Azure Weekly

Issue 581

27^th September 2026

There are many interesting articles covered this week, it's well worth skimming all the sections for all the announcements (new services, plus retirements), and a number of really good thought pieces. I was slightly shocked by the first announcement - as I was about to migrate all of our newsletters over to ACS:

• Retirement: Azure Communication Services (ACS) standalone services will be retired on September 30, 2028 by The Azure Updates Team - Azure Communication Services will sunset its standalone offerings on September 30, 2028, transitioning users to integrated communication solutions.

The fact that comments have been turned off on this post is a fair indication of how well this announcement has been taken by the community:

• Changes to Microsoft Learn’s public documentation repositories by Martin Ekuan - Microsoft Learn will retire most public documentation repositories by December 2026, keeping only those tied to open-source projects, with alternatives like Q&A and community forums for continued feedback.

My highlights of the announcements this week:

• Virtual nodes on Azure Container Instances: a new compute layer for AKS by Hailu Kassa - Virtual nodes on Azure Container Instances enable AKS clusters to use elastic, serverless compute by running pods directly on ACI with per-pod isolation and automatic scaling up to 200 pods per node.
• Azure Container Apps Sandboxes, Now Generally Available by Jan Kalis - Azure Container Apps Sandboxes offer isolated microVMs with egress policies, network audit logs, VNet integration, and support for custom or public container images for secure untrusted code execution.
• Azure Container Apps Express is now generally available by Simon Jakesch - Azure Container Apps Express offers instant, sub-second provisioning and zero-scale capabilities, letting developers deploy container images directly to production with no prior environment setup.

And finally, three posts which caught my eye:

• Bicep Testing Framework PoC with Pester by Stanislav Zhelyazkov - The Bicep Testing Framework Proof of Concept demonstrates integrating Pester for validating Azure Monitor log alert resources, streamlining automation in CI/CD workflows.
• Introducing bicep docs: generate documentation from your Bicep modules by Jared Holgate - The new Bicep CLI command bicep docs generate automatically creates up-to-date README.md files for Bicep modules by pulling documentation directly from code metadata and annotations.
• Your architecture diagram is not your resilience by Mark Russinovich, Adam Bogobowicz, Molina Sharma - Resilience in AI workloads now demands continuous validation of dynamic dependencies not shown in static diagrams.

🤖 AI

• Beyond Cherry-Picking: Evaluating Text-to-Image Models
  The HEIM Image Comparison Lab on Azure Container Apps provides a comprehensive framework for evaluating Text-to-Image models across fidelity, reasoning, safety, equity, and efficiency.
• Microsoft Agent Framework: Hosted Agents in Microsoft Foundry with .NET
  Microsoft Foundry offloads the infrastructure management for .NET agents, replacing manual Azure Functions hosting with a managed execution environment.
• Copilot Studio | The Agent Your Flow Can't Call
  Copilot Studio introduces two distinct harnesses-standard for rule-based agents callable via Power Automate and GitHub Copilot for reasoning-heavy workflows-shaping how agents are built, billed, and integrated.
• Demystifying Dynamic AI Routing: Exploring the model router in Foundry Models with RouteLab
  The model router in Foundry Models, paired with RouteLab, lets developers dynamically choose LLMs based on prompt complexity and performance needs, offering balanced, cost-effective, or high-quality routing modes with a local testing environment for visual evaluation.
• Schema Validity Is Not Enough
  Microsoft Foundry Local powers this robot task-planning prototype, which uses a deterministic governance layer to filter untrusted SLM proposals before execution.
• When AI Stops Waiting for Instructions
  Microsoft's Autopilots introduce persistent agents with identities, email, calendar, and organizational roles, automating tasks like release management within defined boundaries.
• Claude Opus 5.5 comes to Microsoft Foundry for long-running coding and knowledge work
  Claude Opus 5.5 in Microsoft Foundry improves focus, action communication, and token efficiency for complex coding and knowledge work in software development and enterprise applications.
• GPT-6 Astra, Sol, and Luna: For production agents in Microsoft Foundry
  GPT-6 Sol and Luna in Microsoft Foundry provide less noisy, more capable agents for efficient task completion, with Astra excelling in complex reasoning, Sol ideal for general purposes, and Luna optimized for high-volume data processing.
• More Models, One Copilot
  More Models, One Copilot showcases the launch of Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5.5 and OpenAI’s GPT-6 Sol in various Copilot apps, enhancing user options while Work IQ maintains relevance for each organization.
• Microsoft Foundry Hosted Agents and MCP in Practice: Building Fibey Field Ops
  Fibey Field Ops shows bridging model capabilities with operational tools using one hosted agent, five skill sets, eleven tools, and Azure Container Apps for a synthetic fiber-operations assistant built with Microsoft Foundry Hosted Agents and Model Context Protocol.
• Transforming Solo Agents to Collaborative Teams: Choosing Multi-Agent Patterns in Microsoft Foundry
  Choosing multi-agent patterns in Microsoft Foundry involves selecting orchestration strategies like sequential, concurrent, handoff, group chat, or custom workflows to manage agent collaboration efficiently for reliable, secure, and cost-effective AI systems.
• Decoding Environmental Viromes: Amplifying Human Expertise with Microsoft Discovery
  Microsoft Discovery speeds up public health insights from wastewater metagenomics by offering an easy-to-use app that combines sequencing data with scientific literature to lower computational and interpretation hurdles for researchers.
• DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash is coming to Microsoft Foundry
  DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash for Microsoft Foundry features a 20-layer causal encoder-decoder architecture with native image understanding, reduced KV cache usage to 890 bytes per token, and enhanced agentic task performance across coding, terminal, security, tool use, and automation benchmarks.
• Engineering Agentic Recall Controls with MCP and Microsoft Foundry
  Caldova Recall Control Tower shows how to separate AI reasoning from actions using MCP, Foundry, FastAPI, and Azure for validated pharmaceutical recall decisions.
• Tokenomics: the four levers that decide your Azure OpenAI bill
  Tokenomics details Azure OpenAI billing by emphasizing four key levers to reduce costs and improve efficiency in generative AI systems.
• Insights in Foundry Turns Agent Traces into Action
  Insights in Foundry automatically analyzes agent traces to uncover hidden patterns and failures, providing explanations and actionable recommendations without requiring custom evaluators.
• Ship agents faster with expanded model choice, voice agents, and continuous optimization
  Microsoft Foundry expands model selection, enables voice-enabled agents, integrates knowledge tools, optimizes performance with production data, and maintains existing investments.
• Introducing voice agents in Microsoft Foundry
  Microsoft Foundry introduces a unified platform integrating real-time speech, agent capabilities, deployment, observability, and evaluation for developing natural, responsive conversational AI across industries.
• Microsoft Foundry Prompt Agents vs. Hosted Agents: What Are You Actually Choosing?
  Choosing between Prompt Agents and Hosted Agents in Microsoft Foundry depends on whether you need direct control over execution-Hosted Agents let you run custom code for complex workflows, while Prompt Agents offer quick configuration with managed runtime.
• From Camera to Canvas: How Multimodal GenAI Automates Shop Floor Instructions
  The solution automates converting assembly videos into illustrated work instructions using Azure-based multimodal GenAI, reducing documentation effort and improving worker onboarding while preserving operational knowledge.
• Your AI Gateway Is the Only Place Governance Actually Sticks
  AI gateways centralize policy enforcement, preventing fragmented security and compliance issues as LLM deployments scale across an organization.

🔎 Analytics

• Microsoft Tools for Making Data AI-Ready
  Microsoft Tools for Making Data AI-Ready explains how Fabric Dataflow Gen2, Power BI semantic models, and Fabric Ontology work together to create reliable, understandable data for effective AI interpretation of user queries.

🖥️ Compute

• Generally Available: Azure Functions support for PowerShell 7.6
  Azure Functions now officially supports PowerShell 7.6, enabling developers to build and deploy serverless apps using the latest version of PowerShell locally before publishing to Azure.
• Generally Available: Instant Access for VM restore points
  Instant Access lets users start restoring VM disks from application-consistent snapshots within seconds, immediately after creating the snapshot for Premium v2 or Ultra disks.
• Retirement: Support for Node.js 22 ends on April 30, 2027
  Node.js 22 support will cease on April 30, 2027, prompting users to migrate to Node.js 24 to maintain security patches and ongoing Azure Function app operation.
• Retirement: Support for .NET 8 and .NET 9 ends on November 10, 2026—upgrade your apps to .NET 10
  Transitioning to .NET 10 by November 10, 2026, is crucial as support for .NET 8 and .NET 9 will end, removing security updates and Azure Functions support.
• Retirement: Support for PowerShell 7.4 ends on November 10, 2026
  PowerShell 7.4 will reach end-of-life on November 10, 2026, after which users must upgrade to PowerShell 7.6 to receive security patches and ongoing support.
• Expanding access to specialized GPU infrastructure through Dapple and Azure
  Microsoft partners with Dapple to integrate specialized GPU infrastructure into Azure, providing enterprises with topology-aware compute resources for large-scale AI tasks while upholding Azure's governance and security standards.

🚢 Containers

• Public Preview: Flex Nodes for AKS
  Flex Nodes for AKS lets developers run applications on hybrid and edge infrastructure, extending Azure Kubernetes Service’s control plane to these environments with minimal latency.
• Virtual nodes on Azure Container Instances: a new compute layer for AKS
  Virtual nodes on Azure Container Instances enable AKS clusters to use elastic, serverless compute by running pods directly on ACI with per-pod isolation and automatic scaling up to 200 pods per node.
• When the Coding Agent Leaves the Codebase: Building a Multi-Runtime AI Agent Infra with Azure KARS
  Azure KARS unifies diverse coding agents like Claude Code into a single Kubernetes-based runtime environment, resolving credential governance, heterogeneity, and security issues for seamless departmental deployment.
• Run and scale AI applications on AKS – the latest product innovations
  Azure Kubernetes Service introduces innovations like pod sandboxing, confidential GPU support, identity bindings, NFS encryption, and virtual nodes v2 to isolate AI workloads, enhance agentic applications, and optimize capacity.
• Azure Container Apps Sandboxes, Now Generally Available
  Azure Container Apps Sandboxes offer isolated microVMs with egress policies, network audit logs, VNet integration, and support for custom or public container images for secure untrusted code execution.
• Designing agent-first platforms: What changes when agents do the work
  Designing agent-first platforms demands rethinking software architecture to support real-time reasoning and acting by multiple agents, posing challenges in identity management, runtime monitoring, and compliance.
• Azure Container Apps Express is now generally available
  Azure Container Apps Express offers instant, sub-second provisioning and zero-scale capabilities, letting developers deploy container images directly to production with no prior environment setup.
• AKS Flex Nodes Are in Preview: Attaching Your Own Compute to a Managed Cluster
  AKS flex nodes let users attach custom compute resources to a managed Azure Kubernetes Service cluster, offering greater flexibility and control over workload scaling in the upcoming preview release.
• Understanding Azure Container Apps Costs: From Replica Reservations to Running Nodes - Part 1
  This first part explains Azure Container Apps (ACA) cost components, detailing how dedicated workload profiles, nodes, and replica reservations drive billing.
• CoreDNS in AKS: service discovery, upstream DNS, and failover
  CoreDNS in AKS manages internal service discovery and external DNS queries via selection policies and dynamic health checks for reliable application resolution.

🗄️ Databases

• Public Preview: Azure HorizonDB supports PostgreSQL 18
  Azure HorizonDB’s public preview introduces native support for PostgreSQL 18, enabling seamless migration of existing applications while boosting performance and scalability.
• The Migration of a Row: Tagged, Followed, Found Again
  A single database row's journey through deletion reveals it persists across logs, pages, checkpoints, backups, and even statistics histograms for years after being marked as removed.
• Elasticsearch Vector Database on Azure: semantic search and RAG without managing a cluster
  Elastic’s serverless Elasticsearch Vector Database on Azure enables seamless semantic search, RAG, and agent-powered experiences without managing clusters, integrating directly with Azure tools for effortless deployment and management.
• Microsoft.Data.SqlClient 7.1.0 is now generally available
  Microsoft.Data.SqlClient 7.1.0 enhances database operation reliability by fixing connection, transaction, and pooling issues under failures, supporting newer SQL Server features like DateOnly and json data type visibility in Azure SQL, and adding an application identity to the TDS USERAGENT payload for diagnostics without compromising security.
• The one big difference between MySQL and MariaDB you may have overlooked
  The key distinction between MySQL and MariaDB lies in their storage engine options, with MariaDB offering more flexibility and advanced features tailored for diverse workloads compared to MySQL's more constrained selection.
• Unicode String Literals with UNISTR in SQL Server 2025 and Azure SQL Database
  SQL Server 2025 adds the UNISTR function for embedding multiple Unicode codepoints in strings with ANSI escape sequences, enhancing readability and cross-platform compatibility over NCHAR.
• Optimized Locking in SQL Server 2025: Fewer Locks, Less Blocking, and the Cases It Cannot Fix
  SQL Server 2025 optimizes locking to reduce unnecessary row and page locks, improving concurrency with TID locking and Lock After Qualification under Read Committed Snapshot Isolation, though some queries remain ineligible and some blocking persists.
• Install AdventureWorks and WideWorldImporters: Updated 2026
  This 2026 guide offers download links and restoration instructions for AdventureWorks2025 and WideWorldImporters databases in T-SQL, SSMS, Docker, and resolves common errors such as 3201 and 3156.
• How to run PostgreSQL in Docker (getting started with PostgreSQL, part one)
  This guide shows how to use Docker Pull to securely retrieve and validate a PostgreSQL image before creating a container, ensuring you start with the latest stable version.
• Oracle AI Database@Azure Expands with Azure Native Oracle GoldenGate User Experience, Observability
  Oracle AI Database on Azure provides a native experience for Oracle GoldenGate, allowing easy provisioning, management, and monitoring of data replication across databases, clouds, and Azure services via the Azure portal and APIs.
• Lessons Learned #555: The First 60 Seconds of a Production Incident: Stop, Scope, Correlate
  During a production incident's first crucial minutes, defining exactly what "down" means through precise problem statements, quickly determining the blast radius, and building a detailed timeline help focus troubleshooting efforts, reducing wasted investigation time before any corrective actions are taken.
• How to close SQL Server operational blind spots (linked servers, DMVs, and KILL command security risks & fixes)
  SQL Server attackers exploit trusted operational features like linked servers and DMVs by chaining low-privileged access to execute unauthorized commands or escalate privileges.
• The need for a maintainer mindset in the age of LLMs
  PostgreSQL maintainers stress the continued need for human mental models and judgment despite AI tools, noting that even sophisticated LLMs may overlook important issues such as bloat in visibility maps when relying only on code reviews.

