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  • Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.11

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.11

    June 16, 2021

    Welcome to the eleventh edition of the Azure World Newsletter in 2021. 

    Microsoft Build is now a few weeks behind us, so we’ve entered into a bit of a quiet period when it comes to Azure announcements. But I’ll do my best to find the most interesting stories of the past two weeks for you, as usual. 

    Thanks so much for subscribing. The unsubscribe link is at the bottom if you want to stop receiving these emails.

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    ONE.

    Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) has been one of the more exciting major new products that Microsoft has produced in the last few years. I saw a demo of it at the last in-person Microsoft Ignite, showing a Windows desktop running on a phone (Android or iOS in that demo). With WVD, you can log in from any device, and use your desktop in the cloud. All your apps and data there. Instead of that experience being confined to your work desk, you can have an identical experience anywhere.

    Recently, Microsoft has rebranded WVD as Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) and added integration with Azure Active Directory.

    This is going to enable you to log into a Windows VM from any device, using Azure AD as the identity service on the backend. Whether you’re viewing the Windows Desktop on your Surface Laptop, tablet, phone, or desktop, you’ll be able to log in with your AAD credentials everywhere. And of course, that can be connected to your on-prem AD for single sign-on.

    The price of this convenience of Azure AD integration is a bit expensive – $10 per user per month. I assume that will be rolled into one of the Azure AD Premium tiers.

    Each AVD user will cost $5.50 per month starting in 2022. Right now, it’s free in preview.

    https://searchvirtualdesktop.techtarget.com/news/252502437/Microsoft-integrates-virtual-desktop-Azure-Active-Directory

    TWO.

    Microsoft has hinted at this in the past, but a new region has come online, West US 3.

    West US 3 is based in Arizona and is touted as the newest sustainable data center in the network. 

    This new region gets its power from a solar power plant, and will not use water for cooling for more than half the year. And they’re working towards a LEED gold certification which means a minimum of 90 percent of waste will be diverted from landfills.

    If you’re interested in all of the things Microsoft is working on to make this data center sustainable, which will help them achieve their carbon negative by 2030 goal, there’s an interesting blog post on that here.

    https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/expanding-cloud-services-microsoft-launches-its-sustainable-datacenter-region-in-arizona/

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    There were a lot of announcements due to Microsoft Build. The following platform updates happened in the past two weeks: 

    • Azure Durable Functions PowerShell support now in GA
    • Azure Storage Account Inventory in public preview
    • Azure DevOps Delivery Plans 2.0
    • Azure Maps Creator for creating indoor maps!
    • Azure Storage Key Rotation and Expiration Policies
    • Azure Defender for Azure Database for MariaDB now in GA
    • Azure Defender for Azure Database for MySQL Single Server now in GA
    • Azure Defender for Azure Database for PostgreSQL Single Server now in GA
    • Five more free services with an Azure Free Account
    • Azure Maps Elevation API now in GA
    • Azure Dev Spaces retired on May 15, 2021
    • On-prem SQL Server now available as a data in flow in Azure Data Factory and Azure Synapse

    Be sure and check out the Azure Updates page if any of these affect you.

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

    COMING UP FOR ME.

    I launched a new AZ-303 practice test this week. It’s still on launch promotion – US$9.99 for lifetime access to brand new original Azure AZ-303 practice test questions. This coupon expires June 20 at 11AM PDT.

    https://www.udemy.com/course/az303-azure-practice/?couponCode=LAUNCH10

    My SC-900 course should be launching in the next week as well. Excited to invite everyone into that when it’s available.

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 2.11. Thanks for reading this far.

    What is your favorite platform to be on? Perhaps we can connect there.

    Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/getcloudskills/ 

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottjduffy/

    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getcloudskills.ca/

    Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottjduffy

    Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/user/scottduffy2/

    LinkedIn Learning: https://www.lynda.com/Scott-Duffy/1993589682-1.html

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter
  • Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.10

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.10

    June 2, 2021

    Welcome to the tenth edition of the Azure World Newsletter in 2021. 

    Microsoft Build was last week! Did any of the announcements or presentations excite you? I found the announcement of “Windows Package Manager” (winget) interesting, as it finally brings package manager concepts from other systems (npm, pip, and nuget) into Windows as a whole. 

    Here is the Microsoft Build 2021 Book of News, which is a good summary of all of the announcements made: https://news.microsoft.com/build-2021-book-of-news/ 

    Thanks so much for subscribing. As always, if you don’t want to receive this anymore, there’s an unsubscribe link at the bottom. No worries!

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    ONE.

    In the last newsletter, I mentioned that Microsoft was shutting down its Blockchain Service relatively soon. Well, now we see why. Azure has introduced a new service called Azure Confidential Ledger which uses blockchain technology.

    It’s being advertised as Tamperproof unstructured data. The Confidential Ledger data store is hosted in trusted execution environments (TEE) and cryptographically hashed to verify its authenticity.

    So in a way, it takes the “tamperproof” benefits of the blockchain but reimagines it as a data storage type in Azure. So you can store something in a database, in a blob, or in a blockchain-backed ledger depending on your security needs.

    https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/azure-confidential-ledger/

    We’re already seeing the first uses of the Confidential Ledger in one of Azure’s own database products – SQL Database Ledger.

    SQL Database Ledger introduces the idea of tamper-proof transactions inside of the traditional database. You can create ledger tables that are “updateable” or “append-only” inside your existing databases. You don’t need to migrate your database or set up a new one to enable this. 

    The idea is that you can detect if data has been edited and restore it back to its original value. Each transaction is cryptographically hashed and stored in a blockchain-type structure – which could be the Confidential Ledger or Azure Immutable Blob storage. 
    https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-sql/announcing-azure-sql-database-ledger/ba-p/2200401

    TWO.

    Microsoft Build was last week, and one of the announcements was around the expansion of the free and low-cost database services.

    Cosmos DB has an expanded free tier, with 1000 RU/s of provisioned throughput (up from 400 RU/s before). It also offers 25 GB of data storage for free now too.

    Azure Database for PostgreSQL and Azure Database for MySQL also got into the mix, with a free 12-month offer. This provides developers up to 750 hours per month free for the first 12 months. (750 hours is all of the hours in a month, so I don’t know why they say it like that.)  

    Azure Database for PostgreSQL – Hyperscale (Citus) basic tier is even available now for a low-cost introduction for Hyperscale on a single node.

