azure / appconfiguration-announcements Goto Github PK

Changes for data residency and Azure AD support are now GA.

Data residency: All customer data stored in App Configuration now resides within the region where the original configuration store was created. Customer data will not be automatically replicated between Azure paired regions.

Azure AD: The App Configuration portal now allows you to switch between Access Keys and Azure AD for authentication when accessing configuration values and feature flags. Your current authentication method is displayed at the top of the blade, and can be switched easily by clicking on the "Switch to Azure AD" or "Switch to Access keys" button.

Please let us know if you have any questions or feedback on these changes.

We recently revisited the problems we were trying to solve with offline caching since this library was launched in 2019. We found that OfflineCache was being used as a fallback configuration source in case the App Configuration service is down. However, storing configuration data in a local environment outside your App Configuration store can potentially lead to issues. These include difficulties enforcing data access policies and retaining sensitive information in unreliable environments. In the last two years since we went to GA, we have invested heavily in server- side resiliency and availability. Please check our recommendation for highly available App Configuration.

Therefore, we are deprecating all offline caching capabilities with the release of v5.0.0 preview, in favor of improving server-side reliability.

As always, please feel free to let us know if you have any feedback.

App Configuration is planning to create a Python Provider, like our .Net and Spring providers, to support additional usage beyond the Python SDK. This includes loading the sets of configurations, along with resolving key vault references, trimming prefixes, and JSON support to start with.

We are looking for feedback on the proposed design that can be found here, Azure App Configuration Python Provider - Design Proposal · Issue #657 · Azure/AppConfiguration (github.com).

Azure App Configuration has introduced advanced capabilities in Feature Management and Experimentation for .NET applications. The .NET feature management library has added two new features in the form of variant feature flags and feature flag telemetry. These features, along with Azure App Configuration's integration of Split Experimentation, are designed to provide you with greater control, insights, and optimization opportunities for your application's feature releases.

Variant Feature Flags in the .NET Feature Management Library
The introduction of variant feature flags in the .NET feature management library enables more sophisticated and flexible feature rollouts. With variant feature flags, you can:

• Tailor User Experiences: Define multiple variants of a feature to customize experiences for different user segments.
• Manage Controlled Rollouts: Gradually release variants of a feature to minimize risk and ensure a smooth transition for users.
• Enable A/B/n Testing: Deploy different variants of a feature to specific user groups for more precise A/B/n testing.

Explore more about Variants in the Feature Management Library here

Enhanced Telemetry for Deeper Insights
Telemetry in the .NET feature management library now offers robust tracking and analytics for your feature flags. This enhancement allows you to:

• Monitor Feature Usage: Gain real-time insights into feature usage patterns.
• Analyze Performance Impact: Evaluate how feature releases impact your application's performance.
• Make Data-Driven Decisions: Utilize detailed telemetry data to inform your future feature management strategies.

Learn more about the enhanced Telemetry capabilities here.

Experimentation Powered by Integration with Split Experimentation
Our integration with Split Experimentation brings experimentation capabilities directly into Azure App Configuration.
With this integration, you can:

• Easily Run Experiments: Set up and manage experiments to test new features and configurations effortlessly.
• Detect and triage issues in Feature rollouts: Use Split’s advanced analytics to measure the impact of feature changes on key metrics to act as guardrails for your new feature rollouts.
• Continuously Optimize Features: Leverage experimentation results to continuously optimize your features, ensuring the best possible user experience.

Learn how to set up an experiment in App Configuration or simply run an azd up for this repo and run an experiment for the sample "QuoteofTheDay" app.

Currently, all these features are available in .NET, and we will soon be releasing the same capabilities in libraries for other programming languages as well.

More resources

• Learn more about Experimentation as a concept.
• azd up repo to run an experiment for the sample "QuoteofTheDay" app.
• blogpost for Split Experimentation.
• Learn more about Split Experimentation on Azure

We look forward to seeing the innovative ways you will use these new capabilities. Do share your feedback for the above features or App Configuration.

An Azure DevOps pipeline task, Azure App Configuration Push, is now available in the Azure DevOps Marketplace. You can use it to upload your configuration files from either your repository, build artifacts, or any other sources to Azure App Configuration as part of your build or release process. This enables you to integrate your continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) with App Configuration.

This new pipeline task can be used alongside our existing task, named Azure App Configuration, which downloads key-values and sets them as Azure DevOps pipeline variables.

As always, let us know if you have any questions or feedback.

