Microsoft recently released Azure Stack Hub Update 2005 (release notes here), and it is quite a big update, so I felt it warranted a blog post for some of the things I noticed that aren’t detailed in the release notes.

The first thing I noticed running the update is that there are some cosmetic updates.

First of all, the title in the portal is now correctly reflects the name change to Azure STack Hub. The above pictures show the before and after update changes. Note that the Region management ‘globe’ icon has changed too.

Other icons have also been refreshed to match those in Azure:

I prefer the new look, FWIW.

When you run an operation that could block an update, you now get a warning in the Update Management blade:

As you can see in the picture above, the operation MAS Update is in progress, so updates can’t be installed whilst that is running - makes sense. It will block operations such as adding a node to a scale unit and secret rotation.

I like this feature and will stop operators starting an update when it has no chance of completing due to these other activities taking place. Another thing I like is the ability to click on the link and it will take you to the activity log showing what operations are underway that is causing the block.

One thing that did catch my eye was the ability to stop, shut down, and restart an infrastructure role instance from the admin portal has been removed. I’ll admit that I have used this capability on more than one occasion, but I guess the telemetry that the PG have been receiving have shown that his has caused more problems than fixed, so whilst it is frustrating, I can understand the reasons.

Most of the other updates relate to under the hood improvements such as autonomous healing capability, so reducing the number of alerts. Also, the Storage service API version 2019-02-02 is now supported.