Azure Updates – Number 8 – April 10, 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.

Azure Updates

Public preview: Announcing Azure STIG solution templates to accelerate compliance for DoD

Azure Active Directory B2C in Australia is available in public preview

Azure Automation is now available in South India

Public preview: Azure Purview is now available in the Central India region

Public preview: Start VM on connect feature for Windows Virtual Desktop

Public preview: Azure Monitor container insights support for Azure Arc enabled Kubernetes extension model

New Azure Cloud Services deployment model now generally available

Public preview: Announcing platform support migration of Azure Cloud Services (classic) to Azure Resource Manager

Continued region expansion: Azure Data Factory just became generally available in two more regions

Updated App Service Authentication portal experience is now generally available

Azure Security Center: Public preview updates for March 2021

Azure Security Center: General availability updates for March 2021

General availability: Azure Monitor for Windows Virtual Desktop

Microsoft Power Fx: The open-source low-code programming language is in public preview

Public preview: Backup & restore of Azure VM Scale Sets with flexible orchestration is now supported

General availability: Azure Backup supports backup and restore of Azure Dedicated Host

Azure Sphere OS version 21.03 is now generally available

Azure SQL Managed Instance – A performance optimization change to default settings is coming soon

Azure Private Link for Azure Cache for Redis in general availability

Enabling IBM WebSphere on Azure Kubernetes Service

General availability: ExpressRoute monitoring in Azure Monitor network insights

Public preview: Azure Static Web Apps now supports deployment with Azure DevOps

Public preview: Open Service Mesh (OSM) add-on for AKS

General availability: Kubernetes v1.20 support in AKS

Azure Database for PostgreSQL – Flexible Server (public preview) available in new regions

Public preview: Zone redundant configuration for Azure SQL Database serverless compute tier

Insights and workbooks for Azure Cosmos DB now in public preview

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) now supports node image autoupgrade in public preview

Public preview of Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) run-command feature

Public preview: Cognitive Services – Form Recognizer new features

General availability: Virtual machine (VM) level disk bursting available on all Dsv3 and Esv3 families

Public preview: Azure Database for MySQL ??? Flexible Server now connects with Azure CLI

Public preview: Azure Database for PostgreSQL ??? Flexible Server now connects with Azure CLI

General availability: Networking for Key Vault references on Windows in App Service and Azure Functions

General availability: Azure Event Grid now provides support for delivery headers and additional advanced filters among other updates

General availability: Changes coming to Azure Pipelines free grants

Wire Data 2.0 (preview) will be retired on 31 March 2022

General availability: Azure Data Explorer external tables

Encryption scopes in Azure Storage now generally available

General availability: Azure Communication Services

Backup for Azure Managed Disk is now generally available

Azure Blog

Insights and best practices to run business-critical applications on Azure

What I Wish I Knew: Manufacturing leaders offer firsthand IoT adoption advice

Leverage enterprise-scale reference implementations for your cloud adoption

Deepen the value chain for geospatial earth imagery on cloud using Azure Orbital

Cloud Services (extended support) is generally available, migration tool in preview

New solutions for Oracle WebLogic on Azure Virtual Machines

Deploy key design principles with enterprise-scale architecture

Azure Cost Management and Billing updates ??? March 2021

Microsoft named a Leader in Forrester Wave: Function-as-a-Service Platforms

Discover cloud storage solutions at Azure Storage Day on April 29

Azure Sentinel Blog

How to use Azure Sentinel for Incident Response, Orchestration and Automation

Group-IB Threat Intelligence and Attribution Connector – Azure Sentinel

IoT Asset discovery based on FW logs

Web Shell Threat Hunting with Azure Sentinel

Best practices for migrating detection rules from ArcSight, Splunk and QRadar to Azure Sentinel