Azure Updates: Containers; VMs; Security Center; Access control

As some cornavirus-related lockdowns began to lift, Microsoft trained its focus on updates to wide-ranging capabilities for Azure, many related to storage, security, and managing different workloads.

A number of updates touched on VMs and containers. Windows Server containers in AKS are GA, while Advisor is newly integrated with AKS. For VMs, platform updates is GA for Dedicated Hosts and isolated VMs, offering rebootless updates for a 35 day period for sensitive workloads. Incubation architect Bahram Rushenas indicated that Microsoft Services is now a Kubernetes Certified Service Provider, joining a "pre-qualified tier of vetted service providers."

Backup is providing cross-region restore for VMs, while senior program manager Vishnu Charan TJ explained that Files offers fully managed file shares with options to share them with Backup. The new snapshot management features help protect against accidental deletion and offer snapshots on-demand, among other capabilities. According to a post by CTO Mark Russinovich, Microsoft is introducing DCsv2-series VMs for confidential computing, providing hardware-based trusted execution environments and software interoperability with security software providers like Anqlave, Anjuna and Fortanix.