Category Archives: Azure Management

Azure Management services: what's new in February 2022

The month of February was full of news and there are several updates that have affected the Azure management services. This article provides an overview of the month's top news, so that we can stay up to date on these topics and have the necessary references to conduct further insights.

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

Azure Monitor Agent: new feature to update the extension automatically

With the new Azure Monitor agent, you can get important updates and security fixes by enabling the automatic extension update function within the agent. Basically, when an update is published, the extension updates and replaces the existing version present in the virtual machine or in the scale set.

Azure Monitor Agent: improved Syslog RFC compliance

The latest version of the Azure Monitor agent is now capable of collecting syslog events from the following vendors, standard device types and formats:

Cisco Meraki, ASA, FTD
Sophos XG
Juniper Networks
Corelight Zeek
CipherTrust
NXLog
McAfee
CEF (Common Event Format)

Azure IoT Edge monitor

Thanks to a deep integration with Azure Monitor it is possible to simplify the monitor of Azure IoT Edge devices, through a set of built-in metrics, the IoT Edge Metrics Collector module and a set of “curated visualization”. Through this integration it is possible:

Analyze the efficiency of the solution
Choose the hardware to meet the performance demands of the devices
Monitor blocked resources
Proactively identify problems
Resolve problems quickly
Create custom metrics and dashboards

Ability to set an exact time range in queries

In the queries on the Log Analytics workspaces it is now possible to specify a specific time range, in this way it is possible to carry out precise and more targeted searches.

The Azure Monitor ‘action rules’ are now ‘alert processing rules’

Microsoft has renamed the 'action rules” of Azure Monitor in “alert processing rules”, which will continue to provide post-processing capabilities for alerts triggered in Azure Monitor.

Log Analytics data export

The new Azure Monitor Log Analytics data export feature allows you to send log data not only to Log Analytics workspaces, but also to a storage account or Event Hub. Furthermore, data can be streamed continuously from Log Analytics tables to a storage account or to Event Hub if Microsoft has enabled streaming support for those types of tables.

Custom retention for tables AzureActivity and Usage

In Azure Monitor, the ability to set custom retention has been introduced for tables AzureActivity and Usage present in the Log Analytics workspaces . Previously, AzureActivity and Usage had a minimum of retention of 90 days and such data could not be set with a specific retention. Now the minimum retention for those tables remains of 90 days, useful for audit and troubleshooting purposes, but you can customize the retention period.

Possibility to test the Action Groups (preview)

For Azure Monitor action groups, the ability to test notification settings for alerts has been introduced, in order to:

Check if the notifications work as expected when creating or updating an action group
Self-diagnose the cause of notifications not working as expected

Azure Monitor predictive autoscaling for VM Scale Sets (preview)

Predictive autoscaling, released in preview, uses machine learning algorithms to manage and scale Virtual Machine Scale Sets. This mechanism allows you to predict the overall CPU load on the Virtual Machine Scale Sets, based on historical CPU usage patterns. In this way the scale-out takes place in time to satisfy the demand.

Govern

Azure Cost Management

Anomaly detection

Anomaly detection has been introduced in Azure Cost Management. Thanks to this feature it is possible to consult any anomalies on costs, detected by the tool in the Azure subscriptions, in a specific period.

Enterprise agreement component management in Azure Cost Management and Billing

In Azure Cost Management and Billing you can now create, manage and govern departments, accounts, and subscriptions related to enterprise agreement contracts. In particular, from the Azure portal you can perform the following activities:

Manage the roles of the enterprise agreement contract
Create and manage the hierarchy at the enrollment level(department, account, subscription)
View properties and manage policies
View usage and charges
Download the invoice
View and monitor the Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment balance (MACC)

Updates related toAzure Cost Management and Billing

Microsoft is constantly looking for new methodologies to improve Azure Cost Management and Billing, the solution to provide greater visibility into where costs are accumulating in the cloud, identify and prevent incorrect spending patterns and optimize costs . Inthis article some of the latest improvements and updates regarding this solution are reported.

Secure

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

New features, bug fixes and deprecated features of Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Microsoft Defender for Cloud 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

Ability to perform multiple Azure File backups throughout the day

In Azure Backup it is now possible to perform multiple backups during the day, with a maximum frequency of four hours, to take multiple snapshots of the file share. This feature allows you to define a backup schedule in line with working hours, useful for frequent updates to Azure File content. Furthermore, you can use Powershell or the Azure command line interface to create backup policies to generate multiple snapshots during the day according to the defined schedule.

Long term retention for Azure PostgreSQL backup

Azure Backup for PostgreSQL is a scalable solution that does not require the presence of an infrastructure, agents or storage accounts, while providing a simple and consistent experience to centrally manage and monitor backups. Support for long-term backup storage was introduced for this solution.

Automatic backup improvements for SQL Server onboard virtual machines

Automatic backup of Azure Backup, a feature given by the extension of the IaaS SQL agent, provides an automatic backup service for SQL Server on board Azure virtual machines. The following improvements have been added to this functionality:

Longer backup retention time in storage account, passing from 30 days to 90 days.
Ability to choose for each Azure virtual machine a specific container of the storage account as a destination for backups. Previously, it was only allowed to specify a storage account and all backups flowed into the same container.

Restore point cross region for virtual machines

The restore points of a virtual machine are snapshots that contain the metadata of the virtual machine and are consistent for all the disks associated with it. These recovery points can be used to protect workloads from data loss and corruption. Now it is possible to restore points of the virtual machine in any region, regardless of the region in which the virtual machine is deployed.

Azure Site Recovery

Recovery point extended to 15 days

Azure Site Recovery through replication policies allows you to adjust the retention history of recovery points. It is now allowed to keep recovery points up to 15 days instead of 72 hours. Recovery points will be stored with a frequency of 5 minutes for the first 2 hours. Later, they will be deleted and archived less frequently. You can enter any value between 0 and 15 days to configure the retention period in a retention policy. Furthermore, if necessary, it is possible to enable type recovery points “application-consistent” (disabled by default).

