Azure Updates: Ignite 2021 announcements; Private Azure Marketplace; Kubernetes service; Development center

At Ignite 2021, offerings like Synapse Pathway and Percept stole the show along with Windows Server 2022, Machine Learning, Automanage. In a week chock full of announcements, there was something for everybody, but some announcements could be easy to lose in the shuffle, such as the public preview of Log Analytics for Backup, Route Server or Managed VNet and Autoscale for Spring Cloud.   

The Azure team announced the advent of the private Azure Marketplace, a tenant level feature for current Azure customers based that allows controls on the products available for deployment by users.

Microsoft is planning a new datacenter in China, China North 3, set to launch in 2022. The Azure team touted a variety of options for developers and database users: app containerization in Migrate, SQL auditing to Log Analytics and Event Hub, Backup support for Azure VM archive tier, Event Hubs on Stack Hub, and a Power BI connector for Databricks. Not to be left off the list are advance notifications for SQL database, incremental backups for SAP HANA, operational Blobs backup, Premium SSD on-demand disk bursting, Backup Reports, Synapse serverless SQL pool support, and migration assessments with VMware Solution.

Numerous offerings are generally available such as Enterprise Flash tiers for Cache for Redis and Load Balancer support for IP-based backend pool management. Public previews include options to change performance tiers for Premium SSD managed disks without downtime, Azure Communications Services interoperability with Teams, Managed Instance for Apache Cassandra, and Zone Redundant Storage for managed disks.

A slew of updates touched Azure Kubernetes Service like custom Docker images to deploy WebLogic, Conditional Access feature integration, encrypted customer managed keys policy, planned maintenance windows, Calico Windows support. Others include Just-In-Time Access, App Gateway ingress controller add-ons, dynamic IP allocation and expanded subnet support.

In Serbia, Microsoft is rapidly expanding its Azure team. Sixty vacant positions represent a 30% growth for the Azure Data team operating at the Microsoft Development Center. Dragan Tomić, director of Microsoft Development Center Serbia stated: