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

Virtual Network NAT generally available

Azure Virtual Network NAT (Network Address Translation) simplifies outbound-only Internet connectivity for virtual networks. NAT can be configured for one or more subnets of a virtual network and provides on-demand connectivity for virtual machines.

Private Endpoints for Azure Storage are Generally Available

Private Endpoints provide secure connectivity to Azure Storage from a Azure virtual network (VNet). On-premises networks can also securely connect to a storage account using a private endpoint when that network is to a VNet using Express Route or VPN. Private Endpoints for Azure Storage are now generally available in all Azure public regions.

Azure Web Application Firewall integration with Azure Content Delivery Network service in preview

Azure Web Application Firewall service protects your web applications from malicious attacks. In addition to Azure Application Gateway and Azure Front Door service, Web Application Firewall is now natively integrated with Azure Content Delivery Network, protecting Content Delivery Network endpoints from common exploits such as SQL injection and cross site scripting (XSS) attacks.

Private Link for different Azure services is available

Azure Private Link is now generally available (GA) for the below services:

• Azure Storage
• Azure Data Lake Storage Gen 2
• Azure SQL Database
• Azure Cosmos DB
• Azure Synapse Analytics (SQL Data Warehouse)
• Azure Key Vault
• Azure Database for MySQL
• Azure Database for PostgreSQL
• Azure Database for MariaDB
• Azure Kubernetes Service -> Kubernetes API

In addition, Private Link is now available in preview for the following services:

• App Service
• Azure Cognitive Search
• Event Hub
• Service Bus
• Azure Relay
• Azure Backup
• Azure Container Registry
• Event Grid -> Topics
• Event Grid -> Domains

App Service regional Virtual Network integration

The regional Virtual Network integration feature has now entered general availability (GA) and supports sending all outbound calls into your virtual network. Use features like network NSGs and UDRs against all outbound traffic from your web app.

Azure Shared Disks for clustered applications in preview

Azure Shared Disks is a shared block storage offering, enabling customers to run latency-sensitive workloads without compromising on well-known deployment patterns for fast failover and high availability.  Azure Shared Disks are best suited for clustered databases, parallel file systems, persistent containers, and machine learning applications. Azure Shared Disks provide a consistent experience for applications running on Windows or Linux based clusters today.

ACR built-in audit policies for Azure Policy in preview

Azure Container Registry now supports built-in audit policies for Azure Policy.

Preparing for TLS 1.2 in Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure recommends all customers complete migration towards solutions that support transport layer security (TLS) 1.2 and to make sure that TLS 1.2 is used by default.

Azure File Sync agent version 6.x will expire on April 21, 2020

On April 21, 2020, Azure File Sync agent version 6.x will be expired and stop syncing. If you have servers with agent version 6.x, update to a supported agent version (7.x or later).

Azure Storage: Append Blob immutability support is generally available

Store business-critical data objects in a non-erasable and non-modifiable state for a user-specified retention interval using immutable storage for Azure Blob storage. Append blobs allow the addition of new data blocks to the end of an object and are optimized for data append operations required by auditing and logging scenarios.

General availability of NVv4 and HBv2-Series virtual machines

General availability of NVv4 virtual machines in South Central US, East US, and West Europe regions. Additional regions are planned in the coming months. With NVv4, Azure is the first public cloud to offer GPU partitioning built on industry-standard SR-IOV technology. HBv2-series VMs for HPC are now available in the Azure West Europe region.

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

New datacenter region in Spain

Microsoft will open a datacenter region in Spain to help accelerate digital transformation of public and private entities of all sizes, helping them to innovate, scale and migrate their businesses to the cloud in a secure way.

Microsoft will retire classic IaaS VMs

Because Azure Resource Manager now has all the infrastructure as a service (IaaS) capabilities of Azure Service Management and new advancements, Microsoft will retire classic IaaS VMs on March 1, 2023. Beginning March 1, 2023, customers who are using classic IaaS VMs will no longer be able to start any classic IaaS VMs using ASM. Any remaining VMs in a running or stopped-allocated state will be moved to a stopped-deallocated state. The following Azure services and functionality will not be impacted by this retirement: Cloud Services, storage accounts not used by classic VMs, and virtual networks (VNets) not used by classic VMs.

