Category Archives: Microsoft Azure

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (April 2020 – Weeks: 15 and 16)

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

SQL Server 2019 IaaS images with Linux distribution support now available

Azure Marketplace pay-as-you-go images for SQL Server 2019 on RHEL 8.0, Ubuntu 18.04, and SLES 12 SP5 are now generally available.

Virtual machine scale sets: automatic image upgrades for custom images

Virtual machine scale sets now provide the ability to automatically deploy new versions of custom images to scale set virtual machines. Enabling automatic OS image upgrades on your scale set helps ease update management by safely and automatically upgrading the OS disk for all virtual machines in the scale set. This capability is now available in preview for custom images through Shared Image Gallery.

Automatic instance repairs for virtual machine scale sets

Virtual machine scale sets now provide the capability to automatically repair unhealthy instances based on application health status. Configure the scale set instances to emit application health by using either the application health extension or Azure Load Balancer health probes. After the automatic repairs policy is enabled, when an instance is found to be unhealthy, the scale set will automatically delete the unhealthy instance and create a new one to replace it.

Azure Migrate is now available in Azure Government

Azure Migrate provides a hub of Microsoft and partner tools to help customers meet their migration needs. Azure Migrate also offers scenarios for database migration, VDI migration, and web application migration, in addition to at-scale migration of VMware, Hyper-V, and physical servers to Azure. All Azure Migrate features, including agentless discovery and assessment, application inventory, and migration, are now available in Azure Government.

Azure File Sync v10 released

The Azure File Sync agent v10 release is being released to servers which are configured to automatically update when a new version becomes available.

Improvements and issues that are fixed:

Improved sync progress in the portal
Improved cloud tiering portal experience
Support for moving the Storage Sync Service and/or storage account to a different Azure Active Directory (AAD) tenant
Evaluation tool now identifies files or directories that end with a period
Miscellaneous performance and reliability improvements

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 by following the steps documented in KB4522409.

Networking

Azure Virtual Network supports reverse DNS lookup

Azure Virtual Network now supports reverse DNS lookup (PTR DNS queries) for virtual machine IP addresses by default. Use this to quickly look up name of the VM from its IP address. Previously, using DNS queries to look up the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) for a virtual machine from its IP address would result in an NXDOMAIN response. Now, instead of getting an NXDOMAIN, you’ll receive valid FQDN of the virtual machine to which the IP address belongs.

Azure Monitor: consultation of data through Workbooks

Azure Monitor Log Analytics can collect large amounts of data and it is essential to have effective methods to make it easy to access and analyze it in a simple way. Among the various possibilities offered are the Workbooks, interactive documents that allow you to better interpret the data and do in-depth analysis, also designed for collaboration scenarios. This article lists the key features of the Workbooks and the indications to use them at best.

The Workbooks combine text, Log Analytics query, Azure metrics and parameters, this is an interactive report. Interestingly, they can be accessed and editable by anyone who has access to the same Azure resources. This makes them a powerful collaboration tool between members of a team.

Possible usage scenarios

The Workbooks can be used in different scenarios, for example:

Guide tool for troubleshooting and post-mortem incidents. Not only can you highlight the impact of an application or virtual machine outage, but it will also be possible to combine data and provide written explanations. This can become a guide tool to discuss the steps needed to prevent future service outages.
Explore the use of a particular application or virtual machine when you don't know the metrics of interest in advance. In fact,, unlike other analysis tools, The Workbooks combine multiple types of visualizations and analysis, making them a great tool for freeform exploration.
Show your team the performance of a new application feature or the performance of a new virtual machine, giving visibility of key metrics of interest.
Sharing the results of experimentation work on an application with other team members. You have the ability to detail the objectives of text experimentation and to show the Log Analytics metrics and queries used to evaluate the items of interest.

Advantages of Workbooks

Among the main advantages of Workbooks it is possible to quote:

Support for metrics, logs and Azure Resource Graph data.
Parameter support that enables interactive reports, for example, selecting an item in a table will dynamically update the associated charts and visualizations.
Document-like flow.
Ability to have Workbooks personal or shared.
Experience of simple creation and always with a view to collaboration.
Ability to tap into a public template gallery on GitHub that contains several ready-to-use Workbooks.

Workbooks Limits

The Workbooks they also have the following limitations which should be taken into consideration:

There are no automatic refresh mechanisms.
They are not designed to have a denser layout like dashboards and to have a single centralized control panel. In fact, they are designed to gain insights through an interactive path.

Deploy and use Workbooks

The section Workbooks is accessible from the Azure portal from Azure Monitor Log Analytics that from Application Insights and a gallery is available with a series of Workbooks by default.

