Generally Available: Azure Logic Apps Rules Engine

Generally Available: Azure Logic Apps Rules Engine
Announcing the general availability of the Azure Logic Apps Rules Engine, bringing low-code, flexible business logic capabilities to your cloud-native workflows.
Business Rules Engines (BRE) enable organizations to define, manage, and update business logic without writing code or redeploying applications. This is especially valuable in decentralized, microservices-based architectures, where rules engines help ensure consistency, compliance, and maintainability across distributed systems.
Key Highlights:

• Low-code, high-productivity rule creation using Visual Studio Code
• RETE runtime engine support, consistent with the one used in BizTalk Server
• Support for .NET and XML facts, making it easy to build rules around structured business data
• Migration-ready for BizTalk customers, including those using SWIFT-based solutions
• BRE rule reuse, enabling existing BizTalk Business Rules to be brought into Logic Apps (note: export each policy individually as policies are no longer grouped)
  To get started, install the Azure Logic Apps (Standard) extension in Visual Studio Code, create a Logic Apps workspace, and add a Rules Engine project to begin authoring your business rules.
  This release is a key milestone in modernizing BizTalk workloads and accelerating low-code automation using Azure Logic Apps.Learn more.

Generally Available: Azure AI Foundry Agent Service
Azure AI Foundry Agent Service is now generally available, empowering developers to design, deploy, and scale enterprise-grade AI agents. It supports multi-agent workflows, allowing specialized agents to handle complex tasks, accelerate decisions, and boost operational efficiency. With open protocols like Agent-to-Agent (A2A) and Model Context Protocol (MCP), it enables seamless interoperability while maintaining control over orchestration.
The service integrates with knowledge sources like Bing, SharePoint, Databricks, and Microsoft Fabric, and includes a centralized catalog of tools and pre-built agent templates for easy customization. It also leverages a unified runtime that combines Semantic Kernel and AutoGen, offering a consistent experience for building, testing, and deploying agents locally or in the cloud.
To ensure reliable performance, Azure AI Foundry Agent Service introduces Bring Your Own (BYO) thread storage with Azure Cosmos DB and robust AgentOps capabilities like tracing, evaluation, and monitoring, helping developers optimize agent behavior with confidence.

Generally Available: New fine-tuning capabilities in Azure AI Foundry
Azure AI Foundry supports Reinforcement Fine-Tuning (RFT) with the o4-mini model in Azure OpenAI, enabling adaptive learning for context-aware applications. Alongside RFT, we introduced Global Training, allowing fine-tuning from 12+ Azure regions at reduced costs, and promoted Global Standard and Regional Provisioned Throughput deployment types to general availability, offering more cost and data residency flexibility.
To support rapid experimentation, a new Developer Tier was launched, providing free 24-hour hosting for fine-tuned GPT-4.1 and GPT-4.1-mini models with pay-per-token pricing. This tier is ideal for quick testing and model comparison before production.
Additionally, we extended support for fine-tuned GPT-4o and GPT-4o-mini models, allowing continued deployment for 12 months post-retirement at no extra cost, providing continuity for long-term projects.
These updates reflect Microsoft’s commitment to making fine-tuning more accessible, scalable, and production-ready for custom AI solutions.

Generally Available: Azure Managed Redis
Now generally available, Azure Managed Redis brings the latest Redis innovations with enhanced availability and cost-effective operations. Azure Managed Redis boosts AI application performance, supports session management, and interoperates seamlessly with various Azure services. Azure Managed Redis boosts AI application performance, supports session management, and interoperates seamlessly with various Azure services.
With four tiers, you can now customize your Redis solution to match specific performance and memory requirements. Azure Managed Redis also delivers up to 99.999% availability for uninterrupted access to mission-critical apps, while offering enterprise-level security and password-free authentication through Microsoft Entra ID.
Azure Managed Redis also includes preview support for scaling down and using Redis in a nonclustered configuration.

Generally Available: Azure Traffic Manager SLA raised to 100%
Azure Traffic Manager has raised its service level agreement (SLA) to 100% for global DNS resolution, ensuring that all DNS queries consistently resolve to a healthy endpoint.
No changes are required from customers to benefit from this SLA update. All existing Azure Traffic Manager profiles are covered under the new DNS resolution SLA.

Generally Available: Natural Language App Code Generation
In this new update, we are making it easier than ever for developers to get started creating their AI application with Azure. We are expanding the capabilities beyond the templates we offer out of the box, now giving the developers the option to describe the app they would like to build using natural language and we will create the app code for them, then open in vscode.dev/azure in the web with Copilot to lead them through the process of editing and deploying their new application.
Key Features:

• App generation: By describing the desired app in natural language, developers can have the app code built for them automatically, streamlining the development process.
• Seamless integration with vscode.dev/azure: The gallery connects with vscode.dev/azure, enabling developers to get started with their AI projects in minutes, providing a smooth transition from template selection/creation to customization deployment.
• Natural language search: Developers can easily find the templates they are looking for by simply describing what they need in natural language, making the search process more intuitive and efficient.
• Template hardening: improved UX for quota, capacity, and region availability.
• Adding new templates: 20+ new templates across different AI topics.

Generally Available: GitHub Copilot for Azure
GitHub Copilot for Azure is now generally available, bringing disruption-free cloud development, Infrastructure as Code (IaC) support, and intelligent diagnostics to streamline your workflow. With features to help you create deployments with Bicep and Terraform, efficient issue identification and resolution, and deep integration with Azure resources, GitHub Copilot for Azure empowers developers to build, manage, and troubleshoot applications effortlessly. Whether you're designing resilient architectures, enhancing code quality with real-time recommendations, or leveling up your Azure expertise, GitHub Copilot for Azure acts as your trusted assistant, ensuring productivity and efficiency at every step. Embrace the future of cloud development with GitHub Copilot for Azure and transform the way you code.

Generally Available: GRS and CRR support for Azure VMs using Premium SSD v2 in Azure Backup availability in more regions
Premium SSD v2 delivers high-performance block storage with sub-millisecond latency, high IOPS, and throughput—at a low cost. With Geo Redundant Storage (GRS) and Cross-Region Restore (CRR) support, you can safeguard VMs against data loss and perform on-demand restores in a secondary region for audits or disaster recovery.
Enabling GRS vaults for VMs using Premium SSD v2 are available in Brazil South, South Central US, North Central US, East US 2, Central US, UK West, UK South, Canada East, Canada Central, West US, West Central US , West US 2, Australia Southeast, Australia East. To learn more and keep track of region support, refer to the VM backup support matrix.

Generally Available: Improved free Azure SQL Managed Instance offer
Azure SQL Managed Instance is a scalable cloud database service that's always running on the latest stable version of the Microsoft SQL Server database engine. You get an updated operating system with 99.99% high availability and close to 100% feature compatibility with SQL Server.
The free offer for SQL Managed Instance is now generally available, making it very easy to try out SQL Managed Instance for your workload. The free offer applies to existing Pay-As-You-Go, Enterprise Agreement, Azure Plan, and many other subscription types. When you’re ready to move your workload into production, it’s easy—with two clicks, you can convert it, get the 99.99% uptime service-level agreement, and a myriad of configuration options.

Generally Available: Smart VM defaults in AKS
Smart VM defaults are now generally available in AKS. Smart VM defaults automatically select the optimal default VM SKU based on available capacity and quota. This feature ensures that deployments are matched with the best possible SKU, enhancing performance and reliability while optimizing resource utilization. Previously, the default AKS VM SKU was typically Standard_DS2_V2, but now you can expect dynamic outcomes in default provisioning based on SKU availability.

Generally Available: Connected registry in Azure Container Registry (ACR)
Connected registry in Azure Container Registry (ACR) is now generally available. Connected registry is a local resource managed using a cloud-based ACR registry. It can be deployed via the Azure Portal and Command Line Interface (CLI) as an Arc extension on Arc-enabled Kubernetes clusters, or in an environment that supports container workloads on premises/remote. Connected registry synchronizes images and other OCI artifacts between the ACR registry and the on-prem connected registry. Integrating with Azure Arc simplifies governance and management by delivering a consistent multi-cloud and on-premises management solution.
Key Benefits:

• Efficiency: fast on-premises access to containerized workload enhances operational efficiency by mitigating latency and improving performance.
• Security: provides greater control over data security and compliance, as all operations are managed within the organization’s own infrastructure.
• Flexibility: can be configured to synchronize a subset of the repositories from the ACR registry or to synchronize only during certain intervals to reduce traffic between the cloud and the on-premises.
• Scalability: supports scaling of deployments to ensure services are delivered with minimal delay for both occasional and always connected customer scenarios.
• Garbage Collection: reclaims storage space by removing objects that are no longer being used.

Generally Available: Every AKS version is now long term support (LTS) compatible
The Kubernetes community releases a new minor version approximately every four months, with a support window for each version for one year. In Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), this support window is called community support.
AKS supports versions of Kubernetes that are within this community support window to push bug fixes and security updates from community releases. To help you manage your Kubernetes version upgrades, AKS provides a long term support (LTS) option, which extends the support window for a Kubernetes version to give you more time to plan and test upgrades to newer Kubernetes versions.

AKS will now ensure that every community version released (GA) is compatible with long term support (LTS), starting with version 1.28 LTS from April 2025. Versions 1.27, 1.28, 1.29, and 1.30 are now LTS, with 1.31 and 1.32 expected soon. LTS provides an additional year of support beyond the community support EOL period, ensuring all core AKS components, add-ons, and Kubernetes components are supported and promptly patched for CVEs and fixes by AKS.