434 result(s)
Azure will deprecate the Custom Resource Provider (CuRP) service in 2026, retiring the feature by October 31, 2026. A scream test will run on October 27, 2025; the announcement also references an action on July 31, 2026 but the provided content is truncated and does not detail that event.
Azure Storage Mover introduces a container-to-container Azure Blob migration feature in Public Preview that lets organizations securely move data between two Blob containers across the same or different storage accounts, subscriptions, or Azure regions.
Azure Functions for Node.js now offers Service Bus SDK type bindings in public preview. This extends the SDK type bindings capability (previously available for Azure Blob Storage) to Service Bus, simplifying integration between Functions and Service Bus using native SDK types.
In mid-December 2025 Azure SQL introduced an Activity Log capability for Azure SQL Database serverless that identifies causes that auto-resume serverless workloads, helping customers troubleshoot and optimize access patterns.
Microsoft has announced a public preview of the Azure Cosmos DB Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Agent. Built on the Azure SRE Agent platform, the agent is intended to simplify diagnosing and resolving issues for applications that use Azure Cosmos DB by streamlining telemetry and troubleshooting workflows.
Azure NetApp Files advanced ransomware protection (ANF ARP) is now in Public Preview. ANF ARP is designed to help organizations proactively detect, respond to, and recover from ransomware threats on Azure NetApp Files cloud volumes by monitoring volumes.
Azure NetApp Files cross-zone-region replication (CZRR) is now generally available. CZRR builds on existing cross-region and cross-zone replication capabilities to let you replicate volumes both across Azure regions and across availability zones within a region, providing a combined solution for improved disaster recovery and resiliency.
The retirement date for default outbound access has been extended to March 31, 2026. This change aligns with the broader Azure Virtual Network (VNet) update and replaces the previously communicated September 30, 2025 date. The provided excerpt is truncated before describing what starts on March 31, 2026.
Azure Databricks dashboard subscriptions can now deliver insights directly into Microsoft Teams (Public Preview), bringing timely, actionable data into team workflows and reducing the need to separately check dashboards.
Azure Sphere OS version 25.12 is now available for evaluation in the Retail Eval feed. The release contains no customer-facing changes but includes significant under-the-hood build system modifications and is provided for evaluation and testing.
Azure Application Gateway V2 SKUs are now generally available with a FIPS 140-2 compliant mode, allowing customers to use FIPS-validated cryptographic modules to help meet US government and regulatory cryptography requirements.
Zonal Placement for Azure Files Premium LRS is now generally available in select regions, allowing you to pin storage accounts to a specific availability zone for explicit control over zone locality, improved high availability, fault isolation, and more predictable behavior.
Mistral Large 3, a frontier-class open-weight model licensed under Apache 2.0, is now available in Microsoft Foundry on Azure in Public Preview, offering enterprise-grade reliability, long-context comprehension, and multimodal reasoning suitable for production use.
Azure has announced general availability of MCP (Model Context Protocol) Server support for Azure Confidential Ledger. The MCP Server enables streamlined management of Azure resources, including Confidential Ledger, via natural-language prompts, simplifying interactions and operational workflows.
Azure Databricks now offers Serverless workspaces in Public Preview — a fully managed workspace option that includes preconfigured serverless compute and default storage to provide an enterprise-ready SaaS experience with minimal infrastructure management.
Azure Storage Blob SFTP now generally available with resumable uploads, allowing interrupted or partially transferred files to be reopened and the remaining content appended so transfers can continue without restarting from zero.
AzureML SDK V1 will reach end of life on June 30, 2026. The SDKs that operate with V1 — azureml-train-core, azureml-pipeline, azureml-pipeline-core, azureml-pipeline-internal, and azureml-pipeline-steps — will also be retired and should be removed as dependencies before that date.
The pg_squeeze extension is now generally available at version 1.9.1 for Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server, and you can upgrade your instance to this version.
Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server now supports the ip4r extension (Generally Available). ip4r provides efficient storage and indexing for IPv4 and IPv6 addresses and ranges and can be installed on Flexible Server instances.
Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server now supports the credcheck extension (general availability), which enforces password and credential validation policies directly within PostgreSQL.
Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server is now generally available in the Belgium Central region, enabling customers to deploy managed PostgreSQL Flexible Server instances in that Azure region.
Azure Load Balancer bandwidth metrics are now generally available with a new metric dimension named Protocol. Byte, Packet, and SYN Count metrics in the Azure portal include the Protocol dimension (TCP traffic shown as Protocol=6), enabling protocol-level metric views.
Microsoft announced general availability of the Perth Azure Extended Zone — a small-footprint Azure extension in the Perth metro area designed to support low-latency and data residency workloads.
Azure Network Watcher now has public preview support for using Managed Identities with VNET flow logs, Traffic Analytics, and packet capture, enabling identity-based authentication to store and analyze network traffic data without relying on storage account keys.
Claude Opus 4.5 is available in public preview on Microsoft Foundry for Azure customers, introducing improvements in coding, agentic workflows, and enterprise productivity with upgraded performance and versatility.
Azure File Sync is now generally available in the New Zealand North region, enabling customers to tier data from on-premises Windows Servers to Azure Files for hybrid scenarios and simplified migration while preserving on-premises file server performance and compatibility.
Azure Bastion now supports Microsoft Entra ID authentication for RDP connections to Windows VMs directly in the Azure portal (public preview). This allows users to authenticate with their Entra ID identity instead of using local VM credentials.
Microsoft announced general availability of native regular expression (regex) support in T-SQL. The feature is available in Azure SQL and SQL Server 2025, enabling advanced pattern matching directly in queries to simplify code, improve maintainability, and reduce external dependencies.
Azure MCP Server is now generally available with support for Azure Database for MySQL, allowing AI agents and applications to interact with MySQL data using natural language via the open Model Context Protocol (MCP).
Azure Load Testing (part of Azure App Testing) is now generally available in the Italy North region, allowing customers there to run high-scale load tests and simulations to find performance bottlenecks.
Azure Functions now has generally available support for custom handlers on the Flex consumption plan, enabling lightweight HTTP-based handlers written in any language to receive events from the Functions host.
Azure is retiring Low-Priority VMs on September 30, 2025. Azure Machine Learning will continue supporting them until March 31, 2026, and customers are advised to migrate their compute clusters to dedicated VMs to prevent automatic scale-down and service disruption.
Azure’s Advanced Container Networking Services (ACNS) for AKS now offers container network metrics filtering in public preview. The feature lets customers reduce ingestion of unnecessary network telemetry from containers to lower storage costs and declutter monitoring dashboards by controlling which network metrics are collected.
Microsoft announced General Availability of MCP support for the AI Toolchain Operator add-on in AKS. The add-on now supports KAITO inference workspaces with integrated tool calling and Model Context Protocol (MCP), helping address challenges related to dynamic model/context handling in inference workflows.
Azure CNI powered by Cilium for AKS now generally available: the local redirect policy reduces cross-node traffic routing to improve latency and performance for high-scale AKS workloads.
Azure announced General Availability of cluster-wide Cilium network policy for AKS clusters using Azure CNI powered by Cilium. The feature enables consistent, cluster-scoped network policy enforcement across Kubernetes namespaces, addressing a common challenge for platform teams and multi-tenant environments.
Azure Container Networking Services (ACNS) for AKS announces general availability of Layer 7 Policy, enabling customers to enforce fine‑grained application‑layer traffic control in microservices architectures.
Azure NetApp Files now generally available: single file restore from backups lets you recover individual files from an Azure NetApp Files backup vault without restoring the entire volume, reducing time and cost.
Azure DNS security policy Threat Intelligence feed is now generally available. It provides a Microsoft-managed threat intelligence feed to protect DNS queries by identifying and blocking known malicious domains, helping prevent attacks that begin with DNS resolution.
Azure Sphere OS version 25.10 is now generally available in the Retail feed. The release contains OS-only updates (no SDK update), and internet-connected devices will receive the update automatically from the cloud.
Azure Marketplace now offers Arm64 images that support Trusted Launch, enabling customers to run Arm64 virtual machines with Trusted Launch security features. This combines Arm64 cost and performance efficiencies with the integrity and protection benefits of Trusted Launch.
Azure NetApp Files migration assistant is in public preview with Azure portal support. It uses ONTAP SnapMirror replication to provide an efficient, cost‑effective, and seamless way to move data from on‑premises or CVO/other cloud providers into Azure NetApp Files (ANF).
Azure NetApp Files cache volumes are now available in public preview. The feature, built on NetApp’s ONTAP FlexCache technology, provides a persistent, high-performance cache in Azure for data stored on ONTAP-based storage.
Azure Monitor is available in public preview for Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes clusters running OpenShift and Azure Red Hat OpenShift. It provides a complete set of monitoring services to track the health and performance of Kubernetes infrastructure layers and the applications that depend on them.
Azure announces general availability of CSI Dynamic Provisioning for Azure Managed Lustre (AMLFS), allowing Kubernetes workloads to request AMLFS-backed persistent volumes on demand using standard StorageClass and PersistentVolumeClaim objects.
Azure Managed Lustre is now generally available with full integration into Azure MCP Server, allowing developers and infrastructure teams to manage Managed Lustre file systems through Azure MCP Server management workflows.
Azure Managed Lustre is in public preview with a new 20 MB/s/TiB performance tier that targets large-scale AI and HPC workloads and lets customers provision file systems up to 25 PiB in size.
Azure has released Auto-import for Azure Managed Lustre (AMLFS) in public preview, a policy-driven feature that synchronizes data from Azure Blob Storage containers into AMLFS clusters, automatically reflecting new and changed objects.
Azure Monitor is in public preview with one-click enablement of recommended alerts in the Azure portal for Azure Monitor Managed Service for Prometheus customers. These alerts monitor Azure Monitor Workspace ingestion limits to help prevent metric ingestion issues.
Azure Managed Redis is now available in the Microsoft Foundry MCP tools catalog as a Public Preview, enabling customers to use Redis as a knowledge or memory store for Foundry-based AI agents and simplifying the connection between Redis and those agents.
Azure Application Gateway is generally available with support for TLS and TCP termination, enabling load balancing and secure processing of non-HTTP(S) traffic.
Azure Databricks Genie is now integrated with Microsoft Foundry and available in public preview, enabling Genie spaces to connect directly to Foundry agents via the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to give seamless access to trusted data for building intelligent solutions.
Microsoft has announced the public preview of Azure Databricks Genie in Copilot Studio, providing direct access to intelligent, enterprise-grade AI answers across the full Azure Databricks data estate and enabling conversational analytics.
