The Azure Podcast

Cynthia Kreng, Kendall Roden, Cale Teeter, Evan Basalik, Russell Young and Sujit D'Mello
The Azure Podcast

Cynthia Kreng, Kendall Roden, Cale Teeter, Evan Basalik, Russell Young & Sujit D'Mello work at Microsoft in the cloud and services area. They specialize in building and supporting enterprise apps and services that leverage the cloud.

  1. 4 SEPT

    Episode 504 - Azure Reliability SRE

    Sadaf Khan joins Evan and Russell to explain and talk about Service Reliability Engineering in the Azure engineering group.   Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode504.mp3 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNGdTnb1W90&t=1684s   Public Preview: Customer managed planned failover for Azure Storage Public Preview: Instance Mix on Virtual Machine Scale Sets Generally Available: Workspaces in Azure API Management Generally Available: Azure NetApp Files storage with cool access for all service levels Generally Available: Larger Enterprise tier cache instances for Azure Cache for Redis Generally Available: Azure Red Hat OpenShift Now Supports Clusters Up to 250 Nodes Key Topics: Azure Reliability SRE: Evan introduced the episode's focus on Azure reliability SRE and mentioned a special guest, Sadaf, who would provide insights on the topic. 0:19 Azure Storage Public Preview Feature: Russell discussed a new public preview feature for Azure storage that allows customers to manage planned failovers, enhancing the service's reliability. 1:10 Virtual Machine Scale Set Update: Russell highlighted an update to virtual machine scale sets that allows mixing different instances, improving flexibility and scalability. 1:38 Azure API Management Workspace: Russell introduced a new feature in Azure API management that enables teams to have more autonomy in managing and publishing APIs. 2:08 NetApp Files Storage Update: Russell mentioned the general availability of cool access for NetApp files storage, allowing for more cost-effective data storage based on access patterns. 2:40 Redis Cache Update: Russell discussed a new tier for Redis Cache that supports larger enterprises with increased memory and compute capabilities. 3:02 Azure Red Hat Openshift Update: Russell shared an update on Azure Red Hat Openshift, which now supports up to 250 nodes, significantly increasing scalability. 3:29 SRE Role and Impact: Sadaf explained the role of SRE in improving service reliability and quality, detailing their engagement model with various Azure services. 4:52 SRE Engagement and Resistance: Sadaf shared insights on the initial resistance faced from service teams during SRE engagements and how trust is built over time to allow for more impactful changes. 7:49 SRE's Approach to Service Improvement: Sadaf outlined the SRE team's structured approach to service improvement, focusing on fundamentals, service health, operational efficiency, and scalability. 10:51 AI Initiatives in SRE: Sadaf discussed the SRE team's initiatives in leveraging AI to analyze incident data and generate insights, aiming to reduce the cognitive load on engineers. 30:27

  2. 21 AUG

    Episode 503 - Secure Future Initiative

    In this episode of the Azure Podcast, Cale, Evan, and Sujit engage in a comprehensive discussion about the Secure Future Initiative at Microsoft. They explore how this initiative influences our use of Azure and why it's beneficial for customers to consider implementing similar strategies in their own Azure environments.   Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode503.mp3 YouTube: https://youtu.be/TyvkKhdRR5k Resources: https://www.microsoft.com/en/microsoft-cloud/resources/secure-future-initiative#tabx6a6ce2c0327741938ac10b008d5cff64 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/well-architected/security/design-patterns SFI Updates   Other resources: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/v2/Volume-enhancements https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/v2/Dedicated-log-analytics-tables-in-Application-Gateway https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/v2/ANF-Double-Encryption-at-rest https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/v2/FIPS-mutability-support-in-AKS https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/v2/CNI-Powered-by-Cilium-Azure-CNI-Overlay-support-AKS https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/v2/New-features-in-AKS-extension-for-Visual-Studio-Code https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/v2/Enable-multifactor-authentication-for-your-tenant-by-15-October-2024  (also below) https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/v2/generally-available-azure-chaos-studio-supports-a-new-network-isolation-fault-for-virtual-machines https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/v2/High-Scale-mode-Container-Insights