New Update Rollup

For Azure Site Recovery was released theUpdate Rollup 60 that solves several issues and introduces some improvements. The details and the procedure to follow for the installation can be found in the specific KB.

Evaluation of Azure

To test for free and evaluate the services provided by Azure you can access this page.

Azure Management services: what's new in January 2022

The new year started with several announcements from Microsoft regarding news related to Azure management services. The monthly release of this summary allows you to have an overall overview of the main news of the month, in order to stay up to date on these topics and have the necessary references to conduct further exploration.

Monitor

Azure Monitor

News regarding Azure Monitor alerts

The following changes have been introduced in Azure Monitor regarding alerts:

Frequency of 1 minute for alert logs. Alert logs allow users to use a Log Analytics query to evaluate, with a set frequency, resource logs and activate an alert based on the results obtained. Rules can trigger one or more actions using Action Groups. Now you have the ability to evaluate the alert query every minute, thus reducing the overall time for activating an alert log. By adopting this frequency of evaluation it should be taken into account that it also has an impact on the costs of Azure Monitor.
New way of creating alert rules: the experience of creating an alert rule has been transformed from an articulated process into a simple and intuitive wizard.

New agent: support for Private Links

The new Azure Monitor agent introduced support for network configurations via private link. This configuration allows you to operate in restricted environments that require special network requirements and a high degree of isolation.

New version of the agent for Linux systems

A new version of the Log Analytics agent has been released this month for Linux systems thanks to which several improvements and greater stability are introduced.

Govern

Azure Cost Management

Improvements in Azure Advisor recommendations for virtual machines

Azure has improved the Azure Advisor recommendation named “Shutdown/Resize your virtual machines”. This recommendation offers customers the opportunity to save costs by targeting virtual machines that are not being used efficiently.

Among the main improvements we have made are:

Resizing of series between different SKUs: up to this new version, the sizing recommendations provided by Azure Advisor were mostly within the same SKU family. This means if you were using a D3 v2 inefficiently, a D2 v2 or a D1 v2 was recommended, or a smaller SKU but within the same family. Now the recommendations take into account, to increase savings, the ability to move to different families by using SKUs that adapt perfectly to the workload based on the data collected.
Adoption of new versions of SKU families: in general, newer versions of SKU families are more optimized, offer more features and a better performance / cost ratio than previous versions. If the workload is found to be running on an older version and can achieve cost benefits without impacting performance on a newer version, is reported by Azure Advisor.
Improvements on the quality of reports: Microsoft received feedback that some recommendations were not feasible as they did not take certain criteria into account. In order to improve the quality of the recommendations, they are now generated taking into account even more characteristics, such as accelerated network support, support for premium storage, availability in a region, inclusion in an availability set, etc. . Furthermore, to increase the quality, the robustness and applicability of the recommendations the entire recommendation engine has been completely revamped to base it on new automatic and cutting-edge machine learning algorithms.

Multitasking in cost analysis (preview)

Azure Cost Management introduces a new cost analysis experience that allows you to do them more effectively. The preview includes a new tabbed experience to simplify analysis. Starting with an integrated view list, you can open multiple tabs to explore different cost aspects at the same time.

Updates related toAzure Cost Management and Billing

Secure

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

New features, bug fixes and deprecated features of Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Microsoft Defender for Resource Manager has been updated with new alerts and a greater emphasis has been introduced on high-risk operations mapped to MITER ATT&CK® Matrix
Introduced recommendations for enabling Microsoft Defender plans on workspaces (preview)
Automatic provisioning of the Log Analytics agent on Azure Arc-enabled machines (preview)

Protect

Azure Backup

Changes in security settings

Azure Backup recently released the following changes regarding security settings for workloads protected by Microsoft Azure Recovery Service Agent, Azure Backup Server, or System Center Data Protection Manager:

Integration with MUA (Multi-user authorization): the operation of “disabling safety functions” is now defined as a critical operation that can be protected by a Resource Guard.
To provide protection against accidental or harmful elimination, it is no longer possible to unregister a protected server if the security features are enabled for the vault and there are associated backup items, in active or soft delete state.
Customers will not have to incur any costs for backup data kept in the soft delete state.
The backup policy is not applied to data kept in the soft delete state and therefore no data is deleted for 14 days.

Azure Site Recovery

Support for Azure Policy

Microsoft has introduced the ability to use Azure Policies to enable Azure Site Recovery for virtual machines (VM) on a large scale, thus allowing you to more easily and quickly adhere to organizational standards. After creating a Disaster Recovery policy for a specific subscription or for a specific resource group, all new virtual machines added to that subscription or to the resource group will have Azure Site Recovery enabled automatically. The policy in question is called "Configure disaster recovery on virtual machines by enabling replication via Azure Site Recovery“. In addition to enabling replication for large-scale virtual machines, the Policies make it possible to maintain control over the achievement of organizational standards. In fact,, compliance with policies can be monitored and, if virtual machines are found to be non-compliant, you can create a remediation activity to make the subscription or resource group compliant with the 100%.

Support for Managed Disk of Zone Redundant Storage type (ZRS)

Azure Site Recovery (ASR) introduced support for ZRS type managed disks. Therefore, ASR now allows you to protect virtual machines that take advantage of ZRS managed disks, replicating them in a secondary region of your choice. ASR identifies the source disks as ZRS managed disks and creates equivalent ZRS managed disks in the secondary region. If there is an outage in a region and it is necessary to fail over to the secondary region, ASR will activate the virtual machines in the secondary region with ZRS managed disks, ensuring the same level of resilience.

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.

Evaluation of Azure

To test for free and evaluate the services provided by Azure you can access this page.

