u/JohnSavill

This month's (August 2026) Microsoft AI Update is up!

https://youtu.be/-lv1ktRRDfo

00:00 - Introduction

00:15 - New videos

01:06 - MAI-Code-1.1-Flash

01:36 - MAI-Image-2.6

01:52 - MAI-Thinking-1

02:22 - MAI-Transcribe-2

02:46 - Gemini 3.7 Flash

02:59 - Kimi K3

03:07 - DeepSeek-v4-Flash-0731 and NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Lightning

03:55 - Grok 4.6

04:14 - Fable 5.1

05:21 - GPT-6 Astra

05:53 - Model router updates

06:36 - Content understanding update

07:11 - Hosted on Azure Claude updates

08:20 - GitHub Copilot harness use

09:26 - SharePoint authoritative sites

10:07 - Cowork customizable effort

10:19 - Better /cost

10:28 - Automations

10:35 - Chat response selection as context

10:51 - Copilot Notebook updates

11:08 - App updates

12:21 - Scout in preview

12:40 - Code review effort levels and expanded scope

13:24 - Cloud agent reasoning effort

13:35 - Enterprise MCP control

13:53 - Global model enablement policy

14:14 - Trigger Copilot automations for comments

14:40 - App and CLI session updates

14:58 - Reporting updates

16:09 - Azure Copilot agent access

16:38 - Close

With Azure Linux 4.0 Microsoft ❤️ Linux even more! In this video I look at what's new and where we can use it.

https://youtu.be/_9C1d4PZ2Lc

ALSO don't forget today's AMA at 10:00 AM PST, hope to see you there - https://youtube.com/live/hXRPm7r4Q14?feature=share

00:00 - Introduction

00:12 - History

02:42 - Why Azure Linux?

05:28 - Architecture

08:24 - Where can be used

09:01 - Lifecycle

09:19 - Looking at Azure Linux

11:41 - Using with WSL

13:10 - Azure Container Host

16:03 - Summary

16:40 - Close

AI can transform business processes, accelerate productivity, enable new outcomes but malicious actors can also benefit and utilize AI to attack with new speed, scale and sophistication. We need AI to protect and defeat AI attacks. This video explores Project Perception to utilize families of agents to provide end-to-end security.

https://youtu.be/hYjgSu-77pA

00:00 - Introduction

00:13 - Cybersecurity evolution

02:50 - MDASH

04:14 - Perception

05:19 - Agents

07:11 - Red

08:23 - Blue

09:55 - Green

10:38 - Working together

11:10 - Using Perception

16:41 - Playbooks

18:37 - Perception in action

25:20 - Perception everywhere

26:34 - Security Copilot?

27:51 - Summary

28:51 - Close

21st August 2026 Azure Update is up!

📽️ https://youtu.be/OLfRPH319IQ

📄 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/21st-august-2026-weekly-azure-update-john-savill-thstc

