Azure Monthly News Summary - November 2018
November 14, 2018
Tags:Azure Meetup News 
Azure Monthly News - November 2018 (from Melbourne Azure Meetup)
The Azure Monthly News Summary is a monthly post and slide deck that we prepare for our community at the Azure Melbourne Meetup. I am a co-organiser of this meetup and it happens monthly on the second Wednesday of each month. If you missed last month, you can check out the news update here
Hi again, here is the summary of Azure news from the last four weeks. This is brought to you by Melbourne Azure Meetup, which I am a co-organiser of :) There is a lot to cover, so let’s get started.
Static Data Masking for Azure SQL goes to Public Preview
Happens at storage level, original data irretrievable. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/static-data-masking-preview/
Public Preview - Cognitive Services - Bing Local Business Search
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/cognitive-services-bing-local-business-search-now-available-in-public-preview/
SQL Data Warehouse Workload insights through Microsoft Azure Monitor diagnostic logs
External logging process to Azure Monitor https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/workload-insights-with-sql-data-warehouse-delivered-through-azure-monitor-diagnostic-logs-pass/
General Availability – Row-Level Security for Azure SQL DW
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/row-level-security-is-now-supported-for-azure-sql-data-warehouse/
Azure SQL DW supports Visual Studio SQL Server Data Tool (Preview)
dev teams can now work on a single SQL DW project in VS https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-sql-data-warehouse-provides-a-frictionless-development-using-sql-server-data-tools/
General Availability - Secure incoming traffic to HDInsight clusters in a VPN with private endpoint
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/secure-incoming-traffic-to-hdinsight-clusters-in-a-vnet-with-private-endpoint/
Event Domains and Advanced Filters Event Grid
Auth scenarios, multi tenants architecture, partitioning topics, etc https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/deliver-the-right-events-to-the-right-places-with-event-domains/
Simplified Experience of Azure VM Restore
Directly creates managed disk(s) and VM templates no need for manual scripts https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/simplified-restore-experience-for-azure-virtual-machines/
Public Preview – Live Local Data Testing for Azure Stream Analytics
Easier development, shorter test cycle https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/local-testing-with-live-data-means-faster-development-with-azure-stream-analytics-2/
Public Preview - Named Entity Recognition in the Cognitive Services Text Analytics
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/public-preview-named-entity-recognition-in-the-cognitive-services-text-analytics-api/
Azure IoT Reference Architecture 2.1 release
Logging & Monitoring, IoT Edge, TSI, Azure IoT SaaS (IoT Central) https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-iot-reference-architecture-2-1-release/
Updates for Azure Blockchain Workbench 1.4.0
Better Accessibility, customise smart contract tables, array & data types support, support for longer strings (4K) https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/accessibility-and-array-support-with-azure-blockchain-workbench-1-4-0/
Public Preview - Apache Spark jobs gain up to 9x speed up with HDInsight IO Cache
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/apache-spark-speedup-with-hdinsight-io-cache/
Public Preview – Azure Digital Twin
Spatial intelligence graph, twin object models, security through RBAC with AAD, advanced compute capabilities https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-the-public-preview-of-azure-digital-twins/
##Custom C# Code for Azure Stream Analytics query and serialisation https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/supercharge-your-azure-stream-analytics-query-with-c-code/
Microsoft Joins Open Invention Network (OIN) – MS 60,000 patents are now available for Linux
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-joins-open-invention-network-to-help-protect-linux-and-open-source/
General Availability - Azure Event Hubs for Apache Kafka
Support for Kafka apps and ecosystem in the Azure Event Hubs service https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-the-general-availability-of-azure-event-hubs-for-apache-kafka
General Availability – Azure Media Services v3
New SDKs, Low-latency live streaming, easier dev with Event Grid and ARM, etc. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/what-s-new-in-azure-media-services-video-processing/
Preview Release – ARM Cost & Monitoring APIs
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-the-preview-release-of-management-group-cost-apis/
Private Preview of Azure VM Image Builder
Creates image configuration template (via Marketplace) and then devs can customise https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-private-preview-of-azure-vm-image-builder/
New Azure Advisor recommendations
Database and SQL DW optimisation / tuning, Storage recommendation, migration to ARM, etc. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-advisor-has-new-recommendations-for-you/
General Availability – Tomcat & Java SE on App Service on Linux
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/general-availability-of-tomcat-and-java-se-on-app-service-on-linux/
Get Notified when your Azure resources become unavailable
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/get-notified-when-your-azure-resources-become-unavailable/
Public Preview – Azure Container Registry – Helm Chart Repositories and more
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-container-registry-public-preview-of-helm-chart-repositories-and-more/
Azure Maps Web SDK Updates – Data-Driven Styling and more
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/data-driven-styling-and-more-in-the-latest-azure-maps-web-sdk-update/
If you have a comment, feedback or a question, I would love to hear from you