Azure API Management now publicly previews support for A2A (agent) APIs. This enables organizations to manage and govern agent APIs alongside AI model APIs, Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools, and traditional APIs.
Microsoft announced that Anthropic’s Claude models are generally available in Microsoft Foundry, giving enterprises access to Claude Sonnet 4.5, Opus 4.1, and Haiku 4.5 for advanced long-context reasoning, coding, and multimodal capabilities within Foundry’s unified frontier AI ecosystem.
Azure has published a public preview update for Azure Copilot agents that spotlights the deployment agent. The deployment agent — one of six new agent types — is designed to help teams discover, plan, and deploy cloud workloads faster and with greater confidence by providing guided workflows, automation, and integration with Azure deployment patterns.
The VS Code Private Marketplace is now generally available. It provides a secure, enterprise-ready solution to host and manage VS Code extensions internally, fully integrated with VS Code and designed for teams that need control over deployment and updates.
Microsoft announced the public preview of Smart Tier, an account-level, fully managed and automated data tiering solution for Azure Blob Storage and Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS) that removes the need for manual tiering.
Microsoft announced a public preview integration of Microsoft Defender for Cloud with GitHub Advanced Security to protect cloud-native applications across the full application lifecycle — from code to cloud — and to unify developers and security teams in a single workflow.
Azure announces Managed Instance on Azure App Service in Public Preview, a capability that simplifies lift-and-shift migrations of web apps (especially .NET) from on-premises or VMs to the cloud with minimal configuration and no code rewrites.
Azure HorizonDB for PostgreSQL is a new managed PostgreSQL offering now in private preview that emphasizes high performance, large autoscaling storage (up to 128 TB), and rapid compute scalability (up to 3,072 vCores), claiming up to 3× faster performance than open-source PostgreSQL.
Azure Database for PostgreSQL – Flexible Server now supports v6-series VMs (general purpose and memory-optimized) with local NVMe storage in public preview. The v6 family is offered with both Intel and AMD processor options, including AMD v6 Confidential Compute.
Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL now generally available: vector indexing performance improvements deliver faster vector inserts and index builds, reducing end-to-end ingestion and indexing times for large AI workloads through algorithmic enhancements.
SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 22 is now generally available. Built on Visual Studio 2026, SSMS 22 adds support for SQL Server 2025 and offers improved integration for managing and troubleshooting SQL databases and writing T-SQL.
Microsoft Fabric’s SQL database is now generally available — a fully SaaS-native SQL offering built on the SQL Server and Azure SQL Database engine that enables developers and data professionals to unify operational and analytical workloads with improved speed and security.
Azure Container Apps now generally available rule-based routing: a production-ready feature that simplifies traffic control and routing for microservices, enabling A/B testing and blue‑green deployments.
Azure Cosmos DB now generally available: priority-based execution can be enabled so high-priority requests are favored during contention, with low-priority requests throttled first to allow critical operations to proceed on a best-effort basis.
Azure Container Apps’ Premium Ingress is now generally available, introducing environment-level ingress configuration and customizable ingress scaling to provide more control over how the platform handles incoming traffic.
Microsoft announces the general availability of the PostgreSQL extension for Visual Studio Code, which enables connecting to PostgreSQL instances, running queries, managing connection profiles, and supports Microsoft Entra ID with integration for GitHub Copilot.
Azure Database for PostgreSQL now supports PostgreSQL 18 and this release is generally available. It brings the latest PostgreSQL innovations plus seamless in-place upgrade support so you can move from earlier versions without changing your server endpoint.
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) now generally available: pod sandboxing. This feature allows containers to run in per-workload pod virtual machines (pod VMs) to improve isolation and security in shared environments.
Azure announced general availability of a portal-based, self-serve online migration that moves workloads from Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB RU to Azure DocumentDB, enabling modernization with zero downtime.
Azure announced general availability of a new SQL Server migration solution in Azure Arc that streamlines migrations to Azure SQL Managed Instance by combining Azure Database Migration Service with Copilot to provide an automated, end-to-end migration experience.
Azure announced the general availability of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) tool trigger for Azure Functions. MCP is a protocol that lets applications provide capabilities and context to large language models, including defining tools that AI agents can call. The new trigger makes it easier to expose Azure Functions as MCP tools so LLM-based agents can invoke serverless operations directly.
Microsoft Fabric mirroring for Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server is now generally available. The feature lets you mirror PostgreSQL Flexible Server data into Microsoft Fabric (OneLake) to centralize data and simplify analytics, with support for network-isolated environments.
Microsoft announced that the mssql-python driver for SQL Server is now generally available (GA). The release delivers a modern, high-performance, and developer-friendly experience for Python developers working with SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) now has Managed Namespaces generally available. The feature centralizes creation and management of Kubernetes namespaces across AKS clusters to reduce manual setup, lower the risk of misconfiguration, and simplify enforcement of tenant- and team-level configuration.
Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL now generally supports fuzzy search in its built-in full-text search, enabling typo-tolerant and error-resilient search experiences so users can find relevant results even when queries contain mistakes.
Azure Cosmos DB now generally supports the float16 (half-precision) data type for vector indexes, letting you store and query vectors with half-precision floats to reduce storage needs compared with float32.
Azure announced General Availability of ExpressRoute Scalable Gateway (ErGwScale), a next-generation Virtual Network Gateway that enables dynamic scaling of gateway infrastructure to improve flexibility, performance, and operational simplicity for ExpressRoute deployments.
Azure announced general availability of Elastic clusters for Azure Database for PostgreSQL – Flexible Server, enabling horizontal scaling using row-based and schema-based sharding and simplifying multitenant application development by offloading shard management and operations such as tenant isolation.
Azure announces general availability of Cosmos DB in Microsoft Fabric. The integration lets teams build combined operational and analytical workloads in Fabric, leveraging Azure Cosmos DB AI features and Fabric innovations to run SQL queries over JSON data and enable real-time scenarios.
Azure Virtual Network Manager’s address space overlap prevention for mesh deployments is now generally available. The feature prevents unintended IP address overlaps across virtual networks in a mesh to avoid dropped traffic, improving reliability and governance in multi-VNet environments.
November 2025 Azure SQL update (Generally Available): reservation discounts for 1-year and 3-year reservations now apply to zone-redundant Azure SQL Managed Instances in the General Purpose tier; the notice indicates the discount covers both standard compute and additional compute option(s) (source content truncated).
Microsoft announced the Generally Available Next‑gen General Purpose service tier for Azure SQL Managed Instance, delivering major performance improvements along with increased compute flexibility while preserving cost advantages and the simplicity of a fully managed PaaS.
Azure SQL Database now generally supports immutability for long-term retention (LTR) backups. When immutability is enabled, LTR backups cannot be modified or deleted until their configured retention period expires, helping organizations meet compliance and protect backups from deletion or ransomware.
Azure Functions now supports OpenTelemetry in general availability, allowing developers to export logs, traces, and metrics using open standards. This GA release follows the public preview and provides a production-ready observability experience.
Azure announced that the Azure Functions Durable Task Scheduler is generally available on the Dedicated SKU and available in public preview on the Consumption SKU. The scheduler is an orchestration engine for complex workflows and intelligent agents that automatically checkpoints progress and protects orchestration state to enable resilient workflows.
Microsoft announced the general availability of Azure DocumentDB, a fully managed, open-source, MongoDB-compatible document database service—formerly offered as Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB—and now governed by the Linux Foundation for hybrid and multicloud deployments.
Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server now generally supports the Azure Storage extension for Parquet files with multiple compression options, allowing direct read/write of Parquet from the database to accelerate data access and integration.
Azure Database for PostgreSQL – Flexible Server now offers the anon extension as generally available, providing built-in data anonymization tools for production use.
Azure Cosmos DB Mirroring in Microsoft Fabric is now generally available, enabling customers to mirror operational Cosmos DB data into Fabric to run analytics and SQL queries without impacting production workloads.
Azure announced the general availability of the Azure Cosmos DB extension for Visual Studio Code, a production-ready VS Code extension that lets developers manage Cosmos DB resources and develop against Cosmos DB directly inside the editor.
Azure Cosmos DB fleet pools are now generally available. They enable easier operation of Cosmos DB accounts at scale and provide new capabilities for building multitenant SaaS applications, simplifying capacity management by allowing pooled capacity.
Azure Container Registry (ACR) repository permissions with attribute-based access control (ABAC) is now generally available, enabling fine-grained, least-privilege control over which Microsoft Entra identities can publish (push) or consume (pull) container images at the repository level.
Azure Container Apps serverless GPUs are now generally available in additional regions, enabling developers to run AI inference, model training, and other GPU-accelerated workloads using the simplicity of a serverless platform.
Azure Application Gateway now generally supports mTLS passthrough, enabling backend applications to receive client certificates and authorization headers for their own validation while still using the Web Application Firewall for traffic inspection.
Slow start is now generally available for Application Gateway for Containers. The load balancing algorithm gradually increases traffic to newly created pods over a configurable window to improve stability and performance during backend scale‑up.
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) announced General Availability of an Automatic pod readiness SLA: eligible pods will meet readiness criteria within five minutes at the 99.9th percentile, enabling customers to deploy mission-critical workloads with greater confidence.
Azure has made generally available enhanced sampling and richer data collection capabilities in the Azure Monitor OpenTelemetry Distro (which powers Azure Monitor Application Insights). The release introduces new sampling options including rate-limited sampling and trace-based log sampling to give teams finer control over telemetry volume and correlation.
Azure announced the general availability of the 2025 REST API for Azure Database for PostgreSQL, adding support for PostgreSQL 17 and 18 so you can adopt those versions without changing automation patterns; the release also includes the ability to set a default database.
SQL Server 2025 is now generally available. Positioned as an AI-ready enterprise database, the release brings built-in AI capabilities and closer integration with Microsoft’s data platform as part of Microsoft’s effort to modernize enterprise data platforms.
Azure Functions Flex Consumption is now the recommended hosting plan for serverless workloads that need advanced scaling, improved networking, and better cost optimization. Microsoft has published resources to help customers migrate from the Azure Functions Consumption plan and from AWS Lambda to Flex Consumption.
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) has announced a public preview for Windows Server 2025 on AKS to help customers modernize Windows-based workloads as older Windows Server versions near end-of-support.
Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL now supports Italian and Portuguese in its full-text search capability. The feature is available today in public preview and lets you build richer, language-aware search experiences.
Azure announced the public preview of StandardV2 NAT Gateway and StandardV2 Public IPs, providing next-generation, scalable and resilient outbound connectivity with features such as zone-redundancy for high availability in availability-zone supported regions.
Azure announced a public preview that lets you host remote Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers built with MCP SDKs on Azure Functions, enabling easier self-hosting and integration with the Functions platform.
Microsoft announced a public preview of Oracle-to-PostgreSQL migration tooling built into the Azure Database for PostgreSQL extension for Visual Studio Code. The tool aims to make migrating from Oracle to PostgreSQL simpler and faster by providing conversion support directly inside VS Code.
Microsoft released the Azure DocumentDB Migration extension for Visual Studio Code in public preview, enabling zero-cost migrations of MongoDB workloads to Azure DocumentDB with support for both online and offline migration modes.
Azure announced the public preview of NCv6/NC Series virtual machines featuring Nvidia RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs to provide hardware acceleration for a wide array of workloads.
Microsoft announced a public preview of new integration and extensibility capabilities for Azure SRE Agent — an AI-driven, prompt-based automation layer that unifies operational workflows and aims to reduce complexity and overhead for cloud operations.
Microsoft announced the public preview of native Microsoft Foundry support for Azure Database for PostgreSQL. The Azure PostgreSQL MCP Server is now integrated with Microsoft Foundry, enabling the creation of AI agents that can securely query and analyze PostgreSQL data.
Microsoft announced the public preview of the HTTP DDoS Ruleset 1.0 for Application Gateway WAF v2. The ruleset is designed to help mitigate evolving HTTP-layer DDoS and botnet-driven attacks that can bypass static controls.
Azure has announced a public preview of JSON Web Token (JWT) validation in Azure Application Gateway, allowing authentication and token validation to occur at the gateway before requests reach backend applications or APIs.
Public preview of Index Advisor integrated into the DocumentDB for VS Code extension. It helps you view and debug database performance and uses natural-language recommendations to suggest optimal indexing and best practices for MongoDB workloads.
Azure Container Apps announced a public preview of dynamic shell sessions — platform-managed, built-in containers that provide isolated, sandboxed environments to run and execute common shell commands. The update also adds MCP support.
Azure Cosmos DB is in Public Preview for Dynamic Data Masking (DDM), a server-side, policy-based feature that dynamically masks sensitive data for non-privileged users to help prevent unauthorized access.
Azure Container Apps now supports deployment labels in public preview as a new deployment mode. This feature simplifies environment management and enables advanced deployment strategies by letting you assign meaningful names to deployments.
Azure Virtual Network Manager (VNet Manager) now offers public preview support to associate a single IP Address Management (IPAM) pool with virtual networks across multiple regions. This cross-region pool association simplifies governance and ensures consistent CIDR allocation for multi-region deployments.
Azure Container Apps now supports confidential computing in public preview, bringing hardware-based Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) to containerized workloads to protect data in use and complement existing encryption of data at rest and in transit.
Azure announced a Public Preview that adds advanced filtering capabilities to VNet Flow Logs, which capture IP traffic through VNets, subnets, and NICs to support monitoring, troubleshooting, network optimization, security, and compliance.
Public preview announced in November 2025: the MSSQL extension for Visual Studio Code adds an interactive Edit Data interface that lets you view, modify, and insert table rows without manually writing T-SQL, improving data editing workflows for Azure SQL.
Azure announces public preview of DiskANN-based vector indexing in Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance, and SQL databases in Microsoft Fabric, enabling efficient disk-based approximate nearest neighbor (ANN) vector similarity search inside relational database services.
Azure SQL now supports Change Event Streaming (CES) in public preview, allowing near‑real‑time streaming of data changes from Azure SQL Database directly into Azure Event Hubs. The feature is designed to simplify data integration and enable event‑driven architectures and enhanced analytics by delivering change events with low latency.
Azure Network Watcher Topology now supports AKS visualization in Public Preview, providing end-to-end visibility of Azure Kubernetes Service clusters inside the Azure networking experience so customers can inspect their Kubernetes environments and networking relationships.
Microsoft announced a public preview for Azure Network Watcher Topology that adds AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service) visualization and an agentless connection troubleshooting capability, providing end-to-end visibility of Kubernetes clusters within the Azure networking experience.
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) desktop is available in public preview. It provides a modern, application‑centric, guided self‑service interface for deploying and managing workloads on AKS, built on supported AKS features, best practices, and the open‑source Headlamp project.
Azure Kubernetes Fleet Manager now has public preview support for Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes, allowing organizations to manage CNCF-compliant clusters across hybrid and multi-cloud environments from a single plane.
Azure Functions now has public preview support for Node.js 24, enabling local development and deployment to Azure Functions on both Windows and Linux. Node.js 24 does not support 32-bit Windows, so new Windows Function Apps targeting Node.js 24 default to 64-bit to ensure compatibility.
Azure Functions now offers public preview support for Java 25, allowing local development and deployment to Azure Functions on both Windows and Linux with benefits including enhanced security and extended support.
Azure DocumentDB public preview introduces high-performance storage that enables larger, faster workloads on fewer nodes with much higher capacity, IOPS and throughput per physical shard.
Azure Database for PostgreSQL — Flexible Server now supports the pg_duckdb extension in public preview, allowing you to use DuckDB’s vectorized, columnar execution inside your PostgreSQL server to accelerate analytics workloads.
Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL now provides an MCP Toolkit for use with the Microsoft Foundry Agent Service, available in public preview; the integration enables Microsoft Foundry Agents to connect directly to data stored in Azure Cosmos DB.
Azure Cosmos DB Fleet Analytics is in public preview and provides centralized, large-scale insights across multiple Cosmos DB accounts, subscriptions, and workloads to help manage and analyze data across an organization’s entire Cosmos DB footprint.
Azure Container Apps launched a Public Preview of a flexible workload profile that combines the simplicity and pay-per-use serverless model of consumption plans with many performance and control characteristics typically found in dedicated workload profiles.
Azure Container Apps is announcing a public preview that brings Docker Compose support to the service, enabling developers to use their existing docker-compose workflows to define and run multi-container applications directly on Azure Container Apps. This integration aims to simplify deployment and lower the friction for moving compose-based projects to the cloud.
Application Gateway for Containers is in public preview for integration with the Istio service mesh via an optional service mesh extension, enabling simplified secure north–south communication between external clients and services inside the mesh.
Microsoft announced a public preview for AKS Automatic managed system node pools, a feature that automates provisioning and maintenance (scaling, patching, availability) of AKS system node pools to reduce operational overhead and let teams focus on applications.
Microsoft has released a public preview that integrates the durable extension for Microsoft Agent Framework with Azure Functions, enabling durable, hosted orchestration for production-grade AI agents.
Microsoft announced general availability of an integration between the MSSQL extension for Visual Studio Code and GitHub Copilot, bringing AI-powered SQL assistance into the VS Code workflow to reduce repetitive tasks, accelerate development, and assist with database schema design.
Microsoft has opened a private preview for performance enhancements in the latest Azure Boost architecture that improve remote storage throughput and network bandwidth. Azure Boost offloads virtualization functions (networking, storage, host management) and these updates aim to boost I/O and network performance for VMs and cloud services.
Azure Boost confidential device is entering a private preview. Azure Boost offloads virtualization tasks such as networking, storage, and host management from the hypervisor and host OS to purpose-built hardware and software.
Azure announced the public preview of the Azure Copilot observability agent — a new agent aimed at giving cloud operations intelligent, scalable observability that provides actionable insights when services aren’t performing as expected.
Microsoft Foundry’s enterprise features are now generally available, providing IT administrators tools to streamline AI development and management while enforcing enterprise-grade security, compliance, governance, and cost controls.
Scheduled Actions is now generally available in Azure. It enables periodic, large-scale lifecycle management of virtual machines with built-in handling for subscription throttling and automatic retries to reduce operational overhead.
Microsoft announced general availability of resale enabled offers in the Microsoft Marketplace. The capability formalizes a channel-led commerce path on Azure, letting independent software vendors (ISVs) and commercial customers transact through reseller and partner relationships via the Marketplace.
Azure announced general availability of the API Management Premium v2 tier, a more powerful and scalable option designed for enterprise-scale API management with improved performance and expanded capacity.
Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization is now generally available on Azure Red Hat OpenShift (ARO), enabling customers to run and manage virtual machines and containers from a single cloud-native platform. The GA release builds on feedback from the preview announced at Red Hat Summit.
Azure announced Observability in Foundry Control Plane with public preview for agents and a GA pre-announcement for model evaluations. The capability is a suite of tools to evaluate, monitor, and optimize model quality, performance, and safety within the Foundry Control Plane.
Microsoft announced that Azure Logic Apps has expanded hybrid integration with a new set of connectors now generally available. The announcement highlights the Confluent Kafka connector, which enables Logic Apps to connect to Confluent Cloud for event streaming.
Microsoft Foundry’s Model Router is now generally available. The Model Router is an AI orchestration layer that dynamically selects the optimal model for each prompt and now supports a broader range of models including the GPT-4 family, GPT-5 family, GPT-oss, and Deepse.
Microsoft Marketplace, a consolidated storefront for cloud solutions, AI apps, and agents, is now generally available worldwide after its initial U.S. launch in September; traffic from legacy storefronts (Azure Marketplace and AppSource) is being redirected to the new Marketplace.
Azure API Management (APIM) now generally supports governance for Model Context Protocol (MCP) endpoints. The GA release brings APIM’s governance, security, and observability capabilities to AI-driven workloads, enabling enterprises to manage and monitor MCP endpoints through existing APIM controls.
Azure announced Generally Available enhancements to GitHub Copilot App Modernization, expanding capabilities to simplify modernization of applications, databases and containers and to accelerate migrations to Azure.
Microsoft announced Foundry Tools (rebranded from Azure AI Services) as generally available — a unified suite of prebuilt, production-ready AI capabilities for audio, video, images, documents, and text, seamlessly integrated into the Microsoft Foundry platform to empower developers.
Azure App Service now generally supports custom error pages, allowing apps to show user-defined error pages instead of the default ones.
Microsoft announced general availability of Content Understanding, which now connects to Microsoft Foundry model deployments and adds enterprise features including VNet, Managed Identity, and Customer Managed Key support.
Azure Monitor now provides a unified, single-click onboarding experience for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) clusters and virtual machines (VMs), now generally available. The new experience simplifies setup by automatically deploying the latest Azure Monitor capabilities.
