|
Azure Feeds Weekly: 10 Oct 2026 to 17 Oct 2026
This week, Azure released features and the cloud behaved briefly.
Key management: External key management for Managed HSM is GA in all public regions.
Service endpoint: Standard service endpoint is GA, use for scalable IaaS-to-PaaS connectivity.
Databricks gateway: Public preview lets serverless compute reach your VNet and transitively connected networks.
|
|
|
|
⭐ Top picks this week
Editor's picks, AI-assisted, advisory ordering of this week's items.
[Launched] Generally Available: External key management for Azure Key Vault Managed HSM
Generally Available: External key management for Azure Key Vault Managed HSM is now GA in all Azure public regions, enabling organisations with regulatory or sovereignty requirements to retain physical control of key-encryption keys for use with Azure services, so plan...
[Launched] Generally Available: Standard service endpoint
Generally Available (GA): Standard service endpoint in the Azure Private Link family is now available; configure it to connect Azure IaaS workloads to Azure PaaS services to address manageability and scale limitations.
[In preview] Public Preview: Azure Databricks Private network gateway
Public Preview: Azure Databricks Private Network Gateway is available, letting serverless Databricks compute connect to resources in your VNet and transitively connected networks via a single managed gateway, so evaluate and plan VNet routing and security controls before using...
|
|
|
|
| Title |
Summary |
Date |
🔍 Preview
[In preview] Public Preview: Azure Databricks Private network gateway
Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)
|
Public Preview: Azure Databricks Private Network Gateway is available, letting serverless Databricks compute connect to resources in your VNet and transitively connected networks via a single managed gateway, so evaluate and plan VNet routing and security controls before using... |
2026-10-17 |
🚀 Generally Available
[Launched] Generally Available: External key management for Azure Key Vault Managed HSM
Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)
|
Generally Available: External key management for Azure Key Vault Managed HSM is now GA in all Azure public regions, enabling organisations with regulatory or sovereignty requirements to retain physical control of key-encryption keys for use with Azure services, so plan... |
2026-10-17 |
🔍 Preview
[In preview] Public Preview: Azure Files cross-region data copy and synchronization with Azure Storage Mover
Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)
|
Preview: Azure Storage Mover now supports copying and synchronising Azure Files file shares across storage accounts, Azure regions, and subscriptions within the same tenant, with scheduled incremental transfers to maintain secondary copies. |
2026-10-16 |
🚀 Generally Available
[Launched] Generally Available: Standard service endpoint
Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)
|
Generally Available (GA): Standard service endpoint in the Azure Private Link family is now available; configure it to connect Azure IaaS workloads to Azure PaaS services to address manageability and scale limitations. |
2026-10-16 |
🚀 Generally Available
[Launched] Generally Availabile: Automatic zone balance for Virtual Machine Scale Sets
Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)
|
Generally Available: Automatic zone balance for Virtual Machine Scale Sets is now GA; it continuously monitors VM scale sets across availability zones and automatically redistributes instances when zonal imbalances occur, so review or enable it to improve zone distribution and... |
2026-10-16 |
🚀 Generally Available
[Launched] Generally Available: Azure Cloud HSM hardware audit logging
Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)
|
GA: Azure Cloud HSM now produces hardware-generated audit records for supported HSM management operations; enable and collect hardware audit logs to support security monitoring, compliance reporting, governance, and forensic investigations. |
2026-10-15 |
🚀 Generally Available
[Launched] Generally Available: Azure Site Recovery Support for Azure ARC-enabled Windows VMWare/Physical servers
Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)
|
GA: Azure Site Recovery now supports disaster recovery for Azure Arc-enabled Windows VMware virtual machines and on-premises physical servers; register ARC-managed machines with ASR and configure protection policies to add DR while retaining Azure ARC governance and inventory. |
2026-10-15 |
ℹ️ Update
Retirement: Azure Key Vault Secrets Provider Extension for Azure Arc enabled Kubernetes clusters
Microsoft Azure Release Communications (website)
|
Retirement: The Azure Key Vault Secrets Provider Extension for Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes clusters will be retired on 9 October 2027, plan and migrate to the Azure Key Vault Secret Store Extension before that date. |
2026-10-10 |
|
Azure Architecture Center
(1)
|
↑ Top
|
|
| Title |
Summary |
Date |
Autoscaling guidance
Azure Architecture Center (website)
|
Review the autoscaling guidance and implement dynamic resource allocation to match your application's performance requirements. |
2026-10-10 |
|
Microsoft Blogs
(28)
|
↑ Top
|
|
| Title |
Summary |
Date |
Managing open-weight model risk in enterprise deployments
Microsoft Security Blog (website)
|
Use the Microsoft and NVIDIA whitepaper's shared taxonomy, evaluation methods, and controls to assess and mitigate risks of open-weight models before production deployment, and update your model governance and risk-assessment artefacts to reference its guidance. |
2026-10-17 |
Design Patterns for Building Agentic Systems on Azure: The Planner-Executor Loop
Azure Architecture Blog (website)
|
Adopt the Planner-Executor loop pattern for agentic systems on Azure: implement a planner to decompose goals and an executor to call tools, and design for iterative result evaluation and error handling as described in the guidance. |
2026-10-16 |
What’s new in Microsoft Foundry | September 2026
Microsoft Foundry Blog (website)
|
September 2026: Microsoft Foundry added new models plus Routines, Tool Search, Model Router, and Insights; review the developer changelog, test these features against your Foundry workflows, and update any model routing or tool integration configurations. |
2026-10-16 |
Generally Available: Automatic Zone Balance for Virtual Machine Scale Sets
Azure Compute Blog (website)
|
GA: Automatic Zone Balance for Virtual Machine Scale Sets is now generally available; enable it on zonal scale sets so Azure continuously redistributes VM instances across availability zones to reduce single-zone impact and maintain resiliency. |
2026-10-16 |
Power BI October 2026 Feature Summary
Power BI Blog (website)
|
