Browse All Azure Content (665)

shashankamalladi outlines updated scale limits for Azure Network Security Perimeter, including new hard limits for perimeters, profiles, rule elements, and associated PaaS resources, plus what changes apply to existing configurations through the 10/31/26 transition window.

nelsontam introduces Microsoft’s MARS (Map Autoregressive) model on Microsoft Foundry and explains how it converts satellite imagery into GIS-ready vector map data. The post outlines an end-to-end workflow with Microsoft Planetary Computer Pro, including STAC/COG ingestion requirements and practical deployment settings for running geospatial feature extraction at scale.

John Savill rounds up a week of Azure platform updates, spanning AKS, networking, API Management, monitoring, data services, and regional expansion, plus a few notable AI model availability items and security-related changes like Azure Enclave and Key Vault symmetric keys.

TomClaes explains how to govern Azure Log Analytics retention across many workspaces by keeping workspace defaults low, setting per-table interactive retention, and using long-term retention only where needed. The post includes an Azure Policy-based, DeployIfNotExists solution with auditing, drift detection, and automated remediation.

junjieli summarizes the July 2026 releases (1.6.3–1.6.6) of the Foundry Toolkit for VS Code, focusing on a flatter, tabbed workspace, inline tool wiring, deeper agent debugging via event-level inspection, and a new Agent Optimization preview that supports measured compare-and-deploy tuning for hosted agents.

Zoran Jovanovic breaks down the main regional distribution patterns for Azure workloads—single region, failover, parallel (active-active), segmented, and portable—framing each as a deliberate reliability and risk decision with clear trade-offs around cost, complexity, RTO/RPO, and service capabilities.

Kristen Womack’s July 2026 roundup for Azure Developer CLI (azd) summarizes releases 1.27.0 through 1.29.0, including new extension install options, a full tool uninstall workflow, Azure AI Foundry resource modeling in azure.yaml, container deployments to Azure App Service, and CI-friendly non-interactive behavior plus a breaking flag rename.

arindamc explains how Workspace Outbound Access Protection (OAP) in Microsoft Fabric controls outbound connectivity for Eventstream, so streaming pipelines can only read from approved sources and write to approved destinations (including cross-workspace routes) using data connection rules.

Abhishek Tiwari explains how Azure Front Door edge actions adds customer-defined logic in the request path while keeping hyperscale performance predictable, enforcing strong tenant isolation with Hyperlight micro-VMs, and building resiliency through bounded latency, fast-fail behavior, and validated fallback mechanisms.

MattH_OneLake announces two Microsoft Fabric preview features that mirror Azure Monitor (Log Analytics) tables and AWS Glue Data Catalog-managed Apache Iceberg tables into OneLake. The post explains the zero-copy, metadata-based approach and outlines how to set up each mirroring source for analysis across Fabric workloads.

Alym Rayani rounds up July 2026 updates across Microsoft Security, focusing on securing AI and agent environments. The post highlights Project Perception’s agentic SecOps approach, new Microsoft Defender protections (including prompt-injection defenses and cloud agent runtime coverage), Entra identity updates like passkeys-by-default, and Purview controls for data protection and investigations.

Allison summarizes the July 2026 updates for GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio, including a new preview agent built on the Copilot SDK, built-in .NET and Azure skills, selected-code review actions, and organization-wide custom instructions for consistent Copilot behavior across teams.

kyleikeda explains an upcoming Azure Cost Management policy change: starting Feb. 1, 2027, reservation exchanges will no longer be available for services that are covered by Azure savings plans. The post lists affected services, clarifies what stays the same, and outlines practical steps to plan ahead.

Chris Noring shows how to build an AI shopping assistant that remembers customer preferences across sessions by plugging a SQL Server-backed history provider into Microsoft Agent Framework, then explains how the same setup can move from local Docker to Azure SQL Database (including Hyperscale) with only a connection-string change.

demiajayi introduces new Cost Management and Pricing toolsets for the Azure Resource Manager MCP server, enabling AI agents (including GitHub Copilot clients) to query costs, forecast spend, manage budgets and alerts, retrieve pricing, and analyze AKS costs directly through Azure’s control plane.

Ilana Waitser introduces a preview capability that brings Azure Monitor telemetry into Microsoft Fabric so teams can connect operational signals (logs and metrics) with analytics workflows and understand business impact faster.

hetvip introduces a community template collection that lets teams keep their existing workflow orchestrator (like Airflow, Temporal, or Argo) while using Azure Container Apps Jobs as the execution layer for containerized tasks, including guidance on identity, RBAC, retries, and fan-out patterns.

Ilana Waitser announces a public preview that lets you share Azure Monitor Logs from a Log Analytics workspace into Microsoft Fabric’s OneLake as Delta Parquet, without duplicating data. The post explains what this enables in Fabric—Power BI reporting, Spark-based analytics and ML, and correlating telemetry with business data for near real-time decisions.

Justin Bettencourt rounds up the July 2026 Azure SDK releases, highlighting new and GA libraries across Rust and Python, plus a full set of release notes for all supported languages.

stevenjma announces the general availability of Terraform AzureRM provider 5.0 and explains the key breaking changes, including new defaults for Resource Provider registration, opt-in Azure preflight validation during terraform plan, and removal of deprecated resources and properties.

Aurnov Chattopadhyay recaps the June 2026 Azure Arc Server Forum, including updates on the Arc Server AI Agent, Azure Arc Multicloud Connector previews (GCP connector and EKS cluster enablement), and ESU guidance for Windows Server 2016/2012 and SQL Server 2016 end-of-support timelines.

murray-kp rounds up the July 2026 Microsoft Fabric updates across CI/CD and Git integration, OneLake governance, Spark runtime and diagnostics, lakehouse and warehouse features, and Real-Time Intelligence improvements including Eventstream security and new connectors.

