Guardrails That Hold: RAI Filters & a Governed MCP Gateway
Part 2 of the governed AI platform: a custom RAI content filter with harm thresholds, plus an MCP gateway that tiers tool access.
Azure Weekly CW33: Firewall Premium 22 Gbps & MAI-Thinking-1
Azure CW33 2026: the Firewall Premium deny-mode throughput numbers, Markdown for Agents in App Service, and MAI-Thinking-1 in Microsoft Foundry.
Building a Governed AI Platform on Microsoft Foundry
How I built an internal AI platform on Microsoft Foundry with governance first: data residency, secret-less identity, and central audit.
Azure Weekly CW32: Trusted Launch by Default & cc_v5 Sunset
Azure CW32 2026: Trusted Launch on by default for new Gen2 VMs, the cc_v5 confidential VM retirement on September 1st, and Firewall explicit proxy GA.
Azure Weekly CW31: APIM AI Gateway & Azure Enclave
Azure CW31 2026: AI Gateway in API Management, Azure Enclave preview, Key Vault symmetric keys, and reservation exchanges ending February 2027.
Azure Weekly CW30: Standard Service Endpoints & AI Telemetry
Azure CW30 2026: standard service endpoint preview, IPv6 on VPN Gateway GA, DDoS custom policies, and a protected table for generative AI telemetry.
Azure Weekly CW29: Passkeys by Default & Edge Actions
Azure CW29 2026: Entra passkeys become the default in September, SMS and voice retire February 2027, plus Front Door edge actions on Hyperlight.
Azure Weekly CW28: Chaos Studio Workspaces & SFTP Entra ID
Azure CW28 2026: Chaos Studio Workspaces preview, Site Recovery churn to 500 MB/s, Blob SFTP Entra ID GA, and Entra Backup GA.
Azure Weekly CW27: Claude Sonnet 5 GA in Foundry
Azure CW27 2026: Claude Sonnet 5 GA in Microsoft Foundry, and why its data residency still blocks regulated Swiss workloads.
Azure Weekly CW26: Azure Files Share Management GA
Azure CW26 2026: file share-centric management GA, Confidential Live Migration for Intel TDX VMs, and the Azure Blueprints retirement.
Azure Weekly CW25: Databricks Managed Tables in OneLake
Azure CW25 2026: Databricks Unity Catalog managed tables in OneLake, a VS Code Functions project gallery, and NAT Gateway v2 ICMP.
Azure Weekly CW24: Azure Boost RDMA & Anthropic Fable 5
Azure CW24 2026: Azure Boost guest RDMA preview, NCv6 GPUs with RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell, GPv1 retirement, and Fable 5 in Foundry.
Azure Weekly CW23: Build 2026 Special
Build 2026 round-up: Cobalt 200 ARM VMs, confidential VM live migration, Container Apps microVM sandboxes, and Foundry IQ.
Azure Weekly CW22: VNet Flow Logs in Sentinel & AVNM
Azure CW22 2026: VNet flow logs connector for Sentinel, Virtual Network Manager with Virtual WAN as hub, and Istio on AKS.
Azure Weekly CW20-21: Container Apps Express & Linux 4.0
Azure CW20-21 2026: Container Apps Express, Azure Linux 4.0, Azure Files SMB managed identity, and ANF 64 TiB file support.
Azure Weekly CW19: Durable Functions & Elastic SAN on AVS
Azure CW19 2026: Functions consumption durable task scheduler, Elastic SAN on AVS Gen2, and bulk Azure Backup VM restore.
Azure Weekly CW18: AKS WireGuard & Agent Framework 1.0
Azure CW18 2026: AKS pod traffic encryption with WireGuard, Front Door WAF HTTP DDoS rule set, and Microsoft Agent Framework 1.0.
Azure Weekly CW17: ANF Ransomware & Claude Opus 4.7
Azure CW17 2026: AKS Ubuntu 22.04 retirement, ANF ransomware protection, Elastic SAN autoscaling, Claude Opus 4.7 and GPT-5.5 in Foundry.
Azure Weekly CW16: NAT Gateway V2 for AKS & Smart Tiering
Azure CW16 2026: Standard V2 NAT Gateway for AKS, Smart Tiering GA for blob and Data Lake, Azure Files granular encryption-in-transit.
