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What a busy week for Azure Services! Microsoft Inspire took place this week and new announcements were shared.  Announcements include: The next generation of Azure Stack HCI, Numerous Azure Kubernetes Service announcements, Azure IoT Connector to ingest data from Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) devices and Azure Monitor Logs connector.

 

 

The new Azure Stack HCI solution

The new Microsoft Azure Stack HCI provides the best-in-class hyper-converged infrastructure stack, which integrates seamlessly into existing on-premises environments using existing processes and tools. It also is delivered as an Azure hybrid service, which natively integrates into your Azure environment, comes with subscription-based billing, and a dedicated support team. It provides many Azure Hybrid services which can be leveraged to make on-premises environments better. More information regarding the Microsoft Inspire announcement can be found here: The next generation of Azure Stack HCI

Numerous Azure Kubernetes Service Announcements

  • AKS-managed Azure Active Directory support is now generally available – Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)-managed Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) support is now generally available. This simplifies AKS integration with Azure AD. Customers are no longer required to create client apps or service apps or require tenant owners to grant elevated permissions. AKS creates appropriate roles/role bindings with group memberships though delegated permissions to facilitate administration.
     
  • Secure Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) pods with Azure Policy (in preview) – To improve the security of your Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster, secure your pods with Azure Policy (in preview). Users can choose from a list of built-in options and apply those policies to secure pods.
     
  • Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) now supports bring-your-own control plane managed identity – Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) now supports bring-your-own identities for the control plane managed identity. The Kubernetes cloud provider uses this identity to create resources like Azure Load Balancer, public IP addresses, and others on behalf of the user. Managed identities simplify overall management of authorization, as users don’t have to manage service principals on their own.
     

Azure IoT Connector for FHIR now in preview

IoT Connector enables a new set of scenarios like remote patient monitoring, telehealth, clinical trials, and smart hospitals by bringing PHI data from devices into Azure API for FHIR, which can be used along with other clinical data to enable newer insights and clinical workflows. It can accept JSON-based messages from IoMT devices, use mapping templates to transform device data into a FHIR standard resource, and finally persist the resource into Azure API for FHIR. Use it seamlessly with Azure IoT Central, Azure IoT Hub, and other IoT cloud gateways.

 

Azure Monitor Logs connector is now generally available

Create automated workflows using hundreds of actions for a variety of services with Azure Logic Apps and Power Automate. The Azure Monitor logs connector is now generally available and can be used to build workflows that retrieve data from the Azure Monitor Logs workspace or Application Insights component.

 

MS Learn Module of the Week

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Implement hybrid identity with Windows Server

In this module, you’ll learn to configure an Azure environment so that Windows IaaS workloads requiring Active Directory are supported. You’ll also learn to integrate on-premises Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) environment into Azure.

 

Let us know in the comments below if there are any news items you would like to see covered in next week show.  Az Update streams live every Friday. Be sure to catch the next episode and join us in the live chat.

 

Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.