Azure Management services: What's new in May 2021

To stay constantly updated on news regarding Azure Management services, this summary is released monthly, allowing you to have an overview of the main new features of the month. In this article you will find the news, presented in a synthetic way and accompanied with the necessary references to be able to conduct further studies.

The following diagram shows the different areas related to management, which are covered in this series of articles, in order to stay up to date on these topics and to better deploy and maintain applications and resources.

Figure 1 – Management services in Azure overview

Monitor

Azure Monitor

Log Analytics workspace insights

Microsoft has announced the availability of Log Analytics workspace insights which allows you to obtain detailed information on the Log Analytics workspaces, providing a comprehensive overview of the following aspects: usage, performance, integrity, agents, query and change logs.

These are the main questions to which the solution can provide an answer:

What are the main tables, those where most of the data is imported?
Which resource sends the most logs to the workspace?
How long does it take for the logs to reach the workspace?
How many agents are connected to the work area? How many are in a health state?
Query control: how many queries run in the workspace? What are their response codes and duration time? What are the slow and inefficient queries that require workspace overhead?
Who has set a daily limit? When data retention has changed?
- Useful for keeping a log of changes in workspace settings.

Export of Azure Monitor logs to multiple destinations (preview)

You now have the option to create up to 10 data export rules in each Log Analytics workspace, having the flexibility to decide which tables to export and to which destination (storage accounts oppure event hubs). This configuration possibility makes it possible to address these aspects:

Event hub rate limit
Single storage account rate limit
Different logs can be exported to different destinations.

Updates related to the user interface(UI)

The following user interface updates have been introduced in Log Analytics(UI):

Consultation of custom logs: it is now possible to control and manage the table and the custom fields from a new dedicated panel, offering a new user interface that improves the experience of consulting custom logs.
Azure Dashboard: the parts of Log Analytics added to Azure dashboards support integration with filters.

Query packs in Azure Monitor (preview)

Query packages have been made available in Azure Monitor , which are essentially ARM objects containing several queries. Among the main features we find:

Being ARM objects, precise control of permissions is provided and can be distributed via code and incorporated into policies.
They work in all contexts and in all environments, with the ability to upload them to multiple subscriptions.
They allow organizations to better organize queries based on their taxonomy, thanks to the presence of new metadata.
The clear experience, harmonized and contextual to the environment is incorporated in Log Analytics.

Availability in new regions

Azure Monitor Log Analytics is now also available in the South India region. To check the availability of the service in all the Azure regions you can consult this document.

Secure

Azure Security Center

Integration con GitHub Actions (in public preview)

The integration of Azure Security Center (ASC) with GitHub Actions, in public preview, allows you to easily incorporate security and compliance early in the software development lifecycle. With this integrated experience, you can gain greater visibility into IT operations and IT security, both in the pipeline CI / CD, both in the security scans of container registry within ASC. Furthermore, end-to-end traceability makes it easier for developers to identify issues, improving resolution times and strengthening your cloud security posture.

Re-scanning of containers

Azure Security Center has introduced a new scan for containers that analyzes images to identify vulnerabilities before the push action occurs within the Azure container registries. In the future, ASC will also provide recommendations if you detect workflows that send Docker images without enabling scan actions CI / CD.

New features, bug fixes and deprecated features of Azure Security Center

Azure Security Center development is constantly evolving and improvements are being made on an ongoing basis. To stay up to date on the latest developments, Microsoft updates this page, this provides information about new features, bug fixes and deprecated features. In particular, this month the main news concern:

Protect

Azure Backup

Backup for Azure Blobs

Azure Blob Backup is a managed data protection solution, this helps protect block blobs from various data loss scenarios. The data is stored locally within the source storage account and can be restored from a certain time when necessary. This feature provides a simple means, safe and economical to protect blobs.

Azure Site Recovery

Enable Azure Site Recovery (ASR) when creating virtual machines

While creating new virtual machines from the Azure portal, you can now also enable the Azure Site Recovery replication process. This possibility is included in the virtual machine management options along with those already available, such as Monitoring, Identity, and Backup.

Migrate

Azure Migrate

New Azure Migrate releases and features

Azure Migrate is the service in Azure that includes a large portfolio of tools that you can use, through a guided experience, to address effectively the most common migration scenarios. To stay up-to-date on the latest developments in the solution, please consult this page, that provides information about new releases and features. In particular, this month the main news is the migration of virtual machines and physical servers with operating system disks up to 4 TB, which is now supported using the migration method based on the presence of the agent.