Cloud Platform Release Announcements for February 7, 2019
Visual Studio 2019 | Preview 2
Visual Studio 2019 Preview 2 is now available. This release contains several improvements and additions to the core experience and different development areas.
This release brings improvements for developers working with multiple monitors, adds new search capabilities, and improves on the UI changes introduced in Preview 1. Furthermore, developers using C++, C#, F#, .NET, Python, web, containers, and mobile .NET all get some new and improved experiences.
Download Visual Studio 2019 Preview 2 online or learn more on the Visual Studio 2019 blog.
Virtual Machines | Lsv2 Azure virtual machines (VMs) for Big Data, SQL and NoSQL databases, and data warehousing are now available
Pricing Linux | Pricing Windows | Azure Virtual Machines
The new Lsv2 Azure virtual machines, which have been optimized for high-throughput and high-IOPS workloads, are now generally available.
The new Lsv2 series features high throughput, low latency, directly mapped local NVMe storage. The Lsv2 VMs run on the AMD EPYC™ 7551 processor with an all core boost of 2.55 GHz. The Lsv2 series VMs offer up to 80 vCPUs, 8 GiB of memory per vCPU, and up to 19.2 TB (10x1.92 TB) of local storage.
For more information including regional availability read our blog.
Pricing details for Linux or Windows can be found on our website.
Microsoft and TomTom: Partnership Expansion
TomTom has chosen the Azure cloud as its preferred cloud platform for its enterprise. As a result, Microsoft will now be able to incorporate all of TomTom's map and traffic data into a variety of scenarios across all Microsoft services.
What does this mean for customers? By centralizing TomTom's powerful location intelligence, routing engines, and traffic services on the Azure cloud, Microsoft customers who use Azure Maps and the numerous other services powered by TomTom (Cortana and Bing Maps, for example), can reap the benefits of richer, fresher, faster updates to build world-class location intelligence solutions.
MongoDB to Azure Cosmos DB online migration is in preview
Migrate from on-premises or cloud implementations of MongoDB to Azure Cosmos DB with minimal downtime by using the Azure Database Migration Service. Perform resilient migrations of MongoDB data at scale and with high reliability using Azure Database Migration Service. Provision an instance of Azure Database Migration Service from the Azure portal or via Azure CLI and create a migration project to perform the migration.
Read our documentation to learn more about performing these migrations.
Support for Amazon RDS for SQL Server to Azure SQL Database Managed Instance online migrations
Users can now migrate Amazon RDS for SQL Server to Azure SQL Database Managed Instance with minimal downtime by using generally available functionality in the Azure Database Migration Service.
To learn more about how to use Azure Database Migration Service to perform online migrations from Amazon RDS for SQL Server to Azure SQL Database Managed Instance with minimal downtime, read the associated tutorial in the Azure Database Migration Service documentation.
Data Migration Assistant | SQL Migration Assistant—Azure SQL Managed Instance support is now available
The Data Migration Assistant now provides generally available functionality that helps you assess the target readiness of your on-premises SQL Server instances in preparation for a migration to Azure SQL Database Managed Instance. Data Migration Assistant detects compatibility and feature parity issues that can impact database functionality in target Azure SQL Database Managed Instance databases.
SQL Server | SQL Server Migration Assistant support for Azure SQL Database Managed Instance is now available
Take advantage of generally available functionality in SQL Server Migration Assistant version 8.0 to migrate from Oracle, MySQL, DB2, and SAP ASE (Sybase) to the Azure SQL Database Managed Instance platform. The latest version of SSMA enables users to perform an assessment, convert the schema, and move data to the fully managed database service in the cloud.
Azure Database for PostgreSQL Read Replica preview
Azure Database for PostgreSQL now supports asynchronous replication of data from one Azure Database for PostgreSQL server (the ‘master’) to up to five Azure Database for PostgreSQL servers (the ‘replicas’) in the same region. This allows read-heavy workloads to scale out and be balanced across replica servers according to your preferences. Replica servers are read-only; any writes are those replicated from data changes on the master. Stopping replication to a replica server causes it to become a standalone server that accepts reads and writes.
Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 | Now available
Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 combines the massive scalability, cost effectiveness, and rich capabilities of Azure Blob Storage with a high-performance file system built for analytics, and it’s compatible with the Hadoop Distributed File System. You no longer have to trade off between cost effectiveness and performance when choosing a cloud data lake.
Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 is available in all Azure regions, and brings many powerful capabilities to market:
- It uses the same low-cost storage model as Azure Blob Storage.
- It’s tightly integrated with Azure Data Factory, Azure SQL DW, and Azure Databricks to speed the development of end-to-end analytics workflows.
- It’ll support Azure Blob Storage features like object tiering, lifecycle policy management, and high availability/disaster recovery data redundancy.
- It provides a high performance HDFS-compatible file system that supports atomic operations and is capable of 1 TB/s throughput.
- It supports the Common Data Model data storage using Power BI or SQL Data Warehouse.
- It’s supported by a global network of big data analytics partner and system integrators.
To learn more about the Azure Data Lake Storage Gen 2, please visit our product page and read our blog post.
Azure Cost Management | Now generally available for Enterprise Agreement customers, and in preview for pay-as-you-go and Azure Government cloud customers
On Wednesday, February 6, 2019 we announced the general availability of Azure Cost Management for Enterprise Agreement (EA) customers, and the preview release for pay-as-you-go and Azure Government customers.
Cost Management is a built-in tool in the Azure portal that helps you monitor, set budgets and optimize your cloud spend. It integrates with key Azure services like Azure Advisor and with features like Azure management groups and tagging.
As detailed in Raphael Chacko's blog post announcing Azure Cost Management general availability, Azure Cost Management can be used today by our EA, pay-as-you-go, and government customers at no additional cost, making it easier than ever to optimize your cloud spend on Azure.
To learn more, read the full blog post and visit the Azure Cost Management webpage.
Azure Logic Apps | Logic Apps are now available in US Gov Arizona region
Customers can now deploy their Logic Apps to the US Gov Arizona region. Previously, only one US Gov region, Texas, was available for deployment. This increases the overall region availability for Logic Apps for scenarios requiring US Gov regions.
For more information on Logic Apps, visit the Logic Apps page and the What is Logic Apps? documentation page.
Stream Analytics | Blob output partitioning - GA
Azure Stream Analytics users can now partition output to Azure Blob storage based on custom date and time formats. This feature greatly improves downstream data-processing workflows by allowing fine-grained control over the blob output especially for scenarios such as dashboarding and reporting. Additionally, partition by custom date and time formats enables stronger alignment with downstream Hive supported formats and conventions when consumed by services such as Azure HDInsight or Azure Databricks. Learn more by visiting our documentation, "Azure Stream Analytics custom blob output partitioning (Preview)."
Stream Analytics | Language improvements (GA)
Three new built-in functions in Azure Stream Analytics are designed to address commons scenarios. New functions include: