Summary of Azure snippets for the week commencing 16th June 2025, grouped by Azure service. After the flurry of announcements from and around Build, it’s a little quieter this week :-)

For all the updates on Azure platform resources and products - Azure updates from Microsoft

GA = Generally Available
Public/Private Preview = as stated
RET = Service retirement

Azure services with highlighted updates this week:

• API Management
• Azure Backup
• Azure Command Launcher
• Azure DB for PostgreSQL
• Azure Functions
• Azure Kubernetes Services
• Azure SQL

API Management

• Import from Azure AI Foundry to Azure API Management’s AI Gateway (GA) : This capability simplifies onboarding of large language model (LLM) APIs by enabling seamless integration through the Azure portal.

Azure Backup

• Increased Disk Capacity for Azure VM Backup (GA) : VMs can now be protected with individual disks up to 64 TB and a total of 512 TB per VM. This enables large disk support for business continuity and recovery from disasters or ransomware attacks. Reduces the need to exclude disks from a backup set to get a VM backup if you’re still running VMs with lots of disks.

Azure Command Launcher

• Azure Command Launcher for Java (Private Preview) : Announcing the private preview of jaz, a new JVM launcher optimized specifically for Azure. By setting JVM parameters tailored for cloud deployments, jaz reduces wasted memory and CPU cycles, improves first-deploy performance, and enhances cost efficiency. This is ideal for developers who want better JVM defaults without diving deep into JVM tuning guides, and  develop and deploy cloud-native microservices. Works with cloud-native and container workloads.

Azure DB for PostgreSQL

• In-place major version upgrade to PostgreSQL 17 on Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server (Public Preview) : You can now upgrade your Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server instance to PostgreSQL 17 using a simple, in-place upgrade — now available in public preview. This release allows you to move from previous PostgreSQL versions (14, 15, or 16) to PostgreSQL 17 without changing your server endpoint, reconfiguring your application, or performing manual data migration.

Azure Functions

• OpenTelemetry support (Public Preview) : Expanding on the limited preview announced last year, these enhancements deliver better observability, improved performance, and more detailed insights into your function executions, helping you diagnose issues faster and optimize your applications more effectively. For those already using OTEL with tools like Prometheus and Grafana, this makes it easier to integrate Azure Functions into your monitoring.

Azure Kubernetes Services

• AKS Release 2025-06-17 now available (GA) : Among other new features, Kubernetes 1.27 LTS version and 1.30 community version are going out of support by July 30th; Kubernetes 1.33 community version is going to be released before the end of June; AKS patch versions 1.32.5, 1.31.9 are now available; and API Server VNet integration has been rolled out to more regions (includes UK West, but unusually not UK South!).

Azure SQL

• Azure SQL Managed Instance faster management operations (GA) : You can now create and update your Azure SQL Managed Instance with improved speed and precision. The new faster management operations experience enhances elasticity by enabling you to provision any configuration of your instance in under 30 minutes — whether it uses default or custom settings. Update and scaling operations are similarly accelerated, completing in less than 60 minutes compared to the previous four-hour process. Applies to all service tiers, but not to zone-redundant instances.

Summary of Azure snippets for the week commencing 26th May 2025, grouped by Azure service.

With Build taking place last week, a lot of announcements have dropped as usual, so this is a fairly big post. The Build 2025 Book of News has all the details of announcements from there. Plenty of AI focus as usual - I’ll cover some of the stuff that isn’t AI-related here :-)

For all the updates on Azure platform resources and products - Azure updates from Microsoft

Summary of Azure snippets for the week commencing 2nd December 2024, grouped by Azure service.

It’s been a little while since I posted, and this one is a bit of a bumper one with MS Ignite having finished recently - a lot of Azure updates have dropped, along with other products. AI is unsurprisingly a big theme once again :-) Check out the Ignite 2024 Book of News for all the details.

Summary of Azure snippets for the week commencing 28th October 2024, grouped by Azure service.

GA = Generally Available
Public/Private Preview = as stated
RET = Service retirement

Azure services with highlighted updates this week:

• API Center
• Azure Storage
• Compute
• Infrastructure as Code

API Center

• API Management & API Center Synchronization (Public Preview) : Link an APIM instance to API Center to sync the API inventory and keep it continuously up to date.

