Monthly Azure news December 2022

Our Monthly Azure News December 2022 blog post brings you some of the most interesting Azure and Azure Kubernetes Service news announced in December 2022. Enjoy the read!

Contents

Generally Available

Azure Database for MySQL – Flexible Server data encryption with CMK

Customer-managed key (CMK) data encryption for Azure Database for MySQL – Flexible Server allows you to bring your own key (BYOK) for data protection at rest. With this feature, you can implement a separation of duties for managing keys and data.

In addition, you can centrally manage and organize keys using Azure Key Vault. With customer-managed encryption, you are responsible for and have full control over a key’s lifecycle, key usage permissions, and key audit operations.

Azure AD authentication with Azure Database for MySQL – Flexible Server

With the Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) authentication feature, you can connect to your Azure Database for MySQL – Flexible Server instances using identities defined in Azure AD. You can manage your database user identities and other Microsoft services in Azure AD as a central location. The Azure AD authentication simplifies and secures the overall management of permissions.

Static Web Apps Diagnostics

Azure Static Web Apps Diagnostics is an intelligent tool that lets you troubleshoot issues with your static web app directly from the Azure portal. When problems occur, Static Web Apps Diagnostics helps you diagnose what went wrong and shows you how to resolve the issues. This guide helps you improve the reliability of your website and track its performance.

Kubernetes 1.25 support in AKS

AKS support for Kubernetes release 1.25 is now generally available. Version 1.25 delivers forty enhancements. It includes recent changes, such as the removal of PodSecurityPolicy.

Visit the official Kubernetes website to learn more.

Public Previews

With Azure Bastion’s new shareable links feature in the public preview and included in the Standard SKU, you can now connect to a target resource (virtual machine or VM scale set) using Azure Bastion without having to access the Azure portal.

Two key pain points are solved with this feature:

  • Administrators no longer need to give one-time VM users full access to their Azure accounts – which helps maintain their privacy and security
  • Users without Azure subscriptions can seamlessly connect to VMs without exposing RDP/SSH ports to the public Internet

Performance-improving features for Azure Service Bus premium

Two new features enable higher throughput levels for Azure Service Bus Premium. These new features are available in public preview.

First, Microsoft released scaling partitions that enable the use of partitioning for the premium messaging tier. Service Bus partitions enable the partitioning of messaging entities across multiple message brokers. This implies, that the overall throughput of a partitioned entity is no longer limited by the performance of a single message broker. In addition, a temporary failure of a message broker, such as during an upgrade, does not render a partitioned queue or topic unavailable. The reason is that messages are retried on another partition.

Second, Microsoft is making a change to its infrastructure that will result in more consistent low latency. This will be achieved by moving their storage to a different implementation called a local store. During the public preview, partitioned namespaces will use this new feature. In the future, all new namespaces will be created in a local store.

Partitioning

Scaling partitions in premium namespaces works closely with scaling by messaging units (MUs), as the configured messaging units in a namespace are distributed evenly across the different partitions. Currently, it is possible to scale up to four partitions, which means we can scale to a total of 64 MUs.

There are some differences between partitioning in the standard and premium SKUs. First, the number of partitions is configured during namespace creation on the premium SKU. Second, the premium SKU does not allow non-partitioned entities in partitioned namespaces.

To enable partitions, select the number of partitions during the creation of a new namespace. Initially, these features will be available in the USA, East, and North Europe, other regions will follow. After creating partitions, it is not possible to change the number of them. More details can be found in the documentation.

Azure Arc enabled Azure Container Apps

This procedure allows developers to benefit from the features and developer productivity of Azure Container Apps. The underlying Kubernetes cluster can be deployed on-premises or hosted in a third-party cloud. For now, it allows IT administrators to maintain corporate compliance by hosting the application in Hybrid environments.

Azure Container Apps enables developers to quickly build and deploy microservices and containerized applications. Common uses of Azure Container Apps include API endpoints, background or event-driven processing, and running microservices. Applications can be dynamically scaled within the confines of the Arc-enabled Kubernetes cluster.

Deploying an Arc extension on the Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes cluster gives IT administrators control over the underlying hardware and environment while enabling the high productivity of Azure PaaS services within a hybrid environment. Learn more.

Private Preview

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) Backup

Enterprises are increasingly deploying Kubernetes, which continues to win popularity. Microsoft’s customers prefer Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) to deploy and run their critical applications on Kubernetes. While enterprise adoption of Kubernetes is growing, IT leaders are still finding best practices to secure their mission-critical containerized applications and data stored in clusters. For a private preview, fill out this form.

With that in mind, the Azure Backup service is announcing a private preview of AKS Backup. With this feature, you can:

  • Backup and restore your containerized applications. Both stateless and stateful, running on your AKS clusters and data stored in Persistent Volumes connected to the clusters
  • Perform backup orchestration and leverage Azure Backup’s management capabilities and Backup Center’s single-pane-of-glass view