July 2021 - Azure PowerShell updates

Summary

Starting July 2021, the Azure PowerShell team is making the following adjustments:

• The Az PowerShell module will now be released on the first Tuesday of each month.
• We are releasing an AzPreview PowerShell module that includes all Azure PowerShell modules available and supported by Microsoft.

Release cadence

Starting July 2021, we will be releasing the PowerShell modules for Azure on the first Tuesday of each month.

We believe this rhythm is easier to remember for those who want to keep their systems up to date. We will still release critical updates out-of-band.

We have updated our milestones to match the month they belong and the associated release date on our GitHub repository: https://github.com/Azure/azure-powershell/milestones

Preview modules

Each Azure service has a PowerShell module that belongs to one of the following categories:

• GA Modules: Stable modules; their semantic version is greater or equal to 1.0.0.
• Feature preview Modules: Stable modules implementing features in preview that may result in breaking changes.
• Preview Modules: Modules that may introduce breaking changes with any release; their semantic version is less than 1.0.0

Preview modules had to be installed independently, which could quickly become cumbersome.

Starting July 2021, we are releasing two wrapper modules simultaneously:

• Az including only GA modules (existing today).
• AzPreview including GA and Preview modules (new).

We believe this will provide a more convenient mechanism to manage all Azure resources from PowerShell.

A complete list of modules included in AzPreview can be found here: https://github.com/Azure/azure-powershell/blob/main/documentation/azure-powershell-modules.md

Notes:

• Breaking changes may happen at any release of preview modules in AzPreview.
• For convenience, the version of AzPreview is always the same as the version of Az released at the same time.
• The Azure PowerShell team plan to provide a changelog for AzPreview using a new format; stay tuned for more on this soon.
• Feature preview modules (identified with -preview) are not included in AzPreview to avoid potential assembly conflicts when loading the different modules.

Additional reading

Read more about our guiding principles regarding releases of the PowerShell modules for Azure: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-tools/azure-powershell-releases-demystified/ba-p/1609863