    Alongside this announcement, Microsoft is placing all of the Azure Cognitive Services and related AI services into a new category on their site called “Applied AI Services”.  Applied AI services include Azure Bot Services, Azure Cognitive Search, Azure Form Recognizer, Azure Metrics Advisor, and Azure Immersive Reader.

    https://azure.microsoft.com/en-ca/blog/harness-the-power-of-data-and-ai-in-your-applications-with-azure/

    THREE.

    We’ve been making improvements to my course called AI-102 Exam: Designing and Implementing a Microsoft Azure AI Solution.

    You’ll now find a PDF study guide, PDF API reference, and quiz questions inside the course to help you pass this exam.

    If implementing Azure Cognitive Services (now all under Applied AI Services) interests you, and you’re considering the AI-102 exam, please check it out.

    https://www.udemy.com/course/ai102-azure/?couponCode=JUN2021

    The focus of this course is Python because that’s the most common language in the world of machine learning and AI. We’re adding C# examples too this week.

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    There were a lot of announcements due to Microsoft Build. The following platform updates happened in the past two weeks: 

    • Azure ExpressRoute – 5 new peering locations available
    • Azure Stack HCI now gives a 60-day free trial
    • Deploy Azure Web Apps to Kubernetes Clusters with Azure Arc (in preview)
    • Expanded Cosmos DB Free tier
    • New Azure Database for PostgreSQL and Azure Database for MySQL free tier offer
    • Cosmos DB Serverless now in general availability
    • Cosmos DB has a Linux emulator for developing and testing locally (in preview)
    • Cosmos DB in-memory cache in preview
    • Cosmos DB RBAC in general availability
    • Always Encrypted for Cosmos DB in preview
    • Encryption at host support in AKS in general availability
    • App Service Managed Certificates now generally available
    • Logic Apps is now a containerized runtime, which can be hosted on top of Functions, App Service Plans, Kubernetes, Docker, or any cloud
    • New Logic Apps features including stateless workflows, and a new designer UI
    • Azure Confidential Ledger in preview
    • IBM WebSphere Application Server on Azure Virtual Machines
    • Red Hat JBoss EAP for Azure Virtual Machines
    • Cosmos DB Partial document update (path-level) in private preview
    • Azure SQL Database Ledger in preview
    • Event Hubs Premium in preview
    • Spot Virtual Machines on Databricks

    Be sure and check out the Azure Updates page if any of these affect you.

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

    COMING UP FOR ME.

    I’ve been heads down, recording my next course on the SC-900 course. I also have a few surprises planned for the month.

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 2.10. Thanks for reading this far.

    What is your favorite platform to be on? Perhaps we can connect there.

    Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/getcloudskills/ 

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottjduffy/

    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getcloudskills.ca/

    Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottjduffy

    Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/user/scottduffy2/

    LinkedIn Learning: https://www.lynda.com/Scott-Duffy/1993589682-1.html

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter
  • Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.9

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.9

    May 19, 2021

    Welcome to the ninth edition of the Azure World Newsletter in 2021. We’re already well into May, which is hard to believe. Thanks so much for subscribing.

    Have you registered for the Microsoft Build Conference yet? Microsoft Build is coming up May 25-27 and is free to register. It a conference mainly aimed at developers. Check it out, if you are interested. Register here at https://mybuild.microsoft.com/home.

    Now on to the newsletter! As always, if you don’t want to receive this anymore, there’s an unsubscribe link at the bottom. No worries!

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    ONE.

    Microsoft is rolling out a new logo for Azure, based on their Fluent Design system.

    On the left is the current logo, while the new logo is on the right.

    From the Microsoft blog post: “It’s part of Microsoft’s Fluent Design System, carefully crafted to produce icons that look familiar to what customers know and love, while representing the agile future of our business.”

    I’ve already noticed the new logo in places such as the Mobile App, and so this is already being implemented. The new logo matches the style of some other new Microsoft logos – curved shapes that form a letter.

    https://azure.microsoft.com/en-ca/blog/a-fluent-new-look-for-the-azure-icon/

    TWO.

    Microsoft announced that it’s shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service in September 2021. 

    This immediately caused some confusion as some people seem to associate it with cryptocurrency and Bitcoin. 

    In fact, the Blockchain Service allowed you to use a shared ledger to record and publish a complete transaction history. It’s true that cryptocurrencies use a blockchain to record their transactions, but this service was offering that power to private corporations to use this technology for business purposes.

    Obviously, that did not prove popular enough to keep it going.

    If you’re using Azure Blockchain Service, you’ll need to find an alternative to migrate to. And you only have a few months to do that.
    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/blockchain/service/migration-guide

    THREE.

    I’m happy to announce a brand new course on the AI-102 Exam: Designing and Implementing a Microsoft Azure AI Solution.

    The official Microsoft exam objectives say, “Candidates for this exam should be proficient in C#, Python, or JavaScript and should be able to use REST-based APIs and SDKs to build computer vision, natural language processing, knowledge mining, and conversational AI solutions on Azure.”

    And so I designed this course to be really focused on code. There is an official GitHub repository for the course, and I take the time to go through each code sample as it relates to the exam objectives.

    https://bit.ly/3tPGY1i

    The focus of this course is Python because that’s the most common language in the world of machine learning and AI. But if you have programming experience with another language, you should be able to understand what is happening, and it’ll be fun to learn Python.

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    The following platform updates happened in the past two weeks: 

    • Azure Backup: Operational backup for Azure Blobs is now generally available
    • Append blobs for Azure Data Lake Storage  is now generally available
    • Prevent shared key authorization for Azure Storage is now generally available
    • Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) is now in preview
    • Pricing for Azure Ultra Disks has been reduced
    • ZRS for Azure Managed Disks now in preview
    • Azure Static Web Apps is now generally available
    • Azure Blockchain Service is deprecated as of September 2021

    Be sure and check out the Azure Updates page if any of these affect you.

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

    COMING UP FOR ME.

    I’ll continue to enjoy the improving weather. I’m going for long walks daily. And I’ll continue to create new courses and content to help students learn Azure.

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 2.9. Thanks for reading this far.

    What is your favorite platform to be on? Perhaps we can connect there.

    Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/getcloudskills/ 

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottjduffy/

    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getcloudskills.ca/

    Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottjduffy

    Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/user/scottduffy2/

    LinkedIn Learning: https://www.lynda.com/Scott-Duffy/1993589682-1.html

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter
  • Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.8

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.8

    May 5, 2021

    Welcome to the eighth edition of the Azure World Newsletter in 2021. Thanks so much for subscribing. 

