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In the last five years, Microsoft has increased the emphasis on community programs – specifically within the security, compliance, and management space. These communities fall into two categories: Public and Private (or NDA only). In this blog, we will share a breakdown of each community and how to join. What is community? First let’s cover what community is. Our community programs enable potential and current customers or partners to directly connect with Microsoft engineers and other security professionals. In this program, Microsoft shares best practices, what’s new, and what’s under development, while our members share their related product experienc…

Author(s): Arun Sethia is a Program Manager in Azure HDInsight Customer Success Engineering (CSE) team. Introduction In my previous blog, we talked about leveraging Delta Lake on Azure HDInsight; this blog is dedicated to Iceberg open source table format. At this moment, HDInsight does not support Iceberg out of the box, so we will see how someone can leverage Iceberg Open Table Format in this blog. We will also see code examples to use tables from three data sources: Delta, Iceberg, and Spark native parquet files. A quick touch on Apache Iceberg - Apache Iceberg is an open-source table format that provides a transactional and versioned storage l…

This article is brought to you by the Nonprofit Tech Acceleration (NTA) for Black and African American Communities Program Technical Team. For information on how to take advantage of the granted offerings or free technical consultation, please visit: Supporting Black Community Nonprofits | Microsoft Nonprofits This article talks over the general review of user's role and management portal. All administrative functions take place on Microsoft Community Training management portal, and this includes user management, content management, portal settings, tracking and monitoring the training with analytics etc. The management portal's functionalities are separated i…

Azure Functions is a serverless computing platform that enables developers to build and run code without the need to worry about infrastructure. One key aspect of using Azure Functions is choosing the right hosting and networking options to support your application's needs. Choose the right hosting option There are several hosting options available for Azure Functions, each with its own set of benefits and trade-offs. These options include the Consumption, the Elastic Premium, and App Service plans. In this article, we will take a closer look at each of these options and discuss the factors to consider when choosing the right one for your needs. Con…

Almost every aspect of the internet world requires authentication. Authentication is the process of verifying client or server identity before accessing resources to protect information security. Azure App Service provides sets of authentication technologies to protect and secure your web application. However, it is a steep learning curve to know all of them, and we often get lost in the details of the documentations. The purpose of the article is to give you an intuitive way to understand the authentication features in App Service and a high-level summary of different authentication models, their usage scenarios and useful links. Speaking about authentication in A…

Overview: Azure CycleCloud is an enterprise-friendly tool for orchestrating and managing High-Performance Computing (HPC) environments on Azure. With CycleCloud, users can provision infrastructure for HPC systems, deploy familiar HPC schedulers, and automatically scale the infrastructure to run jobs efficiently at any scale. There are two primary mechanisms for enabling login access to cluster nodes, through CycleCloud's built-in authentication, or by integrating nodes with a directory service such as Active Directory or LDAP. For enterprise production clusters, it is recommended that user access be managed through a directory service such as LDAP, Active Dire…

Background: There is a symptom with low throughput in Service Bus triggered function due to Service Bus's message session enabled. This blog we're going to do a lab to demonstrate the cause and effect of this situation. Common causes: According to session features description (Azure Service Bus message sessions - Azure Service Bus | Microsoft Learn), since a session receiver is created by a client accepting a session. When the session is accepted and held by a client, the client holds an exclusive lock on all messages with that session's session ID in the queue or subscription. It will also hold exclusive locks on all messages with the session ID that w…

Migrating a database from one cloud to another can be a time consuming and complex endeavor, but if you’ve prepared a comprehensive migration strategy, your chances of successful completion increase multi-fold. A successful large-scale database migration involves several key phases, including planning, preparation, performing a test migration, performing the final migration, validation, and then cutover. This post covers various strategies for migrating AWS RDS for MySQL to Azure Database for MySQL, how to use them to maximize efficiency and cost savings, different migration considerations, the importance of proper planning and preparation, and potential pitfalls t…

In today's digital world, the need to convert images and PDFs to text is becoming increasingly important. However, the process of manually transcribing images and PDFs can be time-consuming and error-prone. Fortunately, there is a better way. With the Azure Open AI service, you can easily and quickly convert images and PDFs to text. The Azure Open AI service is a cloud-based platform that provides powerful machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. This platform makes it easy to quickly convert images and PDFs to text using pre-trained models. All you need to do is upload your image or PDF file and the AI service will automatically extract the …

