The Modern Version of the Azure Storage Data Movement Library

Generally Available: The Modern Version of the Azure Storage Data Movement Library

• The modern version of the Azure Storage Data Movement Library has reached General Availability! This update simplifies your data movement experience when storing data in Azure Blob and Azure File Storage. The enhanced functionality includes the ability to track transfer progress, pause and resume transfers, and checkpointing. Additionally, the shared infrastructure with the modern v12 Azure Storage libraries streamlines the data transfer process and integrates with the modern Azure Identity packages, ensuring you stay current with modern security
  practices.

Generally Available: Scheduled Load Tests in Azure Load Testing

• With the new scheduling feature in Azure Load Testing, you can now automate test runs at a predefined time or cadence, ensuring seamless performance validation without manual intervention.

Generally Available: Discovery of PostgreSQL Installed on Azure Arc-enabled Servers
We are thrilled to announce that Azure Arc-enabled servers now have the capability to automatically identify PostgreSQL installations. This new feature allows you to use Azure-based management for overseeing your servers running PostgreSQL at-scale. With this enhancement, you can effortlessly find, group, and view all your servers running PostgreSQL from a single, easy-to-use interface. Experience unparalleled convenience in overseeing your database infrastructure with Azure Arc's latest update.

Generally Available: Azure Database for PostgreSQL pg_signal_autovaccum_worker role
You can now use the pg_signal_autovacuum_worker role backported from PostgreSQL version 18 with Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server versions 15 and later. The autovacuum process, once it is triggered, blocks the execution of DDL statements until the time it gets executed. This role allows you to cancel the autovacuum process that gets triggered as part of maintenance activity on the PostgreSQL server using pg_terminate_backend()/pg_cancel_backend() statements. This is a significant improvement as it allows users with non-superuser privileges to cancel the autovacuum process.

Generally Available: New Pricing for Azure Virtual Network Manager
With Azure Virtual Network Manager, a central management service for your virtual network resources, you can easily manage your virtual networks’ connectivity, security, and more at scale.

Starting February 11, 2025, all newly created Azure Virtual Network Manager instances will incur charges based on the number of virtual networks where an active Azure Virtual Network Manager configuration is deployed, replacing the subscription-based pricing. These charges apply only with Azure Virtual Network Manager’s configuration features, such as connectivity, security admin, and routing. This virtual network-based pricing is closely aligned to your usage of Azure Virtual Network Manager, offering a more flexible approach for a wider range of customers.

Existing Azure Virtual Network Manager instances can be switched from subscription-based pricing to this virtual network-based pricing as described in our public documentation. No pricing changes will be automatically applied to existing Azure Virtual Network Manager instances until February 2028, allowing you to maintain your current billing structure without immediate changes.

Generally Available: Azure Premium SSD v2 Disk Storage is Now Available in One More Region
Azure Premium SSD v2 Disk Storage is now available in New Zealand North region. This next-generation storage solution offers advanced general-purpose block storage with the best price performance, delivering sub-millisecond disk latencies for demanding IO-intensive workloads at a low cost. It is well-suited for a wide range of enterprise production workloads, including SQL Server, Oracle, MariaDB, SAP, Cassandra, MongoDB, big data analytics, gaming on virtual machines, and stateful containers.

In case Premium SSD v2 is not available in your preferred region and you wish to use it, please fill out the survey .

Generally Available: Azure Firewall Updates - Increased IP Group Limits
Increased IP Group Limits: We’ve doubled the IP Group limit in Azure Firewall policies from 100 to 200 per policy.
Key benefits:
Better policy organization – Manage more IP addresses within firewall policies.
Greater flexibility – Optimize configurations for complex network security needs.

Generally Available: Fallback to Internet on Private DNS Zones
Fallback to internet on Private DNS Zones: New feature which unblocks adoption of a fully managed solution for Network Isolation and simplifies scenarios with Private Link and Private DNS. This feature enables public recursion to occur in the event of receiving an authoritative NXDOMAIN response from Private DNS Zones. Customers can now rely on a fully managed native solution without using IaaS based DNS servers to unblock Private Link and Private DNS adoption. API, CLI and PowerShell are available today, with portal being available over the next 2 weeks.

What is fallback to internet on Private DNS Zones?

Fallback to internet in Azure Private DNS is a fully managed native solution. This property enables public recursion via Azure’s recursive resolver fleet when an authoritative NXDOMAIN response is received for a private link zone. This Resolution policy is enabled at the virtual network link level. In the Azure portal, this resolution policy property is enabled by selecting Enable fallback to internet in virtual network link configuration.

Generally Available: Analyze data using log analytics simple mode
Azure Monitor Logs is excited to introduce the next leap in log experience: Simple mode.

Azure Monitor Logs offers a powerful set of capabilities for users to explore their logs and derive meaningful insights from their data estate.

Until now, Azure Monitor Logs relied on Kusto Query Language (KQL) for users to express their questions as queries.

KQL is a powerful, easy to learn query language, however, as any query language it requires some knowledge to operate.

Simple mode experience was created to bridge this knowledge gap - allowing most popular KQL operators and actions to be utilized using a very simple, point-and-click experience requiring no KQL knowledge at all!

KQL Mode gives advanced users the full power of KQL to derive deeper insights from their logs.

Here's a link to a video that provides a quick overview of how to query logs in Log Analytics using both Simple and KQL modes