Tech Roundup - May 2022
Your monthly digest covering May 2022 — one of the busiest months of the year thanks to Microsoft Build!
Azure Highlights
- Azure Container Apps — now generally available; a standout announcement for event-driven, serverless container workloads without managing Kubernetes directly
- Azure OpenAI Service — limited access preview with 25 OpenAI models including the GPT-3 series (ada, babbage, curie, davinci) and Codex — the technology behind AI-powered developer tools like GitHub Copilot
- Azure DNS Private Resolver — public preview; enables hybrid name resolution and conditional forwarding, solving the long-standing challenge of resolving private Azure DNS from on-premises environments
- Open Service Mesh extension for Azure Arc — GA; pluggable service mesh interface enabling consistent mesh capabilities across hybrid and multi-cloud environments
- NGINX on Azure — natively integrated SaaS with advanced traffic management, built-in JWT support, active health checks, and Azure Key Vault integration
- AKS host process containers — public preview for privileged Windows container workloads requiring host-level access
- Azure Communication Services Email — GA; removes the dependency on legacy SMTP/IMAP servers for application email notifications
- Azure Cosmos DB — hierarchical partition keys, enhanced serverless elasticity, partition merge, and MongoDB API RBAC now available
- Azure Machine Learning — managed endpoints and CLI v2 in public preview
GitHub Updates How GitHub uses Dependabot internally to measure and accelerate dependency remediation, plus GitHub Projects enhancements.
Azure DevOps Updates Azure Pipelines runtime variable settings, upstream universal packages across organisations, and Java-to-Azure deployment guides co-authored with April Edwards.
Related Content
V022 - Weekly Technology Vlog #22
Weekly Vlog #22 is a dedicated Microsoft Build 2021 recap led by the landmark announcement of Azure Arc for Application Services, enabling App Service, Azure Functions, Logic Apps, Event Grid, and API Management to run on any Kubernetes cluster across Azure, AWS, GCP, or on-premises. Chris also presented at Build alongside Dean Brian and Carol Logan, demonstrating friction-free development with Blazor, GitHub Codespaces, and GitHub Actions while spotlighting UK developer communities. Additional highlights include a wave of AKS improvements, the Durable Functions Netherite storage provider preview, Azure Cosmos DB integrated cache, Azure Applied AI Services, and Security Center integration with GitHub Actions.
V014 - Tech Roundup #14 Azure, DevOps & GitHub Blogs, Azure Updates & New CloudWithChris content
In this Easter Sunday livestream, Chris covers Microsoft's Forrester Wave leader recognition for Azure Functions (FaaS), a wave of AKS updates including the new run command feature and Open Service Mesh add-on, and the GitHub Advanced Security security overview beta plus GA of secret scanning for private repositories. Delivery Plans 2.0 in Azure DevOps approaches GA with card styling and dependency visualisation, while GitHub Desktop gains cherry-pick support and GitHub Mobile adds working-hours notification controls. Cloud with Chris highlights include a beginner Git 101 Cloud Drop, a community blogging panel, the External Configuration and Claim Check architecture pattern episode with Peter Piper, and a preview of the upcoming Northern Azure User Group talk alongside Scott Hanselman.
Tech Roundup - April 2022
Your monthly digest of what shipped across Azure, GitHub, and Azure DevOps in April 2022. Notable Azure updates include Container Apps managed identity preview, Static Web Apps private endpoints going GA, Managed Grafana integrations, Microsoft Purview (renamed from Azure Purview), and Cosmos DB autoscale improvements. On GitHub: secret scanning revocation, Codespaces monorepo support, accessibility colour-blind themes, and required deployments for branch protection. Plus Azure DevOps opt-in auditing, Bicep validation in PRs, and a personal update on the Go-based microservices event platform Chris has been building on Azure Container Apps.