ, and Visual Studio) or editor such as Visual Studio Code, thus enabling your cross-functional team to work effectively on software projects of all sizes, on any platform, and for any language or framework. Top feature areas of Team Foundation Server include—Git version control, Agile Tooling including Kanban boards, Build, CI/CD pipeline, and Test capabilities.

We're happy to announce the first public release of Team Foundation Server 2018. In this  release,  we’ve added many new capabilities for you to use including the following feature highlights:

  • Improved the Project Creation Wizard and Process Template Manager on the web
  • Optimized the mobile work item form
  • Added support for Git forks
  • View, filter, delete, and set the security of Git tags
  • Many improvements to pull requests
  • New improved Wiki experience
  • Support for Maven packages
  • Capability to import/export build definitions
  • A new Release Definition Editor has opt-in by default
  • Capability to deploy with virtual machine deployments
  • Improvements to exploratory testing traceability

These are just some of the new features coming to Team Foundation Server 2018. For full details, please see our release notes.

Visual Studio Team Services | GA

Customizable work item rules—Visual Studio Team Services update

We've recently made available a new Update of Visual Studio Team Services. As part of this release we’re announcing the general availability of customizable work item rules to automate work item behavior. This is key to leveraging the simplicity of the Inheritance process model. Read more about customizable work item rules.

Other key feature highlights include:

For full details about this release, see our release notes.

Azure Active Directory - Azure Gov | Public Preview

We’re pleased to announce the opening of the Preview for Azure Active Directory Premium (AADP) on the US Government Cloud. Our goal with this preview is to provide government customers with the opportunity to gain early access and get hands-on exposure to AADP in the US Government Cloud. Most importantly, we’re eager for these customers to provide valuable feedback and input to our engineering teams as we continue to push towards General Availability.

This preview is intended for customers that have specific compliance needs (e.g. FedRAMP or DoD requirements). At the time of preview, these certifications will not be in place, but it is our intention to have these certifications in place for General Availability. Existing Office 365 US Government GCC High and DoD customers are eligible for this preview and are encouraged to participate.

To gain access to the preview, customers should complete the onboarding survey, which will provide our engineering team with valuable information about the customer and their desired features. At this point, the customer will be assigned a Program Manager, who will send the customer a welcome e-mail and detail next steps on how to begin the preview.