This series of blog posts includes the most important announcements and major updates regarding Azure infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and Azure Stack, officialized by Microsoft in the last two weeks.
Azure
AzCopy support in Azure Storage Explorer
Azure Storage Explorer provides the UI interface for various storage tasks, and now it supports using AzCopy as a transfer engine to provide the highest throughput for transferring your files for Azure Storage.
Service Map is available in Central Canada and UK South
The Service Map feature of Azure Monitor is now available in Central Canada and UK South. Across the world, it’s available in six public regions. Service Map automatically discovers application components on Windows and Linux systems and maps the communication between services. With Service Map, you can view your servers in the way that you think of them: as interconnected systems that deliver critical services. Service Map shows connections between servers, processes, inbound and outbound connection latency, and ports across any TCP-connected architecture, with no configuration required other than the installation of an agent.
Azure premium blob storage is generally available
Azure premium blob storage is generally available. Premium block blob is a new performance tier in Blob storage, complementing the existing hot, cool, and archive tiers. Premium blob storage is ideal for workloads with high transaction rates or that require very fast access times, such as IoT, telemetry, AI, and scenarios with humans in the loop such as interactive video editing, web content, and online transactions.
Support for virtual network peering in Azure Security Center
The network map in Azure Security Center now supports virtual network peering. Directly from the network map, you can view allowed traffic flows between peered virtual networks and deep dive into the connections and entities.
Adaptive network hardening in Azure Security Center (Public preview)
Azure Security Center can now learn the network traffic and connectivity patterns of your Azure workload and provide you with network security group (NSG) rule recommendations for your internet-facing virtual machines. This is called adaptive network hardening, and it’s in public preview. It helps you secure connections to and from the public internet (made by workloads running in the public cloud), which are one of the most common attack surfaces.
Windows Virtual Desktop in public preview on Azure
Now available in public preview, Windows Virtual Desktop is the service that delivers simplified management, a multi-session Windows 10 experience, optimizations for Office 365 ProPlus, and support for Windows Server Remote Desktop Services (RDS) desktops and apps. With Windows Virtual Desktop, you can deploy and scale your Windows desktops and apps on Azure in minutes and enjoy built-in security.
