Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Hotpatching, the ability to patch a Windows OS without requiring a reboot for the patch/update to take effect, is now available at no cost for Azure Arc-enabled machines running Windows Server 2025.

<taken from Azure Update Manager docs>

As of May 19, 2026, Hotpatch on Azure Arc-enabled machines running Windows Server 2025 Standard or Datacenter is available at no additional cost. There is no per-core meter, no hourly charge, and no separate Hotpatch line item on your invoice.

• Existing enrolled servers: Billing has been stopped for all servers previously enrolled in Hotpatch. No action is required. These machines remain enrolled and continue to receive hotpatch updates when available.
• New enrollments: Enabling Hotpatch on eligible Windows Server 2025 Arc-enabled machines incurs no Hotpatch charges, regardless of the underlying environment (VMware, Hyper-V, AWS, GCP, or other on-premises and multicloud environments) or edition (Standard or Datacenter).

Read the note online at:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/update-manager/manage-hot-patching-arc-machines?tabs=manage-scale%2Chotpatch-scale#billing-considerations

Pure Virtual C++ is back! For the 7th year running, we’re hosting a free, one-day virtual conference for the whole C++ community. Whether you joined us back in 2020 when we first launched or you’re discovering the event for the first time, we’d love to have you.

Mark your calendar: Tuesday, July 21, 2026, starting at 16:00 UTC (9:00 AM in Seattle/Los Angeles, 1:00 PM in Buenos Aires, 12:00 AM in Hong Kong). The conference runs approximately 2 hours and will be streamed live on both YouTube and Twitch, so you can watch from anywhere in the world.

The full speaker lineup and detailed schedule will be announced in follow-up posts — stay tuned.

• REGISTRATION: Pure Virtual C++ Conference 2026
  21 July, 2026 | 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM (UTC-07:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada)
  https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/reactor/events/27359/

• ANNOUNCEMENT: Save the Date: Pure Virtual C++ 2026
  https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/save-the-date-pure-virtual-cpp-2026/

The conference is completely free. Register here to save your spot and get notified when the schedule goes live. Can’t make it live? All sessions will be available on-demand on the Visual Studio YouTube channel after the event.

Great news! Registration is officially open to Microsoft Ignite 2026. Secure your spot at Microsoft’s flagship event of the year.

At Microsoft Ignite, you’ll discover the latest innovations, practical insights, and build skills you can apply immediately. Join business and IT professionals, developers, and partners to explore important announcements and learn from real-world implementations.

Hear directly from Microsoft leaders shaping the future of cloud and AI:

• Arun Ulag, Executive Vice President, Azure Data, Microsoft
• Nicole Herskowitz, CVP, Microsoft 365 and Copilot
• Omar Shahine, CVP, Microsoft Scout
• Bryan Goode, CVP, Business Applications
• Vasu Jakkal, CVP, Marketing Security
• Jared Spataro, CMO, AI at Work
• Mark Russinovich, CTO, Deputy CISO, and Technical Fellow, Microsoft Azure
• Cyril Belikoff, Vice President Cloud and AI
• Nitasha Chopra, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Copilot Studio
• Seth Juarez, Staff Developer Advocate

From expert-led sessions and hands-on learning to immersive Hub experiences and valuable community connections, Microsoft Ignite is designed to help you turn discovery into action and move forward with confidence.

Space is limited, so register today:
https://ignite.microsoft.com/en-US/home

Time to change the way you build your Power Apps Canvas Apps. Low-code development can no longer be the Wild West.

• Drag & drop apps thrown together without structure just don’t cut it anymore.
• Development without architecture leads to technical debt, inconsistency, and maintenance nightmares.
• And the worst part? The hidden waste in your apps.
  • Duplicated logic
  • Repeated controls
  • Poorly managed state

The result? Apps that are hard to maintain, slow to evolve, and frustrating to adapt to growing complexity.

That’s exactly why Nicolo Ferranti, Microsoft Power Platform MVP, wrote this new, free guide:

• User Defined Functions (UDFs) and User Defined Types (UDTs)
  → to write cleaner, reusable, and more maintainable code
• Centralised state management
  → for clear, predictable app behaviour
• A structured architectural approach
  → to prevent chaos before it starts

If you’re building with Power Apps and ready to move beyond copy-paste development, this guide is for you. This guide aims to demonstrate how these new features can help you build Power Apps Canvas applications with greater accuracy and architectural discipline.

Download the full eBook by Microsoft Power Platform MVP, Nicolo Ferranti, here:

• Power Platform Guide: Power Apps Canvas Next Level – Modern State Management with UDFs, UDTs and Advanced Components

The National Health Service of England is rolling out Microsoft 365 Copilot to 505,000 clinicians & support staff.

More than half a million NHS staff are being given access to new artificial intelligence (AI) tools that could free up an average of 2 days every month from admin duties, freeing up more time for the duties that matter most for patients and staff.

NHS England announced today that it is significantly accelerating AI adoption across healthcare services by providing 505,000 clinicians and support staff with access to Microsoft 365 Copilot.

The AI personal assistant helps clinicians to draft documents and analyse data more efficiently to focus more time on patient care.

The agreement follows the largest AI trial of its kind globally in healthcare, which provided more than 30,000 NHS workers across 90 NHS organisations with access to Microsoft 365 Copilot.

It found that AI-powered administrative support could save an average of 43 minutes per staff member per day or more, which equates to 5 weeks of time per person annually.

Results from the trial showed that a full rollout of Microsoft 365 Copilot could save millions of hours of staff time per month.

For more, visit:

• 500,000 NHS staff to get new artificial intelligence tools to help free up more time for patients
  https://www.england.nhs.uk/2026/06/500000-nhs-staff-to-get-new-artificial-intelligence-tools-to-help-free-up-more-time-for-patients
• NHS prescribes half a million Copilot licenses for its paperwork headache
  https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/06/08/nhs-prescribes-half-a-million-copilot-licenses-for-its-paperwork-headache/5252214

KPMG and Microsoft are expanding their partnership to help clients manage, monitor and securely deploy AI at scale across their own organisations with Agent 365 and Copilot. At the same time, KPMG’s member firms will roll out Microsoft 365 Copilot to 276,000 employees worldwide.

The expansion is the latest move to embed Microsoft technology into KPMG’s global client service delivery platforms and enable organisations to monitor, govern and control AI agents from a central location. The deal enables KPMG to use Microsoft Agent 365 to enhance how services are delivered in its audit, tax and advisory services, including smart audit platform KPMG Clara, while helping clients build agent-powered operating models to securely deploy AI agents across their own organisations. 

Read more here:

• KPMG and Microsoft scale trusted, enterprise AI agents globally through deployment of Agent 365 and Copilot
  https://news.microsoft.com/source/2026/06/09/kpmg-and-microsoft-scale-trusted-enterprise-ai-agents-globally-through-deployment-of-agent-365-and-copilot/
• KPMG deploys Microsoft Agent 365 and Copilot across its global workforce
  https://www.technologyrecord.com/article/kpmg-deploys-microsoft-agent-365-and-copilot-across-its-global-workforce

Brad Smith, Microsoft’s President, recently had a post to technology leaders about the message students are sending to those in the AI industry:

“This year’s graduates are sending a clear message about AI and jobs. We should listen. They’re reminding us that AI should serve people, not replace them. Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and organization to achieve more. That means helping people build the skills to use technology to create new opportunities. If we’re not doing that, we’re not doing our job.”

He expands on our company’s sentiment at “Microsoft On The Issues“. For obvious reasons, this is a very important article to our community & our company & will help people understanding our philosophy & values around AI, people & technology’s place in the future.

“I would add a second message for today’s graduates: you’re in a unique position to have a positive impact. You’ve lived through significant challenges. While it may feel unfair that the job market is so uncertain, you were made for this moment. Technology is second nature to your generation. Constant change has taught you how to adapt quickly. As AI reshapes how we work, you don’t need to unlearn decades of habits the way some of us do. You are better equipped to move forward.   

Technology will change, but you can stand firmly and speak loudly for values that are timeless. Agency. Ambition. Dignity. All fulfilled through work and technology that gives us purpose.  

Do everything you can to help advance these values.“

Read his post here:

• AI, jobs, and the next generation – Microsoft On the Issues
  https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2026/06/10/ai-jobs-and-the-next-generation/

All the announcements from the keynote are summarized on the Build 2026 Live Blog which has short synopses of each event. I highly encourage taking a look at the live blog because frankly, it can be overwhelming – the amount of information that was announced!

• Microsoft Build 2026 Live:
  https://news.microsoft.com/build-2026-live-blog

Here’s shortcuts to the full overviews of each:

• Updates and new capabilities for Windows AI APIs
• Surface RTX Spark Dev Box delivers local AI compute to devs
• Windows 365 extends support for developers
• Developer-optimized Windows 11 experience to build and ship faster
• More improvements to developer-optimized Windows 11 experience
• Infrastructure updates for the agentic era
• NVIDIA, Microsoft join forces on unified stack
• Introducing Project Solara, a new platform for agents
• Azure HorizonDB brings PostgreSQL into the agentic app era
• New class of GPU-accelerated analytics to give developers a boost
• Microsoft Web IQ: A new standard for AI grounding
• Organizations can unlock collective intelligence with Microsoft IQ
• OpenClaw on Windows now in preview
• Windows 365 for Agents brings Cloud PCs to agent workloads
• Microsoft Foundry updates: agents you deploy, improve and trust in production
• The GitHub Copilot app for agentic development
• Rayfin delivers enterprise-grade app backends
• The latest on MDASH
• A new look for Microsoft Copilot
• Microsoft Scout, the new always-on personal agent for work built on OpenClaw
• Frontier Tuning gives companies domain-specific, high-efficiency AI
• The next-gen in-house Microsoft AI models
• Microsoft Discovery now generally available
• Introducing Majorana 2, Microsoft’s next-gen quantum chip

