This blog, we will be covering up monthly updates from Azure. Each update on this blog isn’t an exhaustive list of all the monthly updates. I would like to call out most specific updates from Infrastructure technologies (compute, storage, networking, identity, containers and security. please feel free to reach out using the contact link of this blog.
The list of updates (May 2020) covered in this post are below:
- Azure Backup supports with 32 disks in Virtual Machines is now in preview.
- Azure Backup now provides protection against accidental deletion of Azure file shares
- Azure AD integration with Azure Database (MySQL and PostgreSQL).
- Azure SQL Auditing to storage account behind Virtual Network and firewall now generally available.
- Optional Uptime SLA now available for Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS).
- Azure Site Recovery—Zone-to-zone disaster recovery now available.
- Azure Site Recovery now supports proximity placement groups.
- Azure custom role creation in the Azure portal is now generally available.
- Azure Key Vault service enhancements now available.
- Azure Monitor enhancements are now available.
Azure Backup supports with 32 disks in Virtual Machines is now in public preview
Azure Backup now supports Azure Virtual Machines (VMs) with up to 32 attached disks (in preview). Previously, the limit was 16 disks per VM. The individual disk size can be up to 32 TB and maximum of 256 TB combined all disks for a VM.
This feature is available in limited regions and Australia east is included in this public preview.
This service will be available in all regions by end of June 2020.
If you are interested in this feature in other regions, sign up for the limited preview by writing to us at AskAzureBackupTeam@microsoft.com.
Azure Backup now provides protection against accidental deletion of Azure file shares
To provide protection against accidental deletion in Azure files, Azure Backup has added one more level of security to the Azure file shares snapshot management solution by providing protection against the accidental or malicious deletion of backed-up file shares.
Azure backup enables soft delete feature on storage account with 14 days as retention and it can be reset as customer requirement between 1 and 365 days.
Azure AD integration with Azure Database (MySQL and PostgreSQL)
The Azure Active Directory integration for Azure Database for MySQL is now generally available. This feature enables to securely sign in to database by using Azure Active Directory and manage credentials in a central place.
Azure AD integration with PostgreSQL is now generally available for use and this provides more secure way for authentication.
Azure SQL Auditing to storage account behind Virtual Network and firewall now generally available
This is really cool stuff and more important from security. This option provides to store Azure SQL events on a storage account with behind VNET and firewall. This securely stores the auditing information for Azure SQL into storage account.
Optional Uptime SLA now available for Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS)
This is another great update from Azure on last month. AKS is a free container service that simplifies deployment, operations and management of Kubernetes as a fully managed orchestrator service. Paying only for nodes, only what you use and no charge for cluster management.
Financially-backed service level agreement (SLA) that guarantees an uptime of 99.95% for the Kubernetes API server for clusters that use Azure Availability Zone and 99.9% for clusters that do not use Azure Availability Zone.
To summarise:
| Free | With Uptime SLA | |
| API Server availability | 99.5% | 99.9% and 99.95% with Availability zone. |
| SLA-backed | No | Yes |
| Price | Free | $0.10/hour |
Azure Site Recovery—Zone-to-zone disaster recovery now available
Azure Site Recovery brings disaster recovery support for Azure VMs in Availability Zones, as zone-to-zone DR. Now if a single Azure availability zone is compromised, fail over your VMs to a different zone within the same region and access them from the secondary availability zone. Support for Zone to Zone disaster recovery is currently limited to two regions: Southeast Asia and UK South.
Azure Site Recovery now supports proximity placement group
Azure Site Recovery now supports proximity placement groups (PPGs). With this release, any virtual machine (VM) hosted inside a PPG can be protected using Site Recovery. While enabling replication of such a VM, you can provide a PPG in the secondary region as an additional parameter.
This is available only through PowerShell and in all azure regions.
Azure custom role creation in the Azure portal is now generally available
This great feature and provides portal support for creating custom role in Azure. Earlier creating it was only with Azure Cli and ARM. You can clone existing role or start from scratch.
Azure Key Vault service enhancements now available
Azure Key Vault has announced below enhancements:
- Enhanced security with private link. This provides an option for accessing Key vault with private endpoint.
- Rotation of secrets. Notifications for keys, secrets and certificates provides a notification while point of lifecycle of these.
- More choices for BYOK.
Azure Monitor enhancements are now available
Azure announced below enhancements for Azure monitor:
- Preview of Azure Monitor Application Insights on Azure Monitor Logs workspaces.
- General availability of Azure Monitor for Azure Storage and Azure Monitor for Azure Cosmos DB.
- Preview of Azure Monitor for Azure Key Vault and Azure Monitor for Redis Cache
- Capacity reservation and CMK encryption with dedicated Azure Monitor Logs clusters for large-scale deployments.
Thanks for your time and I hope to provide Azure monthly updates regularly
References:
Santhosh has over 15 years of experience in the IT organization. Working as a Cloud Infrastructure Architect and has a wide range of expertise in Microsoft technologies, with a specialization in public & private cloud services for enterprise customers. My varied background includes work in cloud computing, virtualization, storage, networks, automation and DevOps.
