Azure Weekly Updates - September 05th, 2022

ExpressRoute IPv6 Support for Global Reach

IPv6 support for Global Reach unlocks connectivity between on-premise networks, via the Microsoft backbone, for customers with dual-stack workloads. Establish Global Reach connections between ExpressRoute circuits using IPv4 subnets, IPv6 subnets, or both. This configuration can be done using Azure Portal, PowerShell, or CLI.

Availability: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Prevent a lifecycle management policy from archiving recently rehydrated blobs

Azure Storage lifecycle management offers a rule-based policy that you can use to transition blob data to the appropriate access tiers or to expire data at the end of the data lifecycle. You can configure rules to move a blob to archive tier based on last modified condition. If you rehydrate a blob by changing its tier, this rule may move the blob back to the archive tier. This can happen if the last modified time is beyond the threshold set for the policy. Now you can add a new condition, daysAfterLastTierChangeGreaterThan, in your rules, to skip the archiving action if the blobs are newly rehydrated.

Availability: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

IoT Edge 1.4

The 1.4 version is the latest long term servicing (LTS) release of IoT Edge. This release will be serviced with fixes for regressions and critical security issues through November 12, 2024 (product lifecycle). This release also marks the end of servicing for the 1.3 release which will no longer receive bug fixes or security patches. The release is based on 1.3 and brings the following improvements in addition to long term servicing:

Automatic cleanup of unused Docker images

Ability to pass a custom json payload to DPS on provisioning

Ability to require all modules in a deployment be downloaded before (re)starting any

Use of the TCG TPM2 Software Stack which enables TPM hierarchy authorization values, specifying the TPM index at which to persist the DPS authentication key, and accommodating more TPM configurations

Availability: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Ephemeral OS disks supports host-based encryption using customer managed key

Ephemeral OS disk customers can choose encryption type between platform managed keys or customer managed keys for host-based encryption. The default is platform managed keys. This feature would enable our customers to meet your organization's compliance needs.

Availability: IN PREVIEW

For more information you can click here.

Azure Arc-enabled servers in South Africa North

Azure Arc-enabled servers are now available in the South Africa North region.

With this announcement, Azure Arc-enabled servers are available in 31 regions worldwide.

Availability: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Ephemeral OS disks supports host-based encryption using customer managed key

Ephemeral OS disk customers can choose encryption type between platform managed keys or customer managed keys for host-based encryption. The default is platform managed keys. This feature would enable our customers to meet your organization's compliance needs.

Availability: IN PREVIEW

For more information you can click here.

Azure Arc-enabled servers in Azure China

Azure Arc-enabled servers are now in public preview in two Azure China regions:

China East 2

China North 2

With this announcement, Azure Arc-enabled servers are available in 31 regions worldwide

Availability: IN PREVIEW

For more information you can click here.

Live resize for Premium SSD and Standard SSD Disk Storage

Resizing a disk on Azure can provide increased storage capacity and better performance for your applications. As part of our commitment to continuously add new capabilities to our Azure Disk Storage portfolio, live resize for Premium SSD and Standard SSD Disk Storage is now generally available.

With live resize, you can dynamically increase the storage capacity of your Premium SSD and Standard SSD disks without causing any disruption to your applications. To reduce costs, you can start with smaller disks and gradually increase their storage capacity without experiencing any downtime.

Availability: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Enterprise VMware Cloud Director Service for Azure VMware Solution

Today we are announcing the public preview of VMware Cloud Director Service for Azure VMware Solution. If you have Azure VMware Solution deployed under your Microsoft Enterprise agreement (EA), you can purchase the VMware Cloud Director Service from VMware. You can connect your Azure VMware Solution private cloud to create and manage private virtual datacenters and leverage vCloud availability for migrating on-premises VMware workloads to Azure VMware Solution private clouds. This allows you to further maximize your investment and allocate private cloud resources (as an example) across different departments and/or create capacity for development and testing which would otherwise require lengthy custom automation.

Availability: IN PREVIEW

For more information you can click here.

Enterprise-ready Azure Monitor change analysis capability released

Change analysis is an observability tool that enables efficient issue triaging and root causing by centrally showing changes inside and outside of Azure web applications. Built on top of Azure resource graph, the capability securely stores resource and application configuration change data with added role-based access control (RBAC) rules on viewing sensitive information. Change analysis supports scalable queries across multiple subscriptions.

Availability: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Azure Communication Services support for Teams identities

Azure Communication Services now supports communication experiences for Teams identities. With this capability developers can build custom standalone applications that integrate audio, video, and telephony for Teams users.

For example, developers can build specialized line of business applications that enable calling experiences for Teams users directly into the app, develop new workflows for apps that require custom management of incoming and outgoing Teams phone calls, or even bring Teams calling capabilities into devices that are not supported with the standard Teams client.

Availability: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

API Management custom widget support in developer portal

Azure API Management support for custom widgets in the developer portal is now generally available. Custom widgets make it easier to integrate with external systems and they provide a different way to represent data (e.g., a modified API reference or user profile pages) in the developer portal.  

This release also enhances custom widget development by providing “scaffolding code" in Vue, React, and native TypeScript as well as an open source npm package - removing the need to write code from scratch.

Supporting these capabilities in the managed developer portal provides you with an alternative to maintaining self-hosted portals, while offering more advanced extensibility options and better manageability and source control than available previously through the “Custom HTML” widget.

Availability: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Enterprise-grade edge for Azure Static Web Apps

Enterprise-grade edge for Azure Static Web Apps is now generally available. Enable faster page loads, enhance security, and optimize reliability for your global applications. Enterprise-grade edge combines the capabilities of Azure Static Web Apps, Azure Front Door, and Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN) into a single secure cloud CDN platform.

