Monthly news roundup as delivered to the Brisbane Azure User Group by Dan Toomey (content compiled by Damien Berry)

1. @BrisbaneAzureUG
meetup.com/Brisbane-Azure-User-Group

2. Microsoft Azure News
December 2019

3. Sponsorship Update

5. Upcoming Presentations
Month Presenter(s) Topic
January 2019 Heinrich Braasch Low-and-slow Weber control from anywhere in the world using Azure IOT
February 2019 Troy Hunt Clouds, Codes and Cybers
March 2019 Ryan Davis How not to translate a videogame
April 2019 Errol Leboydre SignalR as a Service
May 2019 Adam Stephensen Exploring Container Offerings in Azure
June 2019 Dan Toomey
Ben Parker
ISE: Integration Service Environments
Azure Optimisations; Ask for your EOFY Bonus
July 2019 Bronwen Zande 50 Shades of Grey - Ethics In A World of Ever-Growing AI
August 2019 Sonia Cuff Governance & Compliance in Azure
September 2019 Todd Whitehead Azure, DevOps and the Commodore 64
October 2019 Namit Bhandari
Adam Stephensen
RPA and UiPath Azure Automation
Safer, Faster, Smarter - Simple patterns for better cloud native applications
November 2019 David Alzamendi Storing Information in Azure, from A to Z
December 2019 Various UNCONVENTION NIGHT!
Got Topic?
Send message on Meetup or email baug@outlook.com.au

7. Our team in Deloitte Platform Engineering are interested to talking to people with a passion for Azure
and that wishing to further their career with a specialisation in cloud integration solutions!
Key skills of interest:
- Highly proficient in the Microsoft Enterprise Suite - C#, .NET, and Visual Studio;
- A background in Java and interested in exploring integration, using middleware platforms such as
MuleSoft or DellBoomi.
- Software development experience with Microsoft Azure, including App Service, Service Fabric, Logic
Apps, Service Bus, API Management;
- Solution delivery with Agile methodology and CICD;
- Previous experience in consulting or developing and engaging with teams and building client
relationships.
If you’re passionate about exploring Cloud Integration and interested in opportunities with Deloitte,
please reach out to Danica Ahlhaus (dahlhaus@deloitte.com.au) or Rebecca McDonald
(remcdonald@deloitte.com.au) here in Brisbane!

9. Low Code Bot Development Experience (Preview)
• Bot Framework Composer
• Integrated development tool built on top of
the Bot Framework SDK
• Visual experience to create, edit, test, and
refine conversational apps (bots)
• Ability to extend with custom code
• One centralized place to incorporate Azure
Cognitive Services, starting initially with
language understanding, with more
Cognitive Services to come.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/delivering-increased-productivity-for-bot-development-and-deployment/

10. New Azure HPC & HPC Cache GA
• new second gen AMD EPYC based HBv2 Azure Virtual Machines for HPC
• Up to 45 percent more memory bandwidth than x86 alternatives,
• Up to 4 teraFLOPS of double-precision compute.
• HBv2 VMs support up to 80,000 cores per MPI job
• new NVv4 Azure Virtual Machines for virtual desktops
• Between 2GB of dedicated GPU up to an entire MI25 GPU with 16GB of HBM2 memory
• Preview NDv2 Azure GPU Virtual Machines
• 8 NVIDIA Tesla V100 NVLink interconnected GPUs each with 32 GB of HBM2 memory, 40
non-hyperthreaded cores and 672 GiB of system memory.
• HPC Cache
• HPC Cache delivers flexibility and scale.
• Use this service to connect high-performance computing workloads to on-premises network-
attached storage or run Azure Blob as the portable operating system interface.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/blog/announcing-the-general-availability-of-the-new-azure-hpc-cache-service/
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/blog/new-azure-hpc-and-partner-offerings-at-supercomputing-19/

11. Azure Backup for SQL Server 2019 & restore as files
• Zero-infrastructure solution that protects standalone SQL Server and SQL AlwaysOn configurations in
Azure Virtual Machine without the need to deploy and manage any backup infrastructure.
• Long-term retention
• Central monitoring
• Self-service
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/blog/azure-backup-support-for-sql-server-2019-and-restore-as-files/

