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
Hotpatch for Windows Server virtual machines
You can patch and install updates to your Windows Server virtual machines on Azure without requiring a reboot using hotpatch. This capability is available exclusively as part of Azure Automanage for Windows Server for Windows Server Azure Edition core virtual machines, and comes with the following benefits:
- Lower workload impact with less reboots
- Faster deployment of updates as the packages are smaller, install faster, and have easier patch orchestration with Azure Update Manager
- Better protection, as the Hotpatch update packages are scoped to Windows security updates that install faster without rebooting
Virtual Machine level disk bursting supports additional VM types
Virtual Machine level disk bursting supports M-series, Msv2-series Medium Memory, and Mdsv2-series Medium Memory VM families allowing your virtual machine to burst its disk IO and throughput performance for a short time, daily. This enables VMs to handle unforeseen spiky disk traffic smoothly and process batched jobs with speed. There is no additional cost associated with this new capability or adjustments on the VM pricing and it comes enabled by default.
Automatically delete a VM and its associated resources simultaneously
Automatically delete disks, NICs and Public IPs associated with a VM at the same time you delete the VM. With this feature, you can specify the associated resources that should be automatically deleted when you delete a VM. This will allow you to save time and simplify the VM management process.
Storage
Azure NetApp Files: new region and cross-region replication
Azure NetApp Files is now available in Australia Central 2. Additionally, cross-region replication has been enabled between Australia Central and Australia Central 2 region pair.
Azure NetApp Files: application consistent snapshot tool v5.1 (preview)
Application consistent snapshot tool (AzAcSnap) v5.1 is a command-line tool enables you to simplify data protection for third-party databases (SAP HANA) in Linux environments (for example, SUSE and RHEL).
The public preview of application consistent snapshot tool v5.1 supports the following new capabilities:
- Oracle Database support
- Backint Co-existence
- RunBefore and RunAfter capability
These new features can be used with Azure NetApp Files, Azure BareMetal, and now, Azure Managed Disk.
Networking
Application Gateway mutual authentication
Azure Application Gateway is announcing general availability for transport layer security (TLS) mutual authentication. Mutual authentication allows for two-way TLS certificate-based authentication, which allows both client and server to verify each other’s identity. This release strengthens your zero trust networking posture and enables many connected devices, IoT, business to business, and API security scenarios.
You can upload multiple client certificate authority (CA) certificate chains on the Application Gateway to use for client authentication. You can also choose to enable frontend mutual authentication at a per-listener level on Application Gateway. Microsoft is also adding enhancements to server variables supported on Application Gateway to enable you to pass additional client certificate information to backend as HTTP headers.
With this release Microsoft is also extending support for listener specific TLS policies which allows you to configure predefined or custom TLS policies at a per listener granularity, instead of global TLS policies.
