Azure Platform Updates Summary (April 2025 – April 2026)
Hi All.
Wanted to understand how Azure has changed during last 12 months, so made a list of announcements compiled from official Azure Updates page.
Tables below summarizes Azure service announcements and retirements published during this period:
Retirement Services
| Service Name | URL |
|---|---|
| Python support for Azure App Service and Azure Functions on Windows | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558027 |
| AzureDnsEndpoints for Azure storage accounts | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558276 |
| Service Fabric support for Windows Server 2022 | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558247 |
| Service Fabric support for Windows Server 2019 | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558246 |
| Select Azure AI Language Features | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557394 |
| External Data Import & Data Connections in Azure Machine Learning | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557406 |
| Manually registered Azure VPN Clients for Azure Government | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557395 |
| Deprecation of sidecar for remote-write for Azure Monitor | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=550519 |
| Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=556085 |
| Azure SQL Elastic query - Shard_Map_Manager mode | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558086 |
| Azure Sphere | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557123 |
| HC-series Azure Virtual Machines | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=548543 |
| HBv2-series Azure Virtual Machines | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=548525 |
| NP-series Azure Virtual Machines | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=548497 |
| Emissions Impact Dashboard for Azure | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558278 |
| Azure VMware Solution AV36P and AV52 node retirement | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557094 |
| Support for Windows Server 2016 Marketplace images on Azure Batch | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=549077 |
| Migration of Azure Batch Low-Priority VMs to Spot VMs | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=543279 |
| End of life reminder of NVv3 and NVv4-series | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=516070 |
| Flatcar Container Linux for AKS (preview) | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557929 |
| Azure Policy faster enforcement and retirement of login/logout workaround | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558102 |
| Managed NGINX Ingress with Application Routing Add-on | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=555839 |
| Windows Server Annual Channel (preview) on AKS | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557224 |
| Azure Front Door and Azure CDN profiles will end support for DHE cipher suites | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=553527 |
| "Send data to Event Hubs & Storage (Preview)" | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=551523 |
| Support for Python 3.10 in Azure Functions | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=545771 |
| Deprecation of Custom Resource Providers | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=513892 |
| The retirement date for default outbound access has been extended | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=515484 |
| Remove dependency on these Azure ML SDKs before June 30, 2026 | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=501668 |
| Migrate to dedicated VM for your compute clusters | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=501658 |
New Services
| Service Name | URL |
|---|---|
| Azure App Configuration and Azure Front Door integration | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=537234 |
| Azure Data Box - Secure Erasure Certificates | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=559772 |
| Azure Data Box - Azure Files Provisioned v2 support | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=559767 |
| Azure NetApp Files - cool access enhancement | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=559504 |
| Azure DevOps March 2026 updates | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=559660 |
| Azure Event Grid - new capabilities | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=559695 |
| User delegation SAS for Azure Tables, Azure Files, and Azure Queues | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=559535 |
| Azure Event Grid - generally available features | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=492542 |
| Microsoft Azure now available from new cloud region in Denmark | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=559406 |
| Azure Premium SSD v2 Disk in US Gov Arizona | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=559677 |
| Ephemeral OS Disk with full caching for VM/VMSS | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=559322 |
| Azure Red Hat OpenShift in Indonesia Central | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=559552 |
| Azure Premium SSD v2 Disk in South India | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=559526 |
| Azure SQL updates for late-March 2026 | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558879 |
| Cosmos DB Mirroring in Microsoft Fabric with private endpoints | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558836 |
| Blue-green agent pool upgrade in AKS | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557862 |
| Fabric Mirroring integration for Azure Database for MySQL | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558841 |
| Azure SQL Managed Instance change event streaming | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558884 |
| Custom time zone support for pg_cron in Azure Database for PostgreSQL | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558870 |
| PostgreSQL migration service - EDB workloads | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558865 |
| PostgreSQL migration service - Google AlloyDB | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558851 |
| Online migration now uses pgoutput plugin | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558846 |
| Container network metrics filtering for AKS | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557902 |
| AI Agent for container networking troubleshooting | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557887 |
| AKS managed GPU metrics in Azure Monitor | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557882 |
| Cross-cluster networking in Azure Kubernetes Fleet Manager | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557877 |
| Azure Container Storage v2.1.0 with Elastic SAN integration | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557912 |
| Container network logs in AKS | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557892 |
| Azure Monitor Prometheus community recommended alerts | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558825 |
| Application routing with meshless Istio in AKS | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557927 |
| Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Application Network | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557922 |
| Ingest OTLP data into Azure Monitor | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=559273 |
| Azure SQL updates for mid-March 2026 | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558116 |
| Azure Databricks OneLake Catalog Federation | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558927 |
| Azure SQL updates for mid-March 2026 (GA) | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558121 |
| Azure Red Hat OpenShift Managed Identity and Workload Identity | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557917 |
| GitHub Copilot integration in Schema Designer | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558169 |
| Database DevOps in SSMS powered by SQL projects | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558155 |
| SQL MCP Server | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558150 |
| GitHub Copilot in SQL Server Management Studio 22 | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558134 |
| Lakeflow Connect Free Tier in Azure Databricks | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558810 |
| Versionless key support for transparent data encryption | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558183 |
| Data API builder with built-in GitHub Copilot | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558178 |
| Default Rule Set 2.2 and updates to ruleset support policy | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558016 |
| Foundry Agent Service | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557141 |
| Entra ID-Based Access for Azure Blob Storage SFTP | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558662 |
| Summary rules in Log Analytics workspace support manual "Retry bin" | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558656 |
| Azure Storage Mover enables private data transfers from AWS S3 | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558651 |
| Terraform, Bicep, Ansible support for elastic clusters on PostgreSQL | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558145 |
| Azure Database for PostgreSQL dashboards with Grafana | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558140 |
| Customer-managed encryption keys on Premium SSD v2 for PostgreSQL | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557527 |
| Azure SRE Agent with new capabilities | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558321 |
| Query Profiler in MSSQL extension | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558164 |
| Draft & Deploy on Azure Firewall | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558072 |
| Azure Databricks update workspace network configuration | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558060 |
| Azure Databricks Lakebase | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557991 |
| Azure Premium SSD v2 Disk in New Zealand North | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558078 |
| DCesv6, DCedsv6, ECesv6, and ECedsv6 confidential VMs | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=558051 |
| Azure Red Hat OpenShift in Malaysia West, New Zealand North, and Mexico Central | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557897 |
| Restrict usage of user delegation SAS to an Entra ID identity | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557694 |
| Secure ingestion and pod placement for Azure Monitor pipeline | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=552808 |
| Azure SQL updates for late-February 2026 | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557517 |
| Azure SQL updates for late-February 2026 (Preview) | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557522 |
| Geo-redundant backups for Premium SSD v2 in PostgreSQL | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557532 |
| WAF Insights for Application Gateway | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557416 |
| Azure Premium SSD v2 Disk in Brazil Southeast and new zones | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557623 |
| Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4.6 on Azure Databricks | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557595 |
| Unified tooling in the AKS MCP server | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557223 |
| Cluster mode for the agentic CLI for AKS | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557218 |
| Quota and deployment troubleshooting tools for Azure Functions Flex | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=556008 |
| Azure Functions .NET 10 support | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=556003 |
| Node auto-provisioning support in Sovereign Cloud | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557208 |
| Node auto-provisioning enabled clusters in AKS now support LocalDNS | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557203 |
| Encryption at host & disk encryption sets support in node auto-provisioning | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557213 |
| Instant access support for incremental snapshots | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=545784 |
| AKS support for Kubernetes version 1.34 | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=548114 |
| Azure SQL updates for mid-February 2026 | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=550159 |
| Azure Front Door Premium now supports Azure Private Link origins in UAE North | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=556282 |
| Azure Databricks Supervisor Agent | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=557081 |
| Application Gateway for Containers - AKS managed add-on | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=555603 |
| Vaulted Backups for Azure Disk | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=555184 |
| Azure Monitor pipeline transformations | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=555488 |
| Claude Opus 4.6 now available on Azure Databricks | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=555981 |
| New planned datacenter region in Thailand (Thailand South) | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=553999 |
| AMD v6 confidential VMs in new regions | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=553966 |
| Azure virtual network routing appliance | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=555944 |
| Claude Opus 4.6, Available on Microsoft Foundry | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=555870 |
| Azure NetApp Files Elastic zone-redundant service level | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=550863 |
| X-Forwarded-For (XFF) grouping for rate limiting on Application Gateway WAF v2 | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=555205 |
| Azure Container Storage v2.1.0 | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=553917 |
| Azure Kubernetes Fleet Manager namespace-scoped resource placement | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=548198 |
| Serverless workspaces in Azure Databricks | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=550845 |
| Default Ruleset 2.2 in WAF for Azure Application Gateway | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=553532 |
| Azure AMD Turin Dasv7, Easv7, and Fasv7-series Virtual Machines | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=552318 |
| Azure Databricks Agent Bricks Knowledge Assistant | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=542455 |
| Latest PostgreSQL minor versions supported | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=550164 |
| Azure NetApp Files support in OpenShift Virtualization | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=550466 |
| 7th generation Intel-based VMs – Dlsv7/Dsv7/Esv7 | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=529407 |
| Azure Command Launcher for Java | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=543994 |
| Deployment safeguards – pod security standard support in AKS | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=548101 |
| StandardV2 NAT Gateway with zone-redundancy | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=547772 |
| Reporting in Playwright Workspaces | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=550379 |