Azure Virtual Network service endpoint policies feature 

Azure Virtual Network service endpoint policies enable you to prevent unauthorized access to Azure Storage accounts from your virtual network. It enables you to limit access to only specific whitelisted Azure Storage resources by applying endpoint policies over the service endpoint configuration.

Azure Load Balancer TCP resets on idle timeout is available

Azure Load Balancer now supports sending bidirectional TCP resets on idle timeout for load balancing rules, inbound NAT rules, and outbound rules. This is available in all regions. Use this ability to help applications gain visibility into when Standard Load Balancer terminates connections due to idle timeout. When enabled, Standard Load Balancer will generate a TCP reset packet to both the client and server side of a TCP connection on idle timeout. This allows applications to behave more predictably, as well as to detect the termination of a connection, remove expired connections, and initiate new connections.  CP resets can be enabled on standard load balancers using the Azure portal, Resource Manager templates, CLI, and PowerShell.

Web Application Firewall with Azure Front Door service supports exclusion lists

Web Application Firewall exclusion lists allow you to omit certain request attributes from a rule evaluation. You can use them to fine tune Web Application Firewall policies for your applications.

Azure StorSimple 8000/1200 series will no longer be supported starting December 31, 2022

Microsoft has been expanding the portfolio of Azure Hybrid storage capabilities with new services for data tiering and cloud ingestion, providing more options to customers for storing data in Azure in native formats. In conjunction with this, support for the following StorSimple versions will end December 31, 2022.

Active Directory for authentication on SMB access to Azure File in preview

Azure Files Active Directory (Azure AD) Authentication is in preview. You can use it to mount your Azure Files using Azure AD credentials with the exact same access control experience as on-premises.

HPC-optimized virtual machines are available

Azure HBv2-series Virtual Machines (VMs) are generally available in the South Central US region. HBv2 VMs will also be available in West Europe, East US, West US 2, North Central US, Japan East soon. HBv2 VMs deliver supercomputer-class performance, message passing interface (MPI) scalability, and cost efficiency for a variety of real-world high performance computing (HPC) workloads, such as CFD, explicit finite element analysis, seismic processing, reservoir modeling, rendering, and weather simulation.

A8 – A11 Azure Virtual Machine sizes will be retired on March 1, 2021

Microsoft is retiring A8 – A11 Azure Virtual Machine sizes on March 1, 2021. Starting today, customers with existing A8 – A11 size virtual machines will be able to deploy more of the same size, but new customers will no longer be able to create A8 – A11 VMs. After March 1, 2021, any remaining A8 – A11 size virtual machines remaining in your subscription will be set to a deallocated state. These virtual machines will be stopped and removed from the host. These virtual machines will no longer be billed in the deallocated state.

NDv2-Series VMs are Generally Available

NDv2 GPU VMs for high-end deep learning training and HPC workloads are going GA in East US, South Central US, and West Europe.

NVv4-Series VMs are Generally Available

Microsoft announced general availability of NVv4 Virtual Machines. NVv4 VMs are designed to provide you unprecedented GPU resourcing flexibility. You can now choose VMs with a whole GPU all the way down to 1/8th of a GPU.

Virtual machine scale sets now simpler to manage

Three new capabilities that simplify the overall management of virtual machine scale sets in Azure are now available. New custom scale-in policies for virtual machine scale sets let you specify the order in which virtual machines (VMs) within a scale set are deleted during a scale-in operation based on a set of criteria (such as the newest VM that was added to a scale set).  New instance protection policies enable you to protect one or more individual VMs in a scale set. Two new capabilities are provided:

• Protect from scale-in  blocks instance deletion during scale-in operations.
• Protect from scale set actions blocks all scale set operations including upgrades and reimage.

It’s also now possible to receive notifications about instance deletions and to set up a predefined delay timeout for the deletion operation. Notifications are sent through Azure Metadata Service Scheduled Events. Delay timeouts can range between 5 and 15 minutes.

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

Azure Firewall Manager now supports virtual networks

Azure Firewall Manager Preview now supports Azure Firewall deployments in virtual networks (also known as hub virtual networks) in addition to its support for Azure Firewall deployments in virtual WAN hubs (also known as secured virtual hubs).

New Azure Firewall certification and features

New Azure Firewall capabilities are available:

• ICSA Labs Corporate Firewall Certification.
• Forced tunneling support now in preview.
• IP Groups now in preview.
• Customer configured SNAT private IP address ranges now generally available.
• High ports restriction relaxation now generally available.

Form more detrails you can read this document.

Azure Virtual Network: Network address translation in preview

Azure Virtual Network now offers network address translation (NAT) (in preview) to simplify outbound-only internet connectivity for virtual networks. All outbound connectivity uses the public IP address and/or public IP prefix resources connected to the virtual network NAT. Outbound connectivity is possible without a load balancer or public IP addresses directly attached to virtual machines. Virtual Network NAT Preview is fully managed, highly resilient, and is currently available in the following regions:

• Europe West
• Japan East
• US East 2
• US West
• US West 2
• US West Central 

Preview of Azure Shared Disks for clustered applications

The limited preview of Azure Shared Disks, the industry’s first shared cloud block storage, is available. Azure Shared Disks enables the next wave of block storage workloads migrating to the cloud including the most demanding enterprise applications, currently running on-premises on Storage Area Networks (SANs). These include clustered databases, parallel file systems, persistent containers, and machine learning applications. This unique capability enables customers to run latency-sensitive workloads, without compromising on well-known deployment patterns for fast failover and high availability. This includes applications built for Windows or Linux-based clustered filesystems like Global File System 2 (GFS2). With Azure Shared Disks, customers now have the flexibility to migrate clustered environments running on Windows Server, including Windows Server 2008 (which has reached End-of-Support), to Azure. This capability is designed to support SQL Server Failover Cluster Instances (FCI), Scale-out File Servers (SoFS), Remote Desktop Servers (RDS), and SAP ASCS/SCS running on Windows Server.

Azure Private Link is generally available

Azure Private Link is now generally available. Azure Private Link is a secure and scalable way for you to consume services (such as Azure PaaS,  Partner Service, BYOS) on the Azure platform privately from within your virtual network. Private Link also enables you to create and render your own services on Azure. It enables a true private connectivity experience between services and virtual networks.

Azure Resource Manager template support for NSG flow logs

Now, Azure Resource Manage, the native and powerful way to manage your infrastructure as code, supports the deployment of network security group (NSG) flow logs through templates. NSG flow logs are now an Azure Resource Manager resource so you have the ability to deploy flow logs programmatically and set up Azure Governance policies to verify that flow logs are enabled. 

Azure Network Watcher is generally available in four new regions

Azure Network Watcher is now generally available in UAE North, Switzerland North, Norway West, and Germany West Central regions.

Native Azure Active Directory authentication support and Azure VPN Client 

Native Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) authentication support for OpenVPN protocol, and Azure VPN Client for Windows are generally available for Azure point-to-site (P2S) VPN. Native Azure AD authentication support enables user-based policies, conditional access, and multi-factor authentication (MFA) for P2S VPN. Native Azure AD authentication requires both Azure VPN Gateway integration and a new Azure VPN client to obtain and validate an Azure AD token.

Unified network monitoring with connection monitor in preview

Azure Network Watcher now has a new and improved connection monitor feature. Connection monitor provides unified end-to-end connection monitoring capabilities for hybrid and Azure deployments. Some of the new capabilities include:

• A single console for configuring and monitoring connectivity and network quality from Azure and on-premises VMs/hosts. 
• The ability to monitor endpoints within and across Azure regions, on-premises sites, and global service locations. 
• Higher and configurable probing frequencies and support for more protocols.
• Faster time to detect and diagnose issues in Azure and hybrid networks.
• Access to historical monitoring data retained in Log Analytics. 

Azure Bastion is available in 20 new regions

Azure Bastion, the managed PaaS service that provides secure and seamless RDP/SSH connectivity to your virtual machines directly in the Azure portal over SSL and without any public IP on your virtual machines, is now generally available in 20 new regions.

Active Directory authentication support on Azure Files (preview)

You can now mount your Azure Files using AD credentials with the exact same access control experience as on-premises. You may leverage an Active Directory domain service either hosted on-premises or on Azure for authenticating user access to Azure Files for both premium and standard tiers. Managing file permissions is also simple. As long as your Active Directory identities are synced to Azure AD, you can continue to manage the share level permission through standard role-based access control (RBAC). For directory and file level permission, you simply configure Windows ACLs (NTFS DACLs) using Windows File Explorer just like any regular file share. 

