Archivi categoria: Microsoft Azure

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (December 2021 – Weeks: 49 and 50)

This series of blog posts includes the most important announcements and major updates regarding Azure infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and Azure Stack, officialized by Microsoft in the last two weeks.

Azure

Compute

Virtual Machine restore points (preview)

Public preview of VM restore point is available, a new resource that stores VM configuration and a point-in-time snapshot of one or more managed disks attached to a VM. VM restore points supports multi-disk application consistent snapshots and can be leveraged to easily capture backups of your VM and disks. You can easily restore the VM using VM restore points in cases of data loss, corruption, or disasters. Microsoft is also introducing a new Azure Resource Manager (ARM) resource called Restore Point Collection, which will act as a container for all the restore points of a specific VM.

Placement polices for Azure VMware Solution

Placement policies are used to define constraints for running virtual machines in the Azure VMware Solution Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC). These constraints allow the you to decide where and how the virtual machines should run within the SDDC clusters. Placement polices are used to support performance optimization of virtual machines (VMs) through policy, and help mitigate the impact of maintenance operations to policies within the SDDC cluster.

Storage

Secure access to storage account from a virtual network/subnet in any region (preview)

You can secure access to your storage account by enabling a service endpoint for Storage in the subnet and configuring a virtual network rule for that subnet through the Azure storage firewall. You can now configure your storage account to allow access from virtual networks and subnets in any Azure region. By default, service endpoints enable connectivity from a virtual network to a storage account in the same Azure region as the virtual network or it’s paired Azure region. This preview enables you to register your subnet to allow service endpoint connectivity to storage accounts in any Azure region across the globe.

Attribute-based Access Control (ABAC) conditions with principal attributes (preview)

Attribute-based access control (ABAC) is an authorization strategy that defines access levels based on attributes associated with security principals, resources, requests, and the environment. Azure ABAC builds on role-based access control (RBAC) by adding conditions to Azure role assignments expressed as a predicate using these attributes. This update to the preview enables the use of Azure AD custom security attributes for principals in role assignment conditions. You can now use combine principal attributes with resource and request attributes in your condition expressions.

Soft delete for blobs capability for Azure Data Lake Storage

Soft delete for blobs capability for Azure Data Lake Storage is now generally available. This feature protects files and directories from accidental deletes by retaining the deleted data in the system for a specified period of time. During the retention period, you can restore a soft-deleted object, i.e. file or directory, to its state at the time it was deleted. After the retention period has expired, the object is permanently deleted. All soft deleted files and directories are billed at the same rate as active ones until the retention period has expired.

Azure Stack

Azure Stack HCI

Windows Server guest licensing offer for Azure Stack HCI (preview)

To facilitate guest licensing for Azure Stack HCI customers, we are pleased to announce a new offer that brings simplicity and more flexibility for licensing. The new Windows Server subscription for Azure Stack HCI is available in public preview as of December 14, 2021. This offer will allow you to purchase unlimited Windows Server guest licenses for your Azure Stack HCI cluster through your Azure subscription. You can sign up and cancel anytime and preview pricing is $0 until general availability (GA). At GA, the offer will be charged at $23.60 per physical core per month. This offer simplifies billing through an all-in-one place Azure subscription and in some cases will be less expensive for customers than the traditional licensing model.

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (December 2021 – Weeks: 47 and 48)

Azure

Compute

West Central US: Microsoft expands cloud services with two new datacenters in Wyoming

Microsoft is announcing the launch of two new Microsoft datacenters in Cheyenne – Wyoming, one in Cheyenne Business Parkway and another in Bison Business Park, enabling to expand and support the growth and demand for digital services in West Central US datacenter region. Cheyenne has been home to Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure services since 2012 and this expansion will enable us to continue providing services to current and new customers.

New Azure Virtual Machines DCasv5 and ECasv5-series (preview)

Azure DCasv5/ECasv5 confidential virtual machines (VMs) powered by 3rd Gen AMD EPYC™ processors with SEV-SNP are available in preview.

SQL Server IaaS Agent extension for Linux SQL VMs

Microsoft is making the capabilities of SQL Server IaaS Agent extension available to Linux platforms, starting with Ubuntu with plans for other distributions in time.

If you are already running SQL Server on Azure using an Ubuntu Linux Virtual Machine, the SQL Server IaaS Agent extension now enables you to leverage integration with the Azure portal and unlocks the following benefits for SQL Server on Linux Azure VMs:

Compliance: The extension offers a simplified method to fulfill the requirement of notifying Microsoft that the Azure Hybrid Benefit has been enabled as is specified in the product terms. This process negates needing to manage licensing registration forms for each resource.
Simplified license management: The extension simplifies SQL Server license management, and allows you to quickly identify SQL Server VMs with the Azure Hybrid Benefit enabled using the Azure portal, Azure PowerShell, or the Azure CLI.

IaaS Agent extension full mode no restart for SQL VMs

You can now enable the full mode of SQL Server IaaS Agent extension with no restart, giving you access to more manageability features for SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines without interruption to your workloads. Previously, you had to restart the SQL Server services to enable these features. The full mode of SQL Server IaaS Agent extension unlocks many benefits such as Automated Backup, Automated Patching, Storage Optimization, and more, along with license management that comes with lightweight mode.

Storage

Azure File Sync: new agent released

The Azure File Sync agent v14.1 is available. Issue that is fixed in the v14.1 release:

Tiered files deleted on Windows Server 2022 are not detected by cloud tiering filter driver. This issue can also impact Windows 2016 and Windows Server 2019 if a tiered file is deleted using the FILE_DISPOSITION_INFORMATION_EX class.

To obtain and install this update, configure your Azure File Sync agent to automatically update when a new version becomes available or manually download the update from the Microsoft Update Catalog.

More information about this release:

This release is available for Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019 and Windows Server 2022 installations.
A restart is required for servers that have an existing Azure File Sync agent installation if the agent version is less than version 12.0.
The agent version for this release is 14.1.0.0.
Installation instructions are documented in KB5001873.

Azure NetApp Files application volume group for SAP HANA (preview)

Application volume group (AVG) for SAP HANA enables you to deploy all volumes required to install and operate an SAP HANA database according to best practices in a single one-step and optimized workflow. The application volume group feature includes the use of proximity placement group (PPG) with VMs to achieve automated, low-latency deployments. Application volume group for SAP HANA has implemented many technical improvements that simplify and standardize the entire process to help you streamline volume deployments for SAP HANA. Instead of creating the SAP HANA volumes (data, log, shared, log-backup, file-backup) individually, the new application volume group for SAP HANA creates these volumes in a single ‘atomic’ operation (GUI, RP, API).

Networking

VPN Gateway NAT

Azure VPN NAT (Network Address Translation) supports overlapping address spaces between your on-premises branch networks and your Azure Virtual Networks. NAT can also enable business-to-business connectivity where address spaces are managed by different organizations and re-numbering networks is not possible. VPN NAT provides support for 1:1 Static NAT and 1-to-many dynamic NAT.

Wildcard listener on Application Gateways

Azure Application Gateway now supports the use of wildcard characters such as asterisk (*) and question mark (?) for hostnames on a multi-site HTTP(S) listener. You can now route requests from multiple host-names such as shop.contoso.com, accounts.contoso.com, pay.contoso.com to the same backend pool through a single listener configured with a wildcard hostname such as *.contoso.com.

