Microsoft has announced a number of new features for Azure, including ‘Azure Firewall’. The cloud-based network security service will be used to protect virtual network resources, offering high availability and unrestricted scalability.
“Customers can centrally create, enforce, and log application and network connectivity policies, spanning Fully Qualified Domain Names (FQDNs), IP Addresses, ports and protocols across subscriptions and virtual networks,” said Jason Zander, executive vice president, Azure. “Azure Firewall policies can be fully integrated with customers’ dev ops model while enabling them to manage security risks and achieve compliance requirements for managing resource access and protection in the cloud.”
Ths solution launches alongside the Azure WAN service, which provides businesses with automated branch to branch connectivity to and from Azure. This allows for a distributed connectivity model, with support for routing to hub and spoke networks in Azure for network security services.
SQL Data Warehouse and Azure Data Box
As part of its ‘innovative’ new solutions, Microsoft is also promoting improvements in SQL Data Warehouse. The company reveals a 2x faster query performance in Warehouse, made possible instant data movement capabilities that allow for efficient movement between nodes. This apparently cements its position as the fastest data warehouse in the cloud.
This combines with support for up to 128 concurrent queries to allow more users to query the same database simultaneously. As Microsoft notes, these new features come at no extra cost to its customers and maintain the same reach and scalability.
Finally, two additional regions are coming to the Azure Data Box preview, a data-transfer appliance that weighs 45 points and is created to be rugged and tamper-proof. The solution is now available in Europe and the UK, with customers able to order up to five 8TB drives.
The announcements come ready for Microsoft Inspire, which will begin next Monday. Its likely executives will provide more detail then, but you can check the blog in the meantime.