Azure announced general availability of an automated testing framework for Azure Logic Apps (Standard) in the Visual Studio Code extension, enabling developers and integration specialists to create automated tests to improve workflow reliability.
Azure announced the general availability of Agent Loop for Azure Logic Apps (Standard), a new capability intended to reshape how organizations design and automate business processes by enabling approaches that go beyond traditional workflow automation.
Microsoft announced that API Center Standard, previously a separately billed offering, is now included at no additional cost for Azure API Management Standard and Premium customers when an API Center instance is linked to the corresponding API Management service.
Microsoft announced the public preview of a redesigned designer experience for Azure Logic Apps (Standard), offering a faster, more intuitive way to build, edit, and manage workflows with integrated run history and workflow editing capabilities.
Azure Monitor now offers OpenTelemetry-based visualizations in public preview and an enhanced, unified monitoring experience that consolidates key monitoring capabilities into a single view for Azure Virtual Machines and Arc-enabled servers.
Azure Cosmos DB now offers Online Container Copy (Public Preview), which lets you copy data from one container to another in real time to minimize downtime while the source container remains available to your application.
Microsoft announced a public preview of new healthcare-focused connectors for Azure Logic Apps to expand interoperability. The announcement highlights a rich set of connectors now available in public preview, explicitly naming an HL7 connector to enable HL7 messaging and streamlined data exchange between healthcare systems.
Microsoft Foundry is releasing a Public Preview with more granular controls for network and integration security and resource management, enabling IT administrators to deploy enterprise AI solutions while meeting governance and security requirements.
Microsoft Foundry is in Public Preview with new ready-to-use, customizable AI templates for common scenarios—such as live voice agents, release management, data unification, and SharePoint integrations—that eliminate repetitive setup tasks and speed development.
Microsoft announced a public preview of new Agent Loop capabilities for Azure Logic Apps that expand how organizations build, secure, and deploy agentic workflows to enable more flexible AI orchestration across enterprise environments.
Azure’s Foundry Agent Service now offers multi-agent workflows in public preview, letting developers create orchestrated, modular multi-agent processes via a visual designer or a code-first API. The feature supports context sharing, persistent state, and error recovery to handle complex enterprise scenarios.
Microsoft Foundry is in public preview with a one-click, no-code publishing feature that lets organizations deploy custom agents to Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and non-Microsoft channels, removing pro-code deployment complexity and enabling instant reach to large user bases.
Microsoft Foundry Fine-Tuning enters Public Preview with a complete UI redesign that emphasizes an agent-first experience. The updated interface streamlines model creation, evaluation, and deployment workflows and adds integration with Visual Studio to improve developer and data scientist productivity.
Microsoft has announced a public preview of Microsoft Foundry Control Plane and Entra Agent ID, a unified platform for enterprise AI agent observability, security, and governance. The Control Plane combines identity, monitoring, and compliance capabilities to provide centralized control, deep observability, and regulatory alignment for AI agents.
Microsoft Foundry announces a public preview of LLM Speech, an API that applies large language model capabilities to speech tasks—providing fluent, context-aware transcription and translation with expanded multilingual support and advanced prompt tuning.
Azure announced the public preview of the Ebsv6 VM series (and Ebdsv6) powered by 5th Generation Intel® Xeon® processors, offering up to 800,000 IOPS and 14 GBps of remote disk storage throughput for high-performance storage workloads.
Azure announces a public preview of hosted agents in Foundry Agent Service that let teams move custom-code agents from local experimentation to production more easily. The feature supports agents built with Microsoft Agent Framework, LangGraph, CrewAI, and other open-source frameworks.
Microsoft announced public preview enhancements to GitHub Copilot App Modernization that expand capabilities to help modernize applications, databases, and containers and accelerate migrations to Azure.
Foundry Local is in public preview and now supports the Whisper model and enhanced on-device AI for smartphones, tablets, and IoT devices, enabling privacy-preserving speech and audio processing and featuring a redesigned Foundry for improved local deployment.
Foundry IQ, now in public preview and powered by Azure AI Search, is a knowledge system that lets agents access and ground on enterprise data through a single unified knowledge base, eliminating the need to manage multiple source-specific APIs.
Azure Files now offers Entra-only identities in public preview, providing a cloud-native authentication option for SMB file share access using Microsoft Entra Kerberos so customers can retire on-premises domain controllers.
Microsoft Foundry (Foundry Agent Service) now supports enhanced Enterprise MCP integration in public preview, enabling secure, authenticated connections that let credentials be passed to MCP servers securely to improve flexibility, security, and compliance.
Microsoft Foundry (public preview) introduces a unified catalog of Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools that let developers enrich agents with real-time business context, multimodal capabilities, and custom business logic.
Azure Monitor now supports dynamic thresholding for Log search alerts in public preview, automatically calculating appropriate alert thresholds so you don’t have to set them manually.
Azure’s Foundry Agent Service introduces built-in long-term memory (Public Preview). Integrated into the Foundry runtime, this persistent memory layer gives developers a scalable, robust foundation so agents can remember, adapt, and act coherently across sessions and workflows.
Azure Machine Configuration now offers built-in CIS benchmarks in public preview for all Azure-endorsed Linux distributions via a new customizable security benchmarks capability powered by azure-osconfig.
Microsoft announced a public preview for a Bring Your Own (BYO) AI Model Gateway feature that lets enterprises connect Foundry-hosted models to the Foundry Agent Service through third-party API gateway solutions. The Agent Service will honor pre- and post-LLM hooks and apply policy-based model controls when routing calls through gateways such as Azure API Management, Mulesoft, and Kong.
Azure Copilot introduces specialized agents (gated preview) to support end-to-end lifecycle management for migrating, operating, and modernizing workloads anywhere. The Copilot experience also evolves from chat into an immersive, full-screen command center (public preview) powered by GPT-5 reasoning and artifact-generation capabilities.
Microsoft is previewing agent-level guardrails in the Foundry Control Plane (formerly content filters) that let you apply and customize safety controls per agent to help mitigate prompt-injection and other risks.
Microsoft announced the public preview of Agent Loop in Azure Logic Apps (Consumption), bringing agentic intelligence and adaptive workflows to the serverless Logic Apps runtime and enabling movement beyond traditional static automation toward goal-driven, adaptive automations.
Microsoft Foundry announced a Developer Training tier (preview) that offers ultra-low-cost fine-tuning model training by using spot capacity. The tier aims to provide training affordability comparable to the existing Developer hosting tier, specifically for the training phase of fine-tuning workflows.
Azure NetApp Files is releasing a public preview of user and group quota reports that give visibility into quota limits and usage for NFS, SMB, and dual-protocol volumes to help organizations monitor and manage capacity.
Azure NetApp Files now supports creating large volumes up to 7.2 PiB with the Cool Access feature on dedicated capacity in Public Preview, targeting workloads where most data are rarely accessed and extending cool-access support beyond prior capacity limits.
Foundry Local is entering Private Preview for Android, adding to existing Windows and Mac support to enable advanced on-device AI for smartphones, tablets, and IoT devices; the release also integrates Whisper models for privacy-preserving speech and audio processing.
Microsoft announced a private preview of an ActiveMQ and JMS connector for Azure Logic Apps, enabling connections to enterprise messaging systems built on ActiveMQ and JMS to support advanced hybrid integration scenarios.
The Archive access tier for Azure Blob Storage is now generally available in the Taiwan North region, enabling customers in Taiwan to store infrequently accessed data in a cost-effective tier while meeting data residency requirements.
Azure NetApp Files now has a public preview for large-volume Breakthrough mode, which delivers extreme performance and scalability for demanding HPC and EDA workloads. It supports volumes up to 2 PiB and can deliver throughput up to 50 GiB/s depending on workload characteristics.
Azure Backup is in public preview with threat detection for Azure VM backups, powered by Microsoft Defender for Cloud (MDC). The feature lets customers assess the health of VM backup restore points by identifying malicious indicators within restore points.
Azure Monitor is in public preview for query-based metric alerts that support all metric types — platform, Prometheus, and custom — and add query capabilities using PromQL to provide broader and more powerful monitoring coverage.
Azure has announced a public preview of “SDK Stats” for the Azure Monitor OpenTelemetry Distro to give customers internal visibility into the Application Insights data collection pipeline, helping diagnose telemetry collection and delivery issues.
Microsoft announced Visual Studio 2026 is generally available. The release modernizes the IDE with deep AI integration, including built-in GitHub Copilot and support for agentic workflows, to help professional developers work more productively.
Azure Site Recovery is now generally available with seamless failback support from Azure VMs that use managed disks back to on-premises Hyper-V, even when the original replication used a storage account.
Azure Site Recovery is generally available with a new capacity guidance feature that recommends alternative VM sizes during failover when the originally targeted VM size may have limited allocation availability due to capacity constraints, improving disaster recovery options.
Azure Site Recovery is in public preview for supporting major Linux OS version upgrades without disabling replication or losing recovery points; supported on RHEL and SLES (for example, RHEL 8 → RHEL 9).
Azure Site Recovery is available in Public Preview with support for up to 5x churn, enabling up to 500 MB/s per VM. This update improves replication throughput so customers can protect high‑IOPS, high‑throughput workloads with Site Recovery.
Microsoft Azure will end extended support for Python 3.10 on October 1, 2026; apps on App Service will keep running but will no longer receive security updates or customer support.
Microsoft announces the retirement of Windows Server 2022 on Azure Kubernetes Service enabled by Azure Arc in October 2026.
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) now provides Pod CIDR expansion in the Azure CNI Overlay as a public preview to help clusters support larger and more dynamic Kubernetes workloads.
Azure has announced public preview of eBPF host routing in Advanced Container Networking Services (ACNS) for AKS. The feature uses eBPF-based host routing to improve networking performance for containerized applications across distributed environments and integrates with Azure CNI.
Azure Virtual Network Manager (AVNM) UDR management is generally available with a new UseExisting mode that detects existing user-defined routes (UDRs) and appends required routes rather than replacing customer route entries, giving customers more flexibility and compliance control.
Azure Virtual Network Manager peering compliance is now generally available, delivering a secure, centralized way to enforce and monitor VNet peering rules to protect network connectivity managed by Azure Virtual Network Manager — particularly valuable in large-scale environments to prevent unintended peerings and ensure governance.
Azure Virtual Network Manager IP Address Management (IPAM) – Pool Association Recommendation is now generally available, delivering intelligent, large-scale automation to help organizations manage and associate IPAM pools across their expanding Azure network footprint and reduce manual effort and errors.
