Microsoft Ignite Azure Takeaways 2022

Microsoft Ignite is over for this time, but Satya Nadella left us, the Azure fanatics, with some pretty igniting updates. So let us walk you through some of our favorite Azure updates and recession-friendly Hacks.

Azure Monitor

Microsoft released new Azure Monitor capabilities designed to help customers further modernize their environments and optimize costs. Some long-awaited features, previously in preview, are now made generally available.  

For example, the predictive autoscale for Virtual Machine Scale Sets VM lets users leverage machine learning to manage and scale predictively by forecasting the overall CPU load. It’s also possible to mix both standard and spot VMs in the same scale set.  

Log archive and cold storage for log analytics is now generally available, which means you don’t have to pay (as much) for logs you don’t need immediate access to.

Azure Monitor Agent (AMA) gives us one agent to rule them all instead of having one for each OS. Furthermore, AMA is managed with Data Collection Rules, meaning you can define a single rule once and reuse it across multiple VMs – which, according to us, makes it better than the legacy Log Analytics Agents (MMA on Windows and OMS Agent on Linux). In addition, Microsoft provides an agent migration tool for guidance and automation to support migration from the legacy Log Analytics agents to AMA.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

At the event, Microsoft introduced new capabilities for Microsoft Defender for Cloud to help organizations strengthen their cloud security posture and extend threat protection across workloads. In addition, it was well-emphasized that Defender for Cloud will be a comprehensive cloud-native app protection platform.

Defender for DevOps is a new solution that will provide visibility across multiple DevOps environments to centrally manage DevOps security, strengthen cloud resource configurations in code and help prioritize remediation of critical issues across multi-pipeline and multi-cloud environments.

Leading platforms like GitHub and Azure DevOps are supported in this preview. Other major DevOps platforms will be supported shortly.

Recession-friendly Cherry Picks

Azure Automanage is now generally available and will simplify workload management and improve uptime to increase efficiency and cost savings. One of these capabilities is Hotpatch, which allows patching without the need to reboot every installation, reducing downtime of Windows Server Azure edition VMs in Azure.

The Azure savings plan for compute is now generally available, allowing customers to get more value from their cloud budget. It helps clients to save across selected compute services globally by committing to spend a fixed hourly amount (for example, $5/hour) for one or three years.

DNS Private Resolver is a cloud-native and DevOps-friendly service that (finally) went generally available and can now replace hosting your own DNS Servers. It provides a simple, zero-maintenance, reliable and secure DNS service to resolve and conditionally forward DNS queries from a virtual network, on-premises, and to other target DNS servers without the need to create and manage a custom DNS solution. Pricewise it is a bit more expensive, but the savings you’ll see in time and personnel.

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Mesh Avatars makes us long for a “Clippy” skin

And last, a non-Azure-related update, the Mesh Avatars on Teams. The avatars will let users show up in a Teams meeting with a customized, animated version of themselves without turning on their cameras.

Even though it’s still in preview, and we haven’t started using it yet, there are already internal dibs on the potential “Clippy” skin.