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 19th May 2025, grouped by Azure service.

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:

• Azure Backup
• Azure Bastion
• Azure DB for PostgreSQL
• Azure Functions
• Azure Site Recovery
• Azure Storage
• Cloud Services
• Compute
• Copilot
• FinOps
• Governance
• Infrastructure as Code

Azure Backup

• Vaulted backup for Azure Data Lake Storage (Public Preview) : Azure Backup now supports transferring your Azure Data Lake Storage backups to a vault. In this limited public preview, you can configure vaulted backups for block blobs in a HNS-enabled standard general-purpose v2 ADLS Gen2 storage account in specific regions (a very limited set at present).

Summary of Azure snippets for the week commencing 17th March 2025, grouped by Azure service. Notably, the AKS updates this time include a pretty significant networking retirement.

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:

• Azure Backup
• Azure Kubernetes Services
• Azure Load Balancer
• Azure Storage
• Virtual Network Manager

Azure Backup

• Vaulted Backup for Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server (GA) : Generally available in 5 regions (including UK South and UK West), public preview in others. Definite enhancement to DB for PostgreSQL backups which were previously only available with the server. Good to see more services coming in to Azure Backup to take advantage of the enhanced resilience and security a Vault can provide.

Rather belated happy new year, and welcome to the first post of 2025!

Summary of Azure snippets for the week commencing 10th February 2025, grouped by Azure service.

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:

• Azure Data Studio
• Azure Kubernetes Services
• Azure SQL
• Azure Storage
• Azure Virtual Network Manager
• Compute
• Infrastructure as Code

Azure Data Studio

• Azure Data Studio retiring on 28th February 2026 (RET) : ADS is deprecated from February 2025 - Visual Studio Code with the MSSQL extension is the database development tool of choice going forward. SQL Server Management Studio will remain available to handle any incompatibility issues.

Azure Kubernetes Services

• AKS Communication Manager (Public Preview) : AKS Communication Manager simplifies notifications for all your AKS maintenance tasks by leveraging Azure Resource Notification and Azure Resource Graph frameworks. It provides timely alerts on event triggers and outcomes, allowing you to closely monitor your upgrades. In case of maintenance failures, it notifies you with the reasons for the failure, reducing operational hassles related to observability and follow-ups. It is a bit more ‘DIY’ than the annoucement suggests - you have to build a Logic App and then hook it in to the ARN maintenance alerts.
• Parallel image pulls by default in AKS (GA) : By default, AKS versions earlier than 1.31 use serialized image pulls. Starting with AKS version 1.31 preview, AKS defaults to parallel image pulls, which are generally more performant.
• IMDS restriction support (Public Preview) : Currently, all pods on AKS nodes can access the AKS worker node’s Azure Instance Metadata Service (IMDS) endpoint. AKS now offers a managed solution that restricts IMDS endpoint access for customer pods. Only AKS system pods and user pods with host network can access IMDS for retrieving information or authentication. Good enhancement to the security of your AKS clusters.
• New AKS Monitoring Experience (Public Preview) : The new Monitoring experience, updating Insights, provides both basic (free) and detailed insights (with enabled Prometheus metrics and logging), offering a unified, single-pane-of-glass experience. The basic experience is available for all AKS users with no configuration required at all.

Azure SQL

• Azure SQL DB Free offer (GA) : Try 10 Azure SQL Databases free of charge for the life of your subscription. With just a couple of clicks, you can power the application you want to build. This new offer provides 10 databases, each with 32 GB General Purpose, serverless Azure SQL database, and 100,000 vCore seconds of compute free every month. Available for any subscription type, free amount renews monthly.
• Service Endpoint Policies for Managed Instances (GA) : Azure SQL Managed Instance now allows service endpoint policies for Azure Storage accounts, allowing you to deny your managed instances from accessing any storage account outside of a set of pre-approved ones. This security mechanism helps guard your data from unauthorized copying (data exfiltration) or configuration errors, like exporting production data to development accounts.

Azure Storage

• Azure Files provisioned v2 billing model for HDD (standard) (GA) : Brings the provisioned v2 billing model for Azure Files (allowing separate specification of storage, IOPS and throughput) to standard HDD-based storage. Available in UK South and UK West.

Azure Virtual Network Manager

• New Pricing for AVNM (GA) : Pricing has moved from a subscription-based model to VNet-based (charged by number of VNets where AVNM is deployed).