Figure 1 – Workbooks Gallery from Azure Portal

In this GitHub repository you can view numerous templates of Workbooks. You can of course contribute by adding new ones or by processing existing ones.

The Workbooks can be composed of different sections that show graphs, Tables, text and input controls, all independently editable.

Figure 2 – Adding section to a Workbook

In order to create Workbooks according to your needs it is useful to know which elements are supported, in this regard, references to the official Microsoft documentation are provided:

Figure 3 - Example of Workbook showing the key metrics of the VMs

Figure 4 - Example of Workbook showing the highest CPU usage of VMs by region

To deploy new Workbooks through ARM templates you can refer to Microsoft's official documentation.

Conclusions

Thanks to the adoption of Workbooks it is possible to consult the data collected using visually appealing reports, with advanced features that allow you to greatly enrich the analysis experience from the Azure portal. Interactivity based on user inputs, personalization and sharing are important elements that make very useful to adopt Workbooks in specific scenarios.

Azure Security Center: exports of alerts and recommendations to other solutions

Azure Security introduces an interesting feature that allows you to send security information generated by your environment to other solutions. This is done through a continuous export mechanism of alerts and recommendations to Azure Event Hubs or to Azure Monitor Log Analytics workspaces. This feature opens up new integration scenarios for Azure Security Center. This article describes how to use this feature and delves into its features.

Azure Security Center (ASC) carries out a continuous assessment of the environment and is able to provide the recommendations concerning the security of the environment. As described in this article you can customize the solution to meet your own security requirements and the recommendations that are generated. In the standard tier, these recommendations may not be limited to the Azure environment alone, but it will also be possible to contemplate hybrid environments and on-premises resources.

Standard Security Center also generates alert when potential security threats are detected on resources in your environment. ASC sets priorities, lists the alerts, provides the information you need to quickly investigate issues and provides recommendations on how to resolve attacks.

Azure Event Hubs is a streaming platform for big data and a service for the ingestion of events. Can receive and process millions of events per second. The data sent to a Event Hub can be transformed and stored using any real-time analytics provider or batch or storage adapters.

The new feature that was introduced in the Azure Security Center is called Continuos Export, supports enterprise scenarios and allows you to do the following:

Export to Azure Event Hubs to gain integration with third-party SIEMs and Azure Data Explorer.
Export to a Log Analytics workspace to have an integration with Azure Monitor, useful to better analyze data, use Alert rule, Microsoft Power BI and customized dashboards.
Export in a CSV file, for individual data exports (one shot).

The configuration is simple and can be carried out using the following procedure.

In Azure Security Center, you select the subscription for which you want to configure data export, and in the settings sidebar you select Continuos Export:

Figure 1 – Continuous export in ASC's subscription settings

In this case you chose to configure the export to a Log Analytics workspace. You can select which recommendations to export and their severity level. Also for security alerts you can choose for which level to export. Export creates an object, therefore, you should specify which resource group to place it in.. Finally, you will need to select the Log Analytics target workspace.

Figure 2 - Configuring parameters to make the Continuous Export

The link for integration with Azure Monitor provides the ability to automatically create Alert rule already pre-configured.

Figure 3 - Automatically create alert rules in Azure Monitor

By default these alert rules do not constitute the Action Group, therefore it is advisable to modify them to do a trigger to suit your needs.

These are the two default alert rules created:

Figure 4 – Default Alert rules of Azure Monitor

Alternatively, having gone into the recommendations and the ASC alerts in a workspace, you can configure in the Azure Monitor Alert rule customized based on Log Analytics query.

The security alerts and the ASC recommendations are stored in tables SecurityAlert and SecurityRecommendations of the workspace. The name of the Log Analytics solution that contains these tables is relative to the ASC tier, which can then be Security and Audit (standard tier) or SecurityCenterFree (tier free).

Figure 4 – Tables in Log Analytics

The configuration of Continuos Export towards Event Hubs is similar and it is the best methodology to incorporate the recommendations and the Azure Security Center alerts with third-party SIEM solutions. Following, shows the connectors for the main third-party SIEM solutions:

Splunk: Azure Monitor Add-On for Splunk
IBM QRadar: Use a manually configured source log
ArcSight: SmartConnector

In Azure Sentinel is instead available Data connector , it is native to contemplate the Azure Security Center alerts.

To configure exports to Azure Data Explorer you can use the procedure in this Microsoft documentation.

Conclusions

With this new feature introduced in Azure Security Center, you can consolidate all the alerts and recommendations generated by the solution to other tools, opening up new possible integration scenarios even with third-party solutions. All this is made possible through an easily configurable mechanism, allowing you to be notified immediately and quickly take action. These aspects are crucial when dealing with security information.

