Jeff Hollan and Eduardo Laureano from Azure Functions team joined us on a scenic fall autumn day in October to share updates on what they have built, those they are working on, highlighting on what community is doing: A Sneak peek before the upcoming conferences.
What’s New?
- .NET Core 3.0 preview
- Support to all languages
- Community comments are considered
- Highly backward compatible
- Key Vault Reference GA (most popular blog from Jeff- how to reference Key Vault from Azure Function)
- Manage your secrets at one place for all Azure services
- RabbitMQ Extension
- You can now write Azure Functions
- Rabbit MQ trigger can be used in the premium plan
- To answer the request for supporting Rabbit MQ trigger in consumption plan: The customers they have talked to had got Rabbit MQ secured behind a VNet there is no way for a function in consumption plan to talk to a resource under VNet. If your scenario is different raise a flag to the Azure Functions team to spend their effort and build the solution.
- Durable Function 2.0 beta3
- Last planned beta release
- Gets closer to GA
- Managed Dependencies for PowerShell Gallery
- Comes with the mission of ‘Let’s make your code as simple as possible’
- No worries about maintaining the latest version for PowerShell galleries, get them automatically pulled on locally and to the cloud
- GitHub Actions support for Azure Functions
- Start your development from GitHub
- The pipeline is fully set up to trigger a deployment on any change to the code base
- Supports doing better
What’s Coming?
- Microsoft Ignite
- There are few things not added in this list, look for them in Ignite
- Python 3.7
- Now the platform has been got working hence the adoption to upcoming versions will be quick
- VNet triggers for Premium plan
- Starting to roll out, Storage, Cosmos DB already has, Service Bus will soon get
- PowerShell GA
- It’s coming
- Performance improvements
- Will keep up on the journey of high scaling apps
- How to make most out of all powers Azure has got: Best practices on Event Hubs, Service Bus, HTTP does the instance size matter: Serverless360 team eagerly expect and highly appreciate this
Question and Answer
- Any changes to Logic Apps to Azure Functions?
Azure function team will continue to work on improvements in this area. The HTTP Azure function can be called from a Logic App, it works just fine. - .Net Core 3.0 comes that does mean V 3.0 of functions what does it mean to the previous versions of functions?
The journey from Function 1.0 to 2.0 was not a seamless one. This is function 3.0 will be unnoticeable. It will be highly backward compatible. Not deprecating V 1.0 or 2.0. I To summarize if you want to do .Net Framework use functions V 1.0, any language not .Net seamlessly move to V3.0, if you have an app with .Net core 3 dependencies you need to be on V3.0, who use functions V2.0 with no .Net Core 3.0 dependencies can wait for function V3.0 GA and move seamlessly.
- Do we have access to machine metrics of function?
You end up running functions in a lot of machines. Hence the metrics are collated and provides as Azure Function metrics like committed memory, CPU usage, CPU memory, etc. Application insights have a live metrics screen that provides a broader view. - I don’t want to use azure insight. We will get charged for that. Is there any other way?
Their run time and your own code logging data all of them streamed to Log Analytics, which can be configured to go to storage account from where can be sent to a different system, or to Event Hub to stream real-time data to third party applications. App Insights, Azure Monitor and Log Analytics are options to monitor - How about Azure Function + headless browser (chrome,ie,edge,etc) ? any plans on that?
Create your own docker image, your own environment, publish it in your Linux premium plan - Why functions use DryIoc for DI?
Because it abstracts DI. The functions team welcomes its Customers to bring it to their notice if their implementation is causing any limitation. - Is there any plan for supporting Azure Data Lake triggers?
Moving forward the Azure Event Grid will be the way to trigger functions. Event Grid Triggers for Azure Data Lake is in preview which will be the recommended way - What’s the difference between triggered Web Job and Azure Function?
Functions are built on top Web Job SDKs. They share the same triggers. Web Jobs do not have the Serverless scale nature of the Azure Functions. With Web Job, you have full access to run. Functions are more abstract and more productive.
Community Update
https://aka.ms/functions/october: this will have links to all the community contents mentioned below
Serverless September: Tons of great content. Below are a few recommended reads.
- How to create a REST API with Azure Functions and the Serverless Framework Part 1 by Tanner Barlow
This blog post can help write a function and deploy to both Azure and AWS with the same set of tooling taking advantage of Serverless framework - Your own Serverless Request Bin with Durable entities and Azure Durable Functions 2.0 by Paco de la Cruz
Paco has figured out 2 ways to write your own Serverless Request Bin the one he is sharing here is using Durable entities which are the state for functions that can maintain state for as many instances you want. This is a super valuable tool that is nearly free as its charged only when you invoke the functions. It’s great to see the code samples, deployments, and a very useful scenario. - Azure Functions Security: Best Practices by Tal Melamed
This blog talks about all 6 aspects of security in Azure Functions and how you can properly take care of them in your Function Application in your Serverless architecture. - Azure Cosmos DB Change Feed: A Zero Downtime Data Migration Story by Domenico Sibilio
This blog is ideal for Enterprises who would need to migrate their data with no downtime. Learn Change feed, advantages and how to fully use it using the SDKs here. Cosmos trigger uses Change feed which makes it necessary to understand what is change feeds and how does it work. - How to access local disk storage on Azure Functions for Python, by Louis Dorado
Super short blog post. How to get a temp directory while developing a Phyton function for intermediate processing. This blog post provides a really nice piece of information that will make life easier and you more productive.
Christos coding challenge Announcing Xamarian+Azure Functions. Participate and stand a chance to win Surface Headphones
Upcoming Events
- Microsoft Ignite – Big Microsoft Event
- Microsoft Ignite the Tour– Well-structured, matured content delivered around the world. Look for the one close to you and attend without fail.
- KueCon – Chance to showcase programming patterns of Azure Functions outside of events just the traditional Serverless.
Feedback
If you are working on Azure Functions and have something interesting, feel free to share them with the Azure Functions team via Twitter at @AzureFunctions.
You can watch the recorded video of this session here.
The next webcast will be in Microsoft Ignite.
