The guys talk to Manoj Parvathaneni, a senior support escalation engineer in the Azure Backup team, about the service. He gives us use-cases for using Backup and some valuable tips to make Backup work seamlessly in both on-premises and cloud scenarios.

Media file: http://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode129.mp3

Other updates:

Speaker Recognition API for Microsoft Cognitive Services in public preview

Microsoft Cognitive Services is a collection of APIs available to developers to make their applications more intelligent and engaging. This set of services expands on our evolving portfolio of machine learning APIs and lets developers easily add intelligent features to their solutions. Speaker Recognition API is now in public preview, and its features include:
 
• Speaker verification, using voice for authentication. The API can be used to power applications with an intelligent verification tool; for example, if the speaker claims a certain identity, you can use their voice to verify this claim.
• Speaker identification, to recognize who is speaking. The API can be used to determine the identity of an unknown speaker. Input audio of the unknown speaker is compared to a group of selected speakers and if a match is found, the speaker’s identity is returned.

Speaker Recognition API is available as a standalone service, and public preview pricing went into effect on May 2, 2016.

Support deprecation for Create Affinity Group and Create Storage Resource using affinity groups in the Azure classic portal

Affinity groups is a legacy concept originally intended to improve virtual-machine-to-virtual-machine network performance in early Azure network designs and to support the initial release of virtual networks limited to a small set of hardware in a region. The current Azure network within a region is designed so affinity groups are no longer required. Due to these improvements, we no longer recommend that customers use affinity groups. The use of an affinity group will unnecessarily associate your virtual machines to specific hardware, limit the choice of virtual machine sizes available to you, and may lead to capacity-related errors when attempting to add new virtual machines.

Affinity group features are already deprecated in Azure Resource Manager and in the Azure portal. In the upcoming release, we will deprecate support for creating affinity groups and creating storage resources pinned to an affinity group from the Azure classic portal. Existing cloud services using an affinity group don’t need to be modified. New cloud services shouldn’t use affinity groups unless recommended by an Azure support professional.

Azure Backup generally available in the Azure portal
Pricing | Azure Backup webpage
Customers are finding it easier than ever to leverage Microsoft Operations Management Suite for diverse data protection needs on-premises and in Azure. With the release of Azure Backup on the Azure portal, customers can seamlessly back up Azure Resource Manager-based virtual machines, as well as virtual machines created from the Azure classic portal, under the newly introduced recovery services vault. Customers can use this Azure resource to back up their on-premises Windows Server machines and tier backups to the cloud from Azure Backup Server and System Center Data Protection Manager machines. The vault will form the bedrock for unified data protection and management, including disaster recovery and hybrid backup scenarios.

SharePoint Server 2016 dev/test farm in Azure
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/sharepoint-2016-devtest-farm/

Announcing general availability of Azure DevTest Labs
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-general-availability-of-azure-devtest-labs/

Continuous integration and delivery of web apps from Atlassian Bitbucket
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/continuous-integration-delivery-of-web-apps-from-atlassian-bitbucket/

Migrating, managing and more: Real IT pros. Real advice.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/migrating-managing-and-more-real-it-pros-real-advice/

Use Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines to run large-scale parallel MATLAB workloads
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/create-matlab-clusters-using-azure-virtual-machines/

Nir Mashkowski, a Senior Director in the Azure team, joins us to talk about Azure Functions, one of the latest services to be introduced.

Media file: http://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode128.mp3

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/functions/
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/services/functions/
https://github.com/Azure/azure-webjobs-sdk-templates/

Other updates:

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/sqldatabaseadvisorga/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/motion-detection/

https://jenkins.io/index.html

The guys talk to Neil Mackenzie, a Cloud Solution Architect @ Microsoft. He gives us advice from his engagements helping customers do 'lift-n-shift' migrations to Azure.