Allow creation of GitHub Discussions so that the community can discuss issues such as #20, instead of using issues.

Azure App Configuration is now generally available in Azure China. This includes the regions China North 2 and China East 2. These new regions have full feature parity to the public cloud experience.
Please let us know if you have any questions or feedback.

Please see important update: Free tier usage limits now effective 1 May 2020

Configuration stores created during the public preview period have been automatically migrated to the Free tier. Stores in the Free tier are limited to 1,000 requests per day. Currently, we are waiving the daily request limit for Free tier stores created during the public preview period.

Beginning 1 April 2020, we will enforce the daily request limit for all Free tier stores, including those created during the public preview period.

If you used App Configuration while it was in public preview, we recommend that you review the Total Request Count graph on the Overview page in the Azure portal to understand the number of daily requests made to each of your configuration stores. Consider upgrading to the Standard tier for any stores receiving more than 1,000 requests in a single day. You can upgrade from the "Scale up" tab in the portal.

Python App Configuration Provider now supports dynamic refresh of configuration values. With this release, Python applications can get the updated configuration values, as and when the values are updated in the App Configuration store.
The new version is currently a preview version and can be accessed and downloaded from here. Learn how to use the package to dynamically refresh the configuration of your application.

Check out the samples on Github:
Python
Django
Flask

Please share your feedback with us.

When App Configuration reached GA, configuration stores created during the public preview period were automatically migrated to the Free tier. Stores in the Free tier are limited to 1,000 requests per day. We previously announced that we would enforce the daily request limit on stores created during the public preview period starting on 1 April 2020.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on development lifecycles, we will now wait until 1 May 2020 to enforce the daily request limit on stores created during the public preview period.

If you used App Configuration while it was in public preview, we recommend that you review the Total Request Count graph on the Overview page in the Azure portal to understand the number of daily requests made to each of your configuration stores. Consider upgrading to the Standard tier for any stores receiving more than 1,000 requests in a single day. You can upgrade from the "Scale up" tab in the portal.

Snapshots in App Configuration are now Generally Available. With snapshots, App Configuration provides solutions for scenarios like,

• Immutable production configuration (keep the production configuration protected against unintended changes)
• Last known good configuration (easy configuration roll-back)
• Auditing (keep the released version of configuration unchanged or/and a history of released configuration' versions as Snapshots)

Watch this video for a quick overview of snapshots and follow along the how to create/use snapshots for a quick tutorial.

For any questions or feedback, connect with us via Github issue.

New stable version, 2022-05-01, of Azure App Configuration REST API (Control Plane) was made live recently. With this version, we promoted below features in Preview, to General Availability.

• Soft-delete
• Capability to disable access key authentication
• Read and write key-values via ARM template

Please access the REST API documentation here. For any questions or feedback, connect with us via Github issue.

You can use the Azure App Configuration Sync action in GitHub Actions to update an App Configuration instance when you update configuration files in your GitHub repository. This means you can use all of your existing workflows around updating your configuration files in GitHub while leveraging App Configuration to centrally store and secure your settings and feature flags.

To start syncing- go to your repository, select Actions, create a new workflow, and search for “Azure App Configuration sync” in the marketplace. Documentation is available at
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-app-configuration/concept-github-action

We’d love to hear about how you’re using or thinking about GitHub Actions. If you’re available for a call with our team, please leave your email address here.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/appconfigactionsfeedback

Azure App Configuration Task and Azure App Configuration Push Task has been upgraded to use Node10. Previously, using Node 6. Customers running the tasks in self-hosted agents that only support Node 6 can use
Azure App Configuration Task 3.5.16 and Azure App Configuration Push Task 1.4.4.

Azure App Configuration Task: downloads key-values and sets them as Azure DevOps pipeline variables.
Azure App Configuration Push Task: pushes key-values from a configuration file into your App Configuration store.

The update release notes for Azure App Configuration Push Task and Azure App Configuration Task. Please let us know if you have any questions or feedback.

Azure App Configuration is now generally available in the Azure Government cloud. This includes the regions in Virginia and Arizona. These regions have full feature parity to the public cloud experience.
A new public cloud region, Australia Southeast, has also been added.
Please let us know if you have any questions or feedback.

We have gotten a lot of queries around our plans for general availability (GA) of the App Configuration service. We wanted to share some details with our community.

