// Videos

Chris combines tech updates with a Sea of Thieves gaming session alongside Cloud Family community members James Cook, Mert Ata, and Dean Ellerby. Updates cover Azure FX series VMs for HPC, NFS 3.0 for Blob Storage GA, JBoss on App Service, Azure VM Image Builder GA, plus GitHub and Azure DevOps community roundups.

Chris is joined by long-time friend Erin Davies — an Agile Coach who accidentally stumbled into tech after applying for what she thought was a buying and merchandising role at John Lewis. Erin shares her journey from studying law and sociology at Warwick to becoming an Agile Coach, offers honest reflections on women in tech and imposter syndrome, and explains what Agile really looks like in practice when you're in the trenches. The episode also explores content creation, starting a podcast, and finding your voice in the tech community.

In a first for the weekly vlog format, Chris goes live from Sea of Thieves, delivering Azure and GitHub news while sailing the seas with Simon — and timing it perfectly for the Pirates of the Caribbean crossover launching the following day. Azure updates include West US 3 region's sustainability-focused launch, 5G enterprise edge compute expansion, Bridge to Kubernetes replacing Dev Spaces, and Azure Data Factory plus Databricks integration improvements. Chris also recaps the Azure Bicep blog post, Shannon Keane's Azure VMware Solution session, and John Lund's cloud journey, with Aaron Davies (agile coach and women-in-tech advocate) lined up for Friday.

Chris sits down with John Lunn (aka jonnychipz) — technical architect at BT Enterprise, co-organiser of the Welsh Azure User Group, and creator of johnnychips.com. John shares his journey from M365 and unified comms into Azure cloud architecture, what sparked his commitment to the #100DaysOfCloud challenge, and his practical advice on navigating certifications, managing the overwhelming breadth of the cloud ecosystem, and why getting involved in the community is one of the fastest ways to grow. Whether you're just starting out with Azure or thinking about launching a blog or YouTube channel, there's plenty to take away here.

Chris is joined by Shannon Kuehn, a Senior Cloud Advocate at Microsoft, for an accessible deep dive into Azure VMware Solution (AVS) — the dedicated VMware platform hosted within Azure datacentres. Shannon explains how AVS lets organisations migrate on-premises VMware environments into Azure without a forklift upgrade, using live vMotion migrations via HCX with zero downtime, and unlocks Azure-native integrations including Azure Security Center, Azure Active Directory, Application Gateway, and PaaS services.

Recorded on a Monday morning after a sunny weekend, vlog #24 delivers the week's Azure, Azure DevOps, and GitHub news — covering Azure Virtual Desktop's rebrand, enterprise-scale landing zones for AKS, Azure Migrate private endpoint support, and GitHub supply chain security updates. Chris also recaps recent Cloud with Chris sessions on GitHub Actions, Azure Arc for apps, hybrid cloud, and the Geode pattern, then previews the upcoming Azure VMware Solution session with Shannon Keane and John Lund's cloud journey.

Episode 11 covered the Geode pattern in theory — now it's time to get hands-on! Will Eastbury returns to walk through a real-world OData service deployed across three Azure regions (US West, Australia Southeast, and UK West), stitched together by Azure Front Door for active-active routing. Watch how Cosmos DB replicates data across all regions as a shared backplane, how health probes detect and remove unhealthy geodes from rotation, and the ASP.NET middleware pattern needed to handle URL rewriting — a critical authentication gotcha when hosting services behind a reverse proxy.

Chris Reddington is joined by Sarah Lean (Techielass), Senior Cloud Advocate at Microsoft, for a deep dive into Azure Arc and hybrid cloud management. They explore how Azure Arc extends Azure governance, policy, and inventory capabilities to on-premises infrastructure, Kubernetes clusters, data platforms, and app services across multi-cloud environments. The session then shifts to a candid conversation about life in Developer Relations — what cloud advocacy really entails, how to build a sustainable content creation rhythm, and how to protect your mental health in a role that blurs the line between work and passion.

Chris is joined by Karl Cooke (IrishTechie) for a live deep-dive into the GitHub Actions workflows powering CloudWithChris.com. They explore why GitHub was chosen over Azure DevOps, walk through a real-world CI/CD pipeline for a Hugo static site deployed to Azure Blob Storage with CDN purging, and examine how to manage secrets and approvals using GitHub Environments. The session also covers linting Markdown with GitHub Super Linter, early thinking on Playwright-based UI tests, the security considerations around third-party actions from the marketplace, and building a custom .NET GitHub Action for content cross-posting.

Chris rounds up the week's Azure, Azure DevOps, and GitHub news — including the rebrand of Windows Virtual Desktop to Azure Virtual Desktop, Azure FHIR healthcare API updates, SAP on Azure, and a preview of the Azure Arc hybrid and multi-cloud digital event. On the GitHub side, supply chain security takes the spotlight with package registry credential scanning, Dependabot enhancements, and GitHub's Blacktocat fifth anniversary celebrating Black voices in tech. Cloud with Chris recaps include Carl Cook on GitHub Actions, Azure Arc for apps (Event Grid), Sarah Lean on hybrid cloud and DevRel life, and Will Esprit demonstrating the Geode pattern hands-on.