On March 28, Microsoft Secure 2023 will bring together security professionals from around the world in both live and digital formats for a half-day focused on comprehensive and innovative security strategies shaping the future of security. To complement the event’s sessions and help security professionals put what they learn at Microsoft Secure into action, we are providing curated skilling and live experiences that will deepen your technical knowledge and skills. Read on for details. Get self-paced technical skilling with the Official Collection for Microsoft Secure 2023 Check out the Official Collection for Microsoft Secure 2023 to help you build s…

Reduce cost and complexity of multiple solutions. Use advanced cross-platform capabilities that go beyond UEM for one unified endpoint management solution with the Microsoft Intune Suite. Leverage Microsoft’s intelligent services, which include integrated best-in-class solutions to protect against cyberattacks. Capabilities span endpoint privilege management, advanced analytics, secure app-level VPN for personal devices, and Remote Help for Android and Windows users. Matt McSpirit, Azure expert, breaks down new Microsoft Intune Suite essentials to manage endpoint devices, provide secure access to resources, and support end users. Now deploy standard us…

This article is brought to you by the Nonprofit Tech Acceleration (NTA) for Black and African American Communities Program Technical Team. For information on how to take advantage of the granted offerings or free technical consultation, please visit: Supporting Black Community Nonprofits | Microsoft Nonprofits Hello to our amazing NTA non-profit organizations. A few organizations recently inquired about how they can use Microsoft Excel to serve some of their organizational data needs and I figured it would be perfect to discuss in my next blog. In this article I will talk about how Microsoft Excel is a versatile tool that can be used by non-profit organizations in …

A new Azure SQL DB feature in late 2022, sp_invoke_rest_endpoint lets you send data to REST API endpoints from within T-SQL. It sounds like a simple feature, but has the potential to change the way you architecture your database applications and data transformation processes. Learn more in this episode of Data Exposed: MVP Edition with Rob Farley. Resources: sp_invoke_external_rest_endpoint (Transact-SQL) (Preview) Real-time streaming in Power BI Datasets - Execute Queries Github About Rob Farley: Rob Farley lives in Adelaide, Australia where he runs the local data and analytics user group, as well as being a mentor, conference presenter, stand-up comic, …

We are excited to announce the public preview of confidential containers on Azure Container Instances, an industry-first serverless confidential computing platform. Confidential containers on ACI enables fast and easy deployment of containers natively in Azure and with the ability to protect data and code in use thanks to AMD EPYC™ processors with confidential computing capabilities. This is because your container(s) run in a hardware-based and attested Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) without the need to adopt a specialized programming model and without infrastructure management overhead. With this launch you get: Full guest attestation, which reflects the crypt…

Today, we are excited to announce the public preview of confidential containers on Azure Container Instances (ACI) that have been in limited preview since May 2022. Confidential containers on ACI give customers the ability to leverage the latest AMD SEV-SNP technology to secure their containerized workloads. Azure customers are increasingly turning to cloud-native, container-based applications to support their workloads. However, these customers are also seeking cloud hosting options that offer the highest levels of data protection, which often require complex infrastructure management and expertise. To address these challenges, we developed confidential containers on Azu…

Azure Front Door is upgrading its PoP node (point of presence) infrastructure to improve performance and resiliency. While most customers will not notice any changes to the way Front Door proxies HTTP(S) traffic, there are some differences. One of those is stricter implementation of the HTTP Range-Request protocol (RFC 7233). In this article I outline some of these changes, show how to test to see if your origins will be impacted, and provide advice on how to fix origins that are not responding to range requests properly. Background In December Microsoft sent a Service Health advisory to Azure Front Door customers via the Azure Portal. The advisory included th…

Azure Data Studio migration extensions continue to expand to help you accelerate any database migration to Azure. I am pleased to share that the new Azure PostgreSQL migration extension for Azure Data Studio (ADS) offers an assessment capability to identify when a PostgreSQL server instance is ready to be moved to Azure. Database assessments are a fundamental step to help users understand the value of cloud migrations and make strategic decisions for moving into Azure services, such as Azure Database for PostgreSQL. Azure Database for PostgreSQL is a relational database platform based on the open-source Postgres database engine and allows you to focus on app develo…