12. Change feed support (Preview)
• Change feed provides a guaranteed, ordered, durable, read-only log of all the creation, modification, and
deletion change events that occur to the blobs in your storage account. This log is stored as append blobs
within your storage account, therefore you can manage the data retention and access control based on
your requirements.
• Some scenarios that would benefit from consuming a blob change feed include:
• Bulk processing a group of newly uploaded files for virus scanning, resizing, or backups.
• Storing, auditing, and analyzing changes to your objects over any period of time for data
management or compliance.
• Combining data uploaded by various IoT sensors into a single collection for data transformation and
insights.
• Additional data movement by synchronizing with a cache, search engine, or data warehouse.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/blog/change-feed-support-now-available-in-preview-for-azure-blob-storage/

13. Cost Management for partners GA
• With this update, CSPs use Azure Cost Management to:
• Understand invoiced costs and associate the costs to the customer, subscriptions, resource
groups, and services.
• Get an intuitive view of Azure costs in cost analysis with capabilities to analyze costs by customer,
subscription, resource group, resource, meter, service, and many other dimensions.
• View resource costs that have Partner Earned Credit (PEC) applied in Cost Analysis.
• Set up notifications and automation using programmatic budgets and alerts when costs exceed
budgets.
• Enable the Azure Resource Manager policy
that provides customer access to Cost Management
data. Customers can then view consumption
cost data for their subscriptions using
pay-as-you-go rates.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/blog/introducing-azure-cost-management-for-partners/

14. Container Registry: diagnostic & audit logs (Preview)
• enables a capability to monitor your container registry by providing an audit trail of all relevant
user driven activities on the registry. This is helpful for security and compliance related tracking
and Diagnosing operational issues related to registry activities such as pull, push events.
• These event cover:
• Authentication,
• login details,
• repository level activities,
• other user-driven events.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/blog/azure-container-registry-preview-of-diagnostics-and-audit-logs/

15. Reservations for six more services
• With reserved capacity, you get significant discounts over your on-demand costs by
committing to long-term usage of a service.
• Blob Storage (GPv2) and Azure Data Lake Storage (Gen2).
• Azure Database for MySQL.
• Azure Database for PostgreSQL.
• Azure Database for MariaDB.
• Azure Data Explorer.
• Premium SSD Managed Disks.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/blog/save-more-on-azure-usage-announcing-reservations-for-six-more-services/

16. GitHub Actions for Azure GA
• Connect to Azure
• Deploy a Web app
• Deploy a serverless Function app
• Build and Deploy containerized Apps
• Deploy to Kubernetes
• Deploy to Azure SQL or MySQL databases
• Trigger a run in Azure Pipelines
• Utility Actions
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/blog/github-actions-for-azure-is-now-generally-available/

17. Application Gateway
Ingress Controller for AKS
• Application Gateway Ingress Controller can achieve up
to 50 percent lower network latency vs in-cluster
ingress controllers.
• Application Gateway Ingress Controller runs in its own
pod on the customer’s AKS. Ingress Controller
monitors a subset of Kubernetes’ resources for
changes. The state of the AKS cluster is translated to
Application Gateway specific configuration and applied
to the Azure Resource Manager. The continuous re-
configuration of Application Gateway ensures
uninterrupted flow of traffic to AKS’ services.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/blog/application-gateway-ingress-controller-for-azure-kubernetes-service/

18. Multi-language identification and transcription
• The multi-language transcription capability is available as part of
the Video Indexer portal. Currently, it supports four languages.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/blog/multi-language-identification-and-transcription-in-video-indexer/

20. https://www.meetup.com/BrisRuby/events/265469287/

21. https://brisbanebootcamp.com/

24. Azure Australia Slack Team!
http://bit.ly/az-aus-slack

25. BAUG You-Tube Channel
PLEASE SUBSCRIBE!!
http://bit.ly/BAUGYouTubeChannel

26. On Demand Training - Updates
https://aka.ms/learn/
•Azure Fundamentals
•Introduction to Azure
•Create Serverless Logic with Azure Functions
www.pluralsight.com
•Designing a Hybrid Cloud in Azure
•Docker for Web Developers
•Azure AD for Developers
www.opsgility.com
•Azure For AWS Experts
•Deploying Hybrid Identitity Solutions Using Azure AD
•Monitoring Apps with Application Insights

29. BAUG Unconvention Night 2019
Presenter Topic
Jernev Kavka Quick & Easy Testing of APIs with Postman
Dan Toomey Update on Azure Certification Exams
Gayatri Guru Overview of Azure Alerts
Todd Whitehead Building a Web Site Without a Web Server on Azure
11th December 2019