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 2021 conference.
Azure
Compute
Microsoft introduces Narya: advancing failure prediction and mitigation
Project Narya is an end-to-end prediction and mitigation service. Not only does it predict and mitigate Azure host failures but also measures the impact of its mitigation actions and to use an automatic feedback loop to intelligently adjust its mitigation strategy.
Storage
Azure File Sync agent v11.2
Azure File Sync agent v11.2 release is now on Microsoft Update and Microsoft Download Center.
Improvements and issues that are fixed:
- If a sync session is cancelled due to a high number of per-item errors, sync may go through reconciliation when a new session starts if the Azure File Sync service determines a custom sync session is needed to correct the per-item errors.
- Registering a server using the Register-AzStorageSyncServer cmdlet may fail with “Unhandled Exception” error.
- New PowerShell cmdlet (Add-StorageSyncAllowedServerEndpointPath) to configure allowed server endpoints paths on a server. This cmdlet is useful for scenarios in which the Azure File Sync deployment is managed by a Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) or Service Provider and the customer wants to configure allowed server endpoints paths on a server. When creating a server endpoint, if the path specified is not in the allow list, the server endpoint creation will fail. Note, this is an optional feature and all supported paths are allowed by default when creating a server endpoint. To learn more, see the release notes.
More information about this release:
- This update is available for Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016 and Windows Server 2019 installations that have Azure File Sync agent version 4.0.1.0 or later installed.
- The agent version for this release is 11.2.0.0.
- A restart may be required if files are in use during the installation.
- Installation instructions are documented in KB4539952.
Routing Preferences
Routing Preference for Azure Storage provides you the flexibility to choose how network traffic is routed between clients outside Azure and your storage accounts by optimizing for exceptional network reliability and performance or by optimizing for lower costs. You now have the choice to direct network traffic to the public endpoint of your storage account using the ‘Microsoft Global Network‘ or over the ‘Public Internet‘. The Microsoft global network delivers exceptional network reliability with premium performance, while using your ISP network may help achieve cost efficiency.
- Routing over the Microsoft Global Network: The Microsoft global network is one of the largest networks on the globe that currently spans over 165,000 fiber miles with over 180 edge Points of Presence (POPs). The network is well provisioned with multiple redundant fiber paths and traffic engineered intelligently to ensure exceptionally high reliability and performance. Internet traffic enters and exits the Microsoft network at the POP closest to the client to provide optimized network experience (cold potato routing).
- Routing via the transit ISP network: The new competitive egress tier minimizes traversal over the Microsoft global network and maximizes traversal over the transit ISP network. Internet traffic enters and exits Microsoft network at the POP closest to your storage account’s region (hot potato routing).
By default and to date, network traffic between clients outside Azure and the storage account always uses the Microsoft global network. You can change the routing preference configuration for the default public endpoint to the ISP network for storage accounts in major Azure regions where the feature is available. In addition, you now have the ability to publish additional route-specific endpoints for your storage accounts. These route-specific endpoints will always route traffic between clients outside Azure and the storage account over the appropriate path.
