SQL Operations Studio is a free, cross-platform (Windows, macOS and Linux) database management tool that works with Microsoft SQL Server, Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Data Warehouse. Now, in addition to listing active SQL Server Agent jobs, the tool can be used to view alerts, operators and proxies, announced Alan Yu, a program manager at Microsoft SQL Server, in a July 19 blog.

The main Jobs view now features a visualization that serves as a glanceable reference on previously executed jobs and whether they passed or failed, Yu noted. Zeroing in on a specific job among a lengthy list is now easier courtesy of new filtering capabilities, he added. Further diminishing the need to switch to SQL Server Management Studio, the tool now includes new dialog boxes that allow users to add new jobs, alerts and operators.

Following up on the June 2018 beta release of the SQL Server Profiler extension for SQL Operations Studio, Microsoft’s developers have added new keyboard shortcuts and options to help users set up their monitoring environments faster. As its name implies, SQL Server Profiler allows users to trace server activity for monitoring and troubleshooting purposes.

Today, users can use the shortcuts to quickly launch, start and stop the profiler. The extension also now includes templates for five default views that provide key insights into a database server’s operation. “When you click on each one, a different list of columns will generate in your Profiler view so that you can focus on the areas that you are investigating,” Yu explained.

From the budding SQL Operations Studio comes a script-management extension from Cobus Kruger.

The new Combine Scripts extension enables users to execute scripts that are located across multiple folders. After a user selects the desired script files, the tool creates a single file that can be run or stored for safekeeping.

Developers looking to contribute to the SQL Operations Studio extension ecosystem now have new options that can affect the usability of their creations. Authors can now add wizards and informative dialogs to their extensions, Yu revealed. Wizards are intended for guiding users through a multi-step process while dialogs are helpful for drawing attention to some aspect regarding the use of an extension.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has been warning database administrators that support for SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 is quickly drawing to an end.

In less than a year, on July 9, 2019, Microsoft will stop issuing security updates for those older versions of SQL Server. However, customers can buy more time if they move their SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 database to Azure instead of upgrading to a newer version. Microsoft will provide migrators with security updates for an additional three years after the support deadline, the company announced on July 12.

For some expert guidance on deploying SQL Server in the public cloud, particularly Google Cloud, check out this recent eWEEK Data Point interview with Dave Bermingham, Microsoft Cloud and Data Center Management MVP at SIOS Technology.

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“Azure File Sync replicates files from your on-premises Windows Server to an Azure file share, just like how you might have used DFS-R to replicate data between Windows Servers,” explained Brockway in a blog post. DFS-R, short for Distributed File System Replication, is used to synchronize the contents of folders by transmitting only the changes made to files, a tactic that helps reduce network traffic compared to transferring entire files each time they are changed.

“Once you have a copy of your data in Azure, you can enable cloud tiering—the real magic of Azure File Sync—to store only the hottest and most recently accessed data on-premises,” Brockway continued. Administrators can connect multiple servers to an Azure file share, providing a measure of centralized management over their organization’s file services. The offsite enterprise file storage solution can also serve as a safety net if a local server goes bust, he added.

Now that it’s cleared for production deployments, Azure File Sync boasts a number of enhancements since the public beta version hit the scene in September 2017.

In terms of performance, uploads are twice as fast and disaster recovery operations are 4X to 18X faster, depending on the type of hardware involved, Brockway said. On the back end, Microsoft has reworked its cost-cutting cloud tiering technologies for faster and more reliable operations.

Improved Visibility Into Azure Cloud Costs

For Azure users who are keeping a close eye on their cloud expenditures, Microsoft recently launched a new Azure cost forecast API that provides forward visibility for better budgeting decisions. Although the cloud makes financial sense for workloads like analytics, many organizations are having a tough time telling if they are cloud-based services.

A late-2017 survey from cloud services provider Densify revealed that 75 percent of enterprises are exceeding their budgets on public cloud spending or just have no visibility into their spending at all. Half of the 200 cloud infrastructure professionals polled for the report said they were unsure if they’re spending the correct amount for the services they are getting from cloud vendors.

