Azure Snippets w/c 20/05/2024

By Jon Lee

Summary of Azure snippets for the week commencing 20th May 2024, grouped by Azure service.

GA = Generally Available
Public/Private Preview = as stated :-)

Microsoft Build took place this week, so lots of announcements - unsurprisingly, a strong focus on Copilot and AI, though there were some other technologies covered as well. Have a look at the Build 2024 Book of News for all the new stuff announced.

Azure services with highlighted updates this week:

API Management

Availability Zones

  • Inter-zone data transfer will no longer be charged for : Until recently MS charged £0.009/GB for data transfer between Availability Zones. For me, they’re now the primary platform DR feature in Azure (where supported), so data transfer being made free (even from a very small cost base) is definitely helpful.

Azure Backup

Azure Cache for Redis

Azure Compute

Azure Container Storage

Azure Kubernetes Service

  • Kubernetes 1.30 support (Public Preview)
  • KEDA in the Azure Portal (GA?) : Kubernetes Event-Drive Autoscaler (KEDA) is an open-source, lightweight component that allows users to autoscale container workloads on events in external scalers. KEDA extends the functionality of the native Kubernetes Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA) with a wide variety of scalers and scale-to-zero capabilities, thus allowing user applications to meet demand in a more sustainable and cost-efficient manner. (Interesting that the article says it’s GA, but the URL has ‘public preview’ in it. This doesn’t seem to be in the KEDA docs yet either (only mentions ARM template and CLI) - approach with caution perhaps :-)
  • AKS Automatic (Public Preview) : Azure-managed cluster configuration and operations, including nodes, scaling, security, and other preconfigured settings. Bringing some of the management features of e.g. Container Apps to AKS clusters?
  • Automated deployments for AKS (GA) : Simplify the process of setting up a GitHub Action and creating an automated pipeline for your code releases to your AKS cluster. Private clusters currently not supported.
  • In context observability for AKS object overviews in Azure Portal (GA) : View CPU and memory utilisation at a namespace and workload level. More AKS observability in the portal directly - useful for seeing at a glance where there might be issues. Powered by Azure Monitor service for managed Prometheus.
  • Draft : Draft is an open-source MS tool that makes it easier for developers to get started building apps that run on Kubernetes by taking a non-containerized application and generating the Dockerfiles, Kubernetes manifests, Helm charts, Kustomize configuration, and other artifacts associated with a containerized application. Draft can also generate a GitHub Actions workflow file to quickly build and deploy applications onto any Kubernetes cluster. Latest update can now validate manifests against best practices using AKS deployment safeguards.
  • App Configuration Extension for AKS (Public Preview) : Allows you to install and manage the Azure App Configuration Kubernetes Provider on your AKS cluster via Azure Resource Manager (ARM).

Azure Resource Manager

Azure SQL

  • Licence-free standby replica (GA) : Designate your secondary DB as a standby replica and save about 40% on costs. One DB can be designated in the General Purpose & Business Critical service tier and provisioned compute tier.

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