Azure Feeds Weekly: 26 Sep 2026 to 03 Oct 2026

Quick note for this week, Azure shipped more knobs to turn.

VMs: Storage-optimised Lasv5 and Laosv5 are GA, update sizing and templates.
Arc-enabled SQL Server: GA in Germany West Central, schedule server onboarding.
Postgres clusters: MVU preview enables in-place major upgrades, no re-provisioning.

In this issue

⭐ Top picks this week

Azure Updates 39 items

Azure Architecture Center 1 item

Microsoft Blogs 47 items

Microsoft Tech Community 75 items

Azure Community 24 items

⭐ Top picks this week

Editor's picks, AI-assisted, advisory ordering of this week's items.

[Launched] Generally Available: Storage optimized Lasv5 and Laosv5 Azure VM series

Generally Available: Lasv5 and Laosv5 storage-optimised VMs (5th Gen AMD EPYC Turin) are GA, offering 2-160 vCPUs, 8 GiB memory per vCPU, and 720 GB local NVMe per vCPU, so consider these SKUs for storage-intensive workloads and update deployment templates or size choices accordi

[Launched] Generally Available: Azure Arc-enabled SQL Server in Germany West Central

Generally Available (GA) in Germany West Central: you can now connect SQL Server instances to Azure Arc to use Azure-based inventory, governance, security, assessment, and licence management, so schedule onboarding for servers you want managed from Azure.

[In preview] Public Preview: Major version upgrades (MVU) for Azure Database for PostgreSQL elastic clusters

Public preview: Major version upgrades (MVU) for Azure Database for PostgreSQL elastic clusters let you upgrade an existing elastic cluster in-place to a supported newer PostgreSQL major version without provisioning a replacement cluster or migrating distributed data.

Azure Updates (39)

