Last Week in Microsoft Azure: Week of July 5th

Direct from Microsoft

Rohan Kumar announces the upcoming release of Azure Arc-enabled data services. Incorporating Azure Arc and Azure SQL enables customers to deploy and run Azure SQL on any infrastructure, including on-premises and other cloud platforms.

Mastering Azure

Jay Gordon shows off a new Azure service in how to create your personal blog with Gatsby & Azure Static Web Apps. Gatsby provides a framework for static content without the need to write code, and the Azure Static Web Apps service provides a fantastic solution for deploying your website.

Speaking of hosting websites in Azure, check out Ricardo Martin’s very detailed guide to deploy a highly available and scalable WordPress site on Azure. Ricardo’s solution uses IaaS components like virtual machines and Application Gateways for your website solution.

Thomas Maurer demonstrates managing updates of servers using Microsoft Azure Arc. Azure Update Management takes care of operating system updates for your computers in Azure. When you combine this with Azure Arc-enabled servers, you can use the same service for managing servers on-premises or other cloud providers.

Richard Roche provides a great overview on migrating Azure ARM templates to Bicep. Richard not only gives reasons why you should migrate but also documents several issues you may run into and their solutions.

Orin Thomas announces that Windows Server 2022 Azure Edition is in public preview. Windows Server Azure Edition is a special Windows version designed to run as an Azure IaaS virtual machine or part of an Azure Stack HCI cluster.

Azure DevOps

Barbara Forbes provides an end-to-end guide to build, test, and deploy Bicep through GitHub Actions. The tutorial uses Azure CLI tasks, the Bicep Linter, and a What-If deployment. Everything you need to get started with Microsoft’s newest infrastructure as code language!

Andrew Matveychuk outlines how to deploy to different tenants with Azure DevOps. Andrews goes into the ins and outs of how to configure your Azure DevOps environment for multi-tenant deployments.

Looking to get started with Azure DevOps? Check out Neeraj Kumar’s article Understanding Azure DevOps and Building CI/CD Pipelines. Neeraj’s outlines the benefits of Azure DevOps, then gives a detailed guide on building your first pipeline.

Upcoming Events

The Azure Bicep team is hosting their first community call on July 15, 2021, at 9 AM Pacific Time. You register for the event and add any topics you’d like to see discussed over on their GitHub page.

Azure Updates

The following updates are now generally available:

The following updates are currently available in preview: