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

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 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?
  1. Sign in to the Azure portal.
  2. Open the New blade.
  3. Enter the word preview.
  4. You will see a list of available preview features, with the word enabled next to each feature you have activated.
  5. Choose disable to turn off a preview feature.
Source: Daryusman


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