In June have been announced, by Microsoft, a considerable number of news regarding the Azure management services and System Center. From our community, through these articles released monthly, aims to provide a general overview of the main new features of the month, in order to stay up to date on these issues and have the necessary references for further information.
Azure Log Analytics
Azure VMBoundPort Monitor
In Azure Monitor was announced the availability, in all the regions supported by Log Analytics, to consult theVMBoundPort data set. VMBoundPort contains information about all ports that accept incoming traffic and that can potentially accept it. This is a very useful feature, to analyze what ports are open and which are active, to carry out analysis of security or for troubleshooting.
New region supported for Azure Monitor for VMs
Azure Monitor for VMs, the service that allows you to analyze the performance and health of both Windows and Linux VMs, by monitoring their processes and ralative dependencies with other resources, is now also available in the region of West US 2. They become so seven Azure regions that currently support Azure Monitor for VMs.
Availability in new regions
Azure Log Analytics is now also possible to activate it in these new regions: South Africa North, Brazil South, UK West and North Central US.
Advanced Data Security available for SQL Server VMs in Azure
Advanced data security is available in preview for SQL Server on Azure VMs. This feature allows you to protect your SQL Server installations made on board of Azure virtual machines. This service currently includes the capabilities necessary to identify and mitigate potential vulnerabilities on databases and detects unusual activity that may indicate the presence of a security threat on the server.
Updates to the User Interface in Azure Monitor Log Analytics
During the month, some elements of the Azure Monitor Log Analytics underwent a change, For more details you can refer this document.
New version of the agent for Linux systems
This month the new agent version of Log Analytics for Linux systems introduces improvements relating in particular to the installation process and performance. To get more information about it you can access the GitHub official page.
Azure Site Recovery
New Update Rollup
For Azure Site Recovery was releasedUpdate Rollup 37 solving different problems and introduces some improvements. The details and the procedure to be followed for the installation can be found in the specific KB 4508614.
Data replication of new disk added
Azure Site Recovery introduced the ability to enable replication of data disks, only if managed type, that are added to a Azure VM, that has already enabled the ability to make disaster recovery.
New support limits for the Mobility service for DR scenarios of VMware VMs and physical servers
Azure Site Recovery is now able to support up to five GPT partitions on UEFI, when you use the Mobility service for disaster recovery scenarios of VMware VMs and physical servers.
Using an existing automation account for automatic updates of Mobility service
When you set up automatic updates of the Azure Site Recovery Mobility service extension running on Azure VMs enabled for disaster recovery scenarios, introduced the ability to select an existing automation account to use, instead of using the default created by Site Recovery.
Azure Backup
Support for SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 on VMs in Azure
The 9 July 2019 officially ends support for SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 and thanks to the Microsoft approach, which guarantees other 3 years of security updates if migrated to Azure environment, many customers are proceeding with its migration. In the event you choose to move the SQL Server on-premises, in a VM in Azure environment, is appropriate to manage the backup and for this reason, Microsoft has decided to introduce in Azure Backup the support (at the time public preview) of SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2 from Windows 2008 R2 SP1.
System Center Configuration Manager
New release for the Technical Preview Branch
For Configuration Manager was released the update 1906 that among the main innovations provides the ability to specify a user category as a filter in the applications that are on the Software Center page.
To verify the details about what's new in this update you can see this document.
Please note that the releases in Technical Preview Branch help you to evaluate the new features of SCCM and it is recommended to apply these updates only in test environments.
System Center Updates Publisher
Announced the availability of System Center Updates Publisher preview (SCUP) June 2019.
Evaluation of Azure and System Center
To test and evaluate free of charge the service offered by Azure you can access this page, while to try out the various components of System Center you must Access to theEvaluation Center and, after registering, you can start the trial period.
