Browse All Posts (108)

Bruno Capuano and Joshua Yue discuss routing and failover patterns for Microsoft.Extensions.AI, explaining the design decisions behind a resiliency approach Joshua built at Microsoft and how .NET teams can apply it to keep AI features running when a model or provider becomes unavailable.

Allison announces enterprise managed settings for GitHub Copilot for JetBrains, giving admins centralized controls over plugin governance, MCP server access, OpenTelemetry configuration, and Copilot agent permission modes across an enterprise Copilot plan.

artigulwadi announces an August 2026 Azure Copilot update that lets customers invoke specialized Azure Copilot agents directly (instead of starting from a single general chat), with new admin controls for enabling agents per tenant and clarified pricing for the agent portfolio.

Allison announces new GitHub Enterprise controls for incident response that let admins revoke or deauthorize credentials by token type (PATs, SSH keys, OAuth tokens, and GitHub App user tokens), with UI and REST API support plus audit logging and user notifications.

Visual Studio Code highlights an “auto-reload” tip aimed at speeding up the edit-refresh loop when working on web content like HTML.

lily-ma explains how to extend Azure SRE Agent with MCP servers by hosting them in Azure Connector Namespace, then wiring them into the agent’s connector experience. The post includes an end-to-end example using Azure Developer CLI (azd), managed identity auth, and access policies to connect a hosted SQL MCP server.

Teodora Sutilovic outlines what’s new in the small form factor infrastructure preview (version 2607) for Azure Local, including multi-NIC and extra disk support modeled in Azure Resource Manager, Just-in-Time access via Entra PIM with SSH certificates, and safer OS updates using an A/B image-swap rollback model.

Microsoft Defender Experts and Microsoft Security Research break down how MacSync Stealer rotates domains while keeping consistent request and execution patterns, and show how to hunt the campaign using durable behavioral pivots across endpoint and network telemetry.

VMRoman announces a preview update to Microsoft Fabric’s data agent: visual answers in conversations now render using Fabric Visuals (the same visualization foundation used across Fabric). The post explains what changed, why consistent visuals matter, which prompts trigger charts, and the currently supported chart types and data sources.

dotnet presents a practical session on modernizing legacy .NET applications using Visual Studio 2026 and GitHub Copilot, covering assessment, upgrade planning, and AI-assisted fixes for compatibility and dependency issues in real-world, multi-project solutions.

samimodak announces the public preview of Azure DNS Traffic Manager linked records, which let Azure DNS link record sets directly to Azure Traffic Manager profiles. The post explains how this removes the trafficmanager.net CNAME hop, enables zone-apex load balancing, and improves DNSSEC compatibility and operational safety.

Mason_Torres explains how to onboard large Windows and Linux server estates to Azure Arc using non-interactive authentication and automation, focusing on two scalable approaches: Ansible for Linux fleets and Group Policy for domain-joined Windows Server environments.

Microsoft Developer shows how to build an AI-powered application using the GitHub Copilot SDK (the same engine used by Copilot in the CLI), including connecting the app to tools and applying practical patterns to keep AI behavior reliable and under control.

dotnet explains how .NET developers can get more dependable results from modern AI by adding context through agentic workflows, including MCP tools, skills, and custom agents, and then connects those ideas to building cross-platform apps with Uno Platform across web, desktop, and mobile.

dotnet explains how to use GitHub Copilot to build migration tooling that makes moving between package versions (or to different libraries) more deterministic and reliable, including practical techniques for combining Copilot-assisted coding with .NET to reduce migration friction.

Microsoft Developer demonstrates a terminal-first workflow using GitHub Copilot CLI to turn a rough idea into a concrete plan, code edits, and a reviewable set of changes without leaving the command line.

Anna Hoffman recaps the year’s updates across SQL Server, Azure SQL, and SQL database in Microsoft Fabric, with a focus on developer tooling. She also covers themes like security, performance, availability, CI/CD, containers, and how AI and vectors are shaping the SQL ecosystem, plus a look at roadmap direction.

torreyt announces general availability of What-If for Azure Deployment Stacks, explaining how stack previews differ from standard template what-if and how the results can be stored as a first-class Azure resource for review and approvals.

GitHub explains how to run multiple parallel AI agent sessions in the GitHub Copilot app without stepping on your own changes, using isolated git worktrees and a centralized task board to track in-flight work and review results when you’re ready.

Rory Preddy demonstrates how to connect Playwright MCP to GitHub Copilot in VS Code to run end-to-end browser tests against a Spring Boot app, including running existing Java tests, starting the app locally, and reviewing the Playwright tool calls Copilot makes to validate an add/complete/delete workflow.

Gaurav Seth announces GA for Managed Instance on Azure App Service, aimed at lifting and modernizing legacy .NET Framework apps with minimal or no code changes. The post highlights new GA capabilities like Premium v4 support, zone redundancy, deeper observability, managed identity defaults, governance/security coverage, and IaC options.

joannapea explains how Custom SQL Pools in Microsoft Fabric Data Warehouse help isolate workloads and cap how aggressively queries can scale, letting teams trade latency for lower allocation peaks under allocation-based billing. The post includes a vNode-based example, workload fit criteria, and what SQL Pools do not do.