Azure Management services: le novità di novembre 2021

Nel mese di novembre Microsoft ha svelato numerose novità riguardanti gli Azure management services, complice anche la conferenza Microsoft Ignite 2021. Tramite questi articoli rilasciati con cadenza mensile, si vuole fornire una panoramica complessiva delle principali novità del mese, in modo da rimanere sempre aggiornati su questi argomenti ed avere i riferimenti necessari per effettuare maggiori approfondimenti.

Il diagramma seguente mostra le diverse aree relative al management, che sono contemplate in questa serie di articoli, per poter rimanere aggiornati su questi temi ed effettuare al meglio il deployment ed il mantenimento delle applicazioni e delle risorse.

Figura 1 – Overview dei Management services in Azure

Monitor

Azure Monitor

Log Analytics Workspace Insights in Azure Monitor

Microsoft ha annunciato la disponibilità di Log Analytics workspace insights che consente di ottenere informazioni dettagliate sui workspace di Log Analytics, fornendo una panoramica completa in merito ai seguenti aspetti: utilizzo, prestazioni, integrità, agenti, query e change logs.

Queste le principali domande alle quali la soluzione può fornire una risposta:

Quali sono le tabelle principali, quelle in cui viene importata la maggior parte dei dati?
Quale risorsa invia la maggior parte dei log verso il workspace?
Quanto tempo impiegano i log a raggiungere il workspace?
Quanti agenti sono collegati all’area di lavoro? Quanti sono in stato di salute?
Controllo delle query: quante query vengono eseguite nel workspace? Quali sono i loro codici di risposta e il tempo di durata? Quali sono le query lente e inefficienti che richiedono un sovraccarico del workspace?
Chi ha impostato un limite giornaliero? Quando la conservazione dei dati è cambiata?
- Utili per tracciare un registro delle modifiche delle impostazioni del workspace.

Nuove esperienze nella risoluzione dei problemi in Network Insights per VPN Gateway & Azure Firewall

Risulta ora possibile accedere a informazioni dettagliate ed avere una nuova esperienze nella risoluzione dei problemi in Azure Monitor Network Insights per VPN Gateway ed Azure Firewall.

Infatti, si ha la possibilità di:

Accedere alla topologia delle risorse che mostra l’integrità delle stesse e le relative connessioni
Un workbook che mostra tutte le metriche chiave
Collegamenti diretti alla documentazione e alla guida per la risoluzione dei problemi

Azure Monitor container insights per Azure Arc enabled Kubernetes

In Azure Monitor si possono ottenere informazioni dettagliate sui conteiner in esecuzione in ambienti Kubernetes abilitati per Azure Arc. Questo permette di centralizzare la visualizzazione delle metriche dell’infrastruttura, dei log dei container e delle relative raccomandazioni. Le caratteristiche principali sono:

Onboarding semplice direttamente dal portale di Azure
Ricezione di aggiornamenti automatici dell’agente di monitoring
Visibilità delle prestazioni, raccogliendo le metriche di memoria e processore dai controller, nodi e container
Visualizzazioni tramite workbook e nel portale di Azure
Alert e query sui dati storici per la risoluzione dei problemi
Capacità di esaminare le metriche di Prometheus

Gestione delle regole di esportazione dei dati di Log Analytics nel portale di Azure (preview)

L’esportazione dei dati di Log Analytics ora può essere configurata nel portale di Azure. Questo consente di gestire facilmente le regole di esportazione dei dati offrendo una visione chiara delle regole esistenti nel workspace, indipendentemente dal fatto che siano in stato abilitato o disabilitato. Risulta inoltre possibile modificare le regole esistenti e creare nuove regole con pochi semplici passaggi.

Azure Monitor for SAP: nuove telemetrie e root cause analysis (RCA)

Azure Monitor per soluzioni SAP (AMS) ha introdotto il supporto per nuovi dati di telemetria SAP HANA (preview) e SAP NetWeaver

Per SAP HANA troviamo:

Stato licenza: fornisce i dettagli delle licenze per tutti i tenant in esecuzione con SAP HANA MDC.
Multi-Version Concurrency Control (MVCC): report sulla consistenza dei dati transazionali, isolando le transazioni che accedono agli stessi dati contemporaneamente
Dettagli su save point operation
Dettagli su delta merge
Statistiche sugli alert di HANA

I clienti che stanno utilizzando la soluzione avranno a disposizione, senza effettuare ulteriori attività, i dati di telemetria sopra riportati. Per i nuovi clienti che vogliono attivare questa soluzione, è possibile seguire questa guida all’onboarding di AMS e configurare almeno un provider SAP HANA.

Inoltre, i clienti che utilizzano SAP in ambiente Azure possono visualizzare le “root cause analysis (RCA)” quando un sistema SAP diventa indisponibile per un’interruzione della macchina virtuale o dell’host. Infatti, AMS consente di visualizzare le informazioni sul riavvio, l’analisi della causa scatenante, i dettagli sul sistema interessato ed i passaggi consigliati.

AMS è attualmente disponibile nelle seguenti region di Azure: US East, US East 2, US West 2, Europe West, e Europe North. AMS non prevede costi di licenza aggiuntivi, ma sono contemplati solamente i costi di consumo di Azure Monitor.

Configure

Azure Automation

Supporto per runbook PowerShell 7.1 (preview)

Il supporto di Azure Automation per i runbook di PowerShell 7.1 è stato reso disponibile in anteprima in Azure, Azure Gov ed Azure China. Ciò consente lo sviluppo e l’esecuzione di runbook utilizzando PowerShell 7.1, sia per processi cloud sia per processi ibridi su sistemi Azure e non.

Supporto per le Managed Identities

In Azure Automation è stato introdotto il supporto alle Managed Identities. Le System Assigned Managed Identities sono supportate per i processi cloud ed ibridi, mentre le User Assigned Managed Identities sono supportate solo per i processi cloud. Questo supporto consente di ridurre l’effort di gestione dei RunAs Account per i runbook. Una User Assigned Managed Identities è una risorsa Azure indipendente che può essere assegnata all’account di Azure Automation, il quale può avere più identità user-assigned associate. La stessa identità può essere assegnata a più Azure Automation account.

Govern

Update Management

Automatic VM guest patching

La nuova funzionalità denominata “Automatic VM guest patching” è ora disponibile ed aiuta a semplificare la gestione degli aggiornamenti e a raggiungere la conformità in ambito sicurezza. Abilitando la funzionalità “Automatic VM guest patching” vengono scaricate e applicate automaticamente sul sistema le patch classificate come critiche e di sicurezza. Tale funzionalità è disponibile sia per sistemi Windows sia per sistemi Linux.

Azure Cost Management

Azure Advisor: consigli per risparmiare sui costi delle risorse Azure Cosmos DB

In Azure Advisor sono state incluse delle raccomandazione specifiche che consentono di ottenere possibili risparmi sui costi di Azure Cosmos DB, ottenute in base all’utilizzo storico delle risorse.