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (April 2020 – Weeks: 13 and 14)

Azure

Compute

Azure Spot Virtual Machines are now generally available

Spot Virtual Machines provide scalability while reducing costs and they’re ideal for workloads that can be interrupted. Get unique Azure pricing and benefits when running Windows Server workloads on Spot Virtual Machines.

Storage

Direct Upload of Azure Managed Disks

Customers can bring an on-premises VHD to Azure as a managed disk in two ways: copy the VHD into a storage account before converting it into a managed disk, or attach an empty managed disk to a virtual machine and do a copy. Both of these have disadvantages. The first option requires maintaining storage accounts, while the second option has the additional cost of running virtual machines. Direct upload addresses both these issues and provides a simplified workflow by allowing you to copy an on-premises VHD directly into an empty managed disk. You can use it to upload to Standard HDD, Standard SSD, and Premium SSD managed disks of all the supported sizes.

New Azure Disk sizes and bursting support

Azure Disks, block-level storage volumes managed by Azure and used with Azure Virtual Machines, now have new 4-GiB, 8-GiB, and 16-GiB sizes available on both premium and standard SSDs. The new disk sizes introduced on standard SSD disk provide the most cost-efficient SSD offering in the cloud, providing consistent disk performance at the lowest cost per GB. In addition, Microsoft now supports bursting on Azure premium SSD disks in all Azure regions in the public cloud. With bursting, even the smallest premium SSD disks at 4-GiB can now achieve up to 3,500 IOPS and 170 MiB/second, and better accommodate spiky workloads. It can be best used for OS disks to accelerate virtual machine (VM) boot or data disks to accommodate spiky traffic. To learn more about disk bursting, read the premium SSD bursting article.

Azure Ultra Disks: Shared disk capability in preview

Attach an Azure managed disk to multiple virtual machines (VMs) simultaneously using the new shared disks feature of Azure Managed Disks. Deploy new or migrate existing clustered applications to Azure by attaching a managed disk to multiple VMs. Shared disks also support SCSI persistent reservation protocol.

Server-side encryption with customer-managed keys for Azure Managed Disks in GA

Azure customers already benefit from server-side encryption with platform-managed keys for Managed Disks enabled by default. Server-side encryption with customer-managed keys improves on platform-managed keys by giving you control of the encryption keys to meet your compliance need. Today, customers can also use Azure Disk Encryption which leverages the BitLocker feature of Windows and the DM-Crypt feature of Linux to encrypt Managed Disks with customer-managed keys within the guest VM. Server-side encryption with customer-managed keys improves on Azure Disk encryption by enabling you to use any OS types and images, including custom images, for your virtual machines by encrypting data in the Storage service.

General availability of incremental snapshots of Managed Disks

Incremental snapshots are a cost-effective, point-in-time backup of managed disks. Unlike current snapshots, which are billed for the full size, incremental snapshots are billed for the delta changes to disks since the last snapshot and are always stored on the most cost-effective storage, Standard HDD storage irrespective of the storage type of the parent disks. For additional reliability, incremental snapshots are stored on Zone Redundant Storage (ZRS) by default in regions that support ZRS. Incremental snapshots provide differential capability, enabling customers and independent solution vendors (ISVs) to build backup and disaster recovery solutions for Managed Disks. It allows you to get the changes between two snapshots of the same disk, thus copying only changed data between two snapshots across regions, reducing time and cost for backup and disaster recovery. Incremental snapshots are accessible instantaneously; you can read the underlying data of incremental snapshots or restore disks from them as soon as they are created. Azure Managed Disk inherit all the compelling capabilities of current snapshots and have a lifetime independent from their parent managed disks and independent of each other.

New additions to the Azure Archive Storage partner network

Azure Archive Storage is now integrated with new partners including IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, NetApp StorageGRID, Rubrik, and Veritas NetBackup, making the partner network even more comprehensive. Other Azure Archive Storage partners include Archive360, CloudBerry Lab, Cohesity, Commvault, HubStor, Igneous, NetApp, and Tiger Technology.

Networking

IPv6 for Azure Virtual Network is generally available

IPv6 for Azure Virtual Network is now generally available worldwide. IPv6 support within the Azure Virtual Network and to the internet enables you to expand into the growing mobile and IoT markets with Azure-based applications and to address IPv4 depletion in your own corporate networks.

Azure Container Registry support for Private Link now in preview

Azure Container Registry now supports Private Link, a means to limit network traffic of resources within the virtual network.