Azure Management services: what's new in December 2021

In December, Microsoft announced news regarding Azure management services. Thanks to the release of this summary, which occurs on a monthly basis, we want to provide an overall overview of the main news of the month, in order to stay up to date on these topics and have the necessary references to conduct further exploration.

Monitor

Azure Monitor

Audit Logs for Azure Monitor queries

Azure Monitor allows you to collect data from the entire ecosystem, including telemetry data at the application and operating system level, security log, network log, diagnostic logs from Azure resources and custom logs. All these data can be queried with the powerful KQL language, useful for obtaining detailed information and making correlations. Microsoft has included the ability to control Azure Monitor queries. In fact,, by enabling this functionality through the Azure diagnostic mechanism, you can collect telemetry data about who ran a query, when it was performed, which tool was used to run the query, the text of the query and performance statistics relating to the execution of the query. This telemetry, like any other Azure Diagnostic-based telemetry, can be sent to an Azure Storage Blob, to an Azure Event Hub, or in the Azure Monitor logs.

Govern

Azure Cost Management

Updates related toAzure Cost Management and Billing

Secure

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Microsoft Defender for Containers adds new features for Kubernetes (preview)

Microsoft Defender for Containers, is a new offering that combines the functionality of Azure Defender for Kubernetes and Azure Defender for Container registries, adding several new features related to Kubernetes on Azure:

AKS Profile: onboarding and maintenance as an AKS profile, so as to no longer have a dependency on the Log Analytics agent.
Multi cloud support: multi cloud support for AKS, Amazon EKS, Kubernetes on-prem / IaaS (GCP will be added in the future).
Visibility of vulnerabilities: a new recommendation monitors Kubernetes clusters and shows a list of running images with any vulnerabilities, based on evaluation scans provided by Qualys. This allows you to focus on the most critical vulnerabilities that expose runtime environments to security threats and attacks.
Advanced Threat Protection: Kubernetes compatible AI analysis and anomaly detection.
Improved ACR vulnerability assessment: the Azure Container Registry Vulnerability Assessment Recommendation (ACR) has been improved by adding runtime information to image scan results. This allows for the assignment of priorities and to apply filters based on the distribution status of the image.
Continuous scanning of images: in addition to periodic scanning of Azure Container Registry images (ACR) over the past 30 days, continuous image scanning periodically scans ACR images running on Kubernetes clusters.

New features, bug fixes and deprecated features of Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Migrate

Azure Migrate

New Azure Migrate releases and features

Evaluation of Azure

To test for free and evaluate the services provided by Azure you can access this page.

Azure Management services: what's new in November 2021

In November, Microsoft unveiled several news regarding Azure management services, accomplice also the Microsoft Ignite conference 2021. Through these articles released on a monthly basis, we want to provide an overall overview of the main news of the month, in order to stay up to date on these arguments and have the necessary references for further information.

Monitor

Azure Monitor

Log Analytics Workspace Insights in Azure Monitor

Microsoft has announced the availability ofLog 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.

New troubleshooting experiences in Network Insights for VPN Gateway & Azure Firewall

It is now possible to access detailed information and have a new problem solving experience in Azure Monitor Network Insights for VPN Gateway and Azure Firewall.

In fact,, you have the option of:

Access the resource topology that shows the integrity of the same and the related connections
A workbook showing all the key metrics
Direct links to documentation and troubleshooting guide

Azure Monitor container insights for Azure Arc enabled Kubernetes

In Azure Monitor, you can get detailed information about the containers running in Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes environments. This allows you to centralize the visualization of infrastructure metrics, of container logs and related recommendations. The main features are:

Simple onboarding directly from the Azure portal
Receipt of automatic updates from the monitoring agent
Performance visibility, collecting memory and processor metrics from controllers, nodes and containers
Views via workbook and in the Azure portal
Alerts and queries on historical data for troubleshooting
Ability to examine Prometheus metrics

Manage Log Analytics data export rules in the Azure portal (preview)

The export of Log Analytics data can now be configured in the Azure portal. This allows you to easily manage data export rules by giving you a clear view of existing rules in the workspace, regardless of whether they are in the enabled or disabled state. It is also possible to modify existing rules and create new rules with a few simple steps.

Azure Monitor for SAP: new telemetry and root cause analysis (RCA)

Azure Monitor for SAP Solutions (AMS) introduced support for new telemetry data of SAP HANA (preview) and SAP NetWeaver

For SAP HANA we find:

License status: provides licensing details for all tenants running with SAP HANA MDC.
Multi-Version Concurrency Control (MVCC): report on the consistency of transactional data, isolating the transactions that access the same data at the same time
Details on save point operation
Details on delta merge
Statistics on HANA Alert

Customers who are using the solution will have available, without carrying out any further activities, the above telemetry data. For new customers who want to activate this solution, you can follow this guide to AMS onboarding and configure at least one SAP HANA provider.

Furthermore, customers using SAP in an Azure environment can view the “root cause analysis (RCA)” when a SAP system becomes unavailable due to an outage of the virtual machine or host. In fact,, AMS allows you to view information about the restart, the analysis of the triggering cause, details on the affected system and recommended steps.

AMS is currently available in the following Azure regions: US East, US East 2, US West 2, Europe West, and Europe North. AMS does not incur any additional licensing fees, but only the consumption costs of Azure Monitor are covered.

Configure

Azure Automation

PowerShell runbook support 7.1 (preview)

Azure Automation support for PowerShell runbooks 7.1 has been made available in preview on Azure, Azure Gov and Azure China. This allows for the development and execution of runbooks using PowerShell 7.1, both for cloud processes and for hybrid processes on Azure and non-Azure systems.

