This weeks Azure News, probably the biggest and most popular Azure News is open source.
Don’t forget, Azure news can also be heard on the ‘Need to Know‘ podcast with Robert Crane and myself.
New Provider for Azure CDN – Akamai
CDN is a great way to speed up blob file access globally. Rather than having all your files on a single server in a single location, making use of a Content Delviver Network allows you to speed up accessability across the globe by utilising a distributed network of CDN provider servers. Your blob files are cached across the CDN network of servers, which means your files are local to everyone – anywhere.
Previously Azure CDN was only on the Verizon CDN network, now they have added Akamai as well, which means Azure can now offer customers the two largest CDN providers in the world.
More information: https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Azure-Friday/Azure-CDN-with-Akamai
Open source, open source, open source!
Microsoft is working company-wide to deliver management tools that empower customers to manage any platform, from anywhere, on any device, using Linux or Windows. This shift to a more open, customer-obsessed approach to deliver innovation is one of the things that makes me most excited to come to work every day.
You’ve heard Satya Nadella say “Microsoft loves Linux” and that’s never been more true than now.
- Nearly one in three VMs on Azure are Linux
- Nearly 60 percent of third-party IaaS offers in the Azure Marketplace are open source software (OSS).
- Microsoft open sourced .NET, June 27, 2016
- PowerShell is open sourced and available on Linux as of Auguest 2016
Announced SQL Server on Linux – March 7, 2016 http://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2016/03/07/announcing-sql-server-on-linux/ - Bash added to Windows 10 to make it a great platform for developing OSS
- PowerShell Editor Service – this allow users to choose from a range of editors (VS Code and Sublime with others to follow) and get a great PowerShell authoring experience with Intellisense, debugging, etc.
- Extending the PowerShell Remoting Protocol (MS-PSRP) to use OpenSSH as a native transport. Users will have the option to use SSH or WINRM as a transport.
RIO Games break new streaming records using Azure
First there was the Sochi Winter Games in 2014 where Azure performed perfectly without a hitch, Azure did it again with RIO 2016 and brought the games to millions of people across all devices, breaking the record for scale and reach for the largest sporting event on Earth.
- Viewers live streamed 2.71 billion minutes of Olympic coverage – a new record for live event coverage. The 2.71 billion live minutes nearly doubles the combined live streamed minutes of ALL prior Games (1.48 billion)
- NBC Olympics digital coverage handled 100 million unique users – 29 percent more than the 2012 London Olympics
- A 1080p profile for all streamed channels (up from 720p during the Winter Olympics)
- Over 4,500 hours of content made available
- Over 50 simultaneous Olympics events – a 40 percent increase compared with the Winter Games
- Over 100 live channels continuously available for the Games, nearly double the number of available channels for Sochi
Redis Cache
Redis cache is the distributed caching solution in Azure, if you’re building websites, traditionally you’ll serve data from a persistant store like SQL, but serving data from SQL is slow because it’s persistant. Whereas in cache, you store data in memory so it’s much faster and with Redis it’s very high throughput and low latancy, allowing you to service data in under 10 milli-seconds and if you scale out a website, Redis cache is the way to go because it’s a distributed cache solution.
The best practices for Redis cache have just been released online which cover Memory, maximum size & scale, enhanced security, number of client connections, cliend/cache in the same region, Redis is single threaded, key size/timout & long running commands etc.
https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Azure-Friday/Azure-Redis-Cache-Best-Practices
VMware back is not nativilly supported in DPM
System Center Data Protection Manager 2012 R2 with Update Rollup 11 now supports VMware backups nativilly with no agents needed to be installed. Now DPM makes use of VMware’s API to backup VMware servers with no agent. Support for both ESXi or vCentre servers, both discover and backup.
New Microsoft Virtual Academy Course – Introduction to Azure Security Center
The classic security model of Protect, Detect & Respond still applies, but must be adapted to moden environments and todays threats with protection extended into SaaS & PaaS services. Detection technologies must become more sofisticated and leverage advanced analytics, behaivoural inalysis and machine learning. You have to respond more quickly, shortening the time required to investigate, respond and mitigate should a breach occur.
All the videos are now live online for FREE. Security roles, Prevention Deep Dive and Detections Deep Dive.
Marc Kean 