May 17, 2023
Welcome to the tenth edition of the Azure World Newsletter in 2023.
Hello again, my friends from around the world. I’m so happy you continue to subscribe and read this bi-weekly newsletter on Azure. I enjoy sitting down each week to research and write this, and hopefully, you will continue to find value in it. Feel free to invite your co-workers or others to subscribe if you think they would find it helpful.
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ONE.
An interesting new feature of Azure Storage was just announced: Cold Storage.
As you know, there are currently three access tiers for Azure Storage if you don’t count the Premium tier: Hot, Cool, and Archive. Azure announced a new fourth tier called Cold.
The cold access tier fills the gap between Cool and Archive. Cold Storage is less than one-half of the price of the cool access tier. Cold Storage does not require “thawing,” unlike the Archive tier. So files are available for API calls immediately. But it has a 90-day early deletion policy, which means it is clearly intended for longer-term storage. Read operations are significantly more expensive than the cool access tier; 10 times more expensive, in fact.
Cold Storage public preview is now available in Canada Central, Canada East, France Central, and Korea Central.
See more:
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/public-preview-azure-cold-storage/
TWO.
Azure App Service is getting a new scaling option called Automatic Scaling.
You know that App Service Plans already have autoscaling and manual scaling, so what is this new Automatic Scaling option?
Well, that’s interesting! Automatic Scaling scales individual web apps, instead of scaling all apps on the same App Service Plan. And instead of setting your autoscaling options based on resource metrics like CPU utilization, Automatic Scaling is designed to scale based on incoming HTTP requests to a particular web app.
Automatic Scaling does not have “rules” in the way that autoscale has. Azure will just scale your app up and down (within preset boundaries) as HTTP requests come in.
Azure will add more instances to a particular web app based on incoming requests. It can pre-warm these instances so that there is a smooth scaling up when there is an increase in requests.
This allows different apps on the same app service plan to scale according to need and not be forced to all scale together.
Automatic Scaling is in preview mode.
If this interests you, you can find more about it here:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service/manage-automatic-scaling?tabs=azure-portal
AZURE PLATFORM UPDATES.
The following updates to the Azure platform were announced in the last two weeks:
- Application Gateway V1 will be retired on 28 April 2026
- Serverless SQL for Azure Databricks, in GA
- Azure Backup Server V4 (MABS), in GA
- Azure Cold Storage, in preview
- Automatic Scaling for App Service Web Apps, in preview
- Always Serve for Azure Traffic Manager, in preview
- Inbound ICMPv4 pings are now supported on Azure Load Balancer, in GA
- GitHub action to build and deploy to Azure Container Apps, in GA
Be sure and check out the Azure Updates page if any of these affect you.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/
COMING UP FOR ME.
Not much to report right now. I’m working on a couple of courses in May and June. I’ll post more about them when they get closer to launching.
WHERE TO FIND ME.
And that’s it for issue 4.10 Thanks for reading this far. Talk to you again in two weeks.
What is your favorite platform to be on? Perhaps we can connect there.
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