August 2018

  • Article

These features and Azure Databricks platform improvements were released in August 2018.

New regions

August 31, 2018

Azure Databricks is now available in the following additional regions:

  • Canada East
  • Canada Central
  • Central India
  • West India
  • South India
  • Australia Central
  • Australia Central 2
  • Japan East
  • Japan West

Conditional access

August 28, 2018

Azure Databricks now supports Microsoft Entra ID conditional access, which allows administrators to control where and when users are permitted to sign in to Azure Databricks. For example, conditional access policies can restrict sign-in to your corporate network or can require multi-factor authentication.

Conditional access is available only in Microsoft Entra ID Premium.

See Conditional access.

Workspace sidebar redesign

August 28 - September 4, 2018: Version 2.79

The sidebar for navigating workspace files has been simplified and streamlined, showing only two swimlanes at a time, providing left and right arrows to scroll horizontally when there are more than two swimlanes to view, defaulting to your own user file view when you click the Workspace or Home button in the left navigation, and enabling you to pin the sidebar open while you work in the main pane, which remains unobstructed. We hope you enjoy the changes.

New environment variables in init scripts

August 28 - September 4, 2018: Version 2.79

Cluster-scoped init scripts now support the following environment variables:

  • DB_DRIVER_IP - the IP address of the driver node
  • DB_INSTANCE_TYPE - the type of Spark node
  • DB_PYTHON_VERSION - the version of Python used on the cluster
  • DB_IS_JOB_CLUSTER - indicates whether the cluster was created to run a job

See Use cluster-scoped init scripts.

Cluster-scoped init scripts

August 14-21, 2018: Version 2.78

Cluster-scoped init scripts are init scripts defined in a cluster configuration. Cluster-scoped init scripts have the following advantages over other types of scripts:

  • Apply to both clusters you create and those created to run jobs.
  • Are protected by cluster ACLs.
  • Log start and finish events in the cluster event log.
  • Have a configurable log location.
  • Support pre-defined environment variables, which enable conditional processing.

For details, see Use cluster-scoped init scripts.

Collapsible headings

August 14-21, 2018: Version 2.78

Cells that appear after cells containing Markdown headings can now be collapsed into the heading cell. The following image shows a Heading 1 with the following two cells collapsed into it.

Collapsed cells under Markdown heading

Click the + and - to expand and collapse headings.