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

ItalyNorth: New Services Available

The ItalyNorth cloud region has expanded its service offerings with the availability of Azure vNet Data Gateway and Azure AI Computer Vision. Additionally, vNet Data Gateway for Microsoft Fabric is now available in this region, empowering organizations to integrate and manage their data flows efficiently.

Microsoft Azure Now Available from New Cloud Region in New Zealand

Microsoft has announced the general availability of its first cloud region in New Zealand. Equipped with Azure Availability Zones, this new region provides global organizations with access to scalable, highly available, and resilient Microsoft Cloud services. This initiative underscores Microsoft’s commitment to supporting digital transformation and sustainable innovation in the country. The New Zealand region connects to the world’s largest and most trusted cloud infrastructure, offering the highest standards of security, privacy, and regulatory-compliant data storage.

Storage

Storage Account Default Maximum Request Rate Limit Increased to 40,000 Requests Per Second

Microsoft has increased the default maximum request rate for general-purpose v2 and Blob storage accounts to 40,000 requests per second in several regions, doubling the previous limit of 20,000 requests per second. This enhancement ensures that businesses can manage higher workloads with improved efficiency and scalability.

Enhancements on Elastic SAN: Resiliency, Scalability, and AVS Integration

Elastic SAN has received significant enhancements, including improved resiliency, scalability, and integration with Azure VMware Solution (AVS). A newly published availability Service Level Agreement (SLA) offers peace of mind for mission-critical workloads. Additionally, CRC32C checksum verification has been introduced, enabling customers to ensure data integrity. If enabled on the client side, connections without CRC32C verification will be rejected, preventing accidental errors during communication or storage. Elastic SAN is now generally available as a fully managed, VMware-certified SAN integrated with AVS. This solution provides massive scalability, redundancy, and cost efficiency, enabling AVS customers to deploy workloads with varying performance and reliability needs. It also supports use cases like backup, disaster recovery, and capacity-intensive workloads, offering a robust and extensible storage solution at a low total cost of ownership.

Azure Local

Azure Local Clustering Updates

Rack Aware Cluster (Preview)

Azure Local 23H2 introduces Rack Aware Clusters for short-distance setups. These clusters span two racks within a Layer-2 network, offering fault isolation and efficient storage. Supporting up to eight nodes, this scalable solution is ideal for edge locations and is set for general release in 2025.

Long-Distance Disaster Recovery

Azure Site Recovery enables disaster recovery by replicating Azure Local VMs to Azure. Hyper-V Replica supports replication to secondary sites for workloads that cannot utilize the cloud.

Transitioning from Stretched Clusters

Stretched Clusters from version 22H2 are not supported in 23H2 and beyond. However, clusters can remain supported by upgrading the operating system to version 23H2, providing time to transition to new solutions.

Windows Server 2025 Options

Windows Server 2025 introduces hybrid cloud capabilities and replication technologies like Hyper-V Replica and Storage Replica, enabling tailored disaster recovery solutions with enhanced flexibility.

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 Stack. 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.

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

Azure Managed Grafana Now Available in ItalyNorth

Azure Managed Grafana is now available in the ItalyNorth region, bringing the powerful visualization and analytics capabilities of Grafana closer to businesses in this area. This service enables users to monitor and analyze their Azure and hybrid environments seamlessly through an integrated, fully managed Grafana experience. With this expansion, organizations can leverage a locally hosted solution, ensuring lower latency and adherence to regional compliance requirements.

Compute

New Da/Ea/Fav6 Series AMD-Based Virtual Machines

Microsoft has announced the general availability of the Da/Ea/Fav6 series AMD-based virtual machines (VMs). These VMs include the Dasv6 and Dalsv6 general-purpose series, the Easv6 memory-optimized series, and the compute-optimized Falsv6, Fasv6, and Famsv6 series. They deliver significant performance and price-performance improvements over previous AMD-based VM generations, making them ideal for workloads like data analytics, web and application servers, databases, and caches.

Key advancements in these VMs include the integration of NVMe interfaces for local and remote disks, leading to:

• 80% better remote storage performance,
• 400% faster local storage speeds,
• 20% networking bandwidth improvement,
• 45% higher NVMe SSD capacity per vCPU for local-disk configurations.

These enhancements ensure superior performance and scalability for a wide range of enterprise needs.

Networking

Copilot in Azure: Embedded Experience for Azure Firewall Integration in Security Copilot

The integration of Azure Firewall with Security Copilot has been enhanced, offering a streamlined embedded experience for detailed threat analysis directly in the Azure portal. This feature enables analysts to investigate malicious traffic intercepted by the IDPS (Intrusion Detection and Prevention System) feature of Azure Firewall using natural language queries.

Key capabilities now accessible via the Azure portal include:

• Retrieving the top IDPS signature hits for an Azure Firewall.
• Enriching the threat profile of an IDPS signature beyond log information.
• Searching for specific IDPS signatures across tenants, subscriptions, or resource groups.
• Generating recommendations to secure environments using Azure Firewall’s IDPS feature.

These advancements simplify threat analysis and provide actionable insights to bolster security postures.

Azure Bastion Premium

Azure Bastion Premium is a new SKU designed to meet the needs of customers managing highly sensitive virtual machine workloads. This premium offering enhances security by ensuring private connectivity and enabling monitoring for potential anomalies in virtual machine sessions.

Key features introduced with Azure Bastion Premium include:

• Session Recording: Record all virtual machine sessions connected via Bastion, allowing for graphical session playback for auditing and compliance.
• Private Endpoint Connectivity: Securely connect to Bastion via a private endpoint to further isolate network traffic.

These features provide an elevated level of security and monitoring for critical workloads, ensuring compliance and operational integrity. For more details, refer to the guides on configuring session recording and private endpoint connectivity.

Azure Virtual Network Now Supports Configuration of Private IP Address Blocks on Network Interfaces (preview)

Azure Virtual Network has introduced support for configuring private IP address blocks on network interfaces, increasing the number of usable private IP addresses by up to 16 times. Network interfaces now support the configuration of one primary and multiple secondary IP configurations, with each secondary configuration capable of assigning a /28 CIDR block of private IPv4 addresses. This provides 16 usable IP addresses per configuration. This enhancement is particularly beneficial for scenarios such as deploying a large number of Kubernetes (K8s) containers in a virtual network, enabling seamless routing between virtual machines (VMs) and K8s containers. To learn more about configuring private IP address blocks on network interfaces, refer to the documentation: Assign private IP address prefixes to virtual machines.

Fallback to Internet on Private DNS Zones (preview)

The fallback to internet on Private DNS Zones is a new feature in preview that unlocks the adoption of fully managed solutions for network isolation and simplifies scenarios involving Private Link and Private DNS. This feature enables public recursion to occur when an authoritative NXDOMAIN response is received from Private DNS Zones, removing the need for IaaS-based DNS servers.

With this capability, customers can now implement a fully managed native solution for Private Link and Private DNS adoption. The feature can be enabled at the virtual network link level via the API, CLI, or PowerShell, with portal support expected within two weeks. Users can activate the fallback option by selecting Enable fallback to internet in the virtual network link configuration.

DNS Security Policy (preview)

The DNS security policy is now in public preview, introducing enhanced visibility and control over DNS traffic at the virtual network (VNet) level. This feature allows logs to be sent to a storage account, log analytics workspace, or event hubs, and offers DNS filtering capabilities to allow, alert, or block name resolutions based on domain lists. The general availability version will incorporate threat intelligence feeds to block known malicious domains.

Key features of the DNS security policy include:

• DNS Traffic Rules: Rules to allow, block, or alert based on priority and domain lists.
• Virtual Network Links: A single policy can be linked to multiple VNets within the same region.
• DNS Domain Lists: Location-based lists of domains for targeted filtering.

The feature is accessible through API, CLI, and PowerShell, with portal availability expected within two weeks.

Azure DNS Now Supports DNSSEC (preview)

Azure DNS has introduced support for DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions) in public preview, significantly enhancing the security of domain name systems in the Azure public cloud. This feature ensures the integrity and authenticity of DNS data by verifying DNS responses against signatures, protecting against attacks such as cache poisoning and man-in-the-middle.

Key Benefits of DNSSEC:

• Enhanced Security: Prevents DNS response manipulation, ensuring users are directed to legitimate destinations.
• Data Integrity: Verifies that DNS data has not been altered in transit by signing responses.
• Trust and Authenticity: Establishes a chain of trust from the root DNS servers to your domain.

DNSSEC is now available via API, CLI, and PowerShell, with portal support expected in the coming weeks. For further details, refer to the Azure DNSSEC documentation.

Network Security Perimeter (preview)

The Network Security Perimeter feature, now in preview, provides a robust solution to restrict access to resources within a defined perimeter while permitting public traffic through explicitly configured inbound and outbound access rules. This capability enhances security and simplifies the management of PaaS resources.

With Network Security Perimeter, administrators can:

• Create secure boundaries around PaaS resources.
• Prevent data exfiltration by associating PaaS resources with the perimeter.
• Define and manage access rules for traffic outside the secure perimeter.
• Consolidate access rule management for all PaaS resources within a single interface.
• Enable diagnostic settings to generate access logs for auditing and compliance.
• Allow private endpoint traffic without requiring additional access rules.

This feature streamlines the administration of secure environments while maintaining flexibility for specific access needs.

Web Application Firewall (WAF) Running on Application Gateway for Containers (preview)

Azure’s Application Gateway for Containers now supports Web Application Firewall (WAF) in private preview, offering centralized security for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) environments. WAF’s Default Ruleset protects against a wide range of attacks and exploits, including:

• Cross-site scripting (XSS),
• SQL injection,
• PHP and Java injection,
• Local and remote file inclusion,
• Remote command execution,
• Protocol attacks, and
• Session fixation vulnerabilities.

Additionally, the WAF includes bot manager rulesets to safeguard against malicious bot activities. This comprehensive protection empowers AKS users to defend their applications and services against evolving threats while leveraging the scalability of containerized architectures.

Storage

Azure NetApp Files Cool Access Feature Support with Large Volumes

Azure NetApp Files now supports the cool access feature for large volumes, marking its general availability. This capability enables the tiering of infrequently accessed data on large volumes (ranging from 50 TiB to 1 PiB, and up to 2 PiB on request) to a lower-cost storage tier while maintaining seamless integration with standard, premium, and ultra storage service levels.

The cool access feature allows organizations in industries like Oil & Gas, Manufacturing, and Healthcare to optimize costs by transitioning inactive data to more affordable storage tiers. This integration is especially valuable for large-scale workloads requiring compliance or ongoing business processes, offering significant cost savings and operational efficiency. This feature is available in Azure NetApp Files regions that support large volumes.

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 Stack. 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.

This blog post series highlights the key announcements and major updates related to Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Azure Stack, as officially released by Microsoft in the past two weeks.

Azure

Networking

Azure Cross-Subscription Load Balancer

Microsoft is pleased to announce the general availability of the Azure cross-subscription Load Balancer. This feature allows components of a load balancer, such as the frontend IP address or backend instances, to be located in different subscriptions. Cross-subscription load balancing offers flexibility in architecture design and is now available in all Azure public regions, as well as in China cloud and Government cloud regions.

Azure Load Balancer Admin State and Health Status

Azure Load Balancer now supports the Administrative State (Admin State) feature, simplifying the management of backend pool instances. Admin State allows users to override health probe behavior for individual instances without changing network security rules or port configurations. This facilitates maintenance by enabling users to mark instances as up or down and control connection behavior without additional complexity.

Additionally, the Health Status feature is now generally available, offering detailed insights into the health of backend instances in Azure Load Balancer pools. This feature provides:

• User-triggered issue notifications

• Platform-triggered reason codes

These capabilities enhance monitoring and troubleshooting, ensuring efficient management and improved visibility into backend instance health.

Single Prefix Enhancement to Seamless Gateway Migration

The Gateway migration experience has been enhanced to enable customers to use the Azure Portal or PowerShell scripts to deploy a second Virtual Network Gateway within the same GatewaySubnet. During the migration phase, initiated by the customer, Azure will transfer both the control plane and data path configurations from the existing gateway to the new one. This results in two operational gateways coexisting within the same subnet. After a successful migration, customers can remove the original gateway, leaving the new one in place for continued connectivity. This feature is designed to support seamless migrations with minimal downtime.

Azure Virtual Network Manager User-Defined Route (UDR) Management

Azure Virtual Network Manager now offers the general availability of User-Defined Route (UDR) Management. This feature simplifies the process of managing complex routing behaviors by automating UDR orchestration. Users can establish routing configurations that automatically deploy across virtual networks, eliminating the need for manual UDR creation or custom scripts, thus reducing errors and simplifying large-scale routing. UDR Management enables users to organize routing rules into collections tied to specific network groups, ensuring consistency and reusability across subnets or virtual networks. Custom routing behaviors, such as directing traffic in a hub-and-spoke topology or routing traffic through Azure Firewall, can now be implemented with ease. This automation ensures flexible and seamless routing that adjusts to network changes without manual intervention. 

Retirement: Azure CDN Standard/Premium from Edgio (formerly Verizon)

Azure CDN Standard/Premium from Edgio (formerly Verizon) is set to be retired on November 4, 2025. To avoid service interruptions, customers currently utilizing this service need to migrate their workloads to a comparable solution before this date. Additionally, as of January 15, 2025, the creation of new Azure CDN profiles from Edgio will no longer be permitted.

This retirement follows Edgio’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing on September 9, 2024, which casts uncertainty over their ability to maintain service continuity until the retirement date. Microsoft continues to monitor the situation closely and will provide updates if any changes affect the retirement timeline.

As a recommended alternative, Microsoft suggests transitioning to Azure Front Door Standard or Premium, which is the flagship CDN product, to ensure a seamless migration and maintain high service reliability.

Static Egress Gateway for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

The Static Egress Gateway for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is now available in public preview. This feature empowers AKS users to configure a fixed source IP for out-of-cluster communications without the overhead of deploying a dedicated node pool with a NAT gateway. By leveraging this capability, organizations can achieve precise control over egress traffic, streamline integration with external systems, and bolster network security without incurring significant additional costs.

Network Isolated Clusters in AKS (preview)

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) introduces Network Isolated Clusters, now in public preview. This feature simplifies the process of restricting network access for AKS clusters by enabling built-in isolation without relying solely on Azure Firewall. By reducing the complexity and costs associated with managing firewall configurations, Network Isolated Clusters help organizations safeguard sensitive data and prevent unintentional exposure of public endpoints, thereby minimizing the risk of security breaches.

Storage

Convert to Azure Premium SSD v2 Disks

Microsoft is excited to announce the General Availability of the feature for converting to Premium SSD v2 disks (Pv2). This capability enables users to confidently migrate their workloads to Pv2 disks. The conversion process allows for a seamless transition from existing Standard SSD, Standard HDD, or Premium SSD v1 disks to Pv2 with minimal downtime. Notably, this process avoids disk destruction, eliminates the need for snapshots as a staging resource, and bypasses background data copying, making migrations simpler and more efficient.

