Ashish Sharma

Azure service updates General availability: Changes coming to Azure Pipelines free grants With this update, we are including temporary changes that will impact the process to acquire Azure Pipelines free grants. New users will have to send an email and provide additional information to get free CI/CD. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates General availability: Azure Event Grid now provides support for delivery headers and additional advanced filters among other updates Azure Event Grid now supports additional advanced filters, setting customer headers on requests delivering events, configuring TTL on messages delivered to Azure Storage Queues, and setting system-assigned managed identities on regional System Topics. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates Wire Data 2.0 (preview) will be retired on 31 March 2022 Because Azure Monitor Virtual Machine insights and Service Map both provide network connection data sets in Logs, utilize the Dependency agent, and have connections with Azure Sentinel, we will be retiring Wire Data 2.0 (preview) on 31 March 2022. Please transition to using Azure Monitor Virtual Machine insights or Service Map by that date. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates General availability: Azure Data Explorer external tables Create an external table located in Azure Blob Storage, Azure Data Lake Store Gen1, or Azure Data Lake Store Gen2 to analyze and query your data. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates Encryption scopes in Azure Storage now generally available Encryption scopes enable you to provision multiple encryption keys to manage encryption at the container or blob level.  Customers and ISVs can now use a single storage account for multi-tenancy scenarios by provisioning separate encryption keys for each customer. The key that protects an encryption scope may be either a Microsoft-managed key or a customer-managed key in Azure Key Vault.  Click here for more information.

Azure service updates General availability: Azure Communication Services Now you can use Azure Communication Services to add video, voice, SMS, chat, and telephony capabilities into almost any web, mobile, or desktop application. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates Backup for Azure Managed Disk is now generally available Azure Disk Backup offers snapshot lifecycle management to Azure Managed Disk by automating periodic creation of snapshot and retain it for configured duration using Backup policy. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates Public preview: Service Tags for User Defined Routing Simplify route creation and management by using Service Tags to represent multiple IP ranges in a single route. Utilize over 60 tags representing ranges for Microsoft and Azure service. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates General availability: Stream Analytics runs on Azure Stack Hub Stream Analytics now is available on Azure Stack Hub as an IoT Edge module, supporting native input and output adapters, such as Event Hub and IoT Hub. It allows customer to build truly hybrid data solutions. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates General availability: New VM series supported by Azure Batch Take advantage of new VM sizes that are now available when creating your Batch pools, including the latest HPC and GPU sizes. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates General availability: IoT Hub Azure portal extension update If you're using IP filter, add your computer's IP address to the allow list to keep using IoT Hub in Azure portal. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates Public preview: Announcing the new Power BI embedded analytics playground Check out the new Power BI embedded analytics playground (public preview). You can find in the new playground experiences for developer and non-developers to get first-hand experience of Power BI embedded analytics. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates AzCopy v10.9.0 now in public preview: import from GCP to Azure Block Blobs AzCopy v10.9.0 now in preview supports Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to Microsoft Azure Storage Block Blob imports. This version also includes scanning logs which can help in debugging.  Click here for more information.

Azure service updates General availability: Enhanced Azure Dashboards experience for pinned Log Analytics parts Log Analytics enhances pinned parts Azure Dashboards experience. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates HBv3-Series VMs now generally available in East US, South Central US, and West Europe HBv3-series VMs for HPC now available in the East US, South Central US, and West Europe regions Click here for more information.

Azure service updates Azure Sphere OS version 21.03 is now available for evaluation The 21.03 OS quality update includes enhancements to mitigate against 5 CVEs. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates Directory scoped shared access signatures (SAS) generally available Directory scoped SAS allows more granular access assignment for ADLS Gen2. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates Public preview: App Service Managed Certificates now supports apex domains Create apex domains on your Linux and Windows web app at no additional cost. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates Azure Data Explorer performance update (EngineV3) is now generally available Azure Data Explorer (Kusto) is announcing the general availability of it's performance update (EngineV3) which provides unprecedented performance in Big Data Logs and telemetry scenarios. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates General availability: App Service Managed Certificates now supports apex domains Create apex domains on your Linux and Windows web app at no additional cost. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates Service Broker message exchange for Azure SQL Managed Instance in public preview Service Broker message exchange between Azure SQL Managed Instances (public preview) allows you to build reliable distributed applications with asynchronous message processing functionality by leveraging SQL Server engine’s native support for messaging/queuing. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates General availability: Azure Data Explorer (ADX) Performance Updates The next version of Azure Data Explorer (ADX) with performance updates is now available. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates Machine Learning Services on Azure SQL Managed Instance now generally available Use machine learning capabilities on a Managed Instance of Azure SQL Database for ease of moving your data, packages, and models to a cloud ready environment fully configured for machine learning. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates General availability: Dynamic data masking granular permissions for Azure SQL and Azure Synapse Analytics Control who can access your SQL data by using dynamic data masking granular permission on your Azure SQL Database, Azure Synapse Analytics, and Azure SQL Managed Instance. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates Azure Monitor SQL insights for Azure SQL in public preview Get a single monitoring experience for all your cloud-based SQL deployments with Azure Monitor SQL insights Click here for more information.