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Title	Summary	Date
🔍 Preview [In preview] Public Preview: Major version upgrades (MVU) for Azure Database for PostgreSQL elastic clusters Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	Public preview: Major version upgrades (MVU) for Azure Database for PostgreSQL elastic clusters let you upgrade an existing elastic cluster in-place to a supported newer PostgreSQL major version without provisioning a replacement cluster or migrating distributed data.	2026-10-03
ℹ️ Update Retirement: DCsv3 and DCdsv3-series Azure Virtual Machines will be retired on October 31, 2029 Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	Retirement: DCsv3 and DCdsv3-series Azure Linux, Windows, and Dedicated Host virtual machines will be retired on 31 October 2029; they will not be available for use or purchase after that date, so plan and migrate your workloads to supported sizes before then.	2026-10-02
🔍 Preview [In preview] Public Preview: SQL performance monitoring for SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	Public preview: Microsoft-managed performance monitoring for SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines is now available, enabling monitoring without custom collection scripts or manual telemetry correlation, so evaluate the preview and plan migration from script-based monitoring.	2026-10-01
ℹ️ Update Retirement: NVv3-series Azure Virtual Machines Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	Retirement: On 30 September 2026, Microsoft retired the NVv3-series VM SKUs Standard_NV12s_v3, Standard_NV12hs_v3, Standard_NV24s_v3, Standard_NV24ms_v3, Standard_NV32ms_v3, and Standard_NV48s_v3; if you run any of these VMs, plan to migrate or resize them to supported VM sizes a	2026-10-01
ℹ️ Update Retirement: NVv4-series Azure Virtual Machines Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	Retirement: On 30 September 2026, Microsoft retired the NVv4-series VM SKUs Standard_NV4as_v4, Standard_NV4ahs_v4, Standard_NV8as_v4, Standard_NV8ahs_v4, Standard_NV16as_v4, Standard_NV16ahs_v4, Standard_NV32as_v4, and Standard_NV32ahs_v4; if you run any of these VMs, plan to mig	2026-10-01
🔍 Preview [In preview] Public Preview: Ubuntu 26.04 support in AKS Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	Preview: AKS adds Ubuntu 26.04 node images via a new Ubuntu2604 Minimal OS SKU for node pools; test package footprint, security posture, and compatibility in non-production node pools before selecting Ubuntu2604 for production clusters.	2026-10-01
ℹ️ Update Announcing: Azure canvases for GitHub Copilot Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	Announcement: Azure canvases for GitHub Copilot provide interactive, shared workspaces that embed Azure tools, dashboards, cost analysis, and hosted skills into Copilot conversations, so review access, governance, and cost controls before enabling for your teams.	2026-10-01
ℹ️ Update Retirement: Dv3, Dsv3, Ev3, and Esv3 Azure VMs Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	Retirement: Dv3, Dsv3, Ev3, and Esv3 VM series will enter End-of-Life and retire in public cloud Azure regions on 15 November 2029; schedule migrations to supported VM families, update automation, and validate images well before that date.	2026-10-01
ℹ️ Update Retirement: Functions on Azure Container Apps V1 Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	Retirement: Azure Functions v1 hosting model on Azure Container Apps will be retired on 29 September 2027; after that date existing Functions v1 apps will stop running and processing triggers, so migrate or re-deploy them to a supported hosting model before retirement.	2026-09-30
🚀 Generally Available [Launched] Generally Available: Storage optimized Lasv5 and Laosv5 Azure VM series Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	Generally Available: Lasv5 and Laosv5 storage-optimised VMs (5th Gen AMD EPYC Turin) are GA, offering 2-160 vCPUs, 8 GiB memory per vCPU, and 720 GB local NVMe per vCPU, so consider these SKUs for storage-intensive workloads and update deployment templates or size choices accordi	2026-09-30
🔍 Preview [In preview] Public Preview: Automatic Zone Placement for Virtual Machine Scale Sets Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	Public Preview: Automatic Zone Placement for Virtual Machine Scale Sets is now in public preview and will automatically choose availability zones for your scale sets based on SKU availability, capacity, and placement requirements, so opt into the preview to stop maintaining manua	2026-09-30
🚀 Generally Available [Launched] Generally Available: Azure Arc-enabled SQL Server in Germany West Central Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	Generally Available (GA) in Germany West Central: you can now connect SQL Server instances to Azure Arc to use Azure-based inventory, governance, security, assessment, and licence management, so schedule onboarding for servers you want managed from Azure.	2026-09-30
🚀 Generally Available [Launched] Generally Available: Azure Arc-enabled SQL Server Available in Italy North Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	Generally Available (GA) in Italy North: you can now connect SQL Server instances to Azure Arc to use Azure-based inventory, governance, security, assessment, and licence management, so plan onboarding for any Italy North servers you need managed from Azure.	2026-09-30
🔍 Preview [In preview] Public Preview: Azure Database for PostgreSQL Ultra Disk Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	Public preview: Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server can now attach Azure Ultra Disk, so test and validate Ultra Disk for I/O-intensive, transaction-heavy PostgreSQL workloads and plan for the performance and cost implications.	2026-09-30
🔍 Preview [In preview] Public Preview: SQL Performance Monitoring for Azure SQL Database Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	Public preview: Microsoft-managed performance monitoring for Azure SQL Database is available, letting you monitor databases without building custom collection scripts or manually correlating telemetry, so evaluate moving observability to the managed monitoring.	2026-09-30
🔍 Preview [In preview] Public Preview: Performance monitoring for Azure Arc–enabled SQL Server Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	Public preview: Performance monitoring for Azure Arc-enabled SQL Server now exposes Microsoft-managed telemetry you can query via a telemetry endpoint and offers expanded visualisation options, so integrate the endpoint into your monitoring workflows.	2026-09-30
🚀 Generally Available [Launched] Generally Available: Azure SQL updates for late-September 2026 Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	GA: Azure SQL Database Hyperscale Premium adds 160-vCore and 192-vCore SKUs, providing up to 50% more compute capacity,update your capacity planning and select these SKUs when scaling larger workloads.	2026-09-30
🚀 Generally Available [Launched] Generally Available: Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server supports cross-tenant customer-managed keys (CMK) Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	GA: Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server supports cross-tenant customer-managed keys (CMK), allowing encryption with keys in an Azure Key Vault or Managed HSM in a different Microsoft Entra tenant, so update key access, role assignments, and rotation processes.	2026-09-30
🔍 Preview [In preview] Public preview: Script-based deployment for SQL Server on Linux Azure VM Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	Public preview: script-based provisioning replaces legacy marketplace images for SQL Server on Linux Azure VMs, so test and migrate your VM deployment pipelines and automation to the new script-based provisioning workflow.	2026-09-30
🚀 Generally Available [Launched] Generally Available: SQL Server on Azure Local Disconnected (ALDO) Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	Generally Available: SQL Server on Azure Local Disconnected (ALDO) is now supported for environments that cannot maintain continuous Azure connectivity, so evaluate and deploy ALDO for air-gapped, highly regulated, or remote sites.	2026-09-30
🚀 Generally Available [Launched] Generally Available: SQL Server support on Azure Local connected mode Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	Generally Available: SQL Server on Azure Local connected mode lets you run SQL Server on Azure Local infrastructure while using Azure services for centralised management, monitoring, security, and licensing, so plan to connect via Azure Arc and update your operational practices.	2026-09-30
🔍 Preview [In preview] Public Preview: Azure SQL updates for late-September 2026 Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	Public preview: Database Hub in Microsoft Fabric provides a unified experience for discovering, managing, monitoring, and optimising databases across SQL Server and Azure SQL, so pilot the hub to consolidate discovery and operational workflows.	2026-09-30
🚀 Generally Available [Launched] Generally Available: Database DevOps in SSMS powered by SQL projects Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	Generally Available: Database DevOps in SSMS powered by Microsoft.Build.Sql projects is now supported, so start using SQL database projects in SSMS as the local source-of-truth for schema changes and integrate them into your CI/CD pipelines.	2026-09-30
🔍 Preview [In preview] Public Preview: Azure SQL Database Hyperscale Serverless auto-pause and auto-resume Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	Public preview: Azure SQL Hyperscale Serverless now supports auto-pause and auto-resume, so configure idle-time thresholds to pause databases to reduce cost and validate application cold-start behaviour on resume.	2026-09-30
🚀 Generally Available [Launched] Generally Available: SQL Formatter Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	Generally Available: SQL Formatter for Visual Studio Code is now available, so install the extension and configure formatting rules to standardise SQL script style across your team.	2026-09-30
🚀 Generally Available [Launched] Generally Available: SQL Migration Agent Skills for assessment, migration, and validation Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	Generally Available: SQL Migration Agent Skills are available to automate assessment, target selection, migration execution, and post-migration validation, so adopt these reusable AI-powered skills to standardise and speed SQL Server to Azure migrations.	2026-09-30
ℹ️ Update Retirement: Azure Arc enabled System Center Virtual Machine Manager will be retired September 30, 2029 Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	Retirement: Azure Arc-enabled System Center Virtual Machine Manager will be retired on 30 September 2029, so plan and transition to alternative management solutions before the retirement date.	2026-09-30
🔍 Preview [In preview] Public Preview: Migrate directly from Azure Arc to Azure SQL Database, including Hyperscale Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	Public preview: you can now migrate directly from Azure Arc to Azure SQL Database, including Hyperscale, from the Azure Arc migration experience (the workflow provisions Database Migration Service and a self-hosted integration runtime), so try the guided flow for Arc-hosted migra	2026-09-30
🔍 Preview [In preview] Public Preview: Microsoft SQL Agent Skills Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	Public preview: Microsoft SQL Agent Skills are available in preview, enable them to get product-specific, more accurate guidance from AI agents when building, operating, or migrating workloads on Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Database container, and SQL Server to Azure migration	2026-09-30
🔍 Preview [In preview] Public Preview: Long-term retention (LTR) v2 for Azure Database for PostgreSQL Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	Public preview: Long-term retention (LTR) v2 for Azure Database for PostgreSQL moves from logical pg_dump/pg_restore backups to physical snapshot-based backups integrated with Azure Backup Vaults, so plan to test restores and consider migrating LTR policies to v2.	2026-09-30
ℹ️ Update Retirement: Microsoft HPC Pack Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	Retirement: Microsoft is retiring all versions of HPC Pack; it enters a one-year retirement period with limited, retirement-only support and End of Support on 27 August 2027, so plan migration and confirm support options before that date.	2026-09-30
ℹ️ Update Retirement: Azure IoT Central will be retired on September 20, 2029 Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	Retirement: Azure IoT Central will be retired on 20 September 2029; you can continue to use the service until then, but begin transition planning now to migrate devices and solution workloads ahead of the retirement.	2026-09-30
🚀 Generally Available [Launched] Generally Available: Support for large volume breakthrough mode Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	GA: Azure NetApp Files large volume breakthrough mode is now generally available, supporting volumes up to 2 PiB and throughput up to 80 GiBps depending on workload characteristics, so test and validate it for extreme HPC or EDA file workloads.	2026-09-30
🚀 Generally Available [Launched] Generally Available: Storage with cool access enhancement Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	GA: Azure NetApp Files adds a QoS update with cool access on Premium and Ultra service levels,throughput automatically adjusts as data moves to cool storage to balance performance and cost for mixed hot and cool workloads, enable cool access on applicable volumes.	2026-09-30
🔍 Preview [In preview] Public Preview : Microsoft entra kerberos authentication for Azure NetApp Files Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	Preview: Azure NetApp Files now supports Microsoft Entra Kerberos authentication for SMB volumes, enabling users with hybrid or cloud-only identities to authenticate through Microsoft Entra ID using cloud-issued Kerberos tickets, so administrators should plan to configure and tes	2026-09-30
🚀 Generally Available [Launched] Generally Available: Vector search and vector indexes in Azure SQL Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	GA: Azure SQL Database now supports vector search and vector indexes,use the new CREATE VECTOR INDEX and VECTOR_SEARCH T-SQL commands to run approximate nearest neighbour (ANN) searches for semantic and other AI scenarios and update indexing and queries accordingly.	2026-09-29
🔍 Preview [In preview] Public Preview: Azure SQL Dev Hub Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	Public preview: Azure SQL Dev Hub provides a central starting point for building applications with Azure SQL, offering guidance to connect from .NET, Python, Node.js, and Java and resources for developing directly or with AI agents, so try the preview and adopt its connection pat	2026-09-29
🚀 Generally Available [Launched] Generally Available: Azure SQL Managed Instance updates for late-September 2026 Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	GA: Azure SQL Managed Instance now offers a flexible memory feature to change the amount of memory allocated to your managed instance, so update capacity planning and adjust instance sizing where required.	2026-09-29
🚀 Generally Available [Launched] Generally Available: Luxembourg - Azure Extended Zones Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)	GA: Azure Extended Zones are now generally available in Luxembourg, so you can deploy small-footprint Azure resources in the Luxembourg extended zone for lower latency and local data residency requirements; update region selections and deployment templates where you need local pr	2026-09-29

Azure Architecture Center (1)

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Title	Summary	Date
Health Endpoint Monitoring pattern Azure Architecture Center (website)	Add a dedicated health endpoint that performs functional checks and is reachable by external monitoring tools at regular intervals so your monitoring can verify application liveness and readiness.	2026-09-26