🛠️ Developer tools

• Public Preview: Introducing a Guided Copilot Experience for Building Azure Apps in VS Code
  The preview introduces a Guided Copilot Experience in Visual Studio Code that streamlines building and deploying Azure apps by guiding users through a structured workflow.
• Building a Fully Local Maintenance Assistant with Microsoft Foundry Local
  Building a fully local maintenance assistant with Microsoft Foundry Local shows how to create a self-contained RAG system running entirely on one machine using specialized prompts for queries, evidence retrieval, and reasoning while reducing latency via deterministic routing.
• How to Add AI to Your Existing .NET Application Without a Rewrite
  Integrating AI into a .NET app via a clean interface wrapping Azure OpenAI enables incremental integration and lowers risk by viewing AI as a capability layer.
• Calling MCP Servers from PowerShell with PSMcpClient
  PSMcpClient enables PowerShell scripts to interact with Model Context Protocol servers, extending AI capabilities beyond standard desktop chat interfaces.
• Swagger vs. Scalar: A comprehensive comparison for ASP.NET Core developers
  Scalar offers a modern alternative to Swagger UI for .NET 10 projects, which no longer bundle documentation tools by default due to Swashbuckle's maintenance challenges.
• Today I will… debug a production crash
  C# applications can diagnose ThreadPool exhaustion by monitoring task latency and triggering automated memory dumps for analysis in Visual Studio.
• VS Code Simplifies Copilot Inline Suggestions With Unified Model
  VS Code unifies Copilot’s completion and next-edit models to provide smoother, more continuous inline code suggestions.
• Delete Your Polling Loop: Change-driven programming in Node.js with @drasi/lib
  @drasi/lib lets Node.js apps embed change-driven programming, removing polling loops through a lightweight native addon that monitors data changes within the app.
• Get started with the GitHub Copilot app: A free, hands-on course
  The GitHub Copilot app course teaches beginners to use a sample React book app, managing parallel tasks, switching modes, and integrating with GitHub workflows for efficient AI-assisted development.
• VS Code 1.139 Expands Remote Agents, Drops Copilot-Generated Disclaimer
  VS Code 1.139 adds support for running dev container agents on remote projects and removes the previously added disclaimer about Copilot-generated content in the release notes.
• Rendering huge pull requests in the GitHub Copilot app
  GitHub Copilot improved pull request rendering for large PRs with fast scrolling via virtualization and handled variable comment heights with adaptive measurement and bounding techniques.
• Architecture First: Drawing the Boundary for On-Premises HealthRAG
  HealthRAG enforces strict data residency by keeping all inference, telemetry, and vector processing on-premises to comply with national health data laws in jurisdictions like Kenya.
• Resumable Health-Record Ingestion Without Sacrificing the Last-Known-Good Index
  PostgreSQL, MySQL, and SQL Server ingestion pipelines use staged generations and local embedding to ensure data residency compliance and atomic index updates during failures.
• MCP Servers Explained — Part 1: Understand and Build Your First One
  MCP servers simplify AI integration by offering a universal protocol for secure access to databases, APIs, and tools through a single interface, reducing custom integrations.
• MCP Servers Explained — Part 2: Deploy to Azure, Connect Copilot Studio, and Secure It
  Deploying an MCP server on Azure Container Apps provides secure, always-on access for teams using a managed identity, removing the need for secrets and ensuring smooth integration with Copilot Studio.
• How I Learn APIs Quickly Using VS Code REST Client
  The author details a VS Code workflow for quickly learning APIs by keeping requests, credentials, and notes in one place, using environment variables for secrets, and reusing responses across calls.
• Uno Platform 6.7: Your Apps on TVs, Cars, and Watches, Plus More Efficient Skia Rendering
  Uno Platform 6.7 adds support for Android TV, Auto, and Wear OS, introduces semantic styles for unified UI, and optimizes Skia rendering for sub-100 ms updates.
• When chat is the wrong UI
  GitHub Copilot canvases replace generic chat interfaces with task-specific, full-stack applications that reduce token waste by enabling direct, bi-directional interaction between agents and tools.
• Foundry Local with Rust: From Catalog Discovery to In-Process Streaming
  Foundry Local with Rust shows how to do full local inference by initializing the SDK, finding the catalog, loading models, streaming tokens locally, and meeting hardware residency rules without using the cloud.
• The AI chaos beast in your head
  AI tools cause developers to suffer from fragmented attention and mental exhaustion by encouraging constant context switching between multiple concurrent coding agents.
• The Aspire Demo We Didn’t Get to Show Live: Watching an Agent Harness Work
  Aspire’s new demo demonstrates a C# agent using the Microsoft Agent Framework’s Harness to interact with tools, visualizing real-time results via traces, structured logs, and metrics on the Aspire dashboard.
• What's Next for VS Code? 10 Open GitHub Issues Offer Clues
  The VS Code issue tracker reveals upcoming features such as sending coding tasks to multiple isolated agents in separate Git worktrees for collaborative evaluation.
• GitHub Copilot app for Beginners: How to build custom workflows with canvases
  GitHub Copilot's canvas feature enables beginners to create custom workflow interfaces like kanban boards or release checklists in plain English, with AI dynamically updating and collaborating in real time.

🔩 DevOps

• Bicep Testing Framework PoC with Pester
  The Bicep Testing Framework Proof of Concept demonstrates integrating Pester for validating Azure Monitor log alert resources, streamlining automation in CI/CD workflows.
• One Azure DevOps Project for 1,500 People Is Not the Risky Option
  Choosing between one shared Azure DevOps Project for 1,500 people or separate projects involves weighing risks like wider impact from structural mistakes, the need for unified work processes, navigation challenges with shared resources, and the importance of proper administration delegation.
• Developers want more efficient software. Here’s what over 1000 GitHub users told us they need.
  Over 1,000 GitHub users showed strong interest in tools for identifying inefficiencies, measuring environmental impact, and adopting best practices to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions.
• Introducing bicep docs: generate documentation from your Bicep modules
  The new Bicep CLI command bicep docs generate automatically creates up-to-date README.md files for Bicep modules by pulling documentation directly from code metadata and annotations.

🧬 Hybrid + multicloud

• Azure Local Storage: Choose the Architecture That Fits Your Business
  Azure Local Storage provides three adaptable architectures-hyperconverged, disaggregated, and hybrid-to cater to varied business requirements while preserving SAN investments, enhancing efficiency, and lowering maintenance.
• Microsoft Sovereign Private Cloud and Azure Local: Much More Than a Virtualization Platform
  Azure Local extends beyond virtualization, offering a sovereign private cloud solution that integrates security policies and compliance frameworks tailored for regulated industries.

🎭 Identity

• New Entra event hints at account takeover controls
  The new Entra event indicates that custom authentication extensions may soon integrate external risk engines to enhance account takeover protection measures.
• Microsoft Retiring Entra SMS Authentication and Microsoft 365 Companion Apps
  IT administrators should prepare for the retirement of Entra SMS Authentication and the discontinuation of Microsoft 365 Companion Apps within the next half-year.
• What is dynamicMembershipPriority for Entra Groups?
  DynamicMembershipPriority in Entra groups lets admins set high priority values to control group membership evaluation order via a recent beta Graph API endpoint.

🔌 Integration

• Azure Service Bus sessions: Pub/sub without autoforwarding
  This article explains how to maintain ordered event streams in Azure Service Bus without using autoforwarding by employing a transport-owned bridge that consolidates messages into a single session-enabled endpoint queue while preserving recoverability and ordering.
• What the Azure API Management integration means for Azure Service Bus
  Azure API Management's new send-service-bus-message policy enables developers to embed asynchronous messaging directly into governed HTTP APIs for real-time processing without extra intermediary services and supports pattern-based routing through queues or topics.
• Connect Azure Functions to more services with managed connectors
  Azure Functions now integrates with over 1,700 services-including Microsoft 365, Teams, Dataverse, SharePoint, OneDrive, and third-party systems-via managed connectors, enabling event triggers and typed client actions without manual webhook setup or OAuth management.
• How to Validate That Your BizTalk SB-Messaging Adapter Is Really Using AMQP
  Validate that BizTalk’s SB-Messaging adapter uses AMQP by confirming the active connection on TCP port 5671, checking ETW traces for [SBMessaging-AMQP] entries, and ensuring legacy SBMP ports are blocked while testing with large messages in a non-production environment.

💡 Internet of Things

• Generally Available: Azure Sphere OS version 26.09 is now available
  Azure Sphere OS 26.09 GA introduces enhanced security patches and optimized performance for IoT edge devices without requiring SDK updates.
• Azure Sphere OS version 26.09 is now available
  Azure Sphere OS 26.09 upgrades to Linux Kernel 6.1 for Super Long-Term Support alignment, though it brings no new features or functional changes.
• Azure IoT Central is evolving: what you need to know
  Azure IoT Central will transition to an Azure IoT Hub-based architecture with added features such as certificate management and operations agent integration, maintaining current functionality until September 20, 2029.

🎓 Learning and Certifications

• Claude at Work: My New Book
  Claude at Work" teaches effective management of AI agents for productivity, role expansion, and fostering creativity with practical examples and scalability strategies.
• Changes to Microsoft Learn’s public documentation repositories
  Microsoft Learn will retire most public documentation repositories by December 2026, keeping only those tied to open-source projects, with alternatives like Q&A and community forums for continued feedback.

⚖️ Management and Governance

• You Get One Exchange Left: Rethinking Azure Commitments Before February 2027
  Azure will limit reservation exchanges for services covered by savings plans starting February 1, 2027, affecting compute and database offerings.
• Change Analysis in Azure Resource Graph: Your first stop for “What changed?”
  Azure Resource Graph’s Change Analysis tool offers real-time visibility into configuration changes by users, aiding network engineers in quickly identifying root causes for issues such as VPN outages, firewall rule modifications, NSG disruptions, and route table updates.
• Your architecture diagram is not your resilience
  Resilience in AI workloads now demands continuous validation of dynamic dependencies not shown in static diagrams.
• Migrate Data Ingestion from Data Collector to Log Ingestion - Part 2
  Azure Log Ingestion API requires developers to manually chunk payloads into 800KB segments to bypass the strict 1MB limit when migrating from the deprecated Data Collector API.
• Getting the best out of Azure SRE Agent
  The Azure SRE Agent's best practices guide stresses connecting vital data first, prioritizing key incidents, sticking to core knowledge, and setting proper freedom levels for best performance.
• New FinOps for AI capabilities: Control spend, measure value, and optimize for impact
  FinOps for AI introduces shared governance tools to set spending limits, track cross-departmental costs, and connect AI investments to measurable business outcomes for better control and value optimization.

