Seamless Identity Integration: Azure API Management with Azure AD B2C (AADB2C)
Azure API Management (APIM) is a robust platform for managing and securing your APIs. In this blog post, we will guide you through integrating Azure API Management with Azure Active Directory B2C (AADB2C) for identity management. This integration enhances the security of your APIs by requiring user authentication before access is granted. We will break down the process into three key steps: setting up the Developer Portal to use AADB2C, configuring APIM to use OAuth 2.0 for authorization, and implementing token validation to ensure secure access.Introducing the new community site for Azure API Management aka.ms/apimlove
In this article, we'll showcase the new community site for Azure API management https://aka.ms/apimlove. This site is a one-stop shop for all things related to Azure API management, including videos, tutorials, and community resources. You want your blog posts and videos featured? Reply in the comments. What is Azure API management? If you're completely new to Azure API management, it's a service that allows you to create, publish, and manage APIs in a secure and scalable way. With Azure API management, you can expose your APIs to external developers, partners, and internal teams, and monitor and analyze their usage. Additionally it also has a great story around generative AI and how you can take these APIs to production. How you might wonder? Well, the short answer is that there are some great policies made specifically for generative AI that you can apply to your APIs, let's describe it a bit more in detail. Problems and Solutions with generative AI APIs A good way to understand the capabilities of Azure API management is to look at some common problems faced when working with generative AI APIs and how Azure API management solves them. Here are some key problems and solutions: Token Usage Management - Problem: Tracking token usage across multiple applications and ensuring fair distribution. - Solution: Azure APIM provides a token limit policy that allows you to set quotas on token usage per application. This ensures that no single application consumes the entire token quota1. Load Balancing and Error Management - Problem: Distributing load across multiple instances and managing errors to ensure high availability. - Solution: APIM supports load balancing to distribute requests across multiple endpoints. It also implements a circuit breaker pattern to stop requests to failing instances and redirect them to healthy ones2. Monitoring and Metrics - Problem: Monitoring API usage, request success/failure rates, and token consumption. - Solution: APIM provides detailed monitoring and metrics capabilities, including policies to emit token usage metrics. This helps in tracking how many tokens are used and how many are left. Security - Problem: Securing API access and managing API keys. - Solution: APIM allows you to use managed identities for secure authentication, reducing the need to distribute API keys manually. This enhances security by ensuring only authorized applications can access the APIs2. Cost Management - Problem: Managing costs associated with API usage and ensuring efficient resource utilization. - Solution: APIM helps in caching responses to reduce load on the AI model, saving costs and improving performance. It also ensures that committed capacity in Provisioned Throughput Units (PTUs) is exhausted before falling back to pay-as-you-go instances1. Summary: Key Policies and Constructs - Token Limit Policy: Sets quotas on token usage per application. - Emit Token Metric Policy: Tracks and emits metrics related to token usage. - Load Balancing: Distributes requests across multiple endpoints. - Circuit Breaker Pattern: Manages errors by redirecting requests from failing instances to healthy ones. - Managed Identities: Provides secure authentication without the need for API keys. - Caching: Reduces load on the AI model by caching responses. Learn more here Community Site Features So what does this new site offer? Here are some key features: - Videos: Watch tutorials and demos on Azure API management and generative AI. - Tutorials: Step-by-step guides on how to use Azure API management for generative AI. - Community Resources: Connect with other developers, share tips and tricks, and get help with your projects. This site will be updated regularly with new content, so be sure to check back often for the latest updates. Resources - Community site, https://aka.ms/apimlove - Azure API management documentation, https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/api-management/ - Generative AI gateway capabilities, https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/api-management/genai-gateway-capabilitiesUnlock New AI and Cloud Potential with .NET 9 & Azure: Faster, Smarter, and Built for the Future
