Last Week in Microsoft Azure: Week of May 17th

Direct from Microsoft

Microsoft announces the general availability of Azure Static Web Apps. Azure Static Web Apps hosting service enables consumers and businesses to establish a web presence to a global audience with minimal effort.

Mastering Azure

Sam Cogan has a nice update on how to backup Azure Blob storage. Sam walks through use cases, enabling backups, and, most importantly, how to restore from a backup. A backup is only as good as its restore!

Speaking of backups, Pierre Roman talks about Azure Backup Center and governance. Pierre makes a case for how Azure Backup Center gives you the capabilities to validate compliance to auditors.

Thomas Maurer showcases Azure Arc for IT Pros. Azure Arc enables you to extend Azure management and service to anywhere, including hybrid and multi-cloud environments. You can bring services like Azure SQL Database to your on-premises data center.

This week’s AzUpdate episode includes updates on Azure Site Recovery, Azure Storage, and Azure IoT Central. AzUpdate also features a new MS Learn Module Introduction to Infrastructure as code using Bicep.

Victor Silva provides a great introduction to Getting Started with Azure Blueprints. Victor provides a thorough introduction as well as a step-by-step demonstration to get you started.

Charbel Nemnom provides a great tip on auditing subnets with a network security group association. Network security groups govern inbound and outbound traffic inside Azure Virtual Network subnets.

Ever wonder why Azure services only deploy to one region? John Savill has the answer for in his latest YouTube video. John starts with defining what an Azure region is, then dives into details on Azure resource deployments.

Azure DevOps

In Episode 3 of On-Prem to the Cloud, Jay and Abel walk through how to take a legacy application and update it to use cloud-native architectures.

Thomas Thornton shows us how to modify or edit the remote Terraform state file in Azure. While you typically want to leave the state file alone, you may need to import a current resource already deployed or delete a resource from a remote state.

John Reilly shows off how to create a pipeline with the Azure DevOps API. His instructions allow you to create a pipeline simply using the command line.

Chris Meagher demonstrates how to automate Azure infrastructure deployments using Bicep and Azure pipelines. It’s great to see the community embrace Azure Bicep as a new infrastructure as code solution and creating solutions using the new language.

Abhijit Jana walks through how to set up Azure DevOps CI/CD end-to-end for Python on Azure Functions. The pipeline deploys all Azure resources and deploys Python code to an Azure Function.

Are you confused about if you should use Azure DevOps or GitHub for CI/CD pipelines? Michael Levan has an excellent write-up on comparing the two services and how to make an informed decision.

Azure Updates

The following updates are now generally available:

• Enable Azure Site Recovery (ASR) while creating Azure Virtual Machines
• Azure NetApp Files: Application Consistent Snapshot tool (AzAcSnap)
• Announcing lower pricing for provisioned throughput on Azure Ultra Disks
• Azure Static Web Apps is now generally available
• VNET peering support for Azure Bastion

The following updates are now available in preview:

• Zone redundant storage (ZRS) option for Azure managed disks in public preview
• Application Gateway Mutual Authentication
• Azure Purview now supports Private Endpoints in public preview
• Public preview of Azure VPN client for macOS

Training Resources

AzureFunBytes presents an introduction to Microsoft Identity with Christos Matskas. Christos walks through authentication, authorization, and Azure Active Directory, followed by the importance of multi-factor authentication.

Tip of the Week

Are you interested in taking a Microsoft Azure certification exam? In this video, Thomas Maurer shows you how to prepare for a Microsoft Azure certification exam!