Cloudflare Log ingestion in Sentinel with CCF
Hi all, I built a connector to ingest cloudflare firewall logs using CCF. The reason why I had to build this custom one while the official one was available was because official one uses Logpush which is a service that is available only on Enterprise plan, so if you are on pro or business plan you can not use it. Putting it out here in case anyone wants to try. https://amankhan.net/posts/Cloudflare-CCF-Connector/
Introducing APIOps CLI
APIOps CLI helps teams extract, version, review, preview, and publish Azure API Management configuration through source-controlled DevOps workflows. Today, we're excited to announce APIOps CLI, a new command-line experience designed to help organizations manage Azure API Management (APIM) using modern configuration-as-code and GitOps practices. As APIs become increasingly central to digital transformation, organizations need a reliable way to manage API definitions, policies, products, diagnostics, and gateway configuration across multiple environments. APIOps CLI provides a streamlined, developer-friendly approach to extract, version, review, and publish API Management configuration through familiar DevOps workflows. Why APIOps CLI? Traditional API management processes often rely on manual configuration changes, environment-specific customizations, and limited visibility into what changed and why. As API estates grow, these approaches become difficult to scale, audit, and govern. APIOps CLI addresses these challenges by enabling teams to manage API Management configuration as source-controlled artifacts. Every change can be reviewed through pull requests, tracked through Git history, and promoted consistently across development, test, and production environments. The result is improved governance, greater reliability, better collaboration between API developers and platform operators, and a simpler path toward enterprise-scale API operations. What APIOps CLI Enables APIOps CLI provides capabilities that help organizations adopt a true APIOps model: Extract API Management configuration into local artifact files Store and version configuration in Git repositories Review changes through standard pull request workflows Publish approved artifacts back into API Management environments Promote configuration consistently across environments Scaffold GitHub Actions and Azure DevOps pipelines Support automated CI/CD deployment patterns Enable auditable, repeatable API configuration management By treating API Management configuration as code, organizations gain the same operational excellence practices that software development teams have relied on for years. A Modern GitOps Workflow for APIs The APIOps CLI workflow follows a simple yet powerful pattern: Extract configuration from an existing API Management instance. Store the generated artifacts in source control. Review and approve changes through pull requests. Run automated validation and deployment pipelines. Publish approved configuration back to target API Management environments. This approach creates a clear separation between authoring, review, approval, and deployment while maintaining a complete audit trail of API platform changes. For organizations already practicing GitOps, APIOps CLI integrates naturally into existing development workflows and governance processes. Built for Real-World Enterprise Scenarios APIOps CLI is designed to support customers operating at enterprise scale. Common use cases include: Migrating away from manual API Management administration Standardizing deployments across multiple environments Establishing controlled promotion paths from development to production Implementing governance and compliance requirements Supporting platform engineering and API platform teams Managing large inventories of APIs, products, policies, and configurations Enabling self-service API development with centralized governance Whether you're operating a single API Management instance or managing a large multi-team API platform, APIOps CLI provides a foundation for consistent and repeatable operations. Integrated with Your Existing Toolchain APIOps CLI works alongside the tools teams already use: GitHub Azure DevOps Azure Pipelines GitHub Actions Azure CLI Existing Git repositories and branching strategies The tool can generate CI/CD scaffolding to accelerate adoption, helping teams move from manual operations to automated deployments with less effort. Open Source and Community Driven APIOps CLI is available as an open-source project under the Azure GitHub organization. The repository includes source code, architecture guidance, command documentation, CI/CD examples, walkthroughs, troubleshooting guidance, and reference material. By making the project open and community-driven, we are enabling customers, partners, and contributors to participate directly in the evolution of Azure API Management DevOps practices. Getting Started Getting started is straightforward: Install the APIOps CLI package. Authenticate with Azure. Extract an existing API Management instance into local artifacts. Commit those artifacts to a Git repository. Review and approve changes through pull requests. Publish approved changes back to Azure API Management. We recommend beginning with a non-production environment to establish your workflow, validate governance processes, and familiarize teams with the configuration-as-code model. Looking Ahead APIs have become a strategic asset for every organization. As API estates continue to expand, successful teams will increasingly adopt automation, governance, and GitOps practices to maintain speed without sacrificing control. APIOps CLI is an important step in that journey. It provides a modern foundation for managing Azure API Management configurations with the same rigor, automation, and reliability that organizations expect from modern software delivery practices. We invite you to explore APIOps CLI, try it in your environment, share feedback, and join us in shaping the future of API operations on Azure. Resources APIOps CLI GitHub repository: https://github.com/Azure/apiops-cli/tree/main Microsoft Learn: Manage API Management configuration with APIOps CLIModernize Any Integration Platform to Azure Logic Apps Standard with the Logic Apps Migration Agent
Explore the open-source Logic Apps Migration Agent Enterprise integration is entering a new era Enterprise integration platforms have powered business-critical processes for decades. They connect applications, data, partners, devices, and industries, often carrying transactions that an organization cannot afford to interrupt. Expectations have changed. Organizations want cloud-native architectures, AI-assisted automation, stronger governance, improved developer productivity, and faster response to business change. Yet many integration estates contain years of accumulated dependencies, custom code, transformations, operational procedures, and platform-specific knowledge. The challenge is not simply moving an orchestration or flow from one runtime to another. This is not lift and shift. It is a refactoring exercise that preserves business intent and expected behavior while translating source-platform constructs into cloud-ready workflows, connectors, code, operational patterns, and deployment practices for Azure Logic Apps Standard. That is why we created the Logic Apps Migration Agent. Introducing the Logic Apps Migration Agent: An Open-source project to provide an AI End-to-End Modernization Experience The Logic Apps Migration Agent is an open-source Visual Studio Code extension that provides an AI-assisted, end-to-end modernization experience. It uses GitHub Copilot and the Visual Studio Code Language Model API to guide teams through a structured five-stage workflow, while keeping people in control at every stage. Rather than treating modernization as a single conversion step, the agent helps teams discover what they have, understand dependencies, design an appropriate target, generate baseline implementation artifacts, validate expected behavior, and prepare the solution for deployment to Azure Logic Apps Standard. Refactor the implementation, preserve the business intent Lift and shift attempts to reproduce the source platform as closely as possible in a new environment. That approach can carry forward legacy topology, operational assumptions, platform-specific patterns, and technical debt. The Migration Agent supports a different outcome. It uses the source implementation as evidence of the required business behavior, then helps teams design and generate an appropriate Logic Apps Standard implementation. Some components may map directly, while others require restructuring, consolidation, decomposition, replacement, or custom implementation. The objective is functional and semantic continuity, not structural duplication. A successful migration should preserve contracts, transformations, routing rules, ordering requirements, error behavior, and essential business outcomes while allowing the target solution to adopt Azure-native identity, connectivity, observability, resiliency, deployment, and operating