Azure Updates: RSA; MLOps; SSIS integration; Climate Research Initiative

Microsoft CVP Vasu Jakkal discussed Microsoft’s role at 2022 RSA Conference, which was in-person after two years of virtual events. During the event Microsoft CISO Bret Arsenault delivered a key note about the security implications of shadow IT. Throughout the event Microsoft team members hosted sessions on threat hunting, disclosing vulnerabilities, and secure access strategies—as well as voting on the winners of the 2022 Microsoft Security Excellence Awards.

Product marketing manager Takuto Higuchi discussed testing and scalability with MLOps. Customers can conduct A/B testing by sending production traffic to alternate systems, canary testing with most traffic directed to the current system and small test batches to the new system, load testing, or shadow testing that involves sending traffic to several different systems at once to achieve comparisons.

Cloud solution architect Aarti Riley shared how to use Azure-SSIS integration runtime to run SSIS packages for Azure and Azure Government.  The runtime allows users to schedule SSIS packages with SQL Server Agent on-prem, with Data Factory acting as the engine to execute the packages. Users first need to create an Azure Data Factory instance, then create the integration runtime, import projects, configure packages, set a trigger and schedule package execution.

Microsoft highlighted its new Climate Research Initiative.  As it gets underway the initiative will focus on overcoming constraints on decarbonization, improving carbon accounting, and assessing climate risks. Microsoft shared the names of researchers—and some of the topic areas they are focused on—as ...