Azure Weekly Updates - March 13th, 2023

More transactions at no additional cost for Azure Standard SSD

As part of our commitment to delivering the best possible value for our Azure Disk Storage customers, we’re announcing a waiver for billable transactions that go beyond the hourly limit for Azure Standard SSD customers. As a result, we have made changes to the billable transaction costs per hour that can result in additional cost savings.

The total cost of Azure Standard SSD storage depends on the size, number of disks, and the number of transactions. Any transactions that exceed the maximum hourly limit will not incur additional charges. New prices took effect on March 6th, 2023.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/updates/more-transactions-at-no-additional-cost-for-azure-standard-ssd/

Model Serving on Azure Databricks

Model Serving on Azure Databricks is now generally. Azure Databricks Model Serving deploys machine learning models as a REST API, allowing you to build real-time ML applications like personalized recommendations, customer service chatbots, fraud detection, and more - ?all without the hassle of managing serving infrastructure. The first feature to launch under this model is Serverless Real-Time Inference.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/updates/generally-available-serverless-realtime-inference-for-azure-databricks/

Data sharing lineage and search for Azure Storage in Microsoft Purview

Data Sharing Lineage is now available in Microsoft Purview for Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS) Gen2 and Azure Blob (Blob) Storage in public preview.

Data Sharing Lineage is aimed to provide detailed information to data producers and data consumers for root cause analysis and impact analysis on their shared data. Data officers can see a list of all datasets that are bi-directionally shared with their partner organizations.

AVAILABLITY: IN PREVIEW

For more information you can click here.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/updates/public-preview-data-sharing-lineage-and-search-for-azure-storage-in-microsoft-purview/

App Insights Extension for Azure Virtual Machines and VM Scale Sets

The Azure Monitor team is happy to share that the application insights extension for virtual machines and virtual machine scale sets is now generally available. You can now easily monitor your IIS-hosted .NET Framework and .NET Core applications running on Azure VMs and VM scale sets. Customers can enable this feature either through the portal or via PowerShell scripts. When enabled, the extension will configure and attach a .NET Application Insights agent to your application runtime so that application-level logs, metrics, and traces flow into your Application Insights resource.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/updates/generally-available-app-insights-extension-for-azure-virtual-machines-and-vm-scale-sets/

Collect Syslog from AKS nodes using Azure Monitor - Container Insights

Syslog is a popular message logging standard that can be used across a variety of devices like servers, Virtual Machines, routers, and other devices. Enterprises commonly use syslog for collecting logs in on-premise, and IaaS workloads.

AVAILABLITY: IN PREVIEW

For more information you can click here.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/updates/public-preview-collect-syslog-from-aks-nodes-using-azure-monitor-container-insights/

Azure Monitor managed service for Prometheus now supports querying PromQL

With Azure Workbooks support for Azure Monitor managed service Prometheus, users can use our out of box Prometheus explorer workbook to run PromQL queries in the portal.

In addition, users get the benefit of creating their own custom Prometheus workbook reports.

AVAILABLITY: IN PREVIEW

For more information you can click here.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/updates/public-preview-azure-monitor-managed-service-for-prometheus-now-supports-querying-promql/

Azure Ultra Disk Storage in the China North 3 Azure region

Azure Ultra Disk Storage is now available in the China North 3 Azure region. Azure Ultra Disk Storage offers high throughput, high input/output operations per second (IOPS), and consistent low latency disk storage for Azure Virtual Machines. Ultra Disk Storage is well-suited for data-intensive workloads such as SAP HANA, top-tier databases, and transaction-heavy workloads.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/updates/generally-available-azure-ultra-disk-storage-in-the-china-north-3-azure-region/

Azure Backup enables vaulted backups for Azure Blob for comprehensive data protection.

Azure Backup now supports transferring your Azure Blob backups to the vault. A vault is a logical entity that stores the backups and recovery points created over time. You can define a backup schedule for creating recovery points and specify retention settings that determine how long backups will be stored in the vault. The vaulted backups are isolated from the source data enabling you to continue your business operations even if the source data is compromised by performing seamless restores using existing recovery points. You can configure and manage vaulted and operational backups via a single backup policy.

AVAILABLITY: IN PREVIEW

For more information you can click here.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/updates/azureblobvaultedbackups/

Yocto Kirkstone recipes for IoT Edge 1.4 LTS

The meta-iotedge layer now contains Kirkstone compatible recipes to build the latest 1.4 LTS release of IoT Edge. ?The layer tracks the LTS release of IoT Edge and LTS release of Yocto with recipes for both Kirkstone and Dunfell.

Additional Credits:

We also want to recognize the community members that helped enable the recipes for Kirkstone including Nathan Morrison (Timesys), Theo Barker (Hach), and Ruben Schwarz (SOTEC). ?Thank you!

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/updates/general-availability-yocto-kirkstone-recipes-for-iot-edge-14-lts/

Spot Priority Mix

Azure is excited to announce the General Availability of Spot Priority Mix, a new feature for Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS) with Flexible Orchestration Mode enabled. With Spot Priority Mix, customers can now mix spot and standard virtual machines in their Flexible scale set, providing the high availability of standard virtual machines and the cost savings of Spot virtual machines. This feature also allows customers to autoscale their scale set with a percentage split of Spot and standard virtual machines, providing even more flexibility and cost optimization.

AVAILABLITY: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/updates/ga-spot-priority-mix/

Azure Backup enables vaulted backups for Azure Files for comprehensive data protection.

Azure Backup now supports configuring vaulted backups for Azure Files. A vault is a logical entity that stores the backups and recovery points created over time. You can create a backup policy to define your backup schedule and retention. Based on the policy definition, Azure Backup service transfers backups to the vault and manages their lifecycle. Hence, you get automated managed off-site backups.

AVAILABLITY: IN PREVIEW

For more information you can click here.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/updates/azurefilesvaultedbackups-2/

Accelerated Connections for Network Virtual Appliances now in Azure Marketplace

Accelerated Connections is a new product that enhances Accelerated Networking enabled vNICs, enabling customer flexibility in selecting the best option of CPS capabilities suited to match their Azure implementation. ?This offering will enable you to achieve the first bare-metal-like performance levels for connections per second (CPS) in Azure. ? For public preview we offer up to 10x performance versus previous thresholds, with total active connections increasing up to 2x. ?Moving toward general availability, you will be able to select performance levels for your NVAs. ?We are currently deploying region-by-region in an opt-in implementation.

AVAILABLITY: IN PREVIEW

For more information you can click here.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/updates/public-preview-accelerated-connections-for-network-virtual-appliances-now-in-azure-marketplace/