Generally Available (GA): Power BI now lets you create reports with custom visuals using Skills for Fabric; the October 2026 update also includes a Gantt chart (Preview) and enhancements to Copilot, AI, and semantic models you should review. |
2026-10-16 |
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. |
2026-10-16 |
Databricks ADBC connector for Power BI and Microsoft Fabric (Generally Available)
Power BI Blog (website)
|
GA: Databricks ADBC connector for Power BI and Microsoft Fabric is generally available; existing ODBC-based connections continue to work, migration is opt-in per connection, workspace, or tenant, and opting in moves you to the ADBC driver with memory-safety and... |
2026-10-16 |
Introducing dotnetup: A toolchain manager for .NET
.NET Blog (website)
|
dotnetup is a new toolchain manager for macOS and Linux that installs, manages, and updates user-local .NET SDKs and runtimes, so developers can maintain per-user SDK/runtime versions without touching system-wide packages. |
2026-10-16 |
Design Patterns for Building Agentic Systems on Azure: The Planner-Executor Loop
Azure Architecture Blog (website)
|
When building agentic systems on Azure, apply the Planner-Executor loop rather than a simple LLM-to-API wiring: separate planning from execution, orchestrate tool calls, and add result evaluation and recovery logic. |
2026-10-16 |
AI Agents: Meet the Azure Cosmos DB vNext Emulator
Azure Cosmos DB Blog (website)
|
Azure Cosmos DB vNext Emulator has been introduced: use the new emulator to run Cosmos DB locally for agentic development and longer coding-agent sessions, and evaluate it as an alternative to the legacy emulator for local testing. |
2026-10-16 |
Canada’s 2026 time zone updates: guidance for Microsoft SQL
Azure SQL Devs' Corner (website)
|
If you run SQL Server on Windows in affected British Columbia, Alberta, or Manitoba locations, apply Microsoft's interim guidance for the new Windows time zones and temporary workarounds before 1 Nov 2026, because those areas will not set clocks back and will remain at... |
2026-10-15 |
Azure MCP Server 3.0 stable release: More tools. More possibilities
Azure SDK Blog (website)
|
General availability (GA): Azure MCP Server 3.0 is now stable and adds AI agent tools for Terraform, backup, recovery, and troubleshooting, plus stronger default security settings, so plan to upgrade or deploy 3.0 to access these changes. |
2026-10-15 |
Microsoft named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Server Virtualization Platforms
Microsoft Azure Blog (website)
|
Microsoft was named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Server Virtualization Platforms; update your vendor evaluations and procurement artefacts to include Azure, Azure Arc, and Hyper-V as evaluated options and schedule proofs-of-concept if you rely on other... |
2026-10-15 |
From extraction to action: Using grounding and confidence to build reliable document workflows
Microsoft Foundry Blog (website)
|
Consume Azure Content Understanding's grounding, field-level confidence, and calibration outputs in your document-processing pipelines to route low-confidence fields for human review, set confidence thresholds to prioritise automation, and reduce manual verification effort. |
2026-10-15 |
Passkey/FIDO2 for users in mainland China – recommended approach?
Microsoft Entra Blog (website)
|
If your Microsoft Entra ID tenant is global but includes users physically located in mainland China, evaluate Passkey (Microsoft Authenticator) and FIDO2 security key compatibility and behaviour for those users before replacing SMS/voice with phishing-resistant authentication. |
2026-10-15 |
The hidden network: Inside the phishing infrastructure ecosystem powering global cybercrime
Microsoft Security Blog (website)
|
Microsoft disrupted a Chinese-language phishing infrastructure ecosystem (operators tracked as Storm-2990 and a marketplace tracked as Storm-3119); security teams should review phishing protections, update detection rules, and monitor for reconstitution or redirected campaigns. |
2026-10-15 |
October Patches for Azure DevOps Server
Azure DevOps Blog (website)
|
October patches for Azure DevOps Server were released: update your self-hosted Azure DevOps Server instances to the latest patched versions listed on the download page, and consult the Azure DevOps Blog post for which versions were patched and installation instructions. |
2026-10-14 |
Announcing .NET 11 Release Candidate 2
.NET Blog (website)
|
Preview: .NET 11 Release Candidate 2 is available, install the RC2 SDK in your dev and staging environments and test your apps, libraries, MSBuild/NuGet workflows, F#, ASP.NET Core, .NET MAUI, and Windows Forms projects before the final release. |
2026-10-14 |
Amazon Redshift V2 Connector for Microsoft Data Factory
Power BI Blog (website)
|
Microsoft updated the Amazon Redshift connector in Azure Data Factory to use the Amazon Redshift ODBC 2.x driver; validate your pipelines' connectivity and update any self-hosted integration runtime ODBC drivers to maintain compatibility and security. |
2026-10-14 |
Infrastructure for the frontier era: Scaling intelligence through open industry collaboration
Microsoft Azure Blog (website)
|
Microsoft outlines an industry-collaboration approach for scaling intelligence beyond larger frontier models; reassess your AI infrastructure strategy, standards choices, and supplier engagements to align with the collaboration and scaling patterns the post describes. |
2026-10-14 |
Advancing hardware security with open-source Integrated HSM technology
Microsoft Azure Blog (website)
|
Microsoft published an open-source Integrated HSM technology for hardware security; review the project and assess integrating it into your cryptographic key protection, HSM provisioning, and device attestation workflows. |
2026-10-14 |
Azure Content Understanding Prebuilt Analyzers: packaging domain knowledge for document AI
Microsoft Foundry Blog (website)
|
Preview: Azure Content Understanding prebuilt analyzers package domain knowledge, grounding, and confidence for document AI; use the Advanced Contextualization preview benchmarks to compare extraction quality, modelled cost, and latency on your documents before integrating them. |
2026-10-14 |
Build AI-powered apps without creating a vector database
Microsoft 365 Developer Blog (website)
|
Use the Microsoft 365 Copilot Retrieval API for SharePoint Embedded to add Microsoft 365 Copilot and agent experiences to SharePoint Embedded apps and ground them in Microsoft 365 content without creating or managing a separate vector database. |
2026-10-14 |
.NET and .NET Framework October 2026 servicing releases updates
.NET Blog (website)
|
October 2026 servicing releases for .NET and .NET Framework are available, apply the latest servicing updates to your servers and CI/CD images and rebuild or test affected applications against the updated runtimes and frameworks. |
2026-10-13 |
Durable Task in the Real World: What Problems Does It Actually Solve?