Microsoft announced .NET 10 is generally available, delivering a faster, more secure, and more capable platform for modern development. The release improves performance, productivity, and security across the stack, and C# 14 adds language refinements for more natural, expressive coding.
Azure Database for MySQL triggers for Azure Functions is now generally available, enabling change tracking on any MySQL table and letting you build event-driven applications that invoke Azure Functions when rows change.
Azure Database for MySQL - Flexible Server now generally available: you can self-serve configure the lower_case_table_names server parameter during server creation for MySQL 8.0+.
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is releasing a public preview that adds scheduler profile configuration with an in-tree plugin, enabling organizations running complex Kubernetes workloads to customize pod placement policies.
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) announces general availability of LocalDNS, a built-in local DNS caching solution designed to reduce DNS resolution delays and improve reliability for large-scale clusters that experience high query volumes or upstream outages.
Azure Migrate is in public preview with integrated Security insights that let customers assess potential risks in their on-premises environments and receive actionable recommendations to mitigate those risks during migration planning.
Azure Backup’s vaulted protection for ADLS Gen2 is now generally available, providing secure, off‑site, independent backups of Data Lake Storage to help organizations meet resilience and compliance requirements.
Azure Firewall now generally available: DNS flow trace logs provide deep, end-to-end visibility into DNS traffic and name resolution paths, delivering richer telemetry to help troubleshoot, validate, and secure DNS.
Azure announced the general availability of a JavaScript (JS) challenge for Azure Web Application Firewall (WAF) on Azure Front Door to strengthen bot mitigation.
Azure announced a public preview of Flatcar Container Linux as a node OS option for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). The offering aims to reduce configuration drift and manual changes by providing a lightweight, immutable, container-optimized Linux distribution with automated updates and a smaller attack surface, improving node consistency, security, and operational predictability.
Microsoft announced the public preview of Azure Linux with OS Guard for AKS, a new node-level protection designed to strengthen kernel and OS defenses for cloud-native workloads. The feature aims to mitigate sophisticated threats such as rootkits, container escapes, and unauthorized code execution to provide stronger security guarantees for Azure Kubernetes Service clusters.
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is launching an agentic, AI-powered command-line experience (in public preview) to simplify diagnosing and resolving cluster issues by automating navigation of logs, telemetry, and diagnostics.
Azure Blob Object Replication Priority Replication is now generally available, letting customers mark replication policy rules for prioritized copying from a source storage account to a destination storage account so selected objects are replicated ahead of others.
Azure announced General Availability of Geo Priority Replication for Azure Blob Storage. The feature accelerates data replication for GRS and GZRS accounts between primary and secondary regions and is backed by a Service Level Agreement (SLA).
Azure has announced a Public Preview feature to troubleshoot Azure Firewall using packet capture. The capability captures specific flows with filtering by protocol, flags and other filters, and captures can be started from the Azure portal or via PowerShell.
Azure announces general availability of Web Application Firewall (WAF) support for Application Gateway for Containers, the next evolution of Application Gateway combined with the Application Gateway Ingress Controller.
The labels() function in KQL graph semantics is now generally available. It lets you retrieve, filter, and project label information for nodes and edges in graph queries, simplifying work with categorized graph data.
Microsoft announces public preview of openCypher support for KQL graph semantics, enabling openCypher queries over graph data in Fabric Eventhouse and Azure Data Explorer.
Azure Database for PostgreSQL – Flexible Server is now generally available in all three availability zones in Japan West, allowing deployments that improve availability and resiliency.
Azure Ultra Disk is now generally available with a new flexible provisioning model that lets you configure capacity, IOPS and throughput (MBPS) more independently so you can better tailor and optimize disk performance for your workloads.
Azure Blob Storage object replication metrics for pending operations and pending bytes are now generally available in all regions, enabling customers to monitor replication status and act on delays.
Azure MCP Server is now generally available. Built on the Model Context Protocol (MCP), it provides a secure, standards-based bridge that lets agent-based applications and developer workflows access and coordinate across Azure services (examples called out include AKS, ACA, App Service, Cosmos DB, SQL, and AI Foundry). The GA release is aimed at simplifying integration, improving security and interoperability, and enabling cloud-powered agents.
GitHub Copilot for SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) is available in public preview. It provides context-aware assistance to help you write Transact-SQL (T-SQL) faster and more accurately and can answer general SQL questions using database and connection context.
In early November 2025 Azure announced a Public Preview update for Azure SQL Hyperscale that adds support for multiple geo‑secondary replicas. This capability simplifies designing and deploying disaster recovery topologies that span multiple regions.
Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server now supports configuring read replicas (in-region and geo-replicas) with the Premium SSD v2 storage tier in Public Preview, enabling scale-out for read-heavy workloads and improved performance by offloading read operations.
Planned Failover for Azure Storage is now generally available. It lets customers initiate a managed failover for geo-redundant storage accounts, swapping primary and secondary endpoints while preserving geo-redundancy and data durability.
Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL now offers Query Advisor as generally available in the .NET SDK. Query Advisor analyzes your query structure and gives clear, actionable recommendations to help you write faster, more efficient queries.
Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL now generally supports ORDER BY ST_DISTANCE, allowing queries to be sorted by distance from a point or GeoJSON object directly in the database.
Azure has made Connection Monitor integration generally available for ExpressRoute, allowing end-to-end connectivity monitoring to be enabled directly when creating or updating ExpressRoute connections.
Azure has announced general availability of Resiliency Insights for ExpressRoute. This assessment capability measures network reliability for ExpressRoute workloads using a resiliency index — a percentage score calculated from factors such as route resilience (source content truncated).
Azure Database for MySQL - Flexible Server now generally availability (GA) supports a dedicated Azure Standard Load Balancer for servers configured with high availability, delivering a dedicated load-balancing option for HA-enabled deployments.
Azure has made ExpressRoute Resiliency Validation generally available. The feature lets you perform site failovers for your Virtual Network Gateway to assess and validate network connectivity resiliency for ExpressRoute-enabled workloads.
Microsoft announced the open-source DocumentDB Kubernetes Operator, which lets you run DocumentDB (a MongoDB‑compatible, open-source document database built on PostgreSQL) on Kubernetes by extending the cluster with custom resource definitions (CRDs).
Azure NetApp Files is offering a Public Preview of an Object REST API — an S3-compatible REST API that lets customers bridge traditional file-based storage and modern cloud services, enabling reuse of existing data and integration with Microsoft Fabric.
Azure Functions (Public Preview) adds rolling updates for the Flex Consumption plan, enabling zero-downtime deployments by gracefully updating instances instead of force-restarting them; enabled with a simple configuration change.
Azure announced General Availability for High Scale Private Endpoints (HSPE), letting customers raise the per‑Virtual Network limit on Azure Private Endpoints above the previous 1,000 endpoint cap. HSPE enables larger, production‑scale VNet designs that require many private endpoints while keeping the existing Private Endpoint connectivity model.
Azure Functions will stop supporting Node.js 20 on April 30, 2026. Apps running on Node.js 20 will continue to run, but they will no longer receive security fixes or performance updates; you should plan and perform an upgrade to Node.js 22 beforehand.
Azure announced a Public Preview of Instant Access Snapshots for Premium SSD v2 (Pv2) and Ultra Disks, allowing immediate restore of new disks from snapshots and providing high-performance restore disks.
Microsoft will retire several preview features on March 31, 2026. Affected features include grouping multiple pipeline steps, pipeline job comparison for debugging, importing data into a data labeling project, and using v2 data. Customers should remove dependencies on these preview features before the retirement date.
Microsoft announced general availability of CAPTCHA protection for Azure Web Application Firewall (WAF) when used with Azure Front Door to help defend modern web applications from automated threats.
Azure Sphere OS version 25.10 is now available in the Retail Eval feed for a limited 14-day evaluation period. Customers and developers should use this window to confirm that their devices and applications function correctly with the new OS release before wider deployment.
Azure Storage Mover is now generally available for migrating NFS file shares to Azure File Shares using the NFS 4.1 protocol. The fully managed service helps move on-premises files and folders to Azure Storage while minimizing downtime.
Azure Database for PostgreSQL – Flexible Server now generally supports PgBouncer 1.23.1 as a built-in connection pooling feature to efficiently manage many client connections with low overhead.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) software reservations are Generally Available on Azure again after updates to billing meters and pricing that resolve prior billing issues and align charges with Red Hat’s new pricing.
Microsoft announced the planned retirement of the Azure Computer Vision – Image Analysis service, with full support provided through September 25, 2028.
Azure announced a public preview of VM vCore customization that gives customers greater control over virtual CPU configuration. The preview introduces two capabilities: disabling simultaneous multithreading (SMT/Hyper‑Threading) on vCPUs, and constraining the number of cores exposed to the guest. These options help optimize single‑threaded workload performance, reduce license costs by limiting visible cores, and improve CPU isolation and predictable performance. The features are available in public preview and can be configured through Azure management interfaces.
In mid-October 2025 Azure SQL announced Generally Available updates: the redirect connection type was improved to require only port 1433 and promoted to the default, and you can convert an Azure SQL Database to Hyperscale while preserving existing geo configurations.
Azure Database for PostgreSQL now generally supports near-zero downtime scaling for servers with high availability (HA) enabled, reducing scaling interruptions to typically under 30 seconds instead of the previous 2–10 minutes.
Azure Storage Mover’s AWS S3 to Azure Blob migration capability is now generally available, enabling organizations to move data directly from AWS to Azure securely, reliably, and at scale while removing the need for manual pipelines.
Azure announced Public Preview support for sharing Capacity Reservation Groups (CRGs) with subscriptions, allowing CRGs to be used beyond the subscription where they were created. Previously, VMs could only be deployed into a CRG within the same subscription.
Azure released two PowerShell scripts to simplify migrating Application Gateway from V1 (Standard or WAF) to V2 (Standard_V2 or WAF_V2): an enhanced cloning script and a public IP retention script. V1 SKUs are scheduled for retirement in April 2026, so customers are advised to migrate early to V2 and take advantage of its features.
Azure now provides a new OS SKU enum, ‘AzureLinux3’, that lets you migrate to Azure Linux 3.0 for clusters running Kubernetes versions 1.28–1.36. The option gives increased control over OS upgrades by decoupling them from Kubernetes upgrades.
Microsoft is planning a new Azure datacenter region in Malaysia called Southeast Asia 3, currently in private preview. The region will host Microsoft’s most comprehensive and strategic cloud services and represents an expansion of Azure’s digital infrastructure footprint in Southeast Asia. The announcement did not include detailed timelines or exact service availability.
