Generally Available: Azure DevOps March 2026 updates

Generally Available: Azure DevOps March 2026 updates
The following updates were made to Azure DevOps in March 2026.

• The Remote MCP Server entered public preview, enabling seamless AI-powered integration with Azure DevOps without requiring a local server.
• Security improvements included new Advanced Security PR status checks that integrate directly into branch policies, enhanced audit logging for secret push protection bypasses and security enablement changes, and the ability to export security overview data to CSV.
• Azure Pipelines introduced improved deployment visibility through artifact tracking on pipeline runs and a new Stages view that provides clear, at-a-glance insight into what's deployed where across environments.
• Teams also benefit from quality-of-life improvements including auto-complete PR defaults, condensed Kanban board views, cross-project work item linking in test results, and a doubled inherited process limit of 256.

Public Preview: Azure Event Grid provides new capabilities for smarter, more secure event-driven architectures
Azure Event Grid offers a variety of features in Public Preview – intended to help you better manage large-scale, distributed systems with improved interoperability and control.

Public Preview Features:

• Cross-Tenant Webhook Delivery: Enables secure cross-tenant delivery using managed identity in Event Grid namespaces.
• Network Security Perimeter: Defines access boundaries with inbound and outbound communication rules for enhanced security.
• Managed Identity for Webhooks: Automates secure authentication between Event Grid and webhook endpoints.
• MQTT OAuth 2.0 Authentication: Uses JWTs from OIDC-compliant providers for secure client access.
• MQTT Custom Webhook Authentication: Dynamically authorizes clients via external webhooks or Azure Functions.
• MQTT Assigned Client Identifiers: Assigns static client IDs for better session consistency and traceability.

Generally Available: Azure Event Grid provides new capabilities for smarter, more secure event-driven architectures
Azure Event Grid now offers a variety of new features intended to help you better manage large-scale, distributed systems with improved interoperability and control.

Generally Available features:

• MQTT Message Ordering: Ensures in-order message delivery within a client session, crucial for workflows requiring sequence integrity.
• MQTT Connect Rate Limiting: Limits connection attempts to 1 per second per client, improving system stability.
• MQTT Topic Segment Expansion: Supports up to 15 MQTT topic segments, enabling more granular routing for complex scenarios.
• Cross-Tenant Delivery: Managed identity support allows cross-tenant delivery to Event Hub, Service Bus, and Storage Queues.

Generally Available: User delegation SAS for Azure Tables, Azure Files, and Azure Queues
User delegation SAS for Azure Tables, Azure Files, and Azure Queues is now generally available.

User delegation SAS allows users to create a more secure SAS token than account or service SAS by tying the SAS token to the delegator. This extension of UDK SAS will allow users to set SAS tokens at the table, table entity, queue, queue entity, file container, and individual file level. Any SAS token set at the higher level will provide access to all table/queue/file entities within, and any SAS token set at the base level will only provide access to that individual entity.

There is no additional cost to use user delegation SAS. Pricing is based on the standard read/write transaction costs for your storage account type.

Generally Available: Microsoft Azure now available from new cloud region in Denmark
Microsoft announces the opening of its cloud region in Denmark to accelerate digital transformation and AI innovation. The Denmark East region provides Danish customers with local, secure cloud infrastructure, supporting local data residency, low latency, an access to advanced cloud and AI services.

For customers looking to leverage the new region and Availability Zones, Azure offers region portability for multiple resources with Azure Resource Mover.

Microsoft announces the opening of its cloud region in Denmark to accelerate digital transformation and AI innovation. The Denmark East region provides Danish customers with local, secure cloud infrastructure, supporting local data residency, low latency, an access to advanced cloud and AI services.

For customers looking to leverage the new region and Availability Zones, Azure offers region portability for multiple resources with Azure Resource Mover.

Generally Available: Azure Premium SSD v2 Disk is now available in US Gov Arizona
Azure Premium SSD v2 is now available in US Gov Arizona (a region without Availability Zone).

Azure Premium SSD v2 disk, a next-generation general-purpose block storage option for Azure virtual machines, offers sub-millisecond latencies and exceptional price performance for IO-intensive workloads at a low cost. Premium SSD v2 is suited for a broad range of enterprise production scenarios, including SQL Server, Oracle, MariaDB, SAP, Cassandra, MongoDB, big data/analytics, and gaming on virtual machines or stateful containers.

If Premium SSD v2 is unavailable in your preferred region and you would like to use it, please complete this survey.

Public Preview: Ephemeral OS Disk with full caching for VM/VMSS
Ephemeral OS Disk with full caching is now available in public preview for Azure VM/VMSS, bringing significantly faster and more reliable OS disk performance to your workloads. By caching the entire OS disk image on local VM storage (cache disk, resource disk, or NVMe disk), you get better IO performance with consistently low latency — and greater resilience, even during remote storage disruptions. This capability is extremely useful for stateless, IO-sensitive workloads including AI workloads, quorum-based databases, data analytics, and large-scale stateless services on General Purpose VM families. You can get started today on most General Purpose VM SKUs (excluding 2-core and 4-core VMs) across Central US. To use the feature, set the enableFullCaching flag to true for Ephemeral OS disks in your ARM templates or REST API definitions when creating new VMs or VM Scale Sets.

Generally Available: Azure Red Hat OpenShift in Indonesia Central
Azure Red Hat OpenShift (ARO) is now generally available in the Indonesia Central Azure region, expanding regional availability for customers running mission‑critical OpenShift workloads on Azure. This release enables organizations in Indonesia and the broader Southeast Asia region to deploy fully managed Red Hat OpenShift clusters with integrated Azure security, networking, and operations.

With GA availability in Indonesia Central, customers can modernize applications, run regulated and latency‑sensitive workloads closer to end users, and meet local data residency requirements. ARO provides a consistent OpenShift experience across on‑premises and cloud environments while offloading day‑2 operations such as upgrades, patching, and cluster management to Microsoft and Red Hat.

This regional expansion helps customers accelerate application modernization and hybrid cloud strategies on Azure using a jointly operated, enterprise‑grade OpenShift service

Generally Available: Azure Premium SSD v2 Disk is now available in South India
Azure Premium SSD v2 is now available in South India (a region without Availability Zone).
Azure Premium SSD v2 disk, a next-generation general-purpose block storage option for Azure virtual machines, offers sub-millisecond latencies and exceptional price performance for IO-intensive workloads at a low cost. Premium SSD v2 is suited for a broad range of enterprise production scenarios, including SQL Server, Oracle, MariaDB, SAP, Cassandra, MongoDB, big data/analytics, and gaming on virtual machines or stateful containers.

If Premium SSD v2 is unavailable in your preferred region and you would like to use it, please complete this survey.