Category Archives: Microsoft Azure

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 IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (February 2022 – Weeks: 07 and 08)

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.

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (February 2022 – Weeks: 05 and 06)

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

Deployment enhancements for SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines

A great update to our Azure Marketplace image with SQL is you can now configure the instance during deployment. Most companies have standards for their SQL instances and can now make configuration changes during deployment vs keeping the preconfigured image settings. Items like moving the system database to a data disk, configuring tempdb data and log files, configuring the amount of memory and more. During SQL VM deployment under SQL Server Settings, you have the options to change the defaults by clicking Change Configuration for storage or Change SQL Instance settings for customizing memory limits, collation, and ad hoc workloads.

Networking

New Azure Firewall capabilities

New Azure Firewall capabilities are available:

  • Azure Firewall network rule name logging: previously, the event of a network rule hit would show the source, destination IP/port, and the action, allow or deny. With the new functionality, the event logs for network rules will also contain the policy name, Rule Collection Group, Rule Collection, and the rule name hit.
  • Azure Firewall premium performance boost: this feature increases the maximum throughput of the Azure Firewall Premium by more than 300 percent (to 100Gbps).
  • Performance whitepaper: to provide customers with a better visibility into the expected performance of Azure Firewall, Microsoft is releasing the Azure Firewall Performance documentation.

Azure Bastion now supports file transfer via the native client (preview)

With the new Azure Bastion native client support in public preview and included in Standard SKU, you can now:

  • Use either SSH or RDP to upload files to a VM from your local computer.
  • Use RDP to download files from a VM to your local computer.

Custom virtual network support in Azure Container Apps (preview)

You can now create Azure Container Apps environments into new or existing virtual networks. This enables Container Apps to receive private IP addresses, maintain outbound internet connectivity, and communicate privately with other resources on the same virtual network.

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (January 2022 – Weeks: 03 and 04)

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

Storage

Azure NetApp Files: new features

New features are constantly added to Azure NetApp Files and previously released preview features are moved into general availability. The following capabilities have recently received general availability status and no longer need registration for use:

The following new features have been added in public preview :

Regional coverage continues to expand, and Azure NetApp Files is now generally available in:

  • East Asia
  • Switzerland North
  • Switzerland West
  • West US 3

Feature regional coverage continues to expand as well for cross-region replication, cross region replication region pair additions:

  • West US 3 <-> East US
  • Southeast Asia <-> East Asia
  • Switzerland North <-> Switzerland West
  • UsGov Virginia <-> UsGov Texas
  • UsGov Arizona <-> UsGov Texas
  • UsGov Virginia <-> UsGov Arizona

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.

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

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

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:

  • 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 IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (January 2022 – Weeks: 01 and 02)

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

Price reductions for Azure confidential computing

Microsoft is announcing a price reduction on the DCsv2 and DCsv3-series VMs by up to 33%. The price reduction enables the data protection benefits of ACC with no premium compared to general purpose VMs on a per physical core basis. New prices took effect on 1/1/2022. If you are already using DCsv2 and DCsv3-series VMs prior to 1/1/2022, you will see the price reduction in your next bill.

Storage

Azure Ultra Disk Storage is available in West US 3

Azure Ultra Disk Storage is now available in West US 3. Azure Ultra Disks offer high throughput, high IOPS, and consistent low latency disk storage for Azure virtual machines (VMs). Ultra Disks are suited for data-intensive workloads such as SAP HANA, top tier databases, and transaction-heavy workloads.

Networking

Multiple custom BGP APIPA addresses for active VPN gateways

All SKUs of active-active VPN gateways now support multiple custom BGP APIPA addresses for each instance. Automatic Private IP Addressing (APIPA) addresses are commonly used as the BGP IP addresses for VPN connectivity. In addition to many on-premises VPN devices requiring multiple custom APIPA addresses for BGP, this feature enables BGP connections to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and other cloud providers.

Load Balancer SKU upgrade through PowerShell script

You can now upgrade your Azure Load Balancer from Basic SKU to Standard SKU by using a PowerShell script. By upgrading to Standard SKU, the Load Balancer enables the network layer traffic to drive higher performance and stronger resiliency, along with an improved integration experience with other Azure services. The PowerShell script creates the Standard SKU Load Balancer with the same configurations as the Basic Load Balancer. In addition, the script migrates the backend resources to the Standard Load Balancer for you.