Support for Managed Identities

Support for Managed Identities has been introduced in Azure Automation. System Assigned Managed Identities are supported for cloud and hybrid processes, while User Assigned Managed Identities are only supported for cloud processes. This support allows you to reduce the effort of managing Run As Accounts for runbooks. A User Assigned Managed Identities is an independent Azure resource that can be assigned to the Azure Automation account, which can have multiple associated user-assigned identities. The same identity can be assigned to multiple Azure Automation accounts.

Govern

Update Management

Automatic VM guest patching

The new feature called "Automatic VM guest patching" is now available and helps simplify update management and achieve security compliance. Enabling the feature “Automatic VM guest patching” patches classified as critical and security are automatically downloaded and applied to the system. This feature is available for both Windows and Linux systems.

Azure Cost Management

Azure Advisor: tips to save on Azure Cosmos DB resource costs

Specific recommendations have been included in Azure Advisor to help you achieve possible cost savings for Azure Cosmos DB, obtained based on the historical use of resources.

Updates related toAzure Cost Management and Billing

Secure

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Change to the names of Azure solutions in the security field

In November, durante Ignite 2021, changes have been announced to the names of Microsoft Azure solutions in the security field, as below:

Figure 2 - New names for Azure security solutions

New features, bug fixes and deprecated features of Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Azure Security Center and Azure Defender have been unified and are called “Microsoft Defender for Cloud”
Native CSPM for AWS and Threat Protection for Amazon EKS and AWS EC2
Prioritizing sensitive data in cloud workloads, using Azure Purview
Improvements to integration with Microsoft Sentinel
Azure Security Benchmark v3 released

Protect

Azure Backup

Multi-user authorization for backups (preview)

Multi-user authorization for Azure Backup provides advanced protection for Recovery Services vaults against unauthorized critical operations. Azure Backup uses a Resource Guard to ensure that critical operations are performed only with the appropriate authorization. With this mechanism, Azure Backup helps provide better protection against operations that could lead to the loss of backup data, including:

Disabling soft delete and hybrid security settings
Disabling MUA protection
Changes to backup policies
Security changes
Stop protection
Changing the MARS security PIN

The backup administrator, which typically accesses the Recovery Services vault, must acquire the role of Contributor on Resource Guard to be able to perform the above protected operations (Critical). To do this, it must also request the action of the Resource Guard owner, who must approve and grant the requested access. It is also possible to use Azure AD Privileged Identity Management to manage just-in-time access on Resource Guard. Furthermore, it is possible to create the Resource Guard resource in a subscription or in a tenant other than that of the Recovery Services vault, for maximum isolation.

Metrics and related alerts for Azure Backup (preview)

Azure Backup now provides built-in metrics to allow you to monitor the integrity of backups and write custom alert rules based on these metrics.

Azure Site Recovery

Support for failover of multiple IP configurations

Azure Site Recovery has been introduced, for virtual machines on Azure, support for failover of secondary IP configurations. This allows you to configure failover and test failover settings for each secondary IP configuration, currently only in the Azure to Azure scenario (A2A).

New Update Rollup

For Azure Site Recovery was released theUpdate Rollup 59 which solves several problems and introduces some improvements. Among the most important innovations we find support for Windows Server 2022 for the mobility Service. The details and the procedure to follow for the installation can be found in the specific KB.

Migrate

Azure Migrate

New Azure Migrate releases and features

Evaluation of Azure

To test for free and evaluate the services provided by Azure you can access this page.

Azure Management services: what's new in October 2021

In October, Microsoft announced a considerable number of news regarding Azure management services. Through these articles released on a monthly basis I want to provide an overall overview of the main news of the month, so that you can always stay up to date on these topics and have the necessary references to carry out further studies.

Monitor

Azure Monitor

Availability and support of availability zones in new regions

Azure Monitor Log Analytics is available in the following new regions:

West US 3
Korea South
Canada East

To check the availability of the service in all the Azure regions you can consult this document.

Furthermore, support for Availability Zones was introduced in the region of West US 2 for Azure Monitor Log Analytics and Application Insights, which allows to ensure greater availability for the logs present in the Workspace.

Azure Monitor container insights: updating the user experience from the portal

The user experience from the portal for Azure Monitor container insights has been updated and allows you to:

Get detailed information about containers more easily
View resource usage as allocable capacity
Take advantage of new metrics and new recommended alerts

Azure Monitor Query SDK

Microsoft has released the Azure Monitor Query SDK for .NET, Java, JavaScript/TypeScript e Python. This new SDK allows developers to build applications that perform read-only queries on Azure Monitor logs and metrics, so that they can analyze and visualize the data in customized ways. The SDK has been modernized to follow the Azure SDK guidelines and be idiomatic for each programming language. Furthermore, introduces a number of updates and new features.

Azure Monitor application insights in Azure Spring Cloud

Thanks to this new integration in Azure Monitor Application Insights it is possible to enable the monitoring of Java Spring Boot applications running in Azure Spring Cloud with a few simple steps and without making any changes to the code.

Govern

Azure Cost Management

Updates related toAzure Cost Management and Billing

Secure

Azure Security Center

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

Multiple backups during the day for Azure Files

Keeping RPO low is often a key requirement for Azure Files that contain frequently updated business-critical data. To ensure minimal data loss, in the event of an emergency or unwanted content changes, organizations may need to back up more frequently than once a day. Azure Backup now allows you to create backup policies to take multiple snapshots per day. With this feature it is also possible to define the duration of the backup processes.

Support for Archive storage for the backup of VMs and SQL on board VMs using the Azure portal

Azure Backup announced in August the ability to move recovery points to the Azure Storage Vault-Archive tier to save costs and retain backup data for a longer duration. This feature is available for Azure VMs and SQL Servers installed on board Azure VMs. Initially this possibility was only given using Azure PowerShell, while now it is possible to move these backups from the standard tier to the new archive tier also from the Azure portal.

