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. Last week marked an important milestone with Microsoft Ignite, which brought a wealth of key updates and innovations from Microsoft. To explore the specific developments announced at the conference in these areas, I invite you to read the dedicated article.
Azure
General
Azure Load Testing available in Italy North
Azure Load Testing within Azure App Testing is now generally available in the Italy North region. This fully managed load-testing service enables customers to generate high-scale load and run realistic simulations to assess application performance and resilience. Through a rich dashboard combining client-side and server-side metrics, customers can quickly identify performance bottlenecks and leverage AI-powered actionable insights to optimize their applications. The service integrates seamlessly into CI/CD workflows, enabling automated performance validation as part of release pipelines. Customers can get started without prior knowledge of load-testing tools or reuse their existing Apache JMeter and Locust scripts to accelerate adoption.
Networking
Managed identity support in Network Watcher VNET flow logs, traffic analytics, and packet capture (preview)
In this public preview, Azure Network Watcher adds support for managed identities to VNET flow logs, Traffic Analytics, and packet capture. Traffic Analytics leverages VNET flow logs to aggregate, process, and enrich network flows, providing insights into network activity, visualization, security posture, and performance. Network Watcher packet capture enables the collection of network packets directly from virtual machines, supporting deep network analysis and troubleshooting. With this update, managed identities provided by Microsoft Entra ID allow VNET flow logs and Traffic Analytics to securely access Azure Blob Storage and Log Analytics workspaces without storing or managing credentials. Once managed identity is enabled for Network Watcher components and the appropriate permissions are granted, the managed identity is used to obtain an access token from Microsoft Entra ID to access the configured resources.
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.