Key features:

Global presence in 118+ edge locations across 100 metro cities

Caching assets at the edge

Proactive protection against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks

Native support of end-to-end IPv6 connectivity and HTTP/2 protocol.

Optimized file compression.

Availability: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Azure Storage Explorer support for Azure App Configuration resources

Azure Storage Explorer now offers an extension for Azure App Configuration–you can now work with Azure App Configuration resources under your Azure subscriptions directly in Storage Explorer.

This means that with appropriate permissions, you can add, edit, or delete the key-values in your App Configuration store directly from the Storage Explorer.

Availability: IN PREVIEW

For more information you can click here.

Azure Functions extension for Event Grid blob trigger

The Event Grid blob trigger handles events raised by a storage account and is now generally available.

The extension allows you to reduce latency by triggering on an event subscription to the same blob container. The event subscription uses Event Grid to forward changes in the blob container as events for your function to consume.

Availability: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

App Configuration references for App Service and Azure Functions

App Service and Azure Functions now support referencing configuration key-values from the Azure App Configuration service. App Configuration provides central management of configuration key-values that can span resources and deployment environments. When defining an application setting or connection string within App Service and Azure Functions, instead of providing a direct value, you can now specify a key-value in an external Azure App Configuration store. The app uses its managed identity to resolve the value from the store and expose it as an environment variable to your application.

Availability: IN PREVIEW

For more information you can click here.

Azure Cosmos DB integrated cache

Use Azure Cosmos DB integrated cache to optimize read costs and latency for both point reads and queries. The Azure Cosmos DB integrated cache is an in-memory cache built-in to the Azure Cosmos DB dedicated gateway. The dedicated gateway is optional front-end compute that stores cached data and routes requests to the backend database. There’s no need to make code changes in your application to use the dedicated gateway and utilize the integrated cache. Integrated cache is currently available for Core (SQL) API only.

Availability: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Unity Catalog for Azure Databricks

Unity Catalog is a unified and fine-grained governance solution for all data assets including files, tables, and machine learning models in your Lakehouse.  

Unity Catalog helps simplify security and governance of your data with the following key features:

Define once, secure everywhere: Unity Catalog offers a single place to administer data access policies that apply across all workspaces and personas.

Standards-compliant security model: Unity Catalog’s security model is based on standard ANSI SQL and allows administrators to grant permissions at the level of catalogs, databases (also called schemas), tables, and views in their existing data lake using familiar syntax.

Built-in auditing: Unity Catalog automatically captures user-level audit logs that record access to your data

Availability: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Azure SQL—Public preview updates for late August 2022

In late August 2022, the following updates and enhancements were made to Azure SQL:

Enable automatic key rotation for Customer Managed Key in Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance.

Expand support to standard editions of SQL Server 2019 with link feature for Azure SQL Managed Instance.

Availability: IN PREVIEW

For more information you can click here.

Azure SQL—General availability updates for late August 2022

In late August 2022, the following updates and enhancements were made to Azure SQL:

Leverage an assignment of a server or instance identity with user-assigned managed Identity in Azure Active Directory for Azure SQL Database and Managed Instance.

Increase resiliency of Azure SQL Database Hyperscale by enabling zone redundant configuration.

Availability: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Node.js 18 in Azure Functions

Azure Functions support for Node.js 18 is now in public preview. This version of Node.js is supported by Functions runtime v4.x.

Node.js 18 is currently in the initial release stage. You can download it or find more information on the Node.js releases page.

Availability: IN PREVIEW

For more information you can click here.

Managed identity to connect Azure Cache for Redis to storage

Azure Cache for Redis now supports authenticating storage account connections using managed identity. Identity is established through Azure Active Directory, and both system-assigned and user-assigned identities are supported. This allows you to establish trusted access to storage for uses including data persistence and importing/exporting cache data. Using managed identity to connect to storage account limits the need to manage storage keys and gives you tighter and more secure control over storage account access.

Availability: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.

Encrypt storage account with cross-tenant customer-managed keys

Today we are releasing the ability to encrypt storage account with customer-managed keys (CMK) using an Azure Key Vault hosted on a different Azure Active Directory tenant. You can use this solution to encrypt your customers’ data using an encryption key managed by your customers.  

Availability: IN PREVIEW

For more information you can click here.

New Azure Virtual Machines with Ampere Altra Arm-based processors

The general purpose Dps v5 and Dpds v5 Azure Virtual Machines series can run popular Linux enterprise workloads such as web and application servers, open-source databases, Java and .Net applications, gaming, and media servers, and more. The new VMs provide up to 4GiBs of memory per vCPU in sizes with up to 64 vCPUs, 208GiB of memory, and 40Gbps networking, with and without local temporary storage.

The Dpls v5 and Dplds v5 VM series offer one of the lowest starting price points within the general-purpose Azure Virtual Machines portfolio, providing 2GiBs per vCPU in sizes up to 64vCPUs, 128GiBs of memory, and up to 40Gbps networking with and without local temporary storage options.

Lastly, the memory optimized Eps v5 and Epds v5 VM series feature up to 8GiBs of memory per vCPU in sizes with up to 32 vCPUs, 208GiBs of memory, 40Gbps networking, with and without local temporary storage options, and are designed to meet the requirements associated with memory-intensive Linux-based workloads including open-source databases, in-memory caching applications, and data analytics engines.

Availability: NOW AVAILABLE

For more information you can click here.