    The Microsoft Build Conference has been announced for the end of May and is free to sign up. Completely online again, as it was last year. It runs May 25-27 and is aimed at developers. Register here at https://mybuild.microsoft.com/home .

    Now on to the newsletter! As always, if you don’t want to receive this anymore, there’s an unsubscribe link at the bottom. No worries!

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    ONE.

    We just passed through the quarterly earnings season, and it seems Microsoft Azure continues to gain market share on Amazon AWS.

    Microsoft reported their Q3 earnings last week, and overall revenue was up 38% year-over-year. Obviously, they’ve benefited from the disruption to offices and traditional work in the past year.

    Azure revenue was listed at being up 50% year-over-year, so that is still quite dynamic growth in that specific segment of their business.

    Of course, Amazon and Google have also reported earnings. We can see the comparison between the cloud earnings of the big players in the chart below.

    Synergy Research Group combed through the latest numbers and put together this graph. 

    Azure and AWS remain the market leaders, Google, Alibaba and some other Chinese cloud players are listed as being strong but small competitors. Which some of the big names in the US technology space such as Oracle, SAP and IBM have only niche offerings.

    Synergy figures that AWS remains the largest cloud provider by revenue in the latest quarter. But Azure continues to grow at a faster pace, as they have over the past several years. 

    Another interesting view is showing the change over time.

    The blue Microsoft Azure line has a consistent upward trend from 10% in 2017 to 20% by the end of 2020. While the AWS yellow line has remained flat around 32% over the same period. (If you extrapolate to the future, maybe Azure and AWS will be tied for the lead by 2024?)

    These numbers are just estimates, as the companies don’t reveal the exact numbers, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

    No other major cloud provider is growing as fast as Azure, which bodes well for the future career prospects of those who aim to improve their skills in this area.

    https://www.srgresearch.com/articles/amazon-and-microsoft-maintain-their-grip-market-others-are-also-growing-rapidly

    https://www.srgresearch.com/articles/cloud-market-ends-2020-high-while-microsoft-continues-gain-ground-amazon

    TWO.

    Microsoft has introduced a pretty cool 3D tour of a data center in a presentation called “we live in the cloud”:

    https://news.microsoft.com/stories/microsoft-datacenter-tour/

    They’ve had something like this before, but this is new.

    In this presentation, Microsoft said that they are planning to build 50-100 data centers every year for the foreseeable future. Each region contains at least 3 data centers, so this could be a combination of adding new data centers to existing regions as well as creating new regions.

    They say that they’re planning to add 10 new countries this year.

    There’s even a 3D video presentation to go along with it:

    I recommend both the video and the 3D walkthrough of that data center, to imagine what it’s like to work in the clouds.

    THREE.

    There have been some minor updates to the major Azure exams, with most of them being live on May 25. If you’re studying for these exams, it’s good to know but you should have nothing to worry about.

    AZ-104 – 1 addition: added “administrative units” under Azure AD

    AZ-303 – 3 removals, and 1 addition: Azure AD Connect cloud sync under Hybrid Identities

    AZ-304 – minor cosmetic updates to the objectives, no changes

    DP-100 – lots of changes – added security, dev environment, Databricks, ML Ops Practices, Responsible ML

    AZ-900, AZ-204, DP-900, AI-900 – no updates

    There were also updates on other exams such as AZ-400 and AZ-500. Check the official exam page that relates to the exam you are studying for.

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    The following platform updates happened in the past two weeks: 

    • New M-series virtual machines for memory-optimized workloads
    • New D- and E-series virtual machines as well – now up to v5
    • Application Gateway now supports URL Rewrite
    • Ubuntu ended support for 16.04 LTS, and that image has been replaced with 18.04 LTS
    • Azure Event Grid for Azure Redis now in general availability
    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) now support Hybrid Benefit for big cost savings
    • Azure Ultra Disk support in North Central US
    • Azure Site Recovery supports cross-continental disaster recovery in 3 regions
    • Azure Site Recovery now supports Azure Policy in public preview
    • Microsoft Azure Web PubSub Service in public preview
    • New Xilinx Alveo U250 FPGA NPv1 virtual machines

    Be sure and check out the Azure Updates page if any of these affect you.

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

    COMING UP FOR ME.

    Continue to enjoy the improving weather. And continue to create new courses and content to help students learn Azure.

    • I expect my AI-102 course to launch by the time you receive the next newsletter
    • Will go back and address any new videos / lessons based on the exam changes

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 2.8. Thanks for reading this far.

    What is your favorite platform to be on? Perhaps we can connect there.

    Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/getcloudskills/ 

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottjduffy/

    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getcloudskills.ca/

    Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottjduffy

    Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/user/scottduffy2/

    LinkedIn Learning: https://www.lynda.com/Scott-Duffy/1993589682-1.html

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter
  • Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.7

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.7

    April 21, 2021

    Welcome to the seventh edition of the Azure World Newsletter in 2021. Thanks so much for subscribing.

    It’s been fairly quiet in the Microsoft Azure world. I haven’t seen too many announcements from the company. But on the bright side, it’s been a stable couple of weeks on the platform with no high-profile outages. Hopefully, this signals a new period of stability.

    Now on to the newsletter! As always, if you don’t want to receive this anymore, there’s an unsubscribe link at the bottom. No worries!

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    ONE.

    Perhaps the biggest announcement of the past couple of weeks is that Microsoft has signed a deal to acquire the company Nuance for $19.7 billion. Now on the surface, this might seem to be an ordinary acquisition. But some people are pointing out that this points to a bigger strategy around AI.

    $19.7 billion is a lot of money. For context, Microsoft paid $26 billion for LinkedIn several years ago, so this acquisition rivals that in size.

    Nuance sells software under the brand Dragon and is popular dictation software in the healthcare space. Their dictation software is the most advanced voice recognition and transcription solution, as they basically invented the technology more than 20 years ago. They’ve been singularly focused on improving dictation since then.

    Nuance’s AI solutions are currently used by more than 55% of physicians and 75% of radiologists in the U.S. and used in 77% of U.S. hospitals. So they absolutely dominate the healthcare space.

    Some see this as a wider move into “enterprise AI”. While other companies focus on the consumer, Microsoft is making plays to be the preferred AI provider in large industries like healthcare.

    https://venturebeat.com/2021/04/17/why-microsofts-new-ai-acquisition-is-a-big-deal/

    TWO.