Microsoft Blogs (47)

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Title	Summary	Date
Translating an Elasticsearch Search Request to Azure Cosmos DB Azure Cosmos DB Blog (website)	When porting Elasticsearch search requests to Azure Cosmos DB, rewrite queries to use Cosmos DB full-text search functions where they map and implement features that do not map via additional queries or application-layer logic as demonstrated in the tutorial.	2026-10-02
Data API builder 2.1.5: JSON and Vector Data Type Support, and More Azure SQL Devs' Corner (website)	GA: Data API Builder v2.1.5 (stable) adds native SQL json and vector data type support for REST and GraphQL endpoints; upgrade to 2.1.5 if you expose json or vector columns and validate client serialization and schema mapping.	2026-10-02
Power BI September 2026 Feature Summary Power BI Blog (website)	Read the Power BI September 2026 feature summary for new Copilot and AI experiences, reporting, modeling, connectivity, developer, and mobile updates, and act on the listed deprecations by identifying impacted reports and scheduling remediation.	2026-10-02
Bringing rich terminal experiences to Aspire Aspire Blog (website)	Aspire 13.6 adds richer terminal emulation and docked terminals for REPLs, so update your apps to call WithTerminal() and follow the new attach and automation steps to enable and script interactive terminal sessions against app resources.	2026-10-02
Genspark protects live agent sessions with Azure Cosmos DB Global Secondary Indexes Azure Cosmos DB Blog (website)	Genspark shows storing and protecting live AI agent sessions with Azure Cosmos DB Global Secondary Indexes, so if your agents maintain multi-step sessions adopt Cosmos DB Global Secondary Indexes for durable, queryable session state.	2026-10-02
Azure Cosmos DB Shell is now available in the Azure portal Azure Cosmos DB Blog (website)	GA: Azure Cosmos DB Shell is now available in the Azure portal Data Explorer, giving you a terminal-style interface to navigate databases and containers, run NoSQL queries, inspect resources, and update data directly in the portal.	2026-10-02
Preparing governments for an era of interconnected cyber risk Microsoft Security Blog (website)	Microsoft's 2026 Digital Defense Report finds government agencies accounted for 27% of observed cyber activity in 2026 (up from 17% in 2025), so public-sector security teams should reassess threat models, supplier risk, and incident response readiness.	2026-10-02
Insights from the 2026 Microsoft Digital Defense Report Microsoft Security Blog (website)	The 2026 Microsoft Digital Defense Report emphasises a more interconnected security environment, so security teams should review cross-domain visibility, detection and response playbooks, and third-party risk coverage to address cascading threats.	2026-10-02
GitHub-hosted agents with Pay-as-you-Go pricing are now generally available in Azure Pipelines Azure DevOps Blog (website)	General availability: Azure Pipelines now supports GitHub-hosted agents with pay-as-you-go pricing; you can run pipelines on native Apple silicon, and larger Linux and Windows VMs, and pay only for pipeline execution time instead of buying parallel-job capacity.	2026-10-02
Migrating Elasticsearch Mappings to Azure Cosmos DB Azure Cosmos DB Blog (website)	When migrating from Elasticsearch to Azure Cosmos DB, translate each Elasticsearch mapping into Cosmos DB container configuration, because Cosmos DB is schema-agnostic and has no single mapping document, so you must configure storage and indexing via container settings.	2026-10-01
SharePoint Framework (SPFx) roadmap update – September 2026 Microsoft 365 Developer Blog (website)	Copilot UX components for SharePoint Framework will be Generally Available in October 2026; SPFx 1.24 Beta 5 is available now (React 18 support coming in 1.24), so update test projects and validate Node.js compatibility before the GA.	2026-10-01
Network security perimeter metrics are now generally available in Public Cloud Azure Networking Blog (website)	GA: Network security perimeter metrics are now generally available in Public Cloud via Azure Monitor,enable and query these metrics to create dashboards, alerts, and operational monitoring for access patterns and unexpected traffic behaviour.	2026-10-01
Secure what’s next: Your guide to Microsoft Security at Microsoft Ignite 2026 Microsoft Security Blog (website)	Review Microsoft's Ignite 2026 Security guide and plan to attend or watch the sessions and demos that cover the AI-first, end-to-end security platform protecting identities, devices, data, applications, clouds, infrastructure, and AI agents.	2026-10-01
Everything released in September 2026 for Azure Developer CLI Azure SDK Blog (website)	azd (Azure Developer CLI) added dependency-aware extension uninstall and versioned extension contracts, top-level infrastructure and service layers in project configuration, deployment-phase concurrency limits, and local-socket transport for external authentication hosts: update	2026-10-01
Updates to Copilot Code Reviews for Azure Repos Azure DevOps Blog (website)	Copilot Code Reviews for Azure Repos (public preview) now offers configurable effort levels to control how much time Copilot spends on a pull request review, along with bug fixes and feature improvements, so set the effort level when creating reviews to balance review depth and l	2026-10-01
Microsoft and IBM bring enterprise-scale workload orchestration to Azure with IBM Spectrum Symphony Azure Compute Blog (website)	Plan to deploy the IBM Spectrum Symphony Provider Plugin for Azure Compute Fleet so Spectrum Symphony can dynamically access and manage Azure compute capacity for large-scale AI, analytics, and HPC workloads.	2026-10-01
Responsible infrastructure at hyperscale: Managing the full lifecycle of Azure hardware Microsoft Azure Blog (website)	Azure is introducing more efficient datacentre systems and Circular Centers to extend hardware service life; update your asset refresh plans, hardware disposal and procurement expectations, and sustainability reporting to reflect longer lifecycles.	2026-10-01
Unauthenticated command injection on internet-facing mail servers: tracking CVE-2026-73570 Microsoft Security Blog (website)	Operators of internet-facing Zimbra mail servers should implement Microsoft Threat Intelligence's published mitigation guidance and detection recommendations for CVE-2026-73570, and hunt for the indicators of compromise and attack paths described in the report.	2026-10-01
Azure Cosmos DB Migration Guide for Elasticsearch Users Azure Cosmos DB Blog (website)	Evaluate migrating Elasticsearch-backed search into Azure Cosmos DB's built-in full-text search when your application data already lives in Cosmos DB, to consolidate operational data and search and potentially improve price-performance; use the Azure Cosmos DB Migration Guide for	2026-10-01
Bring your plugin to Microsoft Copilot with Work IQ Developer Tools Microsoft 365 Developer Blog (website)	Use Work IQ Developer Tools (WIQD) to package and register an existing or new plugin, containing skills, MCP servers, or agents, into the Microsoft Copilot plugin registry; import the plugin into WIQD and follow the Copilot packaging workflow.	2026-10-01
Cosmos DB Mirroring in Fabric Now Supports Virtual Network Data Gateways Azure Cosmos DB Blog (website)	Cosmos DB mirroring in Microsoft Fabric now supports Virtual Network Data Gateways: provision a gateway inside your VNet to keep public network access disabled during setup and for ongoing replication of private-endpoint secured Cosmos accounts.	2026-09-30
Microsoft & Snowflake’s Commitment to Apache Ossie Power BI Blog (website)	Microsoft and Snowflake have committed to Apache Ossie (incubating), a vendor-neutral standard for exchanging semantic metadata across analytics, AI, and BI; teams should track Ossie for upcoming semantic interoperability between Fabric, Microsoft Databases, and Snowflake.	2026-09-30
Aspire 13.6: Your dashboard gets memory Aspire Blog (website)	Aspire 13.6 persists dashboard telemetry across runs, adds in-dashboard container exec shells, first-party Java and Rust hosting, portable volume paths, and previews Azure Container Apps Sandboxes (preview).	2026-09-30
Phishing Abuses RMM Tools for Persistent Access Microsoft Security Blog (website)	If you use MSP360 RMM or ScreenConnect, audit for unauthorised ScreenConnect deployments and redundant remote-access channels, revoke suspicious MSP360 accounts or sessions, rotate credentials, and enable multi-factor authentication while increasing monitoring for persistence and	2026-09-30
