November Azure Insights: Monthly Round Up
Each month we share the latest news and updates from Microsoft including key changes, General Availability (GA) releases, Public Previews and new resources.
Welcome to our November Edition of
Azure Insights: Monthly Round Up!
Authored by Anthony Norwood
Welcome to the November edition of our Monthly Azure Round-up! Our goal is to keep IT leaders equipped with the latest knowledge, developments and updates from Microsoft, enabling you to make informed decisions and optimise your cloud infrastructure.
This month, discover how you can save up to 56% on the latest Linux VMs—an offer available until March 31st. Plus, it’s time to start planning for the upcoming retirement of Azure Front Door support for TLS 1.0 and 1.1, effective from December 1st, 2024.
Dive into these updates and more to see how they can enhance your Azure experience and keep your organisation resilient and compliant.
General Availability (GA) Releases
Save up to 56% on the latest Linux VMs in most Azure regions for a limited time
Save an additional 15% on 1-year Reserved Linux VMs until March 31st 2025.
What that means for you?
Available for qualifying SKUs and regions, you can save an additional 15% on top of the existing savings of a 1-year Reserved Linux VM for a limited period of time – leading to savings of up to 56% compared to the PAYG rate.
Azure SQL updates for early-October 2024
Included in the latest updates, GA status for bi-directional failovers between SQL Server 2022 and Azure SQL Managed Instance.
What that means for you?
Now generally available, it has become much easier to utilise Azure PaaS offerings for SQL Server high availability and disaster recovery. Offload your read-only workloads to Azure, or more easily implement multi-cloud redundancy for SQL Server both in and out of Azure.
Automated Patching retirement and replacement with Azure Update Manager
Automated OS Patching will be retired in 2027 and replaced by Azure Update Manager.
What does this mean for you?
Microsoft are continuing their drive to consolidate tooling within Azure. Automation Account based patching was recently deprecated and this is the latest announcement in the line of tooling for managing patching of your VMs in Azure. Azure Update Manager offers centralised update management, customisable schedules and compliance reporting.
Azure Cobalt 100 Arm-based Virtual Machines
General Purpose Dpsv6 and Dplsv6, and Memory Optimised Epsv6 VM sizes are now generally available.
What does this mean for you?
Delivering up to 1.4x CPU performance, up to 2x performance on web servers, .NET applications and in-memory cache applications compared to the previous Arm-based VMs in Azure – they also supported 4x local storage IOPS with NVMe and up to 1.5x network bandwidth
Force detach zone redundant data disks during zone outage
Forcefully detach data disks from VMs affected by zonal outages, improving RTO in a DR scenario.
What does this mean for you?
Without this feature, it was often impossible to successfully detach disks from VMs impacted by a zonal outage. With this new feature you and your organisation can now improve RTOs by forcefully detaching disks from affected VMs during a DR scenario.
Java on Azure Container Apps
Azure Container Apps now natively supports Java, providing a wide range of productivity experiences to help you configure, monitor and troubleshoot Java apps.
What does this mean for you?
This newly available feature further extends the capabilities of Azure Container Apps by allowing you to leverage native Azure capabilities such as Azure Monitor to assist in the day-to-day management of your Java apps hosted in Azure Container Apps.
GRS and CRR support for Azure VMs using Premium SSD v2 and Ultra Disk in Azure Backup
Geo-Redundant Storage and Cross-Region Restore is now available for Premium SSD V2 and Ultra Disks.
What does this mean for you?
Extend your recoverability in the event of a disaster to other regions for workloads running on Premium SSD V2 and Ultra Disk managed disks – allowing you not only to backup your data to a separate geographical region but also to perform test restores in the secondary region for BCDR workbooks and planning.
App Service Environment memory intensive pricing tier
Memory-optimised isolated plans are now available that offer a higher ratio of memory to CPU compared to general-purpose plans
What does this mean for you?
If your workload consumes more memory than vCPU and you find yourself hitting compute limits due to this, the new memory-optimised sizes will enable you to increase the amount of memory in an App Service Plan without increasing the number of vCPUs for a more cost-effective approach.
Storage account default egress limit increase to 200 Gbps
Default minimum egress limits have been raised from 120Gbps to 200Gbps in any region where the old limit applied.
What does this mean for you?
The maximum egress speed is now 200Gbps for all blob storage workloads in the listed regions, improving outbound performance for data stored in Azure Blob Storage.
