Reading Notes #566

It is time to share new reading notes. It is a habit I started a long time ago where I share a list of all the articles, blog posts, and books that catch my interest during the week. 

 If you think you may have interesting content, share it!

 

Cloud

• What is the difference between the Azure Command Line Interface and Azure Developer Command Line Interface? (Liam Conroy Hampton) - I keep telling myself I should give it a try. That new AZD CLI seems pretty sick. No more excuses for my next project.

• Azure OpenAI Landing Zone reference architecture (Freddy Ayala) - Using Open AI or planning to do it this post shares a great list of Azure services that will help you do it effectively and securely.

Low Code

• Power Automate Apply To Each Loops 20X Faster (Matthew Devaney) - Smart way to gain performance, but make sure to do your homework and validate the connector limits and adjust the variables.

Data

• Learn about Microsoft Fabric for Data Analytics (Koen Verbeeck) - Learn more about this new one-stop service that was announced during Microsoft Build.

Miscellaneous

• GitHub Repository Rules are now generally available - The GitHub Blog (Patrick Knight) - Wow! very interesting... Great update!

~Frank

Reading Notes #273

Cloud

• Analyze your data with Application Insights Analytics (Dan Hadari) - Nice sample that really shows the power of that tool.
  
• Announcing Azure Service Fabric 5.5 and SDK 2.5 (Vaclav Turecek) - Nice updates in the SDK, and now supports Asp.Net Core.
  
• Azure IoT Suite adds device management capability updates (Sam George) - Nice little post that lists the new features available with the last update.
  
• Azure API Management, Release Notes – March 17 (Vlad Vinogradsky) - This post lists the details about the new features.
  
• Short introduction to serverless architecture (Gunnar Peipman) - Great agnostic overview of was are these serverless services.

Programming

• Using Azure AD with ASP.NET Core (Gunnar Peipman) - A cool tutorial that explains very clearly how to use AD.
  
• Using Dependency Injection in Multiple .NET Core Projects (Juergen Gutsch) - An interesting tutorial that explains how to implement one of the most-used patterns with the new .Net Core.
  
• Visual Studio 2017 can automatically recommend NuGet packages for unknown types (Scott Hanselman) - Nice little post that shares cool tricks with VS that you probably didn't know.

Miscellaneous

• Introducing Microsoft Data Amp (Mitra Azizirad) - All we need to know about this new online event.

Reading Notes #270

Suggestion of the week

• Azure Command Line 2.0 now generally available (Kamaljit Bath) - Azurecli definitely made a great jump in this version 2.0. With it reaching GA, we should all start using it.

Cloud

• Azure Managed Disk–Overview (Vincent-Philippe Lauzon ) - This post is a nice quick introduction on what are managed disks.
  
• Azure brings 5 new services to Canada (Chelsea Carter) - Good news for our clients that need to stay in Canadian Data centers, they now have a lot more tools in their box.
  
• Deploying ARM Templates using Visual Studio Team Services (Jakob Ehn) - This post shows how to automate Azure deployments. It doesn't do it with the usual happy path, but with a very common situation where we need access Key and other information from the deployed resources to complete the deployment.
  
• Deploying a web app and an Azure SQL database with ARM template without providing any password (Vivien Chevallier) - Great tutorial that gives us a very good opportunity to learn some best practices.
  
• Integrating SharePoint With Other Services Using Azure Logic Apps - Part One (Nakkeeran Natarajan) - Nice quick intro to the SharePoint connector in Logic Apps.
  
• Serverless architecture with Azure - Simple Talk (Christos Matskas) - Good post that does a little tour of the serverless services in Azure.However, I would disagree on the simplistic view of Logic Apps and its limitation. Furthermore, I would have talked more about are extremely powerful these services can become if put together in a solution.

Databases

• Loading files from Azure Blob Storage into Azure SQL Database (Jovan Popovic) - Cool. This bulk command has been so useful on-premises; it's great to have them back.
  
• Deploy Docker Container to Oracle Cloud Service (Arun Gupta) - Great post that explains a lot on how to use databases in dicker containers.

Miscellaneous

• GitKraken vs the CLI (Brett Goldman) - Cool comparison between the Git prompt and GitKranken.
  
• Introducing Raspberry Pi Zero W - Great news from Raspberry Pi this week, this new version is simply gorgeous.

