August 5, 2014 at 10:00Overview of Microsoft Azure platform updates for June-July
As part of this digest of news from the Microsoft Azure cloud platform , the main announcements and content for developers, IT professionals and all professionals interested in cloud technologies and the Azure platform are collected. Previous issues of the digest can always be found on the following e th link .
Sections "Open Source News" and "Learning the Platform" were added to the digest.
The irreversible increase in the amount of data and operations in our world complicates the modeling process of what will happen (we hope) or maybe (already more likely) tomorrow. Will they buy new yogurt? Will they give a rating of 9 to our speaker? Where will customers spend time tomorrow? The number and complexity of the models increase, the available resources are limited. A cloud is flying to the rescue - now you can take your model, upload it to Microsoft Azure, train and constantly get the result. You can try Machine Learning for free.
It’s not that the existing mechanisms are not suitable for the new concept of the Internet of Things, but it’s better to make a new one and make it work well than to face the limitations of existing services at some point. Azure Event Hubs is a service that is an aggregator of signals from sensors in any quantity. What does he do with them? All of them fall into one large tunnel, where handlers pick them up. Moreover, the system does not have Dead Lettering - if the message has become poisonous, then, unfortunately, we do not have the luxury (time) to think about what to do with it. But there is nothing to worry about - the tunnel can be called a rubber one. :) If you use EH with Service Bus Queues / Topics, then EH makes it possible to implement Command / Control for IoT.
More about the new service - Event Hubs .
Now you can use Reverse DNS for cloud services and infrastructures, while there is backward compatibility - in order to use the new function, you do not need to recreate everything. Reverse DNS is a useful feature, for example, for Weak AuthN . The function is free, but so far only available through the API and Powershell.
Mobile Services has traditionally received a couple of interesting updates, not revolutionary, but evolutionary and primarily useful for the developer. This time appeared: CORS support with ASP . CORS NET Web API for defining CORS policies at the service, controller and action level; Azure Active Directory AuthN support using Server-Side; extensible authentication model for customers - you can add your own mechanisms in addition to Azure Active Directory, Twitter, Facebook, Google and Microsoft Account.
InMage System is a company that develops interesting solutions for ensuring the continuous operation of cloud solutions. So, Forrester called InMage Systems Enabling Technology for Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service. Their technology is behind solutions from Sungard and HP. The solutions will be integrated into the Microsoft Azure Recovery Service.
Azure Redis Cache has been available for a relatively long time - since May 2014. With it, you can use Microsoft's dedicated dedicated Redis cache . With this update, Azure Redis Cache has become available in new regions and forms - now even more cache. Learn more about how to use - How to Use Azure Redis Cache .
StorSimple is the kind of storage that you install and mount as a network share. More interesting already - inside it has SSD and SAS, as well as integration with Microsoft Azure storage. In real time, the repository looks at which data is accessed most often — it transfers it to SSDs — and which access is generally rare — it is deduplicated by StorSimple and sent to the cloud. It’s convenient when you have a lot of golden images of virtual machines, some of which are rarely used, but they take up space. You can watch the demo on StorSimple Hybrid Cloud Storage . The machine is good, though it is available only to those who have signed an Enterprise Agreement with Microsoft. Need technical details - here you can read in Russian.
There are not many data centers. So in Iowa and Virginia, new regions and, accordingly, new data centers appeared. It can be assumed that these data centers were built using the latest innovations, and if you are a new client, I advise you to use them.
Everyone loves Cron anyway. Those who don’t know what it is, begin to love when they find out (very approximately - a task scheduler with a simple API for event-driven processing. You can read more about how to use it at the development guru - Igor Sychevhabrahabr.ru/post/217635 and Scott Hanselmanwww.hanselman.com/blog/IntroducingWindowsAzureWebJobs.aspx . And about what's new in beta - here .
Microsoft Azure platform is certified for SAP products: SAP Business Suite, SAP Business All-In-One, SAP NetWeaver, and SAP HANA Developer Edition. At the same time, support is provided from two sides - from Microsoft and SAP, and you can use the SAP Cloud Appliance Library to quickly deploy SAP infrastructures .
Now it’s easier (and more reliable) to reserve sites running on the platform. When there is a built-in tool that can also be customized, this cannot but be wonderful. Web Sites Backup supports the backup schedule, Retention and complex scripts (when, for example, the site administrator blocked some files from access, and the backup failed).
Microsoft began working with Google and Docker on projects for Microsoft Azure:
* Kubernetes - a solution for managing and orchestrating (declaratively) Docker containers from Google Compute Engine
* libswarm - a solution for managing (imperatively) Docker.
Both solutions are planned to be supported natively.
