Update
What's new in FinOps toolkit 13
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FinOps toolkit 13 is a maintenance-and-hardening release: fewer new headline features, more of the fixes and compliance controls that matter once a hub is running in production. Two additions stand out: Key Vault purge protection support for FinOps hubs, and Parquet export support for Cost Management exports in PowerShell.
Built for enterprise deployment requirements
Organizations running Azure Landing Zone policies that require Key Vault purge protection can now turn it on with a new enablePurgeProtection parameter, off by default so development and test deployments stay flexible. FinOps hubs also tightened its permission model, replacing the broad User Access Administrator role with a more restrictive RBAC (role-based access control) Administrator role scoped specifically to managed exports.
Alongside that, this release fixes a set of reliability issues that were causing deployment failures or data inconsistency: Azure Data Factory triggers not starting after deployment, hub initialization pipeline failures, and duplicate records in specific scenarios. It also reorganizes the underlying Bicep templates into separate application modules, groundwork for deploying only the components you need.
Smaller, faster Cost Management exports
The PowerShell module’s New-FinOpsCostExport command now supports Parquet format through a new -Format parameter. Parquet is columnar and compact, and it’s noticeably faster to query in Azure Data Explorer, Synapse, and Fabric than CSV at scale. A new -CompressionMode parameter adds gzip and snappy control on top, for teams optimizing storage and transfer cost as much as query speed.
Documentation and community
This release also closes several documentation gaps: a new Data Lake Storage connectivity guide for using hub data outside Power BI, clearer guidance on multi-scope and cross-cloud ingestion, and expanded troubleshooting for common Data Explorer ingestion errors.
The toolkit team also started FinOps toolkit office hours, a recurring, no-agenda drop-in