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In today's data-driven world, selecting the right database for your specific use case is crucial for optimizing performance, ensuring scalability, and maintaining security. Azure AI Search, combined with Azure OpenAI and the Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) pattern, provides a powerful framework for building advanced generative AI applications. These solutions are tailored to meet diverse needs across different industries. In this blog, we'll explore the use cases for various databases available through Azure AI Search and highlight their applications in real-world scenarios across different verticals such as nonprofits, healthcare, financial services, retail, automot…

A new log “AppServiceAuthenticationLogs” is now available in Public Preview for App Service resources on Windows. This would include Web Apps, Functions, and Logic Apps. If you would like to have more visibility into your App Service Authentication and would like to troubleshoot or self-diagnose issues, you can enable this log category to help with these scenarios. App Service Linux resources and Functions Consumption Plan (Linux and Windows) currently does not support this log. You may still see this log as an option in the Diagnostic Settings. However, if your resource is one of the unsupported scenarios, you will not see any logs despite enabling “AppServiceAut…

[HEADING=3]By Nicole Dezen, Chief Partner Officer and Corporate Vice President, Global Partner Solutions[/HEADING] Microsoft Build 2024 centered on the transformative impact our AI technology has on organizations that are leveraging it to boost efficiency, elevate customer experiences, and achieve groundbreaking innovations. This year, we had more than 60 announcements at our annual flagship developer event, ranging from the latest AI features for Windows to the expanded capabilities of Microsoft Copilot, new tools for developers, and cost-efficient, accessible cloud solutions. For partners, these new and enhanced technologies present unparalleled opportunities for…

Personal Data Encryption (PDE) along with BitLocker constitutes Windows data protection on Windows devices. BitLocker is a Windows security feature that provides encryption for entire volumes, addressing the threats of data theft or exposure from lost, stolen, or inappropriately decommissioned devices. However, there are some cases in which BitLocker protection alone might not be sufficient. For example, Trusted Platform Module (TPM) bus sniffing, targeting devices that do not have BitLocker TPM + PIN options set, or trying to get encryption keys by sniffing the unsecured bus between the CPU and TPM can all put BitLocker protected personal data at risk. Direct Memory Acce…

App Service now allows you to create web apps with unique default hostnames to avoid a high-severity threat of subdomain takeover. This feature is currently in Public Preview and is only available for web apps on multi-tenants. App Service Environment (ASE) resources are not supported. Functions and Logic Apps (Standard) are currently out of scope, but we have plans on supporting them soon, so stay tuned. This feature would require you to “opt-in” to create a site with a unique default hostname. This means that when you create a site through the portal, you will need to select the option to enable the feature; Azure Portal will be fully deployed by June 7t…

[HEADING=1]Introduction[/HEADING] This blog will utilize manual steps on for exporting data to blob storage in order to retain specific POSIX attributes. The exporting of data is achieved using the Lustre HSM (Hierarchical Storage Management) interface. The Managed Lustre system will need to have HSM enabled and setup in advance. See this article: Blob integration For more information around setting up automatic synchronization to Azure BLOB Storage for Azure Managed Lustre refer to this blob post: Automatic Synchronization to Azure BLOB Storage. [HEADING=1]Connect client to the Lustre file system[/HEADING] Client machines running Linux can access Azur…

With so much going on this month, let's get you caught up on how Windows 11 management and security improved. We'll jump into what you need to know as an IT admin or decision maker to get ahead of your competition. In line with our Microsoft Secure Future Initiative,[1] the latest features, capabilities, services, and tools prioritize security above all else. And remember, keeping your Windows environment updated helps you keep it protected. [HEADING=1]New in Windows security[/HEADING] [iNTUNE] Automatically check for Windows device health with device enrollment attestation in Microsoft Intune (now in preview). Help ensure that device enrollment certificates are boun…

Learn more about enabling disaster recovery for Azure SQL Database at a lower cost using standby replica which does not incur license costs. Standby replica is Generally Available (GA). Resources: Configure a license-free standby replica (preview) for Azure SQL Database General Availability of license-free standby replica for Azure SQL database Azure SQL DB license-free standby replica Azure SQL DB High Availability & Disaster Recovery overview View/share our latest episodes on Microsoft Learn and ! Continue reading...