Aggiornamenti relativi ad Azure Cost Management and Billing

Microsoft è costantemente alla ricerca di nuove metodologie per migliorare Azure Cost Management and Billing, la soluzione per fornire una maggiore visibilità su dove si stanno accumulando costi nel cloud, identificare e prevenire modelli di spesa errati ed ottimizzare i costi . In questo articolo sono riportati alcuni degli ultimi miglioramenti ed aggiornamenti riguardanti questa soluzione.

Secure

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Cambio ai nomi delle soluzioni Azure in ambito sicurezza

A novembre, durante Ignite 2021, sono stati annunciati cambiamenti ai nomi delle soluzioni Microsoft Azure in ambito sicurezza, come riportato in seguito:

Figura 2 – Nuovi nomi per le soluzioni Azure di sicurezza

Nuove funzionalità, correzioni di bug e funzionalità deprecate di Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Lo sviluppo di Microsoft Defender for Cloud è in costante evoluzione e vengono introdotti miglioramenti su base continua. Per rimanere aggiornati sugli sviluppi più recenti, Microsoft aggiorna questa pagina, che fornisce informazioni su nuove funzionalità, correzioni di bug e funzionalità deprecate. In particolare, questo mese le principali novità riguardano:

Azure Security Center ed Azure Defender sono stati unificati e vengono chiamati “Microsoft Defender for Cloud”
CSPM nativo per AWS e protezione dalle minacce per Amazon EKS e AWS EC2
Assegnazione delle priorità ai dati sensibili nei cloud workload, utilizzando Azure Purview
Miglioramenti all’integrazione con Microsoft Sentinel
Rilascio di Azure Security Benchmark v3

Protect

Azure Backup

Autorizzazione multi-utente per i backup (preview)

La multi-user authorization per Azure Backup fornisce una protezione avanzata per i Recovery Services vaults contro operazioni critiche non autorizzate. Azure Backup utilizza un Resource Guard per garantire che le operazioni critiche vengano eseguite solo in presenza dell’autorizzazione appropriata. Con questo meccanismo, Azure Backup aiuta a fornire una migliore protezione contro le operazioni che potrebbero portare alla perdita dei dati di backup, tra cui:

Disabilitazione del soft delete e delle impostazioni di hybrid security
Disabilitazione della protezione MUA
Modifiche alle backup policy
Modifiche alla protezione
Stop della protezione
Cambio del MARS security PIN

L’amministratore dei backup, che in genere accede al Recovery Services vault, deve acquisire il ruolo di Contributor su Resource Guard per poter eseguire le suddette operazioni protette (critiche). Per farlo deve richiedere anche l’azione dell’owner di Resource Guard, il quale deve approvare e concedere l’accesso richiesto. Risulta possibile anche usare Azure AD Privileged Identity Management per gestire l’accesso just-in-time su Resource Guard. Inoltre, è possibile creare la risorsa Resource Guard in una subscription oppure in un tenant diverso da quello del Recovery Services vault, per ottenere il massimo isolamento.

Metriche e relativi alert per Azure Backup (preview)

Azure Backup mette ora a disposizione metriche built-in per consentire di monitorare l’integrità dei backup e di scrivere regole di alert personalizzate basate su queste metriche.

Azure Site Recovery

Supporto per il failover di più configurazioni IP

Azure Site Recovery ha introdotto, per le macchine virtuali presenti in Azure, il supporto per il failover delle configurazioni IP secondarie. Questo consente di configurare le impostazioni di failover e di test failover per ciascuna configurazione IP secondaria, al momento solo nello scenario Azure to Azure (A2A).

Nuovo Update Rollup

Per Azure Site Recovery è stato rilasciato l’Update Rollup 59 che risolve diverse problematiche e introduce alcuni miglioramenti. Tra le novità più importanti troviamo il supporto per Windows Server 2022 per il mobility Service. I relativi dettagli e la procedura da seguire per l’installazione è consultabile nella KB specifica.

Migrate

Azure Migrate

Nuovi rilasci e funzionalità di Azure Migrate

Azure Migrate è il servizio presente in Azure che comprende un ampio portafoglio di strumenti che è possibile utilizzare, tramite una esperienza di utilizzo guidata, per affrontare in modo efficace i più comuni scenari di migrazione. Per rimanere aggiornati sugli sviluppi più recenti della soluzione è possibile consultare questa pagina, che fornisce informazioni su nuovi rilasci e nuove funzionalità.

Valutazione di Azure

Per testare e valutare in modo gratuito i servizi offerti da Azure è possibile accedere a questa pagina.

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (November 2021 – Weeks: 45 and 46)

Azure

Compute

Virtual machines selector now generally available

Microsoft want to simplify the process required for you to identify the right VM based on your needs and budget. To that end, virtual machines selector is a web-based tool localized in 26 languages and available worldwide. Using the virtual machines selector you can specify your requirements, such as the category of workload you plan to run in Azure, and the technical specifications of your VM (e.g., OS disks storage options, data disks storage performance, Operating System, deployment region, etc.). After a few simple steps, the tool identifies the best VM and disk storage combination based on the information you enter. You will then be able to view the details of the recommended VMs and their prices. You can then add the selected VMs to the pricing calculator to perform a more comprehensive cost analysis.

New cloud region in Sweden

The new sustainable datacenter region in Sweden, with presence in Gävle, Sandviken and Staffanstorp is available. It includes Azure Availability Zones, which offer you additional resiliency for your applications by designing the region with unique physical datacenter locations with independent power, network, and cooling for additional tolerance to datacenter failures.

Azure VMware Solution now generally available in the France Central Azure Region and in Japan West Azure Region

Azure VMware Solution has expanded availability to Japan West and to France Central. With this release Japan West is now the second region within the Japan sovereign area to become available (joining Japan East).

SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines: Multi subnet high availability

You can now simplify your SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines high availability and disaster recovery configuration by deploying virtual machines in multiple subnets, eliminating the need for an Azure Load Balancer. Multi subnet configuration natively helps you match on-premises experience for connecting to your availability group listener or SQL Server failover cluster instance. Additionally, this feature doesn’t have any limitations on unique port or feature interoperability considerations like distributed network name (DNN) for availability group and failover cluster instance. Multi subnet configuration is natively supported by all versions of SQL Server and Windows Server Failover Cluster to simplify deployment, maintenance and improve failover time.

Azure Virtual Machines DCv3-series now available in Europe West and North (preview)

Announcing public preview expansion of the DCv3-series VMs to Europe West and North.

Storage

SFTP support for Azure Blob Storage (preview)

Starting today, SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) support for Azure Blob Storage is available for public preview in select regions. Azure Blob Storage is the only storage platform that supports SFTP over object storage natively in a serverless fashion, enabling you to leverage object storage economics and features. With multi-protocol support, you can run your applications on a single storage platform with no application rewrites necessary, therefore eliminating data silos.

NFSv4.1 support on Azure Files

Azure Files support for NFS v4.1 on premium tier for both locally-redundant storage and zone-redundant storage is available. Now you can deploy these fully POSIX compliant, distributed NFS file shares in your production environments for a wide variety of Linux and container based workloads. Some example workloads include: highly available SAP application layer, enterprise messaging, user home directories, custom line-of-business applications, database backups, database replication, and devops pipelines. NFS 4.1 is available in all regions where the premium tier of Azure Files exists.

