Category: Microsoft
Category Archives: Microsoft
ICYMI | Great article on Azure Cognitive Services & Azure Machine Learning Cost Analysis
Azure Cognitive Services & Azure Machine Learning Cost Analysis
This document serves as an essential guide for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to navigate the complexities of cost management associated with Azure Cognitive Services, focusing on Azure OpenAI and Azure Machine Learning. It adopts a structured approach, examining costs across different project phases—Development, Testing, and Production—to provide a comprehensive view of financial implications at each stage. More than just listing prices, this research explains them, linking to official Azure documentation for accuracy, and offering practical tips and strategies for cost optimization. It’s crafted to assist both developers and CTOs in making informed decisions, balancing technological innovation with budget constraints. This is your go-to resource for understanding and managing the costs of Azure’s advanced cognitive services.
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ICYMI | Great article on Azure Cognitive Services & Azure Machine Learning Cost Analysis
Azure Cognitive Services & Azure Machine Learning Cost Analysis
This document serves as an essential guide for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to navigate the complexities of cost management associated with Azure Cognitive Services, focusing on Azure OpenAI and Azure Machine Learning. It adopts a structured approach, examining costs across different project phases—Development, Testing, and Production—to provide a comprehensive view of financial implications at each stage. More than just listing prices, this research explains them, linking to official Azure documentation for accuracy, and offering practical tips and strategies for cost optimization. It’s crafted to assist both developers and CTOs in making informed decisions, balancing technological innovation with budget constraints. This is your go-to resource for understanding and managing the costs of Azure’s advanced cognitive services.
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
ICYMI | Great article on Azure Cognitive Services & Azure Machine Learning Cost Analysis
Azure Cognitive Services & Azure Machine Learning Cost Analysis
This document serves as an essential guide for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to navigate the complexities of cost management associated with Azure Cognitive Services, focusing on Azure OpenAI and Azure Machine Learning. It adopts a structured approach, examining costs across different project phases—Development, Testing, and Production—to provide a comprehensive view of financial implications at each stage. More than just listing prices, this research explains them, linking to official Azure documentation for accuracy, and offering practical tips and strategies for cost optimization. It’s crafted to assist both developers and CTOs in making informed decisions, balancing technological innovation with budget constraints. This is your go-to resource for understanding and managing the costs of Azure’s advanced cognitive services.
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
ICYMI | Great article on Azure Cognitive Services & Azure Machine Learning Cost Analysis
Azure Cognitive Services & Azure Machine Learning Cost Analysis
This document serves as an essential guide for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to navigate the complexities of cost management associated with Azure Cognitive Services, focusing on Azure OpenAI and Azure Machine Learning. It adopts a structured approach, examining costs across different project phases—Development, Testing, and Production—to provide a comprehensive view of financial implications at each stage. More than just listing prices, this research explains them, linking to official Azure documentation for accuracy, and offering practical tips and strategies for cost optimization. It’s crafted to assist both developers and CTOs in making informed decisions, balancing technological innovation with budget constraints. This is your go-to resource for understanding and managing the costs of Azure’s advanced cognitive services.
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
ICYMI | Great article on Azure Cognitive Services & Azure Machine Learning Cost Analysis
Azure Cognitive Services & Azure Machine Learning Cost Analysis
This document serves as an essential guide for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to navigate the complexities of cost management associated with Azure Cognitive Services, focusing on Azure OpenAI and Azure Machine Learning. It adopts a structured approach, examining costs across different project phases—Development, Testing, and Production—to provide a comprehensive view of financial implications at each stage. More than just listing prices, this research explains them, linking to official Azure documentation for accuracy, and offering practical tips and strategies for cost optimization. It’s crafted to assist both developers and CTOs in making informed decisions, balancing technological innovation with budget constraints. This is your go-to resource for understanding and managing the costs of Azure’s advanced cognitive services.
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
ICYMI | Great article on Azure Cognitive Services & Azure Machine Learning Cost Analysis
Azure Cognitive Services & Azure Machine Learning Cost Analysis
This document serves as an essential guide for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to navigate the complexities of cost management associated with Azure Cognitive Services, focusing on Azure OpenAI and Azure Machine Learning. It adopts a structured approach, examining costs across different project phases—Development, Testing, and Production—to provide a comprehensive view of financial implications at each stage. More than just listing prices, this research explains them, linking to official Azure documentation for accuracy, and offering practical tips and strategies for cost optimization. It’s crafted to assist both developers and CTOs in making informed decisions, balancing technological innovation with budget constraints. This is your go-to resource for understanding and managing the costs of Azure’s advanced cognitive services.
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
Automatic Image Creation using Azure VM Image Builder is now generally available!
We’re happy to announce automatic image creation using Azure Image Builder is now generally available. This feature improves your speed and efficiency by allowing you the ability to start image builds for new base images automatically.
