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
Compute
DCsv3 and DCdsv3 series Virtual Machines
Confidential computing DCsv3 and DCdsv3-series virtual machines (VMs) are generally available.
Switzerland North Availability Zones
Availability Zones in Switzerland North are made up of three unique, physically separated, locations or “zones” within a single region which bring higher availability and asynchronous replication across Azure regions for disaster recovery protection. Availability Zones give you additional options for high availability for your most demanding applications and services as well as confidence and protection from potential hardware and software failures.
Azure Ebsv5 now available in 13 additional regions
Azure Virtual Machines Ebsv5 and Ebdsv5 are now available in 13 additional regions: South Africa North, France Central, Central India, Korea Central, Germany West Central, UK West, South India, Canada East, Australia Central, Japan West, Switzerland North, Norway East and UAE North.
Azure NC A100 v4 virtual machines for AI
Azure NC A100 v4 series virtual machines (VMs) are now generally available in US East 2, US East, Southeast Asia, and West Europe. These VMs, powered by NVIDIA A100 80GB Tensor Core PCIe GPUs and 3rd Gen AMD EPYC™ Milan processors, improve the performance and cost-effectiveness of a variety of GPU performance-bound real world AI training and inferencing workloads.
Storage
Storage optimized Azure VMs deliver higher performance for data analytics
Microsoft is announcing the general availability of new storage optimized Azure Virtual Machines. The new Lasv3 and Lsv3 VM series have been engineered to run workloads that require high throughput and high IOPS, including big data applications, SQL and NoSQL databases, distributed file systems, data analytics engines, and more.
Networking
Azure Bastion IP based connection
Azure Bastion now supports connectivity to Azure virtual machines or on-premises resources via specified IP address. When IP based connection feature is enabled, Azure Bastion can be used to RDP/SSH into an on-premises resource over ExpressRoute and Site-to-Site VPN.
Manage Azure Web Application Firewall policies in Azure Firewall Manager (preview)
Azure Firewall Manager now supports Azure Web Application Firewall (Azure WAF) policies for application delivery platforms, Azure Front Door, and Azure Application Gateway.
Enhanced IPv6 functionality for MultiValue profiles in Azure Traffic Manager
Azure Traffic Manager now enables you to specify minimum children property separately for IPv4 and IPv6 endpoints for MultiValue profiles.
Azure Private Link support in Azure API Management
With Azure Private Link support in Azure API Management, you can now integrate clients in a virtual network privately.
Azure Stack
Azure Stack HCI single-node
At Build 2022, Microsoft announces the new single-node offering that provides additional options for business scenarios with different requirements. The new single-node Azure Stack HCI fulfills growing hybrid infrastructure needs in remote locations while maintaining the innovation of native integration with Azure Arc. Specifically, this new configuration offers flexibility to deploy the stack in smaller spaces and with less processing needs, optimizing resources while still delivering quality and consistency.
Additional benefits of Azure Stack HCI single-node include:
- Smaller Azure Stack HCI solutions for environments with physical space constraints or that don’t require built-in resiliency, like retail stores and branch offices.
- A smaller footprint reduces hardware and operational costs.
- Solutions can be built to scale, ranging from single-node up to 16 nodes if needed.