.NET Blog (website)
|
Decide whether to adopt Durable Task (durable execution) in your .NET workflows: the post provides five practical examples of when to use it, when to avoid it, and the implications for building AI agents. |
2026-10-13 |
Deep dive into Azure Maia 300 architecture
Microsoft Azure Blog (website)
|
Read the deep dive on Azure Maia 300 architecture to inform design decisions for cloud-scale, agentic inference deployments and evaluate Maia 300's architectural fit with your inference workloads and deployment patterns. |
2026-10-13 |
Sole Global Administrator locked out — no working MFA method — need account recovery
Microsoft Entra Blog (website)
|
If you are the sole Global Administrator and lose your only MFA device, you will be locked out and must recover your Entra ID tenant; immediately add emergency access accounts, register multiple alternate MFA methods, and create at least one additional Global Administrator to... |
2026-10-12 |
From metrics to answers: Grafana dashboards for Azure App Service
Azure App Service Blog (website)
|
Follow the App Service blog to adopt Grafana dashboards for Azure App Service: map key metrics to concrete investigation steps and the diagnostic tools to run when your app slows, so you can prioritise what to check first. |
2026-10-12 |
|
Microsoft Tech Community
(72)
|
↑ Top
|
|
| Title |
Summary |
Date |
SQL developer tools at SQL Modernization Day
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
MSSQL VS Code extension now ships monthly, Microsoft SQL drivers have been updated for SQL Server 2025, GitHub Copilot can understand your schema, and new Microsoft SQL skills are in public preview to let coding agents assess and migrate SQL Server to Azure SQL,test these in... |
2026-10-16 |
Bounded Local Agentic Patterns for Clinical RAG
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Prototype guidance: restrict model authority by implementing fixed dispatch and orchestration server-side (Rust Rocket), let local models only classify or propose typed plans, and validate every plan server-side to reduce attack surface, make latency predictable, and simplify... |
2026-10-16 |
Migrating Azure Cosmos DB Across Regions
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Follow the corrected online copy sequence and included Azure CLI snippets in this Cosmos DB migration walkthrough, and pick one of three migration patterns (simplest move, smallest application outage, or durable multi-region) while planning migration duration separately from... |
2026-10-16 |
Preparing for end of support for CNAME auto-discovery in Windows MDM-only enrollment
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Retirement: Microsoft Intune will end support for CNAME-based EnterpriseEnrollment auto-discovery in Windows MDM-only enrollment on 15 January 2027, so remove CNAME dependencies and prepare to supply or configure the Microsoft enrollment server URL or an alternative discovery... |
2026-10-16 |
ProcExp, ZoomIt, BgInfo, ListDLLs, ProcDump, ProcMon, PsKill, Sigcheck, ZoomIt for macOS, RDCMan
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Sysinternals updates available: Process Explorer v17.2 adds process efficiency mode, persistent activity history, live kernel memory dumps, a process memory map explorer, a Devices page, and NPU monitoring; ZoomIt v12.3 adds dictation captions; BgInfo v4.34 and other utilities... |
2026-10-16 |
Muse Spark Open is available in Microsoft Foundry Models
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
GA: Muse Spark Open, an open-weight coding-optimised model from Meta trained for agentic coding workflows, is now available in Microsoft Foundry Models via the Hugging Face collection,consider it for coding agents that need reliable tool calling and deeper codebase understanding. |
2026-10-16 |
Upcoming October 2026 Microsoft 365 Champion community call
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Register for the Microsoft 365 Champion community call on 27 October 2026 (Teams webinar); registration sends the join link by email and sessions run 08:05-09:00 PT and 17:05-18:00 PT, so sign up if you want to attend either slot. |
2026-10-16 |
Building an AI-ready workspace around Surface Laptop Ultra
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Surface Laptop Ultra is positioned for local AI workloads and Microsoft recommends using Designed for Surface accessories to extend the workspace, so if you deploy these devices review accessory compatibility and plan local model workload and thermal behaviour accordingly. |
2026-10-16 |
Coming to Windows 11: An updated Photos experience
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Rolling change: Windows 11 will receive an updated Photos experience (Insiders first, broad rollout later this year); admins should review how current device management policies apply and test the new Photos behaviour on managed devices. |
2026-10-16 |
Shift+Enter Summit
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Shift+Enter Summit is a developer conference named after the Shift+Enter shortcut with a focus on small productivity moves; consult the summit materials if you plan to attend, present, or run related sessions. |
2026-10-16 |
Partner Blog | Attain the skills to scale AI innovation and customer impact
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Microsoft partners should upskill sales, technical, and delivery teams to connect Copilot, agents, and intelligent applications to customers' data, cloud infrastructure, and governance so you can design, position, and operate AI at scale. |
2026-10-16 |
New GitHub Certified: Agentic AI Business Professional
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
New GitHub Certified: Agentic AI Business Professional certification is available, so business professionals who design or run agentic workflows with GitHub and GitHub Copilot should consider taking the credential to validate those skills. |
2026-10-16 |
Build your SaaS offer with the modernized SaaS Accelerator to sell on Marketplace
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Microsoft updated the SaaS Accelerator and added Marketplace-focused agent instructions as reference resources, so engineering teams building Marketplace integrations should review and adapt the accelerator and agent instructions rather than rebuilding subscription and billing... |
2026-10-16 |
New Microsoft Certified: Agentic DevOps Engineer Expert
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Microsoft Certified: Agentic DevOps Engineer Expert (Exam AZ-401) is now in beta, so DevOps engineers should evaluate the beta exam to validate skills in designing and running AI-assisted CI/CD, delivery, and monitoring across Azure DevOps and GitHub. |
2026-10-16 |
Where the Road Leads, Community Grows: The Caravana Cloud Story
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Caravana Cloud is an event series across Brazil organised with Microsoft MVPs to bring cloud knowledge and local connections to communities, so community organisers and local teams should consider similar in-person events or partnerships to grow local cloud skills. |
2026-10-16 |
Introducing Microsoft Copilot for legal
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Microsoft Copilot for legal is now generally available with 20+ purpose-built legal skills and partner-built plugins, so legal teams should pilot the offering and validate plugin behaviour, provenance, and human-review controls before relying on outputs in practice. |
2026-10-16 |
Maximize Oracle RAC Uptime on Azure VMs with FlashGrid Cluster available in Microsoft Marketplace
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
FlashGrid Cluster for running Oracle RAC across Azure availability zones is available in the Microsoft Marketplace, so architects deploying mission-critical Oracle on Azure VMs can deploy FlashGrid from Marketplace to span AZs for higher availability. |
2026-10-16 |
From Chat to Decisions: Bringing SLMs into Application Logic with Microsoft Olive and ONNX
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Microsoft Olive plus ONNX lets you bring semantic-level models into application logic to produce decisions (next action) rather than chat replies, so developers building decision workflows should evaluate Olive+ONNX for deterministic decision APIs integrated into their apps. |
2026-10-16 |
What Traffic Engineering Taught Us About Building an Azure App
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Apply traffic-engineering wayfinding to your Azure conference app: the post presents a digital-passport architecture and UX patterns for routing attendees, sponsor interactions, and stamp flows you can replicate in event apps. |
2026-10-15 |
Enterprise Adoption Guide for Azure SRE Agent, Part 2: From One Team to Enterprise-Wide Adoption
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Part 2 provides recommendations to scale Azure SRE Agent enterprise-wide: decide when to share an agent, when teams need their own, how agents should collaborate, and which deployment and governance topologies reduce complexity. |
2026-10-15 |
Enterprise Adoption Guide for Azure SRE Agent, Part 1: Deploying Your First Azure SRE Agent
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Part 1 gives a step-by-step guide to deploy your first Azure SRE Agent: pick initial use cases, complete the initial setup, and make early decisions about agent sharing so you can reduce operational toil and improve incident response. |
2026-10-15 |
End of Lifecycle for Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Retirement: Extended Security Updates for Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 ended on 13 October 2026, Microsoft will no longer provide security updates, so plan migration or compensating controls for affected servers. |
2026-10-15 |
How EQ Bank connects AI learning, innovation, and governance
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
EQ Bank's case study describes an enterprise framework that links AI learning, experimentation, oversight, and governance so organisations can scale AI experimentation while retaining security, risk, and regulatory controls. |
2026-10-15 |
GPT-chat-latest gets more intelligent, interactive, and personal in Microsoft Foundry
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Microsoft Foundry update: GPT-chat-latest upgrades to GPT-6-level intelligence for stronger reasoning across coding, search, multilingual interactions, personalisation, and task creation, and adds GenUI support for visual, interactive answers plus an interleaved response... |
2026-10-15 |
October update: What’s new in Security for partners
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Review the October 'Microsoft Security for partners' update: it lists Microsoft Sentinel and Defender changes, new Cloud Solution Provider incentives, skilling and customer success resources, so review CSP incentive changes and training for your security practice. |
2026-10-15 |
September 2026 Recap: Azure Database for PostgreSQL
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
GA: Cross-tenant customer-managed keys (CMK) are now Generally Available for Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server; Database Hub in Microsoft Fabric and Azure Backup for PostgreSQL Flexible Server (v2) are in public preview, so plan CMK adoption and test the preview... |
2026-10-15 |
mssql-python 1.16.0: Python 3.15 support, Conda, and faster fetches
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
mssql-python 1.16.0 released: adds Python 3.15 support, prebuilt wheels for x64 and ARM64 on Windows, Linux and macOS, an official Conda package on the Microsoft channel, and faster fetches; pip install --upgrade mssql-python to update. |
2026-10-15 |
