Azure Updates – Number 60 – March 25, 2023

A summary update on Azure News that includes updates released from Microsoft Azure related to Azure, Architecture, Compute, and Sentinel topics. Every update is linked to it’s original Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Sentinel or other blog source. Hopefully this will save you some time digging around to find recent releases and changes.

Updates 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

Batch custom image pools using VHD or managed images will be retired on 31 March 2026

Docker container runtime retirement for Windows node pools effective May 1, 2023

AKS will stop support for Windows Server 2019 on March 1 2026

Batch Service in select regions will be retired on 31 March 2026

Azure Automation is retiring Agent-based User Hybrid Runbook Worker (Windows & Linux) on 31 August 2024

Generally available: Azure Private Link support for Inbound traffic in Azure API Management

Public Preview: Workspaces in Azure API Management

Public preview: Azure Maps Creator Improved indoor maps onboarding and new Features API

General availability: Azure Virtual Network Manager

General availability: Reserved namespaces for subdomains

Announcement: Azure Active Directory backed authentication for JMS 2.0 API on Azure Service Bus

General Availability: ASP. NET web app migration to Azure App Service using PowerShell Scripts

Azure Maps is now HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliant

Generally available: Encryption scopes on hierarchical namespace enabled storage accounts

General availability: Serilog Sink for Azure Data Explorer

Select Batch Pool autoscale service-defined variables will be retired on 31 March 2024

Retirement Announcement: Assigning alert trigger playbooks within Microsoft Sentinel analytics rules

Azure Batch classic compute node communication model will be retired on 31 March 2026

We’re retiring Cluster Configuration with Flux v1 on 24 May 2025 transition to GitOps extension for Kubernetes to move to Flux v2

Container insights recommended alerts (custom metrics) (preview) will be retired on 14 March 2026

Retirement notice: The Azure Storage PHP client libraries will be retired on 17 March 2024

Retirement: Azure Database Migration Service (classic) – SQL Server scenarios deprecation

Public preview: Listener TLS certificates management available in the Azure portal

Preview: JSON support for Active Geo-Replication on Azure Cache for Redis

Public Preview: PgBouncer monitoring metrics for Azure Database for PostgreSQL – Flexible Server

General Availability: Performance workbooks for Azure PostgreSQL – Flexible Server

Azure SQLGeneral availability updates for mid-March 2023

Azure Load Testing support for JMeter 5.5

Azure Machine Learning – Generally availability updates for March 2023

Generally available: Azure Monitor integration with Azure Container Apps

Now available: Azure Kubernetes Service Edge Essentials

Generally available: Azure SQL Database offline migrations in Azure SQL Migration extension

Public preview: Azure Database for MySQL connector for Power Apps, Logic Apps

Generally Available: Durable Functions support of managed identity for Azure Storage

Azure Red Hat OpenShift version 4.11 now available

Public Preview: Collect Syslog from AKS nodes using Azure Monitor container insights

Public preview: Data API builder instantly creates modern REST and GraphQL endpoints for modern databases

Generally available: Azure Ultra Disk Storage in Brazil Southeast, South Africa North and UAE North

Azure Red Hat OpenShift March Updates

Public Preview: Performance Plus for Azure Disk Storage

Public Preview: Change data capture for Azure Cosmos DB analytical store

Azure SQLPublic preview updates for mid-March 2023

Generally available: ContainerLogV2 Schema in Azure Monitor container insights

Generally available: Metric charts support for split-by operations on multiple dimensions

Generally available: Azure Firewall Basic

Public Preview – Backup for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Public preview: Database connections support in Azure Static Web Apps

General Availability of Azure Hybrid Benefit for SQL Server on Azure VMware Solution

General Availability: Support for pg_hint_plan and semver extensions in Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server

Public preview: Azure Static Web Apps support for A Record

Azure Machine Learning March 2023 Region Expansion Announcement

Azure Machine Learning – Public Preview updates for March 2023

Public Preview: Selective Disk Backup and Restore in Enhanced Policy for Azure VM Backup

Generally available: Azure Digital Twins Data history supports Graph updates

Public preview: Illumio for Azure Firewall

Public preview: Azure Cognitive Service for Vision Powers State-of-the-Art Computer Vision Development

Generally available: Immutable vaults for Azure Backup

Public Preview: Azure Chaos Studio now available in

General availability: Ephemeral OS disks supports encryption at host using customer managed keys

Azure Blog

Modernize your apps and accelerate business growth with AI

Connect, secure, and simplify your network resources with Azure Virtual Network Manager

Introducing GPT-4 in Azure OpenAI Service

Azure Data Manager for Energy: Achieve interoperability with Petrel

Protect against cyberattacks with the new Azure Firewall Basic

Microsoft to showcase purpose-built AI infrastructure at NVIDIA GTC

Announcing Microsoft Azure Data Manager for Agriculture: Accelerating innovation across the agriculture value chain

Azure previews powerful and scalable virtual machine series to accelerate generative AI

Azure Sentinel Blog

What’s New: Introducing Microsoft Sentinel Network Session Essentials solution

[Coming soon] Microsoft Sentinel out-of-the-box content centralization!

Tutorial: Get started with Azure WAF investigation Notebook

ACSC Essential 8 Health Report in Microsoft Sentinel

Anomaly detection and Explanation with Isolation Forest and SHAP using Microsoft Sentinel Notebooks