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RSS feedMarch 2022
NC-series Azure Virtual Machines retirement extended to 31 August 2023
Target retirement date: August 31, 2023
Transition to new HPC virtual machines by 31 August 2023.
Update: NC-series Azure Virtual Machines will be retired on 31 August 2023
Target retirement date: August 31, 2023
Transition to new HPC virtual machines by 31 August 2023.
General availability: On-demand capacity reservations
On-demand capacity reservations let you reserve compute capacity for one or more VM size(s) in an Azure region or availability zone for any length of time.
General availability: Azure HBv3 virtual machines for HPC now upgraded
Target availability: Q1 2022
Azure HBv3 virtual machines are now upgraded to and generally available with AMD EPYC 3rd Gen processors with 3D V-Cache, codenamed “Milan-X”, in the Azure East US, South Central US, and West Europe regions.
Public preview: Trusted launch support for Virtual Machines using Ephemeral OS disks
Trusted launch virtual machine (VM) support for VMs using Ephemeral OS disks improves the security of generation 2 VMs in Azure.
February 2022
Public preview: Cross region virtual machine restore points
Create restore points in any region and copy restore points from one region to another.
General availability: Automatically delete a VM and its associated resources simultaneously
You can now automatically delete disks, NICs, and Public IPs associated with a VM at the same time you delete the VM.
Generally available: Virtual Machine level disk bursting supports additional VM types
Handle unforeseen disk traffic spikes smoothly without the need to overprovision your virtual machine with virtual machine level disk bursting.
January 2022
Announcing price reductions for Azure confidential computing
Lower prices for Azure confidential computing virtual machines
December 2021
Public preview availability of Virtual Machine restore points
Take multi-disk consistent point in time snapshots of all the disks attached to a VM for backup and disaster recovery purposes.
November 2021
Public preview: Azure Virtual Machines DCasv5 and ECasv5-series now available
New DCasv5 and ECasv5-series Azure Confidential Virtual Machines are available in public preview
Public preview: Azure Virtual Machines DCv3-series now available in Europe West and North
Confidential computing DCsv3 and DCdsv3-series virtual machines (VMs) are now available in Europe West and Europe North.
Virtual machines selector now generally available
The newly released virtual machines selector lets you quickly find the Azure VMs and disk storage options that meet your requirements. Localized in 26 different languages, the tool guides your selection based on workload categories, operating systems, and Azure regions of your choice. The virtual machine selector is integrated with the pricing calculator.
Public preview: Run Command – Execute PowerShell or shell scripts on Virtual Machines and Scale Sets
The updated Run Commands are now management orientated, allows to run multiple scripts, track their progress and define Run Command resources in ARM templates to automate VM deployments.
Public preview: VM Applications – Manage and deploy applications to Virtual Machines and Scale Sets
With VM Applications, you can create and securely store application packages in an Azure Compute Gallery. Package management is greatly simplified with logical grouping and versioning capabilities and packages can be shared with other users in your organization, across subscriptions, and tenants.
Azure trusted launch for Virtual Machines now generally available
Azure offers trusted launch as a seamless way to bolster the security of Generation 2 VMs. Designed to protect against boot kits, rootkits, and kernel-level malware, trusted launch is comprised of secure boot, virtual trusted platform module (vTPM), and boot integrity monitoring.
Automatic VM guest patching is now generally available
Automatic VM guest patching provides safe and automatic patching for virtual machines to simplify update management and maintain security compliance.
Public preview: Azure Virtual Machines DCsv3 and DCdsv3-series now available
New DCsv3 and DCdsv3-series Azure Virtual Machines transform the state-of-the-art for confidential workloads.
New orchestration mode for Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets now generally available
Increase the availability at scale of business-critical applications with new Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets features. Simplify workload deployment, management, and scalability with Virtual Machine Scale Sets flexible orchestration mode, now generally available.
Limited preview: New Azure Virtual Machines deliver increased storage throughput for data-intensive workloads
Microsoft is announcing the upcoming preview of Ebs v5 and Ebds v5 Azure VMs, a new memory optimized VM series that delivers up to 300% increase in remote storage performance compared to prior generation VMs. The increased storage throughput is ideal for data-intensive workloads, such as large relational databases, high-performance OLTP scenarios, and data analytics applications.
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