Enhancements on Elastic SAN: Resiliency, Security, Scalability, and AVS Integration

Azure Elastic SAN, Microsoft’s latest block storage innovation, has been enhanced with new features that improve resiliency, security, scalability, and integration with Azure VMware Solution (AVS).

Key highlights include:

• Service Level Agreement (SLA): The availability SLA is now published, providing assurance for mission-critical workloads running on Elastic SAN.

• CRC Protection: Customers can now enable CRC32C checksum verification to maintain data integrity. If enabled on the client side, connections without CRC32C set for both header and data digests will be rejected, ensuring data protection.

• Public Preview of Autoscale for Capacity: Elastic SAN now supports autoscaling, a first in cloud block storage solutions. This feature simplifies management by allowing users to set a policy for automatic scaling of storage capacity, saving time and controlling TCO by enabling growth on demand with user-defined increments.

• Integration with Azure VMware Solution (GA): Azure Elastic SAN is now fully integrated with AVS, offering a managed, VMware-certified SAN that is scalable, easy to manage, and cost-efficient. This provides AVS customers with flexible storage options suitable for a range of workloads, including backup and disaster recovery.

Azure File Sync Support for Managed Identities (preview)

Azure File Sync support for managed identities is now available in public preview. This update allows users to leverage system-assigned managed identities provided by Microsoft Entra ID, thereby eliminating the need for shared keys as an authentication method for Azure file shares. By configuring managed identities, Azure File Sync deployments benefit from enhanced security through streamlined authentication processes in three key scenarios:

• Authentication of the Storage Sync Service to Azure file shares

• Authentication of registered servers to Azure file shares

• Authentication of registered servers to the Storage Sync Service

The public preview is accessible in all Azure Public and Gov regions where Azure File Sync is supported, and there is no additional cost for utilizing managed identities in these configurations.

Azure Stack

Azure Stack HCI

Upgrade Your Azure Stack HCI 22H2 Clusters to 23H2

Azure Stack HCI version 22H2 will reach retirement in May 2025. After this date, clusters operating on this version will no longer receive monthly security and quality updates. To maintain compliance and continue receiving updates, it is essential to upgrade the operating system to version 23H2.

The recommended action for customers is to promptly initiate the upgrade process by following these steps:

1. Upgrade the operating system of your Azure Stack HCI cluster to version 23H2 to ensure continued receipt of monthly security and quality updates.

2. Apply the solution upgrade to receive ongoing feature updates.

Taking these steps promptly will help ensure cluster stability and continued support.

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 Stack. 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.

This blog post series highlights the key announcements and major updates related to Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Azure Stack, as officially released by Microsoft in the past two weeks.

Azure

General

Storage

Edit Network Features for Azure NetApp Files with No Downtime (Public Preview)

The latest public preview introduces the ability to edit network features for Azure NetApp Files volumes without downtime, providing greater flexibility and enhanced networking for users. With Standard Network Features now available in select regions (Australia East, Central India, North Central US, and Switzerland North), users can seamlessly upgrade from Basic to Standard network features, maintaining service continuity. Standard Network Features introduce several improvements, including increased IP limits in VNets with Azure NetApp Files, meeting enterprise security needs with Network Security Groups (NSGs) on delegated subnets, and improved network control through User-defined routes. The feature also supports enhanced connectivity via Active/Active VPN gateway setups and enables high-performance ExpressRoute FastPath connectivity, ensuring low latency and high-bandwidth connectivity between on-premises networks and Azure.

Live Resize for Azure Premium SSD v2 and Ultra Disks

Azure has announced the General Availability of Live Resize for Premium SSD v2 and Ultra Disks, a capability that enables users to dynamically increase storage capacity without application disruption. This feature allows organizations to start with smaller disks and expand their storage as needed, supporting cost management while providing flexibility. With this new feature, Azure customers can adjust resources efficiently without experiencing any downtime.

Expansion of Azure Premium SSD v2 Disk Storage to New Regions

Azure Premium SSD v2 Disk Storage is now accessible in additional regions, including Germany West Central, Israel Central, Italy North, Spain Central, and Mexico Central. This advanced storage solution offers a blend of price performance and ultra-low disk latency, ideal for I/O-intensive workloads like SQL Server, Oracle, SAP, and other enterprise applications. Azure Premium SSD v2’s expansion provides more organizations across the globe with access to reliable, high-performance storage for critical workloads, meeting the needs of industries ranging from big data analytics to gaming and containerized applications.

Azure Stack

Azure Stack HCI

Microsoft Recognized as a Leader in 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Distributed Hybrid Infrastructure

Microsoft has once again been named a Leader in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Distributed Hybrid Infrastructure (DHI), marking its second consecutive year in this position. Microsoft earned top placement for both Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute. Azure’s adaptive cloud approach and comprehensive infrastructure, spanning cloud and edge, address a wide array of customer requirements that drive digital transformation across industries. Examples such as Coles and Emirates Global Aluminum (EGA) underscore the impact of Azure in various sectors. Coles leverages GPU-enabled Azure Stack HCI and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) through Azure Arc for AI-driven video inferencing in-store, enhancing customer experience. EGA’s smart crane operations rely on low-latency, local AI models, optimized for real-time adjustments essential to aluminum casting. These examples highlight Azure’s versatile infrastructure, meeting the performance needs of both retail and manufacturing through advanced AI and machine learning capabilities.

Figure 1 – Magic Quadrant for Distributed Hybrid Infrastructure

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 Stack. 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.

This blog post series highlights the key announcements and major updates related to Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Azure Stack, as officially released by Microsoft in the past two weeks.

Azure

General

ItalyNorth – New Services Available

Microsoft has expanded the portfolio of services in the Italy North Azure Region, making it an even more robust destination for organizations seeking to leverage cloud technology for migration, modernization, and real-time analytics. Below are the key new services now available in the Italy North Azure Region.

• Azure VMware Solution (AV64) – The Azure VMware Solution (AV64) is now available in Italy North, allowing businesses to seamlessly migrate their existing VMware-based workloads to Azure. It provides a fully managed VMware environment in the cloud, designed to deliver scalability, security, and operational consistency without requiring businesses to rearchitect their applications. This solution empowers organizations to modernize their infrastructure while preserving the familiar VMware ecosystem.

• Oracle Database@Azure – Oracle Database@Azure is now available in the ItalyNorth Azure Region. This service operates on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) within Microsoft’s data centers, offering high-performance connectivity between Oracle Database and Azure resources. By colocating the services, customers benefit from reduced latency and faster access to their Azure applications. This collaboration enables organizations to take advantage of both Oracle’s and Microsoft’s leading cloud services, ensuring a seamless and efficient cloud experience.

• Apache Kafka® and Apache Flink® on Confluent Cloud™ – Azure Native ISV Services now includes Apache Kafka® and Apache Flink® on Confluent Cloud™ in Italy North. These services provide powerful, scalable solutions for real-time event streaming and data processing pipelines. The native integration with Azure simplifies the architecture, enabling businesses to build real-time analytics solutions that are secure, scalable, and operationally efficient. This strengthens Italy North’s capabilities in supporting data-driven decisions and analytics.

• Azure Data Box – Azure Data Box is now available in the ItalyNorth Azure Region, offering businesses a secure and efficient solution to transfer large volumes of data to Azure. Ideal for companies facing bandwidth limitations or performing one-time large-scale data migrations, Azure Data Box simplifies the data transfer process while minimizing downtime. With its availability in ItalyNorth, businesses now have more options for managing their data migration efforts securely and effectively.

These additions mark a significant enhancement to the Italy North Azure Region, empowering organizations to innovate, migrate, and scale their cloud operations with greater efficiency.

Compute

Azure Cobalt 100 Arm-based Virtual Machines

Microsoft has announced the general availability of the new Cobalt 100 Arm-based virtual machines (VMs). These VMs include the general-purpose Dpsv6-series and Dplsv6-series, as well as the memory-optimized Epsv6-series. The Cobalt 100 VMs deliver up to 50% better price-performance compared to the previous generation of Arm-based VMs, making them ideal for scale-out and cloud-native Linux-based workloads. These workloads include data analytics, web and application servers, open-source databases, and in-memory caches. Additionally, these VMs provide significant performance improvements: up to 1.4x better CPU performance, 1.5x improved performance on Java-based workloads, and up to 2x higher performance for web servers, .NET applications, and cache applications. They also feature 4x the local storage IOPS with NVMe and up to 1.5x better network bandwidth compared to earlier models.

ED25519 SSH Key Support for Linux VMs

Azure now supports ED25519 SSH keys for Linux VMs, offering a more secure and compact alternative to the traditional RSA keys. Previously, only RSA keys were available for secure SSH connections to Linux VMs on Azure. With this update, customers can now choose between RSA and ED25519 keys, allowing for more flexible and secure authentication options. The Azure Portal simplifies key management by enabling the creation of ED25519 keys directly. Additionally, Azure CLI and PowerShell support this key type, giving customers more ways to integrate ED25519 keys into their workflows. While RSA remains the default, the introduction of ED25519 enhances security and deployment efficiency for Linux VMs on Azure.

Networking

ExpressRoute Metro

ExpressRoute Metro is now generally available, offering a new private connectivity architecture designed to enhance network resiliency for Azure customers. ExpressRoute Metro provides dual-homed connections to two separate edge sites within the same city, ensuring improved redundancy and reliability. This feature is particularly valuable for maintaining uninterrupted service in the event of site-wide disruptions, ensuring business continuity for critical operations. Currently available in Amsterdam, Singapore, and Zurich, with upcoming launches in cities such as Atlanta, Milan, and Madrid, ExpressRoute Metro simplifies the setup process through a guided Azure portal, making configuration straightforward and user-friendly.

