Microsoft ACA updates 2023 - Q4
Within this blog, I want to give an overview of all the feature in Q4 2023 that becomes available in General Availability, Technical Preview or End of Support by Microsoft. This information can be found at Microsoft Azure Updates.
Features that are now supported by Microsoft (GA):
- [General available] Azure Container Apps Landing Zone Accelerator
Azure Container Apps Landing Zone Accelerator is now generally available with the latest workload profiles and Container Apps Jobs resources. With Azure Container Apps landing zone accelerator, you can build a production grade secured infrastructure at an enterprise scale to deploy fully managed, cloud-native apps and microservices. Landing zone accelerators provide architectural guidance, reference architecture, reference implementations and automation packaged to deploy workload platforms on Azure at scale. The goal of landing zone accelerators is to save having to reinvent the wheel by building on the lessons we learned working with our strategic customers. To learn more, visit: https://aka.ms/aca-lza and get started with a quick deployment using Azure Dev CLI and GitHub Codespaces to provision Azure Container Apps LZA directly in your azure subscription. - [General available] Azure Container Apps is now eligible for Azure savings plan for compute
Azure Container Apps is now eligible for Azure savings plan for compute! All Azure Container Apps regions and plans are eligible to receive 15% savings (1 year) and 17% savings (3 years) compared to pay-as-you-go when you commit to an Azure savings plan. You can save by committing to spending a fixed hourly amount for 1 or 3 years, unlocking lower prices. Click here to learn more.
Features that are currently in Public Preview and not yet GA
- [Public Preview] Vector database add-ons for Azure Container Apps
When it comes to using cognitive search, those at the very beginning of the AI journey are looking for easy to use and inexpensive solutions. Azure Container Apps is providing add-ons for three of the most popular opensource vector database variants, namely Qdrant, Milvus and Weaviate, to enable you to get started quickly and try out innovative use cases before going into production. With the native Azure Container Apps integration, and its scale to zero capabilities, these add-ons make it fast, easy, and affordable to try things out. Click here to learn more. - [Public Preview] Azure Container Apps adds native support for CNCF Buildpacks to automatically containerize your code
Cloud build feature, now in public preview, adds support for CNCF Buildpacks to Azure Container Apps. You no longer have the overhead of creating containers for existing or new applications. This lets you focus on your code and quickly take your application from source to cloud. There’s no need to understand containers or how to package application code for deployment. With this feature, Azure Container Apps automatically builds and package the application code for deployment. Additionally, Container Apps will make it easier to keep these applications patched by providing on-demand patches which can be applied from the client. Click here to learn more. - [Public Preview] Policy-driven resiliency in Azure Container Apps
Azure Container Apps now offers new built-incapabilities for resiliency. Available in public preview, the new resiliency feature enables you to seamlessly recover from service-to-service request and outbound dependency failures just by adding simple policies. Several policies are built in for retries, back-offs and circuit breakers. The policies are also customizable to meet unique workload needs.Behind the scenes, the resiliency feature is powered by Dapr resiliency, however, it requires no special deployment, coding or knowledge of Dapr. Read more about Azure Container Apps resiliency powered by Distributed Application Runtime (Dapr) here. - [Public Preview] Dedicated GPU workload profiles
GPU workloads are now available in public preview in Azure Container Apps. Run machine learning models with Azure Container Apps as a target compute platform as you build event driven intelligent applications to train your model or derive data driven insights. Container Apps support GPU compute in their dedicated workload profiles to unlock machine learning computing for event driven workloads.
This features allows use of the NC A100 v4 series GPUs that are optimized for real-world Azure Applied AI training and batch inference workloads. GPU workload profiles are offered as part of the Dedicated Plan and only supported in the Workload Profiles type environment. Pricing details are available in the Dedicated plan. Click here to learn more.
Features that are retired
- [Retired] Azure Container Apps preview API versions 2023-04-01-preview
Starting on March 6, 2024, Azure Container Apps control plane API version 2023-04-01-preview will be retired. Before that date, please migrate to the latest stable API version (2023-05-01) or latest preview API version (2023-08-01-preview). Required action If you're using Azure Resource Manager API version 2023-04-01-preview to manage Azure Container Apps, please update your API requests to use version 2023-05-01 or later. Management operations using the retired API versions may fail after the retirement date. If you have any questions or concerns, please create an issue
on GitHub. Click here to learn more.
For more information about the features that are coming out, please refer to the public roadmap of Microsoft ACA team.
