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 recognized as a Leader in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud-Native Application Platforms
Microsoft has been named a Leader in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud-Native Application Platforms for the second consecutive year, positioned furthest to the right for Completeness of Vision. The recognition reflects Microsoft’s continued product innovation, cohesive developer experience, and leadership in AI—enabling customers to build cloud-native applications and AI agents across web apps, APIs, event-driven workloads, serverless functions, and containers, backed by global scale and deep enterprise expertise. Microsoft reiterates its commitment to helping organizations innovate with AI while maintaining scalable, cost-efficient operations.
Microsoft Azure now available from cloud region in Austria
Microsoft announced the opening of its cloud region in Austria to accelerate digital transformation and AI innovation. The new region enables enterprises and public sector organizations in Austria to store and process data locally and securely, in compliance with data protection regulations. To help customers adopt the new region and its Availability Zones, Azure supports region portability for many resource types via Azure Resource Mover, easing migrations and minimizing disruption.
Compute
DCesv6 and ECesv6 confidential VMs with Intel® TDX (preview)
Azure introduced the DCesv6 (general purpose) and ECesv6 (memory-optimized) series as its next generation of Confidential VMs, powered by 5th Gen Intel® Xeon® processors (“Emerald Rapids”) with Intel® Trust Domain Extensions (TDX). In private preview, these VMs are designed for tenants with stringent security and confidentiality requirements, providing a strong, hardware-enforced boundary so data and applications remain private and encrypted in memory while in use. They are intended to run confidential workloads without requiring application code changes and include in-guest attestation, enabling customers to verify the integrity of their environments before processing sensitive data.
Networking
Application Gateway adds MaxSurge support for zero-capacity-impact upgrades
Azure Application Gateway now supports MaxSurge, allowing new instances to be provisioned during rolling upgrades without taking existing ones offline. With this capability, customers can move to newer gateway versions while maintaining full traffic handling and reducing deployment risk. The enhancement strengthens resiliency and reliability for mission-critical applications that require consistent performance during infrastructure updates.
Private Application Gateway on Azure Application Gateway v2
Azure introduced Private Application Gateway on the Application Gateway v2 SKU, enabling fully private Layer-7 load balancing with a private frontend IP. This capability helps organizations publish internal web applications without exposing public endpoints, align with zero-trust network patterns, and simplify routing inside virtual networks and peered environments. By leveraging the v2 platform, customers also benefit from autoscaling, zone redundancy, and WAF integration for enhanced resilience and security.
Inbound IPv6 support on public multi-tenant App Service
Inbound IPv6 support for public multi-tenant Azure App Service is now generally available across all public Azure regions. The capability spans multi-tenant apps on Basic, Standard, and Premium SKUs, as well as Functions Consumption, Functions Elastic Premium, and Logic Apps Standard. With native IPv6 ingress, customers can meet dual-stack requirements, improve addressability, and align with regulatory and enterprise mandates while keeping existing deployment workflows unchanged.
Azure Bastion connectivity to private AKS clusters via tunneling (preview)
In public preview, Azure Bastion enables a secure tunnel from a user’s local machine—through Bastion—directly to an AKS API server using standard Kubernetes tooling. This capability provides seamless access to private AKS clusters, as well as to public clusters configured with API server authorized IP ranges, eliminating the need for complex VPNs, jump boxes, or exposing public endpoints. The result is simplified, consistent, and secure access for developers, operators, and partners working with private AKS environments.
Storage
Azure NetApp Files file access logs
The Azure NetApp Files file access logs feature is now generally available, delivering enterprise-grade visibility into file-level operations across SMB, NFSv4.1, and dual-protocol volumes. By capturing detailed telemetry—including user identity, operation type, and timestamps—the feature helps organizations bolster security, streamline operations, and meet compliance requirements in alignment with Azure’s Well-Architected Framework security best practices. File access logs are currently available in select regions, with broader regional support planned.
Azure Blob Storage Archive tier now in Malaysia West
The Archive access tier for Azure Blob Storage is now generally available in the Malaysia West region. This expansion lets customers in Malaysia store infrequently accessed data cost-effectively while meeting local data residency and compliance needs. Archive remains ideal for long-term backup, compliance, and archival scenarios and can be managed via the Azure portal, CLI, PowerShell, or REST API. With this addition, Malaysia West supports the full tier lineup: Hot, Cool, Cold, and Archive.
Azure Files provisioned v2 billing model for SSD (premium)
Azure Files now supports the provisioned v2 billing model on the SSD (premium) tier, allowing independent provisioning of storage, IOPS, and throughput so shares can be right-sized to precise performance and capacity targets. The model also increases the share size range from 32 GiB up to 256 TiB. Provisioned v2 for both SSD and HDD is generally available in all public cloud regions, giving customers consistent deployment options globally.
Azure NetApp Files Flexible service level: cool access support (preview)
Azure NetApp Files now extends its Flexible service level with cool access in public preview, allowing customers to independently configure capacity and throughput while automatically tiering cold data from volumes in Flexible service level capacity pools to Azure storage accounts. This helps optimize cost and performance across diverse workloads—supporting scenarios that require high capacity with low throughput or vice versa—while maintaining seamless access for active data. Cool access also supports cross-region replication for destination-only volumes, enhancing data protection without affecting source latency, and is available in all Azure NetApp Files regions.
Azure Local
Veeam support for Azure Local 24H2 (version 26100.x)
Veeam has added support for Azure Local 24H2 (version 26100.x). The minimum required release is Veeam Backup & Replication 12.3.2 (build 12.3.2.3617). The update excludes Azure Arc VM management; however, Arc-enabled VMs in a “Running” state can be backed up. On restore, these VMs are converted to standard Hyper-V workloads, and if the original VM no longer exists, the Azure Arc connection is expected to persist when the VM is restored to the same cluster within the Azure Arc reconnection window (typically up to 45 days).
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.