When moving backup data from vault-standard to vault-archive, Azure Backup converts incremental data into full backup. This procedure involves an increase in the total GB used, but costs are reduced due to the huge difference in cost per GB between the two storage tiers. To simplify this process, Azure Backup provides advice on Recovery Points (RPs) for which migration to the vault-archive is recommended. Restores can always be done in an integrated way from the Azure portal, with a simple and intuitive process.

Migrate

Azure Migrate

New Azure Migrate releases and features

Evaluation of Azure

To test for free and evaluate the services provided by Azure you can access this page.

Azure Management services: what's new in September 2021

In September there were several news announced by Microsoft regarding Azure management services. In this summary, which I report on a monthly basis, major announcements are listed, accompanied by the necessary references to be able to conduct further studies on.

Monitor

Azure Monitor

Support for Availability Zones is available

Azure Monitor has introduced support for Availability Zones that help protect applications and data from datacenter failures and can provide resilience for Azure Monitor features such as Application Insights and any other functionality that relies on a Log Analytics workspace. When a workspace is linked to an availability zone, Azure Monitor remains active and operational even if a specific datacenter is not functional or completely inactive. Azure Monitor currently supports Availability Zones for the following regions: East US 2 and West US 2.

Cross query between Azure Monitor and Azure Data Explorer

The ability to query between Azure Monitor and Azure Data Explorer allows you to query data exported to Azure Data Explorer or Azure blob storage and merge them with any Azure Monitor Log Analytics workspace.

Among the various features recently released we find the ability to perform queries:

Between Azure Data Explorer and Azure Monitor services (Log Analytics / Application Insights) and vice versa
On Azure Monitor logs exported from an Azure blob storage account using Azure Data Explorer

In Azure Monitor Log Analytics, the maximum data retention time frame is limited to 2 years. This aspect can be limiting in some areas, to the point that certain compliance criteria are not met. To overcome this limitation, you can export logs to an Azure blob storage. This new feature allows you to cross-query by including data exported to Azure blob storage in an integrated way.

Support for Windows Server 2022 for the Azure Monitor Agent

The Azure Monitor Agent is now also supported for Windows Server 2022 such as virtual machines, virtual machine scale sets and Arc enabled servers (in on-premise environments and / or non-Azure servers).

New version of the agent for Linux systems

A new version of the Log Analytics agent has been released this month for Linux systems where several improvements and greater stability are introduced. Furthermore, the OMI component has been updated to version 1.6.8 and introduced support for AWS 2 / Centos 8.4 Linux.

Configure

Azure Automation

Support for the Az module

Azure Automation introduces support for the module “Az”, available by default for all new Automation Accounts. Furthermore, the option is present in the Azure portal “Update Az Modules” which allows you to update the modules to “Az” for existing Automation Accounts.

Govern

Azure Policy

Support for AKS custom policy (preview)

Microsoft has announced in preview support for custom policies for Azure Kubernetes Service clusters (AKS). With this feature, it is possible to create and assign custom policy definitions and constraint templates to AKS clusters, see advanced information about any errors, use the embedded constraint template embedded within the policy definition and more.

Azure Cost Management

Updates related toAzure Cost Management and Billing

Secure

Azure Security Center

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

Protect

Azure Backup

New alerts and management in the Backup center (preview)

Azure Backup has released a new Azure Monitor based alerting solution, which allows you to take advantage of the notification capabilities offered by Azure to monitor and effectively act on critical backup incidents. These alerts can also be managed directly by Azure Backup center.

Oracle snapshot with Azure Backup

Azure Backup now allows you to run pre-post scripts to deactivate and reactivate Oracle databases. This allows you to have consistent backups and take advantage of all the advantages of Azure VM backup also for Oracle systems. Database-consistent snapshots can be used for restores from Oracle, they are verifiable by Oracle database clients such as RMAN and have economic advantages as the backup of Azure VMs is intrinsically incremental. The ability to take consistent snapshots at the Oracle database level also means there is no need to stream the full daily data to a storage target, therefore it is possible to significantly reduce the I / O demand on the machine and on the network, as well as reducing the need for large storage spaces. Furthermore, the use of these snapshots guarantees the ability to quickly create clones of Oracle production VMs and it is not necessary to perform intensive I / O operations such as a datapump.

Offline backup with Azure Data Box

Microsoft has made the Azure Offline Backup functionality available using Azure Data Box, which allows you to use Azure Data Box to seed large initial backups offline in an Azure Recovery Service vault.

Azure Site Recovery

New features to simplify the DR scenarios of VMs in a VMware environment (preview)

The following changes have been released in preview in ASR to help improve the activation of Disaster Recovery scenarios for VMware environments:

Automatic updates for the ASR replication appliance and for the Mobility agent. A limitation of the current ASR architecture is the need to manually update the various components of the configuration server and the Mobility service. To make things easier, Microsoft has introduced the ability to update automatically: when an update is made available, both the appliance (configuration server) and the Mobility service can be updated automatically. Furthermore, to perform automatic updates, the machine's root / admin credentials are no longer required.
Scalability improvements. The appliance becomes a single management unit where all its components have been converted into microservices hosted in an Azure environment. Not only will this make troubleshooting a lot easier, but managing the scalability of the solution will also be easier.
High availability for the appliance. Appliance resilience is a required feature and, thanks to this review, it is no longer necessary to perform regular backups of the appliance, but just start a new appliance and transfer all protected machines to the new appliance, without having to repeat a full replication.

Upgrade al TLS 1.2 or later

As part of the Microsoft initiative that provides for Azure to use TLS 1.2 by default and removing dependencies from previous versions, Azure Site Recovery is moving away from legacy protocols to ensure greater security for replication data. Therefore, TLS 1.0 e TLS 1.1 they will no longer be supported. These changes will take effect on 15 November 2021. To continue using Azure Site Recovery without interruption, you should make sure that all the resources that use the Microsoft Azure Recovery Services agent (MARS) are enabled for the use of TLS 1.2 or later.