The new API delivers daily and monthly forecasts with a confidence interval of 95 percent, according to a July 17 announcement from Vinod Kurpad, of the Azure Intelligence Platform at Microsoft. To better calculate cost trends, the API takes the past two months of actual usage into consideration. Microsoft also added more parameters this time tied to location and the type of cloud service consumed, for more granular visibility. Additionally, Microsoft has added new price sheet mapping functionality, helping users better account for special offers.

Google, too, wants to help its customers get the most out of their IT budgets.

In May, the company added a new programmatic budget notification feature to its cloud billing services, letting administrators and business managers know when they are approaching their budget limits. On July 9, Google followed up with a new forecasting feature that projects costs, from an entire billing account down to a single project’s individual servers.

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A new feature rolling out to users this month pauses data syncing operations between a user’s PC and the OneDrive cloud storage service when the software notices that Windows has enabled on its power-saving mode.

“To help conserve battery life on Windows devices, we are making improvements to the OneDrive desktop client to automatically pause sync whenever the device switches to ‘battery saver’ mode,” wrote Stephen Rose, senior product marketing manager for OneDrive for Business at Microsoft in a July 18 blog.

“As soon as we detect that a device enters ‘battery saver mode’ we will automatically pause syncing and show a Windows toast notification informing you of why the desktop client was paused,” continued Rose. “Once we detect that the device is no longer in ‘battery saver’ mode, OneDrive will auto-resume.”

For users who are less concerned about their batteries and want to make sure their files are safely stowed in Microsoft’s cloud servers, OneDrive offers a Sync Anyway option.

The software’s Activity Center interface has been refreshed and now sports a more modern look and feel that allows users to see the status of the service’s file sync and share activities at a glance. Finally, users can now send Microsoft feedback and suggestions with a new option that appears in the software’s settings menu. Users who choose to share their ideas on improving the product are deposited in Microsoft’s feedback-gathering site, UserVoice.

Now that the notion of storing and sharing files in the cloud isn’t as novel as it once was, Microsoft and its rivals have been steadily enhancing their products with increasingly advanced functionality that is meant to promote collaboration and enable mobile productivity.

Also in July, Microsoft is rolling out a weekly access chart that shows users statistics on how many times a given file has been accessed by their colleagues. Meanwhile, the Android version of the OneDrive app is gaining a biometric security feature that grants access to an account using a fingerprint on devices equipped with a fingerprint scanner.

Dropbox has also been busy, adding new capabilities that allows users to collaborate on shared files without having to click the download button.

In June, the company announced that the new preview experience can now let Dropbox Professional, Advanced, Enterprise and Education users have a peek at the contents of AutoCAD and MXF video files without having to initiate downloads that potentially bog down the network. Additionally, Dropbox now allows users to see what’s inside of ZIP and RAR files, two formats that are commonly used to package compressed files.

In a May 2018 update to the Dropbox mobile app, Dropbox Professional and Business Advanced users can now view a file’s activity history alongside its preview for insights on recent edits, shares and other events. Users can also leave comments directly in the file preview screen, allowing teams to gather and view feedback on shared content.

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“IoT devices are often in service for many years, so device support costs are important considerations that are either included in the initial purchase cost or often paid over time through a service contract,” wrote Dan Harman, principal program manager of Windows IoT at Microsoft, in a July 18 announcement. “Windows 10 IoT Core Services provides our partners with the ability to distribute maintenance costs over the life of the device while also giving them tools to streamline and reduce maintenance overhead.”

Windows 10 IoT Core is a lightweight, royalty-free version of the Windows operating system designed for connected devices. Available now in preview, Windows 10 IoT Core Services offers 10 years of operating system support using the Windows Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC).

Under the scheme, Microsoft holds off on releasing feature updates on LTSC releases of Windows 10 IoT Core, focusing instead on delivering security patches. It’s a tactic that improves device stability by keeping the base operating system as consistent as possible over time, claims the software giant.

Another component, the Device Update Center, enables organizations to manage their device updates. It piggybacks on the content distribution network used by Microsoft to deliver Windows Update services to millions of Windows PCs and devices.