practices. Preserve what the integration must do. Refactor how it does it. Start by understanding what you have For many organizations, discovery is one of the most difficult parts of modernization. Documentation may be incomplete, original developers may no longer be available, and relationships between applications, endpoints, schemas, maps, pipelines, and custom components may be difficult to reconstruct. The Migration Agent scans the source project, catalogs supported artifacts, organizes related components into flow groups, and identifies dependencies and migration gaps. It can also generate architecture and message-flow visualizations for review before conversion begins. This discovery output becomes the foundation for migration sequencing, refactoring decisions, effort discussions, and risk management. Use AI to accelerate the work, not remove accountability The Migration Agent uses specialized GitHub Copilot agents for analysis, planning, and conversion. AI helps interpret source artifacts, propose mappings, create task plans, and generate baseline Logic Apps artifacts. Enterprise integration, however, requires more than plausible code generation. Human-in-the-loop checkpoints let teams review discovered flows, resolve missing dependencies, reshape the proposed architecture, approve conversion plans, and validate generated behavior before progressing. This combines the speed of AI assistance with the governance and technical review required for mission-critical integration. Modernize incrementally and reduce migration risk Large integration estates do not need a single big-bang program. The Migration Agent organizes work into logical flow groups so teams can refactor one business capability or integration path at a time. Prioritize workloads by business value, risk, complexity, or platform urgency. Validate target architecture and operating patterns with a representative first migration. Run phased cutovers and coexistence strategies when required. Apply reusable refactoring patterns, templates, and engineering standards to subsequent waves. A phased approach helps teams build experience with Azure Logic Apps while reducing migration risk and preserving delivery momentum. Bring your own tests and validate continuously Migration confidence depends on behavior, not structural similarity. The agent supports validation using source specifications, sample files, test cases, and customer-provided black-box tests. This helps compare expected inputs and outputs and identify semantic differences earlier. Generated artifacts are a baseline. Domain-specific transformations, error-handling behavior, performance characteristics, security controls, and edge cases still require customer and partner expertise. Built for BizTalk today and extensible for other platforms BizTalk Server 2016 and BizTalk Server 2020 are the first fully implemented source platforms. MuleSoft Anypoint support is represented as an in-progress built-in parser. The architecture is open and extensible so contributors can add parsers and platform-specific migration capabilities for other integration technologies. That extensibility is central to the vision. A common modernization workflow can help teams apply consistent governance, target patterns, refactoring practices, and validation across mixed integration estates. Why Azure Logic Apps Standard? Azure Logic Apps Standard provides a modern destination with a local project structure, Visual Studio Code development experience, source-control alignment, CI/CD support, stateful and stateless workflows, enterprise connectivity, and Azure and hybrid deployment options. Modernization is not about reproducing a legacy topology component by component. The target design should be optimized for Logic Apps Standard rather than constrained by the source architecture. The migration preserves valuable business logic while refactoring the implementation around modern practices for identity, networking, observability, reliability, deployment, and operations. What your team should still own The Migration Agent accelerates repeatable work, but it does not replace the decisions that define a production-ready integration platform. Responsibility Refactoring focus Target architecture Refactor application and workflow boundaries for Logic Apps Standard. Select reliability, networking, deployment, and supporting Azure patterns rather than copying the source topology. Semantic equivalence Validate contracts, mappings, transformations, business rules, error behavior, ordering, retries, and edge cases. Capability gaps Redesign source capabilities without direct equivalents using connectors, custom code, local functions, API Management, Service Bus, or other appropriate Azure patterns. Production hardening Implement identity, secrets management, security policies, monitoring, cost controls, performance testing, resiliency, and operational ownership. Cutover and coexistence Plan backlog reconciliation, dual-run periods, data consistency, partner coordination, rollback, and decommissioning. More mission critical features for Logic Apps Standard and Hybrid We are weeks away from shipping the following features, aimed at any customers in the Enterprise Application Integration space: HL7 In-App operations in general availability. MLLP Receive/Send In-App connector in Public Preview. Rules Engine In-App operation for XML facts in Public Preview. MSMQ In-App connector in Public Preview. Oracle DB In-App connector in Public Preview. Flat File generation In-App operations in Public Preview. Integration accounts support (Hybrid On premises). NMS In-App connector in Public Preview. Improvements to our EDI capabilities. BizTalk Mapper to Data Mapper Migration path What about other integration platforms? Yes—the Logic Apps Migration Agent is designed to be customizable so you can migrate from any integration platform to Logic Apps (not just BizTalk). The open architecture lets you plug in new discovery, analysis, and conversion skills for the source product you’re modernizing, while keeping the same stage-gated workflow and human-in-the-loop checkpoints. We provide guidance and examples to help you extend the agent for other platforms than BizTalk —so you can tailor mappings, transformation rules, and validation to your customer’s standards and target patterns in Logic Apps. Benefits Faster time to value with a guided process: A structured discovery→planning→conversion workflow reduces uncertainty and helps teams move from assessment to execution with clear checkpoints. Higher confidence migrations: Human-in-the-loop validation, artifacts generation, and black-box testing support mission‑critical correctness and governance. Customizable for your source platform and standards: Extend the agent with product-specific discovery and conversion steps, tailor mappings and transformation rules, and align outputs with your target Logic Apps patterns and engineering conventions. Open-source transparency and control: Review how the tool works end-to-end, validate what it produces, and adopt changes at your pace without waiting for a closed release cycle. Community-driven innovation: Benefit from contributions across Microsoft, partners, and customers—new adapters, mapping packs, and best practices can be shared and reused. Lower total migration cost: Automating repeatable tasks reduces manual effort while preserving the ability to invest partner expertise where it matters most (architecture, governance, reliability, and operations). Reusable accelerators for partners: Partners can create differentiated offerings by packaging templates, validation suites, CI/CD pipelines, and domain-specific patterns on top of the agent. An accelerator for customers and partners For customers, the Migration Agent provides a practical starting point and a consistent process for moving from assessment to a refactored implementation. For professional services organizations and system integrators, the agent augments delivery rather than replacing it. Automating inventory, analysis, baseline generation, and validation scaffolding allows experts to focus on architecture, governance, security, reliability, domain-specific transformation, DevOps, performance, cutover, and operating-model change. Because the project is open source, partners can contribute parsers or package reusable templates, mapping packs, test suites, CI/CD assets, and industry-specific modernization patterns. Review our public documentation here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/logic-apps/migration/migration-agent-overview How to get started Download VSCode and install the Logic Apps Migration Agent extension. Organize source projects and dependencies in a clear directory structure. Include project files, bindings, schemas, maps, pipelines, orchestrations, custom code, configuration, certificates or certificate references, and available documentation. Once you have all your artifacts ready, point the Migration Agent to the directory with all the artifacts. Review every migration stage. Confirm the discovered architecture, resolve missing dependencies, and refine the target design before authorizing conversion. Prepare a representative test environment. The workstation running Visual Studio Code must be able to reach the systems needed for local or end-to-end validation. Bring known inputs, expected outputs, specifications, and existing test cases whenever possible. These materials improve validation and reduce ambiguity. Treat the first migration as a reusable foundation. Capture architecture patterns, naming standards, deployment templates, observability practices, and lessons that can accelerate subsequent waves. Use Claude Opus 4.8 or higher. Make sure you increase the Maximum number of requests for the Copilot Chat as follows (we recommend changing the value from 60 to 1000) Check the following video for a demonstration on how the Agent works and let us know if you have any questions in the comments.Build governed asynchronous APIs with Azure API Management and Azure Service Bus
