Azure Technical News in August 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 Vnet endpoints for MySQL and PostgreSQL, and the innovation around Azure Site Recovery for DR. Which ones are your favorites?

Azure Stack

• Enhance security and simplify network integration with Extension Host on Azure Stack

Management

• Expanded Azure Blueprint for FFIEC compliant workloads

IaaS

• Compute:
  • General availability of instance size flexibility for Azure Reserved Virtual Machine Instances
  • Azure Site Recovery powers Veritas Backup Exec Instant Cloud Recovery for DR
  • Migrate Windows Server 2008 to Azure with Azure Site Recovery
  • New customizations in Azure Migrate to support your cloud migration
• Storage:
  • Managed Disks migration now available in the Azure Portal
  • Azure Block Blob Storage Backup
  • Cross-subscription disaster recovery for Azure virtual machines
• Networking:
  • New locations for Azure CDN now available
  • DPDK (Data Plane Development Kit) for Linux VMs now generally available
  • Announcing VNet service endpoints general availability for MySQL and PostgreSQL

Security and IAM

• Enhance your DevSecOps practices with Azure Security Center’s newest playbooks
• Respond to threats faster with Security Center’s Confidence Score

Apps

• Linux on Azure App Service Environment now generally available
• Announcing the public preview of Windows Container Support in Azure App Service

Data

• SQL:
  • Announcing general availability of Azure SQL Database reserved capacity
  • Automatic intelligent insights to optimize performance with SQL Data Warehouse
  • Azure SQL Data Warehouse Gen2 now generally available in France and Australia
• NoSQL:
  • New Azure #CosmosDB JavaScript SDK 2.0 now in public preview
  • Azure #CosmosDB reference solution: Visualizing real-time data analysis with change feed
• HDInsight
  • How to enhance HDInsight security with service endpoints
  • Azure HDInsight Interactive Query: Ten tools to analyze big data faster
  • Azure #HDInsight Interactive Query: simplifying big data analytics architecture
  • Azure #HDInsight Apache Phoenix now supports Zeppelin
• Azure Data Factory Visual tools now supports GitHub integration
• Sharing a self-hosted Integration Runtime infrastructure with multiple Data Factories

Blockchain

• Multi-member consortium support with Azure Blockchain Workbench 1.3.0

IoT

• Intro articles:
  • Getting started with IoT: driving business action through analytics and automation
  • Getting started with IoT: what do you do with all that data?
  • IoT in Action: Building secure, sophisticated solutions
• Now Available: Azure Sphere technical documentation
• Hardening the security of Azure IoT Edge
• Installing certificates into IoT devices

ML/AI

• Real example: improve accuracy, reduce training times for existing R codebase
• Accelerating Artificial Intelligence (AI) in healthcare using Microsoft Azure blueprints
• Speech Services August 2018 update: SDK v0.6.0 and .NET Standard 2.0 support, amongst other news
• Logic Apps, Flow connectors will make Automating Video Indexer simpler than ever