In this episode we chat with Andrés Padilla and Meer Alam about practical use of AI and ML systems.  Examples of this are discussed around autonomous drone / delivery models and the various components in Azure that make this a seamless, scalable and sustainable experience.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode455.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/0Y_jeCWZn38

Resources:

https://customers.microsoft.com/en-us/story/1569428314103514552-drone-express-travel-transportation-azure-en-united-states

https://github.com/Azure/KAN

Other updates:

Azure Disks Standard SSD billable transaction cap blog (microsoft.com)

Public preview: Login and TDE-enabled database migrations with Azure Database Migration Service | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

General Availability: Customer Initiated Storage Account Conversion | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

ChatGPT is now available in Azure OpenAI Service | Azure Blog and Updates | Microsoft Azure

Teams premium - conversation recap, chapters, etc.; Viva Sales, Bing Chat

Public preview: Azure Cognitive Service for Vision Powers State-of-the-Art Computer Vision Development | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Image captioning, customisation, improved learning, smaller datasets, higher quality.

Public preview: Illumio for Azure Firewall | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Zero Trust segmentation; single holistic view of traffic with real time visibility of interaction and dependencies; test firewall changes before deploying; across all 3 skus of firewall

Public Preview: Azure Monitor managed service for Prometheus now supports querying PromQL | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Use promql to define alerts to view in the portal

Generally available: App Insights Extension for Azure Virtual Machines and VM Scale Sets | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Installs an agent to your VM through PS, triggered by the portal

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-to-showcase-purposebuilt-ai-infrastructure-at-nvidia-gtc/

Our guest this week, Paul Henwood joins Kendall and Russell to talk about many different aspects of sustainability, and how Azure embraces and supports customers with their sustainability goals.

Media File: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode454.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/HSPeE6Hpmns

Sustainability Resources:

Microsoft Sustainability - Products for a Sustainable Future

What is Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability? | Microsoft Learn

Calculating My Carbon Footprint - Microsoft Sustainability

Sustainability workload documentation - Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Framework | Microsoft Learn

Green Software Foundation | GSF

Azure Update Links:

General availability: Azure Data Explorer Dashboards | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Public Preview: Azure Communication Services Chat for Bot Framework | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Azure SQL—General availability updates for mid-February 2023 | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Azure Backup: Enhanced experience for creating and managing private endpoints for Recovery Services vaults is now available | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Ryan Bostelmann joins the Azure Podcast team to share how the Azure Support function use Azure and Power Platform to be more efficient and deliver a better customer service.

Media File: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Edpisode453.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/mIYTsy6jwVQ

Links:

• Power Apps: What is Power Apps? - Power Apps | Microsoft Learn
• Power Automate: Get Started with Power Automate
• Logic Apps: Overview - Azure Logic Apps
• Azure Functions: Azure Functions Overview
• Azure Pipelines: What are Azure Pipelines?
• Choose the right integration and automation services in Azure:

The team catches up with April Edwards to learn about the benefits of using Bicep to deploy Azure resources.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode452.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/FhniwXjDBe0

Resources: 

IaC Blog: Infrastructure as Code - comparing tools (microsoft.com)

MS Learn path for BIcep: Learn Live: Use Bicep to deploy your Azure infrastructure as code - Events | Microsoft Learn

Learn Live: Building your first Bicep Template: Learn Live - Build your first Bicep template - YouTube

Learn Live: Build Your First Bicep Deployment Workflow using GitHub Actions : Learn Live - Build your first Bicep deployment workflow by using GitHub Actions - YouTube

Other updates:

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/azure-automation-extension/

Public Preview: Azure Cosmos DB to Azure Data Explorer Synapse Link | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

General availability of Azure OpenAI Service expands access to large, advanced AI models with added enterprise benefits

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/general-availability-of-azure-openai-service-expands-access-to-large-advanced-ai-models-with-added-enterprise-benefits

Public preview: Capture Event Hubs data with Stream Analytics no-code editor in Delta Lake format | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Jack Tracey, a Cloud Solutions Architect from the Customer Architecture and Engineering team talks to us about the work his team does to create the Landing Zones which can form the foundation for any well-designed Azure platform. He explains what they are and best practices to consume them in your cloud strategy.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode451.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/6Nfeaw9uELQ

Resources:

https://aka.ms/alz

https://aka.ms/alz/tailoring

https://aka.ms/alz/tf

https://aka.ms/alz/bicep

Other updates:

Private Preview: Featured Clothing | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Public Preview: IT Service Management Connector (ITSMC) is now certified with ServiceNow Tokyo version | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

General availability: Apache log4J2 sink to Azure Data Explorer | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

In an Azure Podcast team first, we all got together on Twitter Live Spaces, with a handful of live listeners to see how well this medium works.  

Media File: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode450.mp3 

YouTube: https://youtu.be/1SIRBCWR0YI

Public Preview: Build a business case with Azure Migrate

Generally Available: Azure Functions support for Java 17

Generally Available: Durable Functions support for Java | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

General availability: Improved geo-replication for Azure Cache for Redis | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

  ->speed, metrics, one-click failover, global cache URL

Learn how Microsoft datacenter operations prepare for energy issues

Microsoft Azure CLX: A personalized program to learn Azure

Forrester study finds 228 percent ROI when modernizing applications on Azure PaaS

Public preview: Build a business case with Azure Migrate

Reza Rahman, a Principal Program Manager for Java on Azure, talks to us about the work his team has done to enable customers using legacy Java frameworks to easily migrate to Azure or modernize in a variety of ways.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode449.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/OqjDtcT6c9E

Resources:

https://speakerdeck.com/reza_rahman/why-jakarta-ee-developers-are-first-class-citizens-on-azure

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/developer/java/ee/

https://aka.ms/migration-survey

Other updates:

Public preview: Call automation capabilities for Azure Communication Services | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Improve speech-to-text accuracy with Azure Custom Speech

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/improve-speechtotext-accuracy-with-azure-custom-speech/

Microsoft and Isovalent partner to bring next generation eBPF dataplane for cloud-native applications in Azure

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-and-isovalent-partner-to-bring-next-generation-ebpf-dataplane-for-cloudnative-applications-in-azure/

Microsoft Cost Management updates—November 2022

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-cost-management-updates-november-2022/

Free Services | Microsoft Azure

Public preview: Azure SQL Trigger for Azure Functions | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Sarah Novotny joins us on the show again, this time to tell us all about the collaboration that happens with Azure in Open Source Software.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode448.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/XwkyxBq0KL4

Resources: 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2022/11/16/microsoft-contributes-s2c2f-to-openssf-to-improve-supply-chain-security/

https://github.com/microsoft/fluidframework

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/microsoft365dev/fluid-framework-is-now-open-source/

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2022/10/12/microsoft-365-at-ignite-re-energize-your-workforce-in-the-office-at-home-and-everywhere-in-between/?culture=en-us&country=US

https://microsoft.github.io/CBL-Mariner/docs/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/kubernetes-service/#overview

https://github.blog/2022-10-25-why-were-excited-about-the-sigstore-general-availability/

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/container-registry/container-registry-tutorial-sign-build-push

Other updates:

Azure Resource Manager — Migrating to TLS 1.2 with Deprecation of Outdated Security Protocols | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

General availability: DR secondary free with SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Qualys SSL Labs - SSL Pulse

Public preview: Cross Subscription Restore for Azure Virtual Machines | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Public preview: Azure Bastion now support shareable links | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Public Preview: Use Azure Quota Rest APIs to manage service limits (quotas) | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Sujit and Evan are joined by Amir Dahan, Senior Product Manager for Networking at Microsoft, to discuss Azure DDOS protection.

Media File: Episode447.mp3
YouTube: https://youtu.be/B_TNr6c2F9o

Other Updates

• Use managed identities with Azure Front Door Standard/Premium (Preview) | Microsoft Learn
• Azure Machine Learning—Generally availability updates for November 2022 | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure
• General availability: New cost recommendations for Virtual Machine Scale Sets | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Azure Networking Engineering Manager Abhishek Tiwari joins us once again, this time to talk about all of the work his team has done to add L7 and DDOS protection at the Edge and the enhancements in the DNS Service to make it more secure.

Media: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode446.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/yTtchBGLsKg

Other updates:

General availability: Default Rule Set 2.1 for Azure Web Application Firewall | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Azure Multi-Factor Authentication Server will be deprecated 30 September 2024 | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

General availability: Azure Automation supports Availability zones | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Generally available: Static Web Apps support for preview environments in Azure DevOps | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure