Four Azure retirements land at once — App Service drops Java 8/11/17, Azure SQL retires Intel SGX enclaves, App Service on Azure Stack Hub winds down, and AKS pod metrics lose the pod-name dimension

Microsoft posted four dated Azure retirements overnight: Azure App Service ends support for Java 8, 11 and 17 (1 Sep 2027, upgrade to Java 25); Azure SQL Database retires Always Encrypted with Intel SGX enclaves (31 Oct 2027, move to VBS enclaves); Azure App Service on Azure Stack Hub retires (30 Sep 2029, with new installs already blocked since 30 Sep 2026); and AKS retires the pod-name dimension on two pod-count platform metrics (30 Sep 2027). Plus the busy next three weeks on the board.

A Microsoft-heavy night: four new, individually dated retirement notices landed on Azure Updates at once, each verified against Microsoft’s own release-communications record. None is imminent, but all four are forced migrations worth putting on the calendar now.

New: Azure App Service ends support for Java 8, 11 and 17 on 1 September 2027

Per Microsoft’s Azure release notice, on 1 September 2027 App Service stops supporting Java 8, 11, and 17. Apps keep running, but the runtime gets no more security updates and no customer support — so the danger is a slowly accumulating unpatched platform, not a sudden outage. Microsoft’s named target is Java 25; treat it as a real major-version JDK migration (test Spring Boot / Jakarta EE compatibility in a slot first).

New: Azure SQL Database retires Always Encrypted with Intel SGX enclaves on 31 October 2027

Per Microsoft’s Azure release notice, the Intel SGX backing for Always Encrypted secure enclaves retires on 31 October 2027 as SGX-enabled DC-series hardware is phased out. Encrypted columns stay encrypted, but the enclave-powered operations over them stop. Microsoft’s recommended move is to Virtualization-Based Security (VBS) enclaves — a hardware-independent alternative — or SQL Server on Confidential VMs, with DC-series databases moved to supported tiers.

New: Azure App Service on Azure Stack Hub retires on 30 September 2029

Per Microsoft’s Azure release notice, the on-premises App Service edition retires on 30 September 2029 — but the milestone that already bites is 30 September 2026: as of that date, new installations are no longer supported and no new releases, features, or enhancements ship. Existing deployments run and upgrade until retirement; new capacity on Stack Hub is already off the table. Microsoft’s direction: begin planning migration to Azure App Service in Azure now.

New: AKS retires the pod-name dimension on pod-count platform metrics on 30 September 2027

Per Microsoft’s Azure release notice, from 30 September 2027 the pod name dimension is removed from the Azure Monitor platform metrics kube_pod_status_phase and kube_pod_status_ready. The metric names and aggregate/namespace-level counts stay; what breaks is any dashboard tile or alert rule that groups or filters these two metrics by pod name. Move per-pod investigation to Container Insights or Azure Monitor managed Prometheus before the date.

The next three weeks on the board

Re-verified against their primary sources tonight, dates unchanged: EWS worldwide allow-list enforcement (10 Oct — Microsoft turns on the cloud setting requiring an EWSAllowedAppIDs allow-list; full EWS disablement April 2027), Windows 11 24H2 end of servicing and Reddit RSS feeds ending (both 13 Oct), Microsoft Sentinel containerized SAP connector images removed (14 Oct), Cloudflare Workers KV legacy API (15 Oct), OpenSSL 3.4 end of life and Minimus shutdown (both 22 Oct — OpenSSL 3.6 follows on 1 Nov; upgrade to 3.5 LTS or 4.0), OpenAI GPT-4 / GPT-3.5 / o1 / o3 models (23 Oct), and Kubernetes 1.34 end of life (27 Oct). Full board with live countdowns on the calendar.