This document summarizes new Azure updates from October. Key updates include: 1) new H-Series VMs for high performance computing; 2) general availability of Azure Disk Encryption, IPv6 support, and Azure DNS; 3) preview of Accelerated Networking; and 4) general availability of features like Storage Service Encryption and Premium Storage. It also outlines updates to services like Key Vault, Security Center, Application Gateway WAF, Service Fabric, DocumentDB, SQL, and App Service.

1. Azure Update, October
Kanio Dimitrov

2. VM & Networking
• VM - H-Series:
• Available in South Central US
• One of the fastest in Azure – 30% - 50% performance increase
• For high-end computational needs (molecular modeling and computational fluid
dynamics)
• VM - General Availability: Azure Disk Encryption for Windows & Linux
(Standard and Premium) IaaS VM-s
• IPv6 – General Availability – most Azure regions support both
• Vnet peering – Generally available in most of the regions

3. Accelerated Networking - Preview

4. Azure DNS - General Availability
• SLA – 99.99% covered by Azure Support
• DNS record types supported:
• A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, NS, PTR, SOA, SRV and TXT
• Global network of name servers

5. Storage
• Storage - General Availability: Storage Service Encryption
• Premium Storage – General Availability
• SDD for I/O-intensive workloads
• Up to 64 TB with 80 000 IOPS per second per VM
• SLA – 99.9%

6. Key Vault
• Key Vault Certificates – simplify SST/TLS certificates from
supported third=party CA
• Enroll for certificates
• Automatically renew while providing auditing trails within
same environment

7. Azure Security Center
• Integrated vulnerability assessments available for preview
• Extended web application firewall capabilities available for
preview
• Azure Storage security assessment preview

8. Azure Security Center
• New detections generally available
• Security incidents preview
• Threat intelligence reports preview

9. Application Gateway WAF
• Protect web apps from common web-based attacks
• Preconfigured for OWASP top 10 common vulnerabilities
• Simple to install and have login and continuous monitoring
• Protection and detection-only modes

10. Service Fabric
• General Availability – Windows Server support
• On-premise installation & support offered
• Public Preview – Linux:
• Support for Java applications
• One box setup supported
• CLI, Eclipse and Jenkins support

11. Document DB
• Geospatial indexing and querying of Polygon and LineString
objects
• Automatic detection of GeoJSON in JSON documents
• Index for efficient spatial proximities queries
• Useful for detecting “geo-fences” in IoT , gaming and
mobile apps

12. Document DB
• TOP & ORDER BY queries available in DocumentDB Java and Node.js SDKs for partitioned
collections
• IP-based access control (similar to firewall rules)
• .NET SDK 1.10.0
• Direct connectivity for partitioned collections
• Improved performance for Bounded Staleness consistency level
• LINQ support for StringEnumConverter, IsoDateTimeConverter, and UnixDateTimeConverter
• Python SDK 2.0.0
• Support for Python 3
• Connection pooling
• TOP and ORDER BY support

13. Azure SQL
• General Availability – Temporal tables in Azure SQL
Database
• Track full history of data changes
• Perform data auditing

14. Azure SQL
• Analyze tends or detect anomalies
• Implement slowly changing dimensions patterns
• Perform fine-grained row repairs at the row level

15. Azure App Service Companion preview
• Android and iOS support
• Manage App Services on the go
• Native mobile experience

18. App Service - Linux
• Public preview for native Linux support for Node.js and PHP stacks
• Support for streamlined deployment abilities with deployment slots
• Custom domains
• SSL configuration
• Continuous deployment
• Horizontal and vertical scaling

19. Automation graphical runbooks

20. Azure Bot