.NET 9, now available to developers, marks a significant milestone in the evolution of the .NET platform, pushing the boundaries of performance, cloud-native development, and AI integration. This release, shaped by contributions from over 9,000 community members worldwide, introduces thousands of improvements that set the stage for the future of application development. With seamless integration with Azure and a focus on cloud-native development and AI capabilities, .NET 9 empowers developers to build scalable, intelligent applications with unprecedented ease. Expanding Azure PaaS Support for .NET 9 With the release of .NET 9, a comprehensive range of Azure Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings now fully support the platform’s new capabilities, including the latest .NET SDK for any Azure developer. This extensive support allows developers to build, deploy, and scale .NET 9 applications with optimal performance and adaptability on Azure. Additionally, developers can access a wealth of architecture references and sample solutions to guide them in creating high-performance .NET 9 applications on Azure’s powerful cloud services: Azure App Service: Run, manage, and scale .NET 9 web applications efficiently. Check out this blog to learn more about what's new in Azure App Service. Azure Functions: Leverage serverless computing to build event-driven .NET 9 applications with improved runtime capabilities. Azure Container Apps: Deploy microservices and containerized .NET 9 workloads with integrated observability. Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS): Run .NET 9 applications in a managed Kubernetes environment with expanded ARM64 support. Azure AI Services and Azure OpenAI Services: Integrate advanced AI and OpenAI capabilities directly into your .NET 9 applications. Azure API Management, Azure Logic Apps, Azure Cognitive Services, and Azure SignalR Service: Ensure seamless integration and scaling for .NET 9 solutions. These services provide developers with a robust platform to build high-performance, scalable, and cloud-native applications while leveraging Azure’s optimized environment for .NET. Streamlined Cloud-Native Development with .NET Aspire .NET Aspire is a game-changer for cloud-native applications, enabling developers to build distributed, production-ready solutions efficiently. Available in preview with .NET 9, Aspire streamlines app development, with cloud efficiency and observability at its core. The latest updates in Aspire include secure defaults, Azure Functions support, and enhanced container management. Key capabilities include: Optimized Azure Integrations: Aspire works seamlessly with Azure, enabling fast deployments, automated scaling, and consistent management of cloud-native applications. Easier Deployments to Azure Container Apps: Designed for containerized environments, .NET Aspire integrates with Azure Container Apps (ACA) to simplify the deployment process. Using the Azure Developer CLI (azd), developers can quickly provision and deploy .NET Aspire projects to ACA, with built-in support for Redis caching, application logging, and scalability. Built-In Observability: A real-time dashboard provides insights into logs, distributed traces, and metrics, enabling local and production monitoring with Azure Monitor. With these capabilities, .NET Aspire allows developers to deploy microservices and containerized applications effortlessly on ACA, streamlining the path from development to production in a fully managed, serverless environment. Integrating AI into .NET: A Seamless Experience In our ongoing effort to empower developers, we’ve made integrating AI into .NET applications simpler than ever. Our strategic partnerships, including collaborations with OpenAI, LlamaIndex, and Qdrant, have enriched the AI ecosystem and strengthened .NET’s capabilities. This year alone, usage of Azure OpenAI services has surged to nearly a billion API calls per month, illustrating the growing impact of AI-powered .NET applications. Real-World AI Solutions with .NET: .NET has been pivotal in driving AI innovations. From internal teams like Microsoft Copilot creating AI experiences with .NET Aspire to tools like GitHub Copilot, developed with .NET to enhance productivity in Visual Studio and VS Code, the platform showcases AI at its best. KPMG Clara is a prime example, developed to enhance audit quality and efficiency for 95,000 auditors worldwide. By leveraging .NET and scaling securely on Azure, KPMG implemented robust AI features aligned with strict industry standards, underscoring .NET and Azure as the backbone for high-performing, scalable AI solutions. Performance Enhancements in .NET 9: Raising the Bar for Azure Workloads .NET 9 introduces substantial performance upgrades with over 7,500 merged pull requests focused on speed and efficiency, ensuring .NET 9 applications run optimally on Azure. These improvements contribute to reduced cloud costs and provide a high-performance experience across Windows, Linux, and macOS. To see how significant these performance gains can be for cloud services, take a look at what past .NET upgrades achieved for Microsoft’s high-scale internal services: Bing achieved a major reduction in startup times, enhanced efficiency, and decreased latency across its high-performance search workflows. Microsoft Teams improved efficiency by 50%, reduced latency by 30–45%, and achieved up to 100% gains in CPU utilization for key services, resulting in faster user interactions. Microsoft Copilot and other AI-powered applications benefited from optimized runtime performance, enabling scalable, high-quality experiences for users. Upgrading to the latest .NET version offers