This post was co-authored by Suren Jamiyanaa, Program Manager, Azure Networking We continue to be amazed by the adoption, interest, positive feedback, and the breadth of use cases customers are finding for our service. Today, we are excited to share several new Azure Firewall capabilities based on your top feedback items: ICSA Labs Corporate Firewall … Read more New Azure Firewall certification and features in Q1 CY2020
This post was co-authored by Yair Tor, Principal Program Manager, Azure Networking. Last November we introduced Microsoft Azure Firewall Manager preview for Azure Firewall policy and route management in secured virtual hubs. This also included integration with key Security as a Service partners, Zscaler, iboss, and soon Check Point. These partners support branch to internet … Read more Azure Firewall Manager now supports virtual networks
SQL Server customers migrating their databases to the cloud have multiple choices for their cloud destination. To thoroughly assess which cloud is best for SQL Server workloads, two key factors to consider are: Innovations that the cloud provider can uniquely provide. Independent benchmark results. What innovations can the cloud provider bring to your SQL Server … Read more SQL Server runs best on Azure. Here’s why.
Today, we are announcing the limited preview of Azure Shared Disks, the industry’s first shared cloud block storage. Azure Shared Disks enables the next wave of block storage workloads migrating to the cloud including the most demanding enterprise applications, currently running on-premises on Storage Area Networks (SANs). These include clustered databases, parallel file systems, persistent … Read more Announcing the preview of Azure Shared Disks for clustered applications
This post was co-authored by the extended Azure Mobility Team. The past year has been eventful for a lot of reasons. At Microsoft, we’ve expanded our partnerships, including Volkswagen, LG Electronics, Faurecia, TomTom, and more, and taken the wraps off new thinking such as at CES, where we recently demonstrated our approach to in-vehicle compute … Read more Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform: trends and investment areas
“What is the primary cause of service reliability issues that we see in Azure, other than small but common hardware failures? Change. One of the value propositions of the cloud is that it’s continually improving, delivering new capabilities and features, as well as security and reliability enhancements. But since the platform is continuously evolving, change … Read more Advancing safe deployment practices
As organizations continue to expand their use of IT and the cloud, protecting critical enterprise data becomes extremely important. And if you are a backup admin on Microsoft Azure, being able to efficiently monitor backups on a daily basis is a key requirement to ensuring that your organization has no weaknesses in its last line … Read more Backup Explorer now available in preview
Customers exploring blockchain for their applications and solutions typically start with a prototype or proof of concept effort with a blockchain technology before they get to build, pilot, and production rollout. During the latter stages, apart from the ease of deployment, there is an expectation of flexibility in the configuration in terms of the number … Read more Hyperledger Fabric on Azure Kubernetes Service Marketplace template
Today we’re pleased to publish Data Protection and Privacy Compliance in the Cloud: Privacy Concerns Are Not Slowing the Adoption of Cloud Services, but Challenges Remain, original research sponsored by Microsoft and independently conducted by the Ponemon Institute. The report concludes with a list of 10 recommended steps that organizations can take to address cloud privacy … Read more 10 recommendations for cloud privacy and security with Ponemon research
Whether you’re a new student, thriving startup, or the largest enterprise, you have financial constraints and you need to know what you’re spending, where, and how to plan for the future. Nobody wants a surprise when it comes to the bill, and this is where Azure Cost Management comes in. We’re always looking for ways … Read more Azure Cost Management updates – January 2020
For the recent IoT Signals report, commissioned by our Azure IoT team and conducted by Hypothesis Group, more than 3,000 decision makers at enterprise companies across the US, UK, Germany, France, China, and Japan who were currently involved in IoT, participated in a 20-minute online survey. Healthcare was one of the industries included in the … Read more Azure IoT improves pharmaceutical sample management and medication adherence
At Microsoft Ignite, we announced new Azure Migrate assessment capabilities that further simplify migration planning. In this post, we will demonstrate how to import servers into Azure Migrate Server Assessment through a CSV upload. Virtual servers of any hypervisor or cloud as well as physical servers can be assessed. You can get started with the … Read more Assess your servers with a CSV import into Azure Migrate
Your large archive of videos to index is ever-expanding, thus you have been evaluating Microsoft Video Indexer and decided that you want to take your relationship with it to the next level by scaling up.In general, scaling shouldn’t be difficult, but when you first face such process you might not be sure what is the … Read more Six things to consider when using Video Indexer at scale
