A quieter month following Ignite 2025, with fewer features reaching general availability. Here’s a roundup of the notable updates across Networking, Storage, and some upcoming deprecations to be aware of.

Networking

Azure Load Balancer bandwidth metrics now support Protocol dimension

Bandwidth metrics for Azure Load Balancer now include a Protocol dimension, providing more granular visibility into traffic patterns for alerting, monitoring, and troubleshooting.

Storage

Azure Files Enhancements

Azure Files Premium shares now support zonal placement in selected regions. This allows you to co-locate storage with compute resources in the same availability zone, reducing latency and ensuring consistency for zone-pinned applications.

Deprecation and Retirement Notes

Update: The retirement date for default outbound access has been extended to March 31, 2026.

The retirement date for default outbound access has been extended to March 31, 2026. Plan your migration to explicit outbound connectivity methods ahead of this deadline.

Retirement: Deprecation of Custom Resource Providers

Azure Resource Manager is deprecating the Custom Resource Provider (CuRP) service, with retirement scheduled for October 31, 2026.

Further Reading

• Azure Updates