Differences between GA, Private and Public Preview on Azure Services and Features

Let's talk about what are the main differences between Private Preview, Public Preview and General Availability (GA) of Azure Services and Features.

This topic is important when you run your workloads in production OR you manage sensitive data in production.

Remember that you SHALL NEVER use non-GA services and features for production workloads. The purpose of Private and Public Preview is only for evaluation purposes. Except for the lack of SLA and formal support, there might be other issues that haven't been discovered or fixed yet. Think about the #ChaosDB vulnerability, which was caused by a CosmosDB feature that was in Public Preview.

Below you can find a list of things that you might want to take into consideration:

Area	Private Preview	Public Preview	General Availability
SLA	NO	NO	YES
Support	NO	Limited	Formal support
For who is available	Available for limited no. of customers for evaluation.	Available for all customers for evaluation.	All Azure customers
Timeline	No timeline related to when will be General Available	A roadmap that is, in most of the cases, respected	Clear roadmap
Can be retired without notice	YES	In general NO.	NO
Invite base access	YES	NO	NO
How to join the program	Based on an invitation from the Product Team	Using - https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/?status=inpreview Azure Portal for Public Previews - https://preview.portal.azure.com/	Azure Portal, no restrictions

Tips and tricks

Each Azure Service and Feature is on Public or Private Preview under specific terms and conditions.
In most cases, Private Preview does not offer Support and the Public Preview offers limited support.
Sometimes a service/feature might not respect the roadmap and additional work is required. At that time, it would not go in GA or even be replaced by another service/feature.

How to access Public Preview?

The preview can be accessed from Azure Updates where there is a dedicated tag for IN PREVIEW. OR you could use the Azure Portal for Preview where Public Preview features are available and ready to be used.

How to disable Preview features?

Sign in to the Azure portal.
Open the New blade.
Enter the word preview.
You will see a list of available preview features, with the word enabled next to each feature you have activated.
Choose disable to turn off a preview feature.

Source: Daryusman

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