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
Azure Virtual Machines with Ampere Altra Arm–based processors
Microsoft is announcing the general availability of the latest Azure Virtual Machines featuring the Ampere Altra Arm–based processor. The new virtual machines will be generally available on September 1, and customers can now launch them in 10 Azure regions and multiple availability zones around the world. In addition, the Arm-based virtual machines can be included in Kubernetes clusters managed using Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). This ability has been in preview and will be generally available over the coming weeks in all the regions that offer the new virtual machines.
Storage
Prevent a lifecycle management policy from archiving recently rehydrated blobs
Azure Storage lifecycle management offers a rule-based policy that you can use to transition blob data to the appropriate access tiers or to expire data at the end of the data lifecycle. You can configure rules to move a blob to archive tier based on last modified condition. If you rehydrate a blob by changing its tier, this rule may move the blob back to the archive tier. This can happen if the last modified time is beyond the threshold set for the policy. Now you can add a new condition, daysAfterLastTierChangeGreaterThan, in your rules, to skip the archiving action if the blobs are newly rehydrated.
Encrypt storage account with cross-tenant customer-managed keys (preview)
The ability to encrypt storage account with customer-managed keys (CMK) using an Azure Key Vault hosted on a different Azure Active Directory tenant is available in preview. You can use this solution to encrypt your customers’ data using an encryption key managed by your customers.
Ephemeral OS disks supports host-based encryption using customer managed key
Ephemeral OS disk customers can choose encryption type between platform managed keys or customer managed keys for host-based encryption. The default is platform managed keys. This feature would enable our customers to meet organization’s compliance needs.
Resource instance rules for access to Azure Storage
Resource instance rules enable secure connectivity to a storage account by restricting access to specific resources of select Azure services.
Azure Storage provides a layered security model that enables you to secure and control access to your storage account. You can configure network access rules to limit access to your storage account from select virtual networks or IP address ranges. Some Azure services operate on multi-tenant infrastructure, so resources of these services cannot be isolated to a specific virtual network.
With resource instance rules, you can now configure your storage account to only allow access from specific resource instances of such Azure services. For example, Azure Synapse offers analytic capabilities that cannot be deployed into a virtual network. If your Synapse workspace uses such capabilities, you can configure a resource instance rule on a secured storage account to only allow traffic from that Synapse workspace.
Resource instances must be in the same tenant as your storage account, but they may belong to any resource group or subscription in the tenant.
Networking
ExpressRoute IPv6 Support for Global Reach
IPv6 support for Global Reach unlocks connectivity between on-premise networks, via the Microsoft backbone, for customers with dual-stack workloads. Establish Global Reach connections between ExpressRoute circuits using IPv4 subnets, IPv6 subnets, or both. This configuration can be done using Azure Portal, PowerShell, or CLI.
