Azure Weekly Updates - April 03rd, 2023

Azure Chaos Studio is now available in Brazil South region

Azure Chaos Studio is a managed service that uses chaos engineering to help measure, understand, and improve cloud applicaion and service resilience. Azure Chaos Studio is now available in Brazil South region. For complete list of regions, see list of regions Azure Chaos Studio is available.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Simpler way to renaming Network Interface (NIC) and Disks for protected VMs in Azure Site Recovery

A simpler way to name and rename Network Interfaces (NICs) and Disks for recovery or target virtual machines in your recovery services vaults on the Azure portal is now generally available.

Earlier, upon protecting a VM with Site Recovery (ASR), ASR configured the names of recovery NICs and Disks same as the source. With this update, Azure Site Recovery enables you to easily name and rename a Network Interfaces (NICs) and Disks for recovery or target VMs in your recovery services vaults.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Resource governance for client applications in Azure Event Hubs

Using application groups, you can create logical groupings between client applications that connect (publish or consume events) with Event Hubs and apply throttling and data access policies per each client group. You can associate an application group with a uniquely identifiable condition such as the security context (shared access signatures (SAS) or Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) application ID - of the client application) either at Event Hubs namespace level or event hub /Kafka topic level. By defining an application group and using application group policies, you can throttle low priority producers or consumers while allowing high priority producers or consumers to stream data without any interruptions.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Migrate from a Run As account to Managed Identities using Azure Site Recovery

You can now migrate the authentication type of the Automation accounts to Managed Identities using Azure Site Recovery on the Azure portal. ?

Authentication of runbooks via Run As Account will retire on September 30, 2023. Prior to this, you must migrate your runbooks to use managed identities.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

nconnect support for Azure Files NFS v4.1 shares

Azure Files NFS v4.1 share now support nconnect option. Nconnect is a client-side Linux mount option that increases performance at scale. With nconnect, the NFS mount uses more TCP connections between the client and the Azure Files service for NFSv4.1. Using Nconnect can improve a client’s throughput/IOPS upto 4X and reduce TCO by upto 70%. There is no additional billing cost associated to using this feature. This feature is available to all existing and new shares.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB vCore

Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB vCore offers an integrated, performant, and cost efficient fully-managed database for your MongoDB workloads. You can continue using the MongoDB tools, drivers, and SDKs you're familiar with while boosting developer efficiency through deep integration with Azure products. Additionally, you can enjoy peace of mind knowing that you have one support team for all services.

AVAILABLITY: IN PREVIEW

For more information you can click here.

Migration feature with Azure Database for PostgreSQL – Flexible Server

Azure Database for PostgreSQL – Flexible Server is the next generation managed PostgreSQL service in Azure which provides maximum flexibility over your database, built-in cost-optimizations, and offers several improvements over Single Server. We highly recommend you migrate to Flexible Server to have the best experience of running PostgreSQL workloads on Azure. The new migration feature includes a seamless, inline experience to migrate your Single Server to Flexible Server. Currently this feature supports fast offline migrations; support for online migrations will be introduced at a later point in time.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

New Azure Monitor audit logging policy released

Azure Monitor enables customers to gain end-to-end observability into their applications, infrastructure, and network by collecting, analyzing and acting on telemetry data from their cloud and hybrid environments. Diagnostic settings is a common mechanism by which customers can enable collection of platform logs that Azure makes available on the performance of their Azure resources.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Microsoft Purview DevOps policies for Azure SQL Database

DevOps policies, a type of Microsoft Purview access policies, allow you to manage access to system metadata on data sources that have been registered for Data use management in Microsoft Purview. This feature enables IT/DevOps personnel to ensure that their critical database estate is healthy, performing to expectations and is secure. ?

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Azure Migrate - Discover ASP.NET & Java web apps and assess ASP.NET in all environments

Azure Migrate can now discover Java & ASP.NET web apps running on Tomcat & IIS web servers respectively across all stacks (VMware, Hyper-V and Physical) and assess ASP.NET web apps for Azure App Service code (native) at-scale. This feature fills the gaps for customers who have app workloads running on stacks beyond VMware.

