Microsoft Support & Discussions

Introduction When starting in Azure DevOps Pipelines one can immediately become inundated with terminology that may seem foreign or question what pipeline structure will lead to the most flexibility and streamlining of their build/deployment process. This post will focus on the hierarchy of Tasks->Jobs-Stages. My intent will be to cover Environments and Variables in a follow up post and then templating in one after that. What is a Pipeline? An Azure DevOps Pipeline is the next generation of what is today referred to as Classic Build and Releases. I have heard them called YAML Pipelines, Multi-Stage Pipelines, and just Pipelines. They have been around n…

Read the 2022 recap of all the Azure SQL and SQL Server news or catch the live episode! If you missed the episode, you can find them all at https://aka.ms/AzureSQLYT. This one also features a special Ask Me Anything with product group members. You can read this blog to get all the updates and references mentioned in the show (including the awesome speakers we had on). Since we did things a little differently this month, here’s the special December update which contains the year in review (i.e., all the big updates this year): SQL Server on Azure VMs Public Preview General Availability · Configure availability group through the A…

Microsoft allows organizations to own more than one domain (the default domain is onmicrosoft.com). Learn more about creating domains here: Add a domain to Microsoft 365 | Microsoft Docs. We are enabling two controls for domain use in Microsoft Bookings: You can specify which domain will be used from the domain list for Bookings using OWA mailbox policy. Once the default domain policy is configured and deployed, any newly created Bookings calendars will have the configured domain in the SMTP address. For example, Bookings pages can be created with a domain, “contoso.com” instead of, “contoso.onmicrosoft.com”. You can also configure domains for specific…

The Azure Database for MySQL team just announced General Availability of Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) authentication for Flexible Server. In this post, I’ll walk through how to configure applications to use Azure AD authentication. In general, this process involves: Creating a User-assigned Managed Identity. Creating an Azure AD administrator for MySQL – Flexible Server. Connecting to a MySQL flexible server from an App Service without using secrets. Modifying the application code by using the Azure Identity Library. Create a User-assigned Managed Identity Flexible Server leverages a User-assigned Managed Identity (UMI) to request access tokens. …

For your next application, leverage large-scale, generative AI models with a deep understanding of language and code, using Azure’s OpenAI service. Interact with models using natural language, prompts, and few-shot learning. Use the Azure OpenAI Studio to experiment and test your models before bringing them into your code to deliver differentiated app experiences, all with Azure’s enterprise-grade security built-in. Build new experiences with models: • GPT-3 generates content based on natural language input • Codex translates natural language instructions directly into code • DALL-E 2 generates realistic images and art from natural language descripti…

Asynchronous messaging and event-driven communication are critical assets when building a distributed application composed of several internal and external services. This sample shows how to use an Azure Event Grid Custom Topic as a message broker in a multitenant scenario to send messages to multiple Azure Service Bus queues in different namespaces, one for each tenant. You can find the companion code on GitHub. Azure Event Grid is a highly scalable, serverless event broker that you can use to integrate applications using events. Events are delivered by Event Grid to subscriber destinations such as applications, Azure services, or any endpoint to which Event Grid has …

We are excited to announce the preview availability of Apache Spark™ 3.3 on Synapse Analytics. The essential changes include features which come from upgrading Apache Spark to version 3.3.1 and upgrading Delta Lake to version 2.1.0. Check out the official release notes for Apache Spark 3.3.0 and Apache Spark 3.3.1 for the complete list of fixes and features. In addition, review the migration guidelines between Spark 3.2 and 3.3 to assess potential changes to your applications, jobs and notebooks. Below is an extended summary of key new features that we are highlighting of importance in this article for you to check out in more details. Related to Apa…

The other day my colleague and MVP, Lesley Crook, asked me in Teams; Ståle Hansen here's the draft for your comments Wordpress process.docx. I read this on a mobile just as I was walking into a full day workshop. Teams is great like this, having in-context conversations that spans time and space. One thing was clear, I was sure to forget to do this activity, because I could not do it right away. The next morning though, I had full control, here is what I did, and why this is a lifehack. Create Task By going to the elliptical menu for the message I received, I scrolled down, found Create Task, and chose to send it to Tasks in my Microsoft To Do app. …

Power page is the fifth addition to the Power Platform. The power platform turns great ideas into solutions. Power platform is the collection of Power BI, Power Apps, Power Automate, Power Virtual Agent and Power Pages. Power pages are the no-code and low-code solutions that empower you to build scalable, and secure business websites. Microsoft Power Pages previously called Power Apps portals enables development of external-facing websites with the low-code simplicity and integrated capabilities of Power Platform. With the new Power Pages name comes new positioning. This product sits within the low-code, no-code industry and offers a wider set of design, development, a…

