What's new in Azure Update Manager

Azure Update Manager helps you manage and govern updates for all your machines. You can monitor Windows and Linux update compliance across your deployments in Azure, on-premises, and on the other cloud platforms from a single dashboard. This article summarizes new releases and features in Azure Update Manager.

November 2024

Hotpatching (preview) on Arc-enabled machines

Public preview: Azure Update Manager now supports Hotpatching on Arc enabled servers. Learn more.

August 2024

Support for 35 CIS images added along with 59 other images

Azure Update Manager now supports CIS images along with 59 other popular images. For more information, see the latest list of supported images.

Pre and Post events

General Availability: Azure Update Manager now supports creating and managing pre and post events on scheduled maintenance configurations. Learn more.

July 2024

Support for Windows IoT Enterprise on Arc enabled servers

Public preview: Azure Update Manager now supports Windows IoT Enterprise on Arc enabled servers. For more information, see supported Windows IoT enterprise releases.

June 2024

New region support

General Availability: Azure Update Manager is now supported in US Government and Microsoft Azure operated by 21Vianet. Learn more.

May 2024

Migration portal experience and scripts: Generally Available

Azure Update Manager offers migration portal experience and automated migration scripts to move machines and schedules from Automation Update Management to Azure Update Manager. Learn more

Updates blade in Azure Update Manager: Generally Available

The purpose of this new blade is to present information from Updates pivot instead of machines. It would be useful for Central IT admins, Security admins who care about vulnerabilities in the system and want to act on them by applying updates. Learn more.

April 2024

Added support for new VM images

Support for ubuntu pro 22.04 gen1 and gen2, redhat 8.8, centos-hpc 7.1 and 7.3, oracle8 has been added. For more information, see support matrix for the latest list of supported VM images.

New region support

Azure Update Manager (preview) is now supported in US Government and Microsoft Azure operated by 21Vianet. Learn more

February 2024

Billing enabled for Arc-enabled severs

Billing has been enabled for Arc-enabled servers, starting from February. Azure Update Manager is charged $5/server/month (assuming 31 days of connected usage). It's charged at a daily prorated value. Refer to FAQs for pricing here.

Migration scripts to move machines and schedules from Automation Update Management to Azure Update Manager (preview)

Migration scripts allow you to move all machines and schedules in an automation account from Automation Update Management to Azure Update Management in an automated fashion. Learn more.

Updates blade in Azure Update Manager (preview)

The purpose of this new blade is to present information from Updates pivot instead of machines. It would be useful for Central IT admins, Security admins who care about vulnerabilities in the system and want to act on them by applying updates. Learn more.

December 2023

Pre and Post Events (preview)

Azure Update Manager allows you to create and manage pre and post events on scheduled maintenance configurations. Learn more.

November 2023

Alerting (preview)

Azure Update Manager allows you to enable alerts to address events as captured in updates data. Learn more.

Azure Stack HCI patching

Azure Update Manager allows you to patch Azure Stack HCI cluster. Learn more

October 2023

Azure Migrate, Azure Backup, Azure Site Recovery VMs support

Azure Update Manager now supports specialized VMs including the VMs created by Azure Migrate, Azure Backup, and Azure Site Recovery. Learn more.

September 2023

Azure Update Manager is now Generally Available.

For more information, see the announcement.

August 2023

Service rebranding

Update management center is now rebranded as Azure Update Manager.

New region support

Azure Update Manager is now available in Canada East and Sweden Central regions for Arc-enabled servers. Learn more.

SQL Server patching

SQL Server patching allows you to patch SQL Servers. You can now manage and govern updates for all your SQL Servers using the patching capabilities provided by Azure Update Manager. Learn more.

July 2023

Dynamic scope

Dynamic scope is an advanced capability of schedule patching. You can now create a group of machines based on a schedule and apply patches on those machines at scale. Learn more.

May 2023

Customized image support

Update Manager now supports generalized custom images, and a combination of offer, publisher, and SKU for Marketplace/PIR images. See the list of supported operating systems.

Multi-subscription support

The limit on the number of subscriptions that you can manage to use the Update Manager portal has now been removed. You can now manage all your subscriptions using the Update Manager portal.

April 2023

New prerequisite for scheduled patching

A new patch orchestration - Customer Managed Schedules (Preview) is introduced as a prerequisite to enable scheduled patching on Azure VMs. The new patch enables the Azure-orchestrated and BypassPlatformSafteyChecksOnUserSchedule VM properties on your behalf after receiving the consent. Learn more.

Important

For a seamless scheduled patching experience, we recommend that for all Azure VMs, you update the patch orchestration to Customer Managed Schedules (Preview) by 30th June 2023. If you fail to update the patch orchestration by 30th June 2023, you can experience a disruption in business continuity because the schedules will fail to patch the VMs.

November 2022

New region support

Update Manager now supports new five regions for Azure Arc-enabled servers. Learn more.

October 2022

Improved on-boarding experience

You can now enable periodic assessment for your machines at scale using Policy or from the portal.

Next steps