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.
In this dedicated post you can find the most important announcements and major updates officialized last week during Microsoft Ignite 2019 conference.
Azure
Save more on Azure usage: reservations for six more services
With reserved capacity, you get significant discounts over your on-demand costs by committing to long-term usage of a service. Microsoft is pleased to share reserved capacity offerings for the following additional services:
- Blob Storage (GPv2) and Azure Data Lake Storage (Gen2).
- Azure Database for MySQL.
- Azure Database for PostgreSQL.
- Azure Database for MariaDB.
- Azure Data Explorer.
- Premium SSD Managed Disks.
With the addition of these services, Microsoft supports reservations for 16 services, giving you more options to save and get better cost predictability across more workloads.
Azure Key Vault Virtual Machine extension generally available
The Azure Key Vault Virtual Machine extension makes it easier for apps running on virtual machines to use certificates from a key vault, by abstracting the common tasks as well as best practices.
Azure Disk Encryption
Azure Disk Encryption enables you to encrypt your Azure Virtual Machine disks with your keys safeguarded in Azure Key Vault. Previously this capability was available through PowerShell and CLI, now this capability is also available in the Azure portal, which makes it very easy to use. Microsoft has also added support for the latest versions of the common Linux distros on Azure, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6 and 7.7 as well as CentOS Linux 7.6 and 7.7.
HB and HC Virtual Machines in additional regions
The HB-series VMs are optimized for HPC applications driven by memory bandwidth, such as fluid dynamics, explicit finite element analysis, and weather modeling. The HB-Series VM is now available in East US. HC-series VMs are optimized for HPC applications driven by intensive computation, such as implicit finite element analysis, reservoir simulation, and computational chemistry. The HC-Series VM is now available in Japan East.
