Welcome to our monthly Azure highlights! Here you can find the most important Azure updates, hand-picked by our Zure advisors & developers.

⭐️Highlights⭐️

• Track and record changes in your Azure SQL Databases through Change Data Capture (GA)
  • Change data capture (CDC) provides historical change information for a user table by capturing both the fact that Data Manipulation Language (DML) changes (insert / update / delete) were made and the changed data. Changes are captured by using a capture process that reads changes from the transaction log and places them in corresponding change tables.
• App Service – Networking capabilities added to Basic pricing tier (GA)
  • App Service now supports VNet integration (outbound) and private endpoints (inbound) all the way down to the Basic SKU.

• Azure storage table access using Azure Active Directory (GA)
  • Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) support to authorize requests for Azure Table Storage is now generally available. With Azure AD, you can use Azure role-based access control (Azure RBAC) to grant permissions to any security principal, which can include a user, group, application service principal, or managed identity.
• Microsoft Build May 24–26 2022
  • Microsoft’s developer conference is coming. It’s virtual event and you can register for free.

Storage

• Rehydrate an archived blob to a different storage account (GA)
  • You can now copy archived blob into new destination blob that is either in the Hot or Cool tier.

Database

• Azure Synapse Link now supports existing Azure Cosmos DB containers (GA)
  • Enable Azure Synapse Link for your existing Azure Cosmos DB containers to trigger the initial sync of the data from transactional store to analytical store.

• Azure Cosmos DB autoscale RU/s entry point is 4x lower (GA)
  • With Azure Cosmos DB autoscale, you can now set a scale range of 100 – 1000 RU/s, which is 4x lower than the previous minimum scale range of 400 – 4000 RU/s. Autoscale automatically scales the throughput of your database or container within a specified range, removing the need for manual capacity management. For smaller workloads that do not require high throughput, setting the new scale range can make autoscale up to 4x lower in cost, while still providing the ability to scale-up to handle spikes of traffic. 

• Azure SQL DB Hyperscale short-term backup retention up to 35 days (PREVIEW)
  • Point-in-time restore retention increased from 7 days to 35 days.
• Integrated Power BI experience in Azure Cosmos DB portal for Synapse Link enabled accounts (GA)
  • With the integrated Power BI experience, you can visualize your Azure Cosmos DB data in near real time in just a few clicks. It uses the built-in Power BI integration feature in the Azure portal along with Azure Synapse Link.
    
    Synapse Link enables you to build Power BI dashboards with no performance or cost impact to your transactional workloads, and no ETL pipelines.

Networking

• Service tags support for user-defined routing (GA)
  • Specify a service tag as the address prefix parameter in a user-defined route for your route table. You can choose from tags representing over 70 Microsoft and Azure services to simplify and consolidate route creation and maintenance.

Monitoring

• Recommended alert rules for virtual machines (PREVIEW)
  • The Azure portal experience now allows you to easily enable a set of recommended and out-of-the-box set of alert rules for your Azure resources. Currently in preview for virtual machines, you can simply enable a set of best practice alert rules on an unmonitored VM with just a few clicks.
• Azure Monitor activity log insights (PREVIEW)
  • If you send Azure Activity logs to Log Analytics workspace, you can use new Activity log insights workbook that visualize the data in the AzureActivity table. For example, which administrators deleted, updated or created resources, and whether the activities failed or succeeded.

Compute

• Managed identities support in Azure Container Apps (PREVIEW)
  • Azure Container Apps, a service for building and deploying modern applications and microservices using serverless containers, now supports managed identities in public preview.

• Static Web Apps now supports Gitlab and Bitbucket for CI/CD (PREVIEW)
  • Bring your Gitlab or Bitbucket project, create a simple YAML file using the provided template, and link it to a Static Web App created with a custom deployment source.
• Generally available: Azure Static Web Apps support for private endpoints (GA)
  • Private endpoints enable clients on an Azure virtual network to securely access Azure Static Web Apps through an IP address in the virtual network’s address space over a private link. This enables network traffic between the virtual network and the Static Web Apps service to traverse over the Microsoft backbone, eliminating exposure from the public internet.