Cloud Platform Release Announcements for August 22, 2018

  • Article

Azure SQL Database | Managed instance general purpose availability coming soon

Azure SQL Database Managed Instance general purpose will become generally available on October 1, 2018. Managed Instance is a new deployment option providing near full compatibility with SQL Server, allowing you to migrate your on-premises workloads to the cloud with minimal changes. The general-purpose performance tier provides balanced and scalable compute and storage options that fit most business workloads. Create a managed instance today and use your SQL Server licenses and active Software Assurance to save up to 55 percent with Azure Hybrid Benefit for SQL Server.

Learn more about the Azure Hybrid Benefit for SQL Server.  Learn how to create a managed instance today.

SKU changes and additions for the Azure Database Migration Service

The Basic 1 and 2 vCore SKUs for the Azure Database Migration Service have been renamed to General Purpose 1 and 2 vCore, and a General Purpose 4 vCore SKU has been added. In addition, a new Business Critical 4 vCore SKU is available for higher-end workloads.

For more information, visit the pricing page.

Support for SQL Server to Azure SQL Database online migrations

Now in preview, migrate SQL Server databases to Azure SQL Database with minimal downtime by using the Azure Database Migration Service. Read the Azure Database Migration Service documentation to perform migrations from PostgreSQL on-premises, or on virtual machines to Azure Database for PostgreSQL.

Support for MySQL to Azure Database for MySQL online migrations

Now in preview, migrate MySQL databases to Azure Database for MySQL with minimal downtime by using the Azure Database Migration Service. Read the Azure Database Migration Service documentation to perform migrations from MySQL on-premises, or on virtual machines to Azure Database for MySQL.

Learn more about Azure Database Migration Service.

Azure Database migration service support for MySQL to Azure Database for MySQL migrations

Now in preview, you can migrate MySQL databases to Azure Database for MySQL with minimal downtime by using the Azure Database migration service. Visit the Azure portal and provision an instance of the Database migration service to perform migrations from MySQL on-premises or on virtual machines to Azure Database for MySQL.

Learn more and Learn how to provision an instance of the Database migration service to perform migrations.

Virtual network service endpoints for Azure database services for MySQL and PostgreSQL now available

Now generally available, virtual network service endpoints for Azure database services for MySQL and PostgreSQL are accessible in all available regions. Virtual network service endpoints allow you to isolate connectivity to your logical server from only a given subnet or set of subnets within your virtual network. Traffic to Azure database services for MySQL and PostgreSQL from the virtual network service endpoints stays within the Azure backbone network. This direct route will be preferred over any specific routes that take internet traffic through virtual appliances or on-premises.

Learn more about Azure Database Service for MySQL.

Learn more about Azure Database Service for PostgreSQL.

Azure SQL Data Warehouse | Australia France regions—GA

Azure SQL Data Warehouse Gen2 is now available in Australia and France

Azure SQL Data warehouse is a fast, flexible, and secure analytics platform. The compute optimized Gen2 tier of Azure SQL Data Warehouse is now available in 23 regions. We recently made the service available in Australia Central, Australia Central 2, and France Central. Compute optimized Gen2 tier, using adaptive caching and instant data movement, now brings at least five times better performance.

Learn more.

Power BI Desktop | GA

Our Power BI Desktop August 2018 release is filled with features that address some of your top requests, including our export to PDF feature which is geared towards the number one feature request on UserVoice, printing in Power BI Desktop. We also have an exciting update for data scientists and statisticians with our new Python integration.

For more information, see the Power BI blog.

Power BI Report Server | August 2018 update

The August 2018 update of Power BI Report Server contains several new features, including some highly anticipated items like report theming, conditional formatting improvements, and report page tooltips.

See the Power BI blog for more information.

Power BI service | GA

The latest update to the Power BI service includes several new and exciting capabilities including:

  • Dataflows in Power BI (in preview), a new capability to help organizations unify data from disparate sources and prepare it for modeling. Dataflows are used to ingest, transform, integrate, and enrich big data by defining data source connections, ETL logic, refresh schedules, and more.
  • Power BI Premium Multi-Geo (in preview), a new feature that helps multinational organizations address their data residency requirements.
  • New Power BI Admin APIs, along with a .NET SDK and a PowerShell module, that enable administrators to discover artifacts in their Power BI tenant, as well as take administrative actions.
  • The preview of a new workspace experience in Power BI designed to enable enterprises to easily manage Power BI content at scale using security groups, distribution lists, and Office 365 Groups.

For more information, see the Power BI blog.

Azure security and operations management | Configure just-in-time virtual machine access from the VM blade

Just-in-time virtual machine access can now be configured from the virtual machine blade (in preview) to make it even easier for you to reduce your exposure to threats.

Attackers commonly target open ports on internet-facing virtual machines, spanning from port scanning to brute force and DDoS attacks. One way to reduce exposure to an attack is to limit the amount of time that a port on your virtual machine is open. Ports only need to be open for a limited amount of time for you to perform management or maintenance tasks. Just-in-time virtual machine access helps you control the time that the ports on your virtual machines are open.

Learn more.

Azure security and operations management | Security Center confidence score on alerts

Security Center can help your team triage and prioritize alerts with a new capability called confidence score. The Confidence Score automatically investigates alerts by applying industry best practices, intelligent algorithms, and processes used by analysts to determine whether a threat is real and provides you with meaningful insights. To learn more about this, visit our blog.

Visual Studio 2017 | Update

A new update to Visual Studio 2017 is now available This means you can take advantage of everything listed below, and more, for free:

  • Productivity
    • This release adds notable productivity and debugging enhancers. New additions such as multi-caret editing, contextual navigation, new keybinding profiles, new refactorings, and more enable you to be even more productive.
  • Performance
    • Performance was again a big area of focus and we've made significant improvements in areas such as Git branch checkout and switching, test performance, CPU usage tools, and more.
  • .NET Development
    • .NET Core SDK 2.1 is included in this release, as well as .NET Framework 4.7.2.
    • For Mobile .NET Development with Xamarin, we've made improvements to the Android designer, and this release also adds support for the Hyper-V compatible Google Android emulator.
  • C++ Development
    • We've made improvements to the C++ development experience by adding a C++11 standards compliant experimental, token-based preprocessor, C++ Just My Code debugging, and background code analysis.
  • F# Development
    • F# language version 4.5 is added in this release, as are improvements to IntelliSense performance, brace completion, bug fixes, and an experimental CodeLens implementation.
  • JavaScript and TypeScript Development
    • This release of Visual Studio includes TypeScript 3.0 by default and has improved support for Vue.js and ESLint.
  • Web tools
    • The all-new library manager helps you manage client-side libraries in your web projects. Additionally, we have added a new single project Docker container experience.

For more details, head over to the blog or the release notes.

Download the Visual Studio 2017 update today through the Visual Studio installer or VisualStudio.com