Azure Edge Zones extends Azure services to the edge

Azure Edge Zones combines the power of Azure, 5G, carriers, and operators around the world to enable new scenarios for developers, customers and partners. These new offerings are coming to preview and will help local telecoms and carrier partners drive new solutions for business and society, including autonomous vehicles, smart cities, virtual reality, and other smart industry use cases.

Azure Stack

Azure Stack Edge

Azure Stack Edge preview

Microsoft also announced the expansion of Azure Stack Edge preview with the NVIDIA T4 Tensor Core GPU. Azure Stack Edge is a cloud managed appliance that provides processing for fast local analysis and insights to the data. With the addition of an NVIDIA GPU, customers are able to build in the cloud then run at the edge.

Azure Stack Hub

Azure Stack Hub preview

Microsoft, in collaboration with NVIDIA, is announcing that Azure Stack Hub with Azure NC-Series Virtual Machine (VM) support is now in preview. GPU support in Azure Stack Hub unlocks a variety of new solution opportunities. With our Azure Stack Hub hardware partners, customers can choose the appropriate GPU for their workloads to enable Artificial Intelligence, training, inference, and visualization scenarios.

Event Hubs on Azure Stack Hub in preview

We are now announcing the availability of the preview version of Event Hubs on Azure Stack Hub. Event Hubs on Azure Stack Hub will allow you to realize cloud and on-premises scenarios that use streaming and event-based architectures.

Azure management services and System Center: What's New in March 2020

In March there have been several news announced by Microsoft on the Azure management services and System Center. In this summary, that we report on a monthly basis, major announcements are listed, accompanied by the necessary references to be able to conduct further studies on.

Azure Monitor

Azure Security Center integration

In Azure Security Center (ASC) integration with Azure Monitor has been introduced. In fact, in ASC it has been made available the ability to export continues toward a Log Analytics workspace. With this feature, you can configure Azure Monitor alert rules against recommendations and alerts exported from the Security Center. As a result, you can enable action groups to achieve automation scenarios supported by Azure Monitor.

Service availability Azure Monitor for VMs

In Azure monitor, the service that monitors virtual machines has been released, calledAzure Monitor for VMs. This service analyzes the performance data and the status of virtual machines, makes the monitor of the installed processes and examines its dependencies.

The serviceAzure Monitor for VMsis divided into three different perspectives:

Health: the logical components present on board of the virtual machines are evaluated according to specific pre-configured criteria, generating alerts when certain conditions are met.
Performance: shows summary details of performance, from the guest operating system.
Map: generates a map with the interconnections between the various components that reside on different systems.

This solution can be used on Windows and Linux virtual machines, regardless of the environment in which they reside (Azure, on-premises or at other cloud providers).

New agent version for Windows and Linux systems

A new version of the Log Analytics agent has been released this month for Window systemss and for Linux systems. In both cases they are introduced several improvements and increased stability.

SHA-2 signing for the Log Analytics agent

The Log Analytics agent for Windows will start enforcing SHA-2 signings from 18 may 2020. This change requires action if you are running the agent on a legacy version of the operating system (Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, or Windows Server 2008) . Customers who are in this condition should apply the latest updates and patches on these operating systems before 18 may 2020, otherwise their agents will stop sending data to Log Analytics workspaces. The following Azure services will be affected by this change: Azure Monitor, Azure Automation, Azure Update Management, Azure Change Tracking, Azure Security Center, Azure Sentinel, Windows Defender ATP.

Azure Site Recovery

New Update Rollup

For Azure Site Recovery was released theUpdate Rollup 45 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.

Azure Backup

Azure Backup Report

Azure Backup has announced the release of the solution Azure Backup Report. It's a tool available in the Azure portal that provides reports to answer many questions about backup progress, including: “What backup items consume more storage space?”, “Which machines have consistently had abnormal backup behaviors?”, “What are the main causes of the backup job failure?”. Reports provide cross-sectional information across different types of workloads, Vaults, subscriptions, regions and tenants. This tool also provides support for Windows Server 2008, to facilitate the migration steps of the on-premises systems based on Windows Server 2008 to Azure, process by which you can continue to get security patches.

Azure Automation

Availability in new regions

Azure Automation is now available in preview in the regions ” US Gov Arizona”.

Evaluation of Azure and System Center

To test for free and evaluate the services provided by Azure you can access this page, while to try the various System Center components you must access theEvaluation Center and, after registering, you can start the trial period.

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (March 2020 – Weeks: 11 and 12)

Azure

Virtual Network NAT generally available

Azure Virtual Network NAT (Network Address Translation) simplifies outbound-only Internet connectivity for virtual networks. NAT can be configured for one or more subnets of a virtual network and provides on-demand connectivity for virtual machines.

Private Endpoints for Azure Storage are Generally Available

Private Endpoints provide secure connectivity to Azure Storage from a Azure virtual network (VNet). On-premises networks can also securely connect to a storage account using a private endpoint when that network is to a VNet using Express Route or VPN. Private Endpoints for Azure Storage are now generally available in all Azure public regions.

Azure Web Application Firewall integration with Azure Content Delivery Network service in preview

Azure Web Application Firewall service protects your web applications from malicious attacks. In addition to Azure Application Gateway and Azure Front Door service, Web Application Firewall is now natively integrated with Azure Content Delivery Network, protecting Content Delivery Network endpoints from common exploits such as SQL injection and cross site scripting (XSS) attacks.

Private Link for different Azure services is available

Azure Private Link is now generally available (GA) for the below services:

Azure Storage
Azure Data Lake Storage Gen 2
Azure SQL Database
Azure Cosmos DB
Azure Synapse Analytics (SQL Data Warehouse)
Azure Key Vault
Azure Database for MySQL
Azure Database for PostgreSQL
Azure Database for MariaDB
Azure Kubernetes Service -> Kubernetes API

In addition, Private Link is now available in preview for the following services:

App Service
Azure Cognitive Search
Event Hub
Service Bus
Azure Relay
Azure Backup
Azure Container Registry
Event Grid -> Topics
Event Grid -> Domains

App Service regional Virtual Network integration

The regional Virtual Network integration feature has now entered general availability (GA) and supports sending all outbound calls into your virtual network. Use features like network NSGs and UDRs against all outbound traffic from your web app.

Azure Shared Disks for clustered applications in preview

Azure Shared Disks is a shared block storage offering, enabling customers to run latency-sensitive workloads without compromising on well-known deployment patterns for fast failover and high availability. Azure Shared Disks are best suited for clustered databases, parallel file systems, persistent containers, and machine learning applications. Azure Shared Disks provide a consistent experience for applications running on Windows or Linux based clusters today.

ACR built-in audit policies for Azure Policy in preview

Azure Container Registry now supports built-in audit policies for Azure Policy.

Preparing for TLS 1.2 in Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure recommends all customers complete migration towards solutions that support transport layer security (TLS) 1.2 and to make sure that TLS 1.2 is used by default.

Azure File Sync agent version 6.x will expire on April 21, 2020

On April 21, 2020, Azure File Sync agent version 6.x will be expired and stop syncing. If you have servers with agent version 6.x, update to a supported agent version (7.x or later).

Azure Storage: Append Blob immutability support is generally available

Store business-critical data objects in a non-erasable and non-modifiable state for a user-specified retention interval using immutable storage for Azure Blob storage. Append blobs allow the addition of new data blocks to the end of an object and are optimized for data append operations required by auditing and logging scenarios.

General availability of NVv4 and HBv2-Series virtual machines

General availability of NVv4 virtual machines in South Central US, East US, and West Europe regions. Additional regions are planned in the coming months. With NVv4, Azure is the first public cloud to offer GPU partitioning built on industry-standard SR-IOV technology. HBv2-series VMs for HPC are now available in the Azure West Europe region.

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (March 2020 – Weeks: 09 and 10)

Azure

New datacenter region in Spain

Microsoft will open a datacenter region in Spain to help accelerate digital transformation of public and private entities of all sizes, helping them to innovate, scale and migrate their businesses to the cloud in a secure way.

Microsoft will retire classic IaaS VMs

Because Azure Resource Manager now has all the infrastructure as a service (IaaS) capabilities of Azure Service Management and new advancements, Microsoft will retire classic IaaS VMs on March 1, 2023. Beginning March 1, 2023, customers who are using classic IaaS VMs will no longer be able to start any classic IaaS VMs using ASM. Any remaining VMs in a running or stopped-allocated state will be moved to a stopped-deallocated state. The following Azure services and functionality will not be impacted by this retirement: Cloud Services, storage accounts not used by classic VMs, and virtual networks (VNets) not used by classic VMs.

Azure Virtual Network service endpoint policies feature

Azure Virtual Network service endpoint policies enable you to prevent unauthorized access to Azure Storage accounts from your virtual network. It enables you to limit access to only specific whitelisted Azure Storage resources by applying endpoint policies over the service endpoint configuration.