Automatic image creation is critical for keeping your images up-to-date and secure. It also minimizes the manual steps required for managing individual security and image update requirements.
You no longer have to manually update images that have been patched. Instead, you can create ‘triggers’ for the images you wish to update automatically and allow the Azure Image Builder service to perform the build for you.
Getting started
You can get started using the auto image creation feature by following the instructions provided in the documentation: How to use Azure Image Builder triggers to set up an automatic image build.
Feedback
If you have questions or feedback, please reach out to me at kofiforson@microsoft.com.
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ProcDump 3.1 for Linux
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
生成式人工智能聊天应用黑客松
在过去半年,我们有数以百计的开发人员使用 Python 结合不同的领域的知识构建基于人工智能的聊天应用程序。用户只需要通过简单提问就可以使用 RAG(检索增强生成)从LLM 模型获取专业的知识回答。
我们也从不少传统应用开发者中了解到他们想学习如何构建自己的 RAG 聊天应用程序,但不知道从何入手。 因此,我们将举办线上的黑客马拉松,帮助大家学习如何使用 Python 构建您自己的 RAG 聊天应用程序!
从 1 月 29 日到 2 月 12 日,我们将用英语和 普通话 举办直播,向开发者展示如何构建最受欢迎的 RAG 聊天示例,同时还会介绍基于 RAG 聊天应用程序背后的核心概念。 直播内容将包括向量搜索、权限控制、和使用基于多模态视觉的 GPT-4-turbo-vision。
如果您希望参与,请持续关注上海 Microsoft Reactor 的相关课程信息。
我们希望让世界各地的开发者都参与其中,因此我们还将提供西班牙语、葡萄牙语和普通话的直播。 我们会为参加黑客松中最好的聊天应用给予奖励,同时对活动社区中提供帮助的小伙伴们给予奖励。 请不要错过上海 Reactor 的系列课程 !
要了解更多信息,请访问 Reactor 网页了解本次活动,并访问 AI Chat App Hack 的官方网站,按照里面提供的步骤注册并通过相关社区了解更多的内容。 期待您的参与
为 Python 开发人员提供更多 RAG 学习资源
如果您有兴趣了解有关 RAG 聊天应用程序的更多内容,但无法参加黑客活动,这里我们也为您提供了一些学习的资源:
• 教程:使用 RAG 基于 Python 构建企业聊天入门示例
• GitHub Universe:在 Azure 上快速构建和部署 OpenAI 应用程序,并注入您自己的数据
• 将 Llamaindex 与 Azure AI 搜索结合使用
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
The future of LLM: Scopriamo la RAG
Unisciti a noi per una sessione imperdibile dove sveleremo i segreti della Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), la tecnologia che sta ridefinendo i limiti della Generative AI.
Cosa? The Future of LLM – Scopriamo la RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation)
Quando? Venerdì, 26 gennaio 2024 ore 17:30
Chi? Giuseppe Mastandrea, ML Engineer @ Data Masters; Carlotta Castelluccio, AI Cloud Advocate @ Microsoft
La Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) rappresenta una svolta paradigmatica nell’ambito dell’intelligenza artificiale, offrendo una soluzione rivoluzionaria ai tradizionali Large Language Models (LLM). Mentre gli LLM hanno dimostrato un’eccezionale capacità di generare testi coerenti e informativi, la RAG spinge i confini dell’AI combinando queste capacità con un meccanismo avanzato di recupero delle informazioni da fonti esterne. In termini tecnici, ciò significa che un modello RAG non è limitato alla conoscenza incorporata durante il suo addestramento, ma può estendere la sua comprensione e risposta attingendo da vasti set di dati esterni. Questa sinergia tra generazione del testo e recupero di informazioni è cruciale per affrontare sfide complesse, come la comprensione del contesto, la risposta a domande specifiche e la forniture di soluzioni altamente personalizzate. Nel panorama dell’intelligenza artificiale, la RAG potrebbe rivoluzionare settori come la ricerca, l’assistenza virtuale, l’analisi dei dati e molto altro, ponendo le basi per sistemi più avanzati e reattivi. Di conseguenza, l’adozione e l’evoluzione della RAG non sono solo un passo avanti nella tecnologia AI, ma segnalano una direzione chiave per il futuro dell’intelligenza artificiale, promettendo applicazioni sempre più sofisticate e impattanti nel mondo reale.
Cosa esploreremo nel webinar:
1. Introduzione agli LLM + challenges
3. Overview di Azure OpenAI
Analisi delle soluzioni specifiche offerte da Azure OpenAI per la RAG, con focus su strumenti come Azure OpenAI Studio e Azure OpenAI Search.