    The Supreme Court recently delivered a fairly important ruling on copyright relating to the use of Java in the Android Operating System. Android no longer runs on Java, but the ruling is still important to all of us.

    The ruling limits the ability of companies (in this case Java) to demand payment for creating “compatible APIs” even without copying the underlying code.

    This case has been winding its way through the court system for 10 years. In my view, the right decision was finally made.

    The early developers of the Android operating system (first Android Inc and then Google) needed to provide a way for application developers to develop Android apps. They wanted to use Java as the programming language, and they asked Sun Microsystems at the time if they could. Sun apparently set a reasonable fee, but also wanted some form of control over Android along with the deal. They were not able to come to a deal on that.

    So Google decided to create their own virtual machine called Dalvik, which was a clean-room implementation of Java. That is, they developed a compatible version without access to the underlying source code. (Um, mostly. There was one function copied line for line.) This should have meant that they were free of being accused of copying Java.

    It seemed like everyone was happy. Sun congratulated Android and saw this as a victory for the Java ecosystem.

    But a few years later, Oracle acquired Sun and they came with a different perspective. They saw the clean-room implementation as a copyright violation. And they wanted billions in damages.

    Judge William Alsup first took the case in 2010 and became a legend in the process. He taught himself Java and programmed a few things on his own. Thus he decided that some of the copied lines of code were no big deal since even he could write such a basic function. Legend.

    Oracle was basically claiming that the API definition itself was copyrighted. The function names and method signatures. No one could ever create their own “compatible” version of Java if Oracle got its way.

    Luckily, the Supreme Court decided that the interest of progress overrode the interests of a single company trying to prevent progress. Copying API function signatures are fair use.

    https://www.npr.org/2021/04/05/984442325/supreme-court-hands-google-a-win-over-oracle-in-multibillion-dollar-case

    THREE.

    From time to time, students ask me for advice in landing a job.

    Landing a job involves:

    • Developing skills that are in demand in the marketplace
    • Crafting a resume that highlights those in the right way, to get past the first gatekeeper
    • Impressing the person (or people) who makes the hiring decision in an interview

    I put some thoughts together on the last point (interview skills) in a new blog post.

    https://softwarearchitect.ca/job-interview-advice-make-them-love-you/

    It might sound unfair, but you can be highly skilled and still find it hard to find a job. This is because the people who are hiring are often looking for “the right team fit”. Basically, they need to like you after meeting you for the first time. And so, as well as mastering technology skills, you should also work on some social skills that will help you land a job.

    My opinion is that, in general, if people like you after meeting you for the first time, you’ll go farther in life. And if you find it hard to meet new people, and have had the experience of someone not liking you at first but eventually liking you much later, this does not have to be this way. Charisma is a skill that can be learned. And, if you learn it, you can turn it on when you need it like during a job interview.

    Incidentally, having good social skills will help you land jobs even when you don’t have the skillset. I can recall way back in 1995, I landed my very first job as a consultant but did not have direct experience in any of the technology the client was looking for. I learned quickly and did a great job for that client.

    So check out my blog post for some tips on how to make a good impression during a job interview.

    https://softwarearchitect.ca/job-interview-advice-make-them-love-you/

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    A very, very quiet couple of weeks in terms of new Azure updates and features, but maybe something important has been announced that affects you.

    • Public preview: Start VM on connect feature for Windows Virtual Desktop
    • Azure Blob storage supports objects up to 200 TB in size
    • Azure Maps Weather Services are now generally available
    • Azure API Management support for Availability Zones now generally available
    • Public preview: Microsoft Build of OpenJDK
    • Cognitive Services – New Computer Vision API v3.2 now generally available
    • Open-source API Portal now generally available

    Be sure and check out the Azure Updates page if any of these affect you.

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

    COMING UP FOR ME.

    Continue to enjoy the improving weather. And continue to create new courses and content to help students learn Azure.

    • My course for DP-100 Azure Data Scientist has been live for a couple of weeks, and is getting great reviews! There’s still time to pick it up if you’re interested in machine learning in Azure: https://www.udemy.com/course/dp100-azure/?couponCode=APR2021 
    • I had another blog article go live on Udemy’s website. It’s called “How to Pass the AZ-104 Exam”. If you’re interested, here’s the link to that: https://blog.udemy.com/azure-administrator-az-104/ 
    • The next course I am working on, which is turning out great, is AI-102 Designing and Implementing a Microsoft Azure AI Solution. Taking a slightly different approach with this course. It’s going to contain a lot of code and code examples. If you enjoy coding and want to play with Azure Cognitive Services, this course will be right up your alley.

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 2.7. Thanks for reading this far.

    What is your favorite platform to be on? Perhaps we can connect there.

    Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/getcloudskills/ 

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottjduffy/

    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getcloudskills.ca/

    Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottjduffy

    Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/user/scottduffy2/

    LinkedIn Learning: https://www.lynda.com/Scott-Duffy/1993589682-1.html

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter
  • Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.6

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.6

    Welcome to the sixth edition of the Azure World Newsletter in 2021. Thanks so much for subscribing.

    If you don’t mind, I’d like to start off by talking about a personal milestone. In the past few days, the 500,000th unique student has just signed up for one of my courses on Udemy. Since I’m unable to track that person down to thank them individually, I’d like to extend my sincere gratitude to all students in any of my courses.

    I set a personal goal 5 years ago to reach one million students with my training, and I can’t believe I’ve reached the halfway mark already. I’m going to have to set a bigger goal.

    Seriously, thank you to everyone. Including you. Especially you. You’re the best!

    Now on to the newsletter! As always, if you don’t want to receive this anymore, there’s an unsubscribe link at the bottom. No worries!

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    ONE.

    Well, this is the second newsletter in a row in which we have to discuss an Azure outage.

    This one was particularly weird. Even the Azure Status page went down (status.azure.com), and a new status page needed to be created (status2.azure.com) to say that the Status page was down.

    It’s not a good sign when your status page needs a status page of its own.

    On April 1, access to Azure websites seemed to be down for about an hour. Not as lengthy as the problem in March. But still unusual.

    The cause of this outage was a DNS problem and it affected the Azure Portal, Microsoft 365, Xbox Live, and some other services. It sounds almost like their DNS system was attacked and, because of a bug in the code, the attack was surprisingly successful. They patched the bug, and that will stop this from happening again.

    I may be reading too much into it. They didn’t specifically call it an attack. Just a surge in “anomalous” DNS traffic.

    https://status.azure.com/en-us/status/history/

    TWO.

