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
New M-series Msv2/Mdsv2 Medium Memory VMs for memory-optimized workloads
Azure Msv2/Mdsv2 Medium Memory Series offering up to 192vCPU and 4TB memory configurations and running on Cascade Lake processor are now generally available. Msv2/Mdsv2 medium memory VM sizes providing a 20% increase in CPU performance, increased flexibility with local disks, and a new intermediate scale up-option. These virtual machines provide unparalleled computational performance to support large in-memory databases and workloads such as SAP HANA and SQL Hekaton.
Azure Virtual Machines DCsv2-series in Azure Government (public preview)
Azure Government customers can build secure, enclave-based applications to protect code and data while it’s in use, in a dedicated cloud that meets stringent government security and compliance requirements. Confidential computing DCsv2-series virtual machines are now in preview for Azure Government customers (federal, state, local governments, and their partners) in US Government Virginia and Arizona regions. These VMs are backed by Intel XEON E-2288G processors with Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX) technology.
Microsoft announces plans to establish first datacenter region in Malaysia
The new datacenter region is part of the “Bersama Malaysia” initiative to support inclusive economic growth in Malaysia.
Storage
Azure Blob storage supports objects up to 200 TB in size
Workloads that utilize larger file sizes such as backups, media, and seismic analysis can now utilize Azure Blob storage and ADLS Gen2 without breaking these large files into separate blobs. Each blob is made up of up to 50,000 blocks. Each block can now be 4GB in size for a total of 200 TB per blob or ADLS Gen2 file.
Lustre HSM tools to import from or export to Azure Storage
Lustre HSM (Hierarchical Storage Management) provides the capability to associate a Lustre file system with an external storage system and migrate file data between them.
Now available are the File System Hydrator and Copy Tool, which enables integrating a Lustre file system with an Azure storage account:
- The File System Hydrator is used to import a file system namespace from an Azure storage account into a Lustre file system with the imported files left in the ‘released’/’exist’ state.
- The Copy Tool is used to hydrate the content of the files in the storage account into the Lustre file system on-demand. The copy tool can also be used to archive content of files back into the storage account, including changed or added files.
Networking
Application Gateway URL Rewrite
Azure Application Gateway now supports the ability to rewrite host name, path and query string of the request URL. In addition to header rewrites, you can now also rewrite URL of all or some of the client requests based on matching one or more conditions as required. You can choose to route the request based on the original URL or the rewritten URL. This feature enables several important scenarios such as allowing path based routing for query string values and support for hosting friendly URLs.