Why content extraction still matters in the GenAI era Microsoft Foundry Blog (website)	GenAI makes trustworthy document extraction more critical: assess whether you need precise, structured outputs (use Azure Document Intelligence) or broader semantic content pipelines and integration (use Azure Content Understanding), then update your ingestion pipeline accordingl	2026-09-30
Azure SDK Release (September 2026) Azure SDK Blog (website)	Azure SDK September 2026 release is available; review the release notes, identify which client packages you use, and schedule upgrades to address any security fixes, deprecations, or breaking changes noted.	2026-09-30
What’s new in Microsoft Intune – September Microsoft Intune Blog (website)	Intune adds staged app and policy rollouts to reduce deployment risk, a consolidated device investigation view for troubleshooting, and expanded advanced management capabilities for more government organisations, so review your rollout stages and troubleshooting workflows.	2026-09-30
Announcing General Availability of Azure Lasv5 and Laosv5 VMs Based on 5th Gen AMD EPYC™ processors Azure Compute Blog (website)	GA: Azure Lasv5 and Laosv5 local-storage-optimised VMs (5th Gen AMD EPYC) are now generally available,consider them for storage-heavy workloads that require high local NVMe capacity, throughput, I/O performance, and improved networking.	2026-09-30
SQL Server on Azure Local is now generally available Microsoft Azure Blog (website)	SQL Server on Azure Local is now generally available (GA); evaluate deploying it to modernise data residency while retaining control of infrastructure, connectivity, and data placement, and plan migrations, networking, and operations accordingly.	2026-09-30
Beyond source code: A path to the keys to the kingdom Microsoft Security Blog (website)	Storm-3068 demonstrates a compromised identity can be escalated to broader cloud access, so review and harden identities, CI/CD pipelines, and cloud resource permissions and apply the Microsoft Security Blog guidance to reduce blast radius from identity compromise.	2026-09-30
More EDA Job Sets per Volume: Azure NetApp Files Raises the Performance Bar Azure Storage Blog (website)	Azure NetApp Files now offers a "large volume breakthrough mode" that can nearly double per-volume metadata performance for EDA workloads; re-run your performance tests and consider enabling this mode to fit more concurrent job sets per volume.	2026-09-30
DiskANN Vector Index and Vector Search Are Now Generally Available in Azure SQL Azure SQL Devs' Corner (website)	Generally available (GA): DiskANN vector index and vector search are now GA in Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance with the always-up-to-date update policy, and SQL database in Microsoft Fabric, so you can store vectors with relational data and run approximate nearest-	2026-09-30
Star Blizzard refines phishing and malware delivery with the RedFlick technique Microsoft Security Blog (website)	Hunt and block RedFlick-related activity: Microsoft observed Star Blizzard using large-scale phishing and accounts on compromised websites to deliver evasive malware, so prioritise detection tuning, phishing protections, and incident-response playbooks.	2026-09-30
What’s new across Microsoft SQL at SQLCon/FabCon Europe 2026 Azure SQL Devs' Corner (website)	Azure SQL team is posting live from SQLCon/FabCon Europe 2026 with a roundup of new Microsoft SQL announcements, so read the Azure SQL Dev Corner post to see which features are GA, preview, retired, or require action for your deployments.	2026-09-29
How to build an app on Azure SQL with an AI coding agent Azure SQL Devs' Corner (website)	Microsoft is shipping Microsoft SQL Agent Skills: import or enable these skills in your AI coding agent so it can understand Azure SQL and generate or configure Azure SQL resources when building apps.	2026-09-29
Announcing Public Preview for Azure Cosmos DB in Fabric Database Hub! Azure Cosmos DB Blog (website)	Public preview: Azure Cosmos DB is now supported in Fabric Database Hub, so open Database Hub to discover and monitor every Cosmos DB account you can access and compare their health alongside other Microsoft database engines.	2026-09-29
Power BI’s next chapter: The evolution of business intelligence Power BI Blog (website)	Review the FabCon and SQLCon 2026 announcements from Barcelona to identify Fabric and Microsoft Databases changes related to Microsoft Copilot and Agents, and update your deployment, configuration, and governance plans accordingly.	2026-09-29
FabCon and SQLCon 2026 in Barcelona: Building the data foundation for Microsoft Copilot and agents Microsoft Azure Blog (website)	Microsoft announced new Microsoft Fabric and SQL innovations at FabCon and SQLCon 2026 to help build trusted data foundations for Microsoft Copilot and agents; review the announced features and plan updates to data ingestion, governance, and integration for Copilot/agent workload	2026-09-29
MSSQL Extension for VS Code: New Getting Started Page, Agent skills, SQL Formatter, and more Azure SQL Devs' Corner (website)	Public Preview: MSSQL extension for VS Code v1.46 adds a Getting Started page with quick actions, guided walkthroughs, dev container templates, a built-in SQL formatter, and one-click install of Microsoft SQL agent skills for GitHub Copilot, so open the new page and enable the ag	2026-09-29
Build Agentic UI with the new Blazor AI components .NET Blog (website)	New Blazor AI components let you add streamed content, tool integrations, approvals, shared state, and generative experiences to Blazor apps; evaluate them and plan how to integrate these components into your UI and state management.	2026-09-29
SQLAlchemy 2.1 brings built-in support for mssql-python Azure SQL Devs' Corner (website)	GA: SQLAlchemy 2.1 adds built-in support for mssql-python (Microsoft's Python driver for SQL Server); upgrade to SQLAlchemy 2.1 and use the mssql+mssqlpython dialect to connect your ORM or Core apps with mssql-python.	2026-09-29
Announcing the Public Preview of Local Time Zone Support in Azure SQL Database Azure SQL Devs' Corner (website)	Public preview: Azure SQL Database now supports setting a local time zone at the database or session level via T-SQL (no infrastructure changes required), so update T-SQL or connection logic if your apps depend on DB-local time behaviour.	2026-09-29
NeedyMantis: Unpacking a post-compromise malware family used in targeted operations Microsoft Security Blog (website)	Microsoft Threat Intelligence details NeedyMantis, a modular post-compromise malware family that uses custom loaders, encrypted archives, and extensible components to maintain long-term access; hunt for those behaviours, update EDR and SIEM detection rules, and rehearse containme	2026-09-29
Enhancing Microsoft Azure Virtual Machine lifecycle Microsoft Azure Blog (website)	Microsoft has enhanced the Azure Virtual Machine lifecycle policy; review the updated guidance and adjust your VM image, OS support, and retirement planning to align with the published timelines and transitions.	2026-09-29
Azure App Service on Azure Stack Hub 26R1 Released Azure App Service Blog (website)	GA: App Service on Azure Stack Hub 26R1 is available, download and apply the 26R1 update to your Azure Stack Hub deployments; it updates the App Service resource provider, application runtimes (including .NET and Java), fixes stalled controller startup, reduces database locking,	2026-09-28
Entra ID 53003: How to identify primary authentication when Authentication Details are empty? Microsoft Entra Blog (website)	If you see repeated Entra ID sign-ins flagged Error 53003 (BlockedByConditionalAccess) with empty Authentication Details, follow the Entra blog's investigation guidance and collect full sign-in logs, Conditional Access evaluation details, and additional diagnostics to determine w	2026-09-28
Entra Conditional Access Policy not blocking log ins from mobile devices Microsoft Entra Blog (website)	Conditional Access policies may not persistently block mobile Power Apps sign-ins: the device shows an initial 'You cannot access this right now' message but dismissing it can still allow access, so test CA enforcement on mobile and verify with sign-in logs before rollout.	2026-09-26