Reading Notes #269

Suggestion of the week

• Azure Functions Proxies public preview (Matthew Henderson) - I think this news is a game changer, in a very positive way, for Azure Functions. I'm really looking forward to trying it.

Cloud

• Service Fabric and Windows Containers sample (Service Fabric Team) - Another perfect repository to get started with Fabric, a little simple solution that shows a multi-container implementation.
  
• Protecting Azure Logic Apps Using Azure API Management - This is a good post. It introduces to backbends Azure services (and also less known), and explains how together get more powerful a d how they can help in our solutions.
  
• Penny Pinching in the Cloud: Running and Managing LOTS of Web Apps on a single Azure App Service - Scott Hanselman (Scott Hanselman) - Another great gem from Scott. This post is a must for all developers.

Programming

• Clean up unused git branches (Steve Smith) - Nice quick tutorial to help us cleaning our Git repositories.
  
• Configuring ASP.NET Core Applications in Azure App Service (Adrian Hall) - Fantastic post to get a little deeper with .Net Core and Azure.

Miscellaneous

• Are Manufacturers Taking the Right Precautions to Safeguard Cars Against Hacking Attacks? (Matthew Young) - Interesting post that asks that raises even more interesting questions.

Reading Notes #243

Suggestion of the week

• IaaS isn’t your only path to outsized gains (James Staten) - Excellent post full of true and interesting facts that, at a very high level, explains the real power of the cloud.

Cloud

• Azure Advanced Data Center Bootcamp class now available (mwasham) - Great opportunity to pass at the advanced level.
  
• Azure PowerShell support for Enterprise Integration pack features now available (Jon Fancey) - Quick tutorial that uses PowerShell to create LogicApp.
  
• Getting to Know Actors in Service Fabric - This is the post is about all we need to know about microservices with actors. Even few patterns are described.
  
• Why Does My SQL Server Availability Group Need a Load Balancer in Azure? (Paul Burpo) - This post is the answer of a very common question and also explains how to do it correctly.
  
• Introducing Microsoft Stream: the secure destination to manage and share videos for businesses of all sizes (James Phillips) - Really exiting news, get started in less than 5 seconds and share video only for the viewer(s) you wish, on any devices, and securely.

Programming

• Exploring a minimal WebAPI with ASP.NET Core - Interesting new series that explores the possibilities with dotnet and different component.

Miscellaneous

• Azure Logic Apps Reaches General Availability (Jeff Hollan) - Exiting news, the availability of so many great features and tool like the LogicApp editor inside VS.
  
• Stop the madness! Ridiculous security scare tactics revealed - Like always, by being informed half the problem is already solved.

Reading Notes #237

Cloud

• Azure Redis Cache May 2016 update (Pranav Rastogi) - Quick overview o this update.
  
• Release of Service Fabric SDK 2.1.150 and Runtime 5.1.150 - Have you played with Azure Fabric yet? Here is your chance with new SDK that provides more features and fixes some bugs.
  
• Application Insights is a Business Tool (Alexandre Brisebois) - Indeed, Application Insights is a business tool and a good one. Even more since it's available Azure services.
  
• Azure Media Services is now available in the new Azure portal (Mingfei Yan) - Fantastic another big piece that joined all the other services in the new portal.
  
• Power BI - Microsoft Azure Media Services and Power BI - Great tutorial that explains how to setup a cool dashboard and help you to get more about your media consumers.

Programming

• How to Debug and Run .NET CORE RC2 direct from within Visual Studio Code (Luís Henrique Demetrio) - Wow. I try on Windows, and it takes least than 5 minutes to get setup. Really cool.

Miscellaneous

• Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn - This is a really big move ... even more at the and of the fiscal year.

Reading Notes #218

Suggestion of the week

• Open Source tools to kick start your Xamarin Projects (Guy Barrete, Erik Renaud) - Awesome video where Guy and Eric show many powerful tools to get stated with our project... the good way.

Cloud

• Freeing your Azure data with F# Type Providers - This nice post regroups good Azure storage tips, enough to make you fall in love with F# right await.
  
• How to refer an Azure Key Vault secret in an Azure Resource Manager deployment template - Nice post that shows some security best practices with ARM.
  
• Microservices in Azure (Jon Hilton) - Excellent post to get started and do you first Hello word micro-services application.

Programming

• .NET Rocks! vNext (dotnetrocks.com) - Another great show... And so happy about Glimpse.
  