Migrate

Azure Migrate

New Azure Migrate releases and features

Evaluation of Azure

To test for free and evaluate the services provided by Azure you can access this page.

Azure Management services: what's new in August 2021

Microsoft constantly releases news about Azure management services. By publishing this summary, we want to provide an overall overview of the main news released in the last month. This allows you to stay up-to-date on these topics and have the necessary references to conduct further investigations.

Monitor

Azure Monitor

The IT Service Management Connector is certified with the Quebec version of ServiceNow

The IT Service Management Connector (ITSM) of Azure Monitor is now certified for the Quebec version of ServiceNow. This connector allows you to establish a two-way connection between Azure and ITSM tools, useful for managing incidents and solving problems faster. Furthermore, it is possible to create work items in the ITSM tool, based on Azure alerts(Metric Alerts, Activity Log Alerts, e Log Analytics alert).

Lower levels for reservations for Azure Monitor dedicated clusters

Microsoft has reduced the capacity reservation (capacity reservation) minimum required for Azure Monitor dedicated clusters, bringing it from 1.000 GB to 500 GB per day. This allows you to take advantage of advanced features such as customer-managed keys, lockbox, and infrastructure encryption, even to customers with lower data entry volume.

The retirement of the Log Analytics agent has been announced

Microsoft announced that the 31 August 2024 the Log Analytics agent used in Azure Monitor will be retired. Therefore, before that date, you should use the new Azure Monitor agent (AMA) and data collection rules (DCR) of Azure Monitor to monitor virtual machines and servers.

Configure

Azure Automation

New features coming soon to be released

Microsoft has announced that the following new features will soon be released for Azure Automation:

Azure AD support: ability to use Azure AD-based authentication for public automation endpoints
Support for Powershell 7: ability to run Azure Automation runbooks, in production scenarios, using PowerShell 7.1
Azure Automation Hybrid Worker Extension for Azure and for Azure Arc machines: possibility of onboarding hybrid workers using the hybrid extension for Azure and Azure Arc machines.
Support for Availability Zones, useful for increasing the levels of reliability and resilience.
Native support of the Powershell Az module.

Govern

Azure Policy

Azure Guest Configuration Policy: possibility of applying settings within the systems as well (preview)

Guest Configuration Policies allow you to control settings within a machine, both for virtual machines running in Azure environment and for "Arc Connected" machines. At the moment, most of the Azure Guest Configuration Policies only allow you to make checks on the settings inside the machine, but they do not apply configurations. However, Microsoft has announced in preview the possibility to apply configurations provided by Microsoft or to create your own configuration packages using PowerShell DSC version 3.

Azure Cost Management

Updates related toAzure Cost Management and Billing

Secure

Azure Security Center

Azure Defender for SQL available from Azure SQL Virtual Machine blade

This new Azure Defender information browsing experience for SQL VMs, allows you to view, directly from the SQL virtual machine panel, information about security best practices for related SQL Server databases.

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

Protect

Azure Backup

Support for Archive storage for backup of VMs and SQL on board VMs

In Azure Backup, you can now move recovery points to save costs and keep your backup data longer. This feature is available for Azure VMs and SQL Servers installed on board Azure VMs. Using Azure PowerShell, it is possible to move these backups from the standard tier to the new archive tier.

When moving backup data from vault-standard to vault-archive, Azure Backup converts incremental data into full backup. This procedure involves an increase in the total GB used, but costs are reduced due to the huge difference in cost per GB between the two storage tiers. To simplify this process, Azure Backup provides advice on Recovery Points (RPs) for which migration to the vault-archive is recommended. Restores can be done in an integrated way from the Azure portal, with a simple and intuitive process.

Azure Site Recovery

ASR support for global disaster recovery

Azure Site Recovery (ASR) introduced support for cross-continental disaster recovery. Thanks to this feature, a virtual machine can be replicated from an Azure region in one continent to a region in another continent. In the event of a planned or unplanned outage, you will be able to fail over the virtual machine on all continents and, once the interruption has been mitigated, it can be brought back to the continent of origin (fail-back) and protected.

Extended the date of withdrawal of Hard coded IP address

Microsoft has extended the retirement date for hard coded IP addresses to connect with Azure Site Recovery services to 31 August 2024. This allows you to have more time to adjust the configurations of the environments to use the Azure service tags.

Migrate

Azure Migrate

Software inventory and agentless dependency analysis

In Azure Migrate it is now possible to inventory applications, roles and features installed and perform dependency analysis, on Windows and Linux servers, without installing any agent. Agentless dependency analysis allows you to identify and understand dependencies between servers, supporting data collection for up to 1000 servers at the same time.

Discovery and assessment of ASP.NET Web Apps with Azure Migrate (preview)

Azure Migrate now allows you to identify and assess ASP.NET Web Apps running on the on-premises IIS Web server and manage their migration. Until now, it was necessary to use tools such as App Service Migration Assistant to evaluate the Web Apps. Thanks to the introduction of this feature in Azure Migrate, it is possible to discover the .NET Web Apps running in your VMware environment and create assessments to manage the migration to Azure IaaS or Azure App Service.

Containerization of apps and migration to AKS or Azure App Service

The Azure Migrate app containerization tool allows you to modernize existing ASP.NET and Java web applications, using a containerization approach that requires little or no application changes. The tool groups existing applications running on servers in a container image and allows them to be deployed in containers running in Azure Kubernetes Service(AKS) or in Azure App Service. As part of the migration process, the tool allows you to parameterize the application configurations, outsource file system dependencies using persistent volumes and configure the containerized application monitor using Application Insights.

New Azure Migrate releases and features

Evaluation of Azure

To test for free and evaluate the services provided by Azure you can access this page.

Azure Management services: What's new in July 2021

Microsoft constantly announces news regarding Azure management services and as usual this monthly summary. The aim is to provide an overview of the main news of the month, in order to stay up to date on these topics and have the necessary references to conduct further exploration.