Azure Archive rehydration priority update

Azure Archive Storage provides a secure, low-cost means for retaining cold data, including backups and archival storage. Data stored in Archive Storage is offline and unavailable for read access until it is rehydrated to the hot or cool tier. You can choose to rehydrate data with standard or high priority, depending on the urgency of the retrieval request. Previously, it was not possible to change the retrieval priority after initiating a rehydration operation; priority had to be determined in advance, and there was no flexibility to update the priority if the retrieval urgency subsequently changed.

Archive Storage now supports updating the retrieval priority from standard to high while a rehydration operation is pending. You can simplify rehydration management and improve cost efficiency by initiating the rehydration operation with standard priority for a set of blobs, then updating the priority to high for any blobs that require faster retrieval.

Networking

VPN Gateways: increased connection limit

The max number of Site-to-Site/VNet-to-VNet connections on a VPN Gateway has been increased from 30 to 100 tunnels for SKUs VpnGw4, VpnGw5, VpnGw4AZ, and VpnGw5AZ.
This change does not affect legacy gateways with the High Performance SKU.

Azure Bastion: new features available with Standard SKU (preview)

With the new Azure Bastion native client support you can:

Connect to your target Azure virtual machine via Azure Bastion using Azure CLI and a native client on your local Windows machine
Log into Azure Active Directory-joined virtual machines using your Azure Active Directory credentials

Also, with the new Azure Bastion IP based connection capability you can now connect to any target resource reachable from your Bastion using its private IP address. This includes any reachable resources hosted on-premises or in other clouds, allowing you to achieve more secure global remote connectivity with Azure Bastion.

ExpressRoute now supports Azure Virtual Desktop Shortpath RDP over Private Peering

ExpressRoute Private Peering now supports Azure Virtual Desktop RDP Shortpath. After establishing the reverse connect transport, the client and session host starts the RDP connection. With RDP Shortpath configured, the client will require a direct connectivity with the session host to establish a secure TLS connection. You can leverage ExpressRoute Private peering to setup the direct connection to support RDP Shortpath.

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (November 2021 – Weeks: 43 and 44)

In this dedicated post you can find the most important announcements and major updates officialized last week during Microsoft Ignite (November 2021) conference.

Azure

Compute

Zerto Disaster Recovery for Azure VMware Solution

Zerto Disaster Recovery is now available and supported with Azure VMware Solution, delivering data protection and disaster recovery services that eliminate data loss and downtime for vSphere virtual machines running on Azure VMware Solution environment.

Zerto Disaster Recovery for Azure VMware Solution supports the following 3 scenarios:

On-premises VMware to Azure VMware Solution for Hybrid disaster recovery
Azure VMware Solution to Azure VMware Solution for cloud-based disaster recovery
Azure VMware Solution to Azure IaaS for cloud-based disaster recovery

Azure Spot Virtual Machines: Try to restore functionality

You can now opt-in and use this feature while deploying Spot VMs using Virtual Machine Scale Sets. This new feature will automatically try to restore an evicted Spot VM to maintain the desired target compute capacity (e.g., number of VMs) in a scale set.

Storage

Azure File Sync agent v14

Improvements and issues that are fixed in the v14 release:

Improved server endpoint deprovisioning guidance in the portal. When removing a server endpoint via the portal, we now provide step by step guidance based on the reason behind deleting the server endpoint, so that you can avoid data loss and ensure your data is where it needs to be (server or Azure file share).
Invoke-AzStorageSyncChangeDetection cmdlet improvements. Microsoft has improved the Invoke-AzStorageSyncChangeDetection cmdlet and the 10,000 item limit no longer applies when scanning the entire share.
Azure File Sync is now supported in West US 3 region.
Reduced transactions when a file consistently fails to upload due to a per-item sync error.
Reliability and telemetry improvements for cloud tiering and sync.

To obtain and install this update, configure your Azure File Sync agent to automatically update when a new version becomes available or manually download the update from the Microsoft Update Catalog.

More information about this release:

This release is available for Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019 and Windows Server 2022 installations.
A restart is required for servers that have an existing Azure File Sync agent installation if the agent version is less than version 12.0.
The agent version for this release is 14.0.0.0.
Installation instructions are documented in KB5001872.

Ephemeral OS disks for Azure VMs support additional VM sizes

You now can choose where to store Ephemeral OS disks, either in VM temp disk or on VM cache. This feature enables Ephemeral OS disks to be created for all the VMs, which don’t have cache or have an insufficient cache (such as Dav3, Dav4, Eav4, and Eav3) but has sufficient temp disk to host the Ephemeral OS disk.

Networking

New Azure Firewall Premium capabilities

Several new Azure Firewall Premium capabilities are available:

Azure Firewall Premium availability in more regions. Azure Firewall Premium is now available in both Microsoft Government Cloud and Azure China 21Vianet. This expansion makes Azure Firewall Premium now available in 44 Azure regions.
Terraform support for Firewall Policy Premium. Azure Firewall Premium supports a range of DevOps tools including Azure CLI, PowerShell, REST API. Customers can now use Terraform, a popular open-source tool used by DevOps for implementing infrastructure as code, to manage their Azure Firewall Premium.
Web categories Category Check (in preview). Web categories lets administrators allow or deny user access to web site categories such as gambling websites, social media websites, and others. Often customers want to check what categories does a specific URL fall under. Customers can now use the convenience of Azure Portal to determine URL web categories and share feedback if the category is not accurate.
Migrate to Premium SKU using Stop/Start approach. If you use Azure Firewall Standard SKU with Firewall Policy, you can use the Allocate/Deallocate method to upgrade your Firewall SKU to Premium. This migration approach is supported on both VNET Hub and Secure Hub Firewalls. Secure Hub deployments will be upgraded while preserving the public IP of the firewall.

Extended regional availability for Private Link NSG Support and for Private Link UDR Support

Private Endpoint support for Network Security Groups (NSGs) and Private Endpoint support for User Defined Routes (UDRs) are now in public preview.

Private Endpoint support for Network Security Groups (NSGs) enhancement will provide you with the ability to enable advanced security controls on traffic destined to a private endpoint.
Private Endpoint support for User Defined Routes (UDRs) enhancement will provide you with the ability to apply custom routes to traffic destined to a private endpoint with a wider subnet range.

At this time, this features are available in the following regions: UsEast2Euap, UsCentralEuap, WestCentralUS, WestUS, WestUS2, EastUS, EastUS2, Asiaeast, Australiaeast, Japaneast, Canadacentral, Europenorth, Koreacentral, Brazilsouth, Uksouth, US South, US North, and France Central.

ExpressRoute IPv6 Support for Private Peering

IPv6 support for ExpressRoute Private Peering is now generally available with ExpressRoute circuits and Azure environments globally. IPv6 support will unlock hybrid connectivity for you as you look to expand into mobile and IoT markets with Azure, or to address IPv4 exhaustion in your on-premise networks.