At Microsoft, building a future that we can all thrive in is at the center of everything we do. On January 16, as part of the announcement that Microsoft will be carbon negative by 2030, we discussed how advances in human prosperity, as measured by GDP growth, are inextricably tied to the use of energy. … Read more Fueling intelligent energy with IoT
Today’s Q&A post covers an interview between Siddharth Deekshit, Program Manager, Microsoft Azure Site Recovery engineering and Quentin Drion, IT Director of Infrastructure and Operations, MSC. MSC is a global shipping and logistics business, our conversation focused on their organization’s journey with Azure Site Recovery (ASR). To learn more about achieving resilience in Azure, refer … Read more MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company on Azure Site Recovery, “ASR worked like magic”
Today’s Q&A post covers an interview between Siddharth Deekshit, Program Manager, Microsoft Azure Site Recovery engineering and Quentin Drion, IT Director of Infrastructure and Operations, MSC. MSC is a global shipping and logistics business, our conversation focused on their organization’s journey with Azure Site Recovery (ASR). To learn more about achieving resilience in Azure, refer … Read more MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company on Azure Site Recovery
Enterprises today are transforming their businesses using Machine Learning (ML) to develop a lasting competitive advantage. From healthcare to transportation, supply chain to risk management, machine learning is becoming pervasive across industries, disrupting markets and reshaping business models. Organizations need the technology and tools required to build and deploy successful Machine Learning models and operate … Read more MLOps—the path to building a competitive edge
Anomaly detection plays a vital role in many industries across the globe, such as fraud detection for the financial industry, health monitoring in hospitals, fault detection and operating environment monitoring in the manufacturing, oil and gas, utility, transportation, aviation, and automotive industries. Anomaly detection is about finding patterns in data that do not conform to … Read more Azure Data Explorer and Stream Analytics for anomaly detection
For more than a decade, Microsoft has been investing to reduce environmental impact while supporting the digital transformation of organizations around the world through cloud services. We strive to be transparent with our commitments, evidenced by our announcement that Microsoft’s cloud datacenters will be powered by 100 percent renewable energy sources by 2025. The commitments … Read more Microsoft Sustainability Calculator helps enterprises analyze the carbon emissions of their IT infrastructure
At Microsoft, we are inspired by how artificial intelligence is transforming organizations of all sizes, empowering them to reimagine what’s possible. AI has immense potential to unlock solutions to some of society’s most pressing challenges. One challenge is that according to the World Health Association, globally, only 1 in 10 people with a disability have … Read more Creating a more accessible world with Azure AI
We’ve released our newest Azure blueprint that maps to another key industry-standard, the Center for Internet Security (CIS) Microsoft Azure Foundations Benchmark. This follows the recent announcement of our Azure blueprint for FedRAMP moderate and adds to the growing list of Azure blueprints for regulatory compliance, which now includes ISO 27001, NIST SP 800-53, PCI-DSS, … Read more New Azure blueprint for CIS Benchmark
Cryptocurrency mining attacks continue to represent a threat to many of our Azure Linux customers. In the past, we’ve talked about how some attackers use brute force techniques to guess account names and passwords and use those to gain access to machines. Today, we’re talking about an attack that a few of our customers have … Read more Learning from cryptocurrency mining attack scripts on Linux
Today, January 14, 2020, marks the end of support for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Customers loved these releases, which introduced advancements such as the shift from 32-bit to 64-bit computing and server virtualization. While support for these popular releases ends today, we are excited about new innovations in cloud computing, hybrid … Read more Turning to a new chapter of Windows Server innovation
Few industries have been disrupted by emerging technology quite like retail. From exploding online sales to the growth of mobile shopping, the industry has made a permanent shift to accommodate digital consumers. The rise of IoT has forced the retail industry to take notice; IDC expects that by 2025 there will be 41.6 billion connected … Read more IoT Signals retail report: IoT’s promise for retail will be unlocked addressing security, privacy and compliance
We are pleased to share that Azure is the first major US cloud provider to achieve certification as a data processor for the new international standard ISO/IEC 27701 Privacy Information Management System (PIMS). The PIMS certification demonstrates that Azure provides a comprehensive set of management and operational controls that can help your organization demonstrate compliance … Read more Azure is now certified for the ISO/IEC 27701 privacy standard