    This next article is not specifically Azure-related, but Microsoft recently won a $22 BILLION deal with the US Army for their Hololens Augmented Reality (AR) device.

    This makes total sense. If the device can be reliable in the field, equipping soldiers with devices that can provide various statuses’ on screen in real-time would be a tactical edge. I mean, it’s basically moving closer to a Call of Duty style interface. You know the location of your team, their direction, and distances. You know your heart rate and some other bio stats. Some visual data augments your view so that you can do the job you’re required to do.

    This contract is twice as large as the JEDI contract would have been.

    Obviously, the Hololens is the front-end to a bunch of AI and cloud services in the backend. Good job, Microsoft.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/moorinsights/2021/04/06/why-microsoft-won-the-22-billion-army-hololens-2-ar-deal/?sh=58a0e6605d43

    THREE.

    If you are a developer, Microsoft has announced its Build 2021 conference for May 25-27. Once again, it will be completely online. And completely free.

    https://arstechnica.com/technopaedia/2021/04/2021-microsoft-build-conference-dates-confirmed-may-25-27/

    Microsoft Build is “where developers, architects, start-ups, and students learn, connect, and code together, sharing knowledge and expanding their skill set, while exploring new ways of innovating for tomorrow.”

    I haven’t seen a good list of the types of topics that will be covered, but clearly, they’re aiming for developers with this content.

    Registration isn’t open yet, but when it is open, it will be on their Build page here:

    https://mybuild.microsoft.com/

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    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    A few new things this week. Nothing too Earth-shattering to me, but maybe something important has been announced that affects you.

    • Backup for Azure Managed Disks
    • Azure Communication Services (video, voice, SMS, chat, and other telephony) is not general availability
    • Encryption scopes (ability to manage encryption keys at the blob or container level) is now generally available
    • AKS node image auto-upgrade now in public preview
    • Insights and workbooks for Cosmos DB in public preview
    • Kubernetes v1.20 support in AKS now available
    • Azure Static Web Apps now integrates with Azure DevOps for deployments in preview
    • Azure Private Link for Redis Cache now available
    • Azure Backup for Azure Dedicated Host now available
    • Azure Monitor for Windows Virtual Desktop now available
    • Azure Cloud Services (extended support) now generally available

    Be sure and check out the Azure Updates page if any of these affect you.

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

    COMING UP FOR ME.

    Continue to enjoy the improving weather. And continue to create new courses and content to help students learn Azure.

    • My course for DP-100 Azure Data Scientist is LIVE! If you want to get lifetime access to that, here’s a link that you can use for a discount: https://www.udemy.com/course/dp100-azure/?couponCode=APR2021
    • Please share if you know someone that might find it useful.
    • I had another blog article go live on Udemy’s website. It’s called “How to Pass the AZ-104 Exam”. If you’re interested, here’s the link to that: https://blog.udemy.com/azure-administrator-az-104/
    • The next course I am working on, which is turning out great, is AI-102 Designing and Implementing a Microsoft Azure AI Solution. Taking a slightly different approach with this course. It’s going to contain a lot of code and code examples. If you enjoy coding and want to play with Azure Cognitive Services, this course will be right up your alley.

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 2.6. Thanks for reading this far.

    What is your favorite platform to be on? Perhaps we can connect there.

    Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/getcloudskills/ 

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottjduffy/

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  • Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.5

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.5

    Welcome to the fifth edition of the Azure World Newsletter in 2021. Thanks so much for subscribing.

    We are approaching the end of March, which means the year is almost one-quarter over. It feels like the year is just getting started! Sorry! Didn’t mean to get you down so early in the newsletter, but it’s true. Writing these newsletters just always reminds me of how quickly time passes because it seems like I only wrote the last newsletter a week ago! But it’s been two weeks!

    Now on to the newsletter! As always, if you don’t want to receive this anymore, there’s an unsubscribe link at the bottom. No worries!

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    ONE.

    A couple of weeks ago, Microsoft introduced Azure Percept during their Ignite conference.

    Percept is “edge computing” hardware and technology, in that it extends some Azure services (in this case, intelligent IoT applications) into your own data center.

    These intelligent IoT applications are powered by Azure Cognitive Services and Azure Machine Learning Services.

    Cognitive Services are those pre-built machine learning models that Azure offers by API – including vision, voice, text, knowledge management, and chat-bots. The Azure Machine Learning services allow to you train and deploy your own machine learning models based on your own training data set.

    Azure Percept – I like the name – is a combination of actual hardware that you install at the edge, a development kit, and various cloud-based development tools.

    Forbes published an interesting article on it here, if you want to learn more.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/janakirammsv/2021/03/22/how-azure-percept-simplifies-building-and-deploying-ai-models-at-edge/

    Or you can go to the Azure Percept documentation and see a video about it with this link:

    https://aka.ms/getazurepercept

    TWO.

    On March 15, Azure suffered an embarrassing outage when Azure AD went down for a few hours. As the authentication provider, Azure AD is the bridge you have to cross to access many services including Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams, Xbox Live, and many third-party applications that rely on it.

    This highlights one of the downsides of the centralized nature of the cloud. We usually try to plan around regional outages but have to rely on Microsoft to do all the work to keep the global services up and running.

    Microsoft later explained that the issue was caused by an error that affected the rotation of signing keys. As a security practice, Microsoft regularly updates its cryptographic keys. This means creating new ones and removing the old ones.

    Well, Microsoft needed to keep the old keys for a migration purpose, yet the automation that swaps the keys deleted the old key anyways.

    It’s not really an excuse, anyway. For something so critical such as Azure Active Directory, that just needs to always work. There needs to be a way for it to know it’s not working and quickly get back to a state where it works again. Now deleting the keys is a complex problem no doubt, because you can’t just roll back code to a prior version. And keeping a backup of security keys kind of defeats the purpose of deleting the old security keys.

    But maybe there needs to be a two-stage delete or something. I’m sure they’re working to improve the system.

    https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-explains-the-cause-of-yesterdays-massive-service-outage/

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsofts-latest-cloud-authentication-outage-what-went-wrong/

    THREE.

    Encouraging news for those looking for signs of normality starting to return in 2021. It looks like it’s back to work for some people at Microsoft’s Redmond campus.

    Last year, Microsoft said it was targeting July 2021 for when it’s offices will be fully open. But that happens in stages, and next week will be a new stage.

    Microsoft is moving from “strongly encouraged to work from home” to “encouraged to work from home”.
    I guess this means that offices will be open for those who want to go in, as opposed to being actively shunned away. That’s good news, I guess.