Key discovery capabilities include:

Scale support: 20,000 web apps per appliance

Support for apps on Windows Server 2008 R2 and above.

Support for apps on Ubuntu Linux 16.04/18.04/20.04, Debian 7/8, CentOS 6/7, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5/6/7.

Support for Java web app hosted on Tomcat 8 or later.

Support for .Net app hosted on IIS 7.5 and above.

Support for multiple web app instances in a server

AVAILABLITY: IN PREVIEW

For more information you can click here.

Multi-Column Distribution for Dedicated SQL pools is now available!

Multi-Column Distribution (MCD) for Azure Synapse Dedicated SQL pools allows you to distribute data on multiple columns to balance the data distribution in your tables and reduce data movement during query execution. With Multi-Column distribution, you can choose up to eight columns for distribution. MCD is highly desirable for easing migrations, promotes faster query performance and reduces data skew.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Azure Monitor Alerts now support duplicating alert rules

When viewing the details of an alert rule in the Azure portal, a new “Duplicate” command option is now available, allowing to duplicate the alert rule. When selecting to duplicate an existing alert rule, the alert rule creation wizard will be launched, pre-populated with the configuration of the original alert rule, while allowing tweaks to be made.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Azure Premium SSD v2 Disk Storage in East US 2, North Europe and West US 2

Azure Premium SSD v2 Disk Storage is now available in East US 2, North Europe, and West US 2 regions. This next-generation storage solution offers advanced general-purpose block storage with the best price performance, delivering sub-millisecond disk latencies for demanding IO-intensive workloads at a low cost. It is well-suited for a wide range of enterprise production workloads, including SQL Server, Oracle, MariaDB, SAP, Cassandra, MongoDB, big data analytics, gaming on virtual machines, and stateful containers.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

customer managed key encryption for Enterprise tier caches

Now in preview, Enterprise and Enterprise Flash tier caches can use customer managed keys (CMK) to control encrypted access to the operating system and persistence disk attached to their Enterprise tier cache instances. This ensures that the RDB or AOF files created from Redis persistence or export features are encrypted at rest with a compliant and secure key that can be controlled by the customer. ?Keys can be stored using Azure Key Vault and user-assigned managed identity is used for authorization.

AVAILABLITY: IN PREVIEW

For more information you can click here.

Larger SKUs for App Service Environment v3

Enterprises are now able to operate more securely with large SKUs to support more demanding workloads with App Service Environment v3. New Isolated v2 SKUs of 64GB/ 128GB/ 256GB provide compelling value to organizations that need a dedicated tenant to run their most sensitive and demanding applications.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Azure HDInsight for Apache Kafka 3.2.0 is now available for public preview.

After notable improvements in performance and stability, Azure HDInsight for Apache Kafka 3.2.0 now available for public preview and ready for production workloads. The essential changes include features and improvements. Review the official release notes and migration guidelines to assess potential changes to your applications.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Connection audit logs for Enterprise tier caches

Now in preview, Enterprise and Enterprise Flash tier caches can log all connection, disconnection, and authentication events occurring on the cache. This is a powerful tool to monitor for any unauthorized usage of a cache resource, for instance by looking for unknown IP addresses connected to the cache or for unsuccessful authentication attempts. Logs can be sent to Azure Log Analytics, a storage account, an event hub, or even a partner solution.

AVAILABLITY: IN PREVIEW

For more information you can click here.

Storage in-place sharing in Microsoft Purview in additional regions

Storage in-place data sharing with Microsoft Purview public preview is now supported for Azure Data Lake Gen2 and Blob storage accounts in East US, East US2, North Europe, Southcentral US, West Central US, West Europe, West US, West US2

The public preview is already supported for storage accounts in Canada Central, Canada East, UK South, UK West, Australia East, Japan East, Korea South, and South Africa North.

AVAILABLITY: IN PREVIEW

For more information you can click here.

