The beginning of 2024 was filled with exciting new announcements and events all over the world. Coming up, we’ll be at Open Source Summit North America (16-18), LinuxFest Northwest (April 26-28), and Red Hat Summit (May 6-9). If you’ll be at any of these events, we’d love to meet you!
What’s new with Linux on Azure
Red Hat Enterprise Linux pricing update
Red Hat announced that it is updating its Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) royalty model to a scalable model, which is expected to affect all Red Hat resellers across the market. In response to Red Hat’s price changes, Azure will also be rolling out price changes for all Red Hat Enterprise Linux instances. These changes started occurring on April 1, 2024, with price decreases for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and RHEL for SAP Business Applications licenses for vCPU sizes less than 12. All other price updates will be effective July 1, 2024. Read the blog for more details.
Azure Red Hat OpenShift updates
Azure Red Hat OpenShift now offers Resource Health for clusters with integration with Azure Monitor via Signals and Alerts. Check out the following documentation to learn more: Azure Resources Health overview, Azure Red Hat OpenShift documentation, and Create Azure Monitor alert rules.
Azure Monitor VM Insights Dependency Agent support for RHEL 8.6 Linux VMs
Azure Monitor VM Insights now supports Dependency Agent for RHEL 8.6 Linux VMs, enabling you to monitor their network connections and processes in the Azure portal.
Azure IoT Edge supports Ubuntu Core Snaps
We announced that, in collaboration with Canonical, we addressed a longstanding request from our shared customers to support Ubuntu Core Snaps in Azure IoT Edge. The Tier 1 supported operating systems for Azure IoT Edge were expanded to include Ubuntu Core Snaps on AMD 64 and ARM 64. This expansion not only broadened the horizons for Azure IoT Edge applications, but also ensured seamless integration and development across a wider range of devices and systems. For more details, see documentation on Azure IoT Edge documentation.
End of support for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS for Batch pools
Batch pools with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS VM images and the Batch node agent SKU batch.node.ubuntu 20.04 will no longer be supported in Batch after 23 April 2025. If you are impacted, learn what required action you need to take and how you can get help and support if needed.
New features for Azure Linux
We’ve recently released new features for Azure Linux, including OSsku in-place migration which enables you to trigger a node image upgrade from one Linux distro to another on an existing nodepool. Read the blog from to learn about the latest Azure Linux features, upcoming feature features, and ways to stay connected with the Azure Linux team.
What’s new with Azure and open source
New documentation for capturing real-time insights (in just one click!) from your AKS cluster using Inspektor Gadget
We recently published new documentation outlining common use cases of how you can troubleshoot and debug your AKS cluster using the CNCF sandbox project, Inspektor Gadget. The documentation features a one-click experience where you can deploy Inspektor Gadget on an AKS cluster and easily experiment with the gadgets detailed in the documentation.
Microsoft open sources Retina
We released Retina as an open-source repository that helps with DevOps and SecOps related networking cases for your Kubernetes clusters. Retina is a cloud-agnostic, open-source Kubernetes Network Observability platform which helps with DevOps, SecOps and compliance use cases. It provides a centralized hub for monitoring application and network health and security, catering to Cluster Network Administrators, Cluster Security Administrators and DevOps Engineers. To learn more, visit our Retina page and read the announcement blog.
Linux and open source events
The last few months have been a busy time for events! Microsoft was speaking and attending events across the world, including FOSDEM, SCaLE 21x (Microsoft was a Gold sponsor), WASM I/O, Cloud Native Rejekts, and KubeCon Europe. Check out Brendan Burns’ blog to learn more about important enhancements and innovations in Azure, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), and our open-source projects. You’ll also find us at more events soon, we hope to see you there!
What’s coming up next
Open Source Summit North America (April 16-18)
Join Microsoft at Open Source North America in Seattle! Come meet us at booth P6 to connect with Microsoft experts and see the latest open-source technologies in action. Also, be sure to check out all the exciting Microsoft sessions to learn more about Microsoft’s contributions to the open source community, best practices for using open source technologies, and insights into emerging trends in open source. Read this blog to learn more.
LinuxFest Northwest (April 26-28)
Attending LinuxFest Northwest? Be sure to check out the session from Sudhanva Huruli, Senior Product Manager at Microsoft, who will share learnings from releasing Azure Linux, Microsoft’s open source Linux distribution.
Red Hat Summit (May 6-9)
Microsoft will be a Platinum sponsor at Red Hat Summit, which is taking place in Denver, Colorado on May 6-9. Visit the us at booth #202 to connect with experts and attend the Microsoft sessions to discover best practices for running Red Hat workloads on Azure.
Upcoming End of Life (EOL), End of Support (ES), and/or End of Maintenance (EOM)
- CentOS Linux 7: CentOS 7 will reach EOL on June 30, 2024. Customers will need to migrate to a new operating system to continue receiving updates, security patches, and new features. Read the documentation for CentOS migration options and paths in Azure.
- RHEL 7: RHEL 7 will reach EOM on June 30, 2024. Customers will need to upgrade to a newer version of RHEL or purchase Extended Lifecycle Support (ELS) from Red Hat to continue to receive security updates and bug fixes. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of RHEL if possible to take full advantage of new features, ongoing support and more.
- RHEL 6: RHEL 6 Extended Life Cycle Support (ELS) will end on June 30,2024. Customers will need to migrate to a newer version of RHEL to take full advantage of new features, security enhancements, bug fixes, ongoing support and more.
Bonus content
- Watch the Red Hat on Azure Microsoft Mechanics video to learn why Azure is the right place to run your Red Hat workloads
- Watch the Linux on Azure Mechanics Video discover why you should run your Linux workloads on Azure.
- Are you currently using CentOS and looking to migrate to a new operating system on Azure? Watch the on-demand webinar on navigating the end of CentOS with Ubuntu on Azure.
- Did you know you can use Inspektor Gadget on AKS clusters via VS Code? Check out the demo here.
If you have any feedback or questions, please drop them in the comments.
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