Ignite 2024 & .NET Conf 2024: my personal thoughts
- didierestevespro
- May 5
- 5 min read
Original Link to Medium : Link
Article written without any help from AI.
Hi everybody, I want to share some highlights about the Ignite 2024 that just ended up in Chicago, and .NET conf. It was a lot of information: I didn’t have the time to go to all the new releases but here are the ones that a found interesting. I picked one for security in AI, some new very cool features with Azure Container Apps and .NET Aspire.
1. Advanced AI Risk evaluation and mitigation
It´s about governance with the new service naming from Azure Open AI portal to Azure AI Foundry which introduces a new portal from managing the models, managing security more easily.
On this session, Microsoft says that just like traditional network security, risk is managed like in-depth security, where all layers are scanned, from the user experience, with monitor and calls to the model.
Azure AI Content safety is built on with an agnostic model, which is placed in between the model and user prompt. Organization and configure the level of risk, setting security providing custom categories specific to their needs and deploying it.
I am not a specialist of this area, i think this feature already exists but I like the way it was introduced. Saying that security in AI is a multi-layered step involving many people, many skills and new tools have always been released.
Here is the video that has just been released in YouTube : Trustworthy AI: Advanced AI risk evaluation and mitigation.
2. New features regarding Azure Container Apps
A lot of good stuffs around here, about a service that I like, easy to implement for many scenarios, so let´s take a look !
2.1 Run LLM models using serverless GPU workloads
Now in public preview in West US 3 & Australia, possibility to deploy customized and fine-tuned models within your environments. Thus, the dev teams will focus on the core work meanwhile the infra team can offer this new feature.
I see this feature can encourage organizations to integrate models within their existing infra, using their own policies and integrate with their existing applications in a secure way. Moreover, the costs are more controlled because you have control on the hosting part. In addition, you have the scale to zero capability which means that if you are not using the model, you will not pay for the hosting part.
I encourage organizations thinking ok POC to be prepared when this feature will be GA.
Moreover, you can deploy .NET Aspire solutions to container Apps more easily, so think about it when you are designing your app. It´s not mandatory but it will give you dashboards, help you for the monitoring and provide service discovery by default. DAPR and .NET Aspire can live together by the way.
Link to the book of news : https://news.microsoft.com/ignite-2024-book-of-news/#a-321-azure-container-apps-adds-serverless-gpus-and-dynamic-sessions
2.2 Private endpoints for workload profile
Here, we have the possibility to create secure connections with Azure front door (the global L7 WAF and routing service).
I had a client that wanted to use AFD and Azure container apps in a private way but at the time, this feature didn´t exist so I am very happy that now, we can propose this feature that will brings more security because all traffic will remain on the Azure backbone with no public exposure. This is possible using private Ips.
Be careful you must use Azure CLI for the moment, the integration with the portal will come soon according to Microsoft.
2.3 Planned maintenance
It was another question that I heard from a previous client: how can you manage the maintenance on this PAAS service. Well, that´s right that some feature are out of our control (because it´s PAAS), but now we can decide when the non-critical updates/patchs or bug fixes will be applied to your Container App Environment.
Like this you can:
Test the new version before choosing to update in production
Choose to update when no users are connected (by night for example)
2.4 Java is now available
Now we can support Java applications in Container Apps (link). So, if you have Flask applications and so on, you can use it on this PAAS service.
3. .NET 9 & .NET Aspire 9.0
The dotnet conf is now from a few years the moment when a new version of .NET is released, now we have the .NET 9 version with this updated roadmap for your maintenance (keep in mind for your projects and your clients in order to setup the planning of future evolutions).
I am always surprised to see that many clients do not think of upgrading this stack. I agree to say that it will no bring some additional value to the client, but as IT, we must address this work in order to avoid issue that an application will merely not work at all. This is our responsibility.
This image shows us quite well how .NET Aspire is a very good option when it comes to make a choice. This is not mandatory to use it, but as the documentation says :
.NET Aspire is a set of powerful tools, templates, and packages for building observable, production ready apps. .NET Aspire is delivered through a collection of NuGet packages that handle specific cloud-native concerns.
4. Azure Local
This is a rebranding of Azure Stack HCI with new features. In this video we can see how to deploy Azure local on two servers, without any pre-installed OS and with a simple USB key.
In those servers you can add them to the Azure Control plane, declare it as an Azure Arc Server and deploy VM, Aks and so on! It is very impressive, it brings new uses case for retail, medical health care or industry. Imagine that you have a poor connection or want to keep your data locally: Azure Local is an excellent choice (be sure to think about how to operate it).
Moreover, the failover can be configured if you have more than one server. I think that it can be a good complement: imagine that you already have Azure Arc Servers, you can simply add new ones as physical ones to improve the failover process and keep another copy of your data. Business continuity is also improved.
Link to the video: Azure Local with low cost hardware — YouTube
I hope that you had an enjoyable reading and do not hesitate to post a comment!
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