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
Microsoft named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™ for Sovereign Cloud Platforms
Microsoft has been named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Sovereign Cloud Platforms, Q2 2026, an evaluation that assessed major sovereign cloud providers based on current offerings, strategy, and customer feedback. Microsoft presents this recognition as confirmation of its long-term commitment to helping organizations adopt cloud and Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities without compromising control, compliance, operational independence, or innovation. According to Microsoft, the report highlights an important reality of digital sovereignty: there is no single deployment model that fits every requirement, and organizations often combine public cloud, private cloud, and disconnected environments to balance regulation, risk, functionality, and cost. Microsoft states that its approach is based on delivering consistent sovereign controls across multiple environments rather than relying on a single isolated sovereign cloud model. The company also emphasizes that Microsoft Sovereign Cloud brings together public cloud controls such as data residency and access protections, private cloud and hybrid deployments enabled by Azure Local and Azure Arc, and partner-operated national clouds. Microsoft further notes that Forrester recognized its ability to extend sovereignty across cloud, AI, productivity, and security services, while maintaining consistency in management, governance, and deployment models across connected and disconnected environments.
Microsoft Azure now available from new cloud region in Denmark
Microsoft has announced the opening of a new Azure cloud region in Denmark, further expanding its global infrastructure footprint to support digital transformation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) innovation. The new Denmark East region provides Danish customers with local and secure cloud infrastructure, helping address requirements for data residency, low latency, and in-country cloud adoption.
Compute
Ephemeral OS Disk with full caching for VM and VMSS (preview)
Ephemeral OS Disk with full caching is now available in Public Preview for Azure Virtual Machines (VMs) and Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS), delivering faster and more reliable operating system disk performance for supported workloads. This capability works by caching the entire OS disk image on local VM storage—including cache disk, resource disk, or NVMe disk—resulting in improved input/output (I/O) performance, consistently low latency, and greater resilience during remote storage disruptions. Microsoft highlights that this feature is especially well suited for I/O-sensitive stateless workloads, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) scenarios, quorum-based databases, data analytics, real-time processing systems, and large-scale stateless services on general-purpose VM families. During the preview, the feature is available for most general-purpose VM SKUs, excluding 2-vCPU and 4-vCPU virtual machines, across a broad set of 29 Azure regions.
Networking
Rule impact analysis on Azure Network Watcher (preview)
Rule impact analysis in Azure Network Watcher is now available in Public Preview, enabling customers to preview the impact of security admin rules before applying them to their environments. This capability helps administrators better understand the potential effects of rule changes in advance, reducing the risk of unintended connectivity issues and improving change validation for network security configurations.
Unlock client-side configuration at scale with Azure App Configuration and Azure Front Door (preview)
Azure App Configuration now integrates with Azure Front Door in Public Preview, allowing customers to deliver dynamic configuration securely to client-side applications at Content Delivery Network (CDN) scale. This capability gives modern applications greater flexibility by enabling client-side configuration updates at global scale, while benefiting from Azure Front Door’s distribution and edge delivery capabilities.
StandardV2 NAT Gateway as an outbound type for AKS (preview)
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) now supports managed and user-assigned StandardV2 NAT Gateway as an outbound type for both AKS-managed and bring-your-own virtual networks (BYO VNets) in Public Preview. This update provides additional flexibility for outbound connectivity design in AKS, enabling customers to take advantage of the newer StandardV2 NAT Gateway option when planning egress architecture for Kubernetes workloads.
Storage
Granular encryption-in-transit controls for SMB and NFS on Azure Files
Azure Files now supports independent configuration of encryption-in-transit settings for SMB and NFS protocols at the storage account level. This capability allows customers to define protocol-specific security policies and apply more precise control over encryption requirements for each protocol without compromise. Microsoft positions this enhancement as especially useful for mixed-protocol workloads, where SMB and NFS may require different security configurations while still sharing the same storage environment.
Azure Storage Mover now available in Azure Government (US)
Azure Storage Mover is now available in Azure Government (US), enabling U.S. government customers and partners to securely migrate large-scale file data into Azure Government cloud environments by using a fully managed migration service. This availability expands Storage Mover’s reach to government scenarios that require stronger compliance and sovereign cloud alignment, while helping organizations simplify large-scale file migrations without relying on self-managed tooling.
Azure Data Box now supports Azure Files Provisioned v2
Azure Data Box now supports data ingestion into Azure Files Provisioned v2 storage accounts. This enhancement extends Azure Data Box compatibility to the newer billing and provisioning model for Azure Files, helping customers move data into Provisioned v2 environments as part of migration and large-scale data transfer scenarios.
Azure File Sync now available in Belgium Central, Malaysia West, and Indonesia Central
Azure File Sync is now available in Belgium Central, Malaysia West, and Indonesia Central, extending the service to additional regions and bringing it closer to organizations with hybrid file storage requirements. Azure File Sync enables seamless tiering of data from on-premises Windows Servers to Azure Files, supporting both hybrid use cases and simplified migration scenarios. With this regional expansion, customers can benefit from lower latency, improved performance, and support for local data residency requirements, while continuing to use the performance, flexibility, and compatibility of their on-premises file servers together with the scale and cost efficiency of Azure Files.
Encrypt Premium SSD v2 and Ultra Disks with cross-tenant customer-managed keys
Cross-tenant customer-managed keys (CMK) for Premium SSD v2 and Ultra Disks are now Generally Available (GA). This capability allows managed disks to be encrypted with a customer-managed key stored in an Azure Key Vault located in a different Microsoft Entra tenant from the disk resource itself. The feature is designed for scenarios where resource ownership and key ownership are intentionally separated across tenants, such as in multi-tenant or service provider environments, helping organizations enforce stronger separation of duties and more flexible encryption governance models.
Minimum billable object size for cooler storage tiers
Microsoft has announced a minimum billable object size for cooler storage tiers in storage accounts that use Azure Blob Storage or Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS) Gen2. This update affects how objects stored in cooler tiers are billed, introducing a minimum billable size threshold for stored objects. Based on the available information, Microsoft has announced the change, but no additional publicly indexed details were available in the provided sources regarding the full scope or implementation specifics.
Smart Tier for Azure Blob and Data Lake Storage
Smart Tier for Azure Blob Storage and Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS) is now Generally Available (GA) in nearly all zonal public cloud regions, with Israel Central, Qatar Central, and UAE North excluded from this announcement. Smart Tier is a fully managed and automated data tiering capability for object storage standard online tiers, designed to reduce the need for manual tier placement decisions. By automating data placement across supported tiers, Smart Tier helps customers simplify storage management and optimize data lifecycle handling for object storage workloads.
Azure Data Box enhances compliance with automatic Secure Erasure Certificates
Azure Data Box now automatically generates a downloadable Secure Erasure Certificate for every completed order, improving compliance and auditability for data transfer workflows. This enhancement provides customers with a more consistent way to document secure data removal after transfer operations, which can be especially useful for governance, regulatory, and audit requirements.
Azure Files assessments now available using Azure Migrate (preview)
Azure Migrate now supports Azure Files assessments in Public Preview, allowing customers and partners to more effectively plan migrations of on-premises SMB and NFS shares. With this capability, organizations can discover and review existing on-premises file shares, then group, tag, and assess them to support migration planning and improve visibility into file-based modernization scenarios.
User and group quota reports in Azure NetApp Files (preview)
User and group quota reports in Azure NetApp Files are now Generally Available (GA). This capability provides organizations using individual user and group quotas on NFS, SMB, and dual-protocol volumes with improved visibility into quota consumption by exposing key metrics such as quota limits, used capacity, and percentage utilization for each targeted user or group defined in a quota rule. With this reporting functionality, administrators can more easily monitor capacity usage, identify potential imbalances, and manage storage allocation more effectively across Azure NetApp Files environments.
Azure NetApp Files storage with cool access enhancement (preview)
Azure NetApp Files is introducing a storage with cool access enhancement in Public Preview for the Premium and Ultra service levels. This enhancement more precisely aligns throughput with data tiering by dynamically calculating maximum throughput based on the amount of data tiered to cool access storage, rather than applying a fixed reduction. With this model, hot data retains its configured performance, while throughput adjustments occur only for the data that has been moved to the cool tier, enabling more efficient performance management for tiered storage scenarios.
Azure Local
Foundry Local on Azure Local single-node deployments (preview)
Microsoft has announced the Public Preview of Foundry Local support for single-node Azure Local deployments, extending its edge Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities to industrial, manufacturing, and sovereign scenarios where inference must run locally without relying on cloud connectivity or multi-node clusters. Delivered both as a Kubernetes-native service and as an Azure Arc-enabled extension, this preview allows organizations to deploy, manage, and run advanced AI models directly on local infrastructure, such as servers on the factory floor, in remote plants, or in highly regulated and disconnected environments. Foundry Local provides REST and OpenAI-compatible APIs, enabling teams to use familiar cloud-aligned patterns for local AI workloads, while supporting built-in generative models from the Foundry Local catalog, custom predictive models such as Open Neural Network Exchange (ONNX) models from Open Container Initiative (OCI) registries, and multi-model orchestration for agent-style applications a single Kubernetes cluster. On Azure Local single-node systems, Foundry Local runs on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) enabled by Azure Arc, with Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) access enabled through the NVIDIA device plugin, providing a validated and supported edge AI foundation. Microsoft also offers two deployment paths: an Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes extension for simplified lifecycle management through the Azure portal, and a Helm chart-based installation option for teams that require more granular control over deployment configuration, GPU allocation, storage, and GitOps workflows.
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.
