Starting July 15, 2026, advanced platform metrics are available in Public Preview. This update provides enhanced visibility into platform performance, resource health, and operational trends across supported Azure services.

Azure NetApp Files now supports configuration of SMB opportunistic locking (oplocks) for SMB and dual-protocol volumes. Opportunistic locks (Oplocks) improve SMB client caching and are enabled by default.

Azure Functions support for PowerShell 7.6 is now available in preview. You can now develop apps using PowerShell 7.6 locally and deploy them to Azure Functions plans.

Managing ingress routing while adopting newer Kubernetes standards can require balancing modernization efforts with existing deployments. Application Routing with Gateway API is now generally available on AKS, bringing the Kubernetes Gateway API to ingress management without requiring a service mesh.

The AI Gateway tier for Azure API Management is now available in public preview. Building on the AI gateway capabilities already available across API Management tiers, the new AI Gateway tier provides a dedicated experience optimized for AI workloads.

Microsoft Agent Framework adds episodic procedural memory in public preview, a built-in store that lets agents remember successful task patterns and replay them on similar future requests. The framework records action sequences, tool selections, and intermediate decisions as episodes, then retrieves the closest match when a new user request looks similar.

In late-July 2026, the following update and enhancement was made to Azure SQL: Regex-based dynamic data masking (DDM) extends the built-in DDM feature with pattern‑based masking to hide sensitive data like emails, phone numbers, and identifiers—centrally enforced at the database layer.

This release adds Microsoft Marketplace as a new discovery and procurement channel for Dragon Copilot AI apps and agents. Dragon Copilot customers in the United States can now discover, evaluate and purchase Dragon Copilot Physician Apps and Agents through Microsoft Marketplace.

The Azure Files Container Storage Interface (CSI) driver in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) now supports workload identity for pod-level authentication to SMB file shares. Previously, managed identity support in AKS enabled workloads to mount Azure Files without using storage account keys.

Today, Microsoft is announcing the public preview of Markdown for Agents in Azure App Service. This feature gives AI agents and other tools a cleaner way to consume content from an App Service app.

Announcing the public preview of Azure Multicloud Interconnect, a managed service that provides private connectivity between Azure and supported cloud providers, with Amazon Web Services (AWS) available as the first supported provider in preview. As organizations increasingly distribute applications, data, AI services, and business-critical workloads across multiple clouds, establishing and operating cloud-to-cloud connectivity can become complex and operationally intensive.

To enhance backup protection, Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance now automatically apply immutability to the most recent seven days of backups. This capability is enabled by default for all databases, regardless of the configured point-in-time restore retention period.

Starting February 1, 2027, Azure reservations exchanges will no longer be available for services covered by savings plans. At the time of this announcement, this includes reservations for the following services: Compute services: Azure Virtual Machines, including exchanges between non-premium and premium storage, Azure Dedicated Host, and Azure App Service.

Azure Virtual Network Manager IP address management is now generally available in additional regions: US Gov Virginia, US Gov Texas and US Gov Arizona, and China North 3 and China East 3. In complex network environments, managing IP addresses effectively is essential.

Microsoft is happy to announce the public preview of reader endpoint support to simplify connection management when using multiple replicas in Azure Database for MySQL - Flexible Server. A reader endpoint enables automatic load balancing of read-only connection traffic across multiple replicas.

Azure Front Door's Web Application Firewall (WAF) now supports profile and route level WAF policy associations in public preview. This gives you more flexibility to apply broad baseline protection across an Azure Front Door profile while using targeted policies for specific applications, domains, or routes that need different controls.

You can now accelerate your containerized workloads on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) using Azure Container Registry (ACR) with Artifact streaming. Artifact streaming will allow you to scale your workloads without having to fully wait for images to be pulled into the clusters.

Azure Firewall's auto-learn SNAT routes is now generally available, automatically learning registered and private destination prefixes periodically and applying them as No-SNAT ranges to preserve original source IPs and simplify SNAT management.