Updates this month include Storage Browser, Confidential virtual machines, and VM Applications all now in public preview.
Storage > Storage Accounts
Compute>Virtual Machines
Intune
Let’s look at each of these updates in greater detail.
Storage > Storage Accounts
Storage Browser now in public preview
The Storage Browser in the Azure Portal is a unified browsing and management experience for Azure Storage accounts that spans blobs, files, queues, and tables – the four storage sub-resources. Building on the existing Storage Explorer (preview) currently in the portal, it adds key management features that address customer pain points. The new preview experience serves a broad range of customer scenarios and personas, from novice users looking to learn how Azure works across different storage offerings, to expert users looking to manage their data with precision and care.
The new Storage Browser is a direct replacement for the existing portal Storage Explorer (preview) experience. The Storage Browser supports a much wider array of customer scenarios, including support for Oauth, AAD integration, infinite scrolling, an actionable landing screen with key metrics, drag/drop capabilities, favorites/recently used resources, copy/paste between blobs and file shares, and much more. Because it’s built within the Fluent UI framework, is reflow-compliant, and now has localization support, the look and feel of the Storage Browser is also greatly improved and more inclusive.
Please try out the new Storage Browser experience in the Azure Portal when viewing your favorite Storage account.
Storage Browser experience through the Azure Portal
Compute>Virtual Machines
Confidential virtual machines now in public preview
Azure confidential computing offers confidential VMs based on AMD processors with SEV-SNP technology. Confidential VMs are for tenants with high security and confidentiality requirements. These VMs provide a strong, hardware-enforced boundary to help meet your security needs. You can use confidential VMs for migrations without making changes to your code, with the platform protecting your VM's state from being read or modified.
You can learn more on the benefits of confidential VMs in the About Azure DCasv5/ECasv5-series confidential virtual machines (preview) | Microsoft Docs
Full-disk encryption
Confidential VMs offer a new and enhanced disk encryption scheme. This scheme protects all critical partitions of the disk. It also binds disk encryption keys to the virtual machine's TPM and makes the protected disk content accessible only to the VM. These encryption keys can securely bypass Azure components, including the hypervisor and host operating system. To minimize the attack potential, a dedicated and separate cloud service also encrypts the disk during the initial creation of the VM.
Full-disk encryption is optional, because this process can lengthen the initial VM creation time.
You can choose between:
For further integrity and protection, confidential VMs offer Secure Boot by default. With Secure Boot, trusted publishers must sign OS boot components (including the boot loader, kernel, and kernel drivers). All compatible confidential VM images support Secure Boot.
You can start creating Confidential virtual machines using the Azure portal today!
How to create Confidential virtual machines in the Azure portal
Compute>Virtual Machines
VM Applications now in public preview
Managing the deployments of custom applications can be an onerous task for administrators. Ensuring who has access to a specific application and ensuring that versions are properly updated can be complex.
VM Applications, a new resource type in Azure Compute Galleries (formerly Shared Image Gallery) simplifies management, sharing and global distribution of application packages.
With VM Applications:
This feature provides flexibility and simplicity in managing, sharing, and deploying applications. Some features include:
Learn more about how to Create and deploy VM application packages (preview) - Azure Virtual Machines | Microsoft Docs.
Accessing VM Applications in Azure Portal
Intune
The Microsoft Intune team has been hard at work on updates as well. You can find the full list of updates to Intune on the What's new in Microsoft Intune page, including changes that affect your experience using Intune.
Azure portal “how to” video series
Have you checked out our Azure portal “how to” video series yet? The videos highlight specific aspects of the portal so you can be more efficient and productive while deploying your cloud workloads from the portal. Check out our most recently published videos:
Next steps
The Azure portal has a large team of engineers that wants to hear from you, so please keep providing us your feedback in the comments section below or on Twitter @AzurePortal.
Sign in to the Azure portal now and see for yourself everything that’s new. Download the Azure mobile app to stay connected to your Azure resources anytime, anywhere. See you next month!
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