Monthly Azure news July 2022
It’s hot outside, so the latest Azure news from July 2022 is freshly out of the oven. Read about some new updates on Azure Kubernetes Service, .Net 7, and more. Enjoy!
Contents
General availabilities
New Update on Error handling and retries in Azure Functions
With the new update, it is now possible to set up guidelines for retries that execute a function until it runs successfully, or the maximum number of retries is reached. This maximum number is customizable and can be configured using the event hubs or timer triggers as appropriate. To learn more about this, continue reading the documentation.
Improved Azure Active Directory authentication for Application Insights
To improve security, Application Insights now supports Azure AD authentication. This ensures that only authenticated telemetry data is ingested into your Application Insights resources. Thus, local authentications can be disabled to increase security and reliability. For more information on how to set this up, click here.
Bring your own Container Network Interface plugin for AKS
For even more flexibility in Kubernetes, it is now possible to spin up an AKS cluster without a predefined Container Network Interface plugin (CNI plugin). This means that you can now use your preferred CNI plugin with AKS. It can be installed and configured after creating the Azure Kubernetes Service itself. You will still receive support from Azure except for your chosen CSI implementation. More details are available in the corresponding documentation.
More Stability with the Azure SignalR Service Premium Tier
The new Azure SignalR Service Premium Tier gives you greater resiliency, scalability, and flexibility. With the new Premium Tier you will receive the following features:
- An SLA including 99.95% availability
- Availability Zone support: Distribute workloads evenly across multiple zones in a supported Azure region and redirect traffic to other zones in the event of a failure
- Autoscale capabilities: Specify rules that make it easy to scale up and down to meet capacity needs and optimize resource usage
- Custom domain support: Expose your SignalR resource with a custom domain hostname
Determine your zone with the flexible servers
So that your applications can access the Azure Database for Postgres SQL with even less delay, it is now possible to spin up your database high available in a same-zone setup. Having a standby server in the same zone reduces replication delays and latency between the primary and standby servers. The graphic below shows the setup for this flexible server and or can review the list with all supported regions.
Public Previews
Upcoming API Server VNet integration
So what’s next? For example, the possibility of creating an AKS cluster with an API Server-VNet Integration. This allows network traffic between the node pools and the API server to communicate only within the private network. This feature is currently in public preview, you can try it out here.
.NET 7 support for Azure Functions in isolated process model
With the help of Azure Functions, it is possible to compute with a serverless approach. Normally Azure functions with .NET run as class library in the same process as the host. Now it is possible for them to run out of process which means fewer conflicts, full control of the process, and dependency injection. Now with this preview, the new .NET 7 release can be tested. If you want more information about this topic please visit the Guide for running C# Azure Functions.
Azure Load Testing supports additional metrics including engine health
Azure Load testing enables you to check if the performance expectations which you have for your service meet the real-life experience. The feature is in preview so please consider this while using it. To use the service, you must define different criteria and can customize pass/fail criteria for your tests like latency or errors.
The Azure Load Testing preview has now additional functionality available. You now define the pass/fail criteria on one request in the test plans. Additional client metrics are included. Also, it is now possible to monitor engine health including CPU percentage, memory, number of virtual users, and network bytes per second.
TLS 1.3 preview with Application Gateway
The Azure application gateway now supports TLS Version 1.3 in a preview version. TLS 1.3 provides enhanced security and performance. Visit the documentation to find out more about the new policies, supported minimum protocol versions, and cipher suites.
Premium Tier for Azure Web PubSub
The Azure Web PubSub service now has a premium service tier supporting:
- 99,95% availability
- Availability zones support
- Support for utoscaling
- Custom domain support
For more details refer to the documentation.
Additional News
New functionality heading to the Azure Boards tab
The Azure Boards is a central feature for the project management in Azure DevOps and provides an overview of work items. The new update provides additional features including a new boards hub with improved UI/UX functionality and filters. Additionally, it is possible to toggle dependencies and view the last access columns in the delivery plan view. Please visit the article for a detailed explanation of all added functionality.
Azure SDK Release updates
The July release of the Azure SDK is released and contains new features like the support for Azure Monitor Logs Ingestion for .NET, Java, JavaScript, and Python as well as the requirement of using Go version 1.18. For the details, please refer to the official release information.
Azure Developer CLI (azd) in public preview so try it out
The Azure developer CLI enhances the ability and provides an easy functionality to create, update, delete and monitor your Azure resources in a DevOps approach. There are several extensions for different use cases. The focus is on provisioning resources and deploying applications with just a few commands and predefined templates. The developer CLI is available for Windows and macOS as well as Linux. It can be integrated in VS Code or Visual Studio and will be updated with additional functionality like Terraform support and Java language templates in the near future.