Eric van Wijk announces a public preview of arm64 macOS build agents for Azure Pipelines, letting teams run CI workloads natively on Apple Silicon with pay-as-you-go, per-minute billing. The post shows how to enable the GitHub-hosted Agents pool, select new macOS/Xcode image labels, and monitor usage in pool analytics and Azure Cost Management.

aparnabadireddigari explains what it takes to move Actions Runner Controller (ARC) on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) from a working demo to a production-ready GitHub Actions runner platform, focusing on identity scope, network egress/DNS, workload isolation, runner image lifecycle, observability, and operational ownership.

Abhinav Premsekhar explains why cloud-hosted browsers are becoming a core platform capability for running browser automation and AI agents at scale, with a focus on the operational requirements enterprises hit in production: isolation, governance, observability, reproducibility, and geographic execution.

Anasheh announces a preview update for Microsoft Fabric Eventstreams observability in Workspace Monitoring, adding per-eventstream control so teams can choose which pipelines emit monitoring data. The post explains what telemetry is captured, where it lands, and how to query and dashboard it with KQL.

midesa announces general availability of data source routing for Microsoft Fabric data agents, explaining how a data agent decides which data sources to query when answering questions. The post focuses on improving agent responses by controlling and prioritizing where the agent looks for data across Fabric-managed sources.

Visual Studio Code highlights the Mobile Canvas extension, which lets developers control and interact with Android and iOS apps directly from within VS Code.

NevenaNikolic explains Fabric Data Warehouse Query Acceleration (Preview), a GPU-powered execution capability that automatically offloads eligible parts of SQL query plans to GPUs. The post covers where it helps most (high concurrency), which operators benefit, how fallback to CPU works, and how to monitor impact using SSMS and Query Insights.

Haoran Cheng announces five new Claude capabilities in Microsoft AI Foundry hosted on Azure—structured outputs, web search, web fetch, an MCP connector, and tool search—focused on turning a model endpoint into a production-ready agent platform with clearer governance, cost controls, and operational guidance.

dotnet covers upcoming and recent C# language features, focusing on union types for modeling closed sets of shapes (common in wire protocols), plus a look at extension members and closed classes and how these features aim to make consuming code clearer and safer.

dotnet explains how to add practical AI capabilities to .NET apps using Microsoft.Extensions.AI, starting with features like summarization, classification, and semantic search across cloud and local models, then extending the same foundations into agentic systems with the Microsoft Agent Framework.

Microsoft Developer introduces SQL MCP Server, a Data API Builder-based approach for letting AI tools like GitHub Copilot query SQL Server, Azure SQL, and Fabric SQL Database through a governed, RBAC-enforced interface instead of direct raw SQL access.

Microsoft Developer explains how to implement practical, high-performance vector search in SQL Server using DiskANN, including how to store vectors, build the right indexes, and write queries that combine semantic similarity with relational filters and full-text search for more precise results.

Ayan Gupta explains how GitHub Copilot canvases provide a durable workspace for agentic development, making plans, decisions, progress, and approval points easier to track than chat alone. He shares two concrete canvases—Java Modernization Studio and Site Studio—and discusses the up-front AI credit cost versus long-term workflow efficiency.

Naga Surendran explains why Microsoft’s Azure application platform was named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud-Native Application Platforms, and connects that positioning to practical building blocks for running cloud-native apps, AI workloads, and agentic systems with governance, security, and observability.

John Savill runs through a fast-paced AI-103 study cram focused on building AI apps and agents on Azure, covering Azure AI Foundry concepts, model selection and deployment options, API/SDK usage, evaluations, and agent tooling including Microsoft Agent Framework and Foundry Agent Service.

This week in .NET centers on staying current and testing early: Microsoft shipped August 2026 servicing updates for .NET 10, 9, 8, and .NET Framework, while .NET 11 Preview 7 continued to advance runtime, SDK, and the major app stacks. On the AI side, Microsoft.Extensions.AI added routing and failover primitives that help teams run multi-model and multi-endpoint setups more safely, and Copilot workflows picked up practical improvements from instruction hygiene guidance to local Ollama-based integrations. Rounding things out, Visual Studio 18.9 improved Git submodule management inside the IDE, and agent governance guidance focused on reducing Teams noise and enforcing runtime allow/deny tool-call policy with auditing.

This week's GitHub Copilot roundup is about operational reality: more models in the picker, more places Copilot runs, and better tools to understand what it costs. New options like Gemini 3.7 Flash, Grok 4.6, Kimi K3, and MAI-Code-1.1-Flash push model selection into normal platform governance, while improved token visibility and per-model usage reporting make spend easier to attribute. On the agent side, Agent Plugins 1.0 GA and smoother MCP setup make portable, tool-driven workflows more practical, with clearer patterns for guardrails like allowlists, least privilege, and PR-based review. Across IDEs and enterprise environments (including GHES 3.22 RC), the message is consistent: treat Copilot like part of your toolchain, with policies, instructions, and review paths that keep outputs safe and repeatable.

This week's DevOps roundup centers on two pressures colliding in real workflows: supply chain attacks that arrive through everyday repo automation, and a push to run AI agents with controls you can actually audit. We cover the ChainDrop (Shai-Hulud) npm worm and what it means for repository configs, tokens, and automated dependency updates, then dig into GitHub's tightening governance layer with OAuth hardening, ruleset migration, and new org-level Rule insights. We also look at agent-ready platform patterns (hardware-isolated sandboxes, APIM as a policy gateway, and OpenTelemetry-based run traces) plus practical reliability tooling that turns telemetry into SLI/SLO signals and ITSM-synced incidents.