Microsoft Tech Community (75)

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Title	Summary	Date
Microsoft FinOps News - September 2026 Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Pricing change: Microsoft Foundry model deployment pricing updates take effect 1 Sep 2026 for the EU Data Zone and regional deployments outside the US, and a new APAC Data Zone has been launched, review pricing and region choices for your deployments.	2026-10-02
What’s new in Windows 365: September 2026 recap Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop updates in September 2026 change Cloud PC provisioning, resilience, security, recovery, and IT management behaviour, review the release notes and update provisioning and management workflows as needed.	2026-10-02
ACR workloads for Azure specializations are moving to the FY27 rollover taxonomy Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Partner change: eligible ACR workloads for AI Platform, AI Apps, App Modernization, Azure Virtual Desktop, and Azure VMware Solution have been updated to the FY27 rollover taxonomy, check the refreshed specialization pages and Partner Center to confirm your ACR workloads still c	2026-10-02
Run an Ollaya decision model on Azure Container Apps Microsoft Tech Community (website)	You can run Ollaya decision models on Azure Container Apps using TypeSafe's Jev (released 15 Sep 2026) to handle bounded decision tasks instead of invoking a general-purpose LLM.	2026-10-02
EWS Deprecation Is Here – What This Means To You Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Deprecation: EWS in Exchange Online has begun; starting early October 2026, setting EWSEnabled to True alone will not keep EWS working, you must populate an AppID allowlist via EWSAllowedAppIDs to permit EWS access.	2026-10-02
Your Agent Shouldn't Wait for a Prompt: Build an Event-Driven Microsoft Foundry Routine Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Microsoft Foundry now supports event-driven routines that connect triggers (schedule, timer, GitHub issue, Teams message) to queued agent actions, implement routines to invoke agents automatically without manual prompting.	2026-10-02
What’s new in Copilot in SharePoint: October 2026 Microsoft Tech Community (website)	GA: Copilot in SharePoint began rolling out 30 Sep 2026; October features add review, restructuring, publishing of generated HTML, and image/document reshaping and sharing, plan adoption, permission changes, and governance for generated content.	2026-10-02
Explore App Advisor for details on how Frontier Accelerate for Marketplace can help you sell more Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Frontier Accelerate for Marketplace launched 28 Sep 2026 and App Advisor maps its milestone-based benefits into a partner journey, use App Advisor to identify the right resources, milestones, and investments to publish and scale Marketplace revenue.	2026-10-02
What's New in Microsoft Teams \| August - September 2026 Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Process change: What's New in Microsoft Teams moves from a monthly to a quarterly cadence (next editions in December, March, and June), and AI agent work such as Teams Phone Agent will span the quarterly releases, adjust how you track and roll out Teams updates.	2026-10-02
Build expressive voice experiences with new MAI models in Microsoft Foundry Microsoft Tech Community (website)	New MAI models are available in Microsoft Foundry: MAI-Transcribe-2-Streaming for live speech-to-text, MAI-Voice-2.1 for expressive multilingual text-to-speech, and MAI-Voice-2.1-Flash optimised for responsive, high-volume voice applications, evaluate these for voice agents.	2026-10-02
Deploying hosted agents in Foundry Agent Service via Terraform Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Use the AzAPI Terraform provider to deploy Foundry Hosted Agents as part of your IaC pipeline, so add AzAPI resources for Foundry Hosted Agents into your Terraform modules to version, review, and automate agent deployments.	2026-10-02
Foundry IQ in Microsoft Copilot Studio is now generally available Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Foundry IQ integration with Microsoft Copilot Studio is now generally available: connect a Foundry IQ knowledge base to Copilot Studio agents and configure Azure Private Link for zero public network exposure.	2026-10-02
Scaling distributed AI infrastructure with Azure’s ExpressRoute and AI Points of Presence (AI PoPs) Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Microsoft outlines using ExpressRoute and AI Points of Presence (AI PoPs) to scale distributed AI GPU deployments, so evaluate ExpressRoute and AI PoP connectivity and placement when designing multi-region or edge AI infrastructure.	2026-10-02
Land Your Offer - Anatomy of Revenue Generating Partner Offer - Part 2 - Copilot Envisioning Microsoft Tech Community (website)	For partners, use a funded Copilot envisioning engagement as the commercial entry point for larger customers (around 300+ seats) to drive conversations about usage-based Copilot billing and FinOps governance.	2026-10-02
Postgres MCP Server: Connect AI coding agents to PostgreSQL Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Microsoft open-sourced the Postgres MCP Server (MIT licence), a Rust-based service that connects MCP-compatible coding agents to PostgreSQL so agents can inspect schema and run permitted operations across local, on-prem, Azure, AWS, or GCP deployments.	2026-10-02
Build and govern AI agents across a multitenant organization Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Preview: Microsoft Entra Tenant Governance, multitenant agent management, and the Azure API Management dedicated AI Gateway tier are available as preview capabilities alongside Microsoft Agent 365,test them under preview terms and expect limited regional availability.	2026-10-02
From fragmented data to trusted intelligence: Microsoft at TM Forum Innovate Americas 2026 Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Microsoft will present approaches at TM Forum Innovate Americas 2026 for telecom operators to move from pilots to AI-native operations by building trusted data, shared operational context, and governance to enable AI across network, customer, and business workflows.	2026-10-02
New in Microsoft Marketplace: Offers published August 21-24, 2026 Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Microsoft Marketplace published 202 new offers (Aug 21-24, 2026); review the catalogue for new managed services and SaaS offers such as A2Z Managed Services for Azure and ACOS, and update procurement or evaluation pipelines accordingly.	2026-10-02
Beyond Agent Scores: Building Consequence-Aware Release Gates with Microsoft Foundry Microsoft Tech Community (website)	When releasing AI agents, implement consequence-aware release gates in Microsoft Foundry that check execution traces, tool-call limits, and policy enforcement so high semantic scores cannot mask disallowed actions or unsafe executions.	2026-10-02
Action Required: Upgrade ExchangeOnlineManagement PowerShell Module to Version 3.10.1 or Newer Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Action required: upgrade the ExchangeOnlineManagement PowerShell module to version 3.10.1 or newer to receive new Exchange Online authentication security enhancements, because older versions may not support future authentication requirements.	2026-10-02
Meet the New Microsoft Purview Classifiers Experience: Your Admin Playbook for Public Preview Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Public preview: Microsoft Purview adds a unified Classifiers experience,administrators should start using the new UI to discover, create, inspect, and manage classifiers and to review classified-item counts and policy dependencies before wider rollout.	2026-10-01
Microsoft Advertising API transition: SOAP to REST Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Transition notice: Microsoft Advertising is moving from SOAP to REST and will deprecate the SOAP API on 31 January 2027, so plan to migrate or update integrations to REST because new features will be delivered on REST during the transition.	2026-10-01
Available today: OpenAI's GPT-6.1 Sol and Claude Sonnet 5.5 in Microsoft Copilot Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Available now: GPT-6.1 Sol and Claude Sonnet 5.5 are added to Microsoft Copilot as selectable models,choose them in Copilot model settings to change response style and behaviour while Work IQ continues to ground outputs in your organisation's data.	2026-10-01
What's new in Microsoft Planner \| September 2026 Microsoft Tech Community (website)	September 2026: Planner Agent is now built into basic plans, so teams will have AI assistance in Planner by default,review plan settings and permissions to control agent behaviour and update governance as required.	2026-10-01
Meet the Hosted Skills Canvas: Build, Run, and Debug in GitHub Copilot Microsoft Tech Community (website)	New developer experience: the Azure Functions Hosted Skills canvas in the GitHub Copilot app lets you build, run, and debug Function Apps with trigger controls and live logs beside the conversation, so try it to keep the development loop in one window.	2026-10-01
