Cloud Solution Architect, Dr. Linda Sheard, joins Russell and Sujit for a primer on Azure Open AI. Linda breaks down the service and provides context on how it can be used for the typical scenario where a customer wants to reason over their own data. 

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode466.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/nDcIWvHa43s

Resources: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services/openai/overview

Other updates:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/container-registry/tutorial-registry-cache

Evan and Sujit talk to Principal PM Ramya Oruganti about the release of Functions as a first class managed service on Azure Container Apps. She tells us how this opens up possibilities for event-driven applications on ACA with full support for KEDA, Bindings, Dapr, GitHub Actions etc.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode465.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/0XR0PJuB_ko

Resources:

https://github.com/Azure/azure-functions-on-container-apps

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/apps-on-azure-blog/azure-functions-for-cloud-native-microservices-public-preview/ba-p/3826800

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-functions/functions-deploy-container-apps?tabs=acr%2Cbash&pivots=programming-language-csharp

Other updates:

Understanding Service Health communications for Azure vulnerabilities | Azure Blog | Microsoft Azure

Public preview: Assess impact of service retirements workbook template in Azure Advisor | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Cale and Russell talk to the Microsoft Program Manager for DevBox and Azure Deployment Environments, Sagar Chandra Reddy Lankala, about how Azure Deployment Environments can enable rapid deployment of on-demand dev/test environments while providing governance, security and cost management - plus some more updates from Microsoft Build 2023!

Media File: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode464.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/IsgQVMIkhRc

Sagar's links:

• GA blog - https://aka.ms/ade-ga-blog
• Sign up for Terraform support - https://aka.ms/ade-terraform-signup
• LinkedIn profile - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sagarchandrareddy

Other updates mentioned in this episode:

• Public preview: Introducing NGads V620-series VMs optimized for cloud gaming | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure
• Generally available: Azure Data Explorer Kusto Emulator on Linux | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure
• Explore the latest features for Datadog—An Azure Native ISV Service
• Microsoft Cost Management updates—May 2023
• Microsoft has made Azure Linux generally available. Repeat, Azure Linux
• Azure OpenAI Service - Documentation, quickstarts, API reference - Azure Cognitive Services | Microsoft Learn
• Azure Deployment Environments | Microsoft Azure
• About Azure App Spaces | Microsoft Learn
• Introducing Azure API Center for Centralized API Discovery and Governance (microsoft.com)
• GitHub Advanced Security for Azure Devops

The team catches up with Ryan Berry to learn about OneStream's journey to Azure. They talk about both the benefits and pitfalls and why Ryan is happy OneStream in running in Azure.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode463.mp3

 YouTube: https://youtu.be/Um4rg4eKRuU

Resources: 

https://www.onestream.com/blog/onestream-splash-dc-wows-attendees-with-ai-powered-cpm-capabilities/

Other updates:

Public Preview – Data Migration for Oracle | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Build 2023: New Azure App Service plans fuel greater choice and savings | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure 

https://news.microsoft.com/build-2023-book-of-news/

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9265960

Jorge Palma, the Lead PM for Azure Kubernetes Services, talks to Evan and Sujit about the Long-Term Support (LTS) version Kubernetes which provides support for 2 years. He tells us how this model works and who may benefit from this option.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode462.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/zmrOegThyCE

Resources: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/apps-on-azure-blog/azure-kubernetes-upgrades-and-long-term-support/ba-p/3782789

https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/opensource/2023/04/18/join-microsoft-at-kubecon-and-cloudnativecon-europe-2023/

Russell and Sujit talk to Dave Salvator, Director of Accelerated Computing Products at NVIDIA, about a new offering in Azure via the Marketplace that will make it easier to get NVIDIA's software onto the Azure platform to make it easier for customers to take advantage of their GPU accelerated instances.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode461.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/HcAjq8jAzqo

 Resources:

https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-collaborates-with-microsoft-to-accelerate-enterprise-ready-generative-ai