When we talk about cost management, we focus on three core tenets: Ensuring cost visibility so everyone is aware of the financial impact their solutions have. Driving accountability throughout the organization to stop bad spending patterns. Continuous cost optimization as your usage changes over time to do more with less. These were the driving forces … Read more Azure Cost Management 2019 year in review
“This post continues our reliability series kicked off by my July blog post highlighting several initiatives underway to keep improving platform availability, as part of our commitment to provide a trusted set of cloud services. Today I wanted to double-click on the investments we’ve made in no-impact and low-impact update technologies including hot patching, memory-preserving … Read more Advancing no-impact and low-impact maintenance technologies
This blog post was co-authored by Nikhil Jethava, Senior Program Manager, Azure Lighthouse. Azure Lighthouse became generally available in July this year and we have seen a tremendous response from Azure managed service provider communities who are excited about the scale and precision of management that the Azure platform now enables with cross tenant management. … Read more Azure Lighthouse: The managed service provider perspective
In June 2019, Microsoft announced a cloud interoperability collaboration with Oracle that will enable our customers to migrate and run enterprise workloads across Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud. At Oracle OpenWorld in September, the cross-cloud collaboration was a big part of the conversation. Since then, we have fielded interest from mutual customers who want to … Read more Connecting Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud in the UK and Canada
As 2020 is upon us, it’s natural to take time and reflect back on the current year’s achievements (and challenges) and begin planning for the next year. One of our New Year’s resolutions was to continue live streaming software development topics to folks all over the world. In our broadcasts in late November and December, … Read more Tips for learning Azure in the new year
A few months ago, we posted a survey to gather feedback on your experience with metrics in Azure Portal. Thank you for participation and for providing valuable suggestions! We want to share some of the insights we gained from the survey and highlight some of the features that we delivered based on your feedback. These … Read more New features in Azure Monitor Metrics Explorer based on your feedback
“Continuing our Azure reliability series to be as transparent as possible about key initiatives underway to keep improving availability, today we turn our attention to Azure Active Directory. Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) is a cloud identity service that provides secure access to over 250 million monthly active users, connecting over 1.4 million unique … Read more Advancing Azure Active Directory availability
Processing Big data in real-time is an operational necessity for many businesses. Azure Stream Analytics is Microsoft’s serverless real-time analytics offering for complex event processing. We are excited and humbled to announce that Microsoft has been named a leader in The Forrester Wave™: Streaming Analytics, Q3 2019. Microsoft believes this report truly reflects the market … Read more Microsoft is a leader in The Forrester Wave™: Streaming Analytics, Q3 2019
Since releasing Microsoft Azure IoT Edge, we have seen many customers using IoT Edge automatic deployments to deploy workloads to the edge at scale. IoT Edge automatic deployments handle the heavy lifting of deploying modules to the relevant Azure IoT Edge devices and allow operators to keep a close eye on status to quickly address … Read more New enhancements for Azure IoT Edge automatic deployments
We introduced the preview of bursting support on Azure Premium SSD Disks, and new disk sizes 4/8/16 GiB on both Premium & Standard SSDs at Microsoft Ignite in November. We would like to share more details about it. With bursting, eligible Premium SSD disks can now achieve up to 30x of the provisioned performance target, … Read more Better performance with bursting enhancement on Azure Disks
We are pleased to introduce the ability to export high-resolution keyframes from Azure Media Service’s Video Indexer. Whereas keyframes were previously exported in reduced resolution compared to the source video, high resolution keyframes extraction gives you original quality images and allows you to make use of the image-based artificial intelligence models provided by the Microsoft … Read more Combine the Power of Video Indexer and Computer Vision
One of the toughest IoT quandaries is figuring out how to bake IoT into existing hardware in a secure, cost-effective way. For many customers, scrapping existing hardware investments for new IoT-enabled devices (“greenfield” installations) isn’t feasible. And retrofitting mission-critical devices that are already in service with IoT (“brownfield” installations) is often deemed too risky, too … Read more Azure Sphere guardian module simplifies & secures brownfield IoT
One of the toughest IoT quandaries is figuring out how to bake IoT into existing hardware in a secure, cost-effective way. For many customers, scrapping existing hardware investments for new IoT-enabled devices or “greenfield” installations isn’t feasible. And retrofitting mission-critical devices that are already in service with IoT “brownfield” installations is often deemed too risky, … Read more Azure Sphere guardian module simplifies and secures brownfield IoT