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: most impactful announcements at Microsoft Ignite – November 2021

This special edition includes the most important announcements and major updates regarding Azure infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and Azure Stack, officialized by Microsoft this week during Microsoft Ignite (November 2021) conference. Microsoft announced several important additions to its Azure infrastructure as a service (IaaS) portfolio and the Microsoft infrastructure services continue to evolve to optimize the experience of running business-critical workloads.

Azure

Compute

Azure trusted launch for Virtual Machines

Azure trusted launch protects your virtual machines against boot kits, rootkits, and kernel-level malware. Trusted launch allows administrators to deploy virtual machines with verified and signed bootloaders, OS kernels, and drivers. By leveraging secure and measured boot, administrators gain insights and confidence of the entire boot chain’s integrity. With virtual Trusted Platform Module (vTPM), administrators can securely protect keys, certificates, and secrets in the virtual machines. In addition, administrators can monitor and attest to the integrity of virtual machines as well as reacting to any changes to the attestation policy baseline. Azure Security Center serves as a single pane of glass for integrity alerts, recommendations, and remediations generated by trusted launch. These new features are easily enabled , trusted launch is switched on with a simple change in deployment code or a checkbox within the Azure portal for all virtual machines.

Expansion of the Azure Virtual Machines portfolio

New Azure Virtual Machines, which provide better price-performance for most general-purpose and memory-intensive workloads compared to prior VM generations, are now generally available. This important expansion of the Azure Virtual Machines portfolio now includes:

The general availability of Dv5 and Ev5 Azure VMs, which deliver up to 15% increased performance for many workloads and better price-performance than the previous Dv4 and Ev4-series VMs. These new VMs can scale up to 96 vCPUs and feature the latest 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Platinum 8370C (Ice Lake) processor in a hyper-threaded configuration.
The new Dasv5 and Easv5 Azure VMs are based on the 3rd Generation AMD EPYCTM 7763v (Milan) processor. These new VMs provide options with and without local disk storage for a lower price of entry. Standard SSDs, Standard HDDs, Premium SSDs, and Ultra Disk storage are supported based on regional availability. In addition, support for nested virtualization is also available.
The new DCsv3 and DCdsv3-series Azure Virtual Machines transform the state-of-the-art for confidential workloads. Now with the 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, the capabilities of DC-series have improved substantially.

The Dv5 and Dasv5 Azure VMs, work well for many general computing workloads, e-commerce systems, web front ends, desktop virtualization solutions, customer relationship management applications, entry-level and mid-range databases, application servers, and more. The Ev5 and Easv5 Azure VMs are ideal for memory-intensive enterprise applications, larger relational database servers, data warehousing workloads, business intelligence applications, in-memory analytics workloads, and additional business-critical applications.

Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets: new orchestration mode

Virtual Machine Scale Sets flexible orchestration mode helps you simplify the deployment, management, and scalability of your applications. These new features also combine the functionality of our previously separate Availability Sets and Virtual Machine Scale Sets offerings. As a result, you will now be able to manage your business-critical applications more effectively while ensuring high availability at massive scale. Additionally, this new capability provides full control of the individual VMs within a scale set while increasing overall performance. IT organizations will now also be able to change VM sizes without redeploying their scale set resulting in greater operational agility. They will also be able to mix Spot Virtual Machines and pay-as-you-go VMs within the same scale set to optimize costs while managing VMs and VM scale sets using the same APIs.

Azure VMware Solution now generally available in the Germany West Central Azure region

Azure VMware Solution has now expanded availability to Germany West Central, this update is in addition to the existing availability multiple Azure regions in US, Europe, Australia, Japan, UK, Canada, Brazil and Southeast Asia (Singapore).

Storage

Centralized management of keys for encrypting Azure disks

Now you can manage your Azure Key Vault centrally in a single subscription and use the keys stored in the Key Vault to encrypt managed disks and snapshots in other subscriptions in your organization. This allows your security team to enforce and easily manage a robust security policy to a single subscription.

On-demand disk bursting for Azure Premium SSDs

Microsoft is announcing the general availability of on-demand bursting on Azure Premium SSDs larger than 512 GiB or larger. Unlike the previous credit-based system where you can only burst if you have accumulated credits, the new on-demand bursting capability allows you to burst up to 6X (up to 30,000 IOPS and 1,000 MB/s of throughput) of the provisioned amount whenever needed. This provides you with the flexibility to scale performance to meet demand and optimize costs. You can easily take advantage of on-demand bursting by enabling it on supported Premium SSD disks. You will pay for a burst enablement fee and burst transaction costs for the additional transactions beyond the provisioned target.

Live resize of Azure Disk Storage (preview)

Resizing a disk on Azure can provide more storage capacity and better performance for your applications. Now, with live resize in preview, you can dynamically increase the size of your disks without any downtime to your application. You can start with smaller disks to keep costs down and increase the size of your disks without any downtime as your data footprint grows.

Cross-region snapshot copy for Azure Disk Storage (preview)

Incremental snapshots are cost-effective point-in-time backups of Azure Managed Disks. They are billed for the changes to disks since the last snapshot and are always stored on the most cost-effective storage, Standard HDD storage, irrespective of the storage type of the parent disk. With cross-region snapshot copy now in preview, you can easily copy of incremental snapshots to any region of your choice. Azure manages the copy process and ensures that only changes since the last snapshot in the target region are copied over, reducing the data footprint and recovery point objective (RPO).

Azure VMware Solution: new capabilities introduced for disk pool (preview)

New capabilities are introduced in Disk Pool (preview) to enable Disk storage as the persistent storage for Azure VMware Solution. Disk Storage integration with Azure VMware Solution combines the power of familiar VMware technology running on Azure, with efficient Azure Disk Storage. Disk Pool enables Azure VMware Solution to access Disk storage by surfacing an Internet Small Computer Systems Interface (iSCSI) endpoint for disks. You can add new or existing disks to disk pool and expose them as datastores in Azure VMware Solution. Microsoft is introducing new capabilities to disk pool across availability, cost-effectiveness, and end-to-end integration:

Improved availability of disk pool with an enhancement to the underlying iSCSI infrastructure to a Highly Availably architecture with dual controller support
Addition of Azure Standard SSDs as a supported disk offering for a more cost-effective option for Disaster Recovery scenarios
Updates to the pricing model to a service-based pricing model. Currently, customers are being billed for the managed resources deployed to support disk pool. With this new pricing model, customers will be charged an hourly service fee, which is based on the performance tier selected (Basic, Standard, Premium SKUs). The pricing model change will be effective on December 1, 2021.
End-to-end portal experience for connecting a disk pool to Azure VMware Solution clusters and managing underlying storage

Networking

Bastion Standard SKU

With the new Azure Bastion Standard SKU, you can now perform/configure the following:

Manually scale Bastion host Virtual Machine instances: Azure Bastion supports manual scaling of the Virtual Machine (VM) instances facilitating Bastion connectivity. You can configure 2-50 instances to manage the number of concurrent SSH and RDP sessions Azure Bastion can support.
Azure Bastion admin panel: Azure Bastion supports enabling/disabling features accessed by the Bastion host.

Azure Virtual Network Manager (preview)

Azure Virtual Network Manager is a highly scalable and available network management solution. It allows you to simplify network management across subscriptions globally. Using the centralized network management capabilities, you can manage your network resources at scale from a single plane of glass.

