MSIgnite 2019 Azure News and Announcements Part 1

The Microsoft Ignite is running since Monday and in this blog post I will give you a short overview about the new announcement in the range of Azure services.

To each service you have a headline link to additional information on the Microsoft Azure blog article or the update site. Did you have any questions about this announcements, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Don´t miss our MsIgnite Azure Recap Meetups in Thueringen and Bonn. Information about the Meetups at the end of the article.

Contents

Azure Arc (public preview)

Azure Arc is a new service in public preview to extend Azure management capabilitites to ressources anywhere. This means with Azure Arc you can deploy and manage ressources, like Windows, Linux VM´s and Kubernetes Services in another Cloud provider or in On-Prem environments from one central management place. This new features allows to integrate all resources in one single point of management. Learn more about Azure Arc in the blog post from Thomas Maurer.

New Azure VM sizes

There are some new Azure VM sizes available. Take a look at the new enhancements in the following list.

Azure Da_v4 and Das_v4 VMs

New Azure VMs with more power for high performance workloads become available in the Azure environment. This VM-series based on the lattest release of Azure Epyc CPUs (7452) and provide up to 96 vCPUs, 384GB RAM and 2,4TB temporary SSD-based storage. The Das-series will also support Premium SSDs and the new release of Ultra Disks

Azure Ea_v4 and Eas_v4

Another new Azure VMs based on AMD Epyc 7452 CPUs for memory-intensive workloads. This series supports up to 96 vCPUs, 672GB RAM and 2.400GB of SSD-based temporary storage. This series also supports Ultra Disks.

Azure Private Link now available in all regions

Azure Private link enables many service (Azure SQL DB, Azure SQL DW, Azure Storage, etc.) to connect directly via private IP address to ressources inside the private VNET without need for public IP address.

Windows Admin Center 1910 (GA)

The next release of Windows Admin Center (1910) is GA and ready for download. This release includes

Integration of Azure security center for hybrid server environment
New preview of Performance monitoring features to track server and VM performance
Enable Azure Arc for On-Prem VMs via WAC
Create new Azure VM via WAC
More integration for Azure File Sync
Onboard On-prem server to Security center via Windows Admin Center

Overview about new features

Azure VM Generation 2 (GA)

This was a long awaiting features and now Azure supports Generation 2 VMs. Gen 2 VMs are known from Hyper-V and enable a lots of new features on Azure, like increased memory and Intel software Guard extensions. With this new feature comes support for large VMs up to 12TB and allow customer provision OS Disks with up to 2TB of capacity.

Azure Function premium plan is GA

The premium plan for Azure Function is now GA. This allows functions without cold start delays.

Azure Migrate now supports Web App experience

Azure Migrate now provides a dedicated experience for migrating .NET WebApps to Azure.

Azure VM Scale set enhancements (Public preview)

For VM scale sets there are new features available. Now it is possible to create empty VM scale sets and add various VM with different sizes and series later.

Additionally now it is possible to provision custom images using a shared image gallery to share VMs accross different VMs. A nwe policy allow to determine in which order a VM will be scaled or deprovisioned.

Azure Bastion (GA)

Another long awaited features is Azure Bastion. With Azure Bastion you get access to all of your Azure VMs via the private IP. No needing for an Jump host or an public IP inside the network. Azure Bastion enable secure acces to your Azure VMs based on Linux or Windows. The service is a PaaS service and will deployed directly into the VNET.

Side node: There will be an upcoming blog post available for insights and provision of Azure Bastion. And mid december I will share a video session about the service and the provisioning on the great Azure Adventcalender from Gregor Suttie and Robert Hoper.

Azure VNET supports IPv6 (GA)

The preview starts in July 2019 and now is IPv6 general available worldwide in all Azure regions.

ASR now cleans up deallocated VMs and NICs

After an failover there will be create new ressources in the secondary regions. When the primary regions are back and running ASR takes a failback, replicate the data to the primary regions and run the services from there. Now the failover ressources will be deleted after a successful failback.

Azure Security Center enhancements

The Azure Security Center is the place to go for best practices and recommendations for the hole Azure environment. Late on day one, there are many new features released to ASC. Here are the list of new features:

Azure Cost Management now GA for CSP

Long awating feature for Azure Governance and cost management. The Azure Cost management (ACM) now supports cost management for Cloud Solutions Provider, the recommended way from Microsoft to provision Azure service to partners. Now partners can analyze and track cost via Cost management in the Azure portal.

Azure Sphere will be GA in February 2020

Connect and manage secure all IoT devices in one central service is the functionallity of Azure sphere. The service is planned to going GA in February 2020.

Microsoft Ignite Recap Thueringen and Cologne/Bonn

There are so many announcements about the Microsoft ignite. We are happy to announce a Microsoft Ignite Recap Meetup shortly after the Ignite. We will go deeper into the new announcements, showing demos and giving insights about additional features. We have to dates available. Take a look at the following list and safe your seat. Hope to see you all there.

Find more announcements in the second part of Azure News from the Microsoft Ignite.

Gregor Reimling