Azure updates
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RSS feedOctober 2022
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.
Desired state configuration VM Extension for Linux, and Azure Automation DSC support for Linux, will be retired on 30 September 2023
Target retirement date: September 30, 2022
PowerShell DSC Virtual Machine extension for Linux, and Azure Automation DSC support for Linux, will be retired on 30 September 2023
September 2022
Continuous delivery setting of Azure VM 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 Machines.
Generally available: New Azure Virtual Machines with Ampere Altra Arm-based processors
New general-purpose and memory-optimised Azure VMs, featuring Ampere Altra Arm-based processors, engineered to efficiently run scale-out, cloud-native workloads, are now available.
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.
Generally available: US West 3 price adjustment
Pricing adjustment to bring value to our Azure customers in western US regions.
July 2022
Generally available: Virtual machine restore points
For customers and Azure partners who are looking to build business continuity and disaster recovery solutions, VM restore points provide a feature rich building blocks available natively on Azure platform.
Public preview: Ephemeral OS disk support for confidential virtual machines
Create confidential VMs using Ephemeral OS disks for your stateless workloads.
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.
Generally available: Azure NC A100 v4 virtual machines for AI
Perfect for a range of AI workloads, this new virtual machines series can give you a significant performance boost over our previous NC generation series.
General availability: Storage optimized Azure VMs deliver higher performance for data analytics
The new Lasv3 and Lsv3 VM series are well suited for high throughput and high IOPS workloads including big data applications, SQL and NoSQL databases, data intensive applications and more.
May 2022
Generally available Azure Ebsv5 now available in 13 additional regions
Azure Virtual Machines Ebsv5 and Ebdsv5 are now available in 13 additional regions.
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
Generally available: IBM WebSphere on Azure with evaluation licensing
Use evaluation licenses, instead of full entitlements, for WebSphere on Azure Virtual Machines for trial and prototyping.
Generally available: Azure Virtual Machines increase storage throughput by up to 300%
Microsoft is announcing the general availability of the Ebs/Ebds v5 memory optimized Azure VM series, that deliver up to 300% increase in remote storage performance compared to prior generation VMs.
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
Update: NV-series and NV_Promo Azure Virtual Machines will be retired on 31 August 2023
Target retirement date: August 31, 2023
Move to GPU accelerated virtual machines by 31 August 2023.
Update: ND-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.
Update: NC v2-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.
NC v2-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.
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