Bring Azure SRE Agent into your developer workflow with the new canvas
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Azure SRE Agent adds a new canvas beside Copilot chat that surfaces the agent's findings and actions so you can investigate incidents alongside your code and tools, try the canvas to validate diagnoses within your developer workflow. |
2026-10-15 |
Introducing a team knowledge base, curated by Copilot and agents
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Preview: Copilot introduces a team knowledge base curated by Copilot and agents (Frontier Preview) to centralise team context for agents, evaluate the preview to see if it reduces fragmented or outdated information in your team workflows. |
2026-10-15 |
Secure Linux desktops with Microsoft Defender
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
If you manage developer Linux desktops, follow Microsoft's guidance on securing those endpoints with Microsoft Defender to reduce risk to source code, CI/CD pipelines and internal platforms. |
2026-10-15 |
Alberta 2026 time zone update available now
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Time zone change: Alberta will remain on Permanent DST (UTC-6); Microsoft released the September 2026 non-security preview update (22 Sept 2026) for Windows 11 25H2 and 24H2 to apply this, deploy the update or update your time zone policies before 1 Nov 2026. |
2026-10-15 |
British Columbia 2026 time zone update available now
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Time zone change: British Columbia will remain on Permanent DST (UTC-7); Microsoft released the September 2026 non-security preview update (22 Sept 2026) for Windows 11 25H2 to apply this, schedule deployment to avoid fallback on 1 Nov 2026. |
2026-10-15 |
Manitoba 2026 time zone update available now
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Time zone change: Manitoba will remain on Permanent DST (UTC-5) starting 1 Nov 2026; Microsoft is releasing the October 2026 Windows update to apply this, plan deployment to affected devices. |
2026-10-15 |
HA-Ready SAP HANA Disaster Recovery: a 2+2 setup across Azure Region with SAPHanaSR-angi
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
For cross-region SAP HANA disaster recovery on Azure, implement a 2+2 topology (two-node primary plus two-node DR) using SAP HANA System Replication and Pacemaker with SAPHanaSR-angi so the DR region offers local HA after failover. |
2026-10-15 |
Build a Simple GPU-Enabled Kubernetes Cluster on Azure N-Series VMs
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Build a two-node kubeadm GPU development cluster using the reference topology: control plane on Standard_D8s_v6 and GPU worker on Standard_NC24ads_A100_v4 (Ubuntu 24.04), with Kubernetes v1.33, containerd, Flannel CNI, NVIDIA Container Toolkit, and NVIDIA Kubernetes device... |
2026-10-15 |
Heaviside AI, OneTrust, and NKUSI-IT deliver transactable partner offers in Microsoft Marketplace
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Microsoft partners are publishing transact-capable offers in Microsoft Marketplace you can purchase directly: for example, Heaviside AI's NiaShield deploys into Commercial, GCC High, Azure Government, or European subscriptions, runs entirely in volatile memory, and lets you... |
2026-10-15 |
Introducing sqlsimtools
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
sqlsimtools is now in public preview: an open-source workload simulation suite (modern successor to ostress.exe) you can use to simulate many concurrent SQL users and queries for SQL Server testing, available at aka.ms/sqlsimtools. |
2026-10-15 |
Fine-Tuning and Auditing an On-Device SLM Traffic Controller with Real London Data
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
A guest case study demonstrates fine-tuning a 0.6-billion-parameter language model and serving it on a 6 GB consumer GPU via Microsoft Foundry Local to operate a nine-junction London traffic-signal simulation, showing on-device SLM feasibility for IoT traffic control. |
2026-10-14 |
Don’t start with AI. Start with the work.
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Before selecting Copilot, agents, or other AI tools, pick one recurring piece of work your team does, map its inputs, outputs, and pain points, and use that mapped process to decide if and how to automate. |
2026-10-14 |
Released: October 2026 Skype for Business Server Security Updates
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Microsoft released October 2026 Security Updates for Skype for Business Server SE, 2019, and 2015, apply SE CU1 SU2, Skype 2019 CU8 SU4, and Skype 2015 CU13 SU4, noting CU8 and CU13 updates require purchasing Extended Security Updates (ESU). |
2026-10-14 |
Released: October 2026 Exchange Server Security Updates
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Microsoft released October 2026 Security Updates for Exchange Server SE, 2019, and 2016, apply Exchange SE RTM updates, Exchange 2019 CU14/CU15 SUs, and Exchange 2016 CU23 SU, and note CU14/CU15 and CU23 access requires enrolment in the Period 2 ESU programme. |
2026-10-14 |
What's new on Microsoft Adoption – September 2026
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
September 2026 Microsoft Adoption updates delivered a redesigned Prompt Gallery, new Copilot skilling, hands-on communications guidance, and Teams resources, review these assets and fold relevant items into your skilling and rollout plans. |
2026-10-14 |
Which Reflection Model Should Power your Agent Optimizer?
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
When using Agent Optimizer in Foundry Agent Service, pick the reflection model that matches your agent type because the optimizer uses that model to generate, evaluate, and rank candidate configurations before you choose what to deploy. |
2026-10-14 |
Adding granular control: Windows Admin Center for Azure Arc-enabled Servers is now GA!