Azure Functions now generally supports Python 3.13: you can develop functions locally with Python 3.13 and deploy them to Azure. Alongside this release, Functions introduces an opt-in runtime version control feature that lets you target specific versions of the Functions Python runtime.
The public preview of Confidential Containers on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), available since 2023, is being retired as Microsoft streamlines its confidential computing offerings.
Azure Firewall now offers prescaling (general availability), letting administrators provision and reserve capacity units in advance to handle expected traffic loads—such as seasonal peaks or planned business events—helping ensure consistent throughput and faster handling of traffic spikes.
Azure Firewall now includes the observed capacity metric (Generally Available). The metric reports the number of capacity units actively utilized over time to help administrators understand how their firewalls are scaling in practice.
Microsoft announced general availability of automation support for Azure Database Migration Service (DMS) using Azure PowerShell (Az.DataMigration and custom cmdlets), the Python SDK, and the Azure CLI (az datamigration), enabling scripted and programmatic database migrations.
Azure Functions Flex Consumption features are now generally available: you can enable Availability Zones for apps at creation or after deployment so instances are automatically distributed across zones for improved reliability and fault tolerance. The update also introduces support for network-restricted Key Vault and App Configuration references and notes new region support.
SAP Business Data Cloud Connect to Azure Databricks is now generally available, providing secure, bi-directional, zero-copy data sharing between SAP BDC and Azure Databricks via Delta Sharing so teams can unify SAP and external data for analytics.
Azure Storage Discovery is now generally available, providing enterprise-wide visibility into your Azure Storage estate so you can analyze capacity and activity, optimize costs, improve security, and support operational decision-making.
Azure announced a public preview of Private Link Service Direct Connect, which removes the requirement to place provider applications behind a Standard Load Balancer. The preview simplifies how service providers expose private endpoints to consumers by allowing more direct connectivity while keeping traffic private and secure.
Microsoft Azure will retire the F, Fs, Fsv2, Lsv2, G, Gs, Av2, Amv2, and B series virtual machines on November 15, 2028. After that date these VM series cannot be used or purchased.
Azure has updated the Locations API metadata for UK-based regions by changing the geographyGroup and regionalDisplayName fields to meet evolving compliance and regulatory requirements. The changes are in effect October 2025.
Azure Event Grid announced General Availability of multiple features that enhance support for real-time telemetry, automation, and hybrid workloads. One highlighted GA feature is MQTT OAuth 2.0 authentication, enabling MQTT clients to authenticate using JSON Web Tokens (JWTs).
Azure announced the general availability of Spot Placement Score, a feature that lets you assess the likelihood of successful deployments for Spot virtual machines by evaluating spot capacity availability across different Azure locations and VM size combinations.
Azure Site Recovery is now generally available for Virtual Machines using Ultra Disks, enabling cross-region replication, failover, and failback to improve disaster recovery for high‑performance workloads with minimal impact.
Microsoft announced the general availability of the open-source Containerization Assist MCP Server, a full containerization platform that automates Dockerfile creation and Kubernetes manifest generation to reduce manual, error-prone work. The service is built on the proven AKS Draft technology and aims to be more than a basic AI coding tool by providing end-to-end containerization support.
Azure API Management introduces environmental sustainability features in public preview that help organizations reduce the carbon footprint of their API infrastructure by making API traffic and policy behavior carbon-aware.
Microsoft announced the planned retirement of the Azure Custom Vision service and will provide full support to existing customers until September 25, 2028. Customers are encouraged to begin planning their migration or transition during this support window.
Azure Database for PostgreSQL – Flexible Server now offers PostgreSQL 18 in public preview, providing early access to the latest performance, scalability, and developer productivity improvements.
Microsoft announced the public preview of Azure Integrated HSM, a hardware security module (HSM) cache and crypto accelerator for virtual machines, designed to enhance the security and performance of cryptographic operations for customers with heavy crypto workloads.
Microsoft made generally available Python and .NET code samples demonstrating Entra ID token refresh for Azure Database for PostgreSQL to help securely manage authentication tokens when connecting with Entra ID.
Azure Database for MySQL - Flexible Server now generally supports configuring a custom server port (25001–26000) at creation for both public and private access-enabled servers, making it easier to integrate with existing applications and meet security requirements (default MySQL port remains 3306).
Azure Firewall in Virtual WAN secured hubs is now generally available with support for customer-provided public IP addresses, allowing organizations to bring their own public IPs when deploying Azure Firewall in a secured Virtual WAN hub.
Azure Arc’s firmware analysis capability is now generally available, providing deep visibility into the software that runs on IoT, OT, and network devices to improve security visibility for systems that often operate as black boxes.
Microsoft announced that the Azure AI Health Insights service and the Clinical Trials Matcher and Radiology Insights models will be retired on December 31, 2025. These offerings will no longer be available for use or integration as part of a strategic review of the AI portfolio.
Microsoft announced the Public Preview of Vaulted Backup for Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS). Azure Backup now supports vaulted protection for ADLS, providing secure off‑site backups to help ensure business continuity and compliance and to protect data from accidental deletion.
Azure Cache for Redis (Basic, Standard, Premium) will be retired on September 30, 2028. Microsoft recommends migrating workloads to Azure Managed Redis before that date.
Azure is retiring the Azure Cache for Redis Enterprise and Enterprise Flash tiers on March 31, 2027 and recommends migrating workloads to Azure Managed Redis. Beginning April 1, 2026, customers will no longer be able to create new Azure Cache for Redis Enterprise instances.
Microsoft will retire Azure Network Policy Manager (NPM) for Windows nodes on AKS on September 30, 2026. Customers must move to alternative networking solutions to keep receiving support, security updates, and deployment compatibility.
Azure Firewall Policy now generally available supports up to 600 IP Groups per policy (previously 200), allowing administrators to simplify and better organize firewall rules by using more IP Groups instead of long IP lists.
Azure NetApp Files short-term clones are now generally available. They create temporary thin clones from existing volume snapshots to provide space-efficient, instant read/write access without making full data copies, reducing capacity usage and speeding workflows.
Azure will retire legacy authentication for Azure Monitor - Container Insights on September 30, 2026; customers should migrate to Managed Identity authentication.
Microsoft announced general availability of the AI toolchain operator add-on (KAITO) for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). KAITO streamlines deployment of AI inference and fine-tuning workflows using popular open-source frameworks, with vLLM set as the default inference engine to simplify management and scaling of model serving.
Azure Database for PostgreSQL – Flexible Server now generally supports PostgreSQL minor versions 17.6, 16.10, 15.14, 14.19, 13.22 and 18 Beta 3; minor-version upgrades are applied automatically during monthly planned maintenance.
Azure Monitor SCOM Managed Instance will be retired on September 30, 2026; customers will no longer be able to access the service after that date. Microsoft recommends transitioning to Operations Manager on-premises to continue monitoring on-premises workloads and consulting the retirement documentation for details.
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) now provides a generally available Azure CLI command to automatically migrate clusters using Availability Sets and the basic load balancer to the new Virtual Machines node pool and perform the required upgrade. Availability Sets and the basic load balancer are deprecated on September 30, 2025.
Azure Static Web Apps’ database connections feature (currently in public preview) will be deprecated effective November 30, 2025 due to changes in underlying infrastructure. Customers should refactor deployments using this feature to avoid deployment issues.
Azure NetApp Files now generally supports cross-tenant customer-managed keys (CMK) for volume encryption, letting customers use and control their own encryption keys across different Azure tenancies to increase control and flexibility.
Azure VPN Gateway will retire support for the SSTP protocol on March 31, 2027. Microsoft cites limited scalability and suboptimal performance and advises customers to migrate to IKEv2 or OpenVPN, which offer significantly improved capabilities (including support for up to 10,000 connections).
Azure NetApp Files is in public preview for integration with FreeIPA, OpenLDAP, and Red Hat Directory Server, providing secure LDAP over TLS connectivity for NFSv3 and NFSv4.1 volumes so enterprises can use these directory services for identity management.
Microsoft announced the retirement of all General purpose v1 (GPv1) storage accounts — including legacy blob storage accounts — as part of efforts to streamline the Azure Storage portfolio and improve performance, scalability, and cost efficiency.
Azure Traffic Manager’s new health check infrastructure is now generally available. The update improves the service’s resiliency and scalability, and Microsoft is migrating customers to the new probing infrastructure as the rollout progresses.
Azure Machine Learning’s built-in data labeling capability will be retired on September 30, 2026. Customers can continue to use the service until that date but should plan to transition to third‑party data labeling providers before the retirement.
The MSSQL extension for Visual Studio Code is available in public preview with built-in connectivity to Microsoft Fabric SQL databases. A new Fabric option in the Connection Dialog lets developers sign in with Microsoft Entra ID and access Fabric resources directly from VS Code, bringing Fabric SQL into the development workflow.
Azure will retire Azure Network Policy Manager (NPM) on Linux nodes in AKS on September 30, 2028. Customers must migrate AKS clusters using NPM to Cilium Network Policy before that date to avoid disruptions.
In late September 2025 Azure SQL announced a Public Preview feature that adds immutability to long-term retention (LTR) backups to protect backups from ransomware and tampering.
Azure Compute Gallery now has a Public Preview of a Soft Delete feature that lets you recover accidentally deleted images within a 7-day retention period.
Microsoft will end support for Service Connector (preview) on Azure Container Apps on March 30, 2026. After that date the preview Service Connector will no longer be supported on Azure Container Apps; consult the original update for details and next steps.
Microsoft Azure will retire the NVv4-series virtual machines (listed SKUs) on September 30, 2026.
Microsoft announces the retirement of the Spark native connector effective October 1, 2025, citing low usage, high maintenance costs, and potential security vulnerabilities; source text is truncated before completing the stated goal.
Azure Resource Manager (ARM) is generally available with enhanced integration into Azure Monitor Metrics, enabling subscription-level visualization of new ARM metrics for deeper visibility and more granular monitoring of Resource Manager operations.
Microsoft will retire the AV36 node type for Azure VMware Solution on June 30, 2028. Current AV36 Reserved Instance (RI) terms are not affected, and customers are advised to review their RI expiration timelines.
Microsoft announced the planned retirement of the Entity Linking feature in Azure AI Language and recommends considering replacement solutions; Named Entity Recognition (NER) in Azure AI Language is suggested as an alternative for entity identification. The provided article content is truncated and lacks full details.
Microsoft is retiring the Azure Functions Linux Consumption hosting plan on September 30, 2028 and recommends migrating affected functions to the Flex Consumption plan, which provides faster scaling, advanced networking, cold start mitigation, and concurrency control.
Azure recommends upgrading from BlobFuse v1 to BlobFuse v2 because future enhancements and innovations for Azure Blob Storage file system access will be focused exclusively on BlobFuse v2 and support for BlobFuse v1 will be discontinued.
Azure App Service on Azure Arc enabled Kubernetes will be retired beginning September 30, 2025. After that date customers will no longer be able to install the extension; Microsoft requests customers migrate to other solutions to continue hosting application workloads.
Azure NetApp Files Flexible service level is now generally available. It lets you independently configure storage capacity and throughput so you can right-size performance and cost, avoiding overprovisioning by using customizable throughput settings separate from capacity.
The Insights blade in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) has been renamed to Monitor and moved from the Monitoring section to the top-level navigation; monitoring data and features remain unchanged.
Azure DB for MySQL - Flexible Server now supports deleting on-demand backups. As of the August 2025 release this capability is generally available, complementing the existing ability to manually trigger on-demand backups and the system automated backups.
Azure Migrate is available in public preview to discover and assess PostgreSQL resources across VMware, Hyper‑V, physical servers, and other cloud environments. The service provides a centralized hub to help plan the next steps for migrating or modernizing PostgreSQL workloads.
Azure Disk Encryption will be retired on September 15, 2028; customers are advised to transition to Encryption at Host (or other supported OS-disk encryption solutions such as CVM OS disk encryption) before that date.
Azure Site Recovery (ASR) now generally available for Virtual Machines using Premium SSD v2 disks, enabling seamless disaster recovery across Azure regions and from on-premises to Azure to help maintain business continuity.
Microsoft will retire specific NVv3-series Azure virtual machines (Standard_NV12s_v3, Standard_NV12hs_v3, Standard_NV24s_v3, Standard_NV24ms_v3, Standard_NV32ms_v3, Standard_NV48s_v3) on September 30, 2026. Customers must plan and migrate affected workloads before that date to avoid disruption.
Microsoft announced general availability of GitHub Copilot app modernization capabilities for Java and .NET. The offering is designed to reduce redundant, complex work involved in modernizing applications so developers can focus on innovation, while helping ensure apps remain secure, scalable, and up to date.
Azure Application Gateway now generally supports Server-sent events (SSE), enabling real-time server-to-client data streaming over a persistent HTTP connection for seamless client updates.
Microsoft announced the public preview of Azure Front Door ‘signed request’, a new capability to strengthen access control for content delivery by allowing organizations to restrict access to content such as media streams and files.
Azure Backup now offers generally available vaulted backups for Azure Files premium shares, providing vault-based protection to help ensure business continuity and compliance.
Azure Kubernetes Fleet Manager (Public Preview) adds a new auto-upgrade channel that lets you set a target Kubernetes minor version. Clusters on that target minor will receive only patch updates (no minor upgrades) until the minor reaches end-of-life.
Azure announced general availability of High scale mode for Container Insights, Azure Monitor’s log-collection solution for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). The new mode is designed to provide higher log collection throughput for customers with large or high-throughput clusters.
Azure announces a public preview where Azure Managed Service for Prometheus now includes native Grafana dashboards accessible within the Azure portal at no additional cost, aiming to simplify observability and reduce administrative overhead.
Azure Data Box Next Gen is now generally available in India, Qatar, South Africa, and Korea; the 120 TB and 525 TB Data Box SKUs are GA in the US, UK, Europe, and US Gov.
Broadcom changed VMware licensing: beginning October 16, 2025, new Azure VMware Solution (AVS) subscriptions will require customers to bring their own portable VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) subscriptions. Existing AVS customers can continue operating under current arrangements.
Microsoft announced general availability of DCa/ECa v6 AMD-based confidential virtual machines in several regions, built on 4th generation AMD hardware.
Azure Kubernetes Fleet Manager (public preview) now lets you add approval gates to update runs. Gates can be placed before and after update groups and stages to give operators manual control over the progression of an update run.
Azure announced General Availability of Distributed Tracing V2 for Durable Functions, a robust tracing model that lets developers correlate operations across orchestrations, activities, and durable entities to improve debugging and observability.
Azure Functions now supports .NET 10 in Public Preview. To use it, change the Functions project’s target framework and update Microsoft.Azure.Functions.Worker.Sdk to version 2.0.5 or later. The announcement also indicates .NET 10 projects can be deployed to app (source content truncated).
Azure has made the expanded and rebranded Azure Firewall Manager generally available as the Network Security Hub — a centralized management experience that consolidates Azure Firewall, Web Application Firewall (WAF), and DDoS Protection to simplify policy, visibility, and protection across deployments.
Databricks One is available in Azure Databricks as a public preview offering a unified, simplified platform that combines data engineering, analytics, and AI development into a single, governed environment with integrated collaboration and enterprise governance.
Azure Database for PostgreSQL — Flexible Server now generally available with Confidential Computing support, using hardware-based trusted execution environments (TEEs) to protect data while it is being processed.
Azure has made at-cost data transfer generally available in Europe, allowing customers and CSP partners to pay only the underlying cost for internet data transfers between Azure and external endpoints.
Azure Kubernetes Service on VMware (preview) will be retired on March 16, 2026; customers should transition to Azure Kubernetes Service on Azure Local by that date.
Azure File Sync is now generally available in the Poland Central and Spain Central regions. The service lets you tier data from on-premises Windows Servers to Azure Files for hybrid scenarios and simplified migrations while retaining on-premises file server performance, flexibility, and compatibility.
Azure HBv5-series VMs are now available in Public Preview in the Azure South Central US region and are optimized for memory-bandwidth-intensive HPC workloads such as computational fluid dynamics, automotive and aerospace simulations, and weather modeling.
Azure announced general availability of ‘AKS Automatic’, a managed AKS capability that automates routine cluster operations (provisioning, scaling, upgrades, patching and security) to reduce operational complexity and let teams focus on delivering applications.
Azure Container Storage (ACStor) v2.0.0 is now generally available, offering up to 7× higher IOPS and 4× lower latency on local NVMe compared to v1.3.1. The release positions ACStor as the fastest storage option for Azure Kubernetes Service, is open source, and carries no service fees.
Microsoft announced the retirement of the Azure Databricks Standard tier. Creation of new Standard-tier workspaces will be blocked after April 1, 2026, and the Standard tier will be retired by October 1, 2026.
Microsoft will retire support for hsmPlatform 1 keys in Azure Key Vault on September 15, 2028. Customers are advised to transition their keys to supported alternatives to maintain security and functionality.
Azure Application Gateway V2 now generally available: customers can enable dedicated connections from the gateway to backend servers instead of using the default connection reuse behavior.
Azure Application Gateway V2 is generally available with customer-controlled backend TLS validations, allowing customers to manage how TLS validations are applied to backend HTTPS connections.
Azure announced the general availability of the Azure SQL hub in the Azure portal — a new centralized experience that brings together everything related to Azure SQL. The hub is designed to simplify choosing the right Azure SQL service and support both new and experienced users.
Azure Linux 2.0 on AKS will be retired on November 30, 2025. Customers should transition to the supported Azure Linux 3.0 before that date.
Azure App Service is now generally available with Bring Your Own License (BYOL) support for JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (EAP), letting enterprise customers deploy Java workloads using their existing JBoss licenses for greater flexibility and cost efficiency.
Azure announced general availability of same-region replica clusters for Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB (vCore), allowing you to create a continuously synchronized read-only replica in the same region as the primary cluster to improve read scale and resiliency.
Microsoft announced the general availability of Extended Support for Azure Database for MySQL – Flexible Server, beginning in spring 2026, to help customers manage upgrade timelines for MySQL versions that have reached end of life.
Azure Databricks automatic identity management is now generally available, enabling automated user provisioning and deprovisioning through native integration with Microsoft Entra to streamline identity lifecycle operations.
Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server is now generally available in the Austria East and Chile Central regions.
Azure Database for MySQL – Flexible Server version 8.4 is now generally available, allowing creation of new production MySQL 8.4 servers with the latest features and performance improvements.
Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB (vCore) now generally supports encrypting data at rest with customer-managed keys (CMK) in addition to the existing service-managed keys, giving customers an additional layer of control and security.
Azure Database for MySQL – Flexible Server now offers a Self-Heal feature in Public Preview that provides self-healing tools to proactively resolve common server issues (for example, unresponsive servers) without needing to open a support case.
Azure Files is in public preview for a file share–centric management model (Microsoft.FileShares) that makes file shares top-level resources to simplify creating and managing file shares in Azure.
Azure announced general availability of the new D192 size in the Dsv6 and Ddsv6 virtual machine families. The VMs are powered by the 5th Generation Intel Xeon Platinum 8573C (Emerald Rapids) processor. The announcement notes that Dsv6-series VMs use Azure managed disks.
Azure is offering a private preview of AMD-based VM families (Dasv7/Dalsv7 general purpose, Easv7 memory-optimized, and Fasv7/Falsv7/Famsv7 compute-optimized) with options for local disk or diskless configurations, available in select regions.
Azure announced general availability of Multitenant Managed Logging in Container Insights, letting customers with shared AKS clusters segregate container logs by team so teams can independently manage and access their logs.
Microsoft Playwright Testing (Preview) will be retired on March 8, 2026. Azure App Testing — introduced last August to unify Azure Load Testing and Microsoft Playwright Testing — is the consolidated testing service for running large-scale functional and performance tests.
Microsoft Azure will retire OS disks on Standard HDD on 08 September 2028. The change is part of an effort to align disk offerings with current usage patterns and future investments in disk performance.
Microsoft announced public preview support for the ISO-aligned Graph Query Language (GQL) within KQL graph semantics, enabling GQL queries to run on Fabric Eventhouse and Azure Data Explorer to simplify working with graph data using an industry standard.
Azure Red Hat OpenShift is now generally available in UAE Central and US Gov Texas regions, expanding managed OpenShift services to the Middle East and southwestern US.
Azure NetApp Files migration assistant (with SnapMirror) is now generally available, enabling efficient, cost-effective migrations to Azure NetApp Files using ONTAP’s replication engine.
Azure CDN will be retired in China on December 1, 2025. Customers should migrate to Azure Front to avoid service disruption; Microsoft will provide support during the transition.
Azure Functions now supports Python 3.13 in public preview, and introduces an opt-in runtime version control feature that lets you target specific Functions Python runtime versions when developing locally and deploying to Azure.
Microsoft announced the Public Preview of .NET 10 on Azure App Service for both Windows and Linux, enabling developers to run modern web workloads such as ASP.NET apps, Blazor, and Minimal APIs on the platform.
Azure announced general availability of multiple address prefixes for subnets in Azure Virtual Networks. Subnets previously allowed only a single address prefix, which constrained scale for some applications when address space was exhausted. The GA feature lets subnets hold more than one prefix, enabling larger address ranges and greater flexibility for scaling and IP management.
Azure announced general availability of the ability to upgrade existing Gen1 virtual machines to Gen2-Trusted Launch. The capability enables Trusted Launch on previously deployed Gen1 VMs to improve foundational VM security.
Azure Database for MySQL – Flexible Server with High Availability (HA) now offers near-zero-downtime maintenance and this capability is generally available. The feature is supported by a new HA architecture and applies to Flexible Server deployments with HA enabled.
Azure announced general availability of workspaces and workspace gateways for the Premium v2 tier of Azure API Management, while the Premium v2 tier itself remains in preview. Workspaces enable organizations to manage and govern APIs.
Microsoft announced the general availability of the Logic Apps Hybrid Deployment Model, which lets customers run Logic Apps on customer-managed infrastructure to give more flexibility and control over where integration workloads execute.
Azure API Management v2 tiers (Basic v2, Standard v2, Premium v2) are now generally available with gateway-level metrics and native autoscaling, providing deeper gateway performance visibility and automatic scaling based on real-time usage.
The redesigned Data Mapper user experience in the Azure Logic Apps (Standard) extension for Visual Studio Code is now generally available and becomes the default for creating and editing maps after its public preview.
Azure Logic Apps Standard now generally available: Custom Code support with .NET 8 lets developers embed and run .NET 8 code directly in workflows to enable advanced logic, code reuse, and tighter integration.
Azure announced general availability of Business Process Tracking for Logic Apps (Standard), enabling stakeholders to track key data properties across production workflows to gain timely business insights.
Microsoft announced the general availability of the Azure Logic Apps Standard Automated Test Framework, which enables developers and teams to build, test, and maintain enterprise-grade workflows by creating unit tests for workflow definitions.
Azure Logic Apps now has a public preview of Organizational Templates, enabling teams to create, share, and reuse automation patterns inside their organization to standardize integrations at scale.
Azure API Management is in public preview with expanded support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP), adding MCP support in v2 SKUs and the ability to expose existing MCP-compliant servers to simplify connecting APIs and AI agents.
Microsoft announced the public preview of the Confluent Kafka Connector for Azure Logic Apps (Standard), enabling Logic Apps to both send and receive messages with Confluent Kafka, a distributed streaming platform.
Microsoft is retiring the Confidential VM SKUs DCesv5, DCedsv5, ECesv5, and ECedsv5. These SKUs will be succeeded by the next-generation DCesv6 and ECesv6 sizes, which were recently announced in public preview.
Azure CDN in Microsoft Azure operated by 21Vianet (Azure China) will be retired on December 1, 2025. Customers using Azure CDN in China must migrate to alternative services such as Azure Front Door before that date. The service is built on local CDN providers’ POPs.
Azure App Testing’s Playwright Workspaces is now generally available, enabling highly parallel end-to-end testing across multiple browsers and devices to validate application functionality.
Azure has launched a generally available price reduction for Ultra Disks in the West US 2 region. Ultra Disks are Azure’s highest-performance block storage offering, providing consistent sub-millisecond latency and very high throughput/IOPS, and the price cut lowers storage costs for demanding enterprise workloads in that region.
Azure Ultra Disk is now generally available with a price reduction in the UK South region. Ultra Disk is Azure’s highest-performance block storage for virtual machines, offering consistent sub-millisecond latency and very high throughput and IOPS, making it suitable for demanding enterprise production workloads.
Azure has made a price reduction for Ultra Disks in the Central US region generally available. Ultra Disks provide extremely high performance and sub-millisecond latency for demanding VM workloads, and the price cut reduces costs for those workloads in that region.
Azure App Service has launched the Premium v4 tier, featuring faster processors, NVMe local storage, and memory-optimized options on the latest Azure hardware. This tier supports both Windows and Linux with sizes starting at 1 vCPU and 4GB RAM.
Azure Front Door Standard and Premium are now generally available in Azure China regions China North 3 and China East 3, operated by 21Vianet.
Azure SQL and SQL Server received updates in late August 2025, including the general availability of local SQL Server containers via the MSSQL extension for Visual Studio Code.
Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server now supports Entra ID group login using user credentials in public preview on new servers. This feature aims to simplify user management and enhance security.
Azure Database Migration Service (DMS) now supports schema migration for Azure SQL Database, allowing users to migrate missing schema objects along with data using a simple checkbox option.
Azure SQL Database introduced a replication lag metric in late August 2025, enabling real-time monitoring of the recovery point objective (RPO) for Geo-DR configurations.
Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB (vCore) now supports adding physical shards and rebalancing data as clusters scale, leveraging its elastic compute and storage capabilities.
Entra ID and RBAC support for several Azure Storage supplemental APIs, including GetAccountInfo and ACL management for containers, queues, and tables, is now generally available.
Azure Application Gateway WAF now publicly previews the ability to customize response status codes and bodies for blocked requests.
Azure CNI Overlay for Application Gateway for Containers (AGIC) is now generally available. It allows AKS clusters to assign pod IPs from a separate CIDR, conserving VNet IP space and simplifying multi-cluster deployments.
Azure NetApp Files introduces short-term clones in public preview, allowing instant, space-efficient read/write access by creating temporary thin clones from volume snapshots without full data copies.
The Roslyn Analyzer for Durable Functions in the .NET isolated model is now available in public preview, providing real-time code analysis to enforce durable orchestration coding constraints.
Microsoft Azure is now generally available in a new cloud region in Austria, supporting secure data storage and processing for local companies and public administration.
Azure Functions now generally supports Node.js 22, allowing development and deployment on all Azure Functions plans for Linux and Windows.
Azure Migrate now supports migrating servers to disks with Zone-Redundant Storage (ZRS) redundancy. Users can select ZRS as the redundancy option during migration, enabling automatic provisioning of ZRS disks.
Azure Application Gateway now supports MaxSurge, allowing new instances to be provisioned during rolling upgrades without taking existing instances offline. This feature enables zero-capacity-impact upgrades to newer gateway versions.
Azure Log Analytics’ Search Job feature is now generally available and supports returning up to 100 million results. It enables asynchronous queries across all workspace data, including long-term retention, with results delivered in Analytics tables for further analysis.
Azure NetApp Files file access logs are now generally available, providing detailed visibility into file-level operations for SMB, NFSv4.1, and dual-protocol volumes. This feature helps organizations improve their security monitoring.
Azure Functions Flex Consumption plan now supports a 512 MB memory instance size option, in addition to 2048 MB and 4096 MB. This update helps optimize costs for apps with lower resource needs and supports scaling.
Azure Bastion now supports secure tunneling to private Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) clusters, allowing direct access to the AKS API server from local machines using standard Kubernetes tools.
Azure NetApp Files’ Flexible service level now supports cool access, enabling customers to configure storage capacity and throughput independently for workloads with specific performance and sizing needs.
Azure has introduced the DCesv6 and ECesv6 series Confidential VMs powered by 5th Gen Intel Xeon processors with Intel TDX for enhanced security.
Microsoft Sentinel in Microsoft Azure operated by 21Vianet is being deprecated due to increasing infrastructure and operational complexity.
Microsoft is retiring Microsoft Defender for Cloud in the Azure operated by 21Vianet environment due to increasing infrastructure and operational complexity.
The Azure Blob Storage Archive access tier is now generally available in the Malaysia West region, enabling cost-effective storage of infrequently accessed data locally.
Azure Files has introduced the provisioned v2 billing model for its SSD (premium) tier, allowing separate provisioning of storage, IOPS, and throughput.
The Azure Databricks connector for Microsoft Power Platform is now generally available, enabling seamless integration between Azure Databricks and Power Apps.
Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server is now generally available in the Malaysia West Azure region.
Azure Managed Instance for Apache Cassandra now supports Cassandra 5.0 in public preview, enabling access to the latest features such as improved performance and new indexing capabilities without infrastructure management.
Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB (vCore) now supports encryption with customer-managed keys in public preview, adding to the existing service-managed key encryption.
Azure Automation will resume deploying revised Service and Subscription limits starting August 11, 2025, to ensure fair resource distribution and improve reliability and performance.
Azure Monitor now offers Tenant-Level Service Health Alerts in preview, allowing notifications for service health issues affecting the entire tenant rather than single subscriptions.
Azure App Service now generally supports inbound IPv6 for multi-tenant apps across all public regions on Basic, Standard, Premium SKUs, Functions Consumption, Functions Elastic Premium, and Logic Apps Standard.
Azure App Testing is now in public preview, allowing developers and QA teams to perform large-scale functional and performance tests across frameworks such as Playwright, JMeter, and Locust.
Azure Data Factory and Azure Synapse Analytics now generally support the Upsert method and Script activity for Azure Database for PostgreSQL, enabling efficient and scalable data operations.
Azure Application Gateway v2 now generally available with Private Application Gateway features, enhancing network exposure control.
Azure has launched new VM sizes in the Esv6 and Edsv6 series offering up to 192 vCPUs and 1832 GiB RAM, targeting enterprise-scale workloads.
Azure Data Box Next Gen is now generally available in additional regions including Australia, Japan, Singapore, Brazil, Hong Kong, UAE, Switzerland, and Norway. Both the 120TB and 525TB Azure Data Box models are generally available in these regions.
Azure Storage Discovery is now in public preview, offering enterprise-wide visibility into Azure Storage data. It enables deep analysis of capacity and activity to optimize costs, enhance security, and improve operations.
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is introducing an AI-powered CLI feature called “az aks agent” that integrates agentic reasoning into the Azure CLI for developers and operators.
Azure announced the public preview of Model Context Protocol (MCP) support in Azure API Management and Azure API Center, enabling enterprises to transform existing APIs into dynamic, agent-ready tools while improving security and simplifying integration and consumption. (Original content was truncated.)
Microsoft is retiring Azure unmanaged disks; the announced retirement date is 31 March 2026 (previously 30 September 2025). Azure Managed Disks, launched in 2017 and enhanced since, now provide feature parity and additional capabilities. Deprecation of unmanaged disks began earlier (announced in 2022), and customers are advised to migrate workloads to managed disks before the retirement date.