Key features of Azure Virtual Network Manager include:

Global management of virtual network resources across regions and subscriptions
Automated management and deployment of virtual network topologies such as hub and spoke and mesh
High-priority security rule enforcement at scale to protect your network resources
Simple deployment of network configurations

Gateway Load Balancer (preview)

Gateway Load Balancer is a fully managed service enabling you to deploy, scale, and enhance the availability of third party network virtual appliances (NVAs) in Azure. You can add your favorite third party appliance whether it is a firewall, inline DDoS appliance, deep packet inspection system, or even your own custom appliance into the network path transparently, all with a single click.

With Gateway Load Balancer, you can easily add or remove advanced network functionality without additional management overhead. It provides the bump-in-the-wire technology you need to ensure all traffic to a public endpoint is sent to the appliance before your application. What makes Gateway LB even more powerful is ensuring symmetrical flows or ensuring a consistent route to your network virtual appliance, without having to update routes manually. As a result, packets traverse the same network path in both directions to function are able to do so.

NAT gateway integration with AKS

You can now provision a NAT gateway as part of cluster creation or create an AKS cluster with a NAT gateway on an existing VNET, instead of configuring a NAT gateway manually. A NAT gateway is a Network Address Translation (NAT) service. You can use a NAT gateway so that instances in a private subnet can connect to external services, but external services cannot initiate a connection. With NAT gateway support, ingress traffic can be handled via the Load Balancer, and egress traffic can be distributed across up to 16 IP addresses, providing the potential for 64,000 concurrent UDP and TCP flows per IP.

New troubleshooting experiences in Network Insights for VPN Gateway & Azure Firewall

Access rich insights and new troubleshooting experiences in Azure Monitor Network Insights for VPN Gateway and Azure Firewall.

With the new resources, you can access:

A resource topology showing resource health and connected resources
A pre-built workbook showing all key metrics along multiple
Direct links to documentation and troubleshooting help

ExpressRoute private peering support for BGP communities and FastPath improvements (preview)

ExpressRoute private peering now supports the use of custom Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) communities with virtual networks connected to your ExpressRoute circuits. Once you configure a custom BGP community for your virtual network, you can view the regional and custom community values on outbound traffic sent over ExpressRoute when originating from that virtual network. These values can be used when applying filters or specifying routing preferences for traffic sent to your on-premises from your Azure environment.

Also, ExpressRoute FastPath now supports a greater variety of scenarios, such as support for traffic sent to peered virtual networks.

Azure Network Function Manager

Azure Network Function Manager, which offers a consistent management experience for pre-validated mobile network functions to enable a private LTE/5G solution, is now generally available. The service also enables a seamless cloud-to-edge experience for Azure Marketplace network functions like SD-WAN and VPN. For a true hybrid experience, customers can use Azure Marketplace to choose from a pre-validated list of marketplace network functions to help ensure proper operation with Azure Stack Edge.

Azure Stack

Azure Stack HCI

Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI (preview)

With Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI, you can maintain full control over your infrastructure and enjoy the advantages of Azure Virtual Desktop in your own datacenter, including a full Windows 10 and 11 desktop experience for users with multi-session or single session support to optimize cost and performance.

Azure benefits for Windows Server

To license and activate Windows Server, Azure Stack HCI already lets you bring your own Datacenter license to enable automatic VM activation (AVMA). Coming soon, if you don’t already have a license, there’s a convenient new option to pay for your Windows Server guests through your Azure subscription, just like in Azure.

Arc-enabled VM management (preview)

In addition to managing your host cluster, you can now use Azure Arc to provision and manage virtual machines running on Azure Stack HCI directly from the Azure Portal. VMs and their associated resources like VM images, disks, and networks are projected into ARM as separate first-class resources by a new cross-platform technology called the Arc resource bridge.

Azure Management services: le novità di ottobre 2021

Nel mese di ottobre sono state annunciate da parte di Microsoft un numero considerevole di novità riguardanti gli Azure management services. Tramite questi articoli rilasciati con cadenza mensile voglio fornire una panoramica complessiva delle principali novità del mese, in modo da poter rimanere sempre aggiornati su questi argomenti ed avere i riferimenti necessari per effettuare ulteriori approfondimenti.

Monitor

Azure Monitor

Disponibilità e supporto delle availability zones in nuove regions

Azure Monitor Log Analytics è disponibile nelle seguenti nuove region:

West US 3
Korea South
Canada East

Per consultare la disponibilità del servizio in tutte le region Azure è possibile consultare questo documento.

Inoltre, è stato introdotto il supporto per le Availability Zones nella region di West US 2 per Azure Monitor Log Analytics ed Application Insights, che consente di garantire una maggiore disponibilità per i log presenti nei Workspace.

Azure Monitor container insights: aggiornamento dell’esperienza utente dal portale

L’esperienza utente dal portale per Azure Monitor container insights è stata aggiornata e consente di:

Ottenere più facilmente informazioni dettagliate sui container
Visualizzare l’utilizzo delle risorse come capacità allocabile
Usufruire di nuove metriche e di nuovi alert consigliati

Azure Monitor Query SDK

Microsoft ha rilasciato l’SDK di Azure Monitor Query per .NET, Java, JavaScript/TypeScript e Python. Questo nuovo SDK consente agli sviluppatori di creare applicazioni che eseguono query di sola lettura su log e metriche di Azure Monitor, in modo che possano analizzare e visualizzare i dati in modi personalizzati. L’SDK è stato modernizzato per seguire le linee guida dell’SDK di Azure ed essere idiomatico per ogni linguaggio di programmazione. Inoltre, introduce una serie di aggiornamenti e nuove funzionalità.

Azure Monitor application insights in Azure Spring Cloud

Grazie a questa nuova integrazione in Azure Monitor Application Insights risulta possibile abilitare il monitoraggio delle applicazioni Java Spring Boot in esecuzione in Azure Spring Cloud con pochi semplici passaggi e senza apportare nessuna modifica al codice.

Govern

Azure Cost Management

Aggiornamenti relativi ad Azure Cost Management and Billing

Secure

Azure Security Center

Nuove funzionalità, correzioni di bug e funzionalità deprecate di Azure Security Center

Lo sviluppo di Azure Security Center è in costante evoluzione e vengono introdotti miglioramenti su base continua. Per rimanere aggiornati sugli sviluppi più recenti, Microsoft aggiorna questa pagina, che fornisce informazioni su nuove funzionalità, correzioni di bug e funzionalità deprecate. In particolare, questo mese le principali novità riguardano:

Protect

Azure Backup

Backup multipli durante il giorno per Azure Files

Mantenere l’RPO basso è spesso un requisito chiave per Azure Files che contengono dati business-critical aggiornati frequentemente. Per garantire una perdita di dati minima, in caso di emergenza oppure di modifiche indesiderate al contenuto, le organizzazioni potrebbero avere la necessità di effettuare i backup più frequentemente di una volta al giorno. Azure Backup ora consente di creare policy di backup per effettuare più snapshot al giorno. Con questa funzionalità risulta inoltre possibile definire la durata dei processi di backup.

