Azure service updates

Starting July 13th, 2026, customers can use Azure Databricks SQL Serverless in the UK West region to simplify analytics workloads while benefiting from instant compute, automated scaling, and reduced infrastructure management. Eligible UK West workspaces

Starting October 1, 2026, the specified runtime versions Python 2.7, Python 3.8, and PowerShell 7.1 & 7.2. will no longer be supported by Automation. Runbooks using these versions may continue to run but will not receive security updates, bug fixes, or o

You can now create and run Azure Chaos Studio resilience Scenarios directly from the Azure CLI with the new az chaos extension — no more hand-assembling REST calls and JSON files. Get started in one step: az chaos setup stands up a workspace, wires up per

Open AI GPT-5.6 is now available on Azure Databricks. You can use GPT 5.6 (purchased on Microsoft Foundry) via Model Serving Endpoint in Azure Databricks. Through integrations across Foundry and Azure Databricks, you can securely build, deploy, and manage

Azure Web Application Firewall (WAF) helps protect your web applications from common threats and attacks. In some cases, WAF may block requests that are safe and expected for your application. Existing exclusions help reduce false positives by omitting sp

Azure Chaos Studio now supports Workspaces and Scenarios, a faster, application-centric way to validate how your workloads hold up during real outages.Point a Workspace at your application's scope—a subscription, resource group, or service group—and Chaos

The Log Analytics Export job enables you to export historical data from a Log Analytics workspace to an Azure Storage account based on a specified query and time range. This allows you to extract only the data you need and move it to external systems for

Azure Event Hubs now supports Network Security Perimeter (NSP), enabling organizations to define a logical network isolation boundary for PaaS resources and control public network access through perimeter-based access rules.With Network Security Perimeter

Azure Event Hubs Dedicated now supports Confidential Computing, enabling organizations to protect streaming data while it is being processed in memory. By leveraging hardware-based trusted execution environments (TEEs), customers can help safeguard sensit

Azure Red Hat OpenShift (ARO) is now generally available in Azure Chile Central, expanding regional availability for OpenShift deployments across South America. With the launch of Microsoft’s first Azure region in Chile, customers can now run fully manage

Microsoft Entra ID-based access for Azure Blob Storage SFTP is now generally available in all regions. You can now use Entra ID identities including guest users via Entra External Identities to securely connect to Azure Blob Storage over SFTP, without pro

Azure Site Recovery now supports up to 5x churn (500 MB/s per VM). This major enhancement empowers customers to confidently run high IOPS workloads with Azure Site Recovery, ensuring robust disaster recovery for even the most demanding applications like d

Azure Databricks now supports Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5 through Azure Databricks AI Model Serving. Claude Sonnet 5 is Anthropic's most agentic Sonnet model to date, delivering near-Opus-level intelligence with Sonnet's cost efficiency and speed. Designed

We’re excited to introduce the newly renamed Az.PostgreSQLFlexibleServer PowerShell module, delivering a more streamlined experience for you to manage Azure Database for PostgreSQL with PowerShell. Building on the capabilities of the previous Az.PostgreSq

Document-based PII detection in Azure AI Language now ships an initial playground experience in the Microsoft Foundry NextGen portal. The playground loads a prepared sample document, runs it through the document-based PII feature, and shows the redacted o

Azure AI Language now offers a refreshed Document PII playground in general availability, giving customers a faster way to evaluate personally identifiable information detection on documents. The playground ships with curated sample inputs and outputs, so

Azure introduces Instant Access for VM Restore Points, enabling you to restore disks immediately after a restore point is created—without waiting for background data replication.Key benefits:Faster recovery (lower RTO): Restore disks instantly—no wait for

Azure Storage Mover now supports cloud-to-cloud migration of data from Google Cloud Storage (GCS) to Azure Blob Storage, helping organizations simplify multi-cloud consolidation onto Azure.Using the S3-compatible interface, customers can migrate data from

Azure Blob Storage has long supported data integrity validation, starting with MD5 as part of the original HTTP standards and adding CRC64-NVME support in 2019. Today, CRC64-NVME is now integrated into the latest Azure Blob SDKs for .NET, C++, and JavaScr

Microsoft Foundry brings Toolboxes to GA, providing a unified endpoint to invoke the most-used tools in prompt agents and callable outside of prompt agents. Today every agent team hand-assembles its own tool list to solve the same tasks, with no shared ar