As for cooperation with Packer.io, two plug-ins for Microsoft Azure and Hyper-V with native support for Microsoft technologies become available. Packer can be used to create images of machines and run them on Windows Server, Azure support is coming. At the same time, Packer does not replace Chef / Puppet - when creating images, Packer can be supplemented by them.
As a result of working with OpenNebula, new plug-ins for Microsoft Azure hybrid clouds are appearing. OpenNebula is a simple and powerful solution for managing data centers.
The program includes comprehensive information on how to use Intel Galileo for Windows, as well as the most likely pleasant thing is that Intel Galileo will be sent to registered users. And in the Open Source section this news is for the reason that we mostly give away the development toolkit to Open Source.
Website cheat sheet. Includes:
* Functions
* How-To:
* Filter traffic by IP
* Disable Server Affinity
* Set dynamic restrictions on IP
* Auto-Heal
* Set HTTP compression
* Deployment patterns
* Short language guides (PHP, etc.)
* Guide by commands
* Powershell Guide
Thing is important and useful. Both for those who just harness, and those who have long been using websites on Microsoft Azure.
You can find articles on how to scale websites, how to design them correctly, how to develop web services on Node.js and MongoDB, and how to connect websites with LOB applications via the link to articles.
Do not want to read long articles and be guided by manuals? You can watch a short course and immediately start using the sites.
Load testing using Visual Studio and monitoring what is happening with Application Insights. Watch here .
And about Application Insights, and in general the topic of telemetry and tracking the life cycle of projects, you can see in the course of three modules consisting of hardcore techniques.
A scientist from Microsoft Research on a living example shows how to use the service Microsoft Azure Machine Learning.
Scott Hanselman in his series Azure on Friday ' s talks with Ashwini Palekar of virtual networks in the cloud, security and firewalls. Communicate here .
Dear Azure - interesting questions and no less interesting gifts.
Websites on Microsoft Azure hosted on Websites have great functionality - extensions. One of them is Visual Studio Online Monaco. But much more is possible. In a PM article, Daria Grigoriu talks about what it is and what it needs to be.
Another great extension is Web Deploy. You can use Web Deploy as an extension, if only to ensure that if we have many sites, each of them has its own instance of the service. More details .
Azure Websites scales well and monitors. Here you can deploy Wordpress and deploy it seriously - in a corporate way. In the article everyone will tell and show.
In any infrastructure, you can set a notch at a certain point - it becomes clear that you need task automation. Monitoring, task execution, deployment, and much more - all this is no longer being followed and the human factor naturally arises at the most unnecessary moment. To remove it as much as possible, Microsoft Azure made Automation a service that runs on Runbooks or sets of procedures. To learn how to prepare a Runbook, read the article - How to create an Automation account, how to create and use a Runbook, configure logging and frequency.
In the video , the real experience of Microsoft IT. How self-service infrastructure was made and how the infrastructure deployment time was reduced from 20 to 5 minutes, while observing all policies and procedures.
When the infrastructure is distributed, the question arises - how to connect two virtual networks in different data centers so that traffic goes and does not swear? About it - in the blog .
About just recently started to spread the concept (which, however, more years) DevOps in the cloud will tell in the video “Accelerate DevOps with the Cloud” from TechNet Radio, special attention will be paid to Visual Studio Online. Watch .
In-depth study of the topic of developing web services on Microsoft Azure in the format of the course. Very comfortable and informative. Watch .
They say that the future is not just a public or private cloud, but a hybrid one. The course for ITPro will tell you everything about Azure System Center 2012 R2, as well as how to solve the problems facing IT in developing hybrid solutions ..
API Management is when you need to create and manage APIs in a secure environment. On Microsoft Azure, this can be done easily and naturally, and more on that in the video:
API Management in under 5 minutes
API Management 101
CORS & API Management
Rate Limits and Quotas
Below you will find links to resources that will help you use the Microsoft cloud platform:
Free Microsoft Azure 30-day trial;
Free access to Microsoft Azure resources for startups , partners , teachers, subscribers of MSDN ;
Microsoft Azure Development Center (azurehub.ru) - scripts, guides, examples, recommendations on choosing services and development on Microsoft Azure;
Latest news Azure the Microsoft - Twitter.com/windowsazure_ru .
We will be happy to answer your questions at azurerus@microsoft.com . And look forward to seeing you in the Microsoft Azure Community on Facebook. Here you will find experts (do not forget to ask them questions), photos and a lot of news.
That's all! Thank you and see you soon.
Sections "Open Source News" and "Learning the Platform" were added to the digest.
Announcements
Machine-learning-as-service preview
The irreversible increase in the amount of data and operations in our world complicates the modeling process of what will happen (we hope) or maybe (already more likely) tomorrow. Will they buy new yogurt? Will they give a rating of 9 to our speaker? Where will customers spend time tomorrow? The number and complexity of the models increase, the available resources are limited. A cloud is flying to the rescue - now you can take your model, upload it to Microsoft Azure, train and constantly get the result. You can try Machine Learning for free.