    No word yet on when or if they’ll resume conferences and in-person events. But that might be a while.

    https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2021/03/22/the-philosophy-and-practice-of-our-hybrid-workplace/

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    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    So we are now a couple of weeks after Ignite, and the number of new announcements has died down significantly. Here are a bunch that caught my eye from the last couple of weeks.

    • Azure Functions now supports .NET 5 in production
    • Python Durable Functions now generally available
    • For those handling credit cards, PCI-DSS certification now available across all Azure regions
    • Availability Zones now launched in Brazil South
    • Cost Management and Billing now supports alerts on forecasted costs! That’s great!
    • You can now create Shared Access Signatures (SAS) on directories; previously you could grant access to single files or to the container itself

    Be sure and check out the Azure Updates page if any of these affect you.

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

    COMING UP FOR ME.

    It’s been relatively quiet here. With the weather improving, I’ve been taking the chance to be outside more. It’s a good season for walking here in Canada.

    • My next course, on DP-100, is soft-launching this week. The official launch date for that course is March 30. If that’s something you’re interested in, keep an eye out for that.
    • Some new labs have gone live on www.getcloudskills.com . I just published new labs for DP-203 and DP-300. If you’re looking for practical assignments in Azure, with labs and access to an Azure account to try them, check out the link above.
    • I just published a new blog article on Udemy’s Blog called “How to Pass the AZ-900 Exam”. Many of you are beyond that, but if you’re interested, here’s the link to that: https://blog.udemy.com/azure-fundamentals-az-900/

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 2.5. Thanks for reading this far.

    What is your favorite platform to be on? Perhaps we can connect there.

    Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/getcloudskills/ 

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottjduffy/

    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getcloudskills.ca/

    Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottjduffy

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  • Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.4

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.4

    Welcome to the fourth edition of the Azure World Newsletter in 2021. Thanks so much for subscribing.

    Microsoft Ignite was last week, and I caught several of the sessions over the two days. In the certification space, there were not too many exam-update announcements. I was glad about that. I was sure they’d introduce more changes, but I am not complaining.

    Microsoft summarizes all of their announcements from Ignite into a website called “The Book of News”. You can read about every announcement and product update that they made last week here.

    https://news.microsoft.com/ignite-march-2021-book-of-news/

    If you registered for the Cloud Skills Challenge, don’t forget that you still have some time (until the end of March) to finish that and earn a free exam voucher.

    Now on to the newsletter! As always, if you don’t want to receive this anymore, there’s an unsubscribe link at the bottom. No worries!

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    ONE.

    The top story has to be Ignite. I linked to the Book of News above. It’s well worth a read if you want to see all of the announcements in one place.

    Microsoft is getting better at online events, I think. The event went off without a hitch, from my perspective at least. I was able to view all of the sessions that I wanted to. Never saw an issue with lag or tech issues. It all just worked.

    That must be difficult. So kudos to the team (must be a lot of people) who pulled that off.

    I wonder when Ignite will be in person again. And if so, if it will be scaled down with many more sessions online. Microsoft can now do a worldwide event with over 100,000 attendees with no issues. Sure, they don’t charge $2,500 for tickets, but there are also no logistics to deal with in terms of busses, lunches, and t-shirt sizes.

    One of the most talked-about announcements was the demonstration of the Microsoft Mesh – their Mixed Reality experience. This is their Hololens and augmented reality experience. Microsoft is pushing the technology forward with “Object Anchors”, eliminating the need for a physical printed marker having to be in place for an AR to render something in its place.

    https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/mixed-reality-blog/microsoft-mesh-a-technical-overview/ba-p/2176004

    Azure Arc was also expanding. It was one of the big announcements from the last Ignite, and Microsoft announced some additional capability there.

    https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/02/microsofts-azure-arc-multi-cloud-platform-now-supports-machine-learning-workloads/

    TWO.

    Time to say goodbye to more Azure services.

    In the last 2 weeks, Microsoft has announced that almost two dozen Azure Services are being retired in 2022 and 2024. Instead of listing them all at the bottom, I figure I’d bring them to your attention here. If you rely on any of these services, you had better start thinking about the effort required to migrate them to their replacements.

    Services/features retiring this year:

    • “Community support” for Azure Python 3.6 on December 23, 2021
    • “Community support” for Azure Database PostgreSQL version 9.6 ends November 11, 2021
    • More info

    Services/features retiring in 2022:

    • GS5 losing SAP HANA certification as of February 2022
    • G5, GS5, E64i_v2, and E64is_v3 no longer hardware isolated as of February 2022
    • More info

    Services/features retiring in 2024:

    • Network Performance Monitor retiring February 2024
    • Network Watcher Connection Monitor (classic) retiring February 2024
    • Jenkins Plugins for Azure retiring February 2024
    • AKS legacy Azure AD Integration retiring February 2024
    • Classic Application Insights retiring February 2024
    • AzureRM Powershell retiring February 2024
    • Azure Application Gateway Analytics retiring February 2024
    • Azure AD Connect Sync (older versions) retiring February 2024
    • Azure Cognitive Services Text Analytics v2 retiring February 2024
    • Standard Version of Custom Voice retiring February 2024
    • Marketplace VM Images that contain Azure Batch rendering applications retiring February 2024
    • Azure Stack Edge Pro FPGA retiring February 2024
    • Classic alerts in Azure Monitor (China, Government) retiring February 2024
    • Azure Data Lake Storage Gen1 retiring February 2024
    • Classic Azure Migrate retiring February 2024
    • More info


    Those are just the ones announced in the last 2 weeks. Of course, there are more services being retired this year and next which were previously announced.

    For me, what’s interesting here is the end of AzureRM Powershell. I can’t imagine how many people have dozens or hundreds of scripts that still rely on that old module. You have a couple of years to plan the migration of that.

    A lot of the old monitoring tools are finally retiring. They have been running alongside the new tools in the Portal for a while. But there’s now an end date on those. Network Performance Monitor and the Classic Alerts stand out as two interesting ones. And Classic Application Insights too.

    And it seems some of the SAP HANA hardware is being decertified by HANA and you’ll have to move those apps to more modern servers in the next few months.

    THREE.

    If you remember, the US Department of Defence awarded Microsoft the JEDI contract in 2019. This contract was supposed to modernize the US military and was one of the largest single contracts ever awarded, worth about $10 billion over 10 years if all the options were taken.

