We already know that running a business with the power of Azure helps to provide scalability, flexibility and greater ease of use. But as new features continue to be rolled out in Azure, it’s also our job at New Signature to make sure that our clients are kept abreast on the newest features and updates that will benefit them even further. Finding the best Azure benefits for your business is our business, and we get excited to share all the latest and greatest with you.  

This month, our experts have handpicked some Azure updates that they feel are noteworthy and will elevate your use of Azure moving forward. Check out what they say below: 

  • Azure Bastion Now Available in 20 New Regions
    “In 2019, Azure Bastion came on the scene as a new PaaS that helps to provide secure and seamless access to your virtual machines directly through the Azure portal. This means you can access your VMs without any exposure through a public IP address and now, after being generally available in six regions, it is now available in 20 more regions that vastly expands the scope of who can benefit from this tool, including our clients in central Canada and the US, and the United Kingdom South and West.” – Peter DeTheir, Senior Consultant, Advanced OperationsClick the header link above to see the full list of regions.
  • Managed Disks Incremental Snapshots
    Incremental snapshots are a cost-effective, point-in-time backup, and now this process is generally available for Azure Managed Disks. Unlike current snapshots, which are billed for the full size, incremental snapshots are billed for the changes to disks since the last snapshot and are always stored on the most cost-effective storage“Managed disks is a feature that may not be in use on older VMs, but disks can be converted quite easily in the portal or in Powershell to begin utilizing the incremental snapshots process. Incremental snapshots is one more advantage for managed disks in addition to not needing to manage storage accounts and switching easily between disk sizes. This March 26 announcement includes incremental snapshots for disks, so for businesses that retain multiple snapshots on a single disk, this can help them really save on storage costs.” – Jason Cotton, Service Design Lead
  • Azure Shared Disks for Clustered Applications
    One feature in the preview pipeline that you can test out is using Azure Shared Disks for clustered applications. This update stands as the industry’s first shared cloud block storage, and enables the flexibility to migrate clustered environments running on Windows Server, including Windows Server 2008 (which has reached End-of-Support), to Azure. 

    “We support several customers running third-party software, which can now be replaced by this native feature. The net result is a decrease in application complexity, administrative overhead, and any costs associated with supporting third-party software.” – Peter DeTheir, Senior Consultant, Advanced Operations  

Curious about more Azure learning material? Here are some of our most-recent Azure content resources: 

If you have any questions about anything you see here, or about your Azure environment, reach out to one of our cloud experts today. We are here to keep you optimized, managed and protected through our expertise and our global managed services.