Azure Stack

Kubernetes on Azure Stack 

Microsoft now supports Kubernetes cluster deployment on Azure Stack, a certified Kubernetes Cloud Provider. Install Kubernetes using Azure Resource Manager templates generated by ACS-Engine on Azure Stack.

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

New solution for Azure Monitor for virtual machines

The new solution for Azure Monitor for VMs will soon be available in all regions. This update will provide richer monitoring functionality and map data sets for Service Map customers. Once it’s available in your region, it’ll be necessary to upgrade to the new solution in order to continue using Azure Monitor for VMs. Disruption to your workflow should be minimal since Azure Monitor for VMs is still in preview, compared to upgrading after general availability.

Azure Cost Management and billing updates

Here are a few of the latest improvements and updates related to Azure Cost Management in January 2020:

• New ways to save money with Azure.
• Schedule automated exports of your Microsoft Customer Agreement billing data.
• Use custom RBAC roles for management groups.

Large file shares (100 TiB) on standard is available world-wide

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

Microsoft to launch new cloud datacenter region in Israel

Microsoft announced plans to establish the company’s first cloud region in Israel to deliver its intelligent, trusted cloud services through a local datacenter region. This investment expands the Microsoft global cloud infrastructure to 56 cloud regions in 21 countries, with the new Israel region anticipated to be available starting with Microsoft Azure in 2021, with Office 365 to follow. The new Israel region will adhere to Microsoft’s trusted cloud principles and become part of one of the largest cloud infrastructures in the world, already serving more than a billion customers and 20 million businesses.

Azure is now certified for the ISO/IEC 27701 privacy standard

zure is the first major US cloud provider to achieve certification as a data processor for the new international standard ISO/IEC 27701 Privacy Information Management System (PIMS). The PIMS certification demonstrates that Azure provides a comprehensive set of management and operational controls that can help your organization demonstrate compliance with privacy laws and regulations. Microsoft’s successful audit can also help enable Azure customers to build upon our certification and seek their own certification to more easily comply with an ever-increasing number of global privacy requirements.

New support for Network Security Group flow logs

Network Security Group (NSG) flow logs, a feature of Azure Network Watcher, allows you to view information about ingress and egress IP traffic. This feature now supports two new Azure Storage configurations:

• Firewalled Storage accounts. Configuring Storage firewalls provides greater access control and security of your data. NSG flow logs can now be sent to storage accounts with a firewall enabled.
• Service endpoints for Storage. Azure Virtual Network service endpoints allow you to control how your network interacts with Azure, ensuring that traffic from your virtual network to Azure services remains on the Azure backbone network. NSG Flow Logs can now be sent to Storage accounts accessible through virtual network service endpoints.

Microsoft Sustainability Calculator provides insights into IT carbon emissions

The Microsoft Sustainability Calculator is a Power BI application for Azure enterprise customers that provides new insight into carbon emissions data associated with their Azure services. For the first time, those responsible for reporting on and driving sustainability within their organizations will have the ability to quantify the carbon impact of each Azure subscription over a period of time and datacenter region, and to see estimated carbon savings from running those workloads in Azure versus on-premises datacenters. This data is crucial for reporting existing emissions and will help drive additional decarbonization efforts.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux gold images now available on Azure

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) bring-your-own-subscription images, also referred to as RHEL gold images, are now available in Azure with a simple, automated sign-up process.

Azure Stack

Azure App Service on Azure Stack Hub Update 8 Released

This release updates the resource provider and brings the following key capabilities and fixes:

• Updates to App Service Tenant, Admin, Functions portals and Kudu tools. Consistent with Azure Stack Portal SDK version.
• Managed disk support for all new deployments: all new deployments of Azure App Service on Azure Stack Hub will make use of managed disks for all Virtual Machines and Virtual Machine Scale Sets.  All existing deployments will continue to use unmanaged disks.
• Updates to core service to improve reliability and error messaging enabling easier diagnosis of common issues.
• TLS 1.2 Enforced by Front End load Balancers

All other fixes and updates are detailed in the App Service on Azure Stack Update Eight Release Notes.