We plan to GA the service in January 2020. The biggest piece of remaining work is to stabilize the upcoming versions of the config providers for .NET and Java. We have recently refactored these providers for better reliability and compatibility, e.g. with SDKs from other Azure services. Preview versions of these updated providers will be available by mid-November. You can help! Please switch over to the latest previews when they are available – we’ll make an announcement right here on GitHub. Put them through their paces, and be sure to let us know if you encounter any issues or unexpected behavior.

We are also pleased to provide some details around pricing. There will be two service tiers available with the following options and pricing at GA:

App Configuration will remain free until GA. After GA, all existing resources will be migrated over to the Free tier. For each of your resources, you can choose to stay on the Free tier, or upgrade to the Standard tier if it is a better fit for your needs.

If you have any questions on our GA plans, pricing, or anything else related to App Config, feel free to ask on our GitHub issues page.

Azure App Configuration Kubernetes Provider is an App Configuration add-on for Kubernetes clusters to support the centralized storage and management of configuration data for applications and services running in the cluster(s). It constructs ConfigMaps and Secrets from your key-values and Key Vault references in Azure App Configuration.

Follow along this tutorial on How to use this Kubernetes provider with Azure Kubernetes service to source the configuration of services running in AKS, from App Configuration store.

For any questions or feedback, connect with us via Github issue.

App Configuration has released the Feature Management package for Python. The library is currently in public preview. This will provide the following capabilities for your Python applications:

• Feature Flags: Enable or disable features in your application without deploying new code.
• Targeted Rollouts: You can gradually roll out new features to a percentage of your users, and target individual users and/or groups, reducing risk and increasing control.
• Scheduled Rollouts: Release or enable a feature at or for pre-scheduled time without a redeploying such as running a discount for a limited time period on your website.

For a detailed step-by-step guide, please follow the quickstart to use App Configuration for your next feature release.

We welcome your feedback and suggestions. Please report any issues or feature requests on our GitHub Issues page.

Azure Availability zones(AZ) are now supported by App Configuration in AZ-enabled regions. Each AZ-enabled region consists of 3 or more physically separated datacenters to protect against single datacenter failures. AZ are enabled for all existing and new App Configuration resources automatically at no extra cost. The current supported AZ-enabled regions are: East US, East US 2, Central US, West US 2, North Europe, West Europe, France Central, UK South, Southeast Asia, and Japan East. As more regions are added, please reference the FAQ for updates as well as the azure guide for more information on AZ-enabled regions in Azure.

Python App Configuration provider is now Generally Available. Python App Configuration provider is a library running on top of Python SDK and helps Python developers easily consume the Azure App Configuration service for their configuration settings, just like a dictionary. It works natively with other Azure services such as Azure Key vault and Azure Active directory.

In GA version, we have added the async support, complete support for Mapping API and fixed some of the identified bugs in our preview version. Learn how to use the provider library in this document. Documentation and package could be found here.

You could download the samples from Github:

• Python
• Django
• Flask

Please let us know of your feedback.

Geo-replication allows you to replicate your App Configuration data across regions, where the service is available. With this feature, we offer read-write replicas. Writes to the store or replica, will be synchronized automatically to all other replicas with eventual consistency. Geo-replication helps you build resiliency, higher availability, and lower latency in your application for configuration data.

Learn more about the Geo-replication feature and how to enable it for your App Configuration store.

Enabling Geo-replication will incur an additional cost, and it's only available for the Standard tier. Pricing information is here.
For any questions or feedback, connect with us via Github issue.

Azure App Configuration Kubernetes Provider is an App Configuration add-on for Kubernetes to provide the centralized configuration data for applications and services running in Kubernetes clusters. With the GA version, the provider will support

• Dynamic refresh of the Configuration key-values
• Periodic refresh of the Key-vault referenced secrets
• Workload identity authentication
• Consumption of the generated ConfigMap as a mounted file in addition to the environment variables

Use this doc Kubernetes provider with Azure Kubernetes service to set up this Kubernetes provider to work with the Azure Kubernetes service. Follow this tutorial to set up dynamic refresh of the configuration for applications running in the Kubernetes clusters.

We have updated the schema from the preview versions, please check Provider reference for the complete list of properties that could be used for setting this provider.

For any questions or feedback, connect with us via Github issue.

Are you interested in running A/B tests for your application before rolling out the final version to your user base? Do you want to identify which change will have a positive impact and improve conversions? If you answered yes to either question, then you are a perfect fit for our newest feature, experimentation in App Configuration.

App Configuration is starting a private preview to let users experiment with their application features and figure out which variation works best before they release it to their end users. App Configuration integrates with Application Insights and Microsoft’s partner Split Software to provide the experimentation capability on Azure.