Compute

• 6th Generation Intel-based VMs - Dv6/Ev6 (GA) : Higher performance than previous generations, Azure Boost built-in including a new Microsoft Azure Network Adapter, NVMe interface for disks to boost storage performance. Naturally, these are great for AI workloads :-) Available in UK South but not UK West as yet. Blog post.
• Upgrade Gen 1 VMs to Gen 2-Trusted Launch (Public Preview) : Trusted Launch VMs provide foundational compute security to Azure Generation 2 VMs by enabling Secure Boot and vTPM capabilities. Trusted Launch capabilities protect OS against rootkits, boot kits and enables attestation by measuring the boot chain of VM. Make sure you check out the documentation if you’re thinking of doing this - it’s not recommended for Production workloads at the moment, and there are a lot of prerequisites and potential gotchas. Note also that you can create a new Gen 2 VM without Trusted Launch, but the upgrade only supports moving to Trusted Launch.

Infrastructure as Code

• Terraform Azure Verified Modules for Platform Landing Zone (ALZ) (GA) : Terraform modules for deploying platform landing zones, along with their own Terraform provider. Seems to tie in with a big overhaul of Azure Verified Modules and Landing Zone documentation - check it all out!

Summary of Azure snippets for the week commencing 11th November 2024, grouped by Azure service.

The new Azure updates page is now live (complete with RSS feed - why they could provide that for the updates but not for the new Tech Community platform blogs is a bit beyond me!). Some of the links this week use the old URL format, but they should still work.

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

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 21st October 2024, grouped by Azure service.

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

Azure services with highlighted updates this week:

• Azure Backup
• Azure Storage
• Compute
• FinOps
• Redis

Azure Backup

• GRS and Cross-Region Restore support for Azure VMs using Premium SSD v2 and Ultra Disk in Azure Backup (GA) : Definite improvement for DR resilience if you’re using Premium SSD v2 or Ultra disks with your VMs. GRS vaults and Cross-Region Restore are currently supported in the following regions for machines using Premium SSDv2 Disks: Southeast Asia, East Asia, North Europe, West Europe, East US, West US, and West US 3. Coming to other regions in later months (not sure this really counts as ‘Generally Available’ yet, if I’m being honest!).

Summary of Azure snippets for the week commencing 16th September 2024, grouped by Azure service. Published slightly later than planned!

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

Azure services with highlighted updates this week:

• Azure Kubernetes Service
• Azure Storage
• Infrastructure as Code

Azure Kubernetes Service

• Latest AKS release (GA) : The latest release has almost finished its rollout:
  • AKS v1.27 is now deprecated - long-term support only
  • New versions of KEDA addon deployed

Azure Storage

• Live Resize for Azure Premium SSD v2 and Ultra Disks (Public Preview) : Dynamically increase the storage capacity of your Premium SSD v2 and Ultra disks without causing any disruption to your applications. Still has some significant limitations and is only available in select regions at present.

Infrastructure as Code

• Terraform AzureRM provider 4.0 (GA) : This version includes new capabilities to improve the extensibility and flexibility of the provider: provider-defined functions and improved resource provider registration.

Summary of Azure snippets for the week commencing 5th August 2024, grouped by Azure service.

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

Azure services with highlighted updates this week:

• Azure Extended Zones
• Azure Kubernetes Service
• Azure Storage

Azure Extended Zones

• Azure Extended Zones (Public Preview) : Extending Azure into a small-footprint deployment (for specific services) where latency or data residency for workloads is a primary concern. Looks like the first Extended Zone is in Los Angeles.

Azure Kubernetes Service

• Leveraging Azure Copilot for AKS : More and deeper integration to make cluster management simpler.
• The latest AKS release is now rolling out :
  • AKS patch versions 1.30.3, 1.29.7, 1.28.12, 1.27.16, are now available (so check your cluster versions for any that now fall into ‘N - 3’ or lower).
  • The AKS extension for Visual Studio Code now supports the ability to attach an ACR to your cluster, generate Kubernetes deployment files, generate Dockerfiles, and generate GitHub Actions

Azure Storage

• Customer Managed Planned Failover for Azure Storage (Public Preview) : Finally, the ability to failover storage endpoints while they’re still healthy is coming! Definitely a boon for DR testing, moving regions if there’s a problem with a different service, etc. Very limited set of regions supported at the moment.

Summary of Azure snippets for the week commencing 22nd July 2024, grouped by Azure service. The Azure Updates site is working again, in its new v2 version, though the RSS feed isn’t yet.

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

Azure services with highlighted updates this week:

• Azure DB for PostgreSQL
• Azure Kubernetes Service
• Azure Storage
• Compute
• Governance

Azure DB for PostgreSQL

• Major version upgrade support for PostgreSQL 16 (GA) : Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server now supports in-place major version upgrades to PostgreSQL 16. This update offers access to the latest PostgreSQL features with minimal downtime and a simplified upgrade process.