  3. 15 AUG

    Episode 502 - Azure Open AI and Security

    Azure Open AI is widely used in industry but there are number of security aspects that must be taken into account when using the technology. Luckily for us, Audrey Long, a Software Engineer at Microsoft, security expert and renowned conference speaker, gives us insights into securing LLMs and provides various tips, tricks and tools to help developers use these models safely in their applications.   Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode502.mp3 YouTube: https://youtu.be/64Achcz97PI Resources: AI Tooling: Azure AI Tooling Announcing new tools in Azure AI to help you build more secure and trustworthy generative AI applications | Microsoft Azure Blog Prompt Shields to detect and block prompt injection attacks, including a new model for identifying indirect prompt attacks before they impact your model, coming soon and now available in preview in Azure AI Content Safety.  Groundedness detection to detect “hallucinations” in model outputs, coming soon.  Safety system messagesto steer your model’s behavior toward safe, responsible outputs, coming soon. Safety evaluations to assess an application’s vulnerability to jailbreak attacks and to generating content risks, now available in preview.   Risk and safety monitoring to understand what model inputs, outputs, and end users are triggering content filters to inform mitigations, coming soon, and now available in preview in Azure OpenAI Service. AI Defender for Cloud AI Security Posture Management AI security posture management (Preview) - Microsoft Defender for Cloud | Microsoft Learn AI Workloads Enable threat protection for AI workloads (preview) - Microsoft Defender for Cloud | Microsoft Learn        AI Red Teaming Tool Announcing Microsoft’s open automation framework to red team generative AI Systems | Microsoft Security Blog AI Development Considerations:   AI Assessment from Microsoft Conduct an AI assessment using Microsoft’s Responsible AI Impact Assessment Template Responsible AI Impact Assessment Guide for detailed instructions Microsoft Responsible AI Processes Follow Microsoft’s Responsible AI principles: fairness, reliability, safety, privacy, security, inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability Utilize tools like the Responsible AI Dashboard for continuous monitoring and improvement Define Use Case and Model Architecture Determine the specific use case for your LLM Design the model architecture, focusing on the Transformer architecture   Content Filtering System How to use content filters (preview) with Azure OpenAI Service - Azure OpenAI | Microsoft Learn Azure OpenAI Service includes a content filtering system that works alongside core models, including DALL-E image generation models. This system uses an ensemble of classification models to detect and prevent harmful content in both input prompts and output completions The filtering system covers four main categories: hate, sexual, violence, and self-harm Each category is assessed at four severity levels: safe, low, medium, and high Additional classifiers are available for detecting jailbreak risks and known content for text and code. JailBreaking Content Filters Red Teaming the LLM Plan and conduct red teaming exercises to identify potential vulnerabilities Use diverse red teamers to simulate adversarial attacks and test the model’s robustness Microsoft AI Red Team building future of safer AI | Microsoft Security Blog Create a Threat Model with OWASP Top 10 owasp.org/www-project-top-10-for-large-language-model-applications/assets/PDF/OWASP-Top-10-for-LLMs-2023-slides-v1_1.pdf Develop a threat model and implement mitigations based on identified risks   Other updates: Los Angeles Azure Extended Zones Carbon Optimization App Config Ref GA OS SKU In-Place Migration for AKS Operator CRD Support with Azure Monitor Managed Service Azure API Center Visual Studio Code Extension Pre-release Azure API Management WordPress Plugin Announcing a New OpenAI Featu

  4. 12 JUL

    Episode 499 - Azure VMWare Solution

    Prashant Nayak, a Cloud Solutions Architect at Microsoft, gives us a quick background on AVS and enlightens us with the latest updates in migration and licensing to support customers wanted to move to Azure.   Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode499.mp3 YouTube: https://youtu.be/ut-iUJZXtI4 Resources: Microsoft and Broadcom to support license portability for VMware Cloud Foundation on Azure VMware Solution | Microsoft Azure Blog Introducing the VMware Rapid Migration Plan | Microsoft Azure Blog Tutorial - Network planning checklist - Azure VMware Solution | Microsoft Learn Introduction to the Azure VMware Solution adoption scenario - Cloud Adoption Framework | Microsoft Learn Enterprise-scale network topology and connectivity for Azure VMware Solution - Cloud Adoption Framework | Microsoft Learn Run VMware resources on Azure VMware Solution - Training | Microsoft Learn Azure VMware Solution Documentation Hub - Azure VMware Solution | Microsoft Learn Azure VMware Solution Videos - YouTube (Videos)   Other updates: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-observability-blog/advanced-network-observability-for-your-azure-kubernetes-service/ba-p/4176736 https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/v2/Databricks-Jobs-Serverless-Compute https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/v2/interactive-serverless-compute-AU https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/v2/DLT-Serverless-Compute  https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/v2/Cross-Subscription-Load-Balancer

About

Cynthia Kreng, Kendall Roden, Cale Teeter, Evan Basalik, Russell Young & Sujit D'Mello work at Microsoft in the cloud and services area. They specialize in building and supporting enterprise apps and services that leverage the cloud.

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