Non puoi perdere questa LIVE se:
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
ProcDump 3.1 for Linux
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
ProcDump 3.1 for Linux
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
ProcDump 3.1 for Linux
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
ProcDump 3.1 for Linux
Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More
Microsoft Credentials roundup: In-demand news for in-demand skills
At Microsoft Learn, we’re inspired every day to empower our learners on their skill-building journeys, whether they’re discovering how to use the latest technology, earning Microsoft Credentials, making a career move—or all of the above. To support and guide your changing skilling needs, we’re introducing a series of blog posts that highlight our credentials portfolio updates. We invite you to follow this series over the coming months for ongoing news as we evolve our credentials offerings. Our goal is to provide you with the technical skills necessary to excel in your training and career endeavors.
In this article
Validate your tech skills with the latest Microsoft Credentials
Highlight your abilities with Microsoft Applied Skills
Explore new scenarios
Discover new language offerings
Make the most of Microsoft Cloud Skills Challenges
Prove you’re ready for in-demand job roles with Microsoft Certifications
Earn new certifications with beta exams for Fabric and Dynamics 365 Business Central
Find out how certification and exam retirements make way for new opportunities
Take charge of your career with Microsoft Credentials
Validate your tech skills with the latest Microsoft Credentials
As emerging technologies like AI rapidly evolve to meet business needs, more organizations are turning to a skills-first approach for finding the right talent—both in-house and externally. Microsoft Credentials, including our new Applied Skills and industry-recognized Microsoft Certifications, support that approach.
Highlight your abilities with Microsoft Applied Skills
Many learners have already taken the opportunity to earn Applied Skills. Because these credentials validate skills related to real-world technical scenarios, they’re also proving to be very popular with employers. Customers have told us that task-oriented skill-building and accreditation are effective for quickly applying competencies aimed at the solution components in their projects. For the latest offerings and details:
Read Announcing Microsoft Applied Skills, the new credentials to verify in-demand technical skills.
Watch Explore Microsoft Applied Skills.
Explore new scenarios
Released on January 17, 2024
We recently released the following Applied Skills:
Deploy cloud-native apps using Azure Container Apps
Develop generative AI solutions with Azure OpenAI Service
Train and deploy a machine learning model with Azure Machine Learning
Build collaborative apps for Microsoft Teams
Create and manage model-driven apps with Power Apps and Dataverse
Coming soon
We look forward to offering new scenarios for implementing data lakehouses, data warehouses, and real-time analytics solutions with Microsoft Fabric.
To see the complete portfolio, check out our Applied Skills credentials poster.
Discover new language offerings
In other Applied Skills news, if your preferred language is Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, or Spanish, we’re pleased to share that the following credentials are now available in those languages:
Build a natural language processing solution with Azure AI Language
Build an Azure AI Vision solution
Configure secure access to your workloads using Azure networking
Configure SIEM security operations using Microsoft Sentinel
Create an intelligent document processing solution with Azure AI Document Intelligence
Create and manage automated processes by using Power Automate
Create and manage canvas apps with Power Apps
Deploy and configure Azure Monitor
Deploy containers by using Azure Kubernetes Service
Develop an ASP.NET Core web app that consumes an API
Migrate SQL Server workloads to Azure SQL Database
Secure Azure services and workloads with Microsoft Defender for Cloud regulatory compliance controls
Secure storage for Azure Files and Azure Blob Storage
Available in multiple languages as of January 24, 2024
Build collaborative apps for Microsoft Teams
Create and manage model-driven apps with Power Apps and Dataverse
Deploy cloud-native apps using Azure Container Apps
Implement security through a pipeline using Azure DevOps
If the language set in your browser is one of those itemized, your assessment will be in that language.
Make the most of Microsoft Cloud Skills Challenges
Complete a Microsoft Cloud Skills Challenge with 30 Days to Learn It, which provides an engaging experience to help you prepare for an Applied Skills assessment or certification exam. Check out the challenges for:
Azure AI Document Intelligence
Azure AI Language
Azure AI Vision
Create Power Platform Solutions with AI and Copilot
Generative AI with Azure OpenAI
After earning your Microsoft-verified credential, you can elevate your profile across your professional network by sharing the news of your new credentials on LinkedIn, leaving little doubt about your skills and expertise.
Prove you’re ready for in-demand job roles with Microsoft Certifications
Microsoft Certifications validate technical proficiency for in-demand job roles in infrastructure, data and AI, digital apps and innovation, Modern Work, business applications, and security. For all the latest offerings and details:
Watch Explore Microsoft Certifications.
Check out our Microsoft Certifications poster.
Earn new certifications with beta exams for Fabric and Dynamics 365 Business Central
The new Microsoft Certified: Fabric Analytics Engineer Associate certification validates that you have the broad technical expertise to transform data into reusable analytics assets by using Microsoft Fabric components. And it proves your expertise in designing, creating, and deploying enterprise-scale data analytics solutions. To earn this certification, pass Exam DP-600: Implementing Analytics Solutions Using Microsoft Fabric, currently in beta. For more details, read Validate your skills with our new certification for Microsoft Fabric Analytics Engineers and then take the beta exam.
