Azure Updates: CDN; SAS tokens; Media Services AI; Advanced Threat Protection; FedRAMP High

As the middle of September approached, Microsoft issued a regular slate of announcement joined by a flurry of partner announcements. In Australia, intermittent connectivity failures caused problems accessing Azure portal and resources in the region. Fortunately, the problem only hit a subset of customers and lasted less than an hour. According to CRN reporting on the issue, there was no commentary on social media about problems suggesting that the issue went virtually unnoticed, like many small Azure incidents.

Among geographic updates, Microsoft added new ExpressRoute sites in Munich, Stockholm, and Copenhagen, while new Cognitive Services sentiment analysis is available in Australia East, Canada Central, Southeast Asia, and a variety of US, UK, and European regions. Azure Backup now includes large disk support up to 30 TB and a way to decouple backup jobs into sub-tasks.

An Azure CDN feature update means that users can have a Bring your own SSL Certificate approach with Verizon or tap into managed SSL certificates with Akamai. The Verizon SSLs coupled with Azure Key Vault mean that customers can use the same SSL for multiple CDN capabilities. The announcement also includes Apex domain support, enabled by an integration with alias records on Azure DNS. Starting in October, data transfer from Media Services, Storage, Application Gateway and other services to Azure CDN will be free of charge.

Microsoft made a series of storage and networking updates, such as offering a public preview of Private Link to secure endpoint connections and keep data in the network. The team launched a preview of user delegation SAS tokens, extending role-based access control to Azure Storage and letting low-privilege users receive only partial access. One example would be issuing read-only URLs to customers without sharing higher risk account access keys. Users can create these new types of SAS tokens with either PowerShell or Azure CLI.