similar benefits for cloud apps, optimizing both performance and cost-efficiency. For more information on updating your applications, check out the .NET Upgrade Assistant. For additional details on ASP.NET Core, .NET MAUI, NuGet, and more enhancements across the .NET platform, check out the full Announcing .NET 9 blog post. Conclusion: Your Path to the Future with .NET 9 and Azure .NET 9 isn’t just an upgrade—it’s a leap forward, combining cutting-edge AI integration, cloud-native development, and unparalleled performance. Paired with Azure’s scalability, these advancements provide a trusted, high-performance foundation for modern applications. Get started by downloading .NET 9 and exploring its features. Leverage .NET Aspire for streamlined cloud-native development, deploy scalable apps with Azure, and embrace new productivity enhancements to build for the future. For additional insights on ASP.NET, .NET MAUI, NuGet, and more, check out the full Announcing .NET 9 blog post. Explore the future of cloud-native and AI development with .NET 9 and Azure—your toolkit for creating the next generation of intelligent applications.Past due! Act now to upgrade from these retired Azure services
This is your friendly reminder that the following Azure services were retired on August 31, 2024: Azure App Service Environment v1 and v2 Logic Apps Integration Service Environment Azure API Management stv1 Congratulations to the majority of our customers who have completed the migration to the latest versions! Your timely actions have ensured the continued security and performance of your applications and data. For those still running the retired environments, it is crucial to migrate immediately to avoid security risks and data loss. As part of the retirement process, Azure has already begun decommissioning the hardware. It is possible that your retired environment will experience intermittent outages, or it may be suspended. Please complete your migration as soon as possible. Azure App Service Environment (ASE) v1 and v2:If your environment experiences any intermittent outages, it is important that you acknowledge the outages in the Azure Portal and begin work to migrate immediately. You may also request a grace period to complete the migration. If there is no request for grace period or no action from customers after repeated reminders, the environment may be suspended or deleted, or we may attempt to auto-migrate to the new version. Please consider this only as a last resort and complete the migration using the available resources. This last-resort scenario may require additional configuration from customers to bring the applications back online. If your environment has been automatically migrated, please visit product documentation to learn more: Prevent and recover from an auto-migration of an App Service Environment - Azure App Service Environment | Microsoft Learn. Logic Apps Integration Services Environment: (ISE): Customers who remain on ISE after the retirement date may have experienced outages. To avoid service disruptions, please export your logic apps workflows from ISE to Logic Apps Standard at the earliest. Additionally, read-only instances will continue to incur standard charges. To avoid unnecessary costs, we recommend customers delete any instances that are no longer in use. As of October 1, 2024, Logic Apps executions on all ISE Developer and ISE Premium instances have been stopped and these instances are also read-only. Logic Apps deployed to these instances will be available for export for a limited time. From January 6, 2025 all ISE instances (Developer and Premium) will start being deleted, incurring loss of data. Azure API Management stv1: Customers who remain on APIM stv1 after the retirement date may have experienced outages. As of October 1, 2024 remaining APIM stv1 service instances have started to undergo auto-migration to the APIM stv2 compute platform. Automatic migration may cause downtime for upstream API consumers, and customers may need to update their network dependencies. All affected customers will be notified of the ongoing automatic migration one week in advance through emails to the subscription administrators and Azure Service Health Portal notifications. To avoid service disruptions, please migrate instances running on stv1 to stv2 at the earliest. The latest migration option addresses the networking dependencies, particularly the need for new subnets and IP changes. You can now retain the original IPs, both public and private, significantly simplifying the migration process. What is the impact on support and SLA? As of September 1, 2024, the Service Level Agreement (SLA) will no longer be applicable for continued use of the retired products beyond the retirement date. Azure customer support will continue to handle support cases in a commercially reasonable manner. No new security and compliance investments will be made. The ability to effectively mitigate issues that might arise from lower-level Azure dependencies may be impaired due to the retirement. What is the call to action? If you are still running one or more of the following services, please use the available resources listed here to complete the migration at the earliest. Announcement Learn live Migration Resources Public resources App Service Environment version 1 and version 2 will be retired on 31 August 2024 Episode 1 Bonus episode: Side by side migration App Service Environment version 3 migration Using the in-place migration feature Auto migration overview and grace period Estimate your cost savings Integration Services Environment will be retired on 31 August 2024 Episode 2 Logic Apps Standard migration Export ISE workflows to a Standard logic app ISE Retirement FAQ Support for API Management instances hosted on the stv1 platform will be retired by 31 August 2024. Episode 3 API Management STV2 migrationExciting Updates Coming to Conversational Diagnostics (Public Preview)