Custom IPv4 Prefixes (BYOIP) Can Be Used in Global/Regional Configuration

Microsoft has announced the availability of custom IPv4 prefixes using the bring-your-own-IP (BYOIP) feature in both global and regional configurations. This capability, now available in all public and US government regions, allows customers to bring public IPv4 ranges as small as /24 for global use across Azure. These ranges can be divided into regional subnets as small as /26, enabling users to associate smaller portions of the range with specific regions for redundancy and load balancing. This feature provides flexibility in IP address management, allowing for more efficient use of resources across multiple Azure regions while maintaining global availability.

Private Endpoint Support Without NVA Source Network Address Translation

Azure now offers private endpoint support without requiring source network address translation (SNAT) for traffic passing through a network virtual appliance (NVA). By configuring a specific tag on the NVA virtual machines, users can opt into this feature, which eliminates the need for SNAT for traffic destined for private endpoints. This enhancement simplifies the configuration process and ensures symmetric routing without affecting nonprivate endpoint traffic. Additionally, this feature supports internal compliance standards by maintaining traffic source information in logs. It is recommended to enable this feature during a maintenance window, as it may cause a one-time reset of long-running private endpoint connections traversing the NVA.

ExpressRoute Guided Configuration Experience

Microsoft has announced the general availability of the ExpressRoute guided configuration experience, designed to simplify the process of setting up multi-site resiliency circuits and connections. The guided experience focuses on making resiliency a key aspect of configuring ExpressRoute circuits and virtual network gateway connections. Customers can choose from three resiliency options: maximum, high, and standard. Maximum resiliency offers redundancy across and within peering locations, high resiliency provides redundancy across peering locations but not within, and standard resiliency focuses on redundancy within a single peering location. The experience also provides insights, such as the distance between peering locations and traffic engineering recommendations, to assist in informed decision-making. This guided configuration is available via the Azure portal, PowerShell scripts, and ARM templates, enhancing flexibility and ease of use for users when configuring ExpressRoute circuits.

Storage

Storage Account Default Egress Limit Increase to 200 Gbps

Microsoft has increased the default maximum egress limit for general-purpose v2 and Blob storage accounts from 120 Gbps to 200 Gbps across various regions. This increase applies to both new and existing storage accounts, allowing for greater data transfer capacity, especially for high-volume workloads. The enhanced limit ensures improved performance and scalability for customers relying on Azure storage services for data-intensive operations.

Azure Elastic SAN for Azure VMware Solution

Azure Elastic SAN for Azure VMware Solution (AVS) is now generally available. Azure Elastic SAN provides a fully managed, VMware Certified storage area network (SAN) for AVS customers, offering massive scalability, simplified management, and built-in redundancy at a low total cost of ownership (TCO). With Azure Elastic SAN, customers can scale their storage independently of performance requirements, enabling cost-effective expansion for use cases like backups and disaster recovery. Priced at $0.06-0.08 per GiB per month, this storage solution offers an economical yet robust option for AVS environments while delivering sufficient performance for a wide range of workloads.

Azure Stack

Azure Stack HCI

New Features for Azure Virtual Desktop on Azure Stack HCI

Azure Virtual Desktop on Azure Stack HCI has introduced a series of powerful features aimed at improving scalability, cost management, flexibility, and monitoring for IT administrators. These new capabilities are now generally available and offer a seamless experience through the Azure Virtual Desktop management interface. Below is an overview of the key updates and their benefits.

• Autoscale for Host Pools – The new Autoscale feature allows organizations to automatically scale session hosts up or down based on a predefined schedule, optimizing deployment costs. This feature, which was previously available for Azure Virtual Machines, can now be applied to Azure Stack HCI, enabling better resource management and cost savings.

• Start VM on Connect – This feature reduces operational costs by powering on session host VMs only when they are needed for active user connections and shutting them down when not in use. It allows organizations to maintain high efficiency by running virtual desktops only when required, thereby minimizing resource consumption.

• Windows 11 and Windows 10 Enterprise Single-Session Images from Azure Marketplace – IT administrators now have the ability to download and deploy Windows 11 and Windows 10 Enterprise single-session images from Azure Marketplace directly to their Azure Stack HCI clusters. This flexibility enables better customization of the virtual desktop environment to fit specific user requirements and workloads.

• Azure Virtual Desktop Insights Support – Azure Virtual Desktop Insights provides a centralized monitoring solution that allows IT admins to detect, diagnose, and resolve issues within their Azure Virtual Desktop environments. Now available for Azure Stack HCI, this tool enhances operational oversight by offering detailed performance metrics and troubleshooting capabilities.

• Per-User Access Pricing for Azure Virtual Desktop on Azure Stack HCI – Azure Virtual Desktop now supports a per-user access pricing model for Azure Stack HCI, enabling organizations and independent software vendors (ISVs) to provide external users with access to their virtual desktop solutions. This pricing flexibility allows businesses to offer cost-effective virtual desktop services tailored to their users’ needs.

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 Stack. 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.

This blog post series highlights the key announcements and major updates related to Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Azure Stack, as officially released by Microsoft in the past two weeks.