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
GA: Windows Admin Center for Azure Arc-enabled Servers is now Generally Available, so plan to use the in-portal, in-depth OS management experience for your Arc-managed hybrid servers. |
2026-10-14 |
Hands-on Webinar: Copilot Notebooks and Microsoft Learning Zone
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Educators should register for the hands-on webinar on Wednesday, 21 October at 8:00am Pacific to see Copilot Notebooks, the Study Guide, and Microsoft Learning Zone demos and classroom scenarios. |
2026-10-14 |
Powering Azure infrastructure from grid to chip
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Plan and validate power capacity and thermal design from grid to rack to chip for high-density GPU and accelerator clusters, because increasing compute density and long-running AI workloads change the power envelope for deployments. |
2026-10-14 |
Office LTSC 2021 support ends today
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Retirement: Support for Office LTSC 2021 ended on 13 October 2026; Microsoft no longer provides security updates, bug fixes, or technical support, so upgrade devices to a supported Office release immediately. |
2026-10-14 |
October update: What’s new for partners in AI Business Solutions
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Review the October partner update for AI Business Solutions: update your partner go-to-market, incentives, skilling, and Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption plans, and use the now-live Microsoft Ignite session catalog to build your event agenda. |
2026-10-14 |
Networking for the AI era: Building for scale, efficiency, and openness
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Design network architectures for AI by planning both scale-up, high-bandwidth, low-latency fabrics and scale-out, inter-site connectivity as model sizes and accelerator counts grow across datacentres and sites. |
2026-10-14 |
Advancing hardware security through open-source collaboration
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Microsoft announced six open-source hardware security projects at the Open Compute Project summit (including Tessera Integrated HSM, Platform Integrated TPM, and Composite EAT); assess them for hardware-protected key management, attestation, recovery, and bare-metal management... |
2026-10-14 |
Inference Options on Azure: An Architect’s View
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Architects: consult the October 2026 'Inference Options on Azure' guide that compares six model-serving approaches (serverless to self-operated) with runnable demos to select the right serving option for your workloads. |
2026-10-14 |
Check This Out! (CTO!) Guide (October 2026)
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Breaking change: Azure Key Vault control plane API versions older than 2026-02-01 will stop working on 27 Feb 2027,upgrade Azure CLI and Az PowerShell before that date to avoid management operation failures. |
2026-10-14 |
Building Trust-Aware Controls for AI: Differentiated handling of untrusted content
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Treat externally sourced content as untrusted when integrating generative AI: implement trust-aware controls to separate, sanitise, or restrict untrusted inputs to reduce the risk of indirect prompt injection. |
2026-10-14 |
Azure Verified Modules (AVM) is now owned by Azure engineering
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Azure Verified Modules (AVM) has moved into the Azure Deployments team inside Azure engineering and now has dedicated engineers working on AVM daily, signalling formal engineering ownership. |
2026-10-14 |
Article 3: Your Agent Isn’t the Data Problem
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
When deploying AI agents, review and tighten existing user and data permissions: agents expose existing overpermissive access, so govern the underlying data the same way you govern agent behaviour. |
2026-10-14 |
Land Your Offer - Anatomy of Revenue Generating Partner Offer - Part 3 - Copilot Deployment
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Pricing/incentive change: from 1 Oct 2026 the Frontier Accelerate for Copilot: M365 Copilot Deployment Accelerator pays in two milestones,one at deployment and a second when customer active users grow,update partner delivery and claims accordingly. |
2026-10-14 |
New in Microsoft Marketplace: Offers published September 1-3, 2026
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Microsoft Marketplace published 459 new offers (1-3 Sept 2026); review the catalogue for new solutions to trial or recommend to customers, for example the 3D Globe Power BI visual. |
2026-10-14 |
From Alert to Online Repack: Playbook for PostgreSQL Table Bloat on Azure Database for PostgreSQL
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Follow this playbook to detect PostgreSQL table bloat and perform an online repack on Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server using pg_cron and pg_repack, ensuring you have enough temporary storage and an acceptable maintenance window. |
2026-10-14 |
Postgres Trip Report from Postgres Summit US 2026
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
If you missed Postgres Summit US 2026, read the trip report and photo gallery for practical talk notes and community takeaways, and note the conference has returned under the Postgres Summit US name after years as PGConf NYC. |
2026-10-13 |
Delivering Agent Skills Over MCP
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Start serving reusable agent skills from an MCP-compatible skills server using the official Skills extension so multiple agents can discover and load them, and evaluate Microsoft Foundry for hosting and integration. |
2026-10-13 |
Lessons Learned #559: Understanding query timeouts in Azure SQL Database
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
When you see 'The query has timed out' from apps using Hibernate and the Microsoft JDBC driver, treat it as possibly a client-side command timeout: correlate client timestamps with server cancellations and adjust client command timeout settings or instrumentation. |
2026-10-12 |
Not Every Decision Needs an LLM: Getting Started with Microsoft-Decision-1
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
For high-volume routing, intent classification, or next-action choices, evaluate Microsoft-Decision-1 (a Decision Model) instead of an LLM to reduce token costs and latency while keeping decisions lightweight and fast. |
2026-10-12 |
Building a Local RAG Copilot with Foundry Local: Evidence Before Answers
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
For sensitive, on-device assistants, build a local RAG copilot with Microsoft Foundry Local and focus on retrieval quality and how the model selects, interprets, and cites evidence to avoid plausible but incorrect answers. |
2026-10-12 |
Advancing AI fleet reliability through industry collaboration
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
If you run large-scale, multi-vendor AI clusters, work with vendors to adopt open standards and standardise tooling and workflows to reduce fragmentation, speed fault isolation, and shorten recovery times. |
2026-10-12 |
Lessons Learned #558: What an Execution Plan XML Can Tell Us in Azure SQL Database
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
When investigating query performance in Azure SQL Database, open the execution plan XML and start by checking parameter values, statistics, warnings, and execution attributes to connect the observed symptom to the work performed. |
2026-10-11 |
Qwen3.8-27B on a $2 H100 Azure Spot VM: does it pay off?
