In today’s fast-paced cloud landscape, it’s crucial to stay informed about the constant advancements in cloud computing, and Azure is at the forefront of innovation. With its robust services and powerful capabilities, Azure empowers businesses to accelerate their digital transformation, achieve scalability, enhance security, and unlock new opportunities.

My mission here at Azure Centric is to provide you with a comprehensive overview of the latest Azure updates, announcements, and features so that you can make the most of your Azure investments. From new service releases and updates to insightful tips, best practices, and success stories, I strive to deliver valuable content that helps you leverage Azure to its fullest potential.

I am thrilled to bring you the latest and most significant weekly updates from the dynamic world of Microsoft Azure.

General Availability: Support for Linux clients to use identity-based access to Azure file shares over SMB - Linux SMB clients can now use Azure Files identity based authentication and authorization. This capability is available to devices that are domain joined to either customer-managed Microsoft AD DS or Azure AD DS.

Azure CycleCloud 8.4.0 release - We’re excited to announce the release of CycleCloud 8.4.0. Here is the list of the improvements and bug fixes: New Features

  • Slurm 3.0 is now supported
  • Encryption-At-Host is now supported
  • Added Event Log for auditing storage credentials
  • Cluster usage schema now includes VM size details
  • New regions supported for pricing, including Poland, Sweden, and Jio India

Resolved Issues

  • VMSS which were removed outside of CycleCloud could trigger a null-pointer exception.
  • Users were not able to interact with checkboxes in forms
  • node.json was not parsed using utf-8 encoding on Windows
  • Pricing for Ultra disks was not collected correctly
  • VMs using Ultra disks failed to be created if there was no price information
  • Restoring from backup sometimes picked an older version to restore from
  • Restoring from backup did not work if port 80/443 were in use
  • LSF example template was broken
  • In certain cases, nodes could be added to the cluster but not counted against the limits
  • Users were not able to change their password
  • CVE-2021-43980 is mitigated

Public preview: Azure Container Apps available in Azure China - You can now use Azure Container Apps in Azure China.

Generally Available: Kubernetes 1.26 support in AKS - Benefit from Kubernetes 1.26 features in production.

Public preview: AKS service mesh addon for Istio - Installing and using Istio on your AKS clusters is now easier.

Generally Available: Long term support version in AKS - You now have the option to enable long term support for a specific Kubernetes version.

Public preview: Fail Fast Upgrade on API Breaking change detection - Use this feature to reduce time you have to spend on post upgrade workload troubleshooting

Generally Available: Azure CNI Overlay for Linux - Simplify your AKS cluster management, routing configurations, and efficiently scale your clusters. OpenCost for AKS cost visibility - Get greater visibility into current and historic Kubernetes spend and resource allocation..

GA: Azure Active Directory workload identity with AKS - You can now use AAD workload identity with AKS in production

Azure Service Operator stable release version 2.0 now available - Create and manage over 100 Azure resources such as databases, storage accounts, VMs, and more from within Kubernetes.

Hotpatch is now available on preview images of Windows Server VMs on Azure with the Desktop Experience installation mode - Hotpatch is available for preview images of Windows Server Azure Edition VMs running the Desktop Experience installation mode.

Generally Available: Azure App Service - New Premium v3 Offerings - Introducing two new offerings in the Premium v3 (Pv3) service tier on Azure App Service

Public Preview: Isovalent Cilium Enterprise through Azure Marketplace - Isovalent Cilium Enterprise is now available to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) customers in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace marking a key milestone in delivering the expansive eBPF-powered Cilium and Isovalent Cilium Enterprise to Azure Kubernetes Service and Azure.

Regional expansion: Azure Elastic SAN Public Preview is now available in more regions - Azure Elastic SAN (preview) is now available in Australia East, North Europe, Sweden Central, UK South, West Europe, East US, East US 2, South Central US, and West US 3.

Azure Storage Mover is now Generally Available - We are excited to announce that Azure Storage Mover is now generally available.

General Availability: Azure CNI Overlay - Azure CNI Overlay utilizes an overlay network to reduce IP utilization while providing better performance and scale.

Retirement notice: transition to the Authentication methods policy for Azure Active Directory - The ability to manage authentication methods in the legacy MFA and SSPR policies will be retired on 30 September 2024.

Connect Azure Stream Analytics to Azure Data Explorer using managed private endpoint - You can connect your Azure Stream Analytics job to Azure Data Explorer / Kusto clusters using managed private endpoints /

Use Stream Analytics to process exported data from Application Insights - Use Stream Analytics to process exported data from Application Insights

Cheers,

Marcos Nogueira
Azure MVP
azurecentric.com
Twitter: @mdnoga