AKS support for Kubernetes 1.26 release

AKS support for Kubernetes release 1.26 is now in public preview. Kubernetes 1.26 delivers 37 enhancements. This release includes new improvements in general Kubernetes metrics as well as in pod scheduling.

AVAILABLITY: IN PREVIEW

For more information you can click here.

In-place scaling for enterprise caches

Enterprise and Enterprise Flash tier caches now have the ability, in preview, to scale up or out without requiring downtime. Scaling up allows a cache to scale to a larger Enterprise SKU that offers more memory capacity, connections, and compute performance. Scaling out spreads data over additional nodes, which likewise boosts memory and compute performance. With in-place scaling, the scale operation occurs without disrupting the operation of the current cache, allowing you to use the same cache resource with minimal interruption and no need to change cache addresses.

AVAILABLITY: IN PREVIEW

For more information you can click here.

Simplified flush operation for caches using active geo-replication

To prevent unexpected data loss, caches using active geo-replication in the Enterprise or Enterprise Flash tiers of Azure Cache for Redis have the FLUSHDB and FLUSHALL commands blocked by default. This is because flushing one cache in a geo-replication group will also flush all other synchronized caches. Now, a control-plane operation is available that will force flush the data in all caches in the same geo replication group. This operation can be used either through the portal or through CLI/PowerShell. As a control-plane operation, Azure role-based access control roles can be used to limit access to specific users. This provides a safer and more consistent way to clear geo-replicated caches.

AVAILABLITY: IN PREVIEW

For more information you can click here.

Azure Maps is now HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliant

Azure Maps joins several other Azure services with HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliance, enabling healthcare and health insurance providers to use mapping and geospatial services in even more solutions, while ensuring that protected health information (PHI) is managed appropriately.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Mount Azure Files and ephemeral storage in Azure Container Apps

Azure Container Apps, a service for building and deploying modern applications and microservices using serverless containers, now supports mounting Azure Files file shares and ephemeral volumes.

Mount a file share to read and persist data in Azure Files. This is useful for loading large amounts of data without increasing the size of your container images. You can also use Azure Files to share data with other containers and applications.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Azure HDInsight for Apache Kafka 3.2.0 is now available for public preview.

After notable improvements in performance and stability, Azure HDInsight for Apache Kafka 3.2.0 now available for public preview and ready for production workloads. The essential changes include features and improvements.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Azure Service Fabric 9.1 Second Refresh Release

We are excited to announce that the 9.1 Second Refresh release of the Service Fabric runtime has completed rolling out to the various Azure regions along with tooling and SDK updates. The updates for .NET SDK, Java SDK, and Service Fabric runtimes can be downloaded from the links provided in Release Notes. The SDK, NuGet packages, and Maven repositories are already available in all regions.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Azure Image Builder Portal Functionality now available

Azure Image Builder service offers unification and simplification for your image building process across Azure and Azure Stack with an automated image building pipeline. Use Azure Image Builder to help ensure the security—including patching and updating—and full control of your custom images.

Using Azure Image Builder’s new portal functionality, you can now build and validate custom images inside the portal. The functionality has almost all the features currently available in Azure Image Builder’s API, which makes it an easy entry point for getting started customizing images in Azure.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Azure Database for PostgreSQL Single Server will be retired—migrate to Flexible Server by 28 March 2025

On 28 March 2025, Azure Database for PostgreSQL Single Server will be retired, and you'll need to migrate to Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server by that date. Additionally, as part of this change:

Beginning 31 March 2023, you'll no longer be able to create new Single Server instances for PostgreSQL versions 10 and older through the Azure portal.

Beginning 9 November 2023, you'll no longer be able to create new Single Server instances for PostgreSQL version 11 through the Azure portal.

When you migrate to Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server, you'll have access to multiple improvements, including:

? ? ?Support for Postgres version 11 and newer, plus built-in security enhancements.

? ? ?Better price-performance with support for burstable tier compute options.

? ? ?Improved uptime with the ability to configure a hot standby on the same or a different zone and user-controlled maintenance windows.

? ? ?A simplified developer experience for high-performance data workloads.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.