• Tips for Deploying your .Net project (Gregor Suttie) - Looking for some quick suggestion from some on with experience? Here is the perfect post for that.

Data

• How Halo 5 implemented cloud scale telemetry using Azure Event Hubs (Dan Rosanova) - Inspiring post about scaling and the data platform.

Reading Notes #198

Cloud

• Announcing Backup of Windows 10 machines using Azure Backup (Giridhar Mosay) - Low-brainer, safe and efficient it's a must.
  
• Announcing Geospatial support in Azure DocumentDB! (Aravind Ramachandran) - Fantastic, this option was present in the wishlist of many people. And we can try it right now in the DocumentDB playground.
  
• Azure Site Recovery is now available in Central US, North Central US, South Central US, East US2 (Ashish Gangwar) - Great news!
  
• Copy a Blob From an Azure Datacenter to Another Using PowerShell (Alexandre Brisebois) - I write previously about that here, but the monitoring idea is a nice addition. time to update my scripts.
  
• What’s New In Azure Storage (Gaurav) - Nice summary of the azure blob storage (.Net client), on how to use the new AppendBlob type.
  
• Moving a CentOS Virtual Machine to Another Azure Datacenter (Alexandre Brisebois) - Very complete script to move Linux machine using RAID0 between accounts.
  
• Azure Automation, Remote PowerShell And a Virtual Machine (Alexandre Brisebois) - This post provides a nice PowerShell script clearly commented, to execute commands remotely in an Azure VM.
  
• Meet AzureCon (Nicole Herskowitz) - A date to remember: September 29.
  
• New CDN features – country filtering, compression and analytics (Manling Zhang) - This post announced a new feature in Azure CDN.

Podcast

• .NET Rocks! - Great episode very interesting discussion about the new Azure Service Fabric.

Programming

• Using Callbacks with Moq (Richard Carr) - The callback method is a powerful tool in Moq, and this post explained it very clearly.
  
• AC's Blog: Running Mocha Tests with Visual Studio Code - Nice little tutorial that goes to the essential and explains debugging with. VSCode and Gulp.
  
• 12 tips to increase the performance of ASP.NET application drastically – Part 1 - Evangelism - Nice tips to improve performance. I like the sixth one, I wonder how much the performances are improved with it.
  
• 12 tips to increase the performance of ASP.NET application drastically – Part 2 - Second part of the performance tips list... still very interesting.

Databases

• JavaScript as Modern Day T-SQL (Andrew Liu) - This post explains the awesome evolution of the Javascript Query language DocumentDB.

Reading notes #183

Suggestion of the week

• Announcing Azure Service Fabric: Reducing Complexity in a Hyper-scale World (Mark Russinovich) - A very exiting news. I am looking forward to play with that Azure Service Fabric.

Cloud

• Think #Microservices - Very interesting post that explains why microservices are so promissing.
  
• BizTalk in Azure Infrastructure as a Service - Nice post that shares all kinds of scenario for BizTalk in an Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) context.
  
• UPDATED for 2015: How to install the nodejs Ghost blog software on Azure Web Apps (and the Deploy to Azure Button) (Scott Hanselman) - It can be that easy, right? Well, it is!
  
• With Machine Learning, Amazon Wants to Multiply the Power of Big Data (Saroj Kar) - Amazon is joining the machine learning market. the future promise to be interesting.
  
• Tutorial: Using Ant and Jenkins to automate the deployment of Java projects from the Azure Toolkit for Eclipse - MS Open Tech (Martin Sawicki) - Very nice tutorial when java is your thing and Azureyour destination.
  
• Announcing General Availability of Azure Premium Storage - Good news, now we can get more performance from our storage.
  
• Azure PowerShell 101 - Managing the Cloud from the Command Line (Channel 9) (Scott Hanselman) - Great video that shows few tricks to get started with Azure powershell commands.

Programming

• Mobile app privacy insanity – we’re still failing massively at this - Interesting and scaring post about the lack of security in mobile apps.
  
• IoT: Do you really should have knowledge in electronics? (Sergiy Baydachnyy) - Interesting thoughts about how to get started.

Databases

• MongoDB vs. Azure DocumentDB - Interesting post that compares the new kid on the block with an older one.

Miscellaneous

• Windows 10 - The Fast Ring and BUILD 10061 (Scott Hanselman) - Nice video that shows us the evolution of the very processing windows 10.