Tag Archives: Virtual Machines

This week in Azure

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Microsoft rolls back change to Azure AD Graph API

Microsoft announced in March and again this week that due to user feedback the planned decommissioning of the Azure AD Graph API, originally scheduled for the 30th of June 2022 will be delayed until the end of the year. Updates of the planned retirement date will be released at some point in the middle of this year.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/migrate-azure-ad-graph-overview

Azure Data Explorer supports Azure private endpoints

As of the 7th April you can now use private endpoints for Azure Data Explorer Cluster on a VNet. In effect, this means that any traffic flowing over this VNet from the client to the data explorer will use the Microsoft Backbone, removing any exposure to the public internet.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/adx-pe/

Azure Backup support for metrics and metric alerts for Azure Blobs is in Public Preview

This preview feature enables the following capabilities:

  • Monitor restore job health of your backed up blobs via Azure Monitor and backup centre.
  • Write custom alert rules on metrics for the thresholds and granularity that you are interested in.
  • Route fired metric alerts to various notification channels that Azure Monitor supports, such as email, ITSM, webhook, logic apps, and so on.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/azure/backup/metrics-overview

Support for capacity reservation in AKS in Public Preview

This feature allows you to reserve a capacity for an AKS instance without the requirement of leveraging 1-3 year reserved instances. Providing you with a dedicated and guaranteed level of compute capacity (subject to SLA’s).
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/aks/use-multiple-node-pools#associate-capacity-reservation-groups-to-node-pools-preview

Increased storage throughput for Azure VMs increasing throughput by 300%

The new memory optimised Ebs v5 and Ebds v5 Azure VM, are now generally available. These new VMs feature the latest 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Platinum 8370C (Ice Lake) processor in a hyper-threaded configuration. These VMs can deliver up to a 300% increase in VM-to-Disk Storage throughput and IOPS compared to the previous generation D/Ev4 VM series.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/blog/increase-remote-storage-performance-with-azure-ebsv5-vms-now-generally-available/

News: Microsoft add new limited preview VMs for confidential workloads

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29th June 2021, Microsoft announce the release of 2 new VM series for confidential computing.

Today Microsoft have announced the limited preview go-live of the DCsv3-series and DCdsv3-series Azure Virtual Machines, based on the Intel 3rd Gen Zeon scalable processors. 

These VMs are currently only available (in limited preview) in the East US region.

For more information and to sign up for the preview please register your interest here https://bityl.co/7beZ.

News: FX Series VMs now in GA

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Azure FX series Virtual Machines are now generally available in the West US 2, West Europe, and Japan East regions, and will be released into more regions based on demand.

On the 22nd June 2021 Microsoft announced the new FX series VM’s are now generally available in three regions.

Microsoft are targeting these VMs for EDA (Electronic Design Automation) workloads, but they should provide benefits for any workloads that require high CPU frequency and high memory capacity.

In Europe the following 4 instances are available:

1. FX48mds: 4 Cores, 84GB of RAM.
2. FX12mds: 12 Cores, 252GB RAM
3. FX24mds: 24 Cores, 504GB RAM
4. FX48mds: 48 Cores, 1008GB RAM

With current prices ranging from €390.30 – €4,683.55 for the base instances.

For more information please refer to the announcement from Microsoft here Optimize extreme computing performance with Azure FX-series Virtual Machines | Azure blog and updates | Microsoft Azure