Azure Traffic Manager: additional IP addresses for endpoint monitoring service

Traffic Manager uses a probing mechanism to evaluate your application endpoints. To enhance the capacity of our probing plane, Microsoft will be increasing the number of probes deployed within Traffic Manager’s endpoint monitoring service over the next few years to continue to mitigate the large amount of growth. Your applications will see an increase in number of health probes and some of these probes may originate from new IP addresses. These changes will start to go live on 21st January 2022 at 20:00 UTC.

Recommended action: if you use a network access control mechanism (e.g., Azure Firewall or Network Security Groups) and are not using Service Tags (AzureTrafficManager), please continue checking this updated list of IP addresses each Wednesday, until further notice, to ensure you allow incoming traffic from these new IP addresses. Failure to do so may cause some Traffic Manager health probes for the application endpoints to fail and may result in misrouting of traffic. No action is required access control isn’t used or network access control is utilized with AzureTrafficManager service tags.

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (December 2021 – Weeks: 51 and 52)

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.

In the past two weeks, Microsoft hasn’t made any major announcements regarding these topics. However, here are some links to interesting videos made by John Savill, Principal Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft:

I take this opportunity to wish you happy holidays and happy New Year!

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.

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

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

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

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

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:

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 IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (December 2021 – Weeks: 49 and 50)

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

Virtual Machine restore points (preview)

Public preview of VM restore point is available, a new resource that stores VM configuration and a point-in-time snapshot of one or more managed disks attached to a VM. VM restore points supports multi-disk application consistent snapshots and can be leveraged to easily capture backups of your VM and disks. You can easily restore the VM using VM restore points in cases of data loss, corruption, or disasters. Microsoft is also introducing a new Azure Resource Manager (ARM) resource called Restore Point Collection, which will act as a container for all the restore points of a specific VM.

Placement polices for Azure VMware Solution

Placement policies are used to define constraints for running virtual machines in the Azure VMware Solution Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC). These constraints allow the you to decide where and how the virtual machines should run within the SDDC clusters. Placement polices are used to support performance optimization of virtual machines (VMs) through policy, and help mitigate the impact of maintenance operations to policies within the SDDC cluster.

Storage

Secure access to storage account from a virtual network/subnet in any region (preview)

You can secure access to your storage account by enabling a service endpoint for Storage in the subnet and configuring a virtual network rule for that subnet through the Azure storage firewall. You can now configure your storage account to allow access from virtual networks and subnets in any Azure region. By default, service endpoints enable connectivity from a virtual network to a storage account in the same Azure region as the virtual network or it’s paired Azure region. This preview enables you to register your subnet to allow service endpoint connectivity to storage accounts in any Azure region across the globe.

Attribute-based Access Control (ABAC) conditions with principal attributes (preview)

Attribute-based access control (ABAC) is an authorization strategy that defines access levels based on attributes associated with security principals, resources, requests, and the environment. Azure ABAC builds on role-based access control (RBAC) by adding conditions to Azure role assignments expressed as a predicate using these attributes. This update to the preview enables the use of Azure AD custom security attributes for principals in role assignment conditions. You can now use combine principal attributes with resource and request attributes in your condition expressions.

Soft delete for blobs capability for Azure Data Lake Storage

Soft delete for blobs capability for Azure Data Lake Storage is now generally available. This feature protects files and directories from accidental deletes by retaining the deleted data in the system for a specified period of time. During the retention period, you can restore a soft-deleted object, i.e. file or directory, to its state at the time it was deleted. After the retention period has expired, the object is permanently deleted. All soft deleted files and directories are billed at the same rate as active ones until the retention period has expired.

Azure Stack

Azure Stack HCI

Windows Server guest licensing offer for Azure Stack HCI (preview)

To facilitate guest licensing for Azure Stack HCI customers, we are pleased to announce a new offer that brings simplicity and more flexibility for licensing. The new Windows Server subscription for Azure Stack HCI is available in public preview as of December 14, 2021. This offer will allow you to purchase unlimited Windows Server guest licenses for your Azure Stack HCI cluster through your Azure subscription. You can sign up and cancel anytime and preview pricing is $0 until general availability (GA). At GA, the offer will be charged at $23.60 per physical core per month. This offer simplifies billing through an all-in-one place Azure subscription and in some cases will be less expensive for customers than the traditional licensing model.