Lee Stott walks through an end-to-end, production-minded approach for taking a multi-agent system from local development into Microsoft Foundry Agent Service, then distributing it to users in Microsoft Teams. The guide focuses on identity, governance, observability, and repeatable deployment using the FibreOps reference implementation.

pallakatos announces GA support for built-in CIS Benchmark auditing for Linux workloads using Azure Policy with Machine Configuration, including Azure Arc-enabled servers. The post outlines what’s included in GA, which Linux distributions and CIS benchmark versions are supported, and the basic steps to enable continuous compliance reporting in Azure.

Rafia Aqil outlines how to enable Azure Databricks’ Compliance Security Profile (CSP) for HIPAA workloads, including the September 1, 2026 deadline, required prerequisites like Azure VNet encryption and supported VM series, and a rollout approach to validate cluster startup and end-to-end connectivity before production.

stevenbucher introduces a new Compliance Substate property for Azure Policy exemptions, making it possible to see whether exempt resources would be compliant or non-compliant if the exemption were removed. The post shows where to enable the column in the Azure portal and how to query the field at scale using Azure Resource Graph.

prateekwrites explains why “cost per token” is a misleading metric for agentic systems, and proposes “cost per accepted task” as the unit that matters. The post maps this idea to an Azure reference architecture using APIM’s GenAI gateway, Azure AI Foundry evaluations, and a policy loop driven by telemetry and alerts.

Matt Gordon and Anna Hoffman show how to set up anomaly detection in Microsoft Fabric using streaming change events from Azure SQL/SQL Server, then trigger alerts and actions with Fabric components like Eventstream, Eventhouse, and Activator.

Mark Downie introduces the Visual Studio July update, centered on a new Agent (Preview) in Copilot Chat built on the GitHub Copilot SDK. The post also covers built-in .NET and Azure skills, org-level Copilot custom instructions, attaching Git branches as chat context, and improved MSVC toolset discovery for reproducible C++ builds.

Nora Zhan introduces “Physical-World Intelligence” and explains how GeoAI combines geospatial data (weather, satellite imagery, sensors, and maps) with enterprise context and AI. The article outlines Microsoft Foundry’s geospatial model catalog, Planetary Computer Pro as a GeoAI data plane, and a GeoAI SDK for production-scale inference workflows.

tonimontez explains how to govern GitHub Copilot’s usage-based spend using GitHub’s native budget controls first, then adds an Azure API Management gateway in front of an Azure AI Foundry (Azure OpenAI) deployment for real-time, token-granular quotas and per-developer telemetry.

vladvino announces the public preview of the AI Gateway tier for Azure API Management, focused on publishing and governing AI models and MCP servers. The post explains the new portal experience, policy-card governance (rate limits, quotas, Content Safety, fallback), and OpenTelemetry token metrics to destinations like Application Insights.

Shireesh Thota summarizes what customers say they value most in Microsoft’s database portfolio, and ties that feedback to recent and upcoming investments across SQL Server, Azure SQL Database, Azure Database for PostgreSQL, and Azure Cosmos DB—especially around reliability, scalability, and AI-ready capabilities like vector search and RAG.

Kumar Kaushal demonstrates a transitional Azure networking pattern for phased migrations where an application is hard-coded to a legacy private IP. The lab uses Private Link Service Direct Connect plus a Private Endpoint and a site-to-site VPN so Azure-hosted tiers can keep calling the same on-premises address during the interim phase.

Lee Stott explains why the Model Context Protocol (MCP) is becoming the standard way AI agents connect to tools and data, then shows minimal runnable MCP server examples in Python and TypeScript plus practical guidance for VS Code hosting, security, and production operations.

John Edward explains how to build an AI-powered IT support agent on Azure, using Azure AI Foundry with Azure OpenAI Service and (optionally) Azure AI Search for RAG-based answers grounded in internal documentation, plus ideas for automating common help desk actions like ticket creation and password resets.

Welcome to this week's Weekly Azure Roundup, where the theme is tightening the path from prototype to production across governance, security, and operations. AKS governance takes a Kubernetes-native step forward with CEL and Validating Admission Policy support, while networking and protection updates add practical controls like IPv6 for VPN Gateway and custom DDoS policy tuning. On the platform side, Azure Functions runtime updates and a large-scale migration case study highlight what it takes to keep serverless estates current under live load, and the agent stack continues to fill in with Foundry design tooling, delegated auth, a released Agent Framework runtime, and GA observability in Azure Monitor. We also cover new AI model options, expanding HPC capacity, and data streaming and network controls across Azure SQL and Fabric, plus hybrid updates spanning Azure Local storage and Logic Apps Hybrid on self-managed Kubernetes.

John Savill recaps a small set of Azure updates for the week of 24th July 2026, covering new capabilities across AKS, Azure Functions runtimes, networking, DDoS protection, Defender security assessments for PostgreSQL Flexible Server, and a new Log Analytics table aimed at generative AI workloads.

arindamc explains how to build a real-time “row-to-intelligent-action” pipeline in Microsoft Fabric that captures shopping-cart signals via CDC, reshapes them into analytics-ready rows, and enriches each micro-batch with AI in a Spark Structured Streaming notebook to drive timely actions.

AbodeSaafan explains how the Azure Logic Apps team migrated roughly 60,000 per-customer Azure Functions apps from the end-of-life v1/v2 runtime to Functions v4 (isolated worker) under live load, using shadow traffic, strict parity checks, and a progressive rollout with fast rollback and careful retirement of the old fleet.