In this guest blog post, Omri Eytan, CTO of odix, discusses how businesses relying on Microsoft 365 can protect themselves from file-based attacks with Filewall, available via Microsoft Azure Marketplace. Many theses were written about the latest pandemic impact on our working habits, preferences, and how companies had to adopt new processes to keep business alive. We see numerous reports describing the work-from-home trend becoming the new reality of hybrid working environment. This had a huge impact on IT departments, which had to enable a secured yet transparent working environment for all employees, wherever they work. A McAfee Report showed a 50 perce…

The Imagine Cup, Microsoft's premier student technology competition, has once again drawn the attention of young and aspiring tech enthusiasts from all over the world. With its mission to empower the next generation of creators and problem-solvers, the competition has seen an overwhelming response from students who are eager to showcase their innovative ideas, deepen their business acumen and technical learning and make a positive impact on society. With cutting-edge Azure and AI solutions addressing societal issues, the top teams heading to the world finals have put an incredible amount of research, skilling and teamwork into their quest for excellence. The…

Azure Data Tech Groups v 1.0 Two years ago, Microsoft publicly launched the new Azure Data Community webpage, and created Azure Data Tech Groups utilizing Meetup resources. Prior to this, many user groups used PASS resources to host their websites, virtual meetings, manage members and more. Over the following months, we onboarded qualified user groups to the new Azure Data Meetup network and began providing Microsoft Teams access to help groups meet virtually through the pandemic. Since then, the Azure Data Community Meetup Network has grown to include over 150 groups in 42 different countries. We've expanded the landing page to include community created resources …

Today, Microsoft Intune is introducing the Microsoft Intune Suite which unifies mission-critical advanced endpoint management and security solutions into one simple bundle. The new Microsoft Intune Suite can simplify our customer’s endpoint management experience, improve their security posture, and keep people at the center with exceptional user experiences. Microsoft Security and Microsoft 365 deeply integrated with the Intune Suite will empower IT and security teams with data science and AI to increase automation, helping them move simply and quickly from reactive to proactive in addressing endpoint management and other security challenges. Here’s a list of Micro…

Today, we are announcing General Availability (GA) of native implementation of APPROX_PERCENTILE in Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance. We announced preview of these functions in October 2022. Since then, many customers have adopted these for the applications where response time of percentile calculation was more important than the accuracy of the result. These aggregate functions (APPROX_PERCENTILE_CONT & APPROX_PERCENTILE_DISC) need lesser memory and lesser CPU as compared to their precise analytic counterparts (PERCENTILE_CONT & PERCENTILE_DISC). Here is a quick example to demonstrate this. To follow along, you would need to use Wid…

February 2023 kept pace bringing updates across employee experiences and teamwork. In this episode, we cover: Yammer > Engage rebrand, Viva Topics in Viva Engage, Stream Playlists, SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM), updated OneDrive Home and Shared, external file requests for SharePoint document libraries, export Microsoft Lists as datasets for Power BI, update to rules email notifications, and more. You can listen to the podcast version here and continue to scroll to review further details and screenshots about each feature. In the podcast episode, I chat with Sesha Mani (LinkedIn | Twitter), Principal group product manager on the SharePoint te…

Today, we're announcing the public preview of logins and TDE-enabled database migrations in the Azure SQL Migration extension for Azure Data Studio. These new features provide a secure and improved user experience for migrating TDE databases and SQL/Windows logins to Azure SQL. Prerequisites Before migrating to Azure SQL Database using the Azure Migration extension for Azure Data Studio, be sure that the following prerequisites are in place. Download and install Azure Data Studio. Install the Azure SQL migration extension from the Azure Data Studio marketplace. Download and install Azure Data Studio. Run Azure Data Studio as Administrator. Crea…

When you're dreaming of taking the next step in your career, how can you sharpen your skills? How do you learn best? Microsoft Learn can help you get closer to making your dreams a reality. There’s no “one size fits all” for learning, so we offer a wide variety of dynamic and engaging experiences that fit the learning style that works best for you. In this post, we’ll explore the different skilling pathways available on Microsoft Learn. Check it out and see which style fits you best! For the self-starter who wants to work at their own speed If you’re more of a self-starter and would rather blaze your own trail, self-paced training might be the right opt…