This blog post series highlights the key announcements and major updates related to Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Azure Local, as officially released by Microsoft in the past two weeks.
Azure
General
Troubleshoot Disk Performance with Copilot in Azure (preview)
The Disk Performance Troubleshooting Capability for Azure Copilot is now available in Public Preview. This feature allows users to optimize disk performance seamlessly through Azure Copilot. By leveraging a comprehensive range of disk metrics, Azure provides detailed insights into the performance of Virtual Machines (VMs) and disks, enabling users to identify and address performance bottlenecks. Azure Copilot enhances this process by analyzing these metrics and offering guided recommendations to improve VM and disk performance, ensuring a superior application experience.
Azure Confidential Ledger Achieves ISO 27001 Certification
Azure Confidential Ledger has achieved ISO 27001 certification, a globally recognized standard for information security management systems (ISMS). This certification highlights the implementation of a comprehensive framework designed to manage and safeguard customer data effectively. By meeting ISO 27001 compliance requirements, Azure Confidential Ledger demonstrates its commitment to exceeding industry standards. This achievement assures customers that they can rely on Azure Confidential Ledger to securely manage their most sensitive and critical workloads, reinforcing trust in its robust security capabilities.
Networking
WebSocket Support in Application Gateway for Containers
Azure has introduced WebSocket support in Application Gateway for Containers, enabling interactive and real-time applications such as chat platforms, live dashboards, and gaming services to achieve better performance and reduced latency. This enhancement provides several benefits:
- Bidirectional Communication: Facilitates two-way data exchange between clients and servers.
- Reduced Latency: Enhances application performance through faster data transmission using full-duplex communication over a single TCP connection.
- Improved User Experience: Delivers more engaging and responsive applications for end-users.
This addition significantly boosts the capabilities of Application Gateway for Containers, making it ideal for applications requiring real-time interactivity.
Storage
Customer Managed Unplanned Failover for Azure Data Lake Storage and SSH File Transfer Protocol
Customer managed unplanned failover for Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS) and storage accounts with SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) enabled is now generally available. This feature empowers users to failover their geo-redundant (GRS) or geo-zone-redundant (GZRS) storage accounts to a secondary region when primary storage service endpoints become inaccessible. During a failover, the secondary region becomes the new primary, redirecting all storage service endpoints and restoring write access to the account.
Previously, unplanned failover support was limited to Blobs, Tables, Files, and Queue data. Now, this capability extends to include Azure Data Lake Storage and SFTP-enabled accounts. After resolving the primary region’s outage, users can reconfigure geo-redundancy and fail back to the original primary region, ensuring greater resilience for mission-critical storage solutions.
Conclusion
Over the past two weeks, Microsoft has introduced a slew of updates and announcements pertaining to Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Azure Stack. These developments underscore the tech giant’s unwavering commitment to enhancing its cloud offerings and adapting to the ever-evolving needs of businesses and developers. Users of Azure can anticipate improved functionalities, streamlined services, and enriched features as a result of these changes. Stay tuned for more insights as I continue to monitor and report on Azure’s progression in the cloud sphere.
