Monthly Azure news – July 2020

In our monthly Azure news find out which updates and findings have marked this month. Moreover, you can read about what we found useful to share with our community as well as a short summary of our Azure Rosenheim meetup. We are happy to see our community growing and promise to come up with more topics, hands-on sessions and livestream meetups this autumn.

AKS-managed Azure Active Directory support is available

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)-managed Azure Active Directory support is in general availability. The advantage is that this will simplify AKS integration with Azure AD. There are no requirements for the customers anymore to create client apps, service apps, or tenant owners to grant elevated permissions. AKS creates suitable roles/role bindings with group memberships through delegated permissions to ease the administration.

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) support for containerd runtime is in preview

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) now supports the creation of clusters and node pools with containerd, an industry-standard container runtime, in preview. Containerd increases pod creation speed and stability. Users will be able to choose between containerd or Moby as their runtime during the public preview. Containerd will become the default runtime for AKS after release. Everybody can use the preview period to test their workloads on the new node pools to secure a smooth transition.

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) now supports BYO control plane managed identity

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) now supports bring-your-own identities for the control plane managed identity. The Kubernetes cloud provider uses this identity in order to produce resources like Azure Load Balancer, public IP addresses, and others on account of the user. The complete management of authorization is simplified by the managed identities because users don’t have to manage service principals by themselves.

OpenID Connect support for Azure App Service and Azure Functions is in preview

Now it is possible to configure your Azure App Service and Azure Functions apps for login authentication through any OpenID Connect provider. This new possibility (in preview) makes it possible to extend App Service authentication and authorization support to the provider that you choose. To learn more follow the link.

Azure Monitor for Containers now has recommended warnings. Use this feature to enable one-click alerts in your Azure Kubernetes Service Cluster (AKS). These preconfigured metric alerts allow you to monitor your system resource when it is running at peak capacity or reaching error/failure rates. This feature is currently in the preview phase.

Secure Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) pods with Azure Policy (in preview)

To improve the security of your Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster, it is possible to secure your pods with Azure Policy (in preview). This integration enables you to deny and survey pod requests to an AKS cluster that is not policy conform. You can choose from a list of 16 built-in options and two initiatives and apply those. To find out more check the link.

Azure Monitor Logs connector is now generally available

The Azure Monitor logs connector is generally available. You can use it to build workflows in Power Automate or Azure Logic Apps that retrieve data from the Azure Monitor Logs workspace or Application Insights. The benefit is that the log output can be queried via the connector and used for instance for alerting if some event happened. Older connectors will be supported.

Java 11 for Azure Functions is now available in preview

Java 11 for Azure Functions is now available in preview on Consumption and Premium plans for Windows and Linux. This enables developing and deploying Functions apps using the tools of your choice, specifically the Azure portal, Azure CLI, Gradle, and Maven tools.

Azure Red Hat OpenShift 4.4 is now available

Red Hat OpenShift on Azure is a fully managed offering by Red Hat and Microsoft. The new version Openshift 4.4 builds upon the stability of Kubernetes 1.17. It also includes upgrades in core platform capabilities related to compute, networking and storage.

Further changes are:

  • OpenShift Serverless, based on Knative is now generally available (GA).
  • Support for Helm 3, including making Helm charts visible and available in the OpenShift Console’s developer catalog. 
  • A Tech Preview of OpenShift Pipelines. OpenShift Pipelines, are a CI/CD add-on based on the open-source project Tekton. based on the open-source Tekton. They provide a Kubernetes-native way to create CI/CD pipelines that are portable across Kubernetes and also containerized. Learn more.

Azure Private Link support for Azure SignalR Service is now generally available in all regions that can use Azure SignalR Service. This feature enables your virtual network resources to communicate privately with Azure SignalR Service. Use Private Link to connect to an Azure SignalR Service instance through a private endpoint in a virtual network and configure network access control to protect your cloud end communications with Azure SignalR Service.

Azure Monitor Community Repository is now available

Microsoft announced the Azure Monitor Community Repository, which provides a collaborative space for community members and customers to share and explore Azure Monitor artifacts such as queries, workbooks, and alerts. This repo is public and can accept contributions from any Azure Monitor user, for the benefit of the entire Azure community.

Announcing the GitHub public roadmap

GitHub announced the GitHub public roadmap earlier this month. The public roadmap is designed to give you more information about what features and functionality you can expect from GitHub over the coming quarters. With more transparency into what we’re building and the ability to hare feedback earlier to influence what GitHub is building.

Azure Rosenheim Meetup

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In case you missed our last Azure Rosenheim meetup, you can check the video here and find out more about Serverless hosting of modern Java Applications with Azure Static Web Apps. Martin and Michael showed us some very useful demos. Furthermore, Martin spoke about the GitHub CLI and how it can help us manage repositories, issues and requests, so tune in for more.