Hey Karl, great questions here!
Q1: This is correct. This preview is meant to build on top of our preview announcement from July.
Q2: This backend upgrade has been in preview for nearly a year now and will be coming out of preview very soon. We understand the notes we've put on this, explaining that it might not be the best fit for production environments at this time, may deter folks from trying the build out. If there are issues when we make this experience generally available, we will work diligently to document and address these issues. If necessary, we will update our release outside of our typical spring/fall cadence to get fixes to the public.
Q3: Emailing us directly or filing bugs through the Collaborate portal, if you are a partner with access, are currently the most direct routes to make sure your issues are known. You can also provide feedback through the normal aka.ms/wacfeedback channel.
Q4: At the time of writing this I'm not entirely positive-- let me get back to you!
Q5: This is correct. Many of our OEM partners with gateway plug-ins are targeting release dates for their extensions on or shortly after our planned release date. The plug-ins that are compatible with the updated backend will be available on the new extension feed.
Q6: Windows Admin Center in the Azure Portal has many of these improvements, including perf improvements. The updated backend has already been deployed to all regions. Some specific functionality may be missing based on the timing of our deployments, but we will be deploying the GA build to the portal as soon as we release.