Supporto per l’Archive storage per il backup delle VMs e di SQL a bordo di VMs utilizzando il portale Azure

In Azure Backup nel mese di agosto è stata annunciata la possibilità di spostare i recovery point sul tier Vault-Archive di Azure Storage per risparmiare sui costi e conservare i dati di backup per una durata maggiore. Questa funzionalità è disponibile per le VMs di Azure e per i SQL Server installati a bordo delle VMs di Azure. Inizialmente questa possibilità veniva data solo utilizzando Azure PowerShell, mentre ora è possibile spostare questi backup dal standard tier al nuovo archive tier anche dal portale Azure.

Quando si spostano i dati di backup dal vault-standard al vault-archive, Azure Backup converte i dati incrementali in backup full. Questo procedimento comporta un aumento dei GB complessivi utilizzati, ma i costi si riducono a causa dell’enorme differenza del costo per GB tra i due livelli di archiviazione. Per semplificare questo procedimento, Azure Backup fornisce dei consigli sui Recovery Points (RPs) per i quali è consigliata la migrazione nel vault-archive. I ripristini è sempre possibile farli in modo integrato dal portale di Azure, con un processo semplice e intuitivo.

Migrate

Azure Migrate

Nuovi rilasci e funzionalità di Azure Migrate

Valutazione di Azure

Per testare e valutare in modo gratuito i servizi offerti da Azure è possibile accedere a questa pagina.

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (October 2021 – Weeks: 41 and 42)

Azure

Compute

New centralized management experience for Azure Hybrid Benefit for SQL Server (preview)

Azure Hybrid Benefit for SQL Server helps reduce costs by allowing existing on-premises licenses with active Software Assurance to be assigned to Azure. Now there’s an easier way to manage the benefit, optimize cost savings, and sustain compliance for the entire organization. Instead of assigning the benefit to each individual Azure resource (e.g. virtual machine), billing admins can now assign and manage SQL Server licenses at an Azure subscription or entire Azure account level.

Cross region replication for Azure NetApp Files

With this disaster recovery capability, you can replicate your Azure NetApp Files volumes between select Azure standard and non-standard region pairs continuously in a fast and cost-effective way, protecting your data from unforeseeable regional failures. Azure NetApp Files cross region replication leverages NetApp SnapMirror technology so only changed blocks are sent over the network in a compressed, efficient format. This technology reduces the amount of data required to replicate across the regions with up to 50% or more, therefore saving Azure NetApp Files customers data transfer cost. It also shortens the replication time so you can achieve a smaller Restore Point Objective.

Networking

Azure Firewall Premium now generally available in five new Azure regions

Azure Firewall Premium provides next generation firewall capabilities that are required for highly sensitive and regulated environments, and it is now generally available in the following new Azure Cloud regions: USGov Texas, USGov Arizona, USGov Virginia, China North 2 and China East 2.

Azure Stack

Azure Stack HCI

New feature update

Feature updates for Azure Stack HCI are released periodically to enhance the customer experience. This month’s feature update for Clusters running Azure Stack HCI, version 21H2 are:

Use GPUs with clustered VMs: Provide GPU acceleration to workloads running in clustered VMs.
Dynamic CPU compatibility mode: Processor compatibility mode has been updated to take advantage of new processor capabilities in a clustered environment.
Storage thin provisioning: Improve storage efficiency and simplify management with thin provisioning.
Network ATC: Simplify host networking and network configuration management.
Adjustable storage repair speed: Gain more control over the data resync process by allocating resources to either resiliency or performance to service your clusters more flexibly and efficiently.
Support for nested virtualization on AMD processors: Improve flexibility in evaluation and testing scenarios with VM-based clusters.
Manage quick restarts with Kernel Soft Reboot

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (October 2021 – Weeks: 39 and 40)

Azure

Compute

What’s new in Azure VMware Solution

Azure VMware Landing Zone is now publically available. It is Microsoft’s prescriptive, opinionated and best-practices backed guidance for deploying and managing workloads running on Azure VMware solution.
It’s soon possible to use Azure NetApp Filesas NFS datastore for Azure VMware Solution. It’s a great option for using the same NetApp VSAN datastores as used in on-premise environments in Azure now.
It is possible now to do HCX migration over VPN and SD-SWAN. Customers can get an additional option besides Azure ExpressRoute for driving migrations.
Azure VMware Solution is now included as part of Azure Workload Acquisition & Nurture incentive Partners can take advantage of multiple benefits available under the program to drive Azure VMware Solution projects.
New enhancements, global expansion, partner integration are now available as documented here.

Availability Zones now generally available in new regions

Azure Availability Zones are now generally available in the South Africa North, Norway East and Korea Central region. These new zones provide customers with options for additional resiliency and tolerance to infrastructure impact.

Storage

Azure NetApp Files waitlist removal

Azure NetApp Files, one of the fastest growing bare-metal Azure services is now available to Azure customers directly from the Azure portal, CLI, API or with SDK, without having to go through waitlist approval process.

Standard network features for Azure NetApp Files (preview)

Standard network features for Azure NetApp Files volumes is now in public preview in select regions. This includes support for increased IP limits, Network Security Groups, User-defined routes, and additional connectivity patterns like connectivity over Active/Active VPN gateway and ExpressRoute FastPath.

Azure NetApp Files Backup capability (preview)

Azure NetApp Files backup expands the data protection capabilities of Azure NetApp Files by providing fully managed backup solution for long-term recovery, archive, and compliance.
Azure NetApp Files online snapshots are now enhanced with backup of snapshots. With this new backup capability, you can offload your Azure NetApp Files snapshots to Azure blob storage in a fast and cost-effective way, further protecting your data from accidental deletion.

Enable hierarchical namespace for existing Azure Storage accounts

Accelerating value through data analytics by enabling the Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS) hierarchical namespace for existing Azure Storage accounts is now generally available. The benefits of the ADLS hierarchical namespace in providing enhanced performance and features that are dedicated to maximizing the value of data analytics is well established. You can now get this benefit for existing accounts and data by enabling the hierarchical namespace in place.

Object replication for Premium Block Blob Storage (preview)

Object replication allows you to replicate your premium block blob data at the blob level from one storage account to another anywhere in the Azure.
Object replication unblocks a new set of common replication scenarios for premium block blobs:

Minimize latency: have your users consume the data locally rather than issuing cross-region read requests.
Increase efficiency: have your compute clusters process the same set of objects locally in different regions.
Optimize data distribution: have your data consolidated in a single location for processing/analytics and then distribute only resulting dashboards to your offices worldwide.

Azure China: gli aspetti da conoscere per una scelta di successo

Per le aziende europee e statunitensi con parte del loro business sul territorio della Cina sta diventando sempre più attraente l’adozione di soluzioni cloud. Microsoft offre la possibilità di adottare soluzioni Azure anche in Cina e un gran numero di importanti realtà aziendali del calibro di Coca Cola, BMW ed Heineken sono già approdate sulla piattaforma Azure in Cina. Ci sono però aspetti importanti ed alcune particolarità, trattate in questo articolo, che è bene tenere in considerazione per fare una scelta consapevole quando si intende procedere con la distribuzione di applicazioni line of business nelle aree dalla Cina di Azure.

Che cos’è Azure China?