Do you need rugged, compact-sized hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) enabled servers to run your branch office and edge workloads? Do you want to modernize your applications and IoT functions with container technology? Do you want to leverage Azure’s hybrid services such as backup, disaster recovery, update management, monitoring, and security compliance? Well, Microsoft and HPE have … Read more Azure Stack HCI now running on HPE Edgeline EL8000
Digital twins have moved from an exciting concept to reality. More companies than ever are connecting assets and production networks with sensors and using analytics to optimize operations across machinery, plants, and industrial networks. As exact virtual representations of the physical environment, digital twins incorporate historical and real-time data to enable sophisticated spatial analysis of … Read more Microsoft partner ANSYS extends ability of Azure Digital Twins platform
Today we are announcing the preview of a maintenance control feature for Azure Virtual Machines that gives more control to customers with highly sensitive workloads for platform maintenance. Using this feature, customers can control all impactful host updates, including rebootless updates, for up to 35 days. Azure frequently updates its infrastructure to improve the reliability, … Read more Introducing maintenance control for platform updates
Last month, we started sharing the DevOps journey at Microsoft through the stories of several teams at Microsoft and how they approach DevOps adoption. As the next story in this series, we want to share the transition one team made from a classic operations role to a Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) role: the story of … Read more Building Xbox game streaming with Site Reliability best practices
Do you need rugged, compact-sized hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) enabled servers to run your branch office and edge workloads? Do you want to modernize your applications and IoT functions with container technology? Do you want to leverage Azure’s hybrid services such as backup, disaster recovery, update managment, monitoring, and security compliance? Microsoft and Lenovo have teamed … Read more Microsoft has validated the Lenovo ThinkSystem SE350 edge server for Azure Stack HCI
Since the general availability of Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 in February 2019, customers have been getting insights at cloud scale faster than ever before. Integration to analytics engines is critical for their analytics workloads and equally important is the ability to programmatically ingest, manage, and analyze data. This ability is critical for key areas … Read more Extended filesystem programming capabilities in Azure Data Lake Storage
Many customers have questions when it comes to managing cloud operations. How can I implement real-time cloud governance at scale? What’s the best way to monitor my cloud workloads? How can I get help when I need it? Azure offers a great deal of guidance when it comes to optimizing your cloud operations. At the … Read more Achieve operational excellence in the cloud with Azure Advisor
This post was co-authored by Omar Aftab, Partner Director of Program Management, Power Virtual Agents. Conversational artificial intelligence (AI) is enabling organizations to improve their business in areas like customer service and employee engagement by automating some of the most commonly requested services, which frees up employees to take on more value-adding activities. While the … Read more Enabling collaborative bot development across your organization for any user
Over a million on-premises SQL Server databases have moved to Azure, representing a massive shift in where customers are collecting, storing, and analyzing their data. Modernizing your databases provides the opportunity to transform your data architecture. SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines allows you to maintain control over your database and operating system while still … Read more Faster and cheaper: SQL on Azure continues to outshine AWS
Today, we are sharing the general availability of Microsoft Azure Backup’s solution for SAP HANA databases in the UK South region. Azure Backup is Azure’s native backup solution, which is BackInt certified by SAP. This offering aligns with Azure Backup’s mantra of zero-infrastructure backups, eliminating the need to deploy and manage backup infrastructure. You can … Read more SAP HANA backup using Azure Backup is now generally available
Whether you’re a new student, thriving startup, or the largest enterprise, you have financial constraints and you need to know what you’re spending, where, and how to plan for the future. Nobody wants a surprise when it comes to the bill, and this is where Microsoft Azure Cost Management comes in. We’re always looking for … Read more Azure Cost Management updates – November 2019
Azure Media Services provides a platform with which you can broadcast live events. You can use our APIs to ingest, transcode, and dynamically package and encrypt your live video feeds for delivery via industry-standard protocols like HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) and MPEG-DASH. You can also use our APIs to integrate with CDNs and deliver to … Read more Preview: Live transcription with Azure Media Services