Microsoft recently unveiled some new updates to its Azure networking services. Here’s a rundown of some of the changes that could impact and enhance the user experience.
Azure DDoS Protection
The Azure DDoS Protection Standard service is now generally available. The service is meant to provide enhanced DDoS mitigation for applications and resources deployed in virtual networks. It can be enabled simply without changing the application or resources and includes dedicated monitoring and machine learning that automatically configures DDoS protection policies.
VNet Service Endpoints
Microsoft is also expanding the services accessible via VNet Service Endpoints for Azure Storage and Azure SQL Database. Azure Cosmos DB service endpoints, which is the first service to allow cross-region access control support for customers to restrict access to globally distributed Azure Cosmos DB accounts, is also now generally available.
Azure DNS
Azure DNS Private Zones is now available in public preview. This new service is meant to provide secure and reliable name resolution for VNets without the need for custom DNS servers so that you can bring DNS zones directly to your VNet. It also allows for flexibility in custom domain names and provides name resolution within a VNet and across VNets.
Connection Monitor
Another new service, Network Watcher Connection Monitor, is also now generally available. This service can help you easily monitor and alert on connectivity and latency between VMs, FQDNs, URIs, or IPv4 addresses. The point is to reduce connectivity problems related to the time to detect. It also offers insights into connectivity issues that might be due to platform or user configuration problems so that you can quickly pinpoint and solve those issues.
Traffic View
Traffic View is another new offering that recently became generally available. It provides information to help you learn about your users’ network experience and optimize the placement of your workloads. More specifically, it can provide data on the geographic location of your user base, traffic volume, and latency experienced from those locations.
Global VNet Peering
Another new generally available capability, Global VNet Peering connects your VNets across Azure regions so you can peer those from any location around the world. Once peered, those VNets will appear as one global VNet for connectivity purposes. And resources within those peered VNets can communicate directly with one another.
More Azure networking updates
In addition to those listed above, Microsoft also announced the general availability and enhanced features to Application Security Groups (ASG), Application Gateway and Web Application Firewall, Azure CDN, and Standard Load Balancer.
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