[HEADING=1]Introduction[/HEADING] As a startup or an new customer exploring Microsoft Azure, you may find the terminology around identity and access management a bit perplexing. Terms like Tenant, Subscription, and Microsoft Entra ID, are crucial to understanding how to effectively manage and secure your Azure environment. This blog post aims to demystify these concepts and provide a clear, concise understanding of how they interrelate. [HEADING=1] What is Microsoft Entra ID (Former Azure Active Directory)?[/HEADING] Microsoft Entra ID is the new name for Azure Active Directory (AAD), Microsoft's cloud-based identity and access management service. It p…

Leading a tech user group can be a challenging yet rewarding experience. In this article, we will explore the journey of a user group leader, from the initial challenges of growing the group to the key factors that contributed to its sustained growth and engagement. We are highlighting Internet of Things and Microsoft Azure German MVP, Damir Dobric, AI United States MVP Adam Wisniewski, and Data Platform MVP Data Platform Bernat Agulló Roselló. By leveraging key factors such as support, coordination, planning, engagement, technology, and valuable content, Damir, Adam, and Bernat each overcame initial challenges and achieved sustained growth and engagement in the s…

When speaking with Copilot for Security customers, automation is often brought up as a topic of exploration. Customers are eager to extend their existing SOAR investments or workflows to include Copilot because they recognize the capabilities this new technology brings and believe it has the potential to further increase productivity. Today, Copilot for Security offers two ways of performing automations: 1) Promptbooks which are prompts chained together to achieve a specific task and 2) a LogicApp Connector to fuse the power of Copilot for Security directly into your workflows. In this post, we will explore how the LogicApp connector and set of capabilities could…

Today, Azure Load Balancer distributes incoming traffic across healthy backend pool instances. It accomplishes this by using health probes to send periodic requests to the instances and check for valid responses. Results from the health probe then determine which instances can receive new or continued connections and which ones cannot. You might want to override the health probe behavior for some of the virtual machines in your Load Balancer backend pool. For example, you might want to take an instance out of rotation for maintenance or testing, or you might even want to force an instance to accept new connections even if the health probe marks it as unhealthy. In …

Entra ID tenants face threats from bad actors who use password spray attacks, multifactor spamming, and social phishing campaigns. Many organizations do not prioritize protecting Entra ID because they worry about affecting their end users. One straightforward way to protect Entra ID is to use risk based conditional access policies that combine conditional access policies with the risk signals from Entra ID Protection. In this blog, I will discuss some of the mistakes that we see organizations make that cause delays in the deployment and leave their tenants insecure. This blog will answer questions about Entra ID tenants using third party identity providers to authenticate…

Today we are happy to announce the general availability of hibernation support in Azure Virtual Desktop. Explore additional capabilities that make it easier to save compute costs for your idle resources. [HEADING=1]Hibernation support in Azure Virtual Desktop[/HEADING] In November 2023, we announced the public preview of hibernation support in Azure Virtual Desktop. Hibernating a session host virtual machine (VM) deallocates the machine while persisting the VM's in-memory state. When a VM hibernates, you don't pay for the compute cost associated with the VM. Instead you pay only for the storage and networking costs associated with the VM. When the session host virtu…

Today, I worked on a service request that our customer asked about how SQL Server sorts the uniqueidentifier data type. We know that uniqueidentifier store globally unique identifiers (GUIDs). GUIDs are widely used for unique keys due to their extremely low probability of duplication. One common method to generate a GUID in SQL Server is by using the NEWID() function. However, the ordering of GUIDs, especially those generated by NEWID(), can appear non-intuitive. I would like to share my lessons learned how to determine the ordering method using uniqueidentifier and NEWID(). We know that a GUID is a 16-byte value typically represented in a standard format of 32 hex…

On May 28th, we held the fourth webinar in our "Think Like a People Scientist" series where I was joined by Kate Feeney (Principal People Scientist) and Christina Rasieleski (Senior People Scientist) from our Viva People Science team. This was an insightful session aimed at guiding organizations to design effective surveys that align with their strategic goals. Here's a brief summary of our conversation: Survey Design Principles: The webinar focused on how to design a survey that serves the organization's purpose, starting from understanding business, talent, and cultural priorities to incorporating industry trends and best practices, and applying key survey desi…

