Azure Technical News in June 2018

These updated are conceived so that in a few minutes you can get an overview of what has been going on in Azure last month. I post them in this blog for a web-based repository. Please go to https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/topics/announcements/ for an updated list of Azure anouncements.

My highlights this month are the Global Availability of Azure Kubernetes Service, and the innovation around Azure Storage. Which ones are your favorites?

Management

• Exciting advances in Azure Alerts – From better alert management to Smart Groups
• Cost Reporting ARM APIs across subscriptions for EA customers

IaaS

• Compute
  • VM Run command for Windows and Linux
  • Offering the largest scale and broadest choice for SAP HANA in the cloud (including new SAP HANA TDIv5 options with memory sizes of 6TB, 12TB, 18TB and 24TB)
  • Disaster Recovery solution for Azure IaaS applications
• Storage
  • Immutable Storage for blobs now in public preview
  • Azure Blob Storage lifecycle management in public preview
  • Backup for SQL in Azure Virtual Machines preview
  • Static website hosting for Azure Storage now in public preview
  • Backup your applications on Azure Stack with Azure Backup
• Network
  • Traffic Analytics now generally available
  • New zone-redundant VPN and ExpressRoute gateways now in public preview
  • Network Performance Monitor’s Service Connectivity Monitor is now generally available

Containers

• Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) GA – New regions, more features, increased productivity
• Container Tooling for Service Fabric in Visual Studio 2017

Security and IAM

• Introducing the redesigned Security Center Overview dashboard
• Detecting script-based attacks on Linux
• 4 month retirement notice: Access Control Service

Apps

• Using the Retry pattern to make your cloud application more resilient
• Use Azure Active Directory with Spring Security 5.0 for OAuth 2.0
• Azure Service Bus is now offering support for Availability Zones in preview
• Maven: Deploy Java Apps to Azure with Tomcat on Linux
• Azure Blockchain Workbench 1.1.0 extends capabilities and monitoring

Data

• SQL
  • Announcing the general availability of Azure SQL Data Sync
  • Azure Backup for SQL Server on Azure now in public preview
  • Quick Recovery Time with SQL Data Warehouse using User-Defined Restore Points
  • Azure Elastic Database jobs is now in public preview
  • Resumable Online Index Create is in public preview for Azure SQL DB
  • Column-Level Security is now supported in Azure SQL Data Warehouse
• Data Lake
  • Use Azure Data Lake Analytics to query AVRO data from IoT Hub
  • Azure Data Lake Tools for VSCode supports Azure blob storage integration
  • Process more files than ever and use Parquet with Azure Data Lake Analytics
  • A closer look at Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2
• Data Factory
  • Azure Data Factory new capabilities are now generally available
  • Lift SQL Server Integration Services packages to Azure with Azure Data Factory
  • Event trigger based data integration with Azure Data Factory
  • Azure Data ingestion made easier with Azure Data Factory’s Copy Data Tool
• Structured streaming with Azure Databricks into Power BI & Cosmos DB
• Enterprises get deeper insights with Hadoop and Spark updates on Azure HDInsight
• 8 reasons to choose Azure Stream Analytics for real-time data processing
• The emerging big data architectural pattern: lambda architectures

IoT

• Migrating IoT Edge solutions to GA
• Automatic device management, module identity, and module twin are now generally available
• Expanding Azure Certified for IoT program for the intelligent edge
• Location and Maps in Azure IoT Central powered by Azure Maps
• Azure Event Hubs is now offering support for Availability Zones in preview
• Enabling Smart Manufacturing with Edge Computing

AI

• Azure Search is now certified for several levels of compliance
• Bing Visual Search and Entity Search APIs for video apps
• Get video insights in (even) more languages!
• Autocomplete in Azure Search now in public preview