Other Updates:

Public preview: Azure Cold Storage | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Public preview: Always Serve for Azure Traffic Manager | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

General availability: Inbound ICMPv4 pings are now supported on Azure Load Balancer | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Generally available: Azure Monitor Agent supports Linux Hardening for CIS and SELinux | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Public Preview: Azure Monitor OpenTelemetry Distro for ASP.NET Core, JavaScript (Node.js), Python | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Transforming containerized applications with Azure Container Storage—now in preview | Azure Blog | Microsoft Azure

Cale, Evan and Sujit talk to Neha Rathod, Garv Jasuja, Akshay Gupta and Vijay Chiluveru, who are Graduate Students at Penn State University that have developed a wireless monitoring device to detect cardiac arrest and alert the caretakers. We talk to them about how they developed the product and how Azure helped speed up the development.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode460.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/VQAVhLpzKCE

Resources:

https://alertheart.com/

https://www.psu.edu/news/engineering/story/engineering-graduate-students-named-finalists-microsoft-imagine-cup/

Other updates:

Microsoft Build May 23 - 25 https://build.microsoft.com/en-US/home

Public preview: Rolling Upgrades with MaxSurge for Virtual Machine Scale Sets | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Evan and Sujit talk to Allison Jones, a Group PM for Azure's AIOps System Team. She gives us insights into how Microsoft uses AI/ML to analyze various signals from Azure to provide actionable information about the state of the platform.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode459.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/Ousa2qWQEiQ

Resources: 

Blogs

Advancing Azure Service quality with artificial intelligence: AIOps

Advancing failure prediction and mitigation – introducing Narya

Advancing safe deployment with AIOps – introducing Gandalf

Advancing anomaly detection with AIOps – introducing AiDice 

Webinars

AIOps webinar @ Harvard in Tech Seattle by Dongmei Zhang, Marcus Fontoura, Murali Chintalapati, and Igal Figlin

AIOps Distinguished Industry Lecture by Mark Russinovich at Carneige Mellon University

In addition, the customer can learn more about cutting edge AIOps solutions across industry through participation of Cloud Intelligence / AIOps workshop. 

Other updates:

Generally available: Azure Monitor alerts now suggests signals to alert on | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Azure Advisor VM/VMSS right-sizing recommendations with custom lookback period | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/generally-available-serverless-sql-for-azure-databricks/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/generally-available-azure-event-hubs-dedicated-selfserve-scalable-clusters-for-mission-critical-kafka-amqp-and-https-workload/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/generally-available-ebsv5-and-ebdsv5-nvmeenabled-vm-sizes/

Elizabeth Graham, a Senior Software Engineer in the Commercial Software Engineering group at Microsoft, talks to Evan and Sujit about the various options we have for integrating external systems with Azure. She talks about how messages, files and other input forms can be ingested and processed with some of the services available in Azure.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode458.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/NekugFAh2x8

Resources:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/integration/integration-start-here

Data Mapper

Other updates:

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/azure-service-fabric-91-third-refresh-release-2/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/generally-available-crossregion-service-endpoints-for-azure-storage/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/azurefilessmblinuxad/

The team talks to Ayush Agarwal, Davide Mauri, and Sean Leonard to learn about how the open-source Data API Builder can be used to quickly and easily create CRUD APIs on top of multiple database platforms in Azure for use in many types of applications and languages.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode457.mp3

YouTube: https://youtu.be/pgvMa3tFg7s

Resources: 

https://aka.ms/dab

Other updates:

Public Preview: In-place scaling for enterprise caches | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Hotpatch now available for Windows Server VMs on Azure with desktop experience | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

Public preview: Node Resource Group (NRG) lockdown | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/generally-available-kubernetes-126-support-in-aks/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/public-preview-aks-service-mesh-addon-for-istio/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/generally-available-long-term-support-version-in-aks/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/app-service-environment-v1-v2-retirement/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/unleash-the-power-of-apis-strategies-for-innovation/