Over the past week, Microsoft focused on SQL training and technology, new certifications, recent updates to Security Center, its work with Jij and Toyota to ameliorate traffic with Azure Quantum and more.
Azure Data CVP Gayle Sheppard discussed SQL Learning Tools in a blog post. The tools are intended to help SQL professionals make the switch to Azure SQL, given the common engine underneath both offerings. This involves a six-course Azure SQL fundamentals learning path, a YouTube and Channel9 series, GitHub content and a four day series of live sessions. According to Sheppard, Azure SQL is witnessing significant growth and highlighted a Morgan Stanley statement suggesting a resurgence of interest in traditional relational databases.
Database users will find that large storage is available for Database for MariaDB, SQL Server FCI on Shared Disks for SQL Server is an option, SQL Managed Instance provides configurable backup storage redundancy. Microsoft announced backup storage cost savings for SQL Database and Managed Instance along with a public preview of Cosmos DB Management with PowerShell cmdlets. Customers can also manage keys for Azure DB for PostgreSQL-single server or leverage infrastructure double encryption for PostgreSQL-single server. SQL Database gateway changes are set to come into effect on September 10, adding traffic from West Central US and South Africa North, as well as providing subnets as service endpoints, hard coding for IP addresses and zone redundant configurations.
In geographic updates, Azure France received GSMA certification, enabling future growth for telecom, AI and Edge Zones. Among general updates, Data Explorer LightIngest supports actual creation time with historical data migration, Audit Logs are available for Monitor log queries, Advisor Quick Fix is out, and App Service is providing .NET Framework 4.8 support. Additionally, users can take advantage of selective disks backup for VMs in public preview, configure backup for Azure files directly from the file share blade, use the Kubernetes resource view with Monitor for containers.
On the security front, Microsoft recapped some of the key changes to Security Center in July. Vulnerability assessments for VMs is available for non-marketplace images, threat protection for Azure Storage has been extended to Files and Data Lake Storage Gen2 and faster scanning is available for containers, among other updates.
Program manager Ashish Chhabria announced the preview of Java Message Service 2.0 over AMQP for Service Bus. The Service Bus offering is designed to simplify enterprise messaging and topic subscription semantics by relying on the AMQP standard. The new preview, in the Premium tier, is intended to help customers “lift and shift” Java and Spring workloads to Azure. Going forward, Service Bus supports all Java Message Service API contracts and features such as Queues, Topics, temporary queues and others.
The Azure Quantum team announced an ongoing collaboration with Jij and Toyota Tsusho aimed at optimizing traffic lights to decrease congestion. Using Polynomial Unconstrained Binary Optimization, the partnership was able to reduce car waiting times 20 percent relative to traditional traffic optimization methods.
In the partner channel, Ukrainian warehouse operator Delivery Auto teamed up with Cloud Services to transition to Azure services, achieving a reported 30 percent savings in infrastructure costs. Meanwhile, in Dubai, Dubai Tourism partnered with Microsoft to use Azure for services like networking, databases, analytics and AI intended to help boost the city as a destination. Australian partner Olikka worked with a winery in the state of Victoria to Azure, rehosting its AWS-hosted e-commerce platform in the process.
Reference:https://msdynamicsworld.com/story/azure-updates-sql-learning-tools-database-updates-amqp-quantum
