Continuing our sessions from BUILD 2018, here is a great discussion with Asir Selvasingh on running Java on Azure.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode232.mp3

Cynthia, Cale and Sujit chat about the plethora of IaaS VMs available and things to watch for when selecting the right VM SKU/Size.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode231.mp3

Other updates:

3 reasons why Azure’s infrastructure is secure
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/3-reasons-why-azure-s-infrastructure-is-secure/

Azure Security Center can identify attacks targeting Azure App Service applications
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-security-center-can-identify-attacks-targeting-azure-app-service-applications/

VNet service endpoints for Azure database services for MySQL and PostgreSQL in preview
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/vnet-service-endpoints-for-azure-database-services-for-mysql-and-postgresql-in-preview/

Receiving and handling HTTP requests anywhere with the Azure Relay
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/receiving-and-handling-http-requests-anywhere-with-the-azure-relay/

New capabilities to enable robust GDPR compliance
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/new-capabilities-to-enable-robust-gdpr-compliance/

VSTS Visualize Progress
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/vsts/release-notes/2018/may-30-vsts#visualize-release-progress

 More goodness from BUILD 2018 - this time a great discussion with Paul Yuknewicz and Cesar De La Torre on moving apps to Azure

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode230.mp3

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode229.mp3

The first of many episodes recorded live at BUILD 2018.

Audio file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode228.mp3

Principal Software Engineer Richard Clawson from the Azure SRE team gives us the inside scoop on how his team keeps Azure running reliably.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode227.mp3

Other updates:

Standard public IP addresses are static IP addresses that offer zone resiliency. Assign them to network interfaces or standard internet-facing load balancers.

Global VNet Peering is available in all Azure public regions, excluding the China, Germany, and Azure Government regions.
 
SQL Data Warehouse Gen2 is generally available. Take advantage of five times the compute power and four times the concurrent queries.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/bring-the-power-of-serverless-to-your-iot-application-and-compete-for-cash-prizes/
Registration link: http://azurehacks.devpost.com/
Azure IoT on Serverless Hackathon
New to Azure? New to serverless? Worry not! Check out this quick sample on how to capture data from your devices or sensors, perform aggregation, filtering or some other custom processing on this data, and store it on a database.
$10,000 cash prize for the solution ranked 1st/ Azure Blog feature

AzCopy on Linux now generally available
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azcopy-on-linux-now-generally-availble/

Microsoft extends AI support to PyTorch 1.0 deep learning framework
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-extends-ai-support-to-pytorch-1-0-deep-learning-framework/

Azure Marketplace new offers: April 1–15
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-marketplace-new-offers-for-april-1-15/

Microsoft Build: Come for the tech, stay for the party
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-build-come-for-the-tech-stay-for-the-party/

Thuru Vijayakumar, a Technology Architect at Tiqri and a Microsoft MVP for Azure. He gives us great advice on using API Management for various scenarios and tips and tricks to avoid common mistakes with the service.

He is a hardcore developer and developed using many different languages from GW Basic, FoxPro, Pascal, C, C++, Visual Basic, Action Script, Java, C#, JavaScript, Go and the list grows. He’s authored two books Practical Azure Application Development in 2017 and Practical API Architecture and Development using Azure & AWS.  He also speaks at conference and you can check his blog www.thuru.net/blog.

TIQRI Corporation is an international software engineering company using modern engineering and onshore-offshore collaboration practices. TIQRI is a Microsoft gold partner and an ISO27001 certified company for information security. The main development center is located in Colombo, Sri Lanka with offices in Australia, Norway, Singapore Sweden and Vietnam.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode226.mp3

Other updates:

Transparent Data Encryption with customer managed keys in Azure SQL Database generally available

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/transparent-data-encryption-with-customer-managed-keys-in-azure-sql-database-generally-available/

Preview: programmatically create Azure enterprise subscriptions using ARM APIs

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/programmatically-create-enterprise-subscriptions-preview/

Azure Marketplace new offers in March 2018

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-marketplace-new-offers-in-march-2018/ 

Azure Container Instances now generally available

Azure Service Fabric – announcing Reliable Services on Linux and RHEL support

Spring Data Azure Cosmos DB: NoSQL data access on Azure

Azure DDoS Protection for virtual networks generally available

Streamlining GDPR requests with the Azure portal

Post-show links:

• http://j.mp/ms-apim-whitepaper (Cloud-based API Management: Harnessing the Power of APIs)

We talk to Jeremy Hollett, a Principal Service Engineering Manager, about the CXP organization and how it helps both Azure internally as well its customers, gain the ultimate in reliability. Evan also works for the same organization so the two of them share some good insights.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode225.mp3

Other updates:

We have added Azure Databricks notebook activity in Azure Data Factory. You can now operationalize your Databricks notebooks in Data Factory.  