Finally, the cloud-based Device Health Attestation service allows organizations to evaluate the health and security of their IoT devices. The service integrates with other device management systems, including Microsoft’s own Azure IoT Device Management offering, allowing users to create a service ticket, boot a device from a network or take other actions when a device fails a health check.

Bundled into Windows 10 IoT Core Services, these capabilities empower businesses to monetize IoT devices based on Windows 10 IoT Core by better incorporating device support and maintenance into their business models.

The service will cost $0.30 per device per month when it is officially released in the fall. A prepaid OEM licensing option is also in the works, said Microsoft.

The preview release of Windows 10 IoT Core Services follows on the heels of a new strategic partnership between Microsoft and GE.

Targeting the industrial IoT market, the companies are working on products and services based on Microsoft’s ecosystem of Azure cloud-computing products and Predix, GE’s cloud-based industrial internet platform. In addition to tighter integrations between Predix and Microsoft’s IoT management and analytics offerings, the firms are exploring ways of making Predix data available to hybrid-cloud systems and business applications.

Of course, Microsoft isn’t the only IT provider that is eyeing the fast-growing IoT market.

In February, Google announced plans to acquire Xively, LogMeIn’s IoT management business, for $50 million. In June, Juniper Networks unveiled its latest MX Series routers, featuring advanced programmability and hardware accelerated networking capabilities aimed at adapting to new services and user expectations fueled by the arrival of technologies like 5G wireless and the IoT.

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Available to members of the Windows Insider early-access program, a preview version of Windows Admin Center features integration with Azure Update Management. Released in April, Windows Admin Center is a free Windows Server and Windows 10 management tool intended to narrow the gap between PowerShell’s robust command-line interface and more user-friendly graphical tools such as   (MMC).

Azure Update Management is a free service included as part of the Azure Automation management toolset that helps administrators keep their cloud-based servers up to date and with less manual intervention. Azure Update Management enables administrators to consolidate update deployment and management, sparing them from having to perform those tasks on a per-server basis.

Now, administrators can directly access Azure Update Management’s functionality directly from Windows Admin Center. The tool will also set up the necessary cloud monitoring components required to make the system work, Microsoft’s Dona Sarkar, head of the Windows Insider program and senior program manager Brandon LeBlanc, stated in a July 17 blog post.

“If you don’t already have an Azure Monitoring workspace in your Azure subscription, Windows Admin Center will automatically configure your server and create the necessary Azure resources in the subscription and location you specify,” wrote Sarkar and LeBlanc. “If you have an existing Azure Monitoring workspace, Windows Admin Center can automatically configure your server to consume updates from Azure Update Management.”

The process of registering a Windows Admin Center gateway with Azure, which provides the tool with access to Azure integrations, has also been streamlined with new setting that appears in the interface. Previously, this required users to download and run a PowerShell script.

Another new feature is the ability to select multiple virtual machines in the tool’s inventory page. This allows administrators to perform an action, such as shutting down a virtual machine, on several virtual machines at once. Similar multi-selection capabilities are being ported to other management experiences, including Local Users and Groups.

Windows Admin Center’s Files tool now allows users to add, remove and edit file shares. New user and group management options can be used to prevent unauthorized access to specified file shares.

Also new is the ability to filter server connections using tags and the tailor the results using queries (or, and or not). For security-conscious users, the server overview screen now shows the status of Windows Defender security software. Finally, the task scheduling feature now supports multiple triggers for more sophisticated implementations.

As with any beta software, bugs are part of the deal.

For now, users must manually refresh their Azure Update Management screens for the latest information. Users with other language settings may encounter non-localized text and those accessing Windows Admin Center using the Microsoft Edge Browser may cause Azure gateway connections to fail after opening a new browser tag. 

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Currently in beta, the updates include options to quickly switch between dashboards, set new permissions and bookmark frequently accessed dashboards. They are also expected to hit the next major release of Microsoft’s source code management product, Team Foundation Server (TFS), According to Microsoft senior program manager Francisco Garcia-Ascanio,

Responding to user demand, Microsoft has updated the dashboard picker with two new options, Mine and All, that help developers stay better organized. Selecting Mine shows the dashboards belonging to a user’s team, along with favorites. As expected, the All option displays all the dashboards associated with a project.

