Program Manager Tierney Wixted talks to us about the highly successful OpenHack program run by Microsoft which runs free, challenge-based coaching experiences for various Azure technologies. She gives us some insights into the program, how it works, and what attendees can expect to get out of it.

Media file: https://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode322.mp3

Transcript: https://eus2.videoindexer.ai/accounts/e0eee289-7730-4999-978b-eb7f63be8cb5/videos/80c36dae07/?location=EUS2

Resources: https://openhack.microsoft.com/

Other updates:

Azure Advisor data in Azure Resource Graph is now available

Updated: April 01, 2020

Azure Advisor data is now available in Azure Resource Graph. This release enables many at-scale scenarios for consuming the Advisor best practice recommendations.

Query Advisor recommendations for all your subscriptions at once. Previously, it was possible to only review recommendations for up to 60 subscriptions at a single time due to Azure portal limitations. If you have more than 60 Azure subscriptions, you’ll now have an easier time optimizing your resources and staying on top of your best practices.

From <https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/azure-advisor-data-in-azure-resource-graph-is-now-available/>

Azure Ultra Disks—Shared disk capability is now in preview

Updated: April 01, 2020

Attach an Azure managed disk to multiple virtual machines (VMs) simultaneously using the new shared disks feature of Azure Managed Disks. Deploy new or migrate existing clustered applications to Azure by attaching a managed disk to multiple VMs. Shared disks also support SCSI persistent reservation protocol.

From <https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/azure-ultra-disks-shared-disk-capability-is-now-in-preview/>



New Azure Disk sizes and bursting support are now available

Updated: April 01, 2020

Azure Disks—block-level storage volumes managed by Azure and used with Azure Virtual Machines—now have new 4-GiB, 8-GiB, and 16-GiB sizes available on both premium and standard SSDs. The new disk sizes introduced on standard SSD disk provide the most cost-efficient SSD offering in the cloud, providing consistent disk performance at the lowest cost per GB. We’ve also increased the performance target for all standard SSD disks of 64-GiB or less (E6) to 500 IOPS and 60 MiB/second, matching that with standard HDDs. It’s an ideal replacement for HDD-based disk storage from either on-premises or cloud.

In addition, we now support bursting on Azure premium SSD disks in all Azure regions in the public cloud. With bursting, even the smallest premium SSD disks at 4-GiB can now achieve up to 3,500 IOPS and 170 MiB/second, and better accommodate spiky workloads. It can be best used for OS disks to accelerate virtual machine (VM) boot or data disks to accommodate spiky traffic. To learn more about disk bursting, read the premium SSD bursting article.

From <https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/new-azure-disk-sizes-and-bursting-support-are-now-available/>