🎬 Media

• Retirement: Azure Communication Services (ACS) standalone services will be retired on September 30, 2028
  Azure Communication Services will sunset its standalone offerings on September 30, 2028, transitioning users to integrated communication solutions.

🔐 Security

• Bringing Defender Experts protection and proactive hunting into focus
  Microsoft added new Defender Experts features to the Defender portal, offering a dedicated homepage, persistent navigation, consolidated views, and an enhanced Hunts experience for easier security team access.
• Reimagining Case Management in Microsoft Defender
  Case Management in Microsoft Defender unifies incident response through integrated context, collaboration, automation, and lifecycle tracking in a single Incident Case workspace, enabling teams to tailor workflows and ensure accountability during resolution.
• Integrated Security Operations Center in Microsoft Defender
  The Integrated Security Operations Center in Microsoft Defender unifies XDR, SIEM, threat intelligence, automation, and AI into one platform, enhancing visibility and operational efficiency for eligible customers.
• Reimagining the SOC for the agentic era in Microsoft Defender
  Microsoft Defender launches ISOC, a unified platform merging SIEM and threat protection for integrated agentic security.
• Microsoft Brings Sentinel and Defender Together for Agentic Security Operations
  Microsoft unifies Sentinel and Defender to form an Integrated Security Operations Center designed to combat advanced, AI-powered threats through seamless collaboration.
• Prioritize Real Risk with Defender for Cloud Attack Path Analysis
  Defender for Cloud's attack path analysis prioritizes real security risks through high-impact misconfiguration, vulnerability, and business exposure combinations.
• What’s new in Microsoft Security: September 2026
  In September 2026, Microsoft launches features to help security teams discover, govern, and contain local AI agents, boosting Zero Trust protections and SOC capabilities.
• Beyond the ransomware: Tracking Storm-2570’s consistent tradecraft across deployments
  Storm-2570, a ransomware affiliate since April 2025, uses consistent post-compromise tools like Atera and PsExec to target various industries, emphasizing the need to monitor threat actor behavior beyond specific ransomware payloads.
• AI-powered fuzzing with the GitHub Security Lab Taskflow Agent
  The GitHub Security Lab Taskflow Agent automates continuous fuzzing for C/C++ projects, handling identification of entry points, building harnesses, triaging crashes, and generating vulnerability reports without human oversight.
• Security Copilot is now included as part of Microsoft 365 E5/E7
  Security Copilot’s inclusion in Microsoft 365 E5 and E7 introduces usage quotas, specific access permissions, practical application scenarios, and built-in cost management tools.
• Storm-3168: Agentic-driven cloud attacks using compromised service principals
  Storm-3168 describes JADEPUFFER's agentic ransomware attacks via compromised Azure service principals targeting storage accounts, databases, and more, highlighting the necessity of identity protection and AI-driven defenses such as Project Perception.

📦 Storage

• Who Let the Dog Out?
  Microsoft launches Entra Kerberos for Azure NetApp Files in public preview to simplify domain controller placement for SMBs with secure authentication without needing on-premises DCs.
• Troubleshooting Azure Storage Deletion: Immutability, WORM, and Version Retention
  Understanding why Azure Storage accounts become undeletable involves recognizing that immutable policies protect data and its containers, versions, and snapshots, preventing deletion until all protected resources are removed.

💻 Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

• Azure Local: Entra Joined AVD Session Hosts with PowerShell
  Azure Local enables native Entra ID joining for AVD session hosts through a custom PowerShell script that bypasses the limitations of the standard portal deployment.

🔗 Web

• Improving site performance by shipping more CSS
  Switching Primer Design System components from CSS-in-JS to native CSS Modules reduced initial page load times by 55% and component initialization delays by 25%, showing significant performance improvements.