Many applications use Azure Service Bus to decouple services, handle traffic spikes, and process workloads asynchronously. However, securely exposing messaging capabilities to applications, partners, and internal teams can require custom middleware or messaging-specific client implementations. Today, we’re announcing the general availability of native Azure Service Bus integration in Azure API Management. With the send-service-bus-message policy, developers can publish messages directly from an Azure API Management gateway to an Azure Service Bus queue or topic. This provides a secure and governed HTTP interface for Service Bus workloads—without requiring teams to build and operate a separate adapter service. Connect APIs directly to Azure Service Bus Azure API Management can act as the governed entry point for applications that submit work to Azure Service Bus. A client sends a standard HTTP request to API Management. The gateway can authenticate and authorize the caller, validate or transform the request, and apply policies such as rate limits and quotas before publishing the message to a Service Bus queue or topic. Once the message is accepted, API Management can immediately respond to the caller while downstream services process the message asynchronously. Alternatively, message publication can be added to an existing API flow while the request continues to its primary backend. This integration brings together API governance in Azure API Management and reliable asynchronous messaging in Azure Service Bus—without adding another intermediary service. Greater control over Service Bus messages As part of general availability, we’re introducing additional controls for building production messaging workflows. 1. Control how messages are processed Developers can configure the following Service Bus message properties directly in the policy: Message IDs to correlate messages and support duplicate-detection or idempotent processing patterns. Session IDs to group related messages for ordered or stateful processing. Time-to-live to prevent messages from being processed after they are no longer relevant. These values can be generated dynamically using API Management policy expressions, allowing them to reflect request IDs, customer identifiers, transactions, or other application context. 2. Capture the send result The response-variable-name attribute captures information about the Service Bus send operation in an API Management context variable. Subsequent policies can use the result to add correlation information to an API response, emit telemetry, record an operational event, or apply conditional logic when a message cannot be sent. 3. Choose how failures affect the API Different messaging scenarios require different failure behavior. When publishing the message is the primary purpose of an API, a send failure can stop policy execution and invoke the API Management error-handling path. When publishing is secondary—such as sending an audit event or initiating optional downstream processing—the ignore-error option can allow the primary API request to continue. Information about the send operation remains available through the response variable for logging or subsequent policy logic. 4. Secure access with managed identity API Management authenticates to Azure Service Bus using a Microsoft Entra managed identity. Customers can use the system-assigned identity of the API Management service or specify a user-assigned managed identity. The selected identity is granted the Azure Service Bus Data Sender role for the appropriate namespace, queue, or topic. This removes the need to store Service Bus connection strings or shared access keys in API policies and makes it easier to apply least-privilege access using Azure role-based access control. Send a message with an API Management policy The following example sends the incoming request body to an orders queue. It assigns a message ID and expiration time, captures the result of the send operation, and treats successful publication as a required part of the API request. <send-service-bus-message queue-name="orders" namespace="contoso-messaging.servicebus.windows.net" message-id="@(context.RequestId.ToString())" time-to-live="00:10:00" response-variable-name="serviceBusResult" ignore-error="false"> <payload> @(context.Request.Body.As<string>(preserveContent: true)) </payload> </send-service-bus-message> A session ID can also be added when related messages need to be grouped for ordered or stateful processing. For a fully asynchronous API, the policy can be followed by return-response so that API Management acknowledges the request immediately after sending the message. For an existing API, the request can continue to its configured backend after the message is published. Common integration scenarios Create asynchronous APIs: Accept an order, document, or processing request through an HTTP API, publish it to a queue, and return immediately while downstream services complete the work. Govern partner integrations: Provide partners with a managed API contract instead of exposing the underlying Service Bus namespace. API Management can authenticate callers, validate requests, and apply quotas before publishing messages. Publish business events: Publish events to a Service Bus topic so multiple subscriptions and downstream services can process them independently. Handle bursts of incoming traffic: Use Service Bus to buffer messages when incoming API traffic temporarily exceeds the rate at which downstream services can process requests. Add events to existing API operations: Publish audit, notification, analytics, or workflow events while allowing the primary API request to continue to its configured backend. Preserve workflow affinity: Use Service Bus sessions to group related messages for ordered or stateful processing based on a customer, transaction, order, or workflow identifier. Get started To send messages from Azure API Management to Azure Service Bus: Create or select an Azure Service Bus queue or topic. Enable a system-assigned or user-assigned managed identity on the API Management service. Assign the identity the Azure Service Bus Data Sender role. Add the send-service-bus-message policy to an API operation. Configure the message payload, processing properties, output variable, and failure behavior. With native Azure Service Bus integration, Azure API Management provides a secure and governed way to connect HTTP APIs with asynchronous messaging workloads—without requiring additional middleware. Learn more Send Service Bus message policy reference Send messages to Azure Service Bus from Azure API Management Azure API Management June 2026 release notes Azure Service Bus documentationBizTalk Server 2020 End-of-Sale Announcement
Executive Summary: BizTalk Server 2020 is the final release of BizTalk Server, and Microsoft expects sales of BizTalk Server 2020 and Host Integration Server 2020 to end March 31, 2027. Mainstream support for BizTalk Server 2020 continues through April 12, 2028, after which the product remains subject to Microsoft’s Fixed Lifecycle Policy. Microsoft also plans to offer eligible customers an optional, paid extended-mainstream support offering through April 10, 2030. Customers should begin planning their migration to Azure Logic Apps Standard or Azure Logic Apps Hybrid now, based on their deployment requirements. Closing a chapter Microsoft currently expects sales of BizTalk Server 2020 and Host Integration Server 2020 to end on March 31, 2027. Customers with existing valid licenses may continue to deploy and use the software in accordance with their licensing terms. Mainstream support for BizTalk Server 2020 continues through April 12, 2028. The end-of-sale date does not require customers to stop running licensed deployments, but customers should begin migration and licensing planning now because the extended-mainstream support offering described below remains subject to final eligibility, coverage, pricing, and purchasing terms. Microsoft plans to offer eligible BizTalk Server 2020 customers a paid, time-limited extended-mainstream support option from April 13, 2028, through April 10, 2030. The offering is intended to provide additional migration