| Azure Load Testing in Switzerland North | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=550685 |
| Application volume group for Oracle create data protection volume group | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=548066 |
| Azure File Sync in Israel Central | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=548974 |
| Ubuntu 24.04 support in AKS | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=548096 |
| User delegation SAS for Azure Tables, Azure Files, and Azure Queues | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=548987 |
| Ubuntu 24.04 support in AKS (duplicate) | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=536550 |
| Azure Cosmos DB Mirroring with Private Endpoints | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=543086 |
| Cloud-native apps on Kubernetes pricing calculator scenario | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=536560 |
| Geo-Replication for Azure Service Bus Premium | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=490149 |
| Azure Premium SSD v2 Disk in Austria East and Japan West | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=544080 |
| Azure Blob-to-Blob migration with Azure Storage Mover | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=542813 |
| Service Bus SDK type bindings in Azure Functions for Node.js | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=541427 |
| Azure SQL updates for early December 2025 | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=541818 |
| Use Azure SRE Agent with Azure Cosmos DB | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=541813 |
| Azure NetApp Files cross-zone-region replication (CZRR) | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=537106 |
| Azure NetApp Files advanced ransomware protection | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=536699 |
| Azure Databricks Dashboard subscriptions now support Microsoft Teams | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=536907 |
| Azure Sphere OS version 25.12 | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=541784 |
| FIPS compliant mode for Application Gateway V2 SKUs | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=536712 |
| Zonal placement for Azure Files Premium LRS | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=541410 |
| Mistral Large 3 in Foundry | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=536937 |
| Azure MCP Server support for Azure confidential ledger | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=531889 |
| Serverless workspaces in Azure Databricks | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=536721 |
| Azure Blob Storage SFTP - Resumable Uploads | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=499438 |
| Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server in Belgium Central | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=534523 |
| Update pg_squeeze to version 1.9.1 in PostgreSQL | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=534518 |
| The ip4r extension in Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=534509 |
| The credcheck extension in Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=534504 |
| Azure Load Balancer bandwidth metrics now support Protocol dimension | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=536747 |
| Perth - Azure Extended Zones | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=535363 |
| Model Context Protocol support in Azure API Management and Azure API Center | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=491990 |
| Managed Identity support in Network Watcher | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=534482 |
| Claude Opus 4.5 Available in Microsoft Foundry | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=534541 |
| Azure File Sync in New Zealand North | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=533437 |
| Entra ID support for RDP connections | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=526018 |
| Azure Load Testing in Italy North | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=532481 |
| Regex support in T-SQL | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=532207 |
| Azure MCP Server for Azure Database for MySQL | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=532197 |
| Custom handler support in Azure Functions Flex consumption | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=512413 |
| Container network metrics filtering in Advanced Container Networking Services | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=523076 |
| MCP support for AI toolchain operator add-on in AKS | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=523152 |
| Cluster-wide Cilium network policy with Azure CNI | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=523120 |
| Local redirect policy in Azure CNI powered by Cilium for AKS | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=523081 |
| Layer 7 policy with Advanced Container Networking Services (ACNS) for AKS | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=523115 |
| Azure NetApp Files single file restore from backup | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=522077 |
| DNS security policy Threat Intelligence feed | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=530183 |
| Azure Sphere OS version 25.10 | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=522390 |
| Trusted Launch is now supported for Arm64 Marketplace Images | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=529797 |
| Azure NetApp Files migration assistant (portal support) | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=525620 |
| Azure NetApp Files cache volumes | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=523917 |
| Azure Monitor for Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes with OpenShift | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=530174 |
| Azure Managed Lustre Support for Azure MCP Server | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=529381 |
| CSI Dynamic Provisioning for Azure Managed Lustre | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=529368 |
| 20 MB/s/TiB Performance Tier for Azure Managed Lustre | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=529359 |
| Auto-import for Azure Managed Lustre | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=529342 |
| Recommended alerts for Azure Monitor Workspace | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=515505 |
| Azure Managed Redis integration with Microsoft Foundry | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=532188 |
| TLS and TCP termination on Azure Application Gateway | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=532202 |
| Microsoft Foundry data connection for Azure Databricks | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=527678 |
| Azure Databricks Genie in Copilot Studio | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=527668 |
| Azure API Management adds support for A2A Agent APIs | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=527635 |
| Claude in Microsoft Foundry | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=532303 |
| Azure Copilot agents - deployment agent | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=526751 |
| Azure HorizonDB | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=529806 |
| Private Marketplace for VS Code | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=526909 |
| Microsoft Defender for Cloud + GitHub Advanced Security | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=526876 |
| Smart Tier account level tiering | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=526188 |
| Managed Instance on Azure App Service | https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=523623 |
u/groovy-sky — 1 day ago