Burst IBM Spectrum Symphony workloads into Azure with the new Azure Compute Fleet provider plugin Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Announcement: the IBM Spectrum Symphony Provider Plugin for Azure Compute Fleet enables bursting Symphony workloads into Azure,configure the provider plugin and Symphony Host Factory connector to extend capacity for HPC, AI, and analytics jobs.	2026-10-01
Digital Sovereignty specialization attainment and renewal moved to Partner Center Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Effective 30 September 2026: Digital Sovereignty specialization attainment and renewal move to Partner Center,partners must complete renewals and new attainments through Partner Center on their anniversary dates; ongoing manual enrollments can finish under the original process.	2026-10-01
Engineering for work in motion: How Surface designed 5G for a 12-inch Pro Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Device planning: Surface Pro for Business now offers optional 5G for field workers, so update device provisioning, connectivity policies, and security controls for staff who may rely on cellular instead of organisational Wi-Fi.	2026-10-01
Now live: Earn the Frontier Partner specialization Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Enrollment open: the Frontier Partner specialization is now available in Partner Center,partners who build and govern AI agents across Microsoft 365 Copilot, Azure AI Foundry, GitHub Copilot, Defender, Entra, and Purview should enrol and meet the published requirements.	2026-10-01
Bring Azure Logic Apps connectors into your .NET applications with the Azure Connectors SDK Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Start using the Azure Connectors SDK in your .NET apps to call Logic Apps and Power Platform connectors with a typed client, offloading authentication, pagination, and error handling from your codebase.	2026-10-01
From "Agent Deployed" to "Agent Ready" - Agent Acceptance Gateway Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Add an Agent Acceptance Gateway to your handover: have the application team call the Foundry project endpoint with the expected identity and verify the named agent can reach its configured services before declaring the agent ready.	2026-10-01
Cohere Embed V5 brings more relevant retrieval to Microsoft Foundry Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Switch or test Microsoft Foundry embeddings to Cohere Embed V5 Pro or Embed V5 Fast to get stronger multimodal retrieval, support for 100+ languages, and flexible vector sizes for enterprise search and AI apps.	2026-10-01
Episode 2: Reduce restarts with Hotpatch for Windows Server 2025 \| The Azure Arc Check-In Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Evaluate Hotpatch for eligible Windows Server 2025 machines (via Azure) to reduce reboots when applying monthly security updates and to shrink maintenance windows for hybrid server fleets.	2026-10-01
Now generally available: Regional resiliency for Azure Virtual Desktop Microsoft Tech Community (website)	GA: Azure Virtual Desktop regional host pools are now generally available in East US 2 and Central US,create regional host pools to reduce cross-region metadata dependencies and improve service resiliency; Windows 365 will receive the same improvements via service-managed rollout	2026-10-01
What’s new in Microsoft Sentinel: September 2026 Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Start using Sentinel and Defender's new Case Management shared workspace for investigations, adopt Defender unified RBAC custom roles for GDAP, and use the Sentinel Data Lake Codeless Connector Framework to ingest multi-account data with fewer connectors; check the expanded conne	2026-10-01
What's new in Agent 365 - September 2026 Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Review the September Agent 365 updates and adopt the new visibility, control, and governance capabilities to measure agent value, track resource consumption, and centralise policy across your agent estate.	2026-10-01
Skill vs. will: What leaders must solve for AI adoption Microsoft Tech Community (website)	When driving AI adoption, distinguish whether issues are skill gaps, motivation, or system barriers and target the response with focused training, incentives, or process changes to get teams to change how they work.	2026-10-01
Let the query decide: introducing auto retrieval reasoning effort Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Enable the new auto retrieval reasoning effort mode for Foundry IQ Knowledge Bases to regain about 97.6% of high-effort evidence recall while using 46.9% fewer query planning tokens, reducing token costs on mixed retrieval workloads.	2026-10-01
This Cybersecurity Awareness Month, build skills to secure the future Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Microsoft is running Cybersecurity Awareness Month with role-based learning on AI Skills Navigator, expert sessions, and free events; review the available learning paths and join events to improve security practices relevant to your role.	2026-09-30
Azure Databricks Cost and Workload Assessment: a Local Web UI Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Use the Assessment & Optimization Workbench local web application to pull Azure billing and Databricks compute data, select workspaces and dates, run analyses, and visualise costs and workload hotspots to prioritise optimisation work.	2026-09-30
Scaling classification and labeling: an interactive reference architecture update Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Download the updated interactive Microsoft Purview reference architecture for classification and labeling from GitHub to review how the new public previews make it possible to scale auto-labeling across your estate.	2026-09-30
September 2026 M365 Champions Community call Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Microsoft 365 Champions launched a Champion Stories programme to collect filmed Copilot adoption case studies; submit your organisation's Copilot adoption story at aka.ms/ChampionStory to be considered for publication.	2026-09-30
Microsoft Intune Settings Catalog updated to support Windows 11, version 26H2 Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Microsoft Intune Settings Catalog now provides day-zero support for Windows 11, version 26H2 validated policy settings (rolling out globally); check your Intune tenant's Settings Catalog and author or update policies to adopt 26H2 features.	2026-09-30
Introducing GPT-6.1 Sol in Microsoft Foundry: Advanced intelligence, optimized for production agents Microsoft Tech Community (website)	GPT-6.1 Sol is now generally available in Microsoft Foundry; evaluate it for production agents to compare capability and cost against earlier GPT-6 series models and consider testing migrations or new agent deployments.	2026-09-30
Database Hub in Fabric: Now in Public Preview -Turn Database Signals into Guided Action Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Database Hub in Microsoft Fabric is now in public preview, centralising inventory, health, performance, security, and optimisation insights so you can consolidate database signals and follow guided actions to remediate issues.	2026-09-30
Now Available: Management Group–Scoped Savings Plan and Reservation Recommendations in Azure Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Savings plan and reservation recommendations are now available at management group scope in the Azure Portal and via REST API, so evaluate and apply commitments across your organisational hierarchy to increase coverage and savings.	2026-09-30
Public Preview: Auto-pause and auto-resume for Azure SQL Database Hyperscale Serverless Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Auto-pause and auto-resume for Azure SQL Database Hyperscale Serverless is in public preview; enable it for new or existing Hyperscale Serverless databases to pause compute during idle periods (storage billing continues) and reduce costs.	2026-09-30
Bring Your Azure DevOps Repos to Azure SRE Agent Plugins Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Azure SRE Agent Plugins now support Azure DevOps repositories as plugin marketplaces, so point agents at your Azure DevOps repo to install and pin plugins without mirroring to GitHub.	2026-09-30
Comparing Three Approaches to AI Agent Evaluation and Observability Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Collect end-to-end execution traces (prompts, model responses, tool calls, latency, token usage, errors) alongside repeatable evaluation scores (task completion, tool-call accuracy, groundedness, safety) so you can diagnose agent failures rather than relying on scores alone.	2026-09-30
Windows Hardware Compatibility Program guidance for Windows 11, version 26H2 Microsoft Tech Community (website)	If you certify hardware for Windows 11, continue using the existing WHCP baseline and Windows 11, version 25H2 certification process,Microsoft will not introduce a separate WHCP designation, HLK kit, or submission path for version 26H2.	2026-09-30
