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Microsoft shared a plethora of public preview and general availability announcements this week for services including Azure Security Center, Azure Site Recovery and Azure Cost Management. More on these updates and the Azure Function based Microsoft Learn Module of the week.
Azure Security Center GA and Public Preview updates for May 2021
The following public preview and general availability updates and enhancements were made to Azure Security Center in May 2021:
- New recommendations to enable trusted launch capabilities (Preview) - composed of several, coordinated infrastructure technologies that can be enabled independently.
- New recommendations for hardening Kubernetes clusters (Preview) - these include Kubernetes clusters should not use the default namespace, Kubernetes clusters should disable automounting API credentials and Kubernetes clusters should not grant CAPSYSADMIN security capabilities
- Azure Defender for DNS and Azure Defender for Resource Manager released for General Availability (GA) - These new protections greatly enhance your resiliency against attacks from threat actors, and significantly increase the number of Azure resources protected by Azure Defender.
- Azure Defender for open-source relational databases released for General Availability (GA) - expands its offer for SQL protection with a new bundle to cover your open-source relational databases
- New alerts for Azure Defender for Resource Manager - expands the threat protections provided by Azure Defender for Resource Manager.
- Asset inventory gets a cloud environment filter - A new filter that offers the option to refine the list according to the cloud accounts you've connected with Security Center's multi-cloud features.
If you are new to Azure Security Center, checkout the great run through Sarah Young shares in the following video:
Azure Site Recovery update rollup 55 is now generally available
The recent Azure Site Recovery update provides the following improvements for the latest versions of the Azure Site Recovery components:
- Mobility Services—Added support for configuring Ubuntu-20.04 on master target server. Also added support to Linux OS.
- Microsoft Azure Site Recovery Unified Setup & Configuration Server Template—Updated the flow where the screen was freezing when the user clicks the Configuration Server.
- Microsoft Azure Site Recovery (Service)—Rest API support for protection of VMSS Flex, including protection of VMSS virtual machines inside a proximity placement group and/or in a zonal configuration. Scaling in/out of VMSS Flex is yet to be supported by Site Recovery.
- Microsoft Azure Site Recovery (Portal)—Rolled out support for cross-continental disaster recovery of Azure virtual machines. Support is currently limited to three region pairs.
Click here to learn more about improvements, issues fixed, and to get the download links
Azure Cost Management and Billing updates for May 2021
As we always mention, your feedback is what shapes Azure services and features. Here are a few of the latest improvements to Azure Cost Management and Billing and updates based on your feedback:
- Expanded support for cost allocation across APIs and downloads
- Management group exports in Azure Government
- Reminder: Cloudyn retiring on June 30
- Selecting relative dates in the cost analysis preview
- Help improve usability for Azure reservation and savings features
- What's new in Cost Management Labs
- New ways to save money with Azure
- New videos and learning opportunities
- Documentation updates
Community Events
- Empowering Teams - An introduction of the Power Platform and MS Teams
- Testing in Production - Producer Pierre and Sound Guy Steve are back to share thier livestream learnings
- Hello World - Special guests, content challenges, upcoming events, and daily update
MS Learn Module of the Week
Execute an Azure Function with triggers
A trigger is responsible for executing an Azure function and there are dozens of triggers to choose from. This module will you show you some of the most common types of triggers and how to configure them to execute your logic.
This module details how to:
- Determine which trigger works best for your business needs
- Create a timer trigger to invoke a function on a consistent schedule
- Create an HTTP trigger to invoke a function when an HTTP request is received
- Create a blob trigger to invoke a function when a blob is created or updated in Azure Storage
Learn more here: Execute an Azure Function with triggers
Let us know in the comments below if there are any news items you would like to see covered in the next show. Be sure to catch the next AzUpdate episode and join us in the live chat.