Preview Event Hubs
It’s not that the existing mechanisms are not suitable for the new concept of the Internet of Things, but it’s better to make a new one and make it work well than to face the limitations of existing services at some point. Azure Event Hubs is a service that is an aggregator of signals from sensors in any quantity. What does he do with them? All of them fall into one large tunnel, where handlers pick them up. Moreover, the system does not have Dead Lettering - if the message has become poisonous, then, unfortunately, we do not have the luxury (time) to think about what to do with it. But there is nothing to worry about - the tunnel can be called a rubber one. :) If you use EH with Service Bus Queues / Topics, then EH makes it possible to implement Command / Control for IoT.
More about the new service - Event Hubs .
Reverse DNS support ( IaaS & PaaS ) added for cloud services
Now you can use Reverse DNS for cloud services and infrastructures, while there is backward compatibility - in order to use the new function, you do not need to recreate everything. Reverse DNS is a useful feature, for example, for Weak AuthN . The function is free, but so far only available through the API and Powershell.
Mobile Services Updates
Mobile Services has traditionally received a couple of interesting updates, not revolutionary, but evolutionary and primarily useful for the developer. This time appeared: CORS support with ASP . CORS NET Web API for defining CORS policies at the service, controller and action level; Azure Active Directory AuthN support using Server-Side; extensible authentication model for customers - you can add your own mechanisms in addition to Azure Active Directory, Twitter, Facebook, Google and Microsoft Account.
Acquisition of InMage Systems
InMage System is a company that develops interesting solutions for ensuring the continuous operation of cloud solutions. So, Forrester called InMage Systems Enabling Technology for Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service. Their technology is behind solutions from Sungard and HP. The solutions will be integrated into the Microsoft Azure Recovery Service.
Microsoft and Amazon Lead Forrester Cloud Storage Leaders
Enhanced Availability of Azure Redis Cache
Azure Redis Cache has been available for a relatively long time - since May 2014. With it, you can use Microsoft's dedicated dedicated Redis cache . With this update, Azure Redis Cache has become available in new regions and forms - now even more cache. Learn more about how to use - How to Use Azure Redis Cache .
Azure StorSimple 8000 Series Coming
StorSimple is the kind of storage that you install and mount as a network share. More interesting already - inside it has SSD and SAS, as well as integration with Microsoft Azure storage. In real time, the repository looks at which data is accessed most often — it transfers it to SSDs — and which access is generally rare — it is deduplicated by StorSimple and sent to the cloud. It’s convenient when you have a lot of golden images of virtual machines, some of which are rarely used, but they take up space. You can watch the demo on StorSimple Hybrid Cloud Storage . The machine is good, though it is available only to those who have signed an Enterprise Agreement with Microsoft. Need technical details - here you can read in Russian.
New regions (and data centers)
There are not many data centers. So in Iowa and Virginia, new regions and, accordingly, new data centers appeared. It can be assumed that these data centers were built using the latest innovations, and if you are a new client, I advise you to use them.
Preview of the Microsoft Azure WebJobs SDK Beta
Everyone loves Cron anyway. Those who don’t know what it is, begin to love when they find out (very approximately - a task scheduler with a simple API for event-driven processing. You can read more about how to use it at the development guru - Igor Sychevhabrahabr.ru/post/217635 and Scott Hanselmanwww.hanselman.com/blog/IntroducingWindowsAzureWebJobs.aspx . And about what's new in beta - here .
Microsoft Azure Certification for SAP Products
Microsoft Azure platform is certified for SAP products: SAP Business Suite, SAP Business All-In-One, SAP NetWeaver, and SAP HANA Developer Edition. At the same time, support is provided from two sides - from Microsoft and SAP, and you can use the SAP Cloud Appliance Library to quickly deploy SAP infrastructures .
Azure Web Sites Backup out of preview
Now it’s easier (and more reliable) to reserve sites running on the platform. When there is a built-in tool that can also be customized, this cannot but be wonderful. Web Sites Backup supports the backup schedule, Retention and complex scripts (when, for example, the site administrator blocked some files from access, and the backup failed).
Open Source News
Collaboration between Microsoft, Google, Docker, Packer.io and Open Nebula
Microsoft began working with Google and Docker on projects for Microsoft Azure:
* Kubernetes - a solution for managing and orchestrating (declaratively) Docker containers from Google Compute Engine
* libswarm - a solution for managing (imperatively) Docker.
Both solutions are planned to be supported natively.
As for cooperation with Packer.io, two plug-ins for Microsoft Azure and Hyper-V with native support for Microsoft technologies become available. Packer can be used to create images of machines and run them on Windows Server, Azure support is coming. At the same time, Packer does not replace Chef / Puppet - when creating images, Packer can be supplemented by them.