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (December 2021 – Weeks: 47 and 48)

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

West Central US: Microsoft expands cloud services with two new datacenters in Wyoming

Microsoft is announcing the launch of two new Microsoft datacenters in Cheyenne – Wyoming, one in Cheyenne Business Parkway and another in Bison Business Park, enabling to expand and support the growth and demand for digital services in West Central US datacenter region. Cheyenne has been home to Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure services since 2012 and this expansion will enable us to continue providing services to current and new customers.

New Azure Virtual Machines DCasv5 and ECasv5-series (preview)

Azure DCasv5/ECasv5 confidential virtual machines (VMs) powered by 3rd Gen AMD EPYC™ processors with SEV-SNP are available in preview.

SQL Server IaaS Agent extension for Linux SQL VMs

Microsoft is making the capabilities of SQL Server IaaS Agent extension available to Linux platforms, starting with Ubuntu with plans for other distributions in time.

If you are already running SQL Server on Azure using an Ubuntu Linux Virtual Machine, the SQL Server IaaS Agent extension now enables you to leverage integration with the Azure portal and unlocks the following benefits for SQL Server on Linux Azure VMs:

  • Compliance: The extension offers a simplified method to fulfill the requirement of notifying Microsoft that the Azure Hybrid Benefit has been enabled as is specified in the product terms. This process negates needing to manage licensing registration forms for each resource.
  • Simplified license management: The extension simplifies SQL Server license management, and allows you to quickly identify SQL Server VMs with the Azure Hybrid Benefit enabled using the Azure portal, Azure PowerShell, or the Azure CLI.

IaaS Agent extension full mode no restart for SQL VMs

You can now enable the full mode of SQL Server IaaS Agent extension with no restart, giving you access to more manageability features for SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines without interruption to your workloads. Previously, you had to restart the SQL Server services to enable these features. The full mode of SQL Server IaaS Agent extension unlocks many benefits such as Automated Backup, Automated Patching, Storage Optimization, and more, along with license management that comes with lightweight mode.

Storage

Azure File Sync: new agent released

The Azure File Sync agent v14.1 is available. Issue that is fixed in the v14.1 release:

  • Tiered files deleted on Windows Server 2022 are not detected by cloud tiering filter driver. This issue can also impact Windows 2016 and Windows Server 2019 if a tiered file is deleted using the FILE_DISPOSITION_INFORMATION_EX class.

To obtain and install this update, configure your Azure File Sync agent to automatically update when a new version becomes available or manually download the update from the Microsoft Update Catalog.

More information about this release:

  • This release is available for Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019 and Windows Server 2022 installations.
  • A restart is required for servers that have an existing Azure File Sync agent installation if the agent version is less than version 12.0.
  • The agent version for this release is 14.1.0.0.
  • Installation instructions are documented in KB5001873.

Azure NetApp Files application volume group for SAP HANA (preview)

Application volume group (AVG) for SAP HANA enables you to deploy all volumes required to install and operate an SAP HANA database according to best practices in a single one-step and optimized workflow. The application volume group feature includes the use of proximity placement group (PPG) with VMs to achieve automated, low-latency deployments. Application volume group for SAP HANA has implemented many technical improvements that simplify and standardize the entire process to help you streamline volume deployments for SAP HANA. Instead of creating the SAP HANA volumes (data, log, shared, log-backup, file-backup) individually, the new application volume group for SAP HANA creates these volumes in a single ‘atomic’ operation (GUI, RP, API).

Networking

VPN Gateway NAT

Azure VPN NAT (Network Address Translation) supports overlapping address spaces between your on-premises branch networks and your Azure Virtual Networks. NAT can also enable business-to-business connectivity where address spaces are managed by different organizations and re-numbering networks is not possible. VPN NAT provides support for 1:1 Static NAT and 1-to-many dynamic NAT.

Wildcard listener on Application Gateways

Azure Application Gateway now supports the use of wildcard characters such as asterisk (*) and question mark (?) for hostnames on a multi-site HTTP(S) listener. You can now route requests from multiple host-names such as shop.contoso.com, accounts.contoso.com, pay.contoso.com to the same backend pool through a single listener configured with a wildcard hostname such as *.contoso.com.