Azure

General

Microsoft Invests €4.3B to Boost AI Infrastructure and Cloud Capacity in Italy

Microsoft has announced its largest investment in Italy to date, committing €4.3 billion over the next two years to expand its AI and cloud infrastructure in the country. This initiative will significantly boost the capacity of its hyperscale datacenter region in Northern Italy and provide AI and cloud-based digital skills training to over 1 million Italians by 2025. The expansion aims to support Italy’s growing demand for AI-driven solutions, enabling advancements across industries such as manufacturing, healthcare, finance, and public administration. By embracing AI, Italy can address demographic challenges and foster innovation, particularly among small and medium-sized enterprises. The investment will also fortify Italy’s cybersecurity posture and ensure compliance with European data boundary requirements. As part of its AI Access Principles, Microsoft is committed to fostering innovation and competition while ensuring AI technology is accessible for the public good. This infrastructure will serve as a key data hub for the Mediterranean and North Africa, supporting broader international collaboration efforts.

Compute

Azure confidential VMs with NVIDIA Tensor Core GPUs

Azure announces the general availability of Azure confidential VMs featuring NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs, now ready for production deployment. These VMs, under the NCC H100 v5 SKU, are powered by AMD 4th Gen EPYC™ processors with SEV-SNP technology combined with NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs. This configuration enables customers to securely migrate GPU-intensive workloads to Azure while maintaining optimal performance and requiring no code modifications. The NCC H100 v5 VMs provide a hardware-based Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), which enhances guest protection by securing VM memory and state from potential hypervisor or host management code access. With this capability, Azure customers can issue attestation requests to ensure that VMs are running on a properly configured TEE before deploying sensitive applications or releasing encryption keys, safeguarding against unauthorized operator access. This release enables organizations to run their most confidential GPU workloads with heightened security on Azure.

Save up to 56% on the Latest Linux VMs in Most Azure Regions for a Limited Time

Microsoft has introduced a promotional offer allowing customers to save up to 56% on the latest Linux virtual machines (VMs) in Azure. This limited-time promotion, valid from October 1, 2024, to March 31, 2025, offers an additional 15% discount on top of the existing one-year Azure Reserved Virtual Machine Instances discount. The offer applies to qualified VM SKUs and regions, making it an excellent opportunity for businesses to reduce costs on Linux-based VMs. By purchasing a one-year Azure Reserved Virtual Machine Instance, organizations can significantly cut down their cloud infrastructure expenses compared to the standard pay-as-you-go model.

New FX series VMs – FXmsv2 and FXmdsv2 (preview)

Azure has introduced the latest members of the FX virtual machine subfamily: the FXmsv2 and FXmdsv2 series. These VMs are powered by the 5th Generation Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8473C (Emerald Rapids) processor, operating in a hyper-threaded configuration that is optimized for both memory and compute-intensive workloads. This processor delivers an all-core turbo clock speed of 3.0 GHz, supported by Intel® Turbo Boost Technology, Intel® Advanced-Vector Extensions 512 (Intel® AVX-512), and Intel® Deep Learning Boost, making it a suitable choice for high-performance computing. The FXmsv2 and FXmdsv2 series are designed for workloads requiring high CPU clock speeds and a significant memory-to-CPU ratio, such as electronic design automation (EDA) workloads. These virtual machines offer up to 96 vCPUs and 1832 GiB of RAM, providing substantial power and flexibility. Additionally, customers have the option to choose between VM configurations with or without local disks, allowing for tailored optimization according to the specific needs of each workload.

Azure NMads MA35D-Series Virtual Machines (preview)

Microsoft has introduced the public preview of the Azure NMads MA35D-Series virtual machines (VM) in the East US region, marking Azure’s first VM SKU equipped with specialized hardware designed for video transcoding workloads. Powered by Xilinx MA35D “Supernova” ASIC video processing units (VPUs), this VM is optimized for both batch and real-time video transcoding tasks. With a combination of 16 vCPUs, 32GB of RAM, and 76GB of temporary storage, it also features advanced codecs such as AV1 for improved video processing efficiency. Compared to general-purpose CPU or GPU solutions, the NMads MA35D-Series offers superior throughput and lower latency, reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO) for customers. This new SKU presents a powerful, cost-effective option for video transcoding workloads, enhancing performance and efficiency for cloud-based video processing.

Azure NVads V710 v5-Series Virtual Machines (preview)

Microsoft has announced the public preview of the Azure NVads V710 v5-series virtual machines (VMs), which are powered by AMD Radeon™ Pro V710 GPUs and AMD EPYC 9V64 (Genoa) CPUs. With base frequencies of 3.95 GHz and maximum frequencies of 4.3 GHz, these VMs leverage AMD Simultaneous Multithreading technology to assign dedicated vCPU threads to each VM. The series offers five configuration options, ranging from 1/6 of a GPU with a 4-GiB frame buffer to a full V710 GPU with a 28GB GDDR6 PCIe card. These VMs do not require additional GPU licensing and support NVMe for ephemeral local storage. This series is optimized for GPU-accelerated graphics applications and cloud-based virtual desktops, providing cost-effective, high-performance options for graphics-enabled workloads. It is also well-suited for interactive cloud-based gaming and small to medium AI/ML inference workloads such as semantic indexing and recommendation systems.

