Organizations are transforming from cloud to edge, migrating and optimizing existing workloads, building new cloud-native apps, unlocking new scenarios at the edge, and combining these strategies to meet a diverse set of business needs. Microsoft is committed to helping at every step of the way with continuous technology innovation.

Today, we’re announcing product updates and enhancements across the Azure infrastructure portfolio that provide better performance, scalability, and security. We're enabling new scenarios to meet your business needs, offering more flexibility and choices for long-term success.

Achieve performance, scalability, and security

No matter what application workloads you run in the cloud, the performance, scalability, and security of the underlying cloud infrastructure are critical to success. To that end, Azure continues to innovate with new infrastructure as a service (IaaS) capabilities to empower you.

Gaining better price-performance with new Azure Virtual Machines (VMs). New Intel-based Dv5 and Ev5 VMs are generally available and deliver better price-performance compared to prior generations. New AMD-based Dasv5 and Easv5 VMs are also available, delivering better price-performance over previous generations and providing options without local disk storage for lower price points. And we are also excited to announce the preview of the new memory-optimized Ebsv5 VM series, which delivers higher remote storage performance (up to 4,000 MB/s) compared to prior VM generations. As our VM portfolio expands, use the VM selector to easily identify the right VM and disk storage options for different workloads.

Increasing application availability with Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets flexible orchestration mode. Generally available, this new capability gives you full control of the individual VMs within a scale set while increasing application resiliency at scale across thousands of VMs.

Enhancing scalability and performance with new Azure storage capabilities. On-demand disk bursting, now generally available, lets you boost disk performance above the provisioned limit when needed to handle increased demand. With Azure Disk Storage live resize capability in preview, you can dynamically increase capacity without downtime to easily adapt to changes in demand. Learn more about Azure Disk Storage.

Transparent network appliance insertion at scale. With the new Gateway Load Balancer in preview, you can scale and deploy third-party network appliances with ease and automatically reroute traffic to the healthy appliance instance to ensure the high availability and reliability of applications.

Managing virtual networks at scale. Azure Virtual Network Manager, also in preview, is the one-stop-shop for centralized network management. The highly scalable and available network management solution enables you to easily create and manage virtual network topologies and protect your network resources at scale. 

Continued innovation to deliver unmatched security. With Trusted Launch for all second-generation Azure VMs, it’s easier than ever to harden workloads and protect against malicious attacks. To further ensure privacy and security, you can lift and shift existing workloads into new confidential VMs, available in preview. Also in preview, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) on Intel SGX VMs and AMD SEV-SNP VMs helps secure orchestration of confidential containers. To ensure maximum network security, a new Azure Bastion Standard SKU, IPv6 support for private peering, and advanced MACsec support are all generally available. Additional network security enhancements include the preview of expanded ExpressRoute FastPath support and a new Application Gateway WAF engine that provides better performance.

Migrate, modernize, or optimize your workloads

Most organizations run a diverse set of applications—ranging from traditional and specialized workloads to modern applications—each has different requirements and a different cloud adoption strategy. Our mission is to provide the platform capabilities to power all your applications. Below are highlights of our latest product updates that address our customers' varied workload needs.

Simplifying IT operations for Windows Server and Linux workloads. Azure Automanage is used by IT and DevOps to automate and optimize IT management. Now generally available, extended network for Azure and SMB over QUIC—capabilities of Azure Automanage for Windows Server—help simplify Windows Server workload migration. In preview, new enhancements such as custom configuration profiles and support for Azure Arc-enabled servers provide you more flexibility in managing Windows and Linux VMs.

More regional coverage and capabilities for migration with Azure VMware Solution. Today, we’re announcing the expansion of Azure VMware Solution to the Germany West region, making the solution now available in 18 Azure regions globally. We also recently launched Azure Disk pool integration for Azure VMware Solution in preview, allowing you to scale Azure Disk Storage for data-intensive workloads. Additionally, newly expanded workload scenarios include supporting Citrix Virtual Desktop Infrastructure on Azure VMware Solution.

Optimizing remote work with new Azure Virtual Desktop enhancements. Azure Virtual Desktop is the only cloud VDI solution that supports the full Windows 10 and Windows 11 experience, along with multi-session support to host multiple users per Azure VM. To support further cost optimization, we’re announcing the preview of autoscale support, which will help organizations schedule availability around peak workloads and pay only for the resources they need. For data and application workloads you want to run locally, Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI in preview can help.

Modernizing with cloud-native technology on Azure. Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), one of the fastest-growing services on Azure, lets you deploy and manage containerized applications more easily with a fully-managed Kubernetes service. Attend Microsoft Into Focus: Digital and app innovation and learn about the latest AKS and cloud-native updates including the preview of Azure Container Apps and the general availability of the Open Service Mesh integration for AKS.

More options for migration and modernization. We recently announced a new app containerization tool, improved discovery and assessment capabilities for SQL and .NET web modernization, and the general availability of agentless software inventory and dependency analysis in Azure Migrate. We’ve also further simplified the Azure Migrate appliance onboarding experience. Learn more about the newly announced support for additional scenarios in Azure Migration and Modernization Program (AMMP) including SAP, hybrid with Azure Arc, security, and increased application modernization support.

Unlock new scenarios across hybrid, multicloud, and edge

This week, we shared the latest features and innovations for Azure Arc and Azure Stack HCI in our Secure, develop, and innovate in hybrid and multicloud with Microsoft Azure session and provided a single resource to learn about and stay current on the full Azure hybrid portfolio.

Additionally, we continue to expand our IoT capabilities to support more edge scenarios. Azure IoT Central introduces support for organizations. This highly requested capability simplifies IoT for mainstream adoption. You can now build an IoT solution once and onboard multiple tenants into it—keeping costs down and reducing management overhead. In addition, Windows Server IoT 2022 and Windows 11 IoT Enterprise are now generally available. Dive deeper into IoT strategies, business growth, and considerations around sustainability and cybersecurity to power your edge strategy with Microsoft IoT Signals.

Access additional resources to learn more

We want to thank everyone for joining us this week at Microsoft Ignite and those who will be watching on-demand sessions later. Catch our Microsoft Into Focus: Infrastructure session and view all our announcements in the Microsoft Ignite Book of News. For a deeper dive into IaaS solutions across compute, storage, and networking—don’t miss the free Azure IaaS Day digital event on November 17, 2021. Register today!

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