Media file: http://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode127.mp3

Other updates:

Platform supported migration of IaaS resources from Classic to Azure Resource Manager
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/virtual-machines-windows-migration-classic-resource-manager/

Azure in Canada generally available

Azure SQL Database elastic pools generally available

Azure Content Delivery Network from Akamai now available in the Azure portal

Test-drive feature now available on Azure Marketplace

Announcing Azure Mobile Services transition to Azure App Service
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/transition-of-azure-mobile-services/

Microsoft Cloud accelerates in Canada and expands to South Korea
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-cloud-accelerates-in-canada-and-expands-to-south-korea/

Evan and Sujit are fortunate to chat with Bryan Belmont, a GM in the Azure organization, to give us some insight into what goes into offering top-notch support in the cloud and how it differs from on-premises support. 

Media file: http://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode126.mp3

Other updates:

Free ebook: Introducing Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/microsoft_press/2016/04/20/free-ebook-introducing-windows-server-2016-technical-preview/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-egress-fee-waiver-for-the-academic-community/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-support-for-php-7-0-in-azure-app-service-and-notice-of-php-5-4-retirement/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-data-lake-introduces-java-sdks-in-public-preview-for-big-data-processing-in-java-applications/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-blockchain-update-8/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/introducing-the-azure-iot-gateway-sdk-beta/

Cale and Sujit talk about the newly released to GA, Azure Container Service (ACS).

Media file: http://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode124.mp3

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/container-service-intro/

Create an SSH public/private key - https://ranjanajain.wordpress.com/2016/02/28/using-azure-container-service-acs-on-azure/

Other updates:

IoT Hub throttling and you
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/iot-hub-throttling-and-you/

Azure Media Services announces collaboration with THEOplayer
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-media-services-announces-new-collaboration-with-theoplayer/

Customize developer portal pages using Azure API Management templates
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/customize-your-developer-portal-pages-with-azure-api-management-templates/

Announcing face and emotion detection for Azure Media Analytics
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/face-and-emotion-detection/

JSON functionalities in Azure SQL Database (public preview)
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/json-functionalities-in-azure-sql-database-public-preview/

Optimizing document search using Machine Learning and Text Analytics
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/optimizing-document-search-using-machine-learning-text-analytics/

The guys talk about VM Scale Sets - a neat new feature that let you scale up/down/autoscale your Windows and Linux VMs.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-vm-scale-sets-public-preview/

Media file: http://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode123.mp3

Charlotte Azure Bootcamp - 4/16
http://www.meetup.com/Charlotte-Microsoft-Cloud/events/229276524/

Other updates:

DocumentDB: Everything you need to know about using the new pricing options
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/documentdb-use-the-new-pricing-options-on-your-existing-collections/

Tableau Server in the Azure Marketplace
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/tableau-server-in-the-azure-marketplace/

Bot Framework made better with Azure
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/bot-framework-made-better-with-azure/

Blockchain: the catalyst for a collaborative economy
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/blockchain-the-catalyst-for-a-collaborative-economy/

New Entry point for blockchain info!
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/blockchain/

We talk to Prashant Nayak about the Microsoft Premier Architecture Services program which gives customers that have never ventured to the cloud a quick 5-day workshop to get them started on their Azure journey. He discusses common blockers to adopting the cloud and how customers can prepare themselves to make the (eventual) move. Customers should talk to their TAMs about this cost-effective offering.

Media file: http://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode122.mp3

Other resources and updates:

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/privatecloud/2016/02/26/tool-arm-template-checker-for-microsoft-azure-stack/

http://www.nvidia.com/object/deep-learning-system.html

http://www.nvidia.com/object/tesla-p100.html

http://www.cntk.ai/

WARNING - GEEK episode! Cale takes us into the futuristic world of Blockchains and explains the technology to us mere mortals. We also explore what this means to host this technology on Azure.

Media file: http://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode120.mp3

Resources:

https://ethereum.github.io/solidity/
https://www.ethernodes.org/network/1
https://bitnodes.21.co/
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/partners/consensys/blockapps-strato/
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/search/blog/?q=blockchain

Other resources and updates:

Microservices: An application revolution powered by the cloud
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microservices-an-application-revolution-powered-by-the-cloud/

Developer's introduction to Azure IoT
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/developer-s-introduction-to-azure-iot/

Application Packages and Task Dependencies now available on Azure Batch
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/application-packages-and-task-dependencies-now-available-on-azure-batch/

Full text search of audio and video files
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/full-text-search-of-audio-and-video-files/

Transitioning to the Resource Manager model
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/transitioning-to-the-resource-manager-model/

Cale and Sujit have a great chat with Azure Principal PM Arindam Chatterjee on the topic of Data Lake. Arindam demystifies the service for us and gives us some use-cases and scenarios where it makes sense to use it as opposed to other big data offerings from Azure.

Arindam Chatterjee is a Principal Program Manager in the Microsoft Azure Big Data team.  He comes to big data after extensive experience in Transaction Processing, Authentication & Authorization technologies in Windows Core OS, and designing the Microsoft Dynamics security model. Arindam and his team are now focused on building a scalable analytic workload service that your big data jobs can run on as efficiently and reliably as possible across thousands of machines. In addition, he is also responsible for making Azure Data Lake services ready for adoption by Enterprises by building the appropriate Security & Compliance features.

Media file: http://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode119.mp3

Azure Data Lake links:

Azure Data Lake in 100 seconds (Video)

Azure Data Lake landing page is here.

Twitter: @azuredatalake & @azure

Other updates:

Azure DevTest Lab is a service that helps developers and testers quickly create environments in Azure while minimizing waste and controlling cost. You can test the latest version of your application by quickly provisioning Windows and Linux environments using reusable templates and artifacts. Easily integrate your deployment pipeline with DevTest Lab to provision on-demand environments. Scale up your load testing by provisioning multiple test agents, and create pre-provisioned environments for training and demos.

From <https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/devtest-lab-overview/>

Today we are announcing the Docker Volume Plugin for Azure File Storage. Leveraging the SMB 3.0 protocol support capabilities of Azure File Storage on Linux. This open source Docker volume plugin allows Docker containers to have data volumes stored outside the Virtual Machine and therefore makes it easy to migrate stateful containers between hosts.

From <https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/persistent-docker-volumes-with-azure-file-storage/>

Charles Joy from the Azure Stack team, joins us again for an update on the technical preview release of the product. He shares feedback received from customers and tips and tricks for getting ready for and testing Azure Stack.

Media file: http://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode118.mp3

Azure Stack resources recommended by Charles:

http://aka.ms/AzureStackakaGuide
https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/TechNet+Radio/TNR1635
https://channel9.msdn.com/events/TechNetVirtualConference/TechNetVC2016/Day-3-Azure-Stack-QA-with-Matt--Charles-and-Closing-Remarks
https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Mechanics/An-early-look-at-Azure-Stack-and-what-it-means-for-IT-with-Jeffrey-Snover

Other updates and resources:

http://buildazure.com/2016/02/10/free-ebook-building-cloud-apps-with-microsoft-azure-devops-availability-storage-more

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/azure-app-service-supports-v2-virtual-networks/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/app-service-advisor-recommendations/

Announcing SQL Server on Linux
http://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2016/03/07/announcing-sql-server-on-linux/

Transitioning Mobile Apps from Application Insights to HockeyApp
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/transitioning-mobile-apps-from-application-insights-to-hockeyapp/

Using the Azure WebJobs SDK to create custom Slack integrations
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/using-the-azure-webjobs-sdk-to-create-custom-slack-extensions/

Migrating your CDN resources from the classic Azure portal to the new Azure portal
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/migrating-your-cdn-resources-from-the-classic-azure-portal-to-the-new-azure-portal/

Deploy Java Web Apps to Azure using Eclipse
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/deploy-java-web-apps-to-azure-using-eclipse/