Networking

Azure Virtual Network Monitoring IP Address Management (preview)

The new public preview of Azure Virtual Network Monitoring IP address management enhances Azure’s network management suite by simplifying IP address planning and allocation. This feature offers centralized control over IP addresses, helping organizations manage complex network environments more efficiently. It provides capabilities to automatically assign non-overlapping addresses, reserve IP addresses for specific use cases, and prevent Azure address space from overlapping with on-premises or multi-cloud environments. Users can now monitor IP usage and allocation in real time, ensuring seamless and well-organized network operations. This new feature is critical for maintaining a clear overview of network resources and preventing IP conflicts across different environments.

Azure Retirement in Networking Services

Azure continues to evolve its networking services to align with security standards and enhance overall performance. As part of this ongoing transformation, several key networking features and services are being retired or updated. Customers are encouraged to stay informed of these changes to ensure a smooth transition and avoid service disruptions. Below is a summary of the upcoming retirements and their timelines, along with recommended migration paths and improvements:

• Starting from January 1, 2025, the creation of new gateways on VpnGw1-5 (Non-AZ SKUs) will no longer be possible. To ensure a smooth transition, Microsoft will be seamlessly migrating all existing gateways on VpnGw1-5 (Non-AZ SKUs) to VpnGw1-5 (AZ SKUs) between April 2025 and October 2026. As part of this process, prices on the AZ SKUs will be reduced to facilitate the migration for customers.
• Additionally, starting June 30, 2025, new NSG flow logs will no longer be supported. Microsoft recommends migrating to virtual network flow logs in Network Watcher, which provide enhanced capabilities and overcome the limitations of NSG flow logs.
• As part of Azure’s ongoing security enhancements, from August 31, 2025, all connections to Azure Application Gateway must use Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.2 or later. TLS 1.0 and 1.1 will no longer be supported, and TLS 1.2 and above offer improved security features, such as perfect forward secrecy and stronger cipher suites.
• Similarly, connections to Azure Front Door must also adhere to TLS 1.2 or later, with support for TLS 1.0 and 1.1 being discontinued from December 1, 2024. The later versions of TLS improve security with enhanced encryption features.
• In addition, Azure CDN Standard from Microsoft (classic) will be retired on September 30, 2027. Customers using this service must migrate to Azure Front Door Standard or Premium before this date to avoid service disruptions.
• Finally, on September 30, 2027, Inbound NAT rule V1 for Azure Virtual Machines and Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets in Azure Load Balancer will be retired. Users are advised to migrate to Inbound NAT rule V2 by this date to prevent any interruptions to their services.

gRPC and Frontend mTLS Now Available for Application Gateway for Containers

Azure has introduced two important updates for Application Gateway for Containers, enhancing security and communication capabilities. Frontend mutual authentication (mTLS) is now supported, ensuring that only specific clients are authenticated before their requests are forwarded to the backend service. This update brings feature parity for customers using the Application Gateway Ingress Controller and adds an additional layer of security, complementing the already available backend mutual authentication.

Moreover, gRPC support is now available for Application Gateway for Containers. With gRPC, customers can benefit from four advanced communication methods between the client and the Application Gateway: unary, client streaming, server streaming, and bidirectional streaming. These capabilities offer flexible and efficient communication options for modern application architectures.

Storage

Azure File Sync Agent v19 Release Now Available

The Azure File Sync agent v19 is now generally available for download via Microsoft Update and Microsoft Download Center, bringing key improvements and new features. With this release, server provisioning times for Azure File Sync server endpoints have been drastically reduced, providing faster setup for new servers. Additionally, managed identity support (preview) has been introduced, allowing Azure File Sync to authenticate using system-assigned identities from Microsoft Entra ID, eliminating the need for shared keys. The update also delivers significant sync performance improvements, particularly for file share migrations and metadata changes, and introduces support for Windows Server 2025. This release includes other reliability and telemetry enhancements for cloud tiering and sync operations. The agent version for this release is 19.1.0.0, and a restart is required for servers running earlier versions. Full installation instructions can be found in KB5040924.

Azure Stack

Azure Stack HCI

Announcing the Public Preview of Azure Migrate for VMware to HCI migrations (preview)

Microsoft has introduced the public preview of Azure Migrate’s new feature that facilitates the migration of virtual machines (VMs) from VMware environments to Azure Stack HCI. This enhancement extends Azure’s migration capabilities to the edge, aligning with Microsoft’s adaptive cloud strategy. Key advantages include agent-less replication, which allows VM migration without the need to install agents, reducing potential disruptions. The platform also enables workload configuration during migration, allowing users to adjust properties such as CPU and RAM. Additionally, Azure Migrate ensures no workload impact during replication by utilizing technologies like LEDBAT++ and vCenter API interaction, providing a seamless, disruption-free migration experience. Importantly, data remains on-premises throughout the process, ensuring compliance and control. With minimal cutover time, this solution is designed to maintain business continuity while transitioning to Azure Stack HCI.

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 Stack. 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.