Introduction Last week at Build, we've introduced a new feature in Public Preview for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) called Deployment Safeguards. Deployment Safeguards, as a part of Azure Policy for AKS, provides a configurable and fast way to make sure your Kubernetes deployment follow through best practices and limits that are set beforehand. In this article, we will explore how it works in real time and how can we use it to tailor AKS to your needs. Playground Setup For the sake of this article, I'll create a new cluster from scratch. There are a few things we need to set up first. For my test environment, I'm running these commands on WS…

We are excited to share a Partner Showcase story on Lightning Tools. Director, Brett Lonsdale from Lightning Tools is highlighting their solutions and extensions which available for the customers from the Microsoft AppSource or directly from their web site. Viva Connections is a company-branded employee experience destination that seamlessly integrates news, conversations, and resources within the apps and devices you use daily. It is designed to foster a culture of inclusion, allowing everyone’s ideas and voices to matter, while providing employees with the flexibility to engage and participate from anywhere. Microsoft AppSource is an online store that con…

Previously we introduced Getting started with Azure Cosmos Database (A Deep Dive) blog which is an end-to-end introduction of Azure Cosmos DB. In this blog we are going to talk about one of the Azure Cosmos Database API known as Azure Cosmos Database for PostgreSQL. Imagine a scenario where you are developing a multi-tenant application, as a developer, you have been working with PostgreSQL for years, you have joined a team that is developing an application that needs to handle data for thousands of tenants, each with isolated data. The team decides to use Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL. [HEADING=1]What is covered in this Blog [/HEADING] Challenges w…

[HEADING=1]Introduction[/HEADING] First, let’s provide an overview of how Cosmos DB is being used in this scenario. As per the architectural overview shown below, there are an ecosystem of Customer systems that emit data, these hit a pipeline and are then inserted into Cosmos DB via a Batch process. The original design from 2019 had only a single container, Data, which contained all of the documents that were ingested into Cosmos DB. As the Data Container grew and reached a point where Query performance and RU/s became prohibitive. An Index Container was introduced to function as an 'Index' for the Data Container. This design change mandated the following …

Azure API Management (APIM) is a cloud-based service that enables you to create, publish and manage your APIs behind a secure, consistent façade. You can create and manage policies that control access to your APIs, enforce usage quotas, and transform requests and responses. Azure APIM gateways are the proxy for handling API requests. Self-hosted gateways (SHGW) are a capability of Azure APIM which allow you to deploy an instance of the API gateway component of APIM outside of Azure, such as on-premises or on a different cloud platform. Self-hosted gateways are unique to Azure APIM. API Center is an Azure service that provides a central point of discovery, re…

This post is authored in conjunction with Leo Furlong, Senior Solutions Architect, at Databricks. Many customers choose to migrate their Azure Analysis Services semantic models to Power BI Premium due to the benefits and enhanced functionality described in the Power BI documentation. As customers migrate their semantic models to Power BI, native connections to Azure Databricks SQL become available due to the built-in Databricks SQL connector in Power BI. Databricks SQL Serverless combined with Power BI semantic models can provide customers with a number of benefits including a separation of compute and storage; instant, elastic compute; data refreshes charged by th…

This post is authored in conjunction with Leo Furlong, Senior Solutions Architect, at Databricks. In the world of data analytics and business intelligence, the tools and platforms you use can significantly impact the efficiency and capabilities of your data operations. Two major shifts in the landscape are the migration from Azure Analysis Services to Power BI Premium and the move to Azure Databricks SQL as the underlying data source for Power BI. Let's dive into why these changes are worth considering. [HEADING=1]Migrating from Azure Analysis Services to Power BI Premium[/HEADING] Azure Analysis Services has been a staple in the enterprise semantic layer…

Microsoft Copilot for Sales is reimagining sales. Integrated seamlessly into your daily tools across Microsoft 365 and Teams, Copilot for Sales harnesses the power of generative AI and customer data to keep sellers in their flow of work so they can spend more time with customers. This month we’re bringing exciting capabilities to Outlook by unifying the sidecar for Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot for Sales, adding global entity search, and adding inline editing for from suggested CRM updates! We’re also excited to announce the preview of Copilot for Sales extensibility using Microsoft Copilot Studio! You can enrich out-of-the-box skills and bring your own skills …