From <https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/support-for-operationalizing-azure-databricks-notebook/>

Azure Stream Analytics customers can now easily build solutions for scenarios such as connected cars, fleet management, and mobile asset tracking.
Developers can use built-in geospatial functions in their stream-processing logic to define geographical areas. Developers can evaluate incoming geospatial data for containment, proximity, and overlap, and then generate alerts or start necessary workflows.
These geospatial capabilities are in alignment with the GeoJSON specification.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/native-support-for-geospatial-functions

With Azure Stream Analytics, customers can combine the power of JavaScript with the simplicity and pervasiveness of SQL.
Historically, Stream Analytics let developers express their real-time query logic by using a simple SQL-like language. To support more expressive custom code and help customers implement advanced scenarios, Stream Analytics now supports user-defined functions (UDFs) via JavaScript. With this feature, customers can write their custom code in JavaScript, and easily invoke it as part of their real-time stream processing query.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/javascript-udf-in-azure-stream-analytics/

The public preview of Azure Stream Analytics tools for Visual Studio includes support for local testing on client machines.

Announcing HTTP/2 support in Azure App Service
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/appserviceteam/2018/04/13/announcing-http2-support-in-azure-app-service

Azure Sphere https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/introducing-microsoft-azure-sphere-secure-and-power-the-intelligent-edge/

Altair democratizes access to computer-aided engineering with Azure
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/altair-democratizes-access-to-computer-aided-engineering-with-azure/

Senior Product Marketing Manager Sonya Koptyev talks to us about the Azure AI Platform and give us some great pointers on how to get started with AI.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode224.mp3

Other updates:

Following last month's announcement of zone-redundant database support, Azure SQL Database is further expanding the power of databases and elastic pools by including read scale-out support in the Premium and Business Critical service tiers. 
This capability redirects the read-only client connections to one of the automatically provisioned HA replicas and effectively doubles the compute capacity of the database or elastic pool at no additional charge. This is ideal for load balancing of complex analytical workloads without affecting the primary OLTP workload.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/public-preview-of-read-scale-out-support/

Azure DevTest Labs is now available in Azure Government.
With this availability, US government agencies and their partners can modernize their legacy infrastructure to build fast, easy, and lean environments.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-source-volume-26/

Offline media import for Azure
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/offline-media-import-for-azure/

Achieving GDPR compliance in the cloud with Microsoft Azure
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/achieving-gdpr-compliance-in-the-cloud-with-microsoft-azure/

Three common analytics use cases with Microsoft Azure Databricks
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/three-critical-analytics-use-cases-with-microsoft-azure-databricks/

Kendall, Cynthia, Evan and Cale discuss a fundamental feature of Azure - Storage! They talk about the various possibilities to store data in Azure and break down the use-cases for each of those options.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode223.mp3

Indexed audio: https://www.videoindexer.ai/media/f5cfe87096/

Resources:

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/storage/databox/

https://www.microsoft.com/handsonlabs/

Other updates:

Public preview: Event Hubs for Go

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/event-hubs-go-preview

Microsoft peering on ExpressRoute Standard SKU now available

Microsoft peering with route filters is now available for Azure ExpressRoute Standard SKU. You can access Azure PaaS services, such as Azure SQL Database and Azure Storage, that are offered on a public IP address within the geopolitical zone of your ExpressRoute circuit. See more information about geopolitical zones.
As a result of this new functionality, can no longer create new Azure public peering configurations. Existing Azure public peering configurations will continue to be supported, though we recommend moving to Microsoft peering with route filters. 
For more information on this new functionality, see the documentation. 

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/microsoft-peering-on-expressroute-standard/

New Microsoft Azure regions available for Australia and New Zealand
Two new Microsoft Azure regions in Australia are available to customers, making Microsoft the only global provider to deliver cloud services specifically designed to address the requirements of the Australian and New Zealand governments and critical national infrastructure, including banks, utilities, transport and telecommunications.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/new-microsoft-azure-regions-available-for-australia-and-new-zealand

2018 Global Azure Bootcamp coming up April 21st, 2018
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/globalazure-bootcamp-2018/
Global Azure is an unstoppable force of thirst for knowledge with 244 locations in 68 countries!

SQL Database: Long-term backup retention preview includes major updates
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/sql-database-long-term-backup-retention-preview-includes-major-updates/

A flexible new way to purchase Azure SQL Database
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/a-flexible-new-way-to-purchase-azure-sql-database/

Azure IoT Hub is driving down the cost of IoT
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-iot-hub-is-driving-down-the-cost-of-iot/

Azure DevOps Projects now supports Windows VMs as deployment targets (as opposed to Azure Web App, and Web App for containers) for ASP.NET and ASP.NET core web applications. This addition is the first of several planned expansions to Azure DevOps projects scenarios which allow developers to create full CI/CD pipelines in minutes from the Azure portal powered by Visual Studio Team Services. 

A new Azure DevOps project gives you a git repository with application code, automated CI/CD pipeline that for the written framework (.NET, Java, Node.js, PHP, Python), option to add SQL database, and application insight that monitors the application and helps diagnose issues and understand how the application is currently being used.