The new Microsoft Certified: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Developer Associate certification offers you the opportunity to prove your skills in designing, developing, testing, and maintaining solutions, along with your ability to integrate Business Central with other applications, such as Microsoft Power Platform apps. To earn this certification, pass Exam MB-820: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Developer, currently in beta. For specifics, read Validate your skills: New certification for Dynamics 365 Business Central Developers and then take the beta exam.
Find out how certification and exam retirements make way for new opportunities
Microsoft Fabric—the all-in-one analytics solution that covers everything from data movement to data science—has enabled the role of enterprise data analyst to evolve into that of analytics engineer. As a result, effective April 30, 2024, we’ll retire the Microsoft Certified: Azure Enterprise Data Analyst Associate certification and Exam DP-500: Designing and Implementing Enterprise-Scale Analytics Solutions Using Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Power BI. Enterprise data analysts can now earn the Fabric Analytics Engineer Associate certification by passing Exam DP-600.
In other news, Microsoft Power Platform app makers have new opportunities to demonstrate skills in specific scenarios relevant to the work that they do every day, such as automating business processes with Power Automate and creating apps with Power Apps, with our new Applied Skills credentials. As a result, effective June 30, 2024, we’ll retire the Microsoft Certified: Power Platform App Maker Associate certification and Exam PL-100: Microsoft Power Platform App Maker.
Take charge of your career with Microsoft Credentials
You don’t have to choose between Microsoft Certification and Applied Skills. In fact, combining both types of Microsoft Credentials can help you maximize the potential to achieve your goals. For example, if you want to validate your skills for specific projects that you’re working on related to Microsoft Fabric, like implementing a data lakehouse, a data warehouse, or real-time analytics, or if you’re preparing for the exam, you can start by earning the Applied Skills that cover these topics that are coming soon.
Alternatively, after you’ve earned the certification, you can demonstrate that you have skills needed for specific projects related to Fabric by earning one of the related Applied Skills, when available.
If you’re trying to decide which type of credential suits your current needs, career goals, skill set, and experience, check out Choose your Microsoft Credential.
We hope that this Microsoft Credentials roundup has inspired you to continue your learning journey and to pursue credentials—whether Microsoft Certifications for broader validation of your ability to fill particular job roles or Applied Skills for scenario-based validation of your specific tech skills. In today’s ever-changing business environment, both can help you succeed in your chosen profession. These complementary credentials can help you take charge of your career and give you the tools you need to become indispensable.
Follow us on X and LinkedIn, and make sure you’re subscribed to The Spark, our LinkedIn newsletter.
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What’s new in Viva Insights – January 2024
New Teams channel and collaboration metrics
To help expand the set of collaboration activities measured by Viva Insights, 17 new metrics are now generally available. The metrics capture Teams channel and other collaboration activities including but not limited to: visiting a Teams channel; posting a message in a Teams channel; replying or reacting to a message; and number of weekend collaboration hours.
In addition, we have:
Updated existing metrics, such as Collaboration hours and Uninterrupted focus hours, to include Teams channels activities.
Created a workflow that helps analysts decide when to update existing queries, to prevent unexpected impacts on operationalized reports.
Updated all Power BI templates to benefit from the newly measured activities.
Teams channels are a key component of collaboration in Microsoft Teams, and measuring these new activities increases the accuracy and completeness of our metrics.
Analysts will find the new metrics in the Metrics library, and can use them in both custom Person queries and Power BI templates.
Here is the complete list of the metrics and their definitions:
Channel message hours: Number of hours a person spent posting, replying to, or reading Teams channels messages.
After-hours channel message hours: Number of hours a person spent posting, replying to, or reading Teams channels messages outside of working hours.
Working-hours channel message hours: Number of hours a person spent posting, replying to, or reading Teams channels messages during working hours.
External channel message hours: Number of hours a person spent posting, replying to, or reading messages in Teams channels with at least one other person outside the company.
Weekend channel message posts: Number of messages a person posted on Teams channels during Saturdays or Sundays.
Weekend channel message replies: Number of messages a person replied to on Teams channels during Saturdays or Sundays.
Channel message posts: Number of messages posted on Teams channels.
Channel message reactions: Number of reactions to posts and replies to messages on Teams channels.
Channel message replies: Number of replies to messages on Teams channels.
Channel visits: Number of visits to Teams channels.
Generated load – Channel message replies: Number of replies to messages posted by the person on Teams channels.
Generated load – Channel message reactions: Number of reactions to messages posted or replies to messages by the person on Teams channels.