Monitor

Azure Monitor

New built-in policies for Log Analytics workspaces and linked automation accounts

When designing and deploying Azure Monitor Log Analytics workspaces, it is advisable to adopt specific criteria to distribute them consistently, in compliance with the compliance of their environment. Thanks to a new built-in policy it is possible to automate and control the distribution of Log Analytics workspaces and the Automation Accounts connected to them in your own environments.

Better integration between Azure Monitor and Grafana

Grafana is a very popular open source visualization and analysis software, which allows you to query, view and explore various metrics from multiple data sources in a centralized way. Recently, some updates have been made to the Azure Monitor plug-in for Grafana that allow you to enable additional data sources and easier authentication via managed identity. Among the main improvements we find:

Azure Resource Graph in the Azure Monitor Grafana data source. Azure Resource Graph (ARG) is a service in Azure that allows you to perform large-scale queries on a given subscription set, so that you can effectively govern your environment. With Grafana 8.0, Azure Monitor data source supports querying ARG.
Managed Identities are supported for the Grafana data source hosted in Azure and for Azure Monitor. Customers hosting Grafana on Azure (e.g.. App Service, Azure Virtual Machine) and have enabled managed identity on their virtual machine, they will be able to use it to configure Azure Monitor in Grafana. This aspect simplifies the configuration of the data source, requiring it to be securely authenticated without having to manually configure credentials through app registrations in Azure AD for each data source.
Direct links to the Azure portal for Grafana metrics. To allow easy exploration of Azure Monitor metrics directly from Grafana, when a user selects the result of a query, a menu appears with a link to “View in the Azure portal”. Selecting it will redirect you to the corresponding chart in the Azure Metrics Explorer portal.

Direct proxy and Log Analytics gateway support for the new agent

Following the recent announcement on the availability of the new Azure Monitor agent (AMA) and data collection rules (Data Collection Rules), support for direct proxies and support for Log Analytics gateways is introduced for this agent.

Configure

Azure Automation

Support for User Assigned Managed Identities (preview)

Azure Automation has introduced support for User Assigned Managed Identities, which allows you to eliminate the effort of managing RunAs Accounts for runbooks. A User Assigned Managed Identities is an independent Azure resource that can be assigned to the Azure Automation account, which can have multiple associated user-assigned identities. The same identity can be assigned to multiple Azure Automation accounts.

Govern

Azure Policy

Azure Policy built-in for Network Watcher Traffic Analytics

Traffic Analytics is based on the analysis of NSG flow logs and after an appropriate aggregation of data, inserting the necessary intelligence concerning security, topology and geographic map, can provide detailed information about the network traffic of your Azure cloud environment. The following new built-in policies have been introduced to facilitate the deployment of Traffic Analytics:

An audit policy: Flag flow logs resource without traffic analytics enabled
DeployIfNotExists policies: Enable Traffic Analytics on NSGs in an Azure region of a subscription or resource group

Azure Cost Management

Updates related toAzure Cost Management and Billing

Secure

Azure Security Center

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

Protect

Azure Site Recovery

New Update Rollup

For Azure Site Recovery was released theUpdate Rollup 56 that solves several issues and introduces some improvements. In particular, this update introduces the following new features:

Microsoft Azure Site Recovery (services): Improvements have been made to enable replication and new protection operations to be faster than 46%.
Microsoft Azure Site Recovery (portal): Replication between any two Azure regions around the world can now be enabled. You are no longer limited to enabling replication on your continent.

The details and the procedure to follow for the installation can be found in the specific KB.

Evaluation of Azure

To test for free and evaluate the services provided by Azure you can access this page.

Azure Management services: What's new in June 2021

In June have been announced, by Microsoft, a considerable number of news regarding Azure management services. Through these articles released monthly we want to provide an overall overview of the main news, in order to stay up to date on these arguments and have the necessary references for further information.

Monitor

Azure Monitor

The new Azure Monitor agent and new Data Collection Rules features are available

Azure Monitor introduces, for some months now, a new unified agent (Azure Monitor Agent – AMA) and a new concept to make data collection more efficient (Data Collection Rules – DCR).

Among the various key features added in this new agent we find:

Support for Azure Arc server(Windows and Linux)
Virtual Machine Scale Set support (VMSS)
Installation via ARM template

With regard to the Data Collection, these innovations have been made:

Better control in defining the scope of data collection (e.g.. ability to collect from a subset of VMs for a single workspace)
Single collection and sending to both Log Analytics and Azure Monitor Metrics
Send to multiple workspaces (multi-homing for Linux)
Ability to better filter Windows events
Better extension management

All the preview features are ready to be used even in production environments, with the exception of the use of custom Azure Monitor Metrics (still in preview).

Collection of Syslog events from the Azure Monitor agent for Linux distro (preview)

Azure Monitor introduced a new concept for configuring data collection and a new unified agent for Azure Monitor. This new agent (AMA – Azure Monitor Agent) allows you to improve some key aspects of data collection from virtual machines, as reported in the previous paragraph. There was an issue on this front where Syslog data collection was not working as expected. This problem has been solved and the latest version of the agent includes support for the collection of Syslog events from Linux machines (using version 1.10 and later), available for all supported distributions.

Azure Monitor cost changes to achieve significant savings

Microsoft recently made several changes to Azure Monitor Log Analytics costs, which allow for significant savings, if important amounts of data are merged into the workspaces. It should be noted that a new naming has been introduced with regard to capacity reservations, which are now called “commitment tiers”. These changes have been made available since 2 June 2021:

New commitment tiers (higher). New engagement levels are introduced for Azure Sentinel and Azure Monitor Log Analytics for data ingestion: 1 TB/Day, 2 TB/Day, and 5 TB/Day.
Changes to the billing method for importing data that exceed the commitment tiers. Data imported beyond the commitment tiers will be billed using the actual commitment tiers rate, instead of the pay-as-you-go rate, with consequent cost reduction.
Simplification of commitment tiers: it is now possible to select from eight distinct commitment tiers and it is no longer necessary to manage tiers due to minor changes in the data ingestion. As part of this change, all workspaces with a commitment tier greater than 500 GB / day will be reset to the lowest available commitment tier: 500 GB / day, 1 TB / day, 2 TB / day or 5 TB / day.

