Latest Azure News: Power BI Embedded; Machine Learning for DevOps; Azure Stream Analytics; Service Fabric; Grafana; Bitnami

A series of updates with a strong developer community focus defined the second week of April. New Power BI Embedded code samples premiered on GitHub including an ASP .NET core sample and Node.js code snippets.

Microsoft is strongly encouraging—and ultimately requiring—all customers to update their TLS version to TLS 1.2 for better security controls. .NET app users should programmatically enable a protocol upgrade if they are still using Framework 4.6 or older.

Eduardo Melo, an Azure principal program manager blogged about the need to accelerate DevOps with Machine Learning. Users can employ Azure Machine Learning service workspaces and Python to make DevOps pipelines visible to other team members and interact with them in Jupyter notebooks. The service model registry helps to keep track of models and artifacts, while the Azure Machine Learning SDK supports tracking for individual pipeline runs.

From May 7-9, members of the Microsoft team will assemble in Orlando for the SAP SAPPHIRE 2019, discussing topics like using S/4 HANA on Azure or leveraging IoT data.

A new feature premiered on April 16, allowing users to rewrite HTTP headers in Azure Application Gateway. Request and response headers can be added, removed or updated even as packets move between the client and the backend app, or conditions and security-related headers can be added in. Group targeting for Azure update management is generally available, supporting patch deployments to Azure VMs.

Azure SQL Database users will find one handy new feature: Options to configure the time zone for preexisting applications.

As the Visual Studio 2019 update takes effect, Stream Analytics is adding a wide array of different features including fully partitioned queries, geospatial for Edge jobs, blob output partitioning, anomaly detection and new SQL functions. Azure API Management Analytics in its classic form is set to retire on May 31, affecting any API Management customer with a Developer, Standard, Basic or Premium instance. Fortunately, a new option is available in the Azure portal.

Among geographic updates, Microsoft is doubling the size of its regions in the UK by expanding Availability Zones, courting UK government users, likely in preparation for Britain's pending departure from the EU. Azure Kubernetes Service became generally available in the South Central US, Korea Central and Korea South while Data Box Disk became available in Korea and Japan. Logic Apps is now activated for the US Gov Virginia region. With this update, the number of AKS regions now stands at 22. Virtual network endpoint policies are expanding to new regions throughout the US letting admins limit access to only specific Azure services. Gateway Transit for Global VNet Peering is now supported for all Azure public regions as well as Azure Government and Azure China regions.