    The big controversy was that it’s “single source”, which means that a single vendor was chosen instead of multiple winners each getting a piece.

    Amazon AWS has been protesting it voraciously, and their latest court challenge seems to have pushed the government to the edge of its patience.

    The government is threatening to cancel the contract because fighting Amazon in court would take several years to defend if it’s allowed to continue. A contract that is meant to modernize the military is now delayed by over a year with no end in sight.

    Would be a shame if this ended like this. Not because I think Microsoft Azure is better than Amazon AWS in any regard, but because using the court system to tie up a decision for years is poor sportsmanship when you lose a fair contest.

    https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/microsoft-s-us-10b-pentagon-deal-at-risk-amid-amazon-fight-1.1572730

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    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    There were SO MANY announcements made in the past couple of weeks. After having a short period where there were less than a dozen, we now have several pages of announcements to choose from.

    I tried to choose a few that felt significant, where it would affect many people who read this. Here are a bunch that caught my eye from the last couple of weeks.

    • MFA (email one-time passcode) will be on by default for Azure Active Directory B2B guest users starting October 2021
    • New datacenter region in Indonesia in development
    • New datacenter region in China (China North 3) in development
    • Azure Backup for Azure Blobs is now in public preview
    • Azure Backup for SAP HANA now supports incremental backup
    • Azure Private Marketplace now generally available
    • Backup Reports is now generally available
    • Azure Monitor Alerts for Azure Backup is in public preview
    • Azure Load Balancer can now handle IP addresses in the backend pool
    • Advance notice of planned maintenance events for Azure SQL Database is now in public preview
    • Azure Spring Cloud: General availability of Managed Virtual Network and Autoscale
    • Backup Center is now generally available
    • Just-In-Time Access support in AKS
    • Azure Arc enabled Kubernetes is now generally available
    • Azure Backup now supports archive tier for backup of VMs and SQL Server in a VM, in preview
    • Windows Server 2022 is now available in preview
    • Automatic key rotation for customer-managed keys for disk encryption, in preview
    • Zone Redundant Storage (ZRS) for Azure managed disks in preview
    • Azure Managed Instance for Apache Cassandra, in preview
    • Azure Arc enabled machine learning, in preview
    • Azure Percept in public preview
    • Azure trusted launch for Virtual Machines, in public preview
    • Automatic VM guest patching is now in public preview for Linux VMs

    Be sure and check out the Azure Updates page if any of these affect you.

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

    COMING UP FOR ME.

    Lots of things have happened recently. If you’re a student in one or more of my courses, you might be interested in this:

    • My next course, on DP-100, has been recorded and is going through video editing right now. The launch date for that course is tentatively March 30.

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 2.4. Thanks for reading this far.

    What is your favorite platform to be on? Perhaps we can connect there.

    Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/getcloudskills/ 

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottjduffy/

    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getcloudskills.ca/

    Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottjduffy

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  • Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.3

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.3

    Welcome to the third edition of the Azure World Newsletter in 2021. Thanks so much for subscribing. I was expecting it to be a quiet couple of weeks before the Microsoft Ignite conference kicks off, but I was wrong. There are a few announcements being made, and I’m sure we’ll learn more next week.

    I do intend to watch quite a few sessions, especially the ones on certification (which is my interest, of course). If you haven’t signed up for Microsoft Ignite, it’s online and it’s free. Go check that out if you want to watch some interesting sessions covering lots of Azure and Microsoft-related topics. https://myignite.microsoft.com/home

    Once again, Microsoft is offering a Cloud Skills Challenge where you can earn a free exam voucher if you’re interested in that.

    Now on to the newsletter! As always, if you don’t want to receive this anymore, there’s an unsubscribe link at the bottom. No worries!

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    ONE.

    This Solarwinds hack story keeps getting deeper and deeper.

    To me, the depth and scope of this hack have been fascinating to watch.

    If you haven’t been following the news, hackers found a way to add code into a network monitoring tool called Solarwinds Orion. This allowed them to get access to a wide array of private computer networks, including inside the US government.

    Microsoft President Brad Smith called the attack the “largest and most sophisticated” ever.

    Well, it was not just the US government having its sensitive secrets exposed, even a small portion of the source code for Azure was accessed during the hack. The hackers were searching for secrets in code, and Microsoft does not allow secrets in their internal code.

    “There was no access to the vast majority of source code. For nearly all of the code repositories accessed, only a few individual files were viewed as a result of a repository search.”

    Microsoft views this as a reinforcement of their “zero trust” mindset.

    Hopefully, thousands of companies and organizations have strengthened their security posture to protect against a future attack.

    https://msrc-blog.microsoft.com/2021/02/18/microsoft-internal-solorigate-investigation-final-update/

    https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2021/02/18/turning-the-page-on-solorigate-and-opening-the-next-chapter-for-the-security-community/

    TWO.

    Azure Quantum is now in Public Preview.

    Wait, what? Quantum computing is now available for anyone to play with?

    Can you mine bitcoin with it? Someone will certainly try! You can now spin up a Quantum computer in Azure and deploy your bitcoin miner to solve challenging math problems in fractions of a second.

    OK, OK, it doesn’t work quite like that. But you do have access to Honeywell and IonQ’s Quantum computers in Azure. They are making available a system that allows you to write code in Q#, their Quantum programming language. If you can make a bitcoin miner out of that, go to it. Quick, before anyone realizes the impact of this.

    https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/quantum/2021/02/01/azure-quantum-preview/

    THREE.

    Azure Purview is a brand-new feature in public preview.

    It allows you to have a unified view of your data governance – across Azure, on-premises, and even on other cloud platforms. You can create and visualize a map of your data landscape.

    Purview has a data discovery component so that it can find where your data lives. You can also mark data as sensitive.

    Using this map, you can then enable semantic search to help you discover where your data lives. Think of this as not searching the data itself, but searching the metadata. It’s a data catalog.

    And, finally, you can track how your data travels from the source to other parts of your organization. Do you want to know how your customer’s contact information gets updated in various apps, you can find that path.

    Here’s an overview of Purview:
    https://azure.microsoft.com/en-ca/services/purview/

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    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    Lots of public previews this week. And a few “service retirement” announcements too! I guess Microsoft is prepping for some announcements at next weeks’ Microsoft Ignite conference, and some of this stuff can’t wait. Still, there should be some interesting announcements next week.

    Here are a few that caught my eye from the last couple of weeks.