Azure Event Hubs is a fully managed, real-time data streaming service that can stream millions of events per second from any source using native AMQP or Apache Kafka API to build data streaming pipelines. Azure Event Hubs enables you to connect your Kafka applications and clients using Azure Event Hubs for Apache Kafka® with far lower cost and better performance. You can migrate existing Kafka workloads to Event Hubs with zero code change and use Event Hubs as the Kafka ingestion layer without having to manage Kafka clusters. When you migrate from on-premise or managed Kafka services to Event Hubs, one of the main challange is how you migrate existing Kafka…

Real-time data streams (events) from Azure Event Hubs to Azure Data Explorer (ADX) can be easily processed, before the ingestion to ADX, using Azure Stream Analytics (ASA). The ASA no-code editor allows you to develop a Stream Analytics job without writing a single line of code. The experience provides a canvas that allows you to connect to Event Hub as an input sources, and quickly see your streaming data. Then, you can transform the data before writing to your Azure Data Explorer cluster. You can: Modify input schemas of the events Perform data preparation operations like joins and filters Approach advanced scenarios like time-window aggregations (tumb…

One of Microsoft’s annual flagship conferences, Microsoft Ignite, was back in Seattle in October 2022. Many people were excited about this in-person experience and gathered in Seattle from the world to learn about the latest Microsoft technologies and innovative solutions. They also enjoyed face-to-face conversations with business leaders and community experts to celebrate their reunion with each other. Of course, this event welcomed global attendees beyond the physical location by delivering online sessions. Moreover, Microsoft hosted six Regional Spotlight events in the UK, China, France, Germany, Japan, and LATAM. Microsoft Ignite collaborated with Microsoft MVP…

The prelude: ======== My morning coffee was too strong today and it kicked me into thinking out-of-the-box ideas. Procdump is a great tool for collecting dumps in a Production environment, but I wanted to take it one step further to generate a dump on a specific .net core exception. For example, I wanted to get a dump when IOException occurs with the below command: procdump64.exe -e 1 -f IOException donetcoreapp.exe When the System.IO.IOexception is raised in the target process, there is neither exception type name displayed nor dump generated, you only see the output like the below: … [04:42:56] Exception: E0434352.CLR … The out…

Meet Mziwenhlanhla Mngadi Hi, I'm Mziwenhlanhla Mngadi, a university student currently pursuing a degree in Information and Communications Technology at the Durban University of Technology. As an aspiring low-code developer, I am ardent on using technology to simplify complex processes and enhance user experience. With keen interest in low-code development, I am confident in my ability to create intuitive and efficient solutions. As I continue my journey as a low-code developer, I hope to make a positive impact in the field. As part of a program hosted by Greenlight Solutions in partnership with Durban University of Technology. and a Cloud Advocate at Microsoft,…

In some situations, customers that are using PowerBI and Direct Query reported performance issues depending how the query has been defined by PowerBI. In this scenarion, I would like to share with you how we fixed this performance issue using Partitioning For this example, I download a demo database Release Wide World Importers sample database v1.0 · microsoft/sql-server-samples · GitHub and duplicate rows of a table Fact.Sale until having 234.767.360 rows. I choose HyperScale Database tier basically as a medium size database for OLAP. In every analysis of performance with PowerBI, if you need to know how many rows we have per table use the following TSQL,…

Benefits of Certification Exams There are several reasons why you should go for certification Exams. Certification validates your skill, boosts your confidence, completes your profile, makes you more competitive, and so on. As beneficial certification exams are, not everyone can afford them as they come at a cost. In this article, I will be sharing an opportunity to access certification vouchers for FREE. Note: This opportunity is only available for Nigerian residents as it is a partnership with the Nigerian Government. If you are not a Nigerian, scroll to the end of this post for links to article that can guide you through securing FREE Certifi…

We’re thrilled to share the public preview of a new query resources report in Microsoft 365 Defender to help you optimize your hunting performance. Visibility into how query resources are being used across the SOC team is critical to optimize performance, ensure queries are executed efficiently, and allow team to operate in the most effective way possible. The new query resources report now enables you to view how hunting resources are consumed in your organization and provides insights into your consumption of CPU resources for hunting activities. It provides data on queries that were run in the last 30 days using any of the hunting interfaces in Microsoft’s XDR. …

