Azure Virtual Network Manager IP address management

June 2025

Generally Available: Azure FXv2-series Virtual Machines
Microsoft has announced the General Availability of Azure FXv2-series Virtual Machines (VMs), which are powered by the 5th Generation Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8573C processor. These VMs offer significant improvements in CPU performance, memory capacity, and storage capabilities, making them ideal for compute-intensive workloads such as databases and data analytics.
FXv2-series VMs provide up to 50% better CPU performance compared to the previous generation, with sizes supporting up to 96 vCPUs and 1,832 GiB of memory. They also feature NVMe support for faster remote storage performance up to 400K IOPS and 11.25 GBps throughput.

Designed for demanding applications, these VMs enhance SQL Server and electronic design automation (EDA) performance, offering high memory configurations and improved I/O bandwidth.

Generally Available: Azure Virtual Network Manager IP address management
Azure Virtual Network Manager IP address management feature, a feature designed to enhance your network management, is generally available.

In complex network environments, managing IP addresses effectively is essential. This feature centralizes IP planning and allocation, allowing users to automatically assign non-overlapping addresses, reserve IPs for specific needs, and prevent conflicts between Azure, on-premises, and multi-cloud address spaces. It also provides clear insights into IP usage and allocation across your network resources.

Additionally, with the integration with Azure Policy, this feature ensures that virtual networks are created using the designated IP pool, preventing unintended overlapping prefixes for both new and existing virtual networks.

Please refer to the documentation to learn more about how IP Address Management can streamline your network operations and the regions where Azure Virtual Network Manager IP address management is generally available.

Public Preview: Draft & Deploy on Azure Firewall
The new Draft & Deploy feature for Azure Firewall Policy introduces a streamlined, two-phase approach to managing firewall policies, significantly reducing deployment time and disruption. Traditionally, any policy update would trigger a full deployment of both the policy and the attached firewall, taking 2–4 minutes per change.
With Draft & Deploy, users can collaboratively make multiple changes in a draft version cloned from the current policy without affecting the live environment. Once finalized, all changes can be deployed at once, replacing the existing policy.

Generally Available: Transition existing platform-managed keys (PMK) to customer-managed keys (CMK) for Azure NetApp Files volumes without data migration.
Customers can now transition existing volumes from platform-managed keys (PMK) to customer-managed keys (CMK) seamlessly. This provides customers flexibility of encryption key lifecycle (renewals, rotations) and additional security for regulated industry requirements (Finance, Healthcare, Federal). This feature is now Generally Available in all Azure NetApp Files supported regions.

Key benefits of CMK are:

• Secure key management: The keys are generated and managed by the customer organization. This provides additional security layer by reducing the risk of unauthorized key access. This provides protection against insider threats and unauthorized data access.
• Regulatory/compliance: Several entities have strict regulations for data protection. CMK helps comply with various requirements and provide ability to track key management for regulatory purposes.
• Performance: There is no performance impact when using CMK. It simply protects the account encryption key using the Azure Key Vault.

Public Preview: Monitor ingestion issues with Azure Monitor Workspace
Azure Managed Prometheus sends metrics into Azure Monitor Workspace. Customers can now view and monitor issues with ingestion of Prometheus metrics as part of the platform metrics for the Azure Monitor Workspace. Ingestion errors are issues that occurred during data ingestion and might suggest data loss.

Public Preview: Microsoft Cost Management adds support for FOCUS 1.2

Microsoft Cost Management now supports exporting cost and usage data in the FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification (FOCUS) 1.2 schema. This update introduces key enhancements that help FinOps teams streamline reporting, unify billing data across clouds, and enable consistent multi-currency financial analysis.

FOCUS 1.2 provides a standardized, provider-agnostic dataset that simplifies cost management across IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS services. The new schema includes improved column names, additional fields for future expansion, and alignment with billing constructs such as InvoiceId, ServiceModel, and AmortizationClass.

Key benefits:

• Unified reporting across cloud, SaaS, and PaaS using a single standardized schema.
• Multi-currency support through consistent pricing and billing fields.
• Improved data quality and schema consistency for better analytics and automation.
• Simplified FinOps workflows with provider-aligned constructs and support for future enrichment.

Get started:
To get started with the new schema, create a new export in Cost Management and select FOCUS 1.2-preview as the dataset version.

Generally Available: Azure Advisor VM Right-Sizing Update – Expanded SKU support and series coverage
Azure Advisor has improved its VM right-sizing recommendations by extending coverage for newer VM series. This broader SKU coverage across the D, E, and F VM families enables a more comprehensive evaluation of CPU performance, providing your teams with recommendations to optimize workloads efficiently.

Now, organizations can identify overprovisioned VMs and switch to right-sized configurations that better align with actual usage. This helps reduce costs, minimize resource waste, and lower carbon emissions - all without impacting performance.