Public Preview: Databricks One in Azure Databricks

Public Preview: Databricks One in Azure Databricks
Databricks One in Azure Databricks delivers a unified, simplified experience that brings together data engineering, analytics, and AI development in a single, governed platform. By integrating collaborative workflows, enterprise-grade governance, and performance-optimized infrastructure, Databricks One empowers you to move from data to insights to innovation, faster and more securely. As part of the broader Azure ecosystem, Databricks One gives you a seamless, end-to-end solution that scales with evolving needs, from data ingestion to AI-powered applications. Databricks One represents more than a product enhancement—it serves as a strategic catalyst for organizations aiming to develop AI solutions responsibly. It strengthens the shared vision of Microsoft and Databricks to democratize data and AI by reducing complexity and silos across the modern data stack.

Generally Available: Introducing the new Network Security Hub experience
The Azure Firewall Manager experience has been expanded and rebranded as the Network Security Hub—a centralized interface that brings together Azure Firewall, Web Application Firewall (WAF), and DDoS Protection. This change is part of a broader effort to simplify the Azure Networking portfolio and better align with customer needs.

With this new experience, customers benefit from improved navigation, consolidated service overviews, and enhanced visibility into their security coverage. The landing page now highlights common use cases, documentation, pricing, and recommended scenarios to help users get started faster.

Key Highlights

• Unified experience: Manage Azure Firewall, WAF, and DDoS Protection from a single hub.
• Improved visibility: Enhanced coverage dashboard shows protection across virtual networks, hubs, and applications.
• Azure Advisor integration: Get personalized recommendations to improve security and optimize performance.
• Streamlined navigation: Easier discovery of services like Virtual Hub deployments and Firewall Policies.
  No pricing or support changes to Firewall Manager: This is a UX and naming update only.

Generally Available: Confidential computing for Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server
Announcing support for confidential computing in Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server. Azure Confidential Computing encrypts data in hardware-based trusted execution environments (TEEs), processing data only when the cloud environment has been verified. When you deploy a flexible server instance on a supported confidential compute virtual machine, you can enhance the security of sensitive and regulated data, helping mitigate unwanted data access by cloud providers, administrators, or external users.

Generally Available: At-cost data transfer between Azure and an external endpoint
We support customer choice, including the choice to transfer your data between Azure and environments outside of Azure.

Azure now offers at-cost data transfer for customers and CSP partners in Europe transferring data via the internet between Azure to another data processing service provider. This situation is common where multiple services of different providers are used in parallel, in an interoperable manner. If your application is built to transfer data cross-cloud, please follow these steps to contact Azure Support to claim a credit. Please be aware of the eligibility requirements for this credit.

The at-cost data transfer described above is available solely to organizations with a billing address within the European Economic Area (EEA), European Free Trade Association (EFTA), or the United Kingdom.

Public Preview: Azure HBv5-series VMs
Azure HBv5-series VM are now available in Preview in the Azure South Central US region. HBv5 VMs are optimized for memory bandwidth-intensive HPC applications, such as computational fluid dynamics, automotive and aerospace simulations, weather modeling, energy research, molecular dynamics, computer aided engineering, and more. HBv5 VMs feature 6.7 TB/s of memory bandwidth across 450 GB (438 GiB) of memory (HBM) capacity. Also included are 368 4th Generation EPYC™ processor cores with a 3.5 GHz base frequency, 4 GHz boost frequency, and no simultaneous multithreading. HBv5-series VMs also provide 800 Gb/s of InfiniBand from NVIDIA Networking to enable supercomputer-scale MPI workloads, and 15 TiB of local NVMe SSD storage with up to 50 GB/s (reads) and 30 GB/s (writes) of block device performance.

Generally Available: Azure File Sync in Poland Central and Spain
Azure File Sync enables seamless tiering of data from on-premises Windows Servers to Azure Files for hybrid use cases and simplified migration. It also enables you to leverage the performance, flexibility and compatibility of your on-premises File Server while leveraging the scale and cost effectiveness of Azure Files.
The expansion into Poland Central and Spain Central brings the service closer to organizations in these regions, offering lower latency, better performance, and support for local data residency requirements.
If Azure File Sync is not yet available in your preferred region, please fill out this survey to express interest.

Generally Available: AKS Automatic
Kubernetes is a game-changer for modern apps, but it’s often slowed by operational complexity and a steep learning curve. Many teams spend too much time managing clusters, tuning infrastructure, and troubleshooting security or reliability risks when they’d rather be building and shipping applications.

AKS Automatic, now generally available, is designed to remove those barriers. With AKS Automatic, you get production-ready clusters in minutes, preconfigured with best practices for security, reliability, and scaling. Azure handles node management, networking, upgrades, and dynamic autoscaling, so you don’t have to. Intelligent defaults and proactive safeguards mean even first-time Kubernetes users can deploy confidently, while experienced teams save time and reduce operational overhead.

Generally Available: Azure Container Storage v2.0.0 now with NVMe performance boost, open source, and no service fees
Azure Container Storage (ACStor) v2.0.0 is now generally available. This release delivers up to 7× higher IOPS and 4× lower latency on local NVMe compared to v1.3.1, making Container Storage v2.0.0 the fastest storage available for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), now with zero service fees.

This major update to Azure Container Storage delivers a faster and leaner high-performance Kubernetes storage platform.

• Included out of the box: This release focuses on local NVMe drives provided with select VM families, including storage-optimized L-series, GPU-enabled ND-series, and general-purpose Da-series.
• Enhanced workload support: Optimized for demanding applications like PostgreSQL databases and KAITO-managed AI model serving
• Superior performance: 7x improvement in read/write IOPS and 4x reduction in latency, with 60% better PostgreSQL transaction throughput
• Open source: An alternative open-source version is available for easier installation on any Kubernetes cluster
• Flexible scaling: Deploy on clusters with as few as one node, no minimum cluster size requirements
• Zero service fees: Completely free to use for all storage pool sizes

Generally Available: Enabling dedicated connections to backends in Azure Application Gateway
Azure Application Gateway V2 now supports enabling dedicated connections from Application Gateway to backend server.

By default, Application Gateway reuses the idle backend connections to optimize the resource usage of TCP connections helping both the gateway and the backend servers. With the dedicated connection setting, each incoming client connection is mapped to a distinct backend connection, ensuring one-to-one communication between the frontend and the backend.

Generally Available: Azure SQL hub experience in Azure portal
Choosing the right Azure SQL service can be challenging. To make this easier, you can now visit the Azure SQL hub, a new home for everything related to Azure SQL in the Azure portal.

Whether you’re new to Azure SQL or an experienced user, the hub helps you find the right service quickly and decide, without disrupting your existing workflows. If you’re new to Azure SQL, the hub is your home page where you can get personalized recommendations by answering a few quick questions or chatting with Copilot in Azure. You can also compare services side by side and explore key resources—all without leaving the portal.

If you’re an existing Azure SQL user, your current workflows remain unchanged. You’ll see a streamlined navigation pane when you access Azure SQL resources.

Generally Available: Backend TLS validation controls in Azure Application Gateway
Azure Application Gateway V2 announces general availability of customer-controlled backend TLS validations. When the HTTPS protocol is selected in the Backend Settings of Azure Application Gateway, by default, it performs all validations in the TLS handshake before successfully establishing a connection with a backend server. Azure Application Gateway now supports the following configurable options, giving customers greater flexibility in managing backend TLS behavior across diverse environments.

• Enable or disable Certificate chain and expiry verification
• Enable or disable SNI verification
  With these new settings, customers can customize TLS validations to align with their infrastructure needs.