Azure updates
Get the latest updates on Azure products and features to meet your cloud investment needs. Subscribe to notifications to stay informed.
RSS feedNovember 2023
Public Preview: Attach and VMs to and from Existing Virtual Machine Scale Sets
You can now easily bring existing VMs to an existing Virtual Machine Scale Set with Flexible Orchestration Mode to take advantage of the scaling orchestrations offered by scale sets. You can now detach a VM from the scale set for isolation and troubleshooting.
October 2023
Public Preview: VMSS Automatic Instance Repairs - Reimage, Restart Repair Actions
New recovery options available on automatic instance repairs provides the capability for less-disruptive repair actions on sensitive workloads.
Breaking Change Notice: Virtual Machine Scale Set Default Orchestration Mode changing from Uniform to Flexible on PowerShell, Azure CLI
Starting November 2023, Virtual Machine Scale Sets created on PowerShell and Azure CLI will automatically default to Flexible orchestration mode.
August 2023
Generally Available: Azure Monitor VM Insights using Azure Monitor Agent
VM Insights using Azure Monitor Agent provides various benefits like cost savings, simplified management experience and enhanced security & performance.
April 2023
General Availability: Azure App Health Extension - Rich Health States
Application Health Extension, Rich Health States allows for more detailed health reporting on your VM applications.
March 2023
GA: Spot Priority Mix
Deploy a Virtual Machine Scale Set with both Spot and standard virtual machines using flexible orchestration mode.
January 2023
Public Preview: Azure App Health Extension - Rich Health States
Application Health Extension, Rich Health States allows for more detailed health reporting on your VM applications.
October 2022
Continuous delivery setting of Azure VMSS will be retired on 31 March, 2023 – Use Azure DevOps to create pipelines
Target retirement date: March 31, 2023
Start using Azure Pipelines by 31 March, 2023 instead of Azure Portal to create Continuous delivery pipelines for Azure Virtual Machine Scale Set
Public preview: New Azure Virtual Machine Scale Set and Spot Virtual Machines capabilities
You can now include standard VMs and Spot VMs in the same Azure Virtual Machine Scale Set. New VM-series are now supported with Virtual Machine Scale Sets flexible orchestration mode.
General availability: New Azure proximity placement groups feature
You can now use the new optional parameter "intent" to specify the VM sizes and zone intended for the proximity placement group.
August 2022
Public preview: Ephemeral OS disks supports host-based encryption using customer managed key
Create Ephemeral VMs with customer managed key encryption types for host-based encryption.
June 2022
General availability: 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.
May 2022
Generally available: Azure Compute Gallery support for trusted launch Virtual Machines
Azure Compute Gallery now allows you to create and share custom images for Trusted launch virtual machines
April 2022
Public preview: Arm64-based Azure VMs can deliver up to 50% better price-performance
New general-purpose and memory-optimized Azure Virtual Machines, which feature Ampere Altra Arm-based processors, deliver even better price-performance than comparable x86-based Azure Linux Virtual Machines.
March 2022
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.
November 2021
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.
October 2021
General availability: Ephemeral OS disks for Azure VMs support additional VM sizes
You now can choose where to store Ephemeral OS disks, either in VM temp disk or on VM cache. This enables Ephemeral OS disks to be created on more VM sizes that have sufficient temp disks.
September 2021
Public preview: Automatic scaling with Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets flexible orchestration mode
This release provides improved quality and simplified Azure customer experience, giving you the opportunity to combine the functionality of Availability Sets and Virtual Machine Scale Sets.
June 2021
General availability: Maintenance control for Virtual Machine Scale Sets OS image upgrades
Take control of OS image upgrades on your virtual machine scale sets by using the new maintenance control feature. Now you can update at the time chosen by you with all the safety checks in place.
Azure at Microsoft Build
Get answers to your questions from Microsoft and Community experts.
Community supportRead commonly asked questions on Azure updates.
FAQFind the latest news, updates and resources for Azure partners.
Azure Partner ZoneTell us what you think of Azure and what you want to see in the future.
Provide feedbackAzure is available in more regions than any other cloud provider.
Check product availability in your region