Also new is the ability to set team permissions on individual dashboards that govern whether users can create, edit and delete dashboards. Administrators can also set global permissions that affect all the dashboards used by a team.

“By going to the Dashboard settings, under Project Settings for a team, a team administrator can set permissions for their team dashboards,” explained Garcia-Ascanio in a July 18 announcement. “Whichever permissions are set here, the team’s dashboards will inherit.”

A new interface, called Dashboard Directory Pages, allows users to search for dashboards and bookmark, or “favorite,” the results. Other enhancements to the VSTS dashboard experience include full screen mode support, streamlined dashboard editing tools and dashboard descriptions for improved searching.

Plugging the ESLint Breach

Meanwhile, Microsoft has acted on a security incident involving third-party code that could potentially place VSTS data at risk.

Rajesh Ramamurthy, senior program manager of VSTS at Microsoft, announced on July 18 that the software maker had revoked the tokens for a set of VSTS users who were at risk of having their credentials exposed by two popular ESLint NPM (Node Package Manager) packages. ESLint is an open-source code analysis, or linting, utility for JavaScript.

Recently, malicious code was detected in the ESLint scope analysis library (eslint-scope version 3.7.2) and configuration package (eslint-config-eslint version 5.0.2) that could be used to steal credentials. In a security advisory, ESLint stated that “an attacker compromised the npm account of an ESLint maintainer and published malicious versions” of the packages on July 12.

After downloading and installing the packages, the contents of .npmrc configuration files, which often contain access tokens, were sent to the attacker. Highlighting the dangers posed by password reuse and failing to adopt safe password management practices, the ESLint team noted that the password of the hacked maintainer account had been used on other sites and did not have two-factor authentication enabled.

Microsoft is reaching out to the developers that were affected by the move. Users who find that their credentials no longer work as a result of the ESLint breach will need to recreate them. Finally, the company plans to deploy new APIs that will allow administrators to revoke user-created Personal Access Tokens (PAT) and JSON Web Tokens (JWT), Ramamurthy said.

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On July 16, Microsoft began rolling out Skype version 8.0 for the desktop that delivers various enhancements, including high-definition group calling with up to 24 participants. But those upgrades come at the cost of legacy support.

“As we roll out improvements, there comes a time when we must shut down older services and application versions,” company representatives wrote in a blog post. “This is done to ensure that all customers have the best possible Skype experience, and that there are no quality or reliability issues resulting from old technology and new technology interoperating.”

Over the past few years, Microsoft has been transitioning the Skype communications platform from its peer-to-peer past to a cloud-native architecture backed by the Azure cloud-computing platform, a move the company claims open up new, more advanced functionality such as Skype Bots, Skype Translator and more. Slowly but surely, those behind-the-scenes capabilities began to impact the Skype client software offerings, resulting in more modern, mobile-friendly interfaces.

Acknowledging that change can be hard, Microsoft has published online support documentation to help users acclimate to the newer software. According to the website, the update process preserves contact lists, conversation histories, sign-in credentials and application shortcuts, helping to minimize disruptions.

What longtime Skype users lose in terms familiarity, Microsoft is making up with new features.

Skype 8.0 supports @mentions, or prefacing a contact’s Skype ID with the @ symbol to attract their attention. In group conversations, @mentions trigger a notification in the hopes of provoking a response from the person who was mentioned in a chat session.

Also new is a chat media gallery that allows users to view content that was shared in previous interactions. Rather than pore over a chat history to find an old link, image or file, clicking the gallery option for each chat collects past shared content into a new view.

Sharing that content is easier as well. Now, users can simply drag and drop a file into a conversation window to share it with others, provided it doesn’t exceed the 300MB file size limit.

A new, more flexible calling interface, or “call canvas” as Microsoft describes it, allows users to select which contact they wish to focus on during group calls. New customizable themes add a little more color and variety to the proceedings.