If you are interested in participating in this private preview, please fill out the form: https://aka.ms/appconfig/exppreview . Our team will contact you to book an informational session to help set experimentation for your application.

This exclusive opportunity ensures your insights and suggestions directly influence the product's development. Please note that the seats in private preview are limited and allocated on first-come, first-served basis.

App Configuration stores in the standard tier now allow replicas to be discovered automatically. With the "auto-discovery" feature, no code changes are necessary for applications to take advantage of the geo-replication; improving scalability and resiliency. This feature works seamlessly with the App Configuration provider library for .NET, currently. The library will discover and connect to additional replicas, if available, in case the specified endpoints fail to connect.

Please read more about the feature here. The article also explains how to disable the feature or use a prioritized list of replicas for failover.

Do share your feedback for the above feature or App Configuration.

We’ve released a new version (1.1.2/1.2.2) of the Spring Boot configuration provider. This new release includes updates around authentication and configuration refreshes. Please check out the release notes for more information and guidance on how to migrate to the newest version. As always, let us know if you encounter any issues.

App Configuration now supports changes to recovery, purging, and purge protecting for your standard tier configuration stores. If you accidentally delete your store, it can now be recovered to its previous state for a period of up to 7 days.

All currently existing Standard tier stores automatically have the soft delete option enabled, with a preset recovery period of 7 days. If you are deleting a configuration store and plan to recreate a store with the same name before the end of the retention period, use the purge functionality on the old store first. The previous ability to recreate stores without purging will be deprecated on April 30th, 2022.

To learn more about the soft delete feature, refer to the soft delete conceptual document, or to learn how to recover or purge your store, access this how-to.
For further feedback or questions, feel free to create a github issue.

A major version upgrade 2.x is now available for customers using the Azure App Configuration provider library in Spring Boot applications.

The new library version is redesigned to make it easier to use for Spring developers. For example, it has native integration for Spring profile support through leveraging the App Configuration label feature. Developers now have more flexibility to define what subset of configuration they want to load from an App Configuration store and under what conditions the configuration should be refreshed. The new version also added support for push model configuration refresh triggered by the Event Hub events. If you already use any of the previous 1.x versions, you can follow this guidance to upgrade to 2.x. If you are a new user, please check out this quickstart. For a complete list of all changes, reference the release notes.

A new 2.x version of the feature management library for Spring Boot applications is also released. Besides bug fixes, it added the long-awaited feature rollout support. Please check out the release notes for more information, or follow the quickstart to leverage App Configuration for your next feature release.

As always, please feel free to let us know if you have any feedback.

Azure App Configuration is now available in the region East China 2 for public preview. It has full feature parity to the public cloud experience.
Please let us know if you have any questions or feedback.

We previously announced our plan to release App Configuration to general availability in January 2020. Understandably, we’ve gotten a lot of questions recently about whether that is still the case. We want to provide an update on our progress towards GA.

We will release App Configuration to general availability on February 19, 2020.

The main reason for the delay has been to build out some new features aligning to the Azure Security Controls Benchmark. In particular, you’ll see some new functionality allowing you to secure your infrastructure via Private Links, as well as to use your own keys for encrypting data stored in App Configuration.

Pricing is unchanged from our previous announcement, and will now begin on February 19.

Next week, we will start to roll out the ability to select the Free vs. Standard tier when creating an App Configuration resource. Both tiers will be free until February 19. After GA, there will be charges for resources explicitly created under the Standard tier, or explicitly migrated to the Standard tier. All other resources (including resources created prior to the introduction of the Standard tier) will be in the Free tier. You can migrate these resources to the Standard tier at any time.

Thank you for your support throughout the public preview. We look forward to reaching this important new milestone.

App Configuration has released a new feature called snapshots. A snapshot is an immutable set of key-values from an App Configuration store, created using key and label filters. Once the snapshot is created, the key-values in it are guaranteed to remain unchanged. Snapshots are a good fit for scenarios like controlled rollouts, Last Known Good (LKG) configuration, auditing, configuration versioning, and simplifying client configuration composition.

Learn more about the snapshots feature and how to create/use snapshots.

For any questions or feedback, connect with us via Github issue.

We have been hearing your asks for higher hourly request limits and are happy to announce that as of today, the hourly request limit has been raised from 20,000 requests/hour to 30,000 requests/hour in the standard tier. Additionally, when the hourly limit is reached, some requests may return the HTTP status code 429 until the end of that hour. As more requests exceed the limit, more requests may return HTTP status code 429.

This change avoids a hard cutoff for applications that have hit the request limit. You can monitor an App Configuration store’s request count and follow these best practices to reduce requests made.

If you have any questions or feedback on this change, you can open an issue in our Github repo.

Geo-replication allows you to replicate your App Configuration data across multiple regions where the service is available. With this feature, we offer read-write replicas. Writes to the store or replica, will be synchronized automatically to all other replicas with eventual consistency. Geo-replication helps you build resiliency, higher availability, and lower latency in your application for configuration data.
With this release the replicas now support Private endpoints, and connection string-based authentication.

Learn more about the Geo-replication feature and how to enable it for your App Configuration store.

Enabling Geo-replication will incur an additional cost, and it's only available for the Standard tier. Pricing information is here.
For any questions or feedback, connect with us via Github issue.

Two important security features for App Configuration are now officially GA.

Private Endpoints allows clients on a virtual network (VNet) to securely access data over a private link. The private endpoint uses an IP address from the VNet address space for your App Configuration store. Network traffic between the clients on the VNet and the App Configuration store traverses over the VNet using a private link on the Microsoft backbone network, eliminating exposure to the public internet. Read more about private endpoints for Azure App Configuration.

Customer-Managed Keys provide enhanced data protection by allowing you to manage your encryption keys. App Configuration always encrypts data using a Microsoft-managed key. When customer-managed key encryption is used, all sensitive information in App Configuration is also encrypted with a user-provided Azure Key Vault key. This provides the ability to rotate the encryption key on demand. It also provides the ability to revoke Azure App Configuration's access to sensitive information by revoking the App Configuration instance's access to the key. Read more about customer-managed keys for Azure App Configuration.

Note: In the Central India region, Private Endpoints and Customer-Managed Keys are still in public preview.

If you have any questions or feedback on these features, you can open an issue in the App Configuration GitHub repo.

Python Configuration Provider has a new stable release version, v1.1.0. With the new version we now have below feature in GA for the Python Configuration provider,

• Dynamic refresh, to update the configuration values in your application without the need to restart the application.

Learn how to use the provider to dynamically refresh the configuration of your application.

Please check the relevant samples on Github:
Python
Django
Flask

Don't forget to share your feedback with us.

App Configuration and Key Vault are complementary services, which will be used side by side in most application deployments. To help you use them together, App Configuration allows you to create keys that reference values stored in Key Vault.

When you do this, App Configuration stores the URI to the Key Vault value, rather than the value itself. Your application retrieves the value of this key using the App Configuration client provider, just like any other key stored in App Configuration. The client provider recognizes it as a Key Vault reference, and calls out to Key Vault to retrieve the value.

Your application is responsible for authenticating properly to both App Configuration and Key Vault. The two services don't communicate directly.

For more information, please see our tutorial on using Key Vault references. If you're interested in using managed identity with App Config and Key Vault, please see Integrate with Azure managed identities, which now covers Key Vault in addition to App Config.

Service Connector helps you easily connect an Azure compute service to other backing services. Azure App Configuration is now included in the target service list in Service Connector. This helps you to connect an Azure compute service like App Service to your App Configuration store easily. Service Connector configures the connection information between the compute service and App Configuration store for you. Please check out the documentation for details on this integration.

In case of any questions or feedback, feel free to create a Github issue.

As part of the App Configuration GA plan, we’re releasing a new version (1.1.0.M6) of the Spring Boot configuration provider. This new release updated managed identity support for both system-assigned managed identity and user-assigned managed identity. Please check out the release notes for more information and guidance on how to migrate to the newest version.

We believe that this version will be very close to the final GA build. We encourage you to switch to it soon. As always, let us know if you encounter any issues.

As part of the App Configuration GA plan, we’re releasing a new version (3.0.0-preview-010550001-251) of the .NET Core configuration provider. This new release includes the following changes:

• Added support for authentication using Azure Active Directory.
• Reworked Azure Managed Identity support to align with other Azure SDKs.
• Removed dependencies that have been deprecated.
• Refactored a number of APIs based on user feedback.

Please check out the release notes for more information and guidance on how to migrate to the newest version. We believe that this version will be very close to the final GA build. We encourage you to switch to it soon. As always, let us know if you encounter any issues.

Python App Configuration provider is a library running on top of Python SDK and will help Python developers easily consume the App Configuration service for the configuration settings, just like a dictionary. Please click here for learning about the library and how to use it. You can also get samples using the provider from our repo.
We will appreciate related feedback.