Redis 7.2 on Azure Cache for Redis Enterprise
Redis 7.2, first released in August 2023, is now available for Azure Cache for Redis Enterprise.
What does this mean for you?
Offering several key improvements over Redis 6.0, Redis 7.2 is now generally available for Azure Cache for Redis Enterprise – unless you’ve otherwise indicated, your Redis cache instances will be automatically updated to 7.2.
Azure Database for MySQL – Flexible Server flexible maintenance
Flexible maintenance scheduling for Azure Database for MySQL – Flexible Server is now available.
What does this mean for you?
You can now be in control of when maintenance is performed against your Azure Database for MySQL – Flexible Server instances – choose any date within a 30-day window to reschedule maintenance to a time that better suits you and your business, avoiding disruption during peak hours.
Public Previews
Azure Virtual Network IP address management
Centrally manage your IP Address Pools, ensuring that there are no overlapping address spaces across your network – both on-premises and across multi-cloud environments.
What does this mean for you?
A common challenge in sprawling virtualised infrastructure is managing private IP address ranges to ensure that there is no overlap (creating the requirement for complex NAT handling). This new feature that’s currently in public preview will allow Azure Virtual Network Manager to automatically assign and reserve IP addresses and ranges and remove the headache of ensuring overlaps don’t occur – throw away your spreadsheets, PaaS is in town.
Switch to Azure Business Continuity (ABC) Center for at scale BCDR management
Currently in Public Preview, ABC has already replaced Azure Backup Center across all regions and supports various environments and solutions.
What does this mean for you?
Although Backup Center is still available via the menu in ABC, Microsoft are asking regular consumers of their BCDR tooling to feedback on this new centralised management portal which combines the Azure Site Recovery and Azure Backup solutions, deployed both in Azure and hybrid.
Live Resize for Azure Premium SSD v2 and Ultra Disks
Extend the size of your Premium SSD V2 and Ultra SSD disks without the need for downtime on your VM.
What does this mean for you?
Now in Public Preview in select regions, this extends the capabilities already available for Standard HDD, Standard SSD, and Premium SSD disks to extend your data disks without needing to deallocate your VMs anymore.
DNAT on Azure Firewall Private IP address
DNAT both your Public and Private IP addresses, allowing for better integration of overlapping networks (commonly found when undergoing mergers or acquisitions).
What does this mean for you?
Up until now it’s only been possible to use DNAT in Azure Firewall for public IP addresses; now you’ll be able to also use the private IP address, allowing for DNAT capabilities in private networks and easing the transition of overlapping networks into a single topology.
Retirement
Announcing upcoming retirements in Azure AI Language
Microsoft have announced the upcoming retirement of custom sentiment analysis (preview) and custom text analytics for health (preview) in Azure AI Language. These features are being retired on 10th January 2025.
Based on customer feedback, these features are being discontinued in the new year in favour of other similar functionality across the Azure AI offerings
More on the retirement of custom sentiment analysis
More on the retirement of custom text analytics for health
Azure Front Door support for TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 will end by Dec 1st, 2024
Front Door will no longer support insecure TLS versions from 1st December 2024.
What does this mean for you?
A much shorter timeline on this, but Front Door will also stop supporting TLS 1.0 and 1.1 from 1st December 2024. Make sure that all traffic is validated over the next few weeks to work with TLS 1.2 to prevent any outages as a result of this change.
Azure Application Gateway support for TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 will end by 31 August 2025
Application Gateways will no longer support insecure TLS versions from 31st August 2025.
What does this mean for you?
Continuing the drive to preventing TLS 1.0 and 1.1 from being used in Azure, support will be dropped at the end of August 2025 for these insecure TLS versions in Application Gateways. Ensure that any traffic traversing your gateways are validated for at least TLS 1.2 by this date
VpnGw1-5 (Non-AZ SKUs) will be retired on Sep 30, 2026 – gateways will be automatically migrated to AZ SKUs
VPN Gateways with no zonal redundancy will no longer be available from 1st January 2025, and all existing gateways without redundancy will automatically be migrated by Sep 2026.
What does this mean for you?
Making redundancy the default option, you’ll no longer be able to provision new VPN Gateways with a non-Availability Zone SKU from the 1st January 2025 – this will coincide with a reduction in price for Availability Zone SKUs and finalise with all gateways migrated by 30th September 2026.
Get In Touch
If you have any questions about the updates in this post or if you would like to know more about our Microsoft Azure services please contact us. You can also subscribe to our monthly Azure Round Ups below so that you never miss an update.
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