Azure Storage

• Live Resize for Azure Premium SSD v2 and Ultra Disks (GA) : Increase your Premium SSD v2 and Ultra disks’ storage capacity without stopping your VM. Some limitations to this capability and unsupported regions, check the docs carefully.

Compute

• Azure Cobalt 100-based Virtual Machines (GA) : General purpose Dpsv6-series and Dplsv6-series and memory-optimized Epsv6-series VM series. These VMs run on Microsoft’s first 64-bit Arm-based Azure Cobalt 100 CPU, which has been fully designed in-house. Up to 50% better price performance than previous generation Arm-based VMs. Region availability expanding through the rest of 2024, UK South is coming soon.
  • Arm newsroom post

Infrastructure as Code

• AzAPI version 2.0 released (GA) : The AzAPI provider is designed to expedite the integration of new Azure services with HashiCorp Terraform. It functions as a lightweight layer atop the Azure ARM REST APIs, and is a first class provider experience along with the AzureRM provider. Azure resources that might not yet be or may never be supported in AzureRM can be accessed by this provider, including private/public preview services and features. v2.0 now fully supports HCL (no more JSON) among other updates. Both Microsoft and Hashicorp have blog posts comparing AzureRM and AzAPI and scenarios where you might choose one over the other (they’re mostly the same post but with some additional stuff in each :-) There is also now a tool (aztfmigrate) that lets you migrate resources between the two providers.

Summary of Azure snippets for the week commencing 9th September 2024, grouped by Azure service. Back to regular posting following holidays - though only a couple of updates this time around.

No monthly summary for August as there was only one other post before this one that wasn’t covered by July’s summary.

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

Azure services with highlighted updates this week:

• API Management
• Azure Cache for Redis

API Management

• Workspaces in Azure API Management (GA) : Workspaces enable organizations to manage APIs more productively, securely, and reliably using a federated approach. They function like ‘folders’ within an APIM instance, with access controlled via RBAC. A provisioning enhancement to the developer portal, which can maintain overarching policies, logs, etc. Blog post and documentation.

Azure Cache for Redis

• Larger Enterprise tier cache instances for Azure Cache for Redis (GA) : Large amounts of CPU and memory for the most demanding applications. Very powerful and significantly pricy!

Summary of Azure snippets for the week commencing 3rd June 2024, grouped by Azure service.

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

Azure services with highlighted updates this week:

• API Management
• Azure Bastion
• Azure Load Balancer
• Azure Monitor
• Compute

API Management

• Audit logging in Developer portal (GA) : Audits user actions in the developer portal. Logs can be sent to a storage account, event hub or Log Analytics workspace (common pattern with diagnostic logs in Azure).

Azure Bastion

• Premium SKU (Public Preview) : Adds session recording and private-only deployment to the Standard SKU feature set. Private-only deployment is probably the major new feature here at the moment, though more features are apparently planned for Premium.

Azure Load Balancer

• Health Event Logs (Public Preview) : I can think of several instances when this would have been useful :-) Health event logging through Azure Monitor to help troubleshoot ALB issues. Supported for Standard (regional and global) and Gateway load balancers. A good augmentation to the availability metrics to get more detail - can be queried through Log Analytics and stored/parsed for historical data. UK South only for the preview.
• Admin State (Public Preview) : Override a Load Balancer’s health probe behaviour for each individual backend pool instance without making changes to network security rules or closing ports on a VM. ‘Maintenance mode’ for ALBs (or for the backends) essentially - no need now to modify NSGs or VM config to block connections when maintaining the backends. Only works when a health probe is configured. Documentation and blog post give more details on how it works. Preview available in all regions.

Azure Monitor

• Log Analytics Simple Mode (Public Preview) : Point-and-click analysis of logs without having to know KQL - very useful! KQL mode still available for full-featured querying and analysis. Part of the ’new’ Log Analytics experience.
• Kubernetes Metadata and Logs Filtering in Azure Monitor - Container Insights (Public Preview) : Enhances the ContainerLogsV2 schema with additional Kubernetes metadata. The Logs Filtering feature provides filtering capabilities for both workload and platform (i.e. system namespaces) logs coming out of containers. Visualise results with a Grafana dashboard.
  • Blog post
  • Documentation

Compute

• VM Hibernation (GA) : Hibernation allows saving on compute costs, but persists the VM’s in-memory state so apps etc. resume where they were left off (just like a physical machine hibernating). Available in all public regions.
  • Documentation
  • Blog post

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: