Azure Update - 25th April 2025

Azure Update - April 25th

Key Concepts:

• Subscription Vending
• Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS) Instance Mix
• NV8as v5 and NV710 v5 VMs
• Container Insights Multi-Tenant Support
• Azure Firewall Specific Log Tables
• Ultra Disk & Premium SSD v2
• Azure Data Box
• Azure Files Premium Metadata Cache
• PostgreSQL Versionless Customer Managed Keys
• Cosmos DB Sharded DiskANN
• Azure Site Recovery Shared Disk Support
• Azure Managed Prometheus Usage Insight
• GPT Image Model (DALL-E 3)

1. Compute Updates

• Virtual Machine Scale Set (VMSS) Instance Mix (GA):
  • Allows different VM sizes within a single flexible orchestration mode scale set.
  • Supports up to five different VM sizes.
  • Optimizes resource utilization and availability.
  • Enables ranking of VM SKUs for provisioning preference.
  • Supports mixing spot and non-spot VMs for cost optimization.
• NV8as v5 and NV710 v5 VMs (GA):
  • Powered by 4th Gen AMD EPYC CPUs and AMD Radeon Pro V710 GPUs.
  • Offers a range of sizes from 1/6 of a GPU with 4GB memory to a full GPU with 28GB memory.
  • Suitable for graphics workloads and lighter AI inferencing.
• Container Insights Multi-Tenant Support (Preview):
  • Enables segregation of logs from shared AKS clusters into different Log Analytics workspaces.
  • Teams can only access logs for their respective containers.
  • Log routing is based on the namespace in the AKS cluster.

2. Networking Updates

• Azure Firewall Specific Log Tables (GA):
  • Logs are now stored in specific tables, enabling compatibility with the Basic Log Plan.
  • Basic Log Plan offers significant cost savings (up to 80%).
  • Resource-specific mode creates individual tables for each log type (e.g., network rule logs, application rule logs).
  • Can select specific log types to collect.
  • Some features (policy analytics, Security Copilot integrations) may not work with the Basic Plan.
  • Diagnostic settings in Azure Firewall instance are used to enable resource-specific destination table format.

3. Storage Updates

• Ultra Disk (GA in Spain Central):
  • Top-tier managed disk with sub-half millisecond latency.
  • Separate IOPS and throughput configuration from capacity.
  • IOPS and throughput can be dynamically adjusted while the disk is in use.
• Premium SSD v2 and Ultra Disk (New Regions):
  • Available in Australia Central 2 and Norway West.
  • Premium SSD v2 is a lower-latency alternative to Ultra Disk with separate and dynamic IOPS and throughput.
• New Azure Data Box Devices:
  • 120 TB and 525 TB NVMe-based versions.
  • Up to 10x faster data transfer compared to previous generations.
  • 100 Gigabit Ethernet connections.
  • Ruggedized design with built-in encryption and intrusion detection.
  • Available in US, US Gov, Canada, EU, and UK Azure regions.
• Azure Data Box Region Flexibility:
  • The region where the Data Box ships to and from can now be different from the destination region for data restoration.
  • Allows data to be restored to a storage account in a different region without incurring data transfer costs over the Azure network.
• Azure Files Premium Metadata Cache (GA):
  • Enhances performance for REST or SMB metadata operations.
  • Benefits scenarios with frequent metadata operations (e.g., file renaming, attribute updates).
  • Improves performance in virtual desktop scenarios and workflows.

4. Database Updates

• PostgreSQL Versionless Customer Managed Keys (Preview):
  • Allows using a customer-managed key in Azure Key Vault without specifying a version.
  • PostgreSQL automatically detects and uses new key versions after rotation.
  • Simplifies automatic key rotation.
• PostgreSQL Flexible Server (v17) New Performance Parameters:
  • Provides access to various performance-related parameters (e.g., transaction buffers, caching mode, event triggers).
• PostgreSQL Time Series Database Migration Support:
  • Simplified migration from TimeScaleDB via the Azure portal.
  • No need for PG dump and restore or dropping TimeScaleDB extensions.
• PostgreSQL New Version Support:
  • Supports versions 17.4, 16.8, 15.12, 14.17, and 13.20.
  • Automatic upgrades during monthly maintenance.
• PostgreSQL Entra Integrated Authentication:
  • PostgreSQL integration with Azure Data Factory (ADF) and Azure Synapse Analytics can now use Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) integrated authentication.
  • Enhances security and simplifies management by using service principals.
• Cosmos DB Sharded DiskANN (Preview):
  • Supports sharded DiskANN vector index for data.
  • DiskANN is a vector index for semantic meaning of data, used with generative AI.
  • Sharding splits the vector index into smaller segments.
  • Reduces latency, cost, and improves scalability and accuracy.
• Cosmos DB 8.0 O Support:
  • Available in the vCore version.
• Azure AI Search Tier Change (Preview):
  • Easy tier upgrades for Basic and Standard (S1, S2, S3) plans without rebuilding the index.
  • Increases capacity limits and provides improved features.
• Azure SQL New Backup Storage Type (RA-GZRS):
  • Read-access geo-zone-redundant storage (RA-GZRS).
  • Zone-redundant in the primary region (three copies across three availability zones).
  • Asynchronously replicates to the paired region with three copies in a cluster.
  • Provides resiliency against data center failures in the primary region and regional outages.

5. Miscellaneous Updates

• Azure Site Recovery Shared Disk Support (GA):
  • Supports replicating shared managed disks used by multiple VMs.
  • Applicable for Windows Server 2016 and above clusters with up to four nodes.
  • Enables cluster-consistent recovery points for shared disk configurations.
• Azure Managed Prometheus Usage Insight (Preview):
  • Sends usage information from Azure Managed Prometheus to a Log Analytics workspace.
  • Helps identify used and unused metrics for cost optimization.
  • Free to enable and use.
• GPT Image Model (DALL-E 3) (Preview):
  • Same image model used by ChatGPT.
  • Significant improvements over previous DALL-E models.
  • Better text rendering and precise image generation based on text descriptions.
  • Available in Azure OpenAI Service.

6. Conclusion

This Azure update covers a range of improvements and new features across compute, networking, storage, databases, and miscellaneous services. Key takeaways include enhanced flexibility in VM scaling, cost optimization options for logging and storage, simplified database management, and new AI capabilities. The updates aim to provide better performance, scalability, security, and cost efficiency for Azure users.