Azure Advocates Weekly Roundup - Follow Us : we are everywhere!

[Shayne Boyer]

August is already a week over, can you believe it? That doesn't stop this team they're everywhere doing great things to make the experience better for you in the docs, product and services. Have some feedback? Comment on their posts, contact them on twitter or wherever you see them engaging.

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Content Round Up

WebAssembly, your browsers sandbox
Aaron Powell

We've been doing web development for 30+ years and in all that time have you ever stopped to think, "This SPA needs more C++"? Well thanks to the power of WebAssembly you can finally bring C, C++, Rust, Go and other high level languages to the browser.

So does this mean that we can replace our JavaScript with these other languages? Probably not, so what is the role that WebAssembly can play in building web applications? And most importantly, what does it look like as a web developer to try and incorporate these platforms that have traditionally been on the server?

MS Dev Twitch Stream: Build a Virtual Reality Snake Game with JavaScript! - Aug 5th
Cassie Breviu

Did you know that you can create Virtual Reality (VR) websites with JavaScript using BabylonJS? In this session you will get an introduction on how to build WebVR sites! We will discuss the main concepts used in building 3D experiences. Then go step-by-step to build out a basic version of the classic snake game. By the end of this session you should have a starting point to building your first VR game!

Azure Monitor for Azure Arc enabled servers
Thomas Maurer

As you know Azure Arc for servers is currently in preview and allows you to manage your Windows and Linux machines hosted outside of Azure on your corporate network or other cloud providers, similar to how you manage native Azure virtual machines. With the new extensions which were introduced a couple of weeks ago, you can now also use Azure Monitor to not only monitor your servers in Azure but also servers running on-premises or at other cloud providers. This will provide you with cloud-native management for your Linux and Windows servers.

Docker, FROM scratch
Aaron Powell

Docker's popularity has exploded over the last couple of years, especially in the DevOps space, but unless you've spent a lot of time in that area it can be a confusing technology to wrap your head around.

So let's step back and start looking at Docker from, well, FROM scratch (and we'll understand just what that means).

With minimal starting knowledge of Docker we'll look into what it is, cover off all the core concepts from images to containers, volumes to networks, and how we can compose environments. We'll also look at how to use Docker in Dev, not just DevOps and how containers can be useful tools without being something to run production infrastructure on.

HobbyHack Augmented Reality on the Web Workshop Video
Aysegul Yonet

Augmented Reality applications are becoming common user experiences on mobile devices. WebXR gives you a way to build for all mobile platforms as well as Augmented Reality headsets once. In this workshop you will learn: * The basic concepts of WebXR and 3D on the web. * Possible use cases for Augmented Reality mobile applications that solve real-world problems. * How to get started prototyping really fast.

Assess AWS VMs with Azure Migrate
Sarah Lean

Using Azure Migrate assess and understand what it would look like if you moved AWS VMs over to Azure. 

ITOpsTalk Blog: Step-by-Step: Traditional Windows Cluster setup in Azure
Pierre Roman

How to deploy a windows cluster using Azure Shared Disks

Blog/ Setting-up Visual Studio Codespaces for .NET Core (EN)
Justin Yoo

Since April 2020 Visual Studio Codespaces has been generally available. In addition to that, GitHub Codespaces has been provided as a private preview. Both are very similar to each other in terms of their usage. There are differences between both, though, discussed from this post. Throughout this post, I'm going to focus on the .NET Core application development.

Add ISO DVD Drive to a Hyper-V VM using PowerShell
Thomas Maurer

Hyper-V offers the capability to add an ISO image to a virtual CD/DVD drive and you can use Hyper-V Manager to do that, or you can also use PowerShell. Here is how you can add an ISO to a Hyper-V virtual machine (VM) using PowerShell. There are two ways of doing it if you already have a virtual DVD drive attached to the VM or if you need to add a virtual DVD drive.

State of the Art in Automated Machine Learning
Francesca Lazzeri

• Automated Machine Learning (AutoML) is important because it allows data scientists to save time and resources, delivering business value faster and more efficiently
• AutoML is not likely to remove the need for a "human in the loop" for industry-specific knowledge and translating the business problem into a machine learning problem
• Some important research topics in the area are feature engineering, model transparency, and addressing bias
• There are several commercial and open-source AutoML solutions available now for automating different parts of the machine learning process
• Some limitations of AutoML are the amount of computational resources required and the needs of domain-specific applications

Building & Debugging Microservices faster using Kubernetes and Visual Studio
Shayne Boyer

Shayne walks through using Docker, Visual Studio 2019 and Kubernetes during his talk at .NET Conf 2019: Focus on Microservices. This demonstrations shows how you can take advantage of Visual Studio tools to build, debug and deploy microservices to Kubernetes faster.

Video: Assess AWS VMs with Azure Migrate
Sarah Lean

In this video Sarah Lean talks about how you can utilize Azure Migrate to assess your virtual machines hosted in AWS with a view to migrating them to Azure.

Let's Talk About Azure AD and Microsoft Identity Platform
Matt Soucoup

Have you been following along with all the changes in Azure Active AD and the various Microsoft Identity branded things? The changes and new features are amazing ... but change can be confusing. So, so many terms. And how do they all fit together? Let's have a little chat...

Authenticate a ASP.NET Core Web App With Microsoft.Identity.Web
Matt Soucoup

So you want to authenticate your ASP.NET Core web app with Azure AD. It sounds daunting, but with a little help from the `Microsoft.Identity.Web` SDK and knowing how it fits in with the pieces of Azure AD's Applications, it's not too bad.

The intention of this article is straightforward. Configure Azure AD to allow users of your application to sign-in. And create an ASP.NET Core web application that signs in.