We are pleased to announce the general availability of FSLogix 2210. This latest version is focused on three core features, six bug fixes, and two general updates. We've added several new articles to our documentation and updated the configuration settings reference page. What's new in FSLogix 2210? FSLogix added three new features. First, VHD Disk Compaction, which allows the user's container to shrink during the sign-out phase. VHD Disk Compaction will reduce the amount of consumed storage for user's profile. Second, we've added a new process during the sign-out phase which creates an AppX package manifest for the user. This manifest is used at sign-in to re-r…

We are pleased to announce the general availability of FSLogix 2210. This latest version is focused on three core features, six bug fixes, and two general updates. We've added several new articles to our documentation and updated the configuration settings reference page. What's new in FSLogix 2210? FSLogix added three new features. First, VHD Disk Compaction, which allows the user's container to shrink during the sign-out phase. VHD Disk Compaction will reduce the amount of consumed storage for user's profile. Second, we've added a new process during the sign-out phase which creates an AppX package manifest for the user. This manifest is used at sign-in to re-r…

Advantech has been a trusted embedded system manufacturer for 40 years and is at the forefront of scaling industrial edge AI/ML solutions. Their recent partnership with the Azure Certified Device program, initiated in November 2022, demonstrates their increasingly strong commitment to delivering quality edge solutions on Azure. Indeed, Advantech Solutions utilizing their DeviceOn management software are available now in the Azure Certified Device catalog. DeviceOn software enables the remote connection of Advantech’s diverse selection of certified devices via a centralized dashboard. This solution leverages Azure with Advantech products to promote ease of AI/ML mod…

Hello, Chris Cartwright here from Directory Services support team. Taking a breather from the phone calls. In the past few weeks, there has been a large number of questions, rumors, and suggestions thrown around about the November 2022 security updates. Microsoft Support recommends that you read these articles to gain the most understanding of topics discussed in this and related blogs: Techcommunity: Decrypting the Selection of Supported Kerberos Encryption Types provides an understanding of etypes TechCommunity: November 2022 Out of Band update released! Take action! Microsoft KB5021131: How to manage the Kerberos protocol changes related to CVE-2022-37966 …

Hello, Chris here from Directory Services support team with part 2 of the series. After installing the November 2022/Out of Band update on your domain controllers you might experience a memory leak happening within LSASS.exe (Local Security Authority Subsystem Service). This could affect domain controller performance, cause operational failures, and/or reliability issues. If you have already patched your domain controllers, the December 13, 2022 security update should resolve the known memory leak that is happening within LSASS.exe at this time. See table below, however if you do not currently feel comfortable with doing this please read the below: …

Hello, Chris here from Directory Services support team with part 3 of the series. With the November 2022 security update, some things were changed as to how the Kerberos Key Distribution Center (KDC) Service on the Domain Controller determines what encryption types are supported by the KDC and what encryption types are supported by default for users, computers, Group Managed Service Accounts (gMSA), and trust objects within the domain. It is strongly recommended that you read the following article before going forward if you are not certain about Kerberos Encryption types are nor what is supported by the Windows Operating System: Understanding Kerberos en…

Don't miss Jeff Woolsey and Joe Sarabia as they discuss: How to Modernize Your VMware Environment with Microsoft Azure Thursday, December 15, 2022 10:00 AM–11:00 AM Pacific Time If your organization is running VMware today and wants to lower infrastructure costs while increasing business agility and resilience, Azure has great options for you. In this session, learn about Azure capabilities to help you migrate and modernize workloads running in your VMware environment, including: Migrate workloads to Azure Extend your on-premises VMware environment to Azure for hybrid cloud scenarios such as backup and disaster recovery (BCDR) Modernize with Azur…

1. Create database with a FILESTREAM filegroup USE [master] GO --create database with Filestream CREATE DATABASE [FileStreamTest] CONTAINMENT = NONE ON PRIMARY ( NAME = N'FileStreamTest', FILENAME = N'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL15.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\DATA\FileStreamTest.mdf' , SIZE = 204800KB , MAXSIZE = UNLIMITED, FILEGROWTH = 65536KB ), FILEGROUP [FileStreamFG] CONTAINS FILESTREAM DEFAULT ( NAME = N'FileStreamTestFStream', FILENAME = N'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL15.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\DATA\FileStreamTestFStream' , MAXSIZE = UNLIMITED) LOG ON ( NAME = N'FileStreamTest_log', FILENAME = N'C:\Program Files\Mic…