Source: msdynamicsworld.com (original reporting, July 2019)
Overview
In the weeks leading up to the US Independence Day holiday in 2019, Microsoft released a smaller-than-usual batch of Azure announcements. The updates nonetheless covered a wide surface area: container monitoring, blockchain integration, virtual machine sizing, machine learning tooling, API management, and regional expansion. This article summarises the most significant changes for DevOps and cloud engineering teams.
Competitive Context: Middle East Cloud Regions
Microsoft’s earlier announcement of dedicated Azure regions in the UAE prompted competitors to re-evaluate their own Middle East strategies. Alibaba Cloud — one of the largest non-US cloud providers — was reportedly considering whether to build a second UAE data centre, though reports at the time suggested its existing facility had not yet reached capacity. This illustrates how Microsoft’s regional expansion directly influences the broader cloud market.
Azure Monitor for Containers: New Capabilities from 1 July
Starting 1 July 2019, Azure Monitor for Containers received several additions relevant to Kubernetes operators and SREs:
- New event log filters — Operators can now filter container event logs more precisely, reducing noise when diagnosing issues.
- Kubelet health monitoring — Visibility into the health of the Kubelet process on each node, helping teams detect node-level problems earlier.
- Node network performance tracking — Network throughput and latency metrics at the node level are now surfaced within the Monitor interface.
Resource-Specific Logs in Azure Monitor
A notable architectural improvement came to Azure Monitor’s logging model. Previously, Azure Diagnostics acted as the primary collection mechanism, aggregating data from all Azure services into a single, undifferentiated table — making it difficult to query logs from a specific service without filtering through unrelated records.
The updated approach introduces Resource-Specific log tables: each Azure service category writes to its own dedicated table. Azure Data Factory, for example, now surfaces its logs in dedicated tables accessible directly from Azure Monitor. This makes log queries cleaner, faster, and easier to govern with role-based access control. Azure Diagnostics remains available for legacy compatibility but is no longer the recommended path.
Azure Blockchain Workbench 1.7.0
Microsoft released version 1.7.0 of Azure Blockchain Workbench, introducing two significant capabilities:
- Integration with Azure Blockchain Service — Teams can now connect Workbench directly to the managed Azure Blockchain Service, simplifying network provisioning and removing the need to manage underlying infrastructure manually.
- Quorum network compatibility — The update adds support for the Quorum blockchain network, broadening the range of enterprise blockchain scenarios the platform can address.
Together, these changes allow development teams to spin up blockchain networks and generate application scaffolding more rapidly, reducing the time from concept to prototype.
New B-Series VM Sizes for Burstable Workloads
Following a wave of VM updates at the end of June 2019, Microsoft added three new burstable VM sizes to the B-series family:
- B12ms
- B16ms
- B20ms
The B-series is designed for workloads with variable CPU demand — sometimes called “peak and valley” patterns — where a VM sits mostly idle but occasionally needs to burst to full CPU capacity. This makes the tier well-suited to development and test environments, small databases, and lightweight web servers. Microsoft cited Linux pricing in the US West region at the time ranging from approximately $0.59 to $0.99 per hour for the new sizes (hourly, on-demand rates).
Azure Machine Learning CLI
Building on announcements from the Build 2019 conference in May, Microsoft released an Azure Machine Learning CLI aimed at ML engineers and data scientists who prefer command-line workflows. Key functions include:
- Packaging models for deployment
- Submitting and tracking training experiments
- Registering trained models in the Azure ML model registry
The CLI is a practical complement to the Azure ML Python SDK, enabling automation of ML workflows in CI/CD pipelines without requiring Python scripting at every step.
Azure API Management Extension for Visual Studio Code
Microsoft previewed an Azure API Management extension for Visual Studio Code, consolidating common API management tasks inside the editor. The extension supports:
- Importing OpenAPI (Swagger) specifications
- Creating, editing, and deleting APIs
- Testing API endpoints
- Associating and modifying API policies
Separately, the API Apps icon was removed from the Azure Portal navigation. Microsoft noted that the Web Apps service provides equivalent functionality; users who need to access the legacy API App experience can still do so by searching “API App” in the Portal search bar.
Regional Availability Expansions
Several Azure services reached new geographic availability milestones around this period:
- Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) — Now available in the Brazil South region.
- Azure Database for MariaDB — Available in both South Africa regions (South Africa North and South Africa West).
- Application Insights — Generally available in the China East 2 region.
- Query Performance Insights for Azure Database for PostgreSQL — Generally available worldwide, giving database administrators a built-in tool for identifying slow queries and index recommendations without third-party tooling.
Azure DevOps for Azure Government
Joel Day, an account technology strategist for Microsoft Federal, highlighted the availability and recommended use of Azure DevOps within Azure Government environments. Key services called out include:
- Azure Repos — Git repositories hosted within the government cloud boundary.
- Azure Test Plans — Manual and exploratory testing management for government application teams.
- Azure Artifacts — Package management for sharing NuGet, npm, Maven, and Python packages across teams.
Day also recommended integrating Visual Studio Code with Azure DevOps services, enabling a streamlined development workflow for government engineers operating within compliance-constrained environments.
Summary
This mid-2019 Azure update cycle touched on observability, blockchain, compute, machine learning automation, API tooling, and geographic expansion. For DevOps teams the most operationally significant changes are the shift to resource-specific log tables in Azure Monitor — which will affect how dashboards and alert queries are written — and the new B-series VM sizes for cost-optimised CI/CD runners and test environments. Teams managing ML pipelines should evaluate the Azure ML CLI for integration into their existing automation workflows.