Azure Load Balancer TCP resets on idle timeout is available

Azure Load Balancer now supports sending bidirectional TCP resets on idle timeout for load balancing rules, inbound NAT rules, and outbound rules. This is available in all regions. Use this ability to help applications gain visibility into when Standard Load Balancer terminates connections due to idle timeout. When enabled, Standard Load Balancer will generate a TCP reset packet to both the client and server side of a TCP connection on idle timeout. This allows applications to behave more predictably, as well as to detect the termination of a connection, remove expired connections, and initiate new connections. CP resets can be enabled on standard load balancers using the Azure portal, Resource Manager templates, CLI, and PowerShell.

Web Application Firewall with Azure Front Door service supports exclusion lists

Web Application Firewall exclusion lists allow you to omit certain request attributes from a rule evaluation. You can use them to fine tune Web Application Firewall policies for your applications.

Azure StorSimple 8000/1200 series will no longer be supported starting December 31, 2022

Microsoft has been expanding the portfolio of Azure Hybrid storage capabilities with new services for data tiering and cloud ingestion, providing more options to customers for storing data in Azure in native formats. In conjunction with this, support for the following StorSimple versions will end December 31, 2022.

Active Directory for authentication on SMB access to Azure File in preview

Azure Files Active Directory (Azure AD) Authentication is in preview. You can use it to mount your Azure Files using Azure AD credentials with the exact same access control experience as on-premises.

HPC-optimized virtual machines are available

Azure HBv2-series Virtual Machines (VMs) are generally available in the South Central US region. HBv2 VMs will also be available in West Europe, East US, West US 2, North Central US, Japan East soon. HBv2 VMs deliver supercomputer-class performance, message passing interface (MPI) scalability, and cost efficiency for a variety of real-world high performance computing (HPC) workloads, such as CFD, explicit finite element analysis, seismic processing, reservoir modeling, rendering, and weather simulation.

A8 – A11 Azure Virtual Machine sizes will be retired on March 1, 2021

Microsoft is retiring A8 – A11 Azure Virtual Machine sizes on March 1, 2021. Starting today, customers with existing A8 – A11 size virtual machines will be able to deploy more of the same size, but new customers will no longer be able to create A8 – A11 VMs. After March 1, 2021, any remaining A8 – A11 size virtual machines remaining in your subscription will be set to a deallocated state. These virtual machines will be stopped and removed from the host. These virtual machines will no longer be billed in the deallocated state.

NDv2-Series VMs are Generally Available

NDv2 GPU VMs for high-end deep learning training and HPC workloads are going GA in East US, South Central US, and West Europe.

NVv4-Series VMs are Generally Available

Microsoft announced general availability of NVv4 Virtual Machines. NVv4 VMs are designed to provide you unprecedented GPU resourcing flexibility. You can now choose VMs with a whole GPU all the way down to 1/8th of a GPU.

Virtual machine scale sets now simpler to manage

Three new capabilities that simplify the overall management of virtual machine scale sets in Azure are now available. New custom scale-in policies for virtual machine scale sets let you specify the order in which virtual machines (VMs) within a scale set are deleted during a scale-in operation based on a set of criteria (such as the newest VM that was added to a scale set). New instance protection policies enable you to protect one or more individual VMs in a scale set. Two new capabilities are provided:

Protect from scale-in blocks instance deletion during scale-in operations.
Protect from scale set actions blocks all scale set operations including upgrades and reimage.

It’s also now possible to receive notifications about instance deletions and to set up a predefined delay timeout for the deletion operation. Notifications are sent through Azure Metadata Service Scheduled Events. Delay timeouts can range between 5 and 15 minutes.

Azure management services and System Center: What's New in February 2020

The month of February was full of news and there are different updates that affected the Azure management services and System Center. This article summarizes to have a comprehensive 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.

Azure Monitor

Changes to the Log Analytics schema

Important news has been made to the Azure Monitor Log Analytics schema to help you browse your content faster and easier.

Updates in the log view

Azure Monitor Log Analytics has greatly improved the appearance in the log view. New charts have been introduced that can quickly and easily display the collected data and provide the ability to obtain more information from it effectively.

Azure Site Recovery

Retirement of some protection scenarios

Starting from 1 march 2023 you will no longer be able to use Azure Site Recoivery for the following security scenarios:

Between customer-owned sites managed by System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM)
Between sites managed by SCVMM to Azure

Therefore, by this date, you must modify the configuration to use the protection scenario between Hyper-V and between Hyper-V and Azure, always without SCVMM. Data for protection scenarios that are no longer supported will be removed from the specified date.

Retirement of Azure Site Recovery data encryption functionality

Starting from 30 April 2022 Azure Site Recovery data encryption functionality will be retired and replaced with more advanced encryption mechanisms such asEncryption at Rest with Azure Site Recovery, usingStorage Service Encryption (SSE). Thanks to the adoption of SSE, the data will be encrypted before residing on the storage and decrypted when it is picked up.

Azure Backup

Azure Offline Backup with Azure Data Box

Customers using Azure Backup can now take advantage of Azure Data Box to move large backups through an offiline migration mechanism. The solution is to use both Azure Data Box (appliance from 100 TB) and also Azure Data Box disks (up to 8 TB each), through Azure Recovery Services Agent, to place large initial backups (up to 80 TB per server) in offline mode to an Azure Recovery Services Vault. Subsequent backups will then be made over the network.

Windows Server support 2008

Azure Backup announced support for Windows Server systems 2008. This facilitates the migration of On-premises systems based on Windows Server 2008 to Azure, so you can continue to get security patches.

Selective exclusion of disks to be protected

Azure Backup now allows you to selectively exclude disks to protect on a virtual machine. This allows you to achieve cost savings for your solution if there are disks that you don't want to protect using Azure Backup.

Backup Explorer

Azure Backup now offers a new solution, currently in preview, called Backup Explorer, an integrated Azure Monitor Workbook which allows for centralized control in real time on the progress of the various backup.

System Center

Update Rollup 1 for System Center 2019

For System Center 2019 it was released the first update rollup. This update introduces new features, make error corrections and affects the following products:

Microsoft Endpoint Manager

New releases for the Technical Preview Branch

For Configuration Manager were released in the Technical Preview Branch the’update 2001.2, the’update 2002 and the’update 2002.2. Among the main innovations, improvements to Desktop Analytics and task sequences are introduced. They also allow to obtain novelty inherent in Orchestration Groups, an evolution of the Server Groups.

To check the details of what's included in these updates, you can check these documents:

Please note that Releases in the Technical Preview Branch allow you to preview new Configuration Manager features, and it is recommended that you apply these updates only in test environments.

Evaluation of Azure and System Center

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (February 2020 – Weeks: 07 and 08)

Azure

Azure Firewall Manager now supports virtual networks

Azure Firewall Manager Preview now supports Azure Firewall deployments in virtual networks (also known as hub virtual networks) in addition to its support for Azure Firewall deployments in virtual WAN hubs (also known as secured virtual hubs).

New Azure Firewall certification and features

New Azure Firewall capabilities are available:

ICSA Labs Corporate Firewall Certification.
Forced tunneling support now in preview.
IP Groups now in preview.
Customer configured SNAT private IP address ranges now generally available.
High ports restriction relaxation now generally available.

Form more detrails you can read this document.

Azure Virtual Network: Network address translation in preview

Azure Virtual Network now offers network address translation (NAT) (in preview) to simplify outbound-only internet connectivity for virtual networks. All outbound connectivity uses the public IP address and/or public IP prefix resources connected to the virtual network NAT. Outbound connectivity is possible without a load balancer or public IP addresses directly attached to virtual machines. Virtual Network NAT Preview is fully managed, highly resilient, and is currently available in the following regions:

Europe West
Japan East
US East 2
US West
US West 2
US West Central

Preview of Azure Shared Disks for clustered applications

The limited preview of Azure Shared Disks, the industry’s first shared cloud block storage, is available. Azure Shared Disks enables the next wave of block storage workloads migrating to the cloud including the most demanding enterprise applications, currently running on-premises on Storage Area Networks (SANs). These include clustered databases, parallel file systems, persistent containers, and machine learning applications. This unique capability enables customers to run latency-sensitive workloads, without compromising on well-known deployment patterns for fast failover and high availability. This includes applications built for Windows or Linux-based clustered filesystems like Global File System 2 (GFS2). With Azure Shared Disks, customers now have the flexibility to migrate clustered environments running on Windows Server, including Windows Server 2008 (which has reached End-of-Support), to Azure. This capability is designed to support SQL Server Failover Cluster Instances (FCI), Scale-out File Servers (SoFS), Remote Desktop Servers (RDS), and SAP ASCS/SCS running on Windows Server.

Azure Private Link is generally available

Azure Private Link is now generally available. Azure Private Link is a secure and scalable way for you to consume services (such as Azure PaaS, Partner Service, BYOS) on the Azure platform privately from within your virtual network. Private Link also enables you to create and render your own services on Azure. It enables a true private connectivity experience between services and virtual networks.

Azure Resource Manager template support for NSG flow logs

Now, Azure Resource Manage, the native and powerful way to manage your infrastructure as code, supports the deployment of network security group (NSG) flow logs through templates. NSG flow logs are now an Azure Resource Manager resource so you have the ability to deploy flow logs programmatically and set up Azure Governance policies to verify that flow logs are enabled.

Azure Network Watcher is generally available in four new regions

Azure Network Watcher is now generally available in UAE North, Switzerland North, Norway West, and Germany West Central regions.

Native Azure Active Directory authentication support and Azure VPN Client

Native Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) authentication support for OpenVPN protocol, and Azure VPN Client for Windows are generally available for Azure point-to-site (P2S) VPN. Native Azure AD authentication support enables user-based policies, conditional access, and multi-factor authentication (MFA) for P2S VPN. Native Azure AD authentication requires both Azure VPN Gateway integration and a new Azure VPN client to obtain and validate an Azure AD token.

Unified network monitoring with connection monitor in preview

Azure Network Watcher now has a new and improved connection monitor feature. Connection monitor provides unified end-to-end connection monitoring capabilities for hybrid and Azure deployments. Some of the new capabilities include:

A single console for configuring and monitoring connectivity and network quality from Azure and on-premises VMs/hosts.
The ability to monitor endpoints within and across Azure regions, on-premises sites, and global service locations.
Higher and configurable probing frequencies and support for more protocols.
Faster time to detect and diagnose issues in Azure and hybrid networks.
Access to historical monitoring data retained in Log Analytics.

Azure Bastion is available in 20 new regions

Azure Bastion, the managed PaaS service that provides secure and seamless RDP/SSH connectivity to your virtual machines directly in the Azure portal over SSL and without any public IP on your virtual machines, is now generally available in 20 new regions.

Active Directory authentication support on Azure Files (preview)

You can now mount your Azure Files using AD credentials with the exact same access control experience as on-premises. You may leverage an Active Directory domain service either hosted on-premises or on Azure for authenticating user access to Azure Files for both premium and standard tiers. Managing file permissions is also simple. As long as your Active Directory identities are synced to Azure AD, you can continue to manage the share level permission through standard role-based access control (RBAC). For directory and file level permission, you simply configure Windows ACLs (NTFS DACLs) using Windows File Explorer just like any regular file share.

Azure Stack

Kubernetes on Azure Stack

Microsoft now supports Kubernetes cluster deployment on Azure Stack, a certified Kubernetes Cloud Provider. Install Kubernetes using Azure Resource Manager templates generated by ACS-Engine on Azure Stack.

Azure IaaS and Azure Stack: announcements and updates (January 2020 – Weeks: 05 and 06)

Azure

New solution for Azure Monitor for virtual machines

The new solution for Azure Monitor for VMs will soon be available in all regions. This update will provide richer monitoring functionality and map data sets for Service Map customers. Once it’s available in your region, it’ll be necessary to upgrade to the new solution in order to continue using Azure Monitor for VMs. Disruption to your workflow should be minimal since Azure Monitor for VMs is still in preview, compared to upgrading after general availability.

Azure Cost Management and billing updates

Here are a few of the latest improvements and updates related to Azure Cost Management in January 2020:

Large file shares (100 TiB) on standard is available world-wide

Large file shares (100 TiB) on standard is available in all regions world-wide, including national clouds (Gov, China, Germany).

Azure DNS private zones is now available in Azure Government and Azure China

Azure DNS private zones is now generally available in Azure Government and Azure China regions. Use Azure DNS private zones for DNS resolution across one or more virtual networks in Azure Government and Azure China clouds. Azure DNS private zones provides a reliable and secure DNS service to manage and resolve domain names in an Azure virtual network without the need to add a custom DNS solution.

Managed identities on lab virtual machines in Azure DevTest Labs

Lab owners can now enable user-assigned managed identities on lab virtual machines in Azure DevTest Labs. Managed identities is a feature of Azure Active Directory that can authenticate any Azure service, including Azure Key Vault, without any credentials in your code. With this feature, lab users can now share Azure resources such as Azure SQL Database in the context of the lab. Once configured, every existing or newly created lab virtual machine will be enabled with this managed identity, and the lab user will be able to access resources once logged in to their machine.

New AMD-based Dav4 and Eav4 Azure VMs are available in additional regions

New Azure Dav4-series and Eav4-series virtual machines based on the latest AMD EPYC™ processor are now available in East US, East US2, West US2, Southeast Asia, North Europe, and West Europe regions. The Dav4-series and Das v4-series Azure VMs are suited for general-purpose workloads. The Eav4-series and Eas v4-series are ideal for memory-intensive workloads.

HBv2-Series VMs are Generally Available

HBv2 VMs are Generally Available in the US South Central region .HBv2 Virtual Machines feature 120 AMD EPYC™ 7002-series CPU cores, 480 GB of RAM, 480 MB of L3 cache, and no simultaneous multithreading (SMT). HBv2 Virtual Machines provide up to 350 GB/sec of memory bandwidth.