Per offrire servizi cloud sul territorio cinese e garantire una qualità del servizio coerente a livello globale, si ha la possibilità di adottare Azure China, che ha le seguenti caratteristiche:

Viene gestito e venduto in modo indipendente da 21Vianet nella Cina continentale. Shanghai Blue Cloud Technology Co., Ltd. (“21Vianet”) è una consociata interamente controllata di Beijing 21Vianet Broadband Data Center Co., Ltd.
Si tratta di un’istanza di servizi cloud fisicamente separata e situata in Cina.
Rispetto alle aree pubbliche di Azure gestite da Microsoft, le sottoscrizioni Azure dalle aree cinesi possono essere create solo da un’entità cinese. Questo comporta che per attivare servizi Azure in queste aree geografiche è necessario collaborare con un’organizzazione locale della Cina continentale. Infatti, durante il processo di registrazione viene richiesto di specificare un numero di telefono ed un indirizzo della Cina. Dopo aver creato l’account, la gestione delle sottoscrizioni avviene come per qualsiasi altra area di Azure, utilizzando un portale di Azure dedicato.

Per consentire ai clienti ed ai partner di esaminare tutti gli aspetti importanti, prima di attivare workload in Azure China, Microsoft ha pubblicato questo elenco delle attività.

Datacenter

I datacenter di Azure China sono posizionati nella Cina orientale e settentrionale e sono geograficamente separati da oltre 1.000 chilometri. Anche per questi datacenter è presente il supporto per la replica geografica e la business continuity, consentendo di ottenere un’elevata affidabilità dei dati per i servizi Azure. Sono disponibili ad oggi le seguenti region sul territorio cinese: China North, China North 2, China East e China East 2.

Nuova region Azure in arrivo in Cina nel 2022

Per soddisfare le crescenti esigenze di servizi nel cloud pubblico del mercato cinese, Microsoft ha annunciato che nel 2022 sarà disponibile una nuova region di Azure nella Cina settentrionale, sempre gestita dal suo partner operativo locale 21Vianet. Si prevede che questa espansione raddoppierà la capacità del portafoglio cloud Microsoft in Cina nei prossimi anni, che oltre ad Azure include Microsoft Office 365, Dynamics 365 e Power Platform. Tutto ciò contribuirà ad alimentare ulteriormente l’innovazione e la trasformazione digitale per sviluppatori, partner, e clienti in Cina e nel mondo.

Disponibilità dei servizi

C’è un divario tra i servizi attivabili in Azure China ed i servizi globali di Azure. Tenendo conto di ciò, è possibile verificare i servizi disponibili nelle region della Cina in questa pagina. Inoltre, i rilasci di nuovi servizi, versioni e nuove funzionalità di Azure hanno una propria cronologia in Cina.

Connettività e accesso alle risorse

Innanzi tutto, è bene specificare che i workload distribuiti in Azure China sono potenzialmente accessibili ovunque a livello globale.

Tuttavia, è opportuno tenere in considerazione che le aree globali di Azure e le aree cinesi di Azure sono fisicamente disconnesse. Pertanto, per connettere in modo privato le risorse dislocate nelle sottoscrizioni in Azure China con quelle presenti nelle aree globali di Azure è necessario prevedere l’attivazione di VPN site-to- site oppure di ExpressRoute.

L’adozione di una architettura ibrida consente di estendere le applicazioni ed i workload dislocati in Azure China e fornire connettività ed interoperabilità a livello globale.

Risultano supportate le seguenti connessioni:

VPN oppure Azure ExpressRoute per creare una connessione di rete diretta tra Azure China e l’ambiente on-premises dislocato sul territorio della Cina.
VPN site-to-site per connettere un sito Azure in Cina all’ambiente on-premises fuori dalla Cina. ExpressRoute non risulta supportato per la connettività di rete diretta a un sito esterno al di fuori della Cina (anche Azure global è considerato esterno).

Figura 1 – Cross-border connectivity

A questo proposito è necessario considerare che l’acquisto del servizio di connettività deve essere fatto rivolgendosi presso operatori di telecomunicazioni qualificati che dispongono di licenza rilasciata dal Ministero dell’industria e della tecnologia dell’informazione (MIIT).

Circuito ExpressRoute gratuito per la Cina

Azure China ExpressRoute offre un circuito gratuito tra le seguenti paired regions: China North (N1) – China North 2 (N2) e China East (E1) – China East 2 (E2). Questo permette di avere una latenza di rete minima, simile all’essere all’interno della stessa region. Il crossover ExpressRoute di N1-E2, E1-N2 richiede ExpressRoute Premium ed è soggetto ad addebito il trasferimento dei dati incrociato.

Latenza di rete

Tra la Cina ed il resto del mondo, latenze di rete elevate, larghezza di banda ridotta, connessioni instabili e costi elevati sono situazioni che si verificano nella maggior parte dei casi.

Tutto ciò accade a causa delle tecnologie intermediarie che regolano il traffico internet che attraversa il confine. Tra queste il “Great Firewall of China” che protegge l’accesso Intenet cinese e filtra il traffico verso la Cina. Infatti, quasi tutto il traffico che va dalla Repubblica popolare cinese al di fuori della Cina, ad eccezione delle zone ad amministrazione speciale come Hong Kong e Macao, attraversa il Great Firewall. Il traffico che attraversa Hong Kong e Macao non colpisce in pieno il Great Firewall, ma è gestito da un sottoinsieme del Great Firewall.

Figura 2 – Interconnessioni con la Cina

Per migliorare le interconnessioni con la Cina è anche possibile utilizzare il servizio Azure Virtual WAN, come descritto nel dettaglio in questa documentazione Microsoft.

Figura 3 – Esempio di architettura con Azure Virtual WAN

Inoltre, per migliorare le prestazioni e la reattività dei siti Web con contenuti multimediali in streaming ed altri contenuti multimediali avanzati, è possibile valutare l’adozione di una CDN di Azure (Azure Content Delivery Network). Secondo la legge cinese, l’utilizzo del servizio CDN in Cina potrebbe anche assoggettare un sito web offshore alla registrazione ICP. Non è consigliato utilizzare un servizio CDN globale che non ha un punto di presenza (PoP) all’interno della Cina continentale.

Opzioni di acquisto, costi e supporto

Per le informazioni riguardanti il processo di acquisto e di onboarding end-to-end per gli utenti sia cinesi sia esteri che stanno prendendo in considerazione l’adozione dei servizi Microsoft Azure gestiti da 21Vianet in Cina (“Azure Services in China”) è possibile consultare questa guida, realizzata seguendo la prospettiva del cliente.

I dettagli sui costi dei vari servizi Azure China sono consultabili in questo portale dedicato.

Per ottenere una visione completa dei piani di supporto in Azure China è possibile consultare questa pagina.

Conclusioni

Per garantire una distribuzione efficace dei propri workload in Azure China ci sono diversi aspetti da tenere in considerazione come quale entità legale gestirà il proprio account Azure China, il livello di compatibilità delle proprie applicazioni con i servizi Azure in esecuzione in Cina, il Great Firewall e la strategia di migrazione e replica da utilizzare. Diverse però sono le aziende che da tempo fanno affidamento ad Azure China ed è possibile consultare i molti casi di successo in questa pagina.