AzureTracks Azure News Update
Andrew Posted on 9:18 am

Azure Updates – Number 6 – March 13, 2021

A summary update on Azure News that includes updates released from Microsoft Azure related to Azure, Architecture, Compute, and Sentinel topics. I’ll provide links to all the resource updates with each item. Hopefully this will save you some time digging around to find recent releases and changes.

Updates will include preview and general availability announcements, news, and technical articles published in the listed topic areas for the previous 2 week snapshot. Presented is a subset of news that is highlighted here, visit Azure Blog or Azure Updates Blog to see all the updates.

This weeks update has some overlap from my special post last week with the March 2021 MS Ignite updates, but to provide a complete 2-week snapshot I’ve included the whole lot! Enjoy your weekend Azure updates read & hopefully as spring starts to sneak up on us across Canada you can get outside and enjoy some sun while getting up to date!

Azure Updates

General availability: Azure Media Services ??? HEVC encoding support in Standard Encoder
General availability: Azure Log Analytics in Australia Central 2
General availability: Application Insight in Australia Central 2
New Norway East region added to Azure HDInsight
Azure Storage ??? Routing Preferences now generally available
Python Durable Functions support in Azure Functions is now generally available
General availability: Azure Functions supports .NET 5 in production
Node.js 14 in Azure Functions is now generally available
HDInsight Apache Kafka REST Proxy is now generally available
New Brazil Southeast region added to Azure HDInsight
Token lifecycle management is now in private preview
Azure Routing Preference is now generally available
General availability: Azure monitor for containers now supports Pods & Replica set live logs in AKS resource view
Azure VMware Solution now generally available in the Southeast Asia region
Azure Sphere version 21.02 is now available
Public preview: Azure Purview Bulk Edit enhancements
General availability: New Simplified NSX networking experience for Azure VMware Solution
Azure trusted launch for Virtual Machines now in public preview
Automatic VM guest patching is now in public preview for Linux VMs
Public preview: Azure Purview Resource Set configuration enhancements
New orchestration mode for Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets now in public preview
Public preview: Register Azure subscriptions and Resource Groups with Azure Purview
Improve Azure Spot Virtual Machines runtime and simulate evictions with new features in public preview
General availability: Azure API Management now has named values integration with Azure Key Vault
Azure API Management extension for Visual Studio Code now generally available
On-demand capacity reservations in public preview
Generally available: Plan your migration to Azure VMware Solution using Azure Migrate
Confidential computing nodes (DCSv2) on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is generally available
Azure Remote Rendering is now generally available
Microsoft Power Fx: The open-source low-code programming language is in public preview
Multiple new features for Azure VPN Gateway in public preview
Azure Object Anchors is now in public preview
Public preview: At scale discovery and assessment for SQL Server migration to Azure SQL
General availability: Application insights no-code enablement on Node.js Linux App Service Environments
Azure Percept in public preview
General availability of Persistent Volume monitoring & Reports tab in Container Insights
Device Update for IoT Hub in public preview
Azure Stream Analytics Dedicated now generally available
Public preview: Azure Purview Data Catalog now supports hierarchical glossary
Public preview: Scan and classify Amazon AWS S3 data using Azure Purview
Scan and view lineage of data stored in Teradata, SAP ERP, and Oracle DB using Azure Purview
Public preview: Azure Purview powered search in Azure Synapse Analytics workspaces
Azure Cosmos DB: Continuous backup with point in time restore in public preview
Azure Cosmos DB API for MongoDB supports version 4.0
Azure SQL auditing to Log Analytics and Event Hub are now generally available
Role-based access control (RBAC) with Azure Active Directory (AAD) on Azure Cosmos DB in public preview
Public preview: Azure Route Server
Azure Synapse Link for Azure Cosmos DB: Azure Synapse serverless SQL pool support in general availability
Public preview: Containerize and migrate apps to Azure Kubernetes Service with Azure Migrate: App Containerization
Azure Machine Learning – Public preview announcements Ignite, March 2021.
General availability: Assessments for migration to Azure VMware Solution
Azure Machine Learning – Arc enabled machine learning
Azure Machine Learning – Generally available announcements at Ignite, March 2021.
Azure Managed Instance for Apache Cassandra service now in public preview
Azure SQL auditing of Microsoft operations is now in general availability
Public preview: Azure Communication Services interoperability with Microsoft Teams
Public preview: Change performance tiers for Premium SSD managed disks with no downtime
Zone Redundant Storage (ZRS) option for Azure managed disks in limited preview
Public preview: Automatic key rotation of customer-managed keys for encrypting Azure managed disks
Public preview: Announcing new capabilities for Azure Automanage
Windows Server 2022??is now available in preview.
Limited preview: Azure Backup now supports archive tier for backup of Azure Virtual Machines and SQL Server in Azure VMs
Azure Arc enabled Kubernetes is now generally available
General availability: App Gateway ingress controller add-on for AKS
General availability: Just-In-Time Access support in AKS
Public preview: Calico Windows support in AKS
Public preview: Planned maintenance windows in AKS
General availability: Encrypted customer managed keys policy for AKS
General availability: Conditional Access feature integration with AKS
General availability: Public IP per node capability in AKS
Public preview: Announcing Azure Synapse Pathway: Accelerate your data warehouse migration
Public preview: Maintenance window for Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance
Backup Center is now generally available
Public preview: Dynamic IP allocation & enhanced subnet support in AKS
New Enterprise and Enterprise Flash tiers for Azure Cache for Redis now generally available
Azure Spring Cloud: General availability of Managed Virtual Network and Autoscale
Advance notifications for Azure SQL Database now in public preview
General availability: Deploy WebLogic on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) using custom Docker images
Azure Load Balancer support for IP-based backend pool management is now generally available
New planned datacenter region in China (China North 3)
Azure Monitor Alerts for Azure Backup is in public preview
Backup Reports is now generally available
On-demand disk bursting for Premium SSDs now in public preview
General availability: Announcing private Azure Marketplace
Azure Sphere OS version 21.02 Update 1 is now available for evaluation
Azure Security Center: Public preview updates for February 2021
Azure Security Center: General availability updates for February 2021
Azure Backup for SAP HANA: Incremental backup is now generally available
Azure Backup: Operational backup for Azure Blobs is now in public preview
Event Hubs on Azure Stack Hub for disconnected scenarios is now generally available

Azure Blog

Advancing failure prediction and mitigation – Introducing Narya
Digital event: Extend to the cloud with Azure VMware solution
Azure Defender for Storage powered by Microsoft threat intelligence
Deliver Java apps quickly using Custom Connectors in Power Apps
Built-in backup management at scale with Backup center
Scale your critical applications cost-effectively with Azure Disk Storage
Architect and optimize your internet traffic with Azure routing preference
Announcing preview of Azure Trusted Launch for virtual machines
Drive successful data-driven transformation – Go limitless with Azure data
Choose the landing zone for your cloud adoption journey

Azure Sentinel Blog

Monitoring the Software Supply Chain with Azure Sentinel
What???s new: Alert Enrichment ??? Custom Details and Entity Mapping
Whats new: Azure Sentinel and Microsoft 365 Defender incident integration
Microsoft Ignite 2021: Blob and File Storage Investigations
Visibility of Azure key vault activity in Sentinel Azure Key Vault Workbook