Azure Weekly Update - 9th October 2026

Azure Weekly Update — 9 October 2026

Videos and learning resources

• The host covered the month’s AI updates, including models, GitHub Copilot, and Microsoft 365 Copilot.
• A dedicated video about the updated Copilot app was planned for the following weekend.
• The host published a short explainer on MCP (Model Context Protocol), describing it as a standard for agents to access tools, knowledge, and prompt examples.
• A retirement guide is available for Azure Deployment Environments (ADE).

Compute and developer services

• AKS bare metal on Ubuntu is in preview. Run AKS directly on Ubuntu hosts without a hypervisor. Azure Arc and the AKS resource provider provide Azure-managed Kubernetes capabilities in on-premises or edge environments. Ubuntu joins existing Azure Linux support.
• AKS AnyScale is generally available. Ray runs on AKS to provide a managed platform for distributed Python workloads, including data preparation, inference, model training, and fine-tuning.
• AKS uses NAT Gateway Standard V2 by default. The managed outbound connectivity option brings zone redundancy, IPv6 support, improved performance, and higher bandwidth.
• App Service Java retirements: Java 8, 11, and 17 are scheduled to retire in early September 2027. The recommendation is to upgrade to Java 25 or later beforehand.
• Azure Deployment Environments retire on 22 February 2027. ADE provided developer environments from centrally defined templates, but has no direct replacement. The host recommends reviewing the capabilities in use and considering Bicep, verified modules, Terraform, and deployment pipelines such as GitHub Actions or Azure DevOps.
• Microsoft Dev Box retires on 18 September 2028. Windows 365 is presented as the likely replacement, with managed cloud desktops, developer images, custom company images, policies, and grouping.

Networking and API management

• IPv6 support for Application Gateway WAF is in preview. IPv6 is supported across managed and custom rules and diagnostics. Custom geo-matching rules can restrict access by country or region.
• WAF exceptions are generally available for Application Gateway and Front Door. Exceptions can address false positives by matching request URIs, remote IP addresses, or header names and values. Matching options include exact, starts with, ends with, contains, and IP matching. Exceptions can apply to an individual rule, a rule group, or all managed rules.

The host notes limits of 60 exceptions per policy and 60 for an entire gateway or Front Door instance. A single exception can contain multiple values.

• Agent 365 integration with API Management is in preview. API Management’s MCP capabilities can be combined with Agent 365’s agent inventory, discovery, and policy-based controls. Agent 365 can discover API Management V2 and AI Gateway tiers and expose them in its inventory, with policies that enable or disable resources. The AI Gateway tier offers more granular capabilities.

Databases, analytics, and backup

• PostgreSQL Flexible Server is generally available in East US 3, enabling workloads that need to colocate applications and databases in that region.
• PostgreSQL Elastic Clusters support major-version upgrades in preview. Elastic clusters use Citus to distribute PostgreSQL workloads across servers. Upgrades can be performed in place to a compatible version, without copying data or changing the server name, with the aim of minimizing disruption.
• SQL Server on Linux adds bulk-administration permissions. Bulk imports can be authorized without granting the more powerful sysadmin role, supporting least-privilege access.
• Azure Backup V2 support for PostgreSQL Flexible Server and Elastic Clusters is in preview. Long-term retention uses managed-disk snapshots in Azure Backup vaults rather than a PostgreSQL backup store. Subsequent backups are incremental, and the approach supports larger backup sizes—up to 64 TB with Premium SSD V2 or about 32 TB with V1 SSD, according to the host. Vault features such as multi-user authorization can help protect backups from deletion by a single compromised account.
• OneLake Catalog table discovery arrives on 15 October. Searching by table name can return matching tables from semantic models, lakehouses, and mirrored databases, rather than requiring users to know the table’s location.
• SQL Server on Azure virtual machines is available in Azure Bleu, France’s sovereign cloud environment, for workloads with sovereignty or regulatory requirements.
• Azure HorizonDB is in preview in additional regions. The cloud-native, PostgreSQL-compatible database separates compute and storage and is available in as many as nine regions, according to the host.
• Always Encrypted with Intel SGX enclaves in Azure SQL Database retires by the end of October 2027. The change is associated with the phase-out of DC-series hardware. The host recommends moving to alternatives such as virtualization-based security enclaves or confidential virtual machines.

Local AI model

• MAI Code 1.1 Flash Local was highlighted as a non-Azure-related announcement. Quantization reduces the model’s memory requirements so the coding model can run locally, initially on Windows PCs with Nvidia RTX hardware.
• Developers can route tasks to the local model through GitHub Copilot CLI, the Copilot app, and VS Code. Alternatively, Copilot can choose between local and cloud models based on the task, cache state, and session context.
• The host emphasized the broader idea of hybrid intelligence: using local compute where appropriate to manage token costs while retaining cloud-scale capabilities, security, governance, and observability.

Main speaker and sources

• Main speaker: John Savill, presenting the weekly Azure update.
• Sources and material referenced: Microsoft product announcements and retirement information; the host’s monthly AI update, MCP explainer, and planned Copilot app video; and an Azure Deployment Environments retirement guide.