Azure service updates Long-term backup retention (LTR) for Azure SQL Managed Instance in public preview Configure long-term backup retention for SQL Managed Instance databases and retain database backups beyond the 35 days provided by Azure SQL Managed Instance automated backups, for up to 10 years. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates Generally available: Monitor your spending through forecasted cost alerts with Azure Cost Management and Billing Prevent cost overruns with Azure budget alerts on forecasted costs Click here for more information.

Azure service updates Azure API Management support for request and response validation policies has reached general availability.  Protect your APIs from several OWASP API Security Top 10 vulnerabilities without requiring an add-on solution. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates Limited preview: Make workloads on AMD-backed virtual machines confidential without recompiling code Azure and AMD announce landmark in confidential computing evolution -- it is now even easier to extend your protection of data at rest and data in transit to protect data in use. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates Azure Storage Explorer v1.18.0 is now generally available New release of Azure Storage Explorer (v1.18.0) will decrease time to load, connect, and transfer data to Azure Storage. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates General availability: Media Services adds new "StandBy" mode for Live Events to speed up start times from warm state Media Services Live Events now support a lower-cost "StandBy" mode to allow you to pre-allocate live streaming at a lower cost. You can now use the new standby mode to transition quickly to a "Running" state faster than starting from cold creation and reduces your operational costs. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates General availability: Media Services introduces new security features Media Services introduces new security features available in the 2020-05-01 version of the Azure Media Services API allowing you to now bring your own encryption keys, and configure trusted storage using System Managed Identities. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates Azure IoT Central new and updated features—February 2021 February updates include device model, API, dashboard, and documentation improvements. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates General availability: Azure Media Services – HEVC encoding support in Standard Encoder You can now use High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) or H.265 in the Standard Encoder. This new feature is available for Content Aware encoding, Adaptive Bitrate encoding, and creating your own custom transforms. Using HEVC along with supported decoding devices will provide you with the ability to deliver streaming content at reduced bitrates while maintaining the same video quality compared to H.264/AVC. This in turn will help reduce overall delivery costs through a CDN, and allow your viewers to receive higher quality streams on constrained networks. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates New Norway East region added to Azure HDInsight HDInsight is now generally available for Norway East customers. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates Azure Storage — Routing Preferences now generally available Routing Preference for Azure Storage provide the flexibility to optimize traffic between clients external to Azure and your storage account for premium network reliability and performance over the Microsoft global network or for cost efficiency using the transit ISP network. You can now also publish route-specific endpoints for your storage account. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates HDInsight Apache Kafka REST Proxy is now generally available Azure HDInsight Kafka REST proxy greatly simplifies messaging architecture patterns by allowing Kafka producers and consumers to be located outside the virtual network and enables working with unsupported languages. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates New Brazil Southeast region added to Azure HDInsight HDInsight is now available for Brazil South customers requiring scenario-based in-country disaster recovery. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates Token lifecycle management is now in private preview With this sprint update, we're announcing Azure DevOps REST API support for personal access tokens that's available now in private preview. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates Azure Routing Preference is now generally available Choice matters when it comes to cloud. Routing preference enables network service tiers for internet bound traffic, letting you to optimize for performance or cost. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates General availability: Azure monitor for containers now supports Pods & Replica set live logs in AKS resource view View live logs of your pods & replica-sets in Azure Kubernetes Service(AKS) resource view. Filter, search, and troubleshoot your pods and replica-sets. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates Azure VMware Solution now generally available in the Southeast Asia region The new Azure VMware Solution has expanded availability to Southeast Asia (Singapore). This update is in addition to the existing availability in US East, US West, West Europe, Australia, Japan East, UK South, Canada Central, North US, and North Europe (Dublin) regions. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates Azure trusted launch for Virtual Machines now in public preview Azure offers trusted launch as a seamless way to bolster the security of Generation 2 VMs. Designed to protect against boot kits, rootkits, and kernel-level malware, trusted launch is comprised of secure boot, virtual trusted platform module (vTPM), and boot integrity monitoring. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates Automatic VM guest patching is now in public preview for Linux VMs Automatic VM guest patching provides safe and automatic patching for virtual machines to simplify update management and maintain security compliance. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates Public preview: Azure Purview Resource Set configuration enhancements You can now customize how Azure Purview Data Catalog assets are grouped into resource sets and are named as well. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates New orchestration mode for Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets now in public preview Increase the availability at scale of business-critical applications with new Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets features. Simplify workload deployment, management, and scalability with Virtual Machine Scale Sets flexible orchestration mode, now in public preview. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates Public preview: Register Azure subscriptions and Resource Groups with Azure Purview Manage your data with greater ease by using Azure Purview to register multiple sources at the same time. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates Improve Azure Spot Virtual Machines runtime and simulate evictions with new features in public preview New Azure Spot Virtual Machines capabilities – ‘try & restore’ and REST APIs to simulate VM evictions - are now in public preview. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates General availability: Azure API Management now has named values integration with Azure Key Vault API Management’s named values can now be stored and managed in Azure Key Vault. Click here for more information.

Azure service updates Azure API Management extension for Visual Studio Code now generally available Perform common management operations on your Azure API Management service instances without switching away from Visual Studio Code. Click here for more information.