If you watch Satya Nadella’s Build 2026 keynote in it’s entirety, here’s a list of all the shortcuts they posted in the video:
(I’ll put descriptions of each later but I wanted to get these into the post before I forget)

• https://aka.ms/WindowsAIapis
• https://aka.ms/AIon1
• https://microsoft.com/devbox
• https://aka.ms/win365developer
• https://aka.ms/maia200updates
• https://aka.ms/cobalt200vms
• https://aka.ms/projectsolara (Steven Bathiche)
• https://aka.ms/AzureHorizonDB
• https://aka.ms/GPUAcceleratedFabricDW (7x query Perf for reporting and apps)
• https://aka.ms/WebIQ (The best answer quality, lowest latency, most token efficient)
• https://aka.ms/MicrosoftIQ
• https://aka.ms/MicrosoftExecutionContainers
• https://aka.ms/OpenClawWindows (OpenClaw Windows Companion using MXC… ClawFather Peter Steinberger)
• https://aka.ms/hostedagents
• https://aka.ms/FireworksAIonFoundry
• https://aka.ms/GithubCopilotApp
• https://aka.ms/Rayfin
• https://aka.ms/A365SDKGA
• https://aka.ms/A365Local
• https://aka.ms/MDASH
• https://aka.ms/MicrosoftScout (Autopilots)
• https://aka.ms/MicrosoftDiscoveryGA
• https://aka.ms/Majorana2

At Microsoft Build 2026, we announced the public preview of Azure Linux 4.0 – Microsoft’s first party Linux distribution, purpose-built for Azure. Azure Linux 4.0 is available now for Azure Virtual Machines, VM Scale Sets, and container images – with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) support and Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) coming soon after.

Why Azure Linux 

Running Linux on Azure often involves a mix of distributions – one for VMs, another for Kubernetes nodes, a third for container base images, and sometimes something different on developer machines. That flexibility is powerful, but it can also introduce operational overhead: multiple patch schedules to coordinate, multiple security baselines to validate, and more moving parts for SRE and security teams to stay ahead of. A more consistent baseline – especially one with a smaller footprint – can help reduce exposure and simplify day‑to‑day maintenance 

Azure Linux was built with that principle in mind: a single, Microsoft-supported Linux foundation designed to work across every Azure compute surface. From kernel updates to CVE patches, Azure Linux is built and maintained by Microsoft with a predictable update cadence designed around Azure infrastructure. Azure Linux is included with Azure compute at no additional cost. 

What Is Azure Linux 4.0 

Azure Linux is a Fedora-derived, RPM-based Linux distribution built and maintained by Microsoft. It is open source, free to use, and optimized specifically for Azure. Minimal by choice, secure by default; Azure Linux ships only the packages required for cloud workloads. Azure Linux is built exclusively for cloud and server workloads, it is not intended to support desktop usage or GUI applications.  

Azure Linux already powers millions of cores across Azure’s internal services, including AKS, Azure SQL, Azure Cosmos DB, and many others. With 4.0, we’re bringing the same OS – same security posture, same performance tuning, same operational simplicity – to every Azure customer. 

When Azure Linux 4.0 reaches General Availability, you can expect seamless integration with the Azure services you already rely on, including: 

• Microsoft Defender for Cloud – vulnerability assessment and threat detection 
• Azure Monitor – telemetry, logs, and performance monitoring 
• Azure Migrate – discovery and migration tooling 
• Trusted Launch and Secure Boot – hardware-rooted security 
• Azure Portal, CLI, ARM, Bicep, Terraform, Ansible -deploy and manage with your existing tools 

Read more at:

• Build 2026 Session: (22min) “Build, deploy, and run Linux workloads on Azure”
  Explore how Azure empowers Linux and open‑source developers with streamlined, secure by default, cloud‑native services designed for fast startup, reduced operational overhead, and consistency across VMs and container workloads. Discover the latest Azure Linux capabilities. See live deployments, security defaults in action, and consistent workload execution from development through production across Azure VMs and AKS.
  https://build.microsoft.com/en-US/sessions/OD827
• Announcement:
  Announcing Azure Linux 4.0: Purpose-Built for Azure, Now in Public Preview | Microsoft Community Hub
• Documentation:
  http://aka.ms/AzureLinux