Last year, at Ignite 2023, we unveiled Conversational Diagnostics (Preview), a revolutionary tool integrated with AI-powered capabilities to enhance problem-solving for Windows Web Apps. This year, we're thrilled to share what’s new and forthcoming for Conversational Diagnostics (Preview). Get ready to experience a broader range of functionalities and expanded support across various Azure Products, making your troubleshooting journey even more seamless and intuitive.Unlock Business Growth with Azure Application Platform innovations
AI is reshaping industries, driving transformation in how businesses operate, communicate, and serve customers. In today’s fast-evolving Generative AI landscape, businesses feel the urgency to transform their customer experiences and business processes with AI applications. In a recent study, IDC found that Generative AI usage has jumped significantly, up from 55% in 2023 to 75% in 2024. The return on investment for Generative AI is also significant. IDC found that companies on average experience a 3.7x return on their investment. To deliver business impact with AI applications, businesses are equally looking to modernizing existing applications. However, building and modernizing applications to deliver scalable, reliable, and highly performant AI applications can be complex, time consuming and resource intensive. Microsoft, a leader in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud Application Platform and Container Management, provides a comprehensive application platform designed to address these challenges. Azure’s application platform and services provide developers and IT operators with a comprehensive suite of services to build, deploy, and scale modern intelligent applications in a quick, secure and efficient manner. Join us at Microsoft Ignite 2024 from Nov 18–22, in Chicago and online, to discover the latest Azure Application Platform updates, enhancements, and tools to accelerate your AI app development and app modernization journey. Accelerate business growth with AI Apps From container-based services with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and Azure Container Apps (ACA), to Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering like Azure App Service, and powerful integration capabilities with Azure Integration Services and serverless capabilities with Azure Functions – Azure’s Application Platform provides a complete, end-to-end solution for building, deploying, and managing AI applications - all in one place. The unified platform enables businesses to go from ideas to production faster by leveraging an extensive array of 1600+ AI models in Azure AI Studio Model Catalog, integrated with popular developer tools like GitHub, GitHub Copilot and Visual Studio, and real-time transactional data in Azure databases. At Microsoft Ignite, we are announcing several new enhancements to our Application Platform to help you build transformational AI applications: Real-time AI inferencing with Serverless GPUs: Azure Container Apps now support serverless GPUs in public preview. Serverless GPU enables you to seamlessly run AI workloads on-demand with automatic scaling, optimized cold start, per-second billing with scale down to zero when not in use, and reduced operational overhead to support easy real-time custom model inferencing and other machine learning tasks. Learn more. Azure Container Apps Dynamic Sessions: Dynamic sessions in Azure Container Apps, now generally available, is a fast, sandboxed, ephemeral compute, suitable for running AI-generated, untrusted code at scale in multi-tenancy scenarios. Each session has full compute isolation using Hyper-V. You now have easy access to fast, ephemeral, sandboxed compute on Azure without managing infrastructure. Learn more. AI capabilities in Azure Logic Apps: AI capabilities are now available in the Azure Logic Apps Consumption SKU in public preview, offering advanced features like the Azure AI Search Connector, Azure OpenAI Connector, and Forms Recognizer. These enhancements enable intelligent document processing, enhanced search, and language capabilities for more intelligent workflows. Additionally, Azure Logic Apps Standard now supports Templates, providing pre-built workflow solutions to streamline integration workflow development. Learn more. AI Template Gallery: To help developers quickly get started with building AI apps, we’ve created an AI App Template Gallery that features templates for common AI use cases. With these templates, you can start building AI apps on Azure in as little as 5 minutes. Free services for AI apps: Start building AI apps with free Azure application, data, and AI services to minimize upfront costs. Explore which services offer free monthly amounts to estimate the cost for your project. Discover specialized programs for startups and students to develop AI-powered apps on Azure. Learn more. Learn how customers like H&R Block , Pimco, Novo Nordisk, Harvey, Jato Dynamics, Medigold Health and C.H.Robinson are delivering transformational business impact with AI applications on Azure. Modernize your Apps for AI and continuous innovation To remain competitive, organizations must keep up with modern app development trends and meet evolving customer expectations. This means accelerating application development speed, enhancing scalability and agility, and overcoming the limitations of legacy applications, which can be costly to maintain and challenging to innovate on. At Microsoft Ignite, we are announcing several new features and enhancements to help you accelerate your app modernization and become AI ready faster. Azure App Service: We are excited to announce the general availability of sidecars in Azure App Service, a versatile pathway for organizations to modernize existing apps and add powerful new capabilities without significant rewrites necessary in the main application code. They enable you to add new capabilities by adding SDKs—like AI, logging, monitoring, and security features—to your primary application without the need to significantly modify and redeploy the app. Learn more. GitHub Copilot upgrade assistant for Java: Keeping Java apps up to date with the latest versions can be a time-consuming task. GitHub Copilot upgrade assistant for Java, currently in private preview, enables you to use AI to simplify upgrading Java applications with autonomous AI agents, ensuring trust and transparency throughout the upgrade experience. Learn more. Bring Your Own License for JBoss EAP on Azure App Service: We are excited to announce General Availability of Bring Your Own License for JBoss EAP on Azure App Service is coming in December 2024. You can use existing JBoss EAP subscriptions to deploy applications to Azure App Service, making it far easier to move existing applications to the cloud while retaining support from both Red Hat and Microsoft across the application lifecycle. Learn more. Logic Apps Hybrid Deployment Model: Azure Logic Apps has introduced a new Hybrid Deployment Model, enabling businesses to run integration workflows on their own infrastructure—on-premises, private clouds, or other public clouds. This model allows greater flexibility for meeting specific regulatory, privacy, and network requirements while still benefiting from the rich 1400+ Logic Apps connector library for seamless integration with enterprise systems. Learn more. Azure Migrate application assessments: The newly released Application aware assessment capability in Azure Migrate helps with application-level migrations, rather than individual servers or application components. The Azure Migrate app and code assessment tool and GitHub Copilot Chat integration offer more granular code assessment and AI-assisted suggestions for changes required to successfully run .NET and Java applications on Azure Learn more. Learn how customers like Commercial Bank of Dubai, Scandinavian Airlines, Nexi, Ossur, Sapiens, MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company and Finastra leverage Azure’s application platform to modernize their business-critical applications and deliver enhanced customer experience. Scale and secure enterprise-grade production apps When working with customers on modernizing their applications, we consistently hear about challenges in securing and scaling legacy systems. Outdated infrastructure often leads to operational bottlenecks, slows development, and impacts competitiveness. With rising cyber threats, older systems can lack the robust security measures necessary to protect data and applications. Microsoft Azure addresses these needs with a globally available, enterprise-grade platform that integrates security at every level. Check out Azure application platform announcements at Microsoft Ignite to help you scale and secure your enterprise applications: Scale, secure, and optimize Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS): AKS is designed to simplify Kubernetes adoption for developers and operators of all skill levels. With the latest updates, AKS is now more user-friendly, secure, and cost-efficient, allowing you to focus on building and scaling your applications without worrying about the underlying infrastructure. Read the summaries below and this blog for more details. Cluster upgrades are now more reliable and efficient, and multiple clusters can be upgraded automatically. Additionally, AKS Automatic (preview) will now dynamically select an appropriate virtual machine (VM) based on the capacity in your Azure subscription. With AKS, you now have full visibility over runtime and host vulnerabilities in your AKS cluster. The AKS security dashboard (now available in preview as a blade in Azure portal) offers a simplified and streamlined view of security vulnerabilities and remediation insights for resource owners or cluster administrators. Trusted launch (generally available) enhances the security of certain virtual