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Guide showing how to run and tune Qwen3.8-27B on a single Azure H100 Spot GPU VM with example throughput and costs (3 hours served 1,434 requests; VM time cost $4.65 at that region's Spot price, dashboard counts ~$2/hr), follow the steps to reproduce. |
2026-10-10 |
From Form to Action: A Governed, Event-Driven AI Intake Pipeline with Azure Integration Services
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Reference architecture and runnable repo to implement a governed, event-driven AI intake pipeline using Azure Integration Services and Microsoft Foundry, including authenticated entry, controlled model consumption, durable asynchronous processing, explicit failure handling, and... |
2026-10-10 |
Introducing Microsoft-Decision-1 in Microsoft Foundry for decision and classification workloads
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
SKU addition: Microsoft-Decision-1 has been added to the Microsoft Foundry Models Catalog for high-volume decision and classification workloads, use it when you need fast, structured choices (classify, select, score, verify) instead of open-ended text generation. |
2026-10-10 |
Microsoft Agent 365 and Azure API Management integration for MCP governance
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Public preview: Microsoft Agent 365 now integrates with Azure API Management to let AI administrators discover and govern gateway-managed MCP servers and tools and enable runtime enforcement for APIM V2 and AI Gateway tiers,enable the integration in Agent 365 and configure APIM... |
2026-10-10 |
What's New in Notebooks | October 2026
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Update: Copilot Notebooks will arrive on Frontier in the coming weeks with improvements to create notebooks, work with Copilot, and create or edit artefacts without leaving the Notebooks workspace, so prepare Frontier users and update any internal how-to guidance. |
2026-10-10 |
Introducing Office in the new Microsoft Copilot app
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Change: Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) is now integrated into the Microsoft Copilot app so you can create, edit, and collaborate on Office artefacts directly from Chat or Cowork,start validating workflows in the Copilot app for your teams. |
2026-10-10 |
Title Plan Update - October 9, 2026
Microsoft Tech Community (website)
|
Change: Title Plan (Instructor-Led Training courseware) updates have moved to a weekly publishing cadence,check http://aka.ms/Courseware_Title_Plan to always work from the current version. |
2026-10-10 |
|
Azure Community
(23)
|
↑ Top
|
|
| Title |
Summary |
Date |
Keep the creepy crawlies out of you workflows: securing GitHub Actions in 2026
Jesse Houwing (website)
|
Review the security changes and improvements GitHub introduced to Actions over the past year and update your workflows accordingly to reduce supply-chain risk. |
2026-10-17 |
Azure Weekly Update - 16th October 2026
John Savill's Technical Training (youtube)
|
Watch the 16 Oct 2026 Azure Weekly Update for short briefings on ASR Arc support for VMware and physical servers, VMSS rebalancing, Standard Service Endpoints, cross-region Azure Files replication, Cloud HSM hardware audit logging, and MAI-Base-2/Maia 300, then follow the links... |
2026-10-17 |
What's new in AttendBeacon: native apps, a share kit, an API and a lot of your ideas
Peter Ruiter (website)
|
AttendBeacon added native mobile apps, a speaker share kit, hotel and travel booking, an event budget, bookkeeping and ticket-platform links, support for 38 currencies and Polish, and an API your AI assistant can call, so update your event integrations or test the API to... |
2026-10-16 |
How to build a time machine
Scott Hanselman (youtube)
|
No Azure action: the Hanselminutes episode covers Michio Kaku's speculative blueprint for time travel, saying it requires the energy of a star and raises the grandfather paradox, so treat it as popular-science content rather than cloud engineering guidance. |
2026-10-16 |
The Quantum Revolution with Turing Award Winners Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard
Scott Hanselman (youtube)
|
No immediate Azure action required: this Hanselminutes/ACM ByteCast interview with Charles H. Bennett and Gilles Brassard is an informational podcast on the foundations of quantum information science and quantum cryptography, useful for engineers tracking quantum-safe security... |
2026-10-16 |
Send GitHub Copilot CLI telemetry to Azure Application Insights
Thomas Thornton (website)
|
To route GitHub Copilot CLI telemetry into Azure Application Insights, deploy an authenticated OpenTelemetry Collector on Azure Container Apps, configure Copilot CLI to export telemetry to that collector, and run KQL queries in Application Insights to analyse it. |
2026-10-16 |
My First LinkedIn Learning Course Is Live: Docker in Practice: Build, Debug, and Deploy Containers
Steve Buchanan (website)
|
LinkedIn Learning published a beginner course, 'Docker in Practice: Build, Debug, and Deploy Containers', on 14 Oct 2026; enrol if you want hands-on Docker guidance for building, debugging, and deploying containers. |
2026-10-15 |
The Quantum Revolution with Turing Award Winners Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard
Scott Hanselman (youtube)
|
No action required for Azure configurations: Scott Hanselman's podcast interviews Turing Award winners Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard on quantum information science and quantum key distribution, useful background for teams planning quantum-safe cryptography or researching... |
2026-10-15 |
Picking the Right AI Model for AI-901: Four Questions That Save Time and Money
Travis Roberts (website)
|
Don't default to the largest model in the catalog for a chatbot or app: pick a smaller, task-suitable model to cut latency and cost and to avoid inconsistent answers, and only use bigger models when you can configure them for the job. |
2026-10-15 |
Picking the Right AI Model for AI-901: Four Questions That Save Time and Money
Travis Roberts (website)
|
Stop defaulting to the largest model in the catalogue: test smaller models for your chatbot or app because larger models are often slower, cost more, and can still return inconsistent answers if not configured for the task. |
2026-10-15 |
Tech in Five - What is Computer Use?