    • Azure “East US 3” data center is planned for the state of Georgia, USA
    • Azure Backup for SAP HANA increased from 2TB limit to 8TB
    • Azure Government now has the “Cost Management” feature, but I’m not sure anyone will use it… (Just kidding, kidding… Of course, the government cares about costs.)
    • Azure Firewall Premium now in public preview
    • Automatic Azure VM Extension upgrades in public preview
    • Cross-Region Restore (CRR) for Azure Backup now generally available
    • The oddly named Azure Purview is now in public preview…
    • Azure Front Door Standard and Premium is now in public preview
    • Datadog integration with Azure: Public Preview
    • Azure Image Builder Service now generally available
    • Data flows in Azure Data Factory and Azure Synapse now support Reserved

    Be sure and check out the Azure Updates page if any of these affect you.

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

    COMING UP FOR ME.

    Lots of things have happened recently. If you’re a student in one or more of my courses, you might be interested in this:

    • The AZ-900 course has been completely re-recorded, and there are now two complete courses inside the Udemy course. You don’t have to watch both. Eventually, one course will retire and there will only be one course. 🙂
    • The AZ-304 course has been updated with new videos and sections. Just a general refresh in areas that needed it. And to make sure the exam requirements are all properly covered.
    • A brand new AI-900 course has launched on Udemy. It’s already available in Udemy for Business too if you have access to that.
    • I’m close to finishing a new DP-100 course for machine learning data science. Keep an eye out for that in March.

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 2.3. Thanks for reading this far.

    What is your favorite platform to be on? Perhaps we can connect there.

    Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/getcloudskills/ 

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottjduffy/

    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getcloudskills.ca/

    Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottjduffy

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  • Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.2

    Azure World Newsletter – Issue 2.2

    I hope you’ve been doing well. It has been two weeks since I last sent the newsletter. It’s hard to believe how time flies. I’ve been hard at work these past couple of weeks on a new course, which I’ll introduce to you later in this email. But first, let’s talk about the biggest changes in the world of Microsoft Azure.

    Sign up for this bi-weekly newsletter

    ONE.

    Just as I sent the last newsletter, Microsoft released its quarterly earnings. And once again, they showed impressive growth when it comes to the Cloud.

    Microsoft Azure revenue grew 50% year-over-year. That’s still a very impressive growth rate for something as large as the Azure Cloud. They now have over 60 regions worldwide and are adding data centers into areas of the world that are traditionally underserved, like South America, the Middle East, Africa, and Scandanavia. 

    They’re also getting deeper into “sustainability”, as the new region in Sweden coming later this year will be powered 100% by renewable energy sources. I wouldn’t think I would see such power-intensive things like data centers powered entirely by renewable energy, yet here we are.

    This quarter was the first quarter where cloud revenue exceeds all other sources of income for Microsoft, including Office.

    Here’s an interesting chart that I saw:

    Good to see Microsoft as the fastest-growing line on that graph.

    TWO.

    I attended Microsoft Ignite 2020 back in September, as did many of you. What I didn’t realize at the time is that Microsoft Ignite was broken into two parts. So “part 2” of ignite is coming up in March.

    Ignite Part 2 runs March 2-4. There will be the usual keynotes, technical sessions, and even another chance to get a free exam voucher with the cloud skills challenge.

    https://myignite.microsoft.com/home

    Be sure and register for this free online event if you’re interested.

    THREE.

    Speaking of free exam vouchers, I am not even joking when I tell you what I used my Ignite 2020 free exam voucher on…

    I took the AI-900 Azure AI Fundamentals exam.

    Like any fundamentals-level exam (AZ-900, DP-900, and the others), this exam really is about the concepts more than the practical uses of Azure Machine Learning.

    But the concepts are important. Understanding and mastering the concepts of a topic become a solid foundation for building additional skills on top of it. With the concepts mastered, you could go on to learn the AI Engineer skill or the Data Scientist skill.

    Introducing my latest course, “AI-900 Azure AI Fundamentals Exam Prep In One Day“.

    The AI-900 exam is intended for people with both technical and non-technical backgrounds.

    As with other “900 level” exams, it really is a fundamentals exam covering the absolute basics of AI and machine learning. It’s not a prerequisite for any of the associate level exams or higher. But it will set you up with a good foundation if you wish to advance to those higher levels in the future.

    This 3-hour course covers the fundamentals of machine learning.

    We will learn:

    • Common AI workloads
    • Microsoft guiding principles for responsible AI
    • Common machine learning types
    • Core machine learning concepts
    • Core tasks when creating a machine learning model
    • No-code machine learning in Azure
    • Computer vision ML
    • Natural language processing ML
    • Conversational AI

    Please use this special launch coupon to grab the course for US$9.99.

    https://www.udemy.com/course/ai900-azure/?couponCode=LEARNAI

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    AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.

    With Microsoft Ignite coming in a couple of weeks, I expect Microsoft is holding back some of the better updates. The first March newsletter should have some interesting updates. Here are a few that caught my eye from the last couple of weeks.

    • South Central US now has Availability Zones
    • Germany West Central now has Availability Zones
    • 99.99% uptime SLA for Azure AD Premium coming in April 2021
    • Resource Instance Rules allow access to a storage account to specific instances of Azure resources (in preview)
    • Azure Service Fabric Mesh is being retired in April this year
    • Microsoft Azure Attestation now helps you ensure that you are actually connecting to your resources in Azure (instead of spoofed ones)

    Be sure and check out the Azure Updates page if any of these affect you.

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

    COMING UP FOR ME.

    So I mentioned the AI-900 course above. You’re welcome to check that out if Machine Learning is a topic that interests you. Remember that it’s a fundamentals exam, so don’t expect deep exploration into ML algorithm math, nor the ideal settings of Azure ML Studio for each scenario.

    I’ve also completed a re-recording of the AZ-900 course. If you’re already in that course, you get the updates for free. Look for the “New course for 2021” section for the new videos. I will keep the old videos around for a few weeks, in case people are in the middle of taking that path and don’t want to start over.

    I’ve already made some updates to AZ-304 this month, and there’s more to come. So if you’re a student in that course, look for the videos marked *NEW*. 

    I already have some thoughts about new content for March. So I’ll let you in on the plans for that in the next newsletter.

    Of course, Microsoft Ignite will be in March as well, and I’m expecting that Microsoft will have a few surprises for me too.

    WHERE TO FIND ME.

    And that’s it for issue 2.2. Thanks for reading this far.

    What is your favorite platform to be on? Perhaps we can connect there.

    Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/getcloudskills/ 

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