This blog post series highlights the key announcements and major updates related to Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Azure Local, as officially released by Microsoft in the past two weeks.
Azure
General
Custom Secure Boot UEFI Keys for Azure Trusted Launch VM Now Generally Available
Azure Trusted Launch VMs now support customizing Secure Boot UEFI keys, offering greater flexibility to enhance workload security. Customers can fully replace or update one or more of the Secure Boot UEFI keys and databases (PK, KEK, DB, or DBX) to align with their security policies and compliance requirements.
Key Benefits:
- Enhanced Security: Protect against persistent boot/kernel malware.
- Trusted Boot State: Ensures VMs always boot to a defined and trusted state.
- Compliance with Standards: Meets NIST security best practices, Microsoft security benchmarks, and industry standards.
This enhancement strengthens workload protection for organizations using Trusted Launch VMs in Azure.
AutonomousDb Available on ItalyNorth
Microsoft has announced the availability of AutonomousDb in the ItalyNorth region. This expansion allows organizations operating in Italy to benefit from a fully managed database service with automated scaling, self-healing capabilities, and advanced security features. By leveraging AutonomousDb, customers can optimize performance, reduce operational overhead, and ensure high availability for their mission-critical workloads while complying with local data residency requirements.
Networking
Azure Load Balancer Health Event Logs Now Generally Available
Azure Load Balancer health event logs are now generally available across all public, Azure China, and Government regions. These logs enable users to collect, store, and analyze health-related data for their Azure Load Balancer resources, simplifying troubleshooting and availability monitoring. With built-in health event logs, customers can identify and address traffic distribution issues, detect SNAT port exhaustion that may impact outbound connectivity, and receive alerts when there are no healthy backend instances available. This feature enhances visibility into load balancer operations without requiring custom data ingestion pipelines or complex metric-based alerting configurations, ensuring a more proactive approach to maintaining application performance and availability.
Storage
Edit Network Features for Azure NetApp Files with No Downtime Now Generally Available
Azure has announced the general availability of Edit Network Features for Azure NetApp Files, allowing users to upgrade Basic network features to Standard network features without downtime.
Key Benefits of Standard Network Features:
- Increased IP Limits: Virtual networks with Azure NetApp Files volumes now have IP limits on par with VMs, eliminating network topology constraints.
- Enhanced Security: Network Security Groups (NSGs) are now supported on Azure NetApp Files delegated subnets for improved security controls.
- Advanced Network Control: User-defined routes (UDRs) now enable custom routing to and from Azure NetApp Files subnets.
- Active/Active VPN Gateway Support: Ensures high availability for on-premises to Azure NetApp Files connectivity.
- ExpressRoute FastPath Support: Improves data path latency and bandwidth performance for ExpressRoute connectivity to Azure NetApp Files.
This zero-downtime upgrade allows organizations to enhance their network security, control, and performance for Azure NetApp Files across all Azure-enabled regions.
Azure Storage Object Replication Metrics for Visibility into Replication Progress (Preview)
Azure has introduced the public preview of Object Replication Metrics, providing enhanced visibility into the progress of Azure Storage object replication. The new metrics include:
- Pending Operations: Displays the number of replication operations waiting to be processed.
- Pending Bytes: Shows the amount of data pending replication.
Additionally, the Pending Operations metric categorizes data based on replication delay time, displaying replication wait times in intervals such as:
- Less than 5 minutes
- Between 5–10 minutes
- Between 10–15 minutes, and so on.
These new metrics improve monitoring, troubleshooting, and performance optimization for object replication in Azure Storage.
Conclusion
Over the past two weeks, Microsoft has introduced a slew of updates and announcements pertaining to Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Azure Local. These developments underscore the tech giant’s unwavering commitment to enhancing its cloud offerings and adapting to the ever-evolving needs of businesses and developers. Users of Azure can anticipate improved functionalities, streamlined services, and enriched features as a result of these changes. Stay tuned for more insights as I continue to monitor and report on Azure’s progression in the cloud sphere.