System Center 2022 Update Rollup 4 Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Install System Center 2022 Update Rollup 4 to get targeted fixes and compatibility improvements, notably Virtual Machine Manager support for newer Linux guests (RHEL 10, Oracle Linux 10, Rocky Linux 10, Debian 13, SUSE Linux 15, OpenEuler 24.03) and improved VM deployment and net	2026-09-30
SQL Server Migration, Reimagined with AI-Powered Skills Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Use the new SQL Migration Agent Skills (AI-powered) to guide assessment, compatibility checks, destination selection, sizing, migration planning, execution, and validation across your SQL Server migration workflow.	2026-09-30
Windows 11, version 26H2 security baseline Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Download the Windows 11, version 26H2 security baseline from the Microsoft Security Compliance Toolkit, test and customise the updated settings in your environment, noting changes such as the Ready Print driver ranking now configured as Enabled.	2026-09-30
An IT pro’s guide to Windows 11, version 26H2 Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Windows 11, version 26H2 is Generally Available and is delivered as a lightweight enablement package to eligible devices running 25H2 or 24H2,plan deployment of the enablement package to move devices with minimal disruption.	2026-09-30
Dell PowerScale for Azure is now Generally Available Microsoft Tech Community (website)	GA: Dell PowerScale for Azure (Dell managed) is now generally available as an Azure-native, fully managed PowerScale service,you can provision, manage, and pay for PowerScale through Azure for enterprise NAS workloads.	2026-09-30
What's New in Excel (September 2026) Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Insiders of Excel for Windows and Mac get new Copilot model choices (Grok via Frontier, Anthropic Claude Fable 5.1, OpenAI GPT-6 Astra) plus UI updates such as lists and nested arrays in cells, naming a table at creation, and centre across selection in the merge cell menu.	2026-09-30
Sending Email from an AKS Pod Without a Single Secret Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Implement the Tech Community pattern to send email from an AKS pod without adding SMTP credentials, shared mailbox passwords, or long-lived app secrets; follow the guide to remove stored secrets from your pod email flow.	2026-09-29
From optics to AI: diving into Surface camera innovation Microsoft Tech Community (website)	New Surface Pro 12-inch and Surface Laptop 13-inch include a coordinated camera module, image signal processor, and on-device AI that maintain clarity and natural colour as lighting changes, so include these devices in procurement and test imaging and driver behaviour for video-c	2026-09-29
Partner Blog \| Build. Monetize. Scale. Frontier Accelerate for Marketplace launches to power software companies on Microsoft Marketplace Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Available now: Frontier Accelerate for Marketplace is launched; partners should enrol to access consolidated resources for publishing, becoming transactable, aligning with Microsoft sellers, and accelerating marketplace monetisation.	2026-09-29
Introducing version-specific System Manifest delivery during Windows OOBE Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Hardware Dev Center now lets ARM system makers request approval to deliver a specific System Manifest version during Windows OOBE, enabling devices to hit an approved driver and firmware baseline for a reliable first-run experience.	2026-09-29
September update: What’s new for partners in Azure Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Review the September Azure partner update: Frontier Accelerate for Marketplace is available now, and the bulletin lists upcoming CSP promotions, AI agent skilling, co-sell training, and the Frontier Transformation Engineer badge with resources to prepare.	2026-09-29
Claude Sonnet 5.5 is now available in Microsoft Foundry Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Available now: Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5.5 is in Microsoft Foundry; teams can upgrade to Sonnet 5.5 for improved coding and knowledge-work quality, faster responses, and lower cost per task for many workloads.	2026-09-29
From Camera to Canvas: How Multimodal GenAI Automates Shop Floor Instructions Microsoft Tech Community (website)	If you have assembly videos, evaluate using multimodal GenAI on Azure to automate conversion of raw footage into reviewable, illustrated work instructions and reduce manual documentation effort.	2026-09-29
Open Sourcing the Azure Policy Linter! Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Available now: the Azure Policy Linter is open source on GitHub; run the CLI linter when authoring policy definitions to surface known issues, gotchas, and recommended patterns before you assign policies to your environment.	2026-09-29
Change Management Best Practices to Drive Value with Agent Builder Microsoft Tech Community (website)	When rolling out Agent Builder, apply change-management practices: focus on awareness, measure confidence and value, and create conditions that encourage new workflows so adoption extends beyond a handful of licensed experimenters.	2026-09-29
Announcing the public preview of Local Time Zone Support in Azure SQL Database Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Public preview: Azure SQL Database now supports configuring a database-level local time zone and per-session T-SQL overrides, letting applications use current local date and time without adding explicit conversions (UTC remains the default).	2026-09-29
More performance and flexibility for Azure SQL Managed Instance Business Critical Microsoft Tech Community (website)	General availability starting 28 Sep 2026: Azure SQL Managed Instance Business Critical adds higher transaction log throughput and Flexible memory on Premium-series hardware, allowing you to increase memory independently of vCores for better performance.	2026-09-29
Rate limiting para agentes de IA: estratégias e trade-offs Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Apply different rate-limiting strategies based on agent execution pattern: keep low latency for chat agents with minimal throttling, batch or quota background tasks, provision burst-handling for event-driven loads, and cap multi-agent concurrency with token and request budgets, b	2026-09-29
From Domain Lists to Decisions: Scaling WHOIS Threat Intelligence with MDTI and Microsoft Graph Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Automate WHOIS-derived pivots at scale by integrating MDTI with Microsoft Graph to enrich registrant emails, creation dates, registrars, and nameservers across large domain lists instead of relying on manual lookups.	2026-09-29
Connecting Azure AI Foundry to OpenCode, and some troubleshooting steps Microsoft Tech Community (website)	When connecting Azure AI Foundry deployments to OpenCode, test the model endpoint directly to reproduce errors and use model-supported parameters (for example, replace max_tokens with max_completion_tokens) to resolve 'Unsupported parameter' failures.	2026-09-28
Bringing AI-Powered Grid Optimization Offline: Quantizing GridSFM for Local Deployment Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Quantise GridSFM models for local deployment so field engineers can run AC optimal power flow surrogate models offline, avoid sending telemetry off-site, and remove dependency on cloud connectivity in low-connectivity substations.	2026-09-28
From Jev to Your Laptop: Building "System One" Decision Models in ONNX with Mobius Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Build or export 'System One' decision models (Jev-style) as ONNX artefacts with Mobius so you can run fast, structured decision models locally without relying on string-generation outputs.	2026-09-28
Updating Purview DLP Sensitive Service Domain Groups with PowerShell Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Manage Purview DLP Sensitive Service Domain Groups with PowerShell: retrieve the tenant policy, add URL entries only when absent, validate the change, commit it, and verify the final configuration to make updates repeatable and reviewable.	2026-09-28
Scale repeatable channel sales with Marketplace resale enabled offers (REO) and App Advisor Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Enable Resale Enabled Offers (REO) in Microsoft Marketplace and configure the App Advisor step for negotiated deals so eligible channel partners can resell your offer in specified markets.	2026-09-26
CoreDNS in AKS: service discovery, upstream DNS, and failover Microsoft Tech Community (website)	Review and, if needed, customise AKS CoreDNS upstream selection and health-check behaviour: AKS CoreDNS picks a starting upstream, treats missing replies differently from error replies, and LocalDNS can alter the first-hop, so run the article's repeatable tests and update the Cor	2026-09-26

