September 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 September Edition of
Azure Insights: Monthly Round Up!
Authored by Anthony Norwood
Welcome to the September edition of our Monthly Azure Round-up, where we bring you the latest developments and updates from Microsoft Azure. Whether you’re looking to stay ahead of key changes or strategically plan your cloud infrastructure, this round-up ensures you’re equipped with the knowledge you need. This month, we’re covering several General Availability (GA) releases that will enhance your Azure experience, from zone redundancy for Public IPs to auto-renewal for disaster recovery certificates.
These updates are designed to help IT leaders not only meet compliance and regulatory standards but also streamline operations and ensure system resilience. Read on to explore how these innovations can benefit your organisation and keep you ahead of the curve.
General Availability (GA) Releases
Azure Public IPs are zone redundant by default
Public IPs will now be zone redundant by default, at no additional cost.
What that means for you?
Zonal redundancy for your Public IPs is now included as standard, protecting access to your public facing workloads in the event of a zonal issue.
Azure Database for MySQL Flexible Server supports Managed HSM
MySQL Flexible Server now support Hardware Security Module Key Vaults, providing FIPS 140-2 Level 3 standard-compliant cryptographic processors.
What does this mean for you?
Meet compliance and regulatory requirements for cryptographic processors in Azure Database for MySQL by leveraging Azure Key Vault Managed HSM.
Auto-renewal of certificates for on-premises to Azure Site Recovery
Automatic Renewal for certificates used in on-premises to Azure disaster recovery is now supported.
What does this mean for you?
Simplify management of the required certificates used for On-Prem to Azure disaster recovery by enabling automatic renewal, reducing workload for operations teams and ensuring fidelity of your disaster recovery solution by eliminating potential risks.
Azure Storage Mover with Bandwidth Management
Bandwidth Management Schedules are now available, allowing for optimised network performance.
What does this mean for you?
Shape your network bandwidth by ensuring that your Storage Mover activities only occur in times when your network is less saturated, such as out of working hours.
Virtual Machine Scale Set Automatic Instance Repairs – Reimage, Restart Repair Actions
New automatic repair options are available for Virtual Machine Scale Set instances, allowing for reimaging and restarting in addition to replacing.
What does this mean for you?
New recovery options for VMSS instances allow greater control for app aware automatic recovery; rather than just replacing an entire instance, you can now restart it or reimage it instead.
Larger Enterprise tier cache instances for Azure Cache for Redis
New E200 and E400 cache instances, delivering hundreds of gigabytes of memory and up to 240vCPUs of compute.
What does this mean for you?
Drive greater traffic through Azure Cache for Redis with the newly available higher tiers, to deliver continued app performance as you scale with growth.
Attach and detach of VMs on Virtual Machine Scale Sets for a single fault domain
Add and remove VMs from Virtual Machine Scale Sets with no downtime.
What does this mean for you?
Enhance single node VMs by adding them to an existing VMSS resource and taking advantage of VMSS features. If you need to troubleshoot, you can remove the VM from the VMSS without affecting the rest of the scale set.
Enforce password-less authentication with Azure Cache for Redis
Microsoft Entra ID Authentication can now be enforced for Azure Cache for Redis, improving security by disabling key-based authentication.
What does this mean for you?
Utilise Azure Managed Identity or Entra Service Principals to authenticate with Redis instances, improving security by allowing for key-based authentication to be disabled.
Cross Region Restore of SQL and HANA database backups from a vault with Private Endpoints enabled
Cross Region Restore of SQL and SAP HANA backups are now available, if the vault has private endpoints enabled.
What does this mean for you?
You can now restore SQL and SAP HANA database backups in a different region from that which it was taken in, for private endpoint enabled vaults. This will allow for more complex disaster recovery plans by allowing you to restore in a paired region.
Terraform support for geo-restore in Azure Database for PostgreSQL – Flexible Server
New functionality in the AzureRM Terraform provider to enable the geo-restore create option for new instances.
What does this mean for you?
If you use Terraform as your Infrastructure-As-Code (IaC) provider you are now able to choose the ‘geo-restore’ create option for new instances, simplifying the process for creating new instances based on existing ones as well as being able to integrate with existing CI/CD processes.
Dev Containers templates for Azure SQL Database
Recovery Services Appliances deployed in on-premises and non-Azure environments can now be reset or deleted from the Azure portal.
What does this mean for you?
Allow your developers to hit the ground running when architecting, building, and testing solutions that leverage Azure SQL Database by deploying a pre-defined Dev Container template for Azure SQL Database – preloaded with the plugins, languages, and tools required.
Public Previews
- Entra ID support for SSH connections in portal
- Instance Mix on Virtual Machine Scale Sets
- Customer managed planned failover for Azure Storage
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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