time, will have narrower coverage than the original mainstream-support phase, and will not add new product features. Eligibility, availability, supported components, servicing commitments, purchasing terms, and the official offering name will be published before enrollment opens. If you need to buy BizTalk Server 2020, or Host Integration Server 2020, you can do it until March 31, 2027. Recommended action Begin migrating your BizTalk Server workloads now, selecting Azure Logic Apps Standard or Azure Logic Apps Hybrid according to your organization’s hosting, networking, latency, data-residency, and operational requirements. Treat additional support coverage as contingency time rather than the default destination. Starting early gives teams time to inventory dependencies, redesign excluded capabilities, validate migrated solutions, and make commercial decisions before mainstream support ends. The Logic Apps Migration Agent can accelerate assessment and planning, convert supported artifacts, and assist with validation and deployment of refactored solutions on Azure Logic Apps Standard or Azure Logic Apps Hybrid. Extended-mainstream support scope Paid extended-mainstream support is planned as an optional, temporary bridge for eligible customers completing their migration. It is separate from the Extended Support phase available under Microsoft’s Fixed Lifecycle Policy and is expected to provide a different, narrower scope than the original mainstream-support phase. Microsoft expects the paid offering to run from April 13, 2028, through April 10, 2030. Certain BizTalk Server capabilities are expected to be excluded from the paid offering; the following list identifies the currently expected exclusions. Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) — The framework and tooling for capturing, tracking, and presenting near real-time business milestones, KPIs, and operational data from running BizTalk processes. Servicing, fixes, and updates for BAM components will not be provided under extended support. Enterprise Service Bus Toolkit (ESB Toolkit) — The libraries, itinerary services, and patterns that extend BizTalk with dynamic, itinerary-based routing, transformation, and centralized exception handling for service-oriented solutions. The ESB Toolkit will not receive servicing or support under extended support. Industry accelerators (SWIFT, HL7, and RosettaNet) — The domain-specific accelerators that provide schemas, pipelines, and validation for financial (SWIFT), healthcare (HL7), and supply-chain (RosettaNet) messaging standards. These accelerators will not receive servicing, schema updates, or support under extended support. Legacy enterprise adapters — The adapters that connect BizTalk to line-of-business and enterprise applications such as Siebel, PeopleSoft, TIBCO, and JD Edwards. These adapters will not receive servicing or support under extended support. Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) tooling and integrations — The BizTalk-specific tooling and integrations used for source control, automated build, deployment, and testing of BizTalk applications. These BizTalk-specific ALM components will not receive servicing or support under extended support. BizTalk Server images in Azure Marketplace — Microsoft currently expects to deprecate the BizTalk Server virtual-machine offer in Azure Marketplace. This affects the future availability of the Marketplace deployment image; it does not, by itself, make an otherwise eligible existing BizTalk Server 2020 deployment ineligible for paid extended-mainstream support. Microsoft will publish the effective date and guidance for existing virtual machines, new or replacement deployments, scaling, disaster recovery, customer-managed images, licensing, billing, patching, and support. New Visual Studio version support — Compatibility with Visual Studio versions newer than Visual Studio 2022 will not be added under extended support. Customers should review the Visual Studio 2022 lifecycle and support offering separately, because its coverage terms are independent of BizTalk Server extended support. Customers that depend on an excluded capability should prioritize the affected workloads in their migration plan. Use the Logic Apps Migration Agent to assess dependencies, inform target-architecture decisions, convert supported artifacts, and validate the migrated solution. Excluded BizTalk capabilities may require architectural redesign or manual implementation outside the agent. Customers are not required to purchase paid extended-mainstream support. Customers that do not enroll remain subject to Microsoft’s Fixed Lifecycle Policy and the applicable BizTalk Server 2020 lifecycle dates. The availability of technical support, non-security updates, security updates, and other services during the standard Extended Support phase depends on the policy requirements and the customer’s applicable support arrangement. The paid extended-mainstream support offering described here is an optional, separate offering for eligible customers that require additional coverage while completing their migration. After the end-of-sale date, customers that already hold valid BizTalk Server 2020 licenses may continue to deploy and use the software in accordance with the applicable licensing terms. Eligibility Paid extended mainstream support will be available to eligible customers with properly licensed BizTalk Server 2020 deployments. The final eligibility requirements will be provided in the published offering terms. Eligible products and versions: Paid extended-mainstream support is expected to be available for eligible deployments of BizTalk Server 2020 Enterprise, Standard, or Branch editions. Customers using Host Integration Server 2020 may also purchase the BizTalk Server paid extended-mainstream support offering to receive the applicable extended mainstream-support coverage for their HIS 2020 deployments, including customers that acquired BizTalk Server licences primarily to obtain HIS usage rights. BizTalk Server 2016, HIS 2016, and earlier versions will not be eligible. Azure Marketplace deployments: Existing BizTalk Server 2020 deployments created from eligible Azure Marketplace images are expected to qualify for paid extended-mainstream support, subject to the final offering terms. Customers must meet the applicable licensing, Software Assurance, supported-configuration, and complete-deployment coverage requirements. Microsoft will clarify how eligibility, licensed-core quantities, pricing, and purchasing apply when BizTalk Server software charges are included in the Azure Marketplace virtual-machine rate rather than acquired through a separate BizTalk Server licence agreement. Valid licenses: Customers are expected to maintain sufficient BizTalk Server licenses for each covered deployment in accordance with the applicable licensing model, including relevant core minimums, licensing of physical or virtual environments, and license-reassignment rules. Final extended-support licensing requirements will be stated in the published offering terms. Software Assurance: Active Software Assurance will be required at enrollment and throughout the applicable coverage period. Complete deployment coverage: Extended mainstream support must be purchased for all licensed cores in each enrolled deployment. Partial coverage of an enrolled production environment will not be permitted. Supported configuration: Covered environments must remain on a supported BizTalk Server 2020 configuration and meet published requirements for cumulative updates, operating systems, databases, and dependent components. Annual validation: Eligibility and licensed-core quantities will be confirmed for each coverage year. Customers must remain eligible to purchase Year 2 coverage. As part of the eligibility review, Microsoft may request licensing records, deployment inventories, configuration details, and migration-plan information. Complete requirements and enrollment instructions will be published before the offering becomes available. Purchasing details Paid extended mainstream support will be offered as annual coverage based on the licensed cores in each enrolled BizTalk Server 2020 deployment. Microsoft will publish final pricing, availability, enrollment dates, purchasing channels, and transaction terms before sales begin. Purchasing paid extended-mainstream support is optional and is not required for BizTalk Server 2020 to follow the Fixed Lifecycle Policy. Host Integration Server 2020: Eligible HIS 2020 customers will purchase coverage through the BizTalk Server paid extended-mainstream support offering. Customers that do not require HIS IBM Systems Network Architecture (SNA) capabilities should also evaluate Azure Logic Apps Standard or Azure Logic Apps Hybrid as a modernization alternative before purchasing additional support coverage. Azure Logic Apps Standard does not support SNA; customers that depend on HIS 2020 SNA capabilities must transition to Host Integration Server 2028. Coverage periods: Year 1 is expected to begin the next day mainstream support ends, on April 13, 2028, and continue through April 13, 2029. Year 2 is expected to run from April 14, 2029, through April 10, 2030. The final offering terms will confirm whether the boundary dates are inclusive and will specify the exact enrollment and coverage periods. Purchase sequence: Microsoft expects customers to purchase Year 1 coverage by April 11, 2028, to remain eligible to purchase Year 2 coverage. The final enrollment deadline and Year 2 eligibility conditions will be specified in the published offering terms. Price: Microsoft expects annual extended-mainstream support pricing to be 100% of the applicable BizTalk Server license cost under the customer's licensing agreement. Extended mainstream support is expected to be offered as an annual add-on for eligible BizTalk Server licenses. Final pricing and costs may vary by licensing agreement, geography, currency, available discounts, and the published offering terms. How to purchase: Customers will purchase coverage through an authorized Microsoft commercial licensing channel with support from their Microsoft account team or licensing partner. Separate support services: The annual extended-mainstream support fee is expected to cover only the servicing and support rights defined in the final offering terms. It will not include unlimited incident support, advisory services, migration delivery, solution implementation, or other professional services; customers may need a separate support plan or services agreement for those needs. Annual purchase: Coverage will not renew automatically. Customers must place a separate order and complete an eligibility review for each year. Support beyond April 10, 2030, is not planned. Contact your Microsoft account team or licensing partner to review eligible deployments, confirm licensed-core quantities, and obtain a quote when the offering becomes available. Discounts and incentives Microsoft plans to offer a targeted incentive for eligible existing BizTalk Server customers that are actively migrating to Azure Logic Apps Standard or Azure Logic Apps Hybrid. The incentive is designed to reduce near-term migration costs and support a faster move to the selected Logic Apps deployment model. It will not be automatic or broadly available; eligibility, approval, and final commercial terms must be confirmed by the customer’s Microsoft account team. Timing and important conditions Who can qualify: The incentive is intended exclusively for existing BizTalk Server 2020 customers approaching the announced BizTalk Server lifecycle milestones and actively migrating workloads to Azure Logic Apps Standard or Azure Logic Apps Hybrid. Redemption period: The incentive is expected to become available on August 31, 2026, and remain available through April 12, 2028, subject to publication of the program terms, eligibility approval, continued availability, and any applicable funding limits. Discount duration: The approved discount is expected to apply during the customer’s first qualifying Enterprise Agreement term after approval. The published program terms will define the eligible agreement types, qualifying start date, covered Azure services, discount duration, and treatment of renewals or agreement changes. Qualification: The incentive is subject to eligibility review and approval. Recommended action Ask your Microsoft account team or licensing partner to assess your migration scope, confirm which eligible migration path applies, and request consideration for the incentive. Migration support Contact your Microsoft account team to determine whether your organization is eligible for migration assistance delivered by the Azure Logic Apps product group or through another available migration-factory program. Program names, eligibility criteria, engagement scope, and availability will be confirmed through your account team. Migration options for Host Integration Server workloads Customers using Host Integration Server 2020 for application, data, messaging, or terminal integration—and who do not depend on HIS SNA capabilities—should evaluate Azure Logic Apps Standard or Azure Logic Apps Hybrid as a modernization target. Azure Logic Apps provides mainframe and midrange integration capabilities for scenarios involving IBM CICS, IMS, IBM i programs, DB2, IBM MQ, host files, and 3270 applications. Customers should assess each workload against the available connectors, supported protocols, networking, security, and operational requirements. Azure Logic Apps Standard does not support SNA. Customers running HIS 2020 workloads that depend on SNA capabilities must plan to transition to Host Integration Server 2028. Key dates March 31, 2027: Sales of BizTalk Server 2020 and Host Integration Server 2020 are expected to end. April 12, 2028: Mainstream support for BizTalk Server 2020 ends. April 13, 2028: BizTalk Server 2020 enters the Extended Support phase under Microsoft’s Fixed Lifecycle Policy, subject to the applicable policy requirements and lifecycle dates. April 13, 2028–April 10, 2030: Planned paid extended-mainstream support period for eligible BizTalk Server 2020 customers, subject to the final published offering terms. September 30, 2027: Host Integration Server 2028 is planned for release as a standalone product. Release timing is subject to change. July 7, 2030: Extended Support for Host Integration Server 2020 is currently scheduled to end. This date is separate from the planned BizTalk Server 2020 paid extended mainstream support period, which is expected to end April 10, 2030. Start your modernization journey with the Logic Apps Migration Agent. Use the agent to inventory and assess your BizTalk applications, prioritize integrations, build a phased migration plan, convert supported artifacts and workflows, and support validation, testing, and deployment to Azure Logic Apps Standard or Azure Logic Apps Hybrid. Excluded or unsupported BizTalk capabilities may require architectural redesign or manual implementation outside the agent. The agent’s AI-assisted, human-in-the-loop approach can accelerate modernization while your teams retain control of architecture and implementation decisions. Contact your Microsoft account team to discuss migration-assistance eligibility and commercial options. Learn more: BizTalk Server product lifecycle update | Bringing all your integration workloads to Logic Apps Standard | Fixed Lifecycle Policy – Extended SupportZonal redundancy in API management Standard v2
APIs are the backbone of modern applications, powering everything from mobile experiences and microservices to AI-driven applications and business-critical integrations. As customers continue to modernize their platforms on Azure, they increasingly expect their API infrastructure to remain available even in the face of datacenter-level disruptions. With zone redundancy in Standard v2, Azure API Management now enables customers to increase resilience against Availability Zone failures while continuing to benefit from the simplicity, performance, and cost efficiency of the v2 platform. Why Zone Redundancy Matters Azure Availability Zones are physically separate locations within an Azure region, each with independent power, cooling, and networking infrastructure. By distributing API Management resources across multiple zones, organizations can reduce the impact of a single datacenter failure and improve service continuity for their APIs. Until now, customers who required built-in zone-level resiliency often needed to evaluate higher-end deployment options. With this enhancement, Standard v2 customers can now deploy API gateways across Availability Zones and benefit from improved reliability while maintaining the streamlined operational model of the v2 platform. What’s New Zone Redundancy for Standard v2 extends the platform's resiliency by distributing service capacity across multiple Availability Zones within a supported Azure region. Key benefits include: Higher Availability: API traffic continues to flow even if a single Availability Zone experiences an outage. Built-in Resiliency: Redundancy is provided at the platform layer, reducing the need for customers to design and manage complex intra-region failover solutions. Production-Ready Reliability: Customers can confidently run critical API workloads on Standard v2 with stronger availability guarantees. Operational Simplicity: The service automatically manages capacity distribution, health monitoring, and recovery behavior across zones. Cost-Effective Resilience: Customers gain zone-level protection without requiring an enterprise-tier deployment model. Built on the Modern v2 Platform The v2 platform was designed from the ground up to provide a faster, more reliable, and more scalable API Management experience. Standard v2 already delivers capabilities such as rapid deployment, simplified networking, workspace support, and flexible scaling. Zone Redundancy further strengthens the platform by expanding its reliability story for production workloads. This announcement builds on our broader investment in making Azure API Management more accessible to a wider range of organizations, from digital-native startups to large enterprises modernizing their application estates. Ideal Scenarios Zone Redundancy in Standard v2 is particularly valuable for customers who: Run business-critical APIs that must remain available during datacenter incidents. Consolidate multiple application workloads behind a single API gateway. Expose APIs consumed by mobile, partner, and customer-facing applications. Support AI applications and agent-based architectures that depend on highly available API endpoints. For organizations adopting modern cloud and AI native architectures, this capability helps ensure that API infrastructure remains aligned with broader application resiliency strategies. A Foundation for Reliable AI and API Platforms As AI-powered applications continue to proliferate, APIs increasingly become the critical connection layer between models, agents, business systems, and data platforms. Downtime at the API layer can have a direct impact on application availability, customer experience, and business operations. By bringing zone redundancy to Standard v2, we are making it easier for organizations to build highly resilient API platforms that can serve as the foundation for next-generation AI and digital transformation initiatives. Getting Started Zone Redundancy for Standard v2 can be enabled in supported Azure regions, allowing customers to deploy API Management with built-in protection against Availability Zone failures. We recommend reviewing your application's overall resiliency architecture, including backend redundancy, traffic management, and disaster recovery requirements, to maximize the benefits of zone-resilient API infrastructure. Enable Zone Redundancy in the Azure Portal Getting started with Zone Redundancy in Azure API Management Standard v2 is straightforward and can be configured during service creation. Create a New Standard v2 Instance with Zone Redundancy Sign in to the Azure portal. Select Create a Resource and search for Azure API Management. Choose Standard v2 as the service tier. Select a region that supports Availability Zones. In the Availability Zones section, enable Zone Redundancy. Review and create the service. After deployment, Azure API Management automatically distributes service capacity across multiple Availability Zones within the selected region, helping maintain API availability during a zone-level outage. Looking Ahead This release represents another step in our ongoing investment in the Azure API Management v2 platform. We remain committed to delivering the reliability, scalability, security, and developer experiences that organizations expect from a modern API management service. We are excited to see what our customers build with a more resilient Standard v2 platform and look forward to your feedback as you continue modernizing and scaling your API ecosystems on Azure. Learn more by visiting the Azure API Management documentation and exploring the latest reliability guidance for API Management deployments.Syncing Multiple Azure DevOps Orgs to One ServiceNow Instance Without Forcing a Shared Workflow
If your organization runs more than one Azure DevOps org, whether from an acquisition, a spun-up subsidiary, or business units that never consolidated onto one instance, you already know the visibility gap. Central ServiceNow has no idea what's happening in any of them unless someone checks manually. Your team ends up pulling status updates by hand, chasing changes across orgs, and reconciling what got closed where. That works well for a couple of orgs, but it falls apart past that. Why a Shared Workflow Usually Creates a Bigger Problem Migrating everyone onto a single Azure DevOps org would close the visibility gap on paper. Each org's area paths, iterations, states, and processes took years to get right, and a forced migration undoes all of it. A sync layer between each Azure DevOps org and your central ServiceNow instance closes the same gap without touching how any individual org works day to day. Each org keeps its own configuration. ServiceNow ends up with a rolled-up view across all of them. Common Use Cases Post-Acquisition Org Sprawl Current Setup: A company acquires another company, or runs several business units, each with its own Azure DevOps org and its own way of working. Problem: Central ops has no single view across orgs, and checking each one by hand doesn't scale past a few teams. Solution: Connect each Azure DevOps org to the central ServiceNow instance separately, each with its own sync rules. ServiceNow gets one rolled-up view, and no org has to change how it works. Bi-Directional Status Sync Between Delivery and Support Current Setup: Support logs incidents in ServiceNow. Development tracks the corresponding work in Azure DevOps, sometimes across several orgs. Problem: Support has to ask developers for status or check Azure DevOps boards directly, and developers end up relaying the same update twice. Solution: Sync status, comments, and priority both ways, so an update in either system shows up automatically on the other side. Field-Level Control Per Org Current Setup: Each business unit or subsidiary has its own rules about what data can leave its Azure DevOps org. Problem: A single shared integration with one set of mapping rules risks exposing fields an org never agreed to share outside its own boundary. Solution: Give each org's connection its own outgoing rules, so a subsidiary decides exactly which fields leave its Azure DevOps org, field by field. Handling Closed and Read-Only Work Items Current Setup: ServiceNow blocks writes to closed incidents through ACLs, and Azure DevOps can hit a similar restriction on closed or read-only work items. Problem: A sync that keeps trying to write to a closed item throws the same error repeatedly, and the real problems get buried under the noise. Solution: Filter closed and read-only states out of the sync, or let the errors surface if operations wants visibility into them. What to Evaluate When Choosing an Approach A few criteria matter more than others once you're running this across multiple orgs. Decentralized configuration: does each Azure DevOps org get its own connection and its own rules, or does everything route through one shared setup? Filtering: can you scope the sync with something like WIQL queries on the Azure DevOps side, by area path, iteration, work item type, or tag? Field mapping: does it handle the difference between ServiceNow's field structure and Azure DevOps work item fields without dropping data? Common pairs are ServiceNow State to Azure DevOps State, ServiceNow Priority to Azure DevOps Priority, and ServiceNow Assignment Group to Azure DevOps Area Path. Custom fields usually need explicit mapping rules. Conflict handling: what happens when both sides update the same field at the same time, and what happens with closed or read-only items specifically? Security: Entra ID or OAuth authentication, PAT management per org, role-based access, audit logging, and whatever compliance certifications your security team asks for during review. Direction: bidirectional where both teams update shared fields, one-way where only one side should ever write. Technical Approaches Service Hooks and REST APIs Azure DevOps Service Hooks paired with the ServiceNow REST API give you sync in both directions. A change in Azure DevOps triggers a Service Hook, which calls the ServiceNow API to update the record, and the same flow runs in reverse. This is the most direct route if you're comfortable building and maintaining the webhook logic yourself. Custom Middleware For anything more complex, custom middleware gives you full control over field transformation, routing, and error handling. Azure Functions, Logic Apps, or a small Node.js or Python service usually does the job. The trade-off is maintenance. You own the retry logic, the error handling, and every update when either platform changes its API. Dedicated Integration Platforms Plenty of teams skip building this from scratch and use a dedicated integration platform instead. These typically come with pre-built connectors for both Azure DevOps and ServiceNow, a way to configure field mapping and filters without writing much code, and managed infrastructure so you're not hosting your own sync server. What they usually cover: Pre-configured connectors that already understand both platforms' data structures Visual or scripting configuration for field mapping and filters Managed infrastructure, so nothing runs on your own servers Built-in retry and error handling for API failures Audit logging for tracking what synced and when Support for multi-org routing and conditional logic out of the box The trade-off runs the other way: a subscription cost instead of a one-time build, less control over the exact implementation, and your data passing through a third party's infrastructure. For teams running more than 2 or 3 orgs against one ServiceNow instance, this usually ends up being less overhead than maintaining custom middleware long-term. Every org here has probably solved a version of this differently. Curious what's worked for you, especially with 3 or more Azure DevOps orgs feeding into one ServiceNow instance, and which part of the setup gave you the most trouble.Announcing the General Availability (GA) of the Premium v2 tier of Azure API Management
