The Azure Podcast

In this episode, we delve into a cornerstone service within Azure that is sometimes underestimated or missed in design discussions: the Azure Storage service. Our guest, Ben Hummerstone, a seasoned Cloud Solution Architect based in the UK, brings his expertise in storage and other infrastructure services to the forefront. Ben shares a valuable set of guiding principles to assist you in crafting the optimal storage architecture for your application.   Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode489.mp3 YouTube: https://youtu.be/XIKxPRI1G-Y Resources: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-government/azure-secure-isolation-guidance#high-level-azure-storage-architecture https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/common/storage-redundancy https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/blobs/scalability-targets https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/blobs/access-tiers-overview   Other updates: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/public-preview-azure-functions-support-for-http-streams-in-nodejs/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/public-preview-kubernetes-129-support-in-aks/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/cloud-services-classic-retirement-announcement-feb2024/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/public-preview-azure-netapp-files-volume-enhancement-allow-the-same-file-path-for-volumes-in-different-availability-zones/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/public-preview-os-sku-inplace-migration-for-linux-nodes/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/ga-istiobased-service-mesh-addon-for-azure-kubernetes-service/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/public-preview-disable-network-policy-for-migration-in-aks/  https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/generally-available-capacity-reservations-support-in-aks/

Jose Moreno a Customer Engineer in the FastTrack for Azure team joins Sujit and Russell to talk about Networking, and more specifically discusses best practices for Express Route configuration and monitoring with an eye on resiliency and performance.   Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode488.mp3 YouTube: https://youtu.be/KUhODMaQjEU Resources: FastTrack for Azure: FastTrack for Azure – Technical Enablement FAQ | Microsoft Azure Azure ER Locations (not to confuse with Azure Regions): Locations and connectivity providers for Azure ExpressRoute | Microsoft Learn Azure Connection Monitor: Connection monitor overview - Azure Network Watcher | Microsoft Learn Other updates: GA: Azure API Management Developer Portal Unveils Enhanced Features for Increased Developer Productivity Public Preview: Regional Disaster Recovery by Azure Backup for AKS TLS/TCP Proxy Preview

Fabian Gonzalez and Azure escalation engineer and Jack Lichwa, a PM in the Azure Key Vault team, revisit the Key Vault service which forms the backbone of any deployment. They remind us of the features that Key Vault offers and give us valuable tips and tricks to configure and deploy them effectively in your workloads.   Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode487.mp3 YouTube: https://youtu.be/Pd5seEyqTzI   Other updates: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/public-preview-aks-cluster-control-plane-metrics-in-managed-prometheus/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/general-availability-improvements-in-azure-key-vault/ https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-developer-community-blog/accelerate-developer-onboarding-with-the-configuration-as-code/ba-p/4062416 https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/generally-available-azure-blob-storage-cold-tier-support-on-change-feed-and-object-replication/   https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/general-availability-customer-managed-key-encryption-for-enterprise-tier-caches/

Technical Program Manager in the Azure Commerce team, Obinna Nwokolo explains exactly what the new Azure Savings Plan is all about and how you can easily take advantage of it via the Portal experience. He digs into the various options for cutting costs in Azure and when the Savings Plan makes sense for you. Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode486.mp3 YouTube: https://youtu.be/Qwt728PUz0U Resources: SP product page - Azure Savings Plan for Compute | Microsoft Azure SP Recommendations 101 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HV9GT9kX6A&list=PLlrxD0HtieHjd-zn7u09YoGJY18ZrN1Hq&index=2&t=15s&pp=iAQB SP Benefit application 101 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZOyh1rl3kU&list=PLlrxD0HtieHjd-zn7u09YoGJY18ZrN1Hq&index=3&t=2s&pp=iAQB   Other updates: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/generalavailabilityofazuremonitormetricsdataplaneapi/

Santosh Somayajula, a Principal Product Manager in Azure, breaks down the new Copilot for Azure service which is currently in Private Preview in the Azure Portal. Using this feature, administrators and management can perform operations in the Portal using simple verbal commands instead of navigating the UI.   Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode485.mp3 YouTube: https://youtu.be/Gqv-qOOoK28 Resources: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/copilot/overview  https://aka.ms/MSCopilotforAzurePreviewRequest   Other updates: General Availability: Azure Virtual Network encryption | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure   Public preview: ExpressRoute guided portal experience for multi-site resiliency | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure   General Availability: Azure MySQL Import feature for Azure Database for MySQL Single to Flexible Server migrations | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure    Public Preview: Circuit Breaker in Azure API Management | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure     https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/general-availability-azure-topology/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/mount-azure-storage-as-a-local-share-in-app-service-linux-now-supports-nfs/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/generally-available-continuous-model-monitoring-in-azure-machine-learning/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/public-preview-azure-api-center-features/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/public-preview-new-major-version-of-durable-functions-extension/   https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/generally-available-outbound-type-migration-in-aks/  

Sean Klein joins Evan, Sujit, and Cale to talk about the Production LiveSite Review (PLR) process used by Azure Engineering for modern incident analysis and learnings. Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode484.mp3 YouTube: https://youtu.be/EsRrxguRn2Y Resources: How Complex Systems Fail Etsy Engineering | Blameless PostMortems and a Just Culture   Other updates: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/load-testing/quickstart-create-and-run-load-test https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/load-testing/how-to-parameterize-load-tests#secrets  

Azure Cloud Solution Architects Elena Krasteva and Sabine Blair help us understand what the Azure VMWare Solution is all about and how the Landing Zone Accelerator helps make it easier for customers looking to migrate VMWare workloads to Azure.     Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode483.mp3 YouTube: https://youtu.be/Onj876JxOaw Resources: 1) Product page: https://aka.ms/avs  2) LinkedIn: (20) Azure VMware Solution Pros | Groups | LinkedIn 3) Well Architected Workload Guidance: https://aka.ms/avswafdocs  4) Landing Zone Accelerator: https://aka.ms/avsaccelerator 4) TechCommunity Blog: Azure Migration and Modernization Blog - Microsoft Community Hub 5) Learn Modules: Run VMware resources on Azure VMware Solution - Training | Microsoft Learn 6) Discovery Assessment: Azure VMware Solution assessment calculations in Azure Migrate - Azure Migrate | Microsoft Learn   Other updates: Microsoft puts Azure Quantum Elements to work https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/09/microsoft-puts-azure-quantum-elements-to-work/ https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/apps-on-azure-blog/azure-spring-apps-enterprise-is-now-eligible-for-azure-savings/ba-p/4021532

Cale, Evan and Sujit discuss the often-overlooked Network Watcher service in Azure and how it can be used for monitoring, troubleshooting and logging of network operations in your VNETs.   Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode482.mp3 YouTube: https://youtu.be/CYLtFrbXGck Resources: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/network-watcher/network-watcher-overview   Other updates: Application Insights Availability Tests TLS 1.3 Enablement | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure   Standard and High-Performance VPN Gateway SKUs will be retired on 30 September 2025 | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure   Generally Available: Azure Chaos Studio supports new faults for Service Bus | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure Store and manage medical imaging data with Azure Data Lake Storage (Preview) | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure   https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/public-preview-free-sql-managed-instance/

Cale and Sujit discuss the new Fleet Manager service which allows customers to better manage groups of AKS clusters and perform updates, deployments and network access.   Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode481.mp3 YouTube: https://youtu.be/mpUfpRtqnEE Resources: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kubernetes-fleet/overview https://github.com/Azure/fleet   Other updates: Public Preview: Accelerated logs in Azure Database for MySQL - Flexible Server | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure Public Preview: Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server, enhanced disaster recovery features | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure Generally Available: Azure Functions support on Apple Silicon Macs | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure   Microsoft and Oracle announce that Oracle Database@Azure is now generally available | Microsoft Azure Blog

Mark Eisenberg joins Cale and Sujit to dissect the Azure-related updates announced at the Ignite Conference in November 2023.   Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode480.mp3 YouTube: https://youtu.be/bbt4wTjo7G4 Resources: https://news.microsoft.com/ignite-2023-book-of-news/ Mark Russinovich - Inside AI Innovations

Today the team chat to Keith Howling, a Principal Technical Specialist at Microsoft, on the topic of Platform Engineering with Radius, an open source app deployment engine. Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode479.mp3 YouTube: https://youtu.be/JWCaXfTf77A Resources: Radius: RadApp Introducing Radius: A new open-source application platform for cloud-native apps Other news: General availability: Rate limit rules for Application Gateway web application firewall Export cost using focus Azure support for TLS 1.0 and 1.1 will end by 31 October 2024 Experiment templates now available in Azure Chaos Studio General availability: Start and stop load testing faults in Azure Chaos Studio General availability: Azure Functions supports .NET 8 in the isolated worker model App Service end-to-end encryption for Linux multi-tenant (preview) Azure Monitor Logs archive provides up to 12 years of retention

The team catches up with Nithya Sivam and Joshua Min who explain how Azure is democratizing access to the self-help content accessible in the Azure Portal. The Help API makes it easier to integrate this self-help into your own workflow.   Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode478.mp3 YouTube: https://youtu.be/Depmijm4YUg Resources: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/help/?view=rest-help-2023-09-01-preview   Other updates: Realize the full potential of your cloud investment with Azure optimization https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/realize-the-full-potential-of-your-cloud-investment-with-azure-optimization/   Building for the future: The enterprise generative AI application lifecycle with Azure AI https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/building-for-the-future-the-enterprise-generative-ai-application-lifecycle-with-azure-ai/   Join Microsoft at Azure Day & KubeCon North America 2023 in Chicago! https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/apps-on-azure-blog/join-microsoft-at-azure-day-amp-kubecon-north-america-2023-in/ba-p/3958610   Azure Elastic SAN updates: Snapshots, Security, and Usability | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure   Preview: Azure Container Storage in AKS | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure   Public preview: Application Gateway IPv6 support | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure  General Availability: Azure Advisor recommendation improves the reliability of Azure Disks with Zone Redundant Storage | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Software Engineers Ian Jensen and Michael Litman from Microsoft's ISE group, explain the other 'clouds' in Azure. They dive into the Power Platform and Dynamics 365 suite and explain the use-cases for each of them and how you can use low-code or high-code to take advantage of these clouds without having to worry about specific resources in Azure.   Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode477.mp3 YouTube: https://youtu.be/9EAl_tCAoMs Resources: Power Platform Terraform Provider: https://aka.ms/PowerPlatTerraformQuickstarts SolutionOps Playbook: https://playbook.microsoft.com Power Platform Pipelines: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/alm/pipelines ALM Accelerator for Power Platform: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/guidance/alm-accelerator/overview Updated ERP Development Experience: https://aka.ms/ERPDevDeploy , then https://aka.ms/ERPDevConfig ERP Git guidance: https://aka.ms/XppGit   Other updates: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/public-preview-update-channel-for-basic-standard-and-premium-caches/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/public-preview-builtin-azure-monitor-alerts-for-azure-site-recovery/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/azure-bastion-developer-public-preview/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/general-availability-default-rule-set-21-for-regional-waf-with-application-gateway/

Balaji Sankaran, General Manager of Azure HDInsight, joins us to share the latest announcement from HDInsight - an updated, managed HDInsight service that runs on AKS, giving a better experience for hosting opensource analytics workloads in the cloud.   Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode476.mp3 YouTube: https://youtu.be/RiQzpkZeT9c Resources: HD Insight on AKS: Manage your big data needs with HDInsight on AKS Enterprise scale open-source analytics on containers (Video) Get started with HDInsights on AKS Get in touch - Ask HDInsight Other news: Announcing Microsoft Playwright Testing: Scalable end-to-end testing for modern web apps The Microsoft Azure Incubations Team launches Radius, a new open application platform for the cloud

Alice Gibbons, Customer Success Engineer and Kendall Roden, Product Manager, both from Diagrid, talk about the companies SaaS offering that allows easier monitoring and management of DAPR installations on AKS and any Kubernetes service.   Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode475.mp3 YouTube: https://youtu.be/iIjUs1Z-g4I Resources: Conductor links: 5 min intro: https://www.diagrid.io/conductor#video-section book a demo: https://www.diagrid.io/conductor Run Dapr in production with Confidence webinar: https://youtu.be/88VJZ0K09PM?feature=shared   Other Updates: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/public-preview-azure-data-explorer-addon-for-splunk/