Last Week in Microsoft Azure: Week of June 28th

Jeff Brown

Updated: 6/28/2021

Direct from Microsoft

Learn more about the new Azure FX-series virtual machines for extreme compute performance. These virtual machines are based on the 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processor that features a high-performing CPU clock speed in a single core up to 4 GHz.

Azure Blob Storage now supports the Network File System (NFS) 3.0 protocol. Customers can now run applications using a single storage platform, eliminating data silos when using multiple platforms.

Need to build a custom OS image? This week Microsoft released the Azure VM Image Builder service. This service allows you to create a custom Linux or Windows virtual machine image. You configure a custom image in a template and immediately start building the image without setting up your own image build pipeline.

Microsoft announced a new Azure Network Engineer Associate certification. The AZ-700 beta exam is available in mid-July 2021. Check out the exam page for more information.

Mastering Azure

Want to learn more about Microsoft’s newest infrastructure as code project called Azure Bicep? This week I posted an article Azure Bicep: Getting Started and How-To Guide. I take you through an explanation of Azure Bicep, followed by how to get started with writing your first template.

Sonia Cuff outlines a neat project on how to display Azure Monitor alerts with smart lights and no code. Sonia documents an out-of-the-box solution using Phillips LIFX strip lighting to change colors when a virtual machine’s CPU is greater than 50% utilization.

Charbel Nemnom walks you through how to set Windows ACLs (NTFS) permissions on Azure File Shares. This article is great if you are looking to migrate on-premises file share data to the cloud and keep your existing file share permissions.

Marcel L. shows how to secure Azure Logic Apps with Private Endpoints. Marcel documents the step-by-step creation of a Logic App and integrates it with a Private Endpoint using plenty of code examples and screenshots.

Francisco Navarro takes you from zero to a fully deployed solution to set up Azure File Sync to sync on-premises to Azure. Configuring Azure File Sync is no easy task, but Francisco takes you through every step to ensure a great deployment.

Eric Long demonstrates how to automate company-wide IP blocking via Azure Firewall and Azure Functions. The solution solves an issue where a company must dynamically change the list of blocked IP addresses and CIDR ranges in their Azure Firewalls.

Azure DevOps

Thomas Thornton demonstrates storing and retrieving secrets in Azure Key Vault with variable groups in an Azure DevOps pipeline. Azure Key Vault is an excellent centralized service for keeping secrets and certificates, and Thomas shows how to bring these values into a pipeline using variable groups.

Russ Freeman showcases how to get started with Azure DevOps for mobile apps in bare-bones CI/CD for iOS with Azure DevOps and App Center.

Upcoming Events

On June 30, 2021, Microsoft is hosting a live event to celebrate the release of Azure Static Web Apps! Register here to receive an invitation to the event.

Azure Updates

The following updates are now generally available:

The following updates are currently available in preview:

Training Resources

Are you looking to get started studying for the new AZ-700 Azure Network Engineer certification? Check out Thomas Maurer’s study guide! Thomas provides resources for each exam objective to get ready for the exam.