• App Service Managed Instance (00:51) - Like the SQL Managed Instance, the App Service Managed Instance provides very strong compatibility for existing web applications to move to App Service without having to change the code or even major configurations. You still get autoscale, resiliency and other capabilities.
• AVS license (01:20) - With the changes to Broadcom licensing AVS will no longer be able to provide licenses so ensure you purchase licenses before this time so can bring your own.
• ASR BYON (01:36) - BYON is Bring Your Own NIC which means with Azure Site Recovery an existing NIC can be attached during a failover which is useful where you need a specific pre-prepared configuration.
• VM vCore customization (02:03) - You now have the ability to disable Simultaneous multi-Threading on VM cores in Azure VMs in addition to being able to select the number of vCores seen by the OS. Removing the hyper-threading can help improve consistency of compute latency and reducing the number of visible cores you can reduce license requirements where software is core count based.
• Summarized advertisement gateway prefix (03:41) - The ExpressRoute and VPN gateway now supports aggregated (summarized) prefixes which avoids having to send large numbers of small address spaces which can be important for large environments.
• Az FW IPv6 support (04:15) - Azure Firewall now enable IPv6 support through a dual stack mode (IPv4 and v6). There is no IPv6 only mode. You can deploy a new firewall in dual-stack or upgrade an existing to dual-stack. This includes support for network-rule filtering and DNS proxy but other capabilities like application and DNAT rules are not yet supported.
• VS Code MSSQL extension SQL DB provisioning (04:43) - You can now create and connect a new Azure SQL DB within VS Code using the MSSQL extension from within a single page wizard. It can even create artifacts for repeated deployment, i.e. Bicep, Arm and Terraform files. This starts with creating a free tier database so zero-cost initially.
• MSSQL shortcut configuration (05:17) - You can easily configure, manage and launch your most frequently used SQL queries and extension commands from a single experience via the "Shortcuts Configuration" in the MSSQL extension toolbar.
• SQL Formatter in MSSQL extension (05:42) - The extension also has a SQL Formatter in preview to help apply consistent style, for example casing, alignment, multi list formatting.
• SQL MI zone redundancy (06:00) - SQL MI next-gen general purpose now supports zone redundancy with up to 99.995% uptime for General Purpose tier.
• Azure Databricks Lakebase new regions (06:20) - Azure Databricks Lakebase provides a managed, serverless PostgresSQL instance which is key for operational purposes but enables the data to be available directly in the lakehouse storage, bridging the gap between transactional and analytical needs. No data pipelines or duplication needed. It is also now available in North Central US (northcentralus) , France Central (francecentral) , Germany West Central (germanywestcentral) and East Asia (eastasia).
• Azure Linux in WSL (06:55) - The 4.0 version of Azure Linux that is now available as an OS and not just focused on containers is now available for Windows Subsystem for Linux making it easy to access and utilize. Today you install by downloading from github and installing from the downloaded file and its ready to go!
• DeepSeek-v4-Flash-0731 and NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Lightning in Foundry (07:47) - This continues the ever growing set of models in Foundry and I love these names  The new DeepSeek model is great for agent coding, workflow automation and general agentic/assistant use. The Nemotron has similar abilities but has long-context calling, multi-step task execution and multilingual support. These are available via Fireworks (consumption based high performance inference engine) which Nemotron also available via managed compute through Hugging Face collection where you pay for the provisioned capacity.
• Azure Copilot agent access (08:47) - Azure Copilot leverage a number of agents to enable its capabilities which traditionally where behind a single chat experience. But now you can access them directly from the copilot drop down to engage which includes Troubleshooting, Deployment, Optimization and Resiliency. This direct access will help get to answers faster with more focused expertise.
• SharePoint authoritative sites (09:19) - As a human I know certain SharePoint sites are the “official” ones for HR, company news etc. An AI does not have that same ability. By marking a SharePoint site as authoritative it enables AI, e.g. Copilot to recognize the content as trusted and therefore improving its responses. It does also help human users know its official. Up to 100 sites can be marked as authoritative and must be set at site-level today.

Study cram is up for the AI-103, Develop AI Apps and Agents on Azure. Just under 2 hours long with whiteboard and a lot of code examples. Hope it helps and good luck!

📽️ https://youtu.be/WK2BvjOYTCQ

00:00 - Introduction

00:24 - Microsoft learning resources

01:17 - What are core AI terms

02:59 - Responsible AI

06:55 - Foundry resource and project

14:35 - Models

25:15 - Model deployment options

29:44 - Using playgrounds to experiment

33:46 - Model routing

38:19 - Evaluations

41:22 - Using APIs and SDKs

44:11 - Responses API

45:14 - ChatCompletions

45:46 - Comparing

50:37 - OpenAI vs Foundry SDK

53:23 - Tools

54:27 - OpenAI responses tools

57:25 - Foundry services

58:13 - Foundry tools

1:02:56 - Skills

1:03:57 - Toolbox

1:05:50 - Knowledge

1:10:52 - Optimizing the solution

1:15:11 - Guardrails

1:17:45 - Bringing it together

1:19:56 - Microsoft Agent Framework

1:21:00 - Agents

1:27:56 - Workflows

1:29:04 - Agent harness

1:30:13 - Foundry Agent Service

1:30:42 - Prompt agent

1:34:20 - Hosted agent

1:34:55 - Publishing agents

1:35:46 - Foundry services

1:36:13 - Language

1:40:28 - Speech

1:44:10 - Translation

1:46:11 - Vision

1:46:23 - Using generative AI

1:49:50 - Generating images

1:51:44 - Generating videos

1:52:47 - Viewing metrics

1:53:34 - Azure Content Understanding

1:56:09 - Summary

1:56:41 - Close

This month's Microsoft AI Update (July 2026) is up.

https://youtu.be/2GpTcz6JVhQ

00:00 - Introduction

00:09 - New videos

01:18 - Model thinking

02:09 - Open AI GPT-5.6

03:04 - GPT-transcribe and GPT-live-transcribe

03:52 - MAI-Image-2.5 Pro and MAI-Voice-2 Flash

04:30 - Claude Opus 5 available

05:10 - Kimi K3 via Fireworks AI

05:35 - Grok 4.5 and Gemini 3.6 in GitHub Copilot

06:19 - ROI for agents

07:13 - APAC data zone

07:40 - New portal

08:03 - Sensitive trace content handling

08:44 - Foundry IQ support

09:48 - GitHub Copilot harness option

11:10 - @ mention app agents in chat

11:29 - Copilot in app updates

11:54 - Meeting recaps

12:09 - M365 copilot app notifications

12:23 - Event-driven tasks

12:51 - Cowork enhanced skill support

13:09 - Skill Recorder

14:00 - Copilot vision

14:12 - Browser tools for Copilot in VS Code

14:29 - APIM AI Gateway

15:18 - Close

New video exploring how we can bring (only) the most relevant and up-to-date knowledge from our enterprise and the Internet to our agentic applications with Microsoft IQ.

00:00 - Introduction

00:39 - Responsibilities and requirements

01:17 - Tasks and AI

02:07 - Intelligence needed

02:16 - How I work

03:28 - State of the business

04:16 - Institutional knowledge

04:43 - Internet

05:16 - AI and models

06:52 - Multiple models and flexibility

08:49 - Bringing intelligence and tools to AI

09:58 - Microsoft IQ

11:21 - Work IQ

13:16 - Fabric IQ

15:33 - Foundry IQ

16:59 - Web IQ

18:52 - Most relevant data

19:17 - Using all types of intelligence

20:24 - Identity and least privilege

21:53 - Security and protection

23:26 - Observe and improve

24:43 - Summary

25:27 - Close

https://youtu.be/LrIS9lcSbko

This week's hotel-based very quick Azure Update is up :-) Very big change coming to Entra strong-authentication!

https://youtu.be/bemRBrJnYvA

00:00 - Introduction

00:20 - AFD Edge Actions

01:50 - Azure Databricks SQL Serverless new region

02:28 - Azure Arc-enable SQL to Azure VM-based SQL

03:00 - SQL VS Code extension updates

03:33 - Advanced platform metrics

04:58 - Entra ID passkey changes

06:23 - Close

Really quick overview video on Azure Health Models. Understand, observe and alert based on your overall service health, business functions and application components and not just the base resources.

Azure Health Models help you:
- See your service the way your users do
- Combine signals across resources, apps, and business workflows
- Detect issues earlier and reduce false positives
- Build meaningful, actionable alerts

📽️ https://youtu.be/RKEvu6asHd4

00:00 - Introduction
00:06 - Resource health challenges
01:34 - Azure Health Models
06:41 - Demo
11:23 - Summary
11:46 - Close

This months Microsoft AI Update is up!

https://youtu.be/opCw_CDf9fg

00:00 - Introduction

00:29 - New videos

01:10 - Claude models running on Azure

01:57 - Anthropic Fable 5 in Foundry and Copilot

03:32 - Claude Sonnet 5

03:43 - Kimi K2.7 in GitHub Copilot

03:51 - MAI models

05:29 - Alon

05:55 - MDASH

06:44 - Frontier tuning

07:05 - Foundry IQ

08:03 - Work IQ

09:30 - Web IQ

10:51 - Foundry agents

11:48 - Foundry evaluations and tracing

13:29 - Foundry Toolbox and Memory

14:46 - Foundry agent security license changes

15:15 - Computer

15:44 - Redesigned workflow experience

16:07 - Updated orchestration layer

16:30 - Copilot Cowork

17:05 - Microsoft Scout

17:52 - GitHub Copilot desktop app

18:07 - Sandboxes

18:57 - GitHub Copilot SDK

19:07 - Close

This week's Azure Update is up!

📽️ https://youtu.be/RQmWSjKIQJY

📄 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/azure-weekly-update-nearly-4th-july-2026-john-savill-5hk6c/

• VM instant application-consistent restore points (00:54) - This enables a restore point that is application consistent, i.e. utilizes the VSS capabilities in Windows or pre/post scripts on Linux to ensure all app data is flushed out to disk, can be restored as soon as its created, no delay for the normal background data replication.
• New client-side blob integrity (01:36) - CRC64-NVME is integrated into the latest SDKs enabling greater support for integrity assurance for client applications at a byte level.
• ASM migration from Google Cloud Storage (GCS) (02:11) - Azure Storage Mover now supports migration from Google Cloud Storage buckets via its S3-compatible interface to Azure blob storage. This does include support for private network support.
• PostgreSQL new PowerShell module (02:37) - The new PowerShell module for PostgreSQL Flexible which adds support for version 18 of PostgreSQL, elastic clusters and a number of other capabilities.
• Foundry Toolboxes (02:53) - Toolboxes provide a single endpoint for MCP clients to connect to that can then expose any combination of tools you define including exposing via a tool search to avoid flooding the model context with too many tools. The various IQs (Work, Foundry and Fabric) can also be exposed via toolbox. Foundry handles the authentication, lifecycle and governance.
• Foundry Claude on Azure (04:27) - Claude models are now available in Foundry hosted on Azure ensuring the entire AI app flow stays within the Microsoft governance and security boundary. Both global and US data zone options are available.
• Claude Sonnet 5 (05:01) - This includes the new Claude Sonnet 5 which has stronger coding and agentic performance and can easily replace Sonnet 4.6 and in many scenarios can be used in place of Opus 4.8 at a far better cost-performance. This is also available in GitHub Copilot and Azure Databricks
• Kimi K2.7 in GitHub Copilot (06:01) - The open-weight model Kimi K2.7 Code is also available in GitHub Copilot now as a new lower cost option.
• Quantum safe program acceleration (06:13) - The Microsoft Quantum Safe Program (QSP) is accelerating which includes TLS 1.3 adoption, changes to stored data cryptography and modernized cryptographic trust chains.
• Document PII NextGen Playground (07:14) - Azure AI Language has a playground enabling a way to evaluate capabilities. The Document PII has an updated playground with curated samples to see exactly how Personally Identifiable Information like addresses, names, financial IDs are detected and redacted.

With Copilot Cowork GA I wanted to walk through understanding non-Cowork vs Cowork capabilities, when to use, then for the usage-based billing how to plan, control and observe.

https://youtu.be/qXPTJDgbbPg

00:00 - Introduction

00:16 - M365 Copilot USL

03:39 - Copilot Cowork

07:53 - Usage based billing

09:21 - Planning

13:54 - Control

19:49 - Payment

20:30 - Observe and track

24:10 - Summary

25:44 - Close

New video exploring Web IQ, the newest edition to Microsoft IQ that complements the organizational context provided by Work IQ, Fabric IQ and Foundry IQ to provide Internet-sourced context.

Key differentiators from other Internet knowledge services are:

- Lowest latency (2.5x less latency than closest competitor)

- Highest quality grounding

- Token efficiency to only send the passages of source that are most applicable to save tokens on the model where desired

Check out the detail in the video.

📽️ https://youtu.be/YpUSm0_7Lgs

This week's Azure Update is up.

📽️ https://youtu.be/iDqfCpGTdBc

📄 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/azure-weekly-update-19th-june-2026-john-savill-fe83c

• VS Code Azure Functions extension new project experience update (01:04) - The Azure Functions VS Code extension has a redesigned create new project experience that now uses a visual template gallery which can be filtered and searched over. You can also use Copilot to describe what you want to get a project built out.
• Azure Migrate GitHub Copilot integration (01:35) - Azure Migrate can create web app assessments for modernization to AKS and Azure App Service. It looks at the source applications and understands the possible migration targets and configurations. Additionally it can now integrate with GitHub Copilot to scan the application code to identify further opportunity to modernize with .NET and Java web app support.
• NAT Gateway v2 Standard ICMP support (02:21) - We will know this as echo requests and replies which are useful for validate connectivity and hops for a path. Basically we can ping it!
• ANF NFS nconnect for AVS (03:09) - Azure VMware Solution can use Azure NetApp Files for its storage via NFS. The nconnect option supports 4 parallel TCP connections to the same ANF NFS datastore providing aggregated throughput and IOPS which is very useful for performance sensitive workloads. This works on both gen1 and gen2 AVS private clouds. Note a single VMware host supports up to 256 NFS connections so if you use this across all connections that would reduce to 64 datastores per host.
• Azure Databricks OneLake integration (04:36) - Azure Databricks unity catalog can now integrate with Fabric’s OneLake to enable read access to any data available via OneLake without having to duplicate data. This is GA. In PREVIEW Azure Databricks can WRITE to delta tables in OneLake enabling Azure Databricks to natively use OneLake as its storage layer. This makes it easier to maintain a single copy of the data across all the various use cases.
• Copilot Cowork (06:24) - The outcome-based AI capability is now GA. This is a consumption-based solution, you pay for the amount of work it does. The existing Copilot features like chat, M365 in-app copilot, analyst, researcher, agents built with agent builder are still part of the per-seat then you need the per-seat as a pre-req but then pay using Copilot Credits for all work Cowork does. There are cost controls at org, group and user level in addition to tracking of usage. There is also a cost estimator based on role and expected usage. At an org level you can also choose to enable or disable the consumption-based features, it is off by default.
• Log Analytics summary rules (07:59) - Summary rules are useful to aggregate data on a defined cadence and store the results in summarized tables. This will then improve performance for querying and reporting against the aggregated data. It may also be useful to enhance certain data privacy by abstracting away source detail. You may combine this with lower tiers for the mass ingestion to save money and then the summarized data in analytics tier.

Really quick video looking at and showing the huge changes for identity integration for Azure Files.

https://youtu.be/sXNyXRgQTPs

Now supports:

- Managed identities

- Cloud-only user accounts

- macOS PSSO

New video looking at Azure's HorizonDB. A 100% PostgreSQL compatible, cloud-native database offering with great scale, performance and availability.

https://youtu.be/ZsLnWnjkJQw

00:00 - Introduction

00:08 - PostgreSQL

04:06 - Cloud-native architecture

04:50 - Azure HorizonDB

06:33 - Architecture

16:15 - Standby replicas

19:42 - Other features

21:21 - Pricing

23:22 - Summary

24:12 - Close

This week's Azure Update is up!

Article - https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:ugcPost:7471221969103892480/

Video - https://youtu.be/0dOmMLqrlw0

• Azure Boost Guest RDMA – Preview (00:47) - Azure Boost offloads a number of network, storage and mgmt functions to dedicated hardware on each node reducing latency and improving performance. Now in private preview we have RDMA which is a capability that instead of data flowing down the network stack and drivers it bypasses it between nodes providing even lower latency and higher throughput.
• ASR Linux NVMe Azure VM support – Preview (01:47) - Now your gen 2 Azure VMs with NVMe like the v6 Da/Ea/Fa running RHEL 9, SLES 15 and Ubuntu 24 can be migrated VM to VM.
• Premium SSD v2 non-zonal VM support – GA (02:12) - The sub-millisecond v2 of premium ssd with separate capacity, IOPS and throughput that has dynamic IOPS and throughput can now be used on VMs without AZ support.
• NCv6 – GA (02:38) - The new GPU enabled VM series that is using NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPU which have 96GB of GDDR7 memory per GPU. They are available in both general purpose and compute optimized SKUs.
• Azure Batch legacy VM SKU retirements (03:07) - D, Ds, Dv2, Dsv2 and Ls all retire May 1st 2028. Av2, F, Fs, Fsv2,G ,GS and Lsv2 all retire November 15th 2028. Move to newer SKUs before this retirement date as pools using them may become unusable.
• Azure VPN Client for Linux (preview) retired – 8/31/2026 (03:39) - The preview Azure VPN Client for Linux that is used for point-to-site (P2S) to Azure VPN Gateway will not reach GA and is being retired. Instead transition to other VPN clients on Linux such as OpenVPN client or strongSwan depending on tunnel type.
• Azure Migrate Azure Files – GA (04:20) - Azure Migrate now supports the discovery and assessment of both SMB and NFS file shares on Windows or Linux for migration to Azure Files. This includes the business case comparing on-premises vs cloud costs, which Azure Files SKU to use and if a move to Azure VM is better.
• Minimum billable object size for cool, cold and archive access tiers – NOT July 1 2026 (04:52) - Original there was going to be a minimum object billable size for the non hot access tiers but this has been pushed from the planned July 1 2026 with no firm date at this time.
• GPv1 and Legacy Blob new account blocked – June 1st 2026 (05:22) - As part of the already announced retirement plan you can no longer create new general purpose v1 or legacy blob storage accounts. These will be fully retired October 13th 2026 where GPv1 will be converted to GPv2.
• Azure Managed Redis Entra RBAC for data management – Preview (05:57) - The Azure managed Redis (the very high performance in-memory cache/data store) now supports data plane Entra-ID integrated RBAC which means your Entra identities can be used to grant access to read/write/administer your Redis data and no longer having to use shared keys.
• Azure PostgreSQL maintenance control – GA (06:41) - PostgreSQL flexible server now has better controls for managing maintenance events which includes viewing, rescheduling and applying. You can reschedule for up to 14 days.
• PostgreSQL Hub for Azure Developers – GA (07:01) - This brings together application development and AI resources for developers including sample apps, tutorials, learning paths and solution accelerators. It is available at https://azure-samples.github.io/postgres-hub/.
• SSMS GitHub Copilot Agent Mode – Preview (07:27) - SQL Server Management Studio GitHub Copilot integration now includes the agent mode. Previously the integration was great to help with T-SQL, help with basic questions and admin tasks. With the agent mode this expands to helping investigate performance issues, tune queries, troubleshoot errors and more complex tasks. It can also use skills AND can run as a different user from the person logged in, i.e. a different database user or SQL login that Copilot will use for query execution.
• Cosmos DB Synapse Link retirement – 3/31/2029 (08:17) - With the forward direction being Microsoft Fabric the Azure Synapse Link is being retired. Instead use the Cosmos DB mirroring to Fabric going forward for higher performance and feature sets.
• Azure SQL DB Entra logins – GA (08:35) - Using Entra server principals (logins) for Azure SQL DB is now GA. This means you can create logins from external provider and then grant server roles to those Entra principals which also means you can disable SQL authentication. This is already possible with Azure SQL MI.
• SQL MCP Server - GA (09:11) - This provides an agentic way to interact databases including SQL, PostgreSQL and Cosmos DB.
• Azure Monitor ingestion volume change dashboard – Preview (09:38) - The metrics usage insights now shows the volume change of ingestion to help you understand the changes over time, for example detecting spikes or drops in traffic.
• Foundry agent security license changes – Preview (10:01) - Today some Foundry agent security capabilities are licensed as part of Defender for Cloud. These are moving to the Microsoft Agent 365 license since the Defender agent protection will be powered by the Agent 365 observability logs and agent map. So think of this as capabilities like agent discovery, posture, threat detection, real-time protection and advanced hunting.
• Anthropic Fable 5 in Foundry and GitHub Copilot (10:42) Fable 5, a Mythos class model (and a new class above Opus) for non-security work, is built for long-running, multi-step workflows that unfold over time. It supports complex code development across systems, research synthesis across documents, and analysis across tables, charts, and diagrams.  It’s designed for the hardest knowledge work and coding problems. It plans its approach and checks progress against it while refining its work. Note it has a 30 day prompt and response retention currently per Anthropic for quality, safety and attack mitigation purposes, so you should consider that. The data is NOT used for training future models. It is well suited for work including financial analysis and reporting, contract review and due diligence and complex engineering workflows. It also has improved vision so great for multimodal scenarios. It does have restrictions on its use in certain areas, for example cybersecurity. Then you add in Foundry's own safety and guardrail capabilities. Anthropic also released Mythos 5 under the same Project Glasswing restrictions that is for cybersecurity scenarios.

New video on the passkey registration campaign feature of Entra ID to help get more users leveraging the easy, fast, strong and phishing resistant authentication mechanism.

00:00 - Introduction

00:07 - Passkey benefits

03:24 - Nudging users

03:57 - Passkey policies

07:49 - Registration campaigns

14:38 - When are users nudged

16:41 - Summary

17:43 - Close

Video link https://youtu.be/10Se9jR-cR0

Azure Weekly Update BUILD SPECIAL is up! It's late not because of recording but because it was so long it took 3 hours to upload on Starlink 🤣

https://youtu.be/f1JZs2bYUss

0:00 - Introduction

01:33 - New videos

02:07 - Cobalt 200 ARM VMs – Preview

03:17 - Lasv5 and Laosv5 VM SKU - Preview

04:58 - Azure Linux 4 - Preview

05:50 - VMSS updates

05:20 - Azure Infrastructure Resiliency Manager – Preview

06:41 - Confidential TDX VM live migration - Preview

06:18 - ASR premium plus support – GA

07:35 - Azure Functions updates

09:08 - Logic App updates

12:28 - AKS updates

14:40 - Azure Container Apps updates

15:26 - API Management updates

19:47 - API Center updates – GA

19:10 - Azure Monitor updates

20:29 - Fabric Rayfin – Preview

22:04 - Azure HorizonDB – Preview

24:45 - Cosmos DB updates

32:51 - SQL Server in VM snapshot backup – Preview

32:26 - Azure Databricks branch – Preview

33:56 - Foundry IQ and Azure AI Search updates

36:36 - Azure AI Search new gen AI integration - GA

36:26 - Oracle to PostgreSQL schema conversion – GA

37:47 - PostgreSQL updates – Preview

38:13 - MySQL updates- GA

39:50 - MS SQL updates

40:49 - Azure DocumentDB updates – GA

41:19 - Azure Confidential Clean Room multiparty analytics - Preview

42:55 - Microsoft Execution Container (MXC)

43:40 - Agent governance with ASSERT and ACS

45:35 - Agent A2A - Preview

45:49 - Foundry guided guardrails – Preview

46:33 - Foundry tracing and evaluation updates

47:36 - Agent service voice live integration - GA

47:52 - Purview agent integrations – Preview

48:20 - Foundry Toolbox and Memory

50:59 - Publish to Teams and M365 Copilot – June GA

50:28 - Azure AI Translator updates – GA

51:27 - Azure AI Speech LLM API – GA

52:54 - Custom Avatar and Custom Video in Foundry – GA

53:30 - Content Understanding in Foundry portal – Preview

53:37 - Foundry Global PTU reservations – GA

53:11 - PII playgrounds – Preview

53:27 - Foundry VS Code extension - GA

54:47 - Alon-1.0 Instruct

54:58 - Alon-1.0 Plan

55:50 - MAI-Thinking-1

55:22 - MAI-Image-2.5 (with Flash variant)

56:33 - MAI-Transcribe-1.5

56:46 - MAI-Voice-2 (with Flash variant coming soon)

58:52 - MAI-Code-1-Flash

58:10 - Majorana 2

59:40 - MDASH

59:26 - Intelligent terminal – Preview

01:00:09 - Work IQ APIs

01:01:07 - Web IQ

01:02:00 - Microsoft Scout, the first Autopilot

01:02:32 - Event Grid MQTT v5 sub identifier - GA

01:02:45 - Close

Tried something new and created a Microsoft AI update for month of May. Would be interested in feedback on maybe changes for future ones.

https://youtu.be/HN12PCVEeuM

00:00 - Introduction

00:19 - New AI videos

00:47 - Models

00:50 - Claude Opus 4.8 - Foundry, Copilot Cowork and GitHub Copilot

02:10 - GPT-5.5 Instant (GPT-chat-latest) & GPT-5.5 Thinking – Microsoft Foundry and M365 Copilot Chat

02:52 - GPT-realtime-2, GPT-realtime-translate, and GPT-realtime-whisper - Foundry

03:37 - xAI Grok 4.3 - Foundry

03:57 - DeepSeek V4, V4 Pro & Kimi 2.6 - Foundry (via Fireworks)

04:45 - Cohere Command A+ and new image models - Foundry

05:17 - MAI-Image-2-Efficient — Foundry Labs

05:54 - Microsoft Foundry

05:57 - Trace-based evaluation for external & hosted agents

06:59 - GPT-5 Reinforcement Fine-Tuning - Gated GA

07:39 - Managed VNet, project cost attribution & Content Understanding - GA

08:17 - Open agentic stack from MS Research - MagenticLite, MagenticBrain, Fara 1.5

09:11 - Foundry Local 1.1 & 1.2 plus azure-ai-projects 2.2.0 SDK

10:13 - Foundry IQ

11:00 - Copilot Studio

11:03 - Computer-using agents

11:34 - New workflow experience

12:24 - M365 Copilot

12:27 - Redesign

12:59 - Implicit Outlook grounding

13:07 - PDFs in chat

13:11 - GitHub Copilot

13:14 - Opus 4.8 & Gemini 3.5 Flash GA, GPT-5.3-Codex, auto model selection

13:34 - GitHub Copilot App – Preview

13:54 - Copilot CLI remote control – GA

14:18 - Organizational model rules - Preview

14:41 - Close