Azure updates
Get the latest updates on Azure products and features to meet your cloud investment needs. Subscribe to notifications to stay informed.
RSS feedApril 2021
Public preview: Enhancements to encryption using customer managed keys for Azure Backup
Encryption of backup data in Recovery Services vaults using customer managed keys has enhancements in public preview.
Public preview: Azure Purview is now available in the UK South and Australia East region
Azure Purview is now available in public preview in the Australia East and UK South region. You can now provision Azure Purview accounts in these regions as a public preview offering.
Action required: upgrade your AML cluster to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS by 30 April 2021
Target retirement date: April 30, 2021
Ubuntu 16.04 community support ends on 30 April 2021 – Transition to 18.04 immediately
Azure Purview resource set pattern rules available in public preview
Azure Purview is announcing the public preview of resource set pattern rules. A resource set is a single object in the data catalog that represents a large number of assets in storage. Resource set pattern rules allow you to customize or override how Azure Purview detects which assets are grouped as resource sets and how they are displayed within the catalog.
General availability: Application Gateway URL Rewrite
Application Gateway now supports hosting friendly URLs and routing based on query string values.
Azure Data Factory announces Data Flow general availability in two new Azure regions
Azure Data Factory has released Mapping Data Flows for 2 new Azure regions: US Virgina Gov & US Arizona Gov
Azure Virtual Machines DCsv2-series now available in public preview in Azure Government
Azure Government customers can build secure, enclave-based applications to protect code and data while it’s in use, in a dedicated cloud that meets stringent government security and compliance requirements.
Announcing general availability of new M-series Msv2/Mdsv2 Medium Memory VMs for memory-optimized workloads
Azure Msv2/Mdsv2 Medium Memory Series offering up to 192vCPU and 4TB memory configurations and running on Cascade Lake processor are now generally available.
Microsoft announces plans to establish first datacenter region in Malaysia
The new datacenter region is part of the “Bersama Malaysia” initiative to support inclusive economic growth in Malaysia.
Open source API Portal now generally available
API Portal is a no-code option to create, manage, and publish API documentation - for free.
General availability: Azure Sphere version 21.04 expected on April 29, 2021
Participate in the retail evaluation now to ensure full compatibility. The OS evaluation period provides 14 days for backward compatibility testing.
User data through Azure Instance Metadata Service now generally available
Leverage user data to customize your VM instance provision and configuration.
General availability: Event source start options in Azure Time Series Insights Gen2
The new event source start options feature in Azure Time Series Insights Gen2 gives you flexibility when configuring an event source.
Azure Automation support for System Assigned Managed Identities is now in public preview
Use managed identities now to authenticate runbooks to any Azure service that supports Azure AD authentication.
Apache Spark 3.0 is now available for public preview in HDInsight 4.0.
Apache Spark 3.0 public preview in HDInsight 4.0 is a major update to Apache Spark and brings significant improvements including better performance and better support for ANSI SQL.
Public preview - Support for multiple currencies on Retail Rates API for all Azure products/services
An unauthenticated experience to get retail prices in different currencies for all Azure products/services (including Reserved Instances).
Cognitive Services - New Computer Vision API v3.2 now generally available
Updated Computer Vision API now generally available to improve image tagging, content moderation, OCR language expansion, and more.
General availability: Log analytics workspace name uniqueness is now per resource group
You can now use the same workspace name in deployments across all your environment without a conflict. This is useful in template deployments when the same name can be used for every deployment for consistency.
General availability: New Azure Policy built-in definitions for data encryption in Azure Monitor
With Azure Monitor built-in policy definitions for data encryption, you can enforce organizational standards and assess compliance of data encryption settings in your environment.
Public preview: Functions upgrade in Azure Monitor log analytics
We have upgraded the functions experience in log analytics, providing new UI and capabilities to allow you to do more with functions.
Azure at Microsoft Ignite
Get answers to your questions from Microsoft and Community experts.
Community supportRead commonly asked questions on Azure updates.
FAQTell 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