Azure Kubernetes Service

• The latest AKS release is now rolling out :
  • AKS version 1.30 is now GA.
  • AKS patch versions 1.30.2, 1.30.1, 1.29.6, 1.28.11, 1.27.15, are now available (so check your cluster versions for any that now fall into ‘N - 3’ or lower).

Azure Storage

• Convert to Azure Premium SSD v2 disks (Public Preview) : This feature allows you to migrate your existing Standard SSD, Standard HDD, or Premium SSD v1 disks to Pv2 disks in a few clicks with minimal downtime. This process avoids disk destruction, eliminates the need to use snapshots as a staging resource, and doesn’t require waiting for background data copying. Expands the conversion capability and could be very useful if your workloads can take advantage of Premium SSD v2 capabilities - you had to create a new v2 SSD disk from a snapshot previously.

Compute

• 6th generation Intel-based VMs – Dv6/Ev6 (Public Preview) : General Purpose and Memory-optimised variants, initially available in US West and US East. Claimed performance increase over v5 VMs as well as increased scalability. Also support Azure Boost for increased performance (as will all new VM series going forward).

Governance

• Azure Essentials | Azure Migrate and Modernize | Azure Innovate - Curated collections of resources to kick off and develop Azure projects. Quite a heavy focus on AI (unsurprisingly :-) but covers other areas as well. Useful starting points to go with resources like the Well-Architected and Cloud Adoption Frameworks.

Summary of Azure snippets for the week commencing 6th May 2024, grouped by Azure service.

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

Azure services with highlighted updates this week:

• API Center
• Azure DB for PostgreSQL
• Azure Kubernetes Service
• Azure Resource Graph
• Azure Storage
• Cloud Services (classic)
• Defender for Cloud
• Virtual Network Manager
• Virtual Networks

API Center

• API Center (GA) : A centralised solution for delivery, consumption and governance of APIs. Provides (among other features): cataloguing and inventory of APIs (including from APIM), governance and design rule enforcement, API Analysis for consistency and compliance, and a Visual Studio Code extension for an enhanced developer experience. More full featured than I thought - is this the future of the APIM developer portal?
  • Azure API Center GA blog post

Azure DB for PostgreSQL

• Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server enhanced disaster recovery features (GA) : Enhancements to the read replicas feature - Virtual Endpoints and promote a read replica to primary server
  • Virtual endpoints for read replicas
  • Promote to primary server
• Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server networking with Azure Private Link (GA) : Private Link joins VNet integration as a supported private VNet access method for PostgreSQL Flexible Server
  • Networking with Private Endpoint docs

Azure Kubernetes Service

• Initialization taints (Public Preview) : Temporary taints on AKS nodes, for example if more time is needed to set up nodes
  • Node initialisation taints docs

Azure Resource Graph

• Azure Change Analysis - New Portal experience (Public Preview) : See all resoure changes across all tenants and subscriptions in the Azure Portal. New portal experience includes filtering, grouping and Change Actor (who made the change and how)
  • View resource changes in the Azure portal (Learn)
  • Change Actor (public preview)

Azure Storage

• Azure Storage Actions (public preview) : Serverless and no-code framework for managing storage operations. Currently supports operations on Blobs in Storage Accounts, and isn’t available in UK regions yet.
• SLA on Blob Storage Cold Tier (GA) : Cold tier Blob storage now backed with a Microsoft uptime and connectivity SLA.

Cloud Services (classic)

• Cloud Services (classic) deployment model is retiring on 31 August 2024 : Migrate to Cloud Services (extended support) if you need to keep using them
  • Five classic networking services which depend on classic Cloud Services are also being retired

Defender for Cloud

• Azure Defender for Microsoft Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Flexible Server (GA) : Part of the Defender for open-source relational databases plan which includes MySQL and MariaDB as well. I have no idea why they refer to it as Azure Defender (the old name for Microsoft Defender for Cloud) here!
  • Azure DB for PostgreSQL docs - Defender for Cloud support

Virtual Network Manager

• Virtual Network Manager UDR (Public Preview) : Enabling users to describe their desired routing behavior via configuration, simplifying the management of routing behaviors at scale.
• Azure Virtual Network Manager security admin rule (GA) : Empowering users to enforce security rules across their virtual networks globally.
  • Security admin rule concepts

Virtual Networks

• Virtual network flow logs (GA) : New capability of Network Watcher, enhancing the flow log support already available for NSGs to the VNet scope
  • Azure Networking blog announcement
  • VNet flow logs
• Virtual Network encryption in all regions (GA) : Customers can enable encryption of traffic between Virtual Machines and Virtual Machines Scale Sets within the same virtual network and between regionally and globally peered virtual networks. This new feature enhances the existing encryption in transit capabilities in Azure.
  • Virtual Network encryption docs