Superior capacity, highest entity limits, unlimited included calls, and the most comprehensive set of features set the Premium v2 tier apart from other API Management tiers. Customers rely on the Premium v2 tier for running enterprise-wide API programs at scale, with high availability, and performance. The Premium v2 tier has a new architecture that eliminates management traffic from the customer VNet, making private networking much more secure and easier to setup. During the creation of a Premium v2 instance, you can choose between VNet injection or VNet integration (introduced in the Standard v2 tier) options. In addition, today we are also adding three new features to Premium v2: Inbound Private Link: You can now enable private endpoint connectivity to restrict inbound access to your Premium v2 instance. It can be enabled along with VNet injection or VNet integration or without a VNet. Availability zone support: Premium v2 now supports availability zones (zone redundancy) to enhance the reliability and resilience of your API gateway. Custom CA certificates: Azure API management v2 gateway can now validate TLS connections with the backend service using custom CA certificates. New and improved VNet injection Using VNet injection in Premium v2 no longer requires configuring routes or service endpoints. Customers can secure their API workloads without impacting API Management dependencies, while Microsoft can secure the infrastructure without interfering with customer API workloads. In short, the new VNet injection implementation enables both parties to manage network security and configuration settings independently and without affecting each other. You can now configure your APIs with complete networking flexibility: force tunnel all outbound traffic to on-premises, send all outbound traffic through an NVA, or add a WAF device to monitor all inbound traffic to your API Management Premium v2—all without constraints. Inbound Private Link Customers can now configure an inbound private endpoint for their API Management Premium v2 instance to allow your API consumers securely access the API Management gateway over Azure Private Link. The private endpoint uses an IP address from an Azure virtual network in which it's hosted. Network traffic between a client on your private network and API Management traverses over the virtual network and a Private Link on the Microsoft backbone network, eliminating exposure from the public internet. Further, you can configure custom DNS settings or an Azure DNS private zone to map the API Management hostname to the endpoint's private IP address. With a private endpoint and Private Link, you can: Create multiple Private Link connections to an API Management instance. Use the private endpoint to send inbound traffic on a secure connection. Apply different API Management policies based on whether traffic comes from the private endpoint. Limit incoming traffic only to private endpoints, preventing data exfiltration. Combine with inbound virtual network injection or outbound virtual network integration to provide end-to-end network isolation of your API Management clients and backend services. More details can be found here Today, only the API Management instance’s Gateway endpoint supports inbound private link connections. Each API management instance can support at most 100 Private Link connections. Availability zones Azure API Management Premium v2 now supports Availability Zones (AZ) redundancy to enhance the reliability and resilience of your API gateway. When deploying an API Management instance in an AZ-enabled region, users can choose to enable zone redundancy. This distributes the service's units, including Gateway, management plane, and developer portal, across multiple, physically separate AZs within that region. Learn how to enable AZs here. CA certificates If the API Management Gateway needs to connect to the backends secured with TLS certificates issued by private certificate authorities (CA), you need to configure custom CA certificates in the API Management instance. Custom CA certificates can be added and managed as Authorization Credentials in the Backend entities. The Backend entity has been extended with new properties allowing customers to specify a list of certificate thumbprints or subject name + issuer thumbprint pairs that Gateway should trust when establishing TLS connection with associated backend endpoint. More details can be found here. Region availability The Premium v2 tier is now generally available in six public regions (Australia East, East US2, Germany West Central, Korea Central, Norway East and UK South) with additional regions coming soon. For pricing information and regional availability, please visit the API Management pricing page. Learn more API Management v2 tiers FAQ API Management v2 tiers documentation API Management overview documentationAI Gateway tier of API Management now in public preview
Today, we are introducing the AI Gateway tier of Azure API Management, now in public preview. It gives platform teams a purpose-built experience built specifically for AI workloads - publishing and governing models and MCP servers. Controls are configured through policy cards rather than XML and expressions, and the portal experience and control plane are structured around models, MCP servers, and tools rather than APIs. (For brevity, we refer to the AI Gateway tier as AI Gateway throughout the rest of this article.) AI Gateway is built on Azure API Management, bringing proven operational capabilities to AI workloads. The resource runs in your subscription, uses your Entra tenant, and sends telemetry to destinations you control. The operating model will be familiar to existing API Management customers, but the interface is built around AI workloads. The AI Gateway tier is intended for teams that want this focused experience; other API Management tiers remain the right choice when organizations also need general-purpose API management or capabilities not included in the AI Gateway experience. A practical model for platform teams The AI Gateway gives platform teams a shared place to manage models, MCP servers, policies, and observability destinations, with access controlled through Azure RBAC. For example, a central platform group can connect a set of approved models and tools and publish them for application teams. The application teams can test those assets in the test console and build against them without routing every change through the central group. The platform group still owns the shared guardrails and can see how the assets are being used. After an asset is published, developers can create a named runtime key and begin calling the gateway immediately. Bring the models and tools you already use Most organizations don't standardize on a single model provider. Different models are selected based on quality, latency, cost, geography, or specialized capabilities. The preview supports models from Microsoft Foundry including OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral, and other Foundry hosted models, as well as models hosted in AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex AI, OpenAI, and Anthropic. A guided wizard simplifies importing models from Microsoft Foundry. Other providers can be added by configuring a connection, with backend authentication configured as part of that connection. All published models are available under the same stable endpoint. Applications continue to use supported API formats such as OpenAI Chat Completions and Responses or Anthropic Messages directly or via SDKs. The AI Gateway extends governance beyond models to the MCP servers and tools agents use to interact with enterprise systems. You can expose an existing MCP server over SSE or Streamable HTTP, turn all or selected operations from a REST API into an MCP server by uploading its OpenAPI specification, or use more than 1,400 connector-backed tools from the Power Platform and Logic Apps library. You can also federate multiple MCP servers behind a single server, so an agent connects once and sees the tools across those servers. Backend authentication supports an API key, OAuth client credentials, managed identity, or mTLS. Governance that's built in Organizations need consistent governance across models and MCP servers without requiring every application team to implement those capabilities independently. The AI Gateway portal presents governance policies through an intuitive card-based experience rather than requiring policy XML. The same policies are expressed as JSON properties, making them easy to manage as infrastructure as code and to audit and enforce across a fleet with Azure Policy. In the public preview, those cards cover request and token rate limits, token quotas, Azure AI Content Safety, and fallback to a secondary model. Policies are applied per asset, making it clear which controls protect each model or MCP server. OpenTelemetry-based token metrics The AI Gateway emits token-usage metrics through OpenTelemetry, with attributes following GenAI and cloud semantic conventions. Metrics can be sent to Application Insights, Datadog, Splunk, Grafana Cloud, or another OTLP endpoint. The portal provides a monitoring view over Application Insights data. Better together: Microsoft Foundry and AI Gateway With AI Gateway, teams can extend the same governance controls, for example token rate limits and quotas, across models hosted in Microsoft Foundry and models hosted elsewhere. Foundry and non-Foundry models are published through gateway-managed endpoints, giving applications and agents a consistent way to access governed models regardless of where they are hosted. Foundry-hosted agents can consume curated sets of tools from Foundry toolboxes, with access to the underlying MCP servers and APIs governed through AI Gateway. Together, Microsoft Foundry and AI Gateway cover the enterprise application lifecycle: Foundry for building and running AI applications, and AI Gateway for publishing, governing, and observing models, tools, and MCP servers across your AI estate. The new AI Gateway tier will soon be available through the gateway experience in Microsoft Foundry portal. We are working toward a seamless, integrated AI Gateway experience within Foundry portal and will share more about that work separately. Available today in public preview The AI Gateway tier is available today at no cost in public preview in East US 2 and Sweden Central. Pricing will be shared separately. To provision a resource, add a model or MCP server, and make a first call click this to go to the AI Gateway tier portal and try it. If you prefer to start from code, use a sample to deploy all the required resources for a Foundry-hosted agent configured to access its model and tools through AI Gateway. We look forward to your feedback as we continue to rapidly evolve AI Gateway.Power Azure SRE Agent with the tools it needs
What is the Azure SRE Agent Azure SRE Agent is an AI-powered service designed to reduce operational toil. Teams can use it to: Investigate incidents and identify probable causes. Automate health checks, compliance reviews, and other scheduled work. Answer questions such as “What changed before this service became degraded?” Propose remediations while allowing teams to require human approval. An effective investigation rarely depends on one source of information. An alert might originate in Azure Monitor, while deployment history lives in source control, telemetry stored in another observability platform, and incident records in a service-management tool. Without access to those systems, you must retrieve and transfer the information manually, adding context switching and slowing diagnosis. MCP servers can give SRE Agent tools to query telemetry, inspect deployments, retrieve database records, look up incidents, etc. SRE Agent provides native connection for some servers such as GitHub, Datadog, New Relic, and Splunk. Connector Namespace makes it easier to host additional remote MCP servers you want the agent to use. Removing remote MCP server hosting burden Connecting SRE Agent to an existing remote endpoint is straightforward. Hosting that endpoint yourself is not. You must deploy the server, provide secure HTTPS infrastructure, configure authentication, manage downstream credentials, scale the runtime, monitor its health, recover failed instances, and maintain it over time. These responsibilities are necessary, but the value is in the server’s tools not in operating another service. Azure Connector Namespace is a fully managed service for hosting connectors and MCP servers. You select the server you need and let the namespace handles the operational and maintenance tasks. The offering is currently in preview. See documentation for supported regions and other preview considerations. You’ll find a wide variety of servers in the Connector Namespace’s catalog. Some examples of useful servers for the SRE agent include: Database servers such as Azure SQL and Azure Cosmos DB Source control and CI/CD servers like GitLab Incident management servers like Jira and PagerDuty A note on what's currently in development: We're building “bring-your-own” server support, allowing you to supply your own server image while the namespace handles hosting and operations. Please keep an eye out for the blog post about this! Deploy server and connect it to SRE Agent The following example deploys the SQL MCP server in Connector Namespace and connects it to Azure SRE Agent. 1. Server deployment Prerequisite: Install the Azure Developer CLI (azd). Clone the sql-server-samples repo: git clone https://github.com/microsoft/sql-server-samples.git Navigate to the azure-sql-mcp sample cd sql-server-samples/samples/applications/azure-sql-mcp From the azure-sql-mcp folder, run the following to log into your Azure subscription and then deploy the server and related resources: azd auth login azd up The last command will prompt for the following before deployment: Prompt Suggested value Explanation Enter a unique environment name mcp-dev This name added as prefix to Azure resources created Select an Azure Subscription Pick your subscription Resources will deploy under this subscription Enter value for connectorNamespaceIdentityType UserAssigned User assigned identity is recommended as it’s not tied to resource lifecycle Enter value for deployerLoginName Enter your Azure subscription login email To give your identity access to the MCP server Enter value for the location Pick a supported region Supported regions: West Central US, Central US, East Asia, North Europe Once deployment finishes, copy the MCP endpoint for use later. It looks similar to: https://<app-name>.<region>.logic.azure.com/api/connectorGateways/123abc456defg7890/mcpServerConfigs/sql-mcp/mcp (Optional) Test deployed server in Visual Studio Code GitHub Copilot: Open command palette > search MCP: Add server > pick HTTP > enter MCP endpoint and server name > pick Local Workspace. Inside .vscode/mcp.json, click Start above server name, then allow authentication with Microsoft in the popup and log into Azure subscription account. 2. Configure MCP connector in SRE Agent Connector Namespace does not create the connection in SRE Agent. Add the server endpoint through SRE Agent’s existing MCP connection experience. Open the Azure SRE Agent portal On the left menu, go to Builder > Connectors, and select + Add connector Under Choose a connector, select the MCP tab, choose MCP server, and select Next Configure the connector: Field Value Name A descriptive name for the server Connection type Streamable-HTTP URI The hosted server endpoint from Connector Namespace Authentication method Managed identity (Selecting managed identity automatically creates an identity for the connector.) Azure AD token scope https://apihub.azure.com/.default Select Next. Before testing the connection, grant the managed identity access to the MCP server. 3. Authorize the managed identity Open the Azure portal, search for the managed identity by name. In the identity’s Overview page, click JSON View (top right) and copy the tenantId and principalId. The principal ID is also called the object ID. Open Connector Namespace portal and search for the deployed namespace. Inside the namespace, navigate to the MCP Connectors tab on the left, then select the SQL MCP server. Inside the MCP server, click Access Policies, then select Add Access Policy. Enter the tenant ID and principal ID, then select Create. 4. Test and finish the connection Return to Azure SRE Agent portal and select Test connection. After the test succeeds, select the server tools the agent should use. Select Add connector. Establishing the connection can take a minute. Select Refresh at the top of the connectors page until its status changes to Connected. The agent can now use the selected server tools in chat threads. The azd deployment from previous created and seeded a SQL database with sample blog post data, so you can ask something like: What are the top blog posts? For more details, see MCP connectors and tools in Azure SRE Agent. Focus on the server, not its infrastructure MCP servers can give Azure SRE Agent access to the additional systems it needs to investigate incidents and perform operational work effectively. However, operating every remote server yourself introduces infrastructure, security, and maintenance responsibilities that distract from that goal. Connector Namespace removes much of that friction. Your primary question becomes “Which MCP server do I want to host?” rather than “How will I deploy, secure, scale, monitor, and maintain it?” Once deployed, the hosted endpoint can be added to Azure SRE Agent through its existing MCP connection experience. That gives teams a straightforward path to extending the agent with more operational tools, without turning MCP server hosting into another platform they must build and run. Try Connector Namespace with Azure SRE Agent and share your feedback! Resources Azure SRE Agent Overview Set up an MCP connector in Azure SRE Agent Connector Namespace Overview Hosted MCP servers in Connector Namespace