External 1:1 meeting hours – Number of hours a person spent in meetings where the only other participant was an external person.
External meetings including manager – Number of meetings where a person and their manager met with at least one person outside of the company.
Meetings including manager and skip-level leadership – Number of meetings where a person’s manager and skip manager or skip manager’s peers also attended.
Time with leadership – Number of hours a person spent in meetings, emails, Teams chats, Teams calls, and Teams channels with people that are skip level or above up to six levels in the organization chart.
Weekend collaboration hours – Number of hours a person spent in meetings, emails, Teams chats, Teams calls, and Teams channels on Saturdays and Sundays.
Partitions general availability
Previously only available to private preview customers, we’re pleased to announce the general public availability of partitions in Viva Insights. Partitions are analyst workspaces that only contain certain employee data and attributes. In a partition, analysts can only create queries based on the data in that partition.
You can think of partitions like buckets. Each bucket (partition) contains a certain subset of data from the reservoir (your entire dataset, also known as the global partition). For example, one bucket might only contain data from employees who work in your company’s marketing division.
The Insights administrator assigns analysts to one or more buckets or partitions. When those analysts run queries, they can only pull from the data in their assigned partition.
Admins can turn on partitions in the Viva Insights privacy settings page. Learn more about partitions and how to set them up.
New Growth, Inclusion and Engagement Power BI report
We’re pleased to announce our new Power BI template, the Growth, inclusion and engagement report. This new report empowers HR leaders and analysts to support, engage, and retain talent throughout the employee lifecycle.
This report addresses key moments in the employee lifecycle, allowing you to pivot the insights by any given attribute and focus on a specific cohort group of interest. This way, the report can be used for a multitude of workforce and talent management-related scenarios including career advancement, distributed teamwork, HiPo analyses, or analyses aimed at improving the experiences for talent with different roles, skills, diversity attributes or contract types.
This report empowers leaders to learn about people’s experiences throughout the employee lifecycle to help create an environment in which all talent can thrive. To encourage employee engagement and retention, and to guide analysis, the report includes five main business questions:
Attract talent: What attributes does the new talent pool bring compared to the current workforce?
Onboard new hires: Are new hires growing their networks and getting the manager support they need?
Develop and grow: Do employees receive enough manager coaching and visibility to leadership?
Promote career advancement: Are all cohort groups well-represented among leadership?
Boost engagement: What are potential drivers of engagement for different cohorts in the organization?
The report will be generally available by early February.
New query for analysts: Organizational network analysis (private preview)
We’re rolling out a new Organization Network Analysis (ONA) experience within the Viva Insights Analyst Workbench. This new tool enables analysts to conduct “in-depth” analysis of the repercussions on collaboration behavior following a change, such as a re-org, agile transformation, or shift in work modes.
The distinguishing characteristic of this experience is that ONA metrics are leveraged to surface pertinent insights within the context of a scenario. In this case, the scenario is Change management.
Specifically, the tool offers:
Guided workflow: Analysts can conduct scenario-focused analysis tied to a change event.
Relevant insights: As the analyst uses the tool, they are provided with specific curated insights pertinent to diagnosing the impact of the change on collaboration behavior.
Simple visualizations: Insights are surfaced through simple visualizations which are easy to interpret and comprehend.
The three differentiating traits of the experience are:
1. Side-by-Side network views which enables comparative diagnosis, like below:
2. Sub-group perspective for deeper exploration:
3. The combination of qualitative insights (via Network visualizations) and quantitative insights (through matrix and chart views) provide a complete perspective into the impact on collaboration behavior:
The upcoming private preview of this new ONA experience starts the week of Jan 29. You can sign up using this link.
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Load Testing Azure Event Hubs services with restricted public access
Load Testing Azure Event Hubs services with restricted public access
Scenario details
Potential use cases
Anomaly detection (fraud/outliers)
Application logging
Analytics pipelines, such as Clickstream
Live dashboards
Archiving data
Transaction processing
User telemetry processing
Device telemetry streaming
Architecture of the system we want to load test
Dataflow
Load testing Architecture
Load testing scenario
Configure the Azure Event Hubs namespace firewall to accept connections from the different sources on Internet including the Azure Load Testing service adding the source IP addresses in the firewall configuration
Launch the load testing service to send requests to the input Event Hub.
The Azure Event Hubs collects the events from the different source.
The service analyzes the events using different possible resources like Azure Data Factory, Azure Machine Learning, Azure Stream Analytics, Azure Synapse Analytics. If an anomaly is detected, the alert is sent to the Output Event Hub.
The alert can trigger the transmission of an mail, notification. Moreover, the alert can be stored in Azure Storage and Azure SQL Server.
While the load testing is still sending requests to the Azure Event Hub, the load testing pipeline sends events that should trigger an alert, the same pipeline reads events (alerts) from the output event hub to measure the latency of the system.
When the load testing duration is reached, the service stops sending requests to the input Event Hub. The load testing results are successful if the alert latency is not degraded with the high ingress traffic.
Components
Azure Load Testing: Enable developers and testers to generate high-scale load and run simulations that reveal actionable insights into app performance, scalability, and capacity with a fully managed load-testing service.
Create tests quickly without prior knowledge of load testing tools, or upload your existing Apache JMeter scripts. Gain specialized recommendations backed by comprehensive metrics and analytics, and support continuous improvement through automated continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) workflows—all with a testing service built for Azure.
Azure Event Hubs: Stream millions of events per second from any source to build dynamic data pipelines and immediately respond to business challenges.
Azure Machine Learning: Empowers data scientists and developers to build, deploy, and manage high-quality models faster and with confidence.
Azure Data Factory: Integrate all your data with Azure Data Factory—a fully managed, serverless data integration service.
Azure Synapse Analytics: Limitless analytics service that brings together data integration, enterprise data warehousing, and big data analytics.
Azure Stream Analytics: Go from zero to production in minutes using SQL—easily extensible with custom code and built-in machine learning capabilities for more advanced scenarios.
Azure Kubernetes Service: The quickest way to start developing and deploying cloud-native apps in Azure, data centers, or at the edge with built-in code-to-cloud pipelines and guardrails.
Azure Blob Storage: A massively scalable object storage for any type of unstructured data, including images, videos, audio, documents, and more. It’s easy and cost effective.
Azure SQL Database: Fully managed relational database service built for the cloud. Build your next app with the simplicity and flexibility of a multi-model database that scales to meet demand.
Email: Create automated task and workflows with Azure Logic Apps and Microsoft 365 Outlook Connector to send an email.
Considerations
Cost optimization
Next steps
– A sample implementation load testing an Eventhubs based infrastructure from either a dev container in Visual Studio Code or an Azure DevOps pipeline or a Github Action is available here
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Using Azure Load Testing to test Multi-Tenant services
Using Azure Load Testing to test Multi-Tenant services
This article describes how to use Azure Load Testing to test a multi-tenant service based on Azure App Service. It also describes how to run the Load Testing scenario from either:
a Dev Container in Visual Studio Code
an Azure DevOps Pipeline
a Github Action
Scenario details
For this scenario, Azure Load Testing is used to test the performances of a Multi-Tenant service hosted on Azure. The Load Testing resources are only deployed during the tests and can be managed from an Azure DevOps pipeline or a Github Action.
Potential use cases
Multi-tenant architectures are commonly used for building SaaS applications, where multiple customers share the same application instance while keeping their data isolated.
For instance, applications like project management tools or customer relationship management systems, where multiple users collaborate and share data, can benefit from a multi-tenant architecture. Some Microsoft Teams applications can also provide Multi-Tenant Services.
Architecture of the system we want to load test
The architecture diagram below describes a minimal architecture to provide a multi-tenant service. The multi-tenant service is composed of:
a backend (REST API) hosted on Azure Function,
a Frontend hosted on Azure Static Web App,
a database hosted on Azure Table Storage.
This architecture could be extended with an Azure Front Door to support a distributed application in several regions. Azure Front Door routes client traffic to the correct region, moreover it can fail over to the second region if a regional failure happens, and it can secure the internet-facing entry point via Azure Web Application Firewall.
Application Gateway could also be deployed to route and load-balances traffic internally. Application Gateway has awareness of the load on individual services within a group.
Azure Front Door and Application Gateway combine to provide complex load-balancing at all levels in a multitenant solution.
Load testing Architecture
The load testing of this infrastructure requires the deployment of Azure Load Testing service to test the multi-tenant service through the REST API endpoint.
As this REST API is protected and requires an authentication, each client will send a token to get access to the service. Those tokens will be stored in the Azure Key Vault.
Moreover, a Microsoft Entra ID Test Renant could be created to provision temporary users. Using those users’ credentials the load testing preparation script will store the access token of each user in an Azure Key Vault secret.
You can get a test tenant in joining the Microsoft 365 Developer Program:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/identity-platform/test-setup-environment#get-a-test-tenant
Load testing scenario
This paragraph describes all the steps to load test the Multi-Tenant service.
Before launching the load testing scenario, temporary users are created in the Microsoft Entra ID Test tenant. The multi-factor authentication is disabled for those users to allow the authentication with the REST API to load test.
When the users in the Microsoft Entra ID test tenant are provisioned, the infrastructure to test is deployed.
The multi-tenant application is created in the Microsoft Entra ID tenant associated with the Azure Subscription where the resources are deployed.
The backend and frontend services are built and deployed on the targeted infrastructure.
Once the frontend is running, the administrator of the Microsoft Entra ID test tenant grants admin consent on behalf of the organization. After this step, users aren’t usually prompted for consent for that application.
A preparation script gets the access token for each test user and stores the token in a secret in Azure Key Vault.
The targeted infrastructure and services are now ready.
The load testing engines are now sending request towards the REST API endpoint using the token stored in the Azure Key Vault.
When the load testing duration is reached, the service stops sending requests to the REST API endpoint. The load testing results are successful if the error rate is below the targeted error threshold and the average response time below the targeted response time.
Components
Beyond Azure Load Testing, this paragraph describes the list of services which could be deployed on Azure to offer a multi-tenant service.
Azure Load Testing: Enable developers and testers to generate high-scale load and run simulations that reveal actionable insights into app performance, scalability, and capacity with a fully managed load-testing service. Create tests quickly without prior knowledge of load testing tools, or upload your existing Apache JMeter scripts. Gain specialized recommendations backed by comprehensive metrics and analytics, and support continuous improvement through automated continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) workflows—all with a testing service built for Azure.
App Service: Azure’s premier service for web applications and web-based APIs. Security integrates with services like Microsoft Entra ID and Azure Key Vault. You can configure automatic scaling. Also, the amount of resources available to scale to is flexible between the various App Service plans on which the app can run. App Service can also leverage integrated DevOps capabilities for continuous integration and deployment to multiple environments. These and other supporting features of the Azure platform allow for developers to focus on the development of their applications.
Azure Event Hubs: Stream millions of events per second from any source to build dynamic data pipelines and immediately respond to business challenges.
Azure Machine Learning: Empowers data scientists and developers to build, deploy, and manage high-quality models faster and with confidence.
Azure Blob Storage: A massively scalable object storage for any type of unstructured data, including images, videos, audio, documents, and more. It’s easy and cost effective.
Azure Front Door: A regional load balancer that routes client traffic to the correct region. It can fail over to the second region if a regional failure happens, and it can secure the internet-facing entry point via Azure Web Application Firewall.
Microsoft Entra ID: Acts as the identity provider for the entire application, enforcing authentication and end-to-end authorization of the request in the application.
Azure DNS: A hosting service in Azure for domain name resolution. In a multitenant solution, multiple clients access the solution via their own individual domains. Use Azure DNS to configure and resolve client requests to their correct application stack.
Application Gateway: Routes and load-balances traffic internally in the application to the various services that satisfy client business needs. While Azure Front Door balances load across high-level regions, it’s Application Gateway that has awareness of the load on individual services within a group. Azure Front Door and Application Gateway combine to provide complex load-balancing at all levels in a multitenant solution. For more information on load-balancing options in Azure, visit this overview on Azure load-balancing.
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS): Orchestrates instances of container images deployed to a cluster. Managing multiple clients’ data often involves implementing a suite of components to manage:
Data modeling
Data source connectivity
Extract, transform, load (ETL)
Import/export activities.
Azure SQL Elastic Pools: Provides a solution for managing a set of databases flexibly with a pool of resources. The service allocates resources on demand to the databases. It gives the developer of a multitenant SaaS architecture the power to deliver database resources to clients as they need it. The service also reduces the budget and overhead of maintaining multiple SQL Servers with large chunks of unused compute resources.
Azure Cognitive Search (formerly known as Azure Search): A service that adds a powerful indexing and query engine to your application. It gives clients access to strong query functionality. They can also use Azure’s AI capabilities to enrich and enhance the query functionality. Azure Cognitive Search can account for multitenancy using an index-per-tenant or service-per-tenant strategy.
Azure Cache for Redis: Applies a caching layer as a service to the solution, providing an in-memory managed cache to reduce latency and increase performance for the clients. High throughput allows for a high volume of requests to handle multiple tenants accessing the system. You can flexibly scale up the service as application loads increase. It also supports encryption at rest to protect and isolate cached tenant data.
Email: Create automated task and workflows with Azure Logic Apps and Microsoft 365 Outlook Connector to send an email.
Azure DevOps pipelines
After installing the Azure Load Testing component from the Azure DevOps Market Place, it’s possible to run the same load testing scenario from an Azure DevOps pipeline.
Below the load testing task:
– task: AzureLoadTest@1
displayName: ‘Step Run Load Testing Multi-Tenant Web App’
inputs:
azureSubscription: $(SERVICE_CONNECTION)
loadTestConfigFile: ‘$(TEMP_DIR)/load-testing.yaml’
resourceGroup: $(LOAD_TESTING_RESOURCE_GROUP)
loadTestResource: $(LOAD_TESTING_NAME)
secrets: |
[
]
env: |
[
{
“name”: “hostname”,
“value”: “$(LOAD_TESTING_TARGET_HOSTNAME)”
},
{
“name”: “path”,
“value”: “$(LOAD_TESTING_TARGET_PATH)”
},
{
“name”: “duration”,
“value”: “${{ parameters.duration }}”
},
{
“name”: “threads”,
“value”: “${{ parameters.threads }}”
},
$(LOAD_TESTING_USERS)
]
Github Actions
From a Github Action it’s also possible to run the same load testing scenario.
