John Savill's Technical Training runs through a weekly roundup of Microsoft updates, covering Azure service retirements, AKS and VM SKU changes, Entra ID and backup updates, Azure SQL and VS Code tooling news, plus Azure AI Foundry and Databricks/Fabric improvements.

Azure Update 20th March 2026

Lots of updates this week.

Channel notes

• Looking for content on a particular topic? Search the channel.
• The creator notes they can’t answer/read questions due to volume; use places like Reddit or Microsoft Community Hub for Q&A.

Chapters (topics covered)

• 00:00 - Introduction
• 00:29 - New videos
• 01:13 - AMA next week
• 01:29 - AKS Flatcar Container Linux retire
• 02:03 - Azure Batch VM SKU and image retirements
• 03:11 - AVS AC30P and AV52 node retirements
• 03:29 - HC, HBv2 and NP VM SKU retirement
• 03:41 - Azure RedHat OpenShift MI support
• 04:07 - WAF DRS 2.2
• 04:43 - Entra ID blob SFTP access
• 05:18 - Standard HDD retirement
• 05:39 - Azure Databricks Lakeflow Connect Free tier
• 06:36 - Azure Databricks to Fabric federation
• 07:43 - Fabric mirroring and shortcut updates
• 08:58 - Fabric IQ updates
• 10:28 - Azure SQL DB versionless TDE
• 11:05 - SQL Server VS Code updates
• 11:45 - Foundry Agent Service
• 12:44 - Foundry Observability
• 13:59 - NVIDIA Nemotron models
• 14:15 - Foundry Local updates
• 14:44 - OpenAI GPT-5.4 mini and nano
• 15:23 - Entra Backup and Recovery
• 16:15 - Close

Links mentioned

• Recommended Learning Path for Azure: https://learn.onboardtoazure.com
• Certification Content Repository: https://github.com/johnthebrit/CertificationMaterials
• Weekly Azure Update playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlVtbbG169nEv7jSfOVmQGRp9wAoAM0Ks
• Azure Master Class playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlVtbbG169nGccbp8VSpAozu3w9xSQJoY
• DevOps Master Class playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlVtbbG169nFr8RzQ4GIxUEznpNR53ERq
• PowerShell Master Class playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlVtbbG169nFq_hR7FcMYg32xsSAObuq8
• Certification Cram Videos playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlVtbbG169nHz2qfLvPsAz9CnnXofhmcA
• Mentoring Content playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlVtbbG169nGHxNkSWB0PjzZHwZ0BkXZZ
• FAQ: https://savilltech.com/faq
• Charity T-shirt store: https://johns-t-shirts-store.creator-spring.com/
• Subtitles/translation demo: https://youtu.be/v5b53-PgEmI
• Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpIn7ox7j7bH_OFj7tYouOQ?sub_confirmation=1

What this update is about (at a glance)

This video is a weekly update covering:

• Azure platform changes and retirements (AKS, VM SKUs, storage)
• Identity/security-related updates (Microsoft Entra ID; backup/recovery)
• Data platform and analytics updates (Azure Databricks, Microsoft Fabric, Azure SQL)
• AI platform and model updates (Azure AI Foundry, agent/observability/local updates, model announcements)