generated: '2026-09-17'
method: searched
source: >-
  https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/azure/,
  https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/legal/sla/private-link/,
  https://azure.status.microsoft/en-us/status,
  https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/?updateType=retirements, and the api-version directory
  listing of Azure/azure-rest-api-specs
description: >-
  Versioning, deprecation, SLA and operational-signal posture for the Azure Private Link control plane.
versioning:
  scheme: date-based api-version query parameter
  format: YYYY-MM-DD (preview versions suffixed -preview)
  required_on_every_request: true
  current_stable: '2026-01-01'
  harvested_in_this_repo: '2025-03-01'
  stable_versions_published: 61
  oldest_stable: '2015-06-15'
  docs: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/azure/
  evidence: >-
    61 stable api-version directories enumerated 2026-09-17 from
    https://api.github.com/repos/Azure/azure-rest-api-specs/contents/specification/network/resource-manager/Microsoft.Network/Network/stable
    — 2015-06-15 through 2026-01-01.
  note: >-
    Versions are additive and effectively permanent. Microsoft has never removed a Microsoft.Network
    stable api-version from the service; the 2015-06-15 version is still callable. That is the deprecation
    policy in practice: you opt in to new behaviour by changing a query parameter, and nothing changes
    under a pinned client.
  structural_change_2025:
    observed: true
    detail: >-
      From api-version 2025-05-01 Microsoft stopped publishing privateEndpoint.json and
      privateLinkService.json as separate documents and folded the same 16 Private Link paths into
      virtualNetwork.json. The API did not change; the packaging did. Anything that harvests Azure specs
      by filename breaks at that boundary — which is why this repo pins 2025-03-01 for the verbatim copy.
deprecation:
  policy_published: true
  policy_url: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/?updateType=retirements
  mechanism: >-
    Azure announces service and feature retirements on the Azure Updates feed with a named retirement
    date, and Microsoft's public commitment is a minimum of 12 months' notice before an Azure service is
    retired. Notice is per-service, not per-api-version.
  sunset_header: false
  deprecation_header: false
  rfc8594: false
  header_note: >-
    ARM does not emit RFC 8594 Sunset or Deprecation headers on Private Link responses. Deprecation is
    announced out of band on the Updates feed; there is no runtime signal an agent can read.
  deprecated_operations_in_contract: 0
  deprecated_operations_note: >-
    No operation in either harvested document carries deprecated: true or an x-ms-deprecated marker.
  active_retirements:
    - item: Azure SDK for Ruby (azure_mgmt_network)
      status: retired
      evidence: Last gem release 2021-03-11; Microsoft directs Ruby users to the CLI or REST API.
      see: packages/microsoft-azure-private-link-packages.yml
sla:
  published: true
  url: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/legal/sla/private-link/
  scope: >-
    Microsoft publishes a dedicated SLA document for Azure Private Link, separate from the general Azure
    SLA. Probed 2026-09-17, HTTP 200. The commitment value is rendered client-side on that page and is not
    reproduced here rather than risk misquoting a contractual number — read it at the URL above.
  covers: the private endpoint data path
  note: The management API (management.azure.com) is covered by the Azure Resource Manager availability commitment, not by this document.
status_page:
  published: true
  url: https://azure.status.microsoft/en-us/status
  history_url: https://azure.status.microsoft/en-us/status/history/
  scope: per-region, per-service health for Azure Networking including Private Link
  machine_readable: false
  machine_readable_note: >-
    The public status page is an HTML application with no RSS, Atom or JSON status feed. Programmatic
    health for your own resources is exposed instead through the Azure Resource Health and Service Health
    APIs (Microsoft.ResourceHealth), which are subscription-scoped and require authentication — so there
    is no anonymous machine-readable health signal for this service.
  probed:
    url: https://azure.status.microsoft/en-us/status
    status: 200
    date: '2026-09-17'
support:
  url: https://support.microsoft.com/
  azure_support: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/options/
  faq: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/private-link/private-link-faq
availability_matrix:
  url: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/private-link/availability
  note: >-
    Microsoft publishes a per-service availability page listing which Azure PaaS services support Private
    Link, at what GA stage, and in which sub-resource. This is the closest thing Private Link has to a
    feature-lifecycle document, and it is the page to check before writing code against a new sub-resource.