Azure Community (24)

↑ Top

Title	Summary	Date
Azure Weekly Update - 2nd October 2026 John Savill's Technical Training (youtube)	Retirement: Azure IoT Central and Microsoft HPC Pack are listed as retiring in this update, so plan and execute migrations or pick supported alternatives; the video also mentions VM Scale Sets automatic zone placement, so check the Azure docs for its availability and any migratio	2026-10-03
Somewhere, Elvis is still alive Scott Hanselman (youtube)	No Azure action required: this Scott Hanselman video is a community discussion about many-worlds and Elvis, and does not introduce any changes to Azure services, SKUs, regions, or configurations you need to act on.	2026-10-02
Decision model in action, Jev in Cloud operation with PowerShell Olivier Miossec (website)	Typesafe.ai released Jev, a decision model you can run in cloud operations with PowerShell: feed context and a predefined question, and it returns a predefined answer with a probability (supports three question types), so evaluate it for deterministic decision workflows.	2026-10-02
ISOC In Microsoft Defender: Deep Dive And When You Need An ISOC Workspace Charbel Nemnom (website)	Preview: Microsoft Defender announced a public preview of the Integrated Security Operations Center (ISOC) on 23 Sep 2026; if you run Defender XDR, create a test ISOC workspace to evaluate its SOC workflows and operational impact before wider deployment.	2026-10-02
Agentic Workflows with Peli de Halleux Nicholas Chang (youtube)	Community video discussion on agentic workflows with Peli de Halleux; informational content only, so there are no announced Azure product, region, or pricing changes and no immediate action required beyond watching for technical details.	2026-10-01
Agentic Azure Insights - 19th October Nicholas Chang (youtube)	No product changes or action items are listed in the Agentic Azure Insights 19 October community video; watch the recording for any implementation details or follow-up links.	2026-10-01
'A Human Should Check It' is Not an Agentic Security Control Graham Gold (website)	Do not treat "a human should check it" as an adequate security control for agentic or autonomous systems; update your threat models, approval gating, and auditing because MSRC's Low rating for a Security Copilot prompt injection relied on downstream human or automation approval,	2026-10-01
Windows 365 Wednesday - Windows 365 Link and Intune Jeroen Burgerhout (website)	Final post in the Windows 365 series explains using Windows 365 Link with Intune, so review and update your Intune device configuration and compliance policies to ensure Cloud PC linking and management work as intended.	2026-09-30
What’s New for Android Enterprise in Microsoft Intune 2609: September 2026 Highlights Nicky De Westelinck (website)	Microsoft Intune service release 2609 (September 2026) adds new Android Enterprise capabilities; review the official Intune 2609 release notes, test policy and app configurations on representative devices, and stage deployment before broad rollout.	2026-09-30
Cybersecurity Mittendrin - Folge 29 - KI-Prompts und Daten sicher? Nur mit Microsoft Purview! Tom Wechsler (youtube)	Watch the Cybersecurity Mittendrin episode on Microsoft Purview to learn concrete controls and configurations for protecting enterprise data and AI prompts, and use the episode's GitHub links for hands-on workshops and artefacts.	2026-09-30
Billions of tiny starships Scott Hanselman (youtube)	No Azure action required: Scott Hanselman's Hanselminutes episode interviews Michio Kaku about the concept of sending billions of nanoscale starships, listen if you want background on nanoscale spacecraft concepts.	2026-09-30
AI-901 Explained: What’s New in Microsoft’s Azure AI Fundamentals Exam Travis Roberts (website)	Retirement: Microsoft has retired the AI-900 exam and replaced it with AI-901, so update your certification study plans, training materials, and scheduled exam targets to align with the AI-901 objectives.	2026-09-30
Making AI reviews useful in pull requests Thomas Thornton (website)	Apply a managed-comment pattern for AI-generated PR reviews: tag commenter identity, assign severity levels, attach evidence links, and gate merges on resolved high-severity findings to reduce noise and make reviews actionable.	2026-09-30
Enterprise Live Migrations: Moving Azure DevOps Repos to GitHub Without the Freeze Gregor Suttie (website)	Use Enterprise Live Migrations to move Azure DevOps repositories to GitHub without imposing a repository freeze: evaluate this live-migration approach, run pre-migration checks, and validate repo integrity after cutover.	2026-09-29
Last week in Agent Security Update 1: We are not-a-mused! Will Velida (website)	Audit your agent-based tooling against the OWASP Top 10 for agents and implement mitigations such as stricter permissions, input validation, and sandboxing to reduce the risk of agent exploitation.	2026-09-29
Azure Devops Dependency scanning into Defender for Cloud Batsirai Tambo (website)	Configure your Azure DevOps pipelines to run dependency scanning and forward scan results into Microsoft Defender for Cloud using the guide, so dependency vulnerabilities appear in Defender for Cloud alerts and reports.	2026-09-29
Autopilot Device Preparation BitLocker 256 Bit Issue: The 128 Bit Race Is Finally Fixed Rudy Ooms (website)	Fixed: Autopilot Device Preparation no longer starts BitLocker early and will respect devices configured for XTS-AES-256 instead of falling back to the default XTS-AES-128; check devices that were encrypted with 128-bit earlier.	2026-09-29
ACA Sandboxes - Isolated, secure hosting for agents John Savill's Technical Training (youtube)	ACA Sandboxes are now available to host your agent workloads on the same isolation infrastructure Microsoft uses; consult https://sandboxes.azure.com and the companion whiteboard for setup, and configure microVM-based container agents, egress proxy, lifecycle controls, pricing, a	2026-09-29
ACA Sandboxes Quick Overview #ai #containers #agents John Savill's Technical Training (youtube)	ACA Sandboxes are now available to host agentic workloads on the same infrastructure Microsoft uses; start at https://sandboxes.azure.com to create isolated microVM-based sandboxes for container agents and configure egress and lifecycle settings.	2026-09-29
Faster Win32 App Delivery in Intune with Push Notifications Rudy Ooms (website)	Intune now uses push notifications to trigger faster delivery of required Win32 apps to online devices, so expect installs to start sooner and verify devices can receive Intune push messages and that the Intune Management Extension is healthy if deployments are delayed.	2026-09-27
Festive Tech Calendar 2026: What It Is and How to Take Part Gregor Suttie (website)	Gregor Suttie's post explains what the Festive Tech Calendar 2026 is and how to take part; read it if you plan to participate or contribute content.	2026-09-27
Ethical Hacking und Penetration Testing Tipps: Aufbau KI-Cybersicherheitslabors - Teil 11: Benchmark Tom Wechsler (youtube)	Run the automated benchmark tool from Tom Wechsler's repositories to download GGUF language models from Hugging Face and precisely measure raw processing and text-generation throughput in tokens per second on your CPU or NVIDIA GPU.	2026-09-27
Faster Required App Delivery After Autopilot Rudy Ooms (website)	Follow Rudy Ooms' guidance to trigger required (non-blocking) Win32 app installations immediately after Windows Autopilot's Enrollment Status Page (ESP) completes so those apps start installing as users reach the desktop.	2026-09-27
One Gym Session, One Cell Phone, One Working App Jamie Maguire (website)	The author published a small WPF Markdown editor with live preview and documents two runtime bugs and implementation notes you should review before building or running a similar local WPF editor.	2026-09-26

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