Govern

Azure Policy

Changes in compliance for Resource Type Policies

Starting from 16 June 2021, the policies in which the resource type is the only evaluation criterion (e.g.. Allowed Resource Types, Disallowed Resource Types) they will have no resources “compliant” in compliance records. This means that if there are no non-compliant resources, the policy will show compliance with the 100%. If one or more non-compliant resources are present, the policy will show it 0% of compliance, with total resources equal to non-compliant resources. This change is to respond to feedback that resource type policies skew overall compliance rate data (which are calculated as compliant resources + exempt from total resources in all policies, deduplicated for unique resource IDs) due to a large number of total resources.

Azure Cost Management

Updates related toAzure Cost Management and Billing

Display of amortized costs in the cost analysis preview.
Cloudyn is withdrawn from the 30 June.
News regarding Cost Management Labs.

Secure

Azure Security Center

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

Protect

Azure Backup

TLS 1.2 enforcement per il MARS backup agent

Starting from September 1st 2020, Azure Backup will enforce the presence of the Transport Layer Security protocol (TLS) version 1.2 or later. To continue using Azure Backup, you need to make sure that all resources use the Microsoft Azure Recovery Services agent (MARS) updated to use TLS 1.2 or superior.

Cross Region Restore of SQL / SAP HANA running on VM in Azure

In Azure Backup, restore between different regions of Azure (Cross-Region Restore – CRR), available for virtual machines, has also been extended to support SQL and SAP HANA. Cross Region Restore allows customers to restore their data to secondary regions (paired region) at any time, essential in the event of the unavailability of the primary region. Geo-replicated backup data can then be used to restore SQL and SAP HANA databases running on Azure VMs to the “paired region” from Azure, during planned or unplanned incidents.

Migrate

Azure Migrate

New Azure Migrate releases and features

Support for new geographies of the public cloud.
The ability to register servers running SQL Server, with SQL VM RP, to automatically install the IaaS SQL agent extension. This feature is available for VMware (without agent), Hyper-V (without agent) and agent-based migrations.
Evaluation via CSV file import supports up to 20 disks. Previously, there was a limit of eight disks per server.

Support for Azure private links

Private Link support allows you to connect to the Azure Migrate service privately and securely via ExpressRoute or via a site-to-site VPN. Thanks to this method of connectivity, the instrumentsAzure Migrate: Discovery and Assessment andAzure Migrate: Server Migration, they can be used by connecting privately and securely. This method is recommended to use when there is an organizational requirement to access the Azure Migrate service and other Azure resources without crossing public networks or if you want to get better results in terms of bandwidth or latency.

Evaluation of Azure

To test for free and evaluate the services provided by Azure you can access this page.

Azure Management services: What's new in June 2021

Monitor

Azure Monitor

The new Azure Monitor agent and new Data Collection Rules features are available

Azure Monitor introduces, for some months now, a new unified agent (Azure Monitor Agent – AMA) and a new concept to make data collection more efficient (Data Collection Rules – DCR).

Among the various key features added in this new agent we find:

Support for Azure Arc server(Windows and Linux)
Virtual Machine Scale Set support (VMSS)
Installation via ARM template

With regard to the Data Collection, these innovations have been made:

Better control in defining the scope of data collection (e.g.. ability to collect from a subset of VMs for a single workspace)
Single collection and sending to both Log Analytics and Azure Monitor Metrics
Send to multiple workspaces (multi-homing for Linux)
Ability to better filter Windows events
Better extension management

All the preview features are ready to be used even in production environments, with the exception of the use of custom Azure Monitor Metrics (still in preview).

Collection of Syslog events from the Azure Monitor agent for Linux distro (preview)

Azure Monitor cost changes to achieve significant savings

New commitment tiers (higher). New engagement levels are introduced for Azure Sentinel and Azure Monitor Log Analytics for data ingestion: 1 TB/Day, 2 TB/Day, and 5 TB/Day.
Changes to the billing method for importing data that exceed the commitment tiers. Data imported beyond the commitment tiers will be billed using the actual commitment tiers rate, instead of the pay-as-you-go rate, with consequent cost reduction.
Simplification of commitment tiers: it is now possible to select from eight distinct commitment tiers and it is no longer necessary to manage tiers due to minor changes in the data ingestion. As part of this change, all workspaces with a commitment tier greater than 500 GB / day will be reset to the lowest available commitment tier: 500 GB / day, 1 TB / day, 2 TB / day or 5 TB / day.

Govern

Azure Policy

Changes in compliance for Resource Type Policies

Azure Cost Management

Updates related toAzure Cost Management and Billing

Display of amortized costs in the cost analysis preview.
Cloudyn is withdrawn from the 30 June.
News regarding Cost Management Labs.

Secure

Azure Security Center

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

Protect

Azure Backup

TLS 1.2 enforcement per il MARS backup agent

Cross Region Restore of SQL / SAP HANA running on VM in Azure

Migrate

Azure Migrate

New Azure Migrate releases and features

Support for new geographies of the public cloud.
The ability to register servers running SQL Server, with SQL VM RP, to automatically install the IaaS SQL agent extension. This feature is available for VMware (without agent), Hyper-V (without agent) and agent-based migrations.
Evaluation via CSV file import supports up to 20 disks. Previously, there was a limit of eight disks per server.

Support for Azure private links

Evaluation of Azure

To test for free and evaluate the services provided by Azure you can access this page.