Below the load testing task:
– name: ‘Step Run Load Testing Multi-Tenant Web App’
uses: azure/load-testing@v1
with:
loadTestConfigFile: ‘${{ steps.configureloadtest.outputs.TEMP_DIR }}/load-testing.yaml’
resourceGroup: ${{ steps.deployloadtest.outputs.LOAD_TESTING_RESOURCE_GROUP }}
loadTestResource: ${{ steps.deployloadtest.outputs.LOAD_TESTING_NAME }}
secrets: |
[
]
env: |
[
{
“name”: “hostname”,
“value”: “${{ steps.configureloadtest.outputs.LOAD_TESTING_TARGET_HOSTNAME }}”
},
{
“name”: “path”,
“value”: “${{ steps.configureloadtest.outputs.LOAD_TESTING_TARGET_PATH }}”
},
{
“name”: “duration”,
“value”: “${{ github.event.inputs.duration }}”
},
{
“name”: “threads”,
“value”: “${{ github.event.inputs.threads }}”
},
${{ steps.configureloadtest.outputs.LOAD_TESTING_USERS }}
]
Considerations
These considerations implement the pillars of the Azure Well-Architected Framework, which is a set of guiding tenets that can be used to improve the quality of a workload. For more information, see Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Framework.
Cost optimization
Cost optimization is about looking at ways to reduce unnecessary expenses and improve operational efficiencies. For more information, see Overview of the cost optimization pillar.
Use the Azure pricing calculator to get customized pricing estimates.
Next steps
– Get started with this Using Azure Load Testing to test services running on Azure
– A sample implementation here load testing a multi-tenant service composed of:
a backend (REST API) hosted on Azure Function,
a Frontend hosted on Azure Static Web App,
a database hosted on Azure Table Storage.
The performances of this service can be tested from either a dev container in Visual Studio Code or an Azure DevOps pipeline or a Github Action using a Microsoft Entra Id Test Tenant.
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Sensitive info types are now available for non-M365 data assets
We are excited to announce that Microsoft Purview has extended the support of Sensitive info types (SITs) to Azure and 3P data assets. Before this release, SITs had only been available for M365-related scenarios. This capability is now available as a Preview to new Microsoft Purview Data Map customers. Existing Microsoft Purview Data Map customers will be offered this capability at a later point.
With this new capability, you will be able to apply SITs to Azure and 3P data objects manually or automatically, and even for custom SITs. Sensitivity labels will be derived automatically from SITs. And you will be able to create reports related to SITs for non-M365 data assets.
Background
Sensitive info types (SITs) help you identify sensitive items in your organization’s data estate, such as credit card numbers or personal identifiable information. SITs are a type of classifier that can be manually or automatically applied to data objects. The manual application involves a curator selecting the appropriate SIT and applying it as a tag to a unstructured document, to a structured dataset or to a column in the dataset. The automatic application involves Microsoft Purview scanning files and running pattern recognition algorithms (e.g., RegEx rules, dictionaries) to apply these tags. The SIT taxonomy defines a good number of out of the box (built-in) SITs but also gives you the flexibility to create new SITs (a.k.a. custom SITs) and tailor the pattern recognition rules to the type of information and scenarios you care about. SITs can be managed from the Compliance classic experience or via the Information Protection tab in the new Microsoft Purview portal.
Figure 1: Sensitive info types
What is new
New Purview Data Map customers are now able to:
Manually or automatically apply SITs to Azure and 3P data assets
See SITs applied to structured data under the asset details page (dataset level) and the schema details page (column level) in Microsoft Purview Catalog.
Figure 2: Data assets example screenshot
Apply sensitivity labels automatically based on the SITs that are applied to the assets.
See a number of SIT related reports in the Insights experience
Figure 3: Sensitive info type insights
Additional resources
What are Sensitive info types?
The SIT taxonomy
Join this preview here
https://forms.office.com/r/KUm7auR0rp
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Learn about the Geekbot Microsoft 365 partner solution in Microsoft AppSource
Microsoft 365 lets you create, share, and collaborate all in one place with your favorite apps. Learn about an offer from high-performing Microsoft 365 partner Geekbot on Microsoft AppSource:
Geekbot Workflows | Standups and More: Use Geekbot for Microsoft Teams instead of an in-person meeting to run a standup, survey, poll, retro, and other workflows. The bot sends notifications in everyone’s local time zone while the team’s well-being is automatically monitored by AI.
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