Monthly Azure news October 2020

This month as per usual we’re reporting about some of the most recent news from the Azure and Cloud native world! Join us and keep reading as there are bunch of interesting updates and tips.

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Azure Kubernetes Service on Azure Stack HCI is now in public preview

Azure Stack HCI is a Azure service that allow you to deploy and run Windows and Linux virtual machines in your datacenter or at the edge and use Azure services on-prem like Azure Backup, Azure Monitor and Azure Security Center. Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS) on Azure Stack HCI allows and simplifies the Kubernetes cluster deployment on Azure Stack HCI.

Get started with the preview and learn more.

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Support for Dapr applications in Azure API Management

It’s now possible to integrate your Dapr services into an Azure API Management. Dapr is a runtime for developing event-driven microservices by codifying different microservice patterns. You can interact with Dapr applications via APIs published in Azure API Management.

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Azure Monitor Log Analytics UI improvements September 2020

Some UI improvements are made within the Azure Monitor Log Analytics UI.

Searching the query history is now improved and enhancements to the Time Picker were made.

Read about search improvements in this blog post and this blog post.

Read more about the Time picker enhancements in this blog post.

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App Service integration with GitHub Actions now generally available

GitHub Actions are allowing you to create CI/CD pipelines in your GitHub repository. The App Service Deployment Center support for GitHub Actions is leaving its preview and is now GA for production workloads.

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Azure Private Link provides private connectivity from a virtual network to Azure PaaS services, simplifying the network architecture and securing the connection between endpoints in Azure by eliminating data exposure to the public internet. Private Link carries traffic privately, which reduces your exposure to threats and helps you meet compliance standards.

You can now use Azure Private Link to connect to an Azure Cache for Redis instance from your virtual network via a private endpoint which is assigned a private IP address in a subnet within the virtual network. Once a private endpoint is created, all access to your Azure Cache for Redis instances will be restricted to only connections using the private IP addresses.

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Azure Dev Spaces is retiring on 31 October 2023

Azure Dev Spaces is retiring and replaced by Bridge to Kubernetes, which provides a lighter-weight alternative to many of the development scenarios that Azure Dev Spaces supports and is now GA. You can use Bridge to Kubernetes viw Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code extensions. 

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App Service Private Endpoints now generally available

Azure App Service support for Private Endpoints has now entered General Availability in all Azure public regions for both Windows and Linux apps. Private Endpoints enables you to consume your app through a specific IP address located in your Azure Virtual Network (VNet), eliminating exposure to the public internet.

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Azure role-based access control (RBAC) for Azure Key Vault data plane authorization is now in preview

It’s now possible to use Azure role-based access control (RBAC) for KeyVault authorization.

Learn more.

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Azure Key Vault Event Grid integration is now available

Azure Key Vault is now integrated into Azure Event Grid. That means that you can now use KeyVault triggers, like the change of a key or certificate, in your Azure Logic Apps, Functions and every other service that’s able to subscribe to an Event Grid.

More info on Azure Event Grid event schema for Azure Key Vault.

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Announcing Akri, an open source project for building a connected edge with Kubernetes

Microsoft is announcing Akri. Akri is a Kubernetes-native project for exposing edge leaf devices as resources in a Kubernetes cluster by providing an abstraction layer for finding, utilizing, and monitoring the availability of leaf devices.

Akri is handling the dynamic appearance and disappearance of leaf devices. A user simply has to apply an Akri Configuration to a cluster, specifying the discovery protocol and the pod that should be deployed upon discovery and will automatically create a Kubernetes service for each type of leaf device (or Akri Configuration), removing the need for an application to track the state of pods or nodes.

Akri currently has ONVIF and udev discovery protocols.

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Azure Rosenheim meetup – Projektmanagement mit Azure DevOps

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Azure API Management updates- October 2020

A regular Azure API Management service update was released, and included the following new features, bug fixes, and changes, along with other improvements. 

Details on all these new features, bug fixes, and other changes can be found here on Github.

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General Availability: Azure Spot on Azure Kubernetes Service

Azure Spot support for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is now in GA. Spot node pools are running on a spot vritual machine scale set and thus allows you to take advantage of unutilized capacity in Azure at a significant cost savings. For example, you can set up “spot” workloads to only run when compute ressources are available at a particular cost.

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General Availability: Azure Kubernetes Service support for proximity placement groups

One of the factors affecting Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) application latency performance is network latency due to the physical distance between agent nodes. You can now associate a proximity placement group with an AKS node pool in order to co-locate agent nodes and minimize node to node latency. This enables AKS to support latency-sensitive workloads in critical business scenarios.

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Generate Azure Functions using Azure API Management extension for Visual Studio Code

You can now generate Azure Functions using Azure API Management extension for Visual Studio Code. This new experimental capability can help you scaffold all the necessary functions for your API based on the API definitions. Once generated, you can add the business logic to each function as necessary. This extension supports C#, Java, Python, and Type Script, with support for JavaScript and PowerShell and is coming very soon.