John Savill's Technical Training (youtube)
|
No immediate Azure action required: this short video explains the 'computer use' concept for LLM agents, when to provide external tool integrations versus model-only workflows, and how agent tool harnesses change behaviour, so watch before designing integrations. |
2026-10-14 |
Hands-On: Seculyze for Microsoft Sentinel – Part 1: Calibrate Your Detection Posture
Charbel Nemnom (website)
|
Install the Seculyze content from the Microsoft Sentinel Content hub and follow this hands-on guide to calibrate and tune your detection posture for Sentinel's unified SKU. |
2026-10-14 |
Azure VM Price Increases: A Small App to Show What Your Estate Will Actually Cost
Gregor Suttie (website)
|
Pricing change: Azure VM prices have increased, run Gregor Suttie's small app to calculate the impact on your VM estate, then update budgets, consider rightsizing, and review reservation purchases to control spend. |
2026-10-14 |
Cybersecurity Mittendrin - Folge 31 - Ricardo Datenleck: Was genau ist passiert? Analyse & Schutz
Tom Wechsler (youtube)
|
Ricardo's data leak (~890,000 user accounts exposed) means you should force password resets for affected accounts, require MFA, notify and educate users about incoming SMS/WhatsApp phishing, and increase logging and alerts for suspicious logins. |
2026-10-14 |
Agentic Azure Insights - Day 3
Nicholas Chang (youtube)
|
No official Azure product change is announced in this community video 'Agentic Azure Insights - Day 3'; there is no immediate action required from practitioners, watch the video for community commentary on agentic/AI topics if relevant to your work. |
2026-10-14 |
Looking at the new Copilot "Super App"
John Savill's Technical Training (youtube)
|
Watch the Copilot "Super App" demo covering enterprise knowledge, chat, plugins, notebooks, intent routing, code, and Autopilot, and review user-seat versus user-based billing and FinOps implications so your organisation can adjust licensing and cost governance. |
2026-10-12 |
Official icon sources for Microsoft Fabric architecture diagrams
Kevin Chant (website)
|
Replace unofficial icons in your Microsoft Fabric architecture diagrams with Microsoft's official icon sources (including Azure DevOps, Git, and GitHub) by updating your diagram templates and asset repository to the official assets linked in Kevin Chant's post. |
2026-10-12 |
How to configure Istio’s Gateway Network Topology
Daniel Neumann (website)
|
Configure Istio's Gateway Network Topology so the ingress gateway and Envoy derive the trusted client IP from the X-Forwarded-For header correctly by applying the network-topologies settings in the Istio docs. |
2026-10-12 |
How to lint Azure Policy definitions in Azure DevOps with EPAC and Azure Policy Linter
Gijs Reijn (website)
|
Add EPAC and the Azure Policy Linter to your Azure DevOps pipelines to lint Azure Policy definitions as code during CI so policies are validated before deployment. |
2026-10-12 |
Meet AttendBeacon: the event platform I built to give back to the community
Peter Ruiter (website)
|
Consider using AttendBeacon, a community-built, free-for-most event platform that provides Apple Wallet tickets, scanners, screen signage, live polls, surveys, call-for-speakers, and crew rosters for online, hybrid, and in-person events. |
2026-10-12 |
Microsoft Azure (Cloud) Solutions Architect - Folge 74 - Weniger Labels, mehr Präzision in Purview!
Tom Wechsler (youtube)
|
Start your Microsoft Purview classification rollout with a lean, risk-based label set and assign detection methods by data type: use Sensitive Info Types for patterned data, Exact Data Match for known records, and Trainable Classifiers for contextual or complex items, expanding... |
2026-10-11 |
Created a Job Board Because I Was Tired of Lying Job Boards
Jamie Maguire (website)
|
Jamie Maguire created a job board to stop misleading "remote" listings, so if you recruit or are looking for genuinely remote or hybrid Azure-related roles, check the board for clarified remote/hybrid status and fuller role details. |
2026-10-10 |
Jev Gives You Probabilities, Not Decisions
Olivier Miossec (website)
|
Read Olivier Miossec's post explaining Jev's mental model: Jev outputs probabilities, not deterministic decisions, so when you use it with PowerShell for NSG rule filtering, Bicep what-if checks, or Azure Policy linting, interpret results probabilistically and adjust automation a |
2026-10-10 |
|
|
Get the newsletter, or pass it on
Weekly Azure updates, Microsoft blogs, and community content, delivered every week.
Subscribe here.
No spam, unsubscribe anytime. Know someone who'd benefit? Forward this email, or share the issue online:
Bluesky
·
LinkedIn
·
X
Was this useful?
Reply to this email and let me know what you thought. Feedback shapes what comes next.
Browse the archive
·
RSS feed
|
|
|
|
Azure Feeds
· Curated by
Luke Murray
Curated weekly · Issue generated 17 Oct 2026, 08:00 AM NZT. Links may include a tracking parameter to support the curator's work.
|
|
|