machines (VMs) by protecting against advanced and persistent attack techniques. Intelligent workload scheduling in Azure Kubernetes Fleet Manager is now generally available, providing operators more control when deploying workloads to optimize resource utilization and simplify multi-cluster scenarios. Auto-instrumentation through Application Insights (coming soon) makes it easier to access telemetry like metrics, requests, and dependencies, as well as visualizations like the application dashboard and application map. Expanded GenAI gateway capabilities in Azure API Management: Azure API Management has expanded support for GPT-4o models, including both text and image-based capabilities. Additionally, the new Generative AI Gateway Token Quota allows flexible token quotas (daily, weekly, or monthly), helping organizations control costs and track usage patterns for effective resource management. Learn more. Achieve instant fast scaling with Azure Functions: Flex Consumption plan is a new Azure Functions hosting plan that builds on the consumption pay-per-second serverless billing model with automatic scale down to zero when not in use for cost efficiency. With Flex Consumption plan now in General Availability, you can integrate with your virtual network at no extra cost, ensuring secure and private communication, with no considerable impact to your app’s scale out performance. Learn more. Learn how customers like BMW, ABN-AMRO, SPAR, ClearBank are scaling and operating mission critical enterprise-grade production apps on Azure application platform. With the Azure Application Platform, you can build new AI applications and modernize your existing applications faster, while ensuring end-to-end security and scalability across the entire app development journey, from development to production. Join us at Ignite this week and learn more about updates for Azure Digital and App Innovation: Here.Import Logic Apps (Standard) into Azure API Management
API Management (APIM) is a way to create consistent and modern API gateways for existing back-end services. API Management helps organizations publish APIs to external, partner, and internal developers to unlock the potential of their data and services. Azure Logic Apps is a cloud-based platform for creating and running automated logic app workflows that integrate your apps, data, services, and systems. With this platform, you can quickly develop highly scalable integration solutions for your enterprise and business-to-business (B2B) scenarios. To create a logic app, you use either the Logic App (Consumption) resource type or the Logic App (Standard) resource type. The Consumption resource type runs in the multi-tenant Azure Logic Apps or integration service environment, while the Standard resource type runs in single-tenant Azure Logic Apps environment. This blog walks you through step by step on how to import Logic App (Standard) into Azure API Management. For how to import a Logic App (Consumption) into APIM, please refer to our public doc Prerequisites— Create an Azure API Management instance. Create a Logic App The functionality to directly import from “Create from Azure Resource” is not available for workflows in Logic App (Standard) yet. We will demonstrate how to overcome this limitation in the followings. Steps to import Logic App (Standard) into Azure API Management: ======================================================== As an alternative, to import the Logic App (Standard) we can manually register the Request trigger URL from workflows as a blank API in APIM service. We will need to divide the Request URL(i.e., Logic Apps Workflow URL) into two parts to put into the backend and frontend. For example – this request URL can be broken into 2 segments— https://stdla1.azurewebsites.net:443/api/TESTWF1/triggers/manual/invoke?api-version=2020-05-01-pre...> Part 1 https://stdla1.azurewebsites.net:443/api/ Part 2 /test2/triggers/manual/invoke?api-version=2020-05-01-preview&sp=%2Ftriggers%2Fmanual%2Frun&sv=1.0&sig=<123abc> We need to place the part 1 URL into either Webservice URL Or Backend HTTP(s) endpoint by clicking on highlighted part as portrayed below Or Place the part 1 URL of Workflow URL into the backend HTTP(s) endpoint by clicking on highlighted part as portrayed below Then select target as HTTP(s) endpoint and click on override and provide the first part of your request URL as shown in the screenshot. Next add part 2 URL into the frontend section as depicted in the screenshot below. On testing, it gives 200 OK response. Similarly, you can add various workflows as different operations in the same API. This method is useful for Logic App (Standard) Workflows. Happy Learning!! 🙂Boost Your Development with Azure Tools for Visual Studio Code
As the cloud becomes essential for modern software development, integrating cloud solutions into your development process can significantly boost productivity. Microsoft Azure offers a comprehensive suite of services and tools to help developers create, deploy, and manage cloud applications. Using Azure extensions for Visual Studio Code is one of the simplest ways to utilize Azure’s features. This blog post will discuss using the Azure Tools extension pack for Visual Studio Code and the best extensions for various development roles.