As a result of working with OpenNebula, new plug-ins for Microsoft Azure hybrid clouds are appearing. OpenNebula is a simple and powerful solution for managing data centers.
Announcement of the Windows Developer Program for IoT
The program includes comprehensive information on how to use Intel Galileo for Windows, as well as the most likely pleasant thing is that Intel Galileo will be sent to registered users. And in the Open Source section this news is for the reason that we mostly give away the development toolkit to Open Source.
Learning
Azure Web Sites Cheat Sheet and many useful articles , as well as a course for beginners
Website cheat sheet. Includes:
* Functions
* How-To:
* Filter traffic by IP
* Disable Server Affinity
* Set dynamic restrictions on IP
* Auto-Heal
* Set HTTP compression
* Deployment patterns
* Short language guides (PHP, etc.)
* Guide by commands
* Powershell Guide
Thing is important and useful. Both for those who just harness, and those who have long been using websites on Microsoft Azure.
You can find articles on how to scale websites, how to design them correctly, how to develop web services on Node.js and MongoDB, and how to connect websites with LOB applications via the link to articles.
Do not want to read long articles and be guided by manuals? You can watch a short course and immediately start using the sites.
Stress Testing
Load testing using Visual Studio and monitoring what is happening with Application Insights. Watch here .
And about Application Insights, and in general the topic of telemetry and tracking the life cycle of projects, you can see in the course of three modules consisting of hardcore techniques.
Practical Use of Machine Learning
A scientist from Microsoft Research on a living example shows how to use the service Microsoft Azure Machine Learning.
We delve into Virtual private network
Scott Hanselman in his series Azure on Friday ' s talks with Ashwini Palekar of virtual networks in the cloud, security and firewalls. Communicate here .
Have a question? They will answer and give :)
Dear Azure - interesting questions and no less interesting gifts.
How to use Azure Websites extensions
Websites on Microsoft Azure hosted on Websites have great functionality - extensions. One of them is Visual Studio Online Monaco. But much more is possible. In a PM article, Daria Grigoriu talks about what it is and what it needs to be.
Another great extension is Web Deploy. You can use Web Deploy as an extension, if only to ensure that if we have many sites, each of them has its own instance of the service. More details .
WordPress Corporate - With Websites
Azure Websites scales well and monitors. Here you can deploy Wordpress and deploy it seriously - in a corporate way. In the article everyone will tell and show.
Automation
In any infrastructure, you can set a notch at a certain point - it becomes clear that you need task automation. Monitoring, task execution, deployment, and much more - all this is no longer being followed and the human factor naturally arises at the most unnecessary moment. To remove it as much as possible, Microsoft Azure made Automation a service that runs on Runbooks or sets of procedures. To learn how to prepare a Runbook, read the article - How to create an Automation account, how to create and use a Runbook, configure logging and frequency.
In the video , the real experience of Microsoft IT. How self-service infrastructure was made and how the infrastructure deployment time was reduced from 20 to 5 minutes, while observing all policies and procedures.
VNet-to-VNet: how to connect two networks in different regions
When the infrastructure is distributed, the question arises - how to connect two virtual networks in different data centers so that traffic goes and does not swear? About it - in the blog .
DevOps in the cloud
About just recently started to spread the concept (which, however, more years) DevOps in the cloud will tell in the video “Accelerate DevOps with the Cloud” from TechNet Radio, special attention will be paid to Visual Studio Online. Watch .
Courses: Developing Azure and Web Services Jump Start
In-depth study of the topic of developing web services on Microsoft Azure in the format of the course. Very comfortable and informative. Watch .
Courses: Moving to the hybrid cloud with Azure
They say that the future is not just a public or private cloud, but a hybrid one. The course for ITPro will tell you everything about Azure System Center 2012 R2, as well as how to solve the problems facing IT in developing hybrid solutions ..
Courses: API Management
API Management is when you need to create and manage APIs in a secure environment. On Microsoft Azure, this can be done easily and naturally, and more on that in the video:
API Management in under 5 minutes
API Management 101
CORS & API Management
Rate Limits and Quotas
useful links
Below you will find links to resources that will help you use the Microsoft cloud platform:
Free Microsoft Azure 30-day trial;
Free access to Microsoft Azure resources for startups , partners , teachers, subscribers of MSDN ;
Microsoft Azure Development Center (azurehub.ru) - scripts, guides, examples, recommendations on choosing services and development on Microsoft Azure;
Latest news Azure the Microsoft - Twitter.com/windowsazure_ru .
We will be happy to answer your questions at azurerus@microsoft.com . And look forward to seeing you in the Microsoft Azure Community on Facebook. Here you will find experts (do not forget to ask them questions), photos and a lot of news.
That's all! Thank you and see you soon.