Azure Weekly CW15: AKS CNI Expansion & Foundry Local
Azure CW15 2026: AKS CNI overlay CIDR expansion GA, Functions MCP resource triggers GA, ARO H100/H200 GPU support, Foundry Local GA.
Azure Weekly CW14: Ephemeral OS Caching & Cosmos PG Sunset
Azure CW14 2026: VM ephemeral OS disk full caching preview, App Configuration with Front Door, and Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL retirement.
Azure Weekly CW13: AKS App Network & Blue-Green Upgrades
Azure CW13 2026: AKS application network mesh, blue-green agent pool upgrades, SQL DB automatic index compaction, and Entra external MFA.
Azure Weekly CW12: Foundry Agent Service & Entra Blob SFTP
Azure CW12 2026: Foundry Agent Service GA with native voice, Entra ID for Blob SFTP, WAF DRS 2.2, and standard HDD retirement announced.
Azure Weekly CW11: SRE Agent & PostgreSQL IaC
Azure CW11 2026: SRE Agent gains new capabilities, private AWS S3 to Blob migration, PostgreSQL Elastic Cluster IaC GA, Grafana dashboards.
Azure Weekly CW10: Confidential VMs v6 & GPT-5.4
Azure CW10 2026: Intel TDX confidential VMs GA, Azure Firewall draft-and-deploy, Databricks Lakebase, Arc Gateway down to 7 endpoints.
Terraform Module Design Patterns
Practical patterns for reusable Terraform modules: security-first defaults, input validation, conditional resources, and testing with Terratest.
Azure Weekly CW9: WAF Insights & Copilot CLI
Azure CW9 2026: App Gateway WAF Insights preview, Entra-restricted blob SAS tokens, AI Search sensitivity labels, and GitHub Copilot CLI goes GA.
Azure Weekly CW8: PSSD v2 Snapshots & AKS MCP
Azure CW8 2026: Premium SSD v2 instant snapshots, AKS MCP Server preview, node autoprovision encryption, and Azure Functions .NET 10 support.
Budget Alerts in Azure with Terraform
Set up Azure budget alerts at 50/80/100/120% thresholds, enforce cost tags via policy, and automate with a reusable Terraform module.
Azure Weekly CW7: Monitor Pipelines & Entra SoA
Azure CW7 2026: Monitor Pipelines preview, AKS Kubernetes 1.34 GA, Azure Disk vaulted backups, and Entra source of authority goes GA.
Azure Weekly CW6: VNet Routing & Container Storage
Azure CW6 2026: VNet routing appliance preview, Container Storage 2.1 with Elastic SAN, App Gateway DRS 2.2, and Claude Opus 4.6 in Microsoft Foundry.
Azure Weekly CW5: ExpressRoute Scalable Gateway & Passkeys
Azure CW5 2026: ExpressRoute scalable gateway goes GA with autoscaling, new Intel/AMD v7 VM SKUs, and automatic passkey rollout for all Entra tenants.
Azure Weekly CW4: NAT Gateway V2 & AKS Pod Security
Azure CW4 2026: Zone-redundant NAT Gateway V2 goes GA, AKS gets pod security safeguards, and user-delegated SAS expands to more storage services.
Azure Weekly CW3: AKS Ubuntu 24.04 & GPT-5.2-Codex
Azure CW3 2026: AKS gets Ubuntu 24.04 GA, Cosmos DB adds private networking for Fabric mirroring, and GPT-5.2-Codex brings 400k token context.
Post-Quantum Cryptography on Azure
Post-quantum cryptography in Azure: NIST FIPS 203/204/205 standards, harvest-now-decrypt-later threats, and what Azure customers should do today.
Audit Azure TLS Across Subscriptions
PowerShell script to audit TLS versions across Azure subscriptions, scanning 13 service types and generating CSV and HTML compliance reports.
Welcome to the Blog
Azure infrastructure, governance, security, and DevOps automation. Real-world solutions and lessons learned from production cloud engineering.
Azure Cloud Foundation: The Boring Stuff That Matters
Practical guide to Azure cloud foundation: governance, connectivity, identity, security, and management done right from day one.