Looking ahead, Microsoft revealed that more updates are in the works.

This summer, the company plans to add a read receipt feature along with private, end-to-end encrypted audio and text conversations using the open source Signal Protocol. Developed by Open Whisper Systems and used in the Signal mobile app, the secure messaging technology is also used by Facebook, Google and WhatsApp to strengthen user privacy. Users can also expect new call recording features, links that serve as invitations to Skype groups and the ability to invite non-users to chats or calls. 

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The retailing giant announced on July 18 a five-year strategic partnership involving Microsoft’s cloud, artificial intelligence (AI) and internet of things (IoT) offerings. The aim is help shoppers complete their transactions faster and promote a culture of collaboration among store associates using Microsoft’s productivity software solutions.

“Walmart’s commitment to technology is centered around creating incredibly convenient ways for customers to shop and empowering associates to do their best work,” said Walmart CEO Doug McMillon in a company statement.

McMillon’s approach to improving the Walmart shopping experience and bringing the best out of its employees happens to align with Microsoft’s cloud- and AI-focus product strategy. “Whether it’s combined with our agile cloud platform or leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence to work smarter, we believe Microsoft will be a strong partner in driving our ability to innovate even further and faster,” he said.

Like other major IT companies, Microsoft has been investing heavily in AI technologies that improve efficiency by automating workflows and adding intelligent decision-making capabilities to business processes.

On June 20, the software maker announced that it had snapped up Bonsai for an undisclosed amount. The Berkeley, Calif., startup specializes AI for autonomous systems and industrial equipment. Days later, Microsoft announced the general availability release of Azure IoT Edge, a service that allows organizations to run AI and data analytics workloads on edge devices and systems rather than transmit data back to the cloud or an on-premises data center for processing.

Some of those capabilities may help Walmart run a tighter ship in the years ahead. The retailer hinted at an Azure-backed global IoT platform that will help efficiently route its trucks and improve the energy efficiency of its refrigeration units and HVAC systems.

Meanwhile, Walmart’s IT personnel, office workers and store employees will be increasingly relying on Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365, a bundle that includes Windows 10, Office 365 and Enterprise Mobility + Security, to get work done.

Engineers from both companies will migrate hundreds of existing applications to the cloud. Meanwhile, a phased rollout of Microsoft 365 for office workers and store associates is expected to drive adoption of Microsoft Workplace Analytics, OneDrive, and other Microsoft collaboration and productivity offerings among Walmart’s workforce.

Walmart vs. Amazon

The partnership also puts the companies on a collision course with e-tailing giant Amazon.

Walmart plans to move “a significant portion” of its e-commerce operations, namely Walmart.com and Samsclub.com, to Microsoft Azure. The move is expected to help Walmart respond more quickly to shopping trends and enable the company to roll out new features at an accelerated pace.

Walmart’s e-commerce ambitions took another major turn in May, when the company announced the largest acquisition to date. Walmart outbid Amazon for Flipkart, India’s fast growing e-commerce company, offering a whopping $16 billion for a majority stake in the firm.

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Jason Zander, executive vice president of Microsoft Azure, revealed that his group had flipped the switch on new capabilities that provide at least double the query performance. “This significant performance improvement is made real by new instant data movement capabilities that allows for extremely efficient movement between data warehouse compute nodes,” he stated in a July 12 announcement.

This was made possible by integrating data movement capabilities directly into the SQL Server engine, explained Tomas Talius, a Microsoft Azure Data partner architect, in a separate July 12 blog post. This enable the Azure SQL Data Warehouse to harness the performance-enhancing capabilities of the multi-core parallel processors that are running in its underlying architecture.

Performance is further enhanced by Azure Accelerated Networking, a set of network throughput optimizations for Azure cloud instances. In this case, it supports data transfer speeds of up to one gigabyte per second per node, noted Talius.In addition, Azure SQL Data Warehouse now supports up to 128 concurrent queries, allowing more users to query a database at the same time, Zander said.

Azure Service Fabric Mesh Preview Goes Live

Locked for months behind a private beta after its Build 2018 debut, users can now see how Azure Service Fabric Mesh stacks up against other container hosting platforms.

Based on technologies that power Microsoft’s core cloud infrastructure along with other services including Azure SQL Database and Dynamics 365, Azure Service Fabric allows users to deploy and run containerized applications without having to manage instances, configure networks or provision cloud storage. It supports both Linux and Windows-based containers.

Developers using Microsoft’s IDE, Visual Studio 2017, can download Azure Service Fabric Mesh tools that enable them to debug and publish their applications to the service. Once an application is deployed, Service Fabric Mesh works in the background to provide automated scaling, service discovery and other maintenance tasks, while allowing users to perform zero-downtime upgrades.

Although the Azure Service Fabric Mesh preview is open to all comers as of July 16, it’s only available from select cloud data centers. So far, the public beta is limited to three Azure regions, California, Virginia and the Netherlands.

New Azure Firewall and Virtual WAN Services 

For Customers looking to strengthen the security of apps and cloud resources that are attached to their Azure Virtual Networks, Microsoft has launched a new stateful firewall as a service offering.

Called Azure Firewall, the service allows administrators to configure various network and application-level connectivity policies that filter traffic based on port, protocol and IP addresses. The product’s built-in monitoring and reporting capabilities can be accessed using Microsoft’s Azure Monitor toolkit.

Another new service, called Azure Virtual WAN (Wide Area Network), enables businesses to connect their branch offices to headquarters and each other. It supports both traditional routers as well as a growing number of newer software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) systems from select vendors, noted Zander.

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Building on their existing partnership centered around GE’s Predix cloud-based industrial internet platform, the companies announced on July 16 that they are deepening their ties and using Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing offerings to make it happen. Predix is an ecosystem of IoT applications, analytics and management products and services for businesses and developers.

In October 2017, shortly after inking a deal with Apple that brought Predix to iOS devices, GE entered into an agreement with Microsoft to focus on large industrial IoT deployments. Suggesting that their efforts bore fruit, GE Digital, home to the conglomerate’s industrial IoT business, announced it was standardizing Predix on Azure, a move that will allow GE to expand its cloud footprint and help keep cyber-security risks at bay.

Currently, Microsoft operates 42 Azure regions around the world and is in the process of adding more cloud data centers for a total of 54 announced regions.

GE is also working on tighter integrations between Predix and Microsoft Azure Analytics, Azure IoT and other cloud services from the software giant. In addition, the pact calls for the companies to jointly market and sell Predix-powered IoT solutions.

Microsoft and GE will also explore how to make Predix data available to business applications and hybrid-cloud systems.

Likely candidates include Microsoft Power BI, a cloud-based business intelligence and data analytics platform, and PowerApps, a no-code business application builder. In terms of hybrid implementations, the firms are investigating integrations with Azure Stack, hybrid cloud server and software bundles from Microsoft and select hardware partners.

According to Bill Ruh, chief digital officer at GE and CEO of the GE Digital division, the move reflects a desire from customers to “make a deeper connection between our two companies.”

“Through this expanded partnership, Microsoft and GE are enabling customers around the world to harness the power of the Predix portfolio, including Predix Asset Performance Management, to unlock new capabilities to drive growth,” Ruh said in a media advisory.

Predix Asset Performance Management (APM) is a set of performance optimization software and services designed to help businesses improve the reliability and availability of their IoT-enabled equipment. With Predix APM, organizations can lower operational risks, rein in maintenance costs and reduce an industrial IoT deployment’s overall total cost of ownership, claims GE.

The partnership is also expected to yield benefits for IoT developers. Using a combination of Microsoft’s coder-friendly enterprise cloud and the Predix application development platform, the companies hope to accelerate the process of building, deploying and running industrial IoT applications, both in the cloud and at the edge.

Microsoft’s investments in cloud security and compliance are also expected to pay off for GE by enhancing the Predix platform’s security layer and allowing customers with stringent regulatory requirements to roll out IoT solutions.

Internally, GE said it will be using Azure for its own Predix-based deployments. The company also plans to expand the use of Microsoft’s cloud-based IT workload and productivity solutions across the business.

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