Networking - 1

2025 (8)

October (3)

azure: Retirement: Azure Network Policy Manager (NPM) for Windows nodes on AKS to Be Retired by September 30, 2026

Azure Updates

2025-10-07

Microsoft will retire Azure Network Policy Manager (NPM) for Windows nodes on AKS on September 30, 2026. Customers must move to alternative networking solutions to keep receiving support, security updates, and deployment compatibility.

azure: [Launched] Generally Available: Azure Firewall Updates - IP Group limit increased to 600 per Firewall Policy

Azure Updates

2025-10-07

Azure Firewall Policy now generally available supports up to 600 IP Groups per policy (previously 200), allowing administrators to simplify and better organize firewall rules by using more IP Groups instead of long IP lists.

azure: Retirement: Azure VPN Gateway support for SSTP Protocol will be retired on March 31, 2027

Azure Updates

2025-10-03

Azure VPN Gateway will retire support for the SSTP protocol on March 31, 2027. Microsoft cites limited scalability and suboptimal performance and advises customers to migrate to IKEv2 or OpenVPN, which offer significantly improved capabilities (including support for up to 10,000 connections).

September (4)

aks: Release 2025-09-21

Release notes from AKS

2025-09-27

AKS release v20250921 includes new previews and GA features, multiple deprecations and retirements, security and component upgrades, bug fixes, and several behavioural changes. Important actions: upgrade clusters from deprecated Kubernetes/Azure Linux versions, migrate deprecated add-ons, and review node pool and networking defaults to ensure compatibility.

azure: [Launched] Generally Available: Enabling dedicated connections to backends in Azure Application Gateway

Azure Updates

2025-09-15

Azure Application Gateway V2 now generally available: customers can enable dedicated connections from the gateway to backend servers instead of using the default connection reuse behavior.

azure: [Launched] Generally Available: Backend TLS validation controls in Azure Application Gateway

Azure Updates

2025-09-15

Azure Application Gateway V2 is generally available with customer-controlled backend TLS validations, allowing customers to manage how TLS validations are applied to backend HTTPS connections.

azure: [Launched] Generally Available: Multiple address prefixes for subnets in Azure Virtual Networks

Azure Updates

2025-09-04

Azure announced general availability of multiple address prefixes for subnets in Azure Virtual Networks. Subnets previously allowed only a single address prefix, which constrained scale for some applications when address space was exhausted. The GA feature lets subnets hold more than one prefix, enabling larger address ranges and greater flexibility for scaling and IP management.

August (1)

azure: [Launched] Generally Available: CNI Overlay for Application Gateway for Containers and AGIC

Azure Updates

2025-08-26

Azure CNI Overlay for Application Gateway for Containers (AGIC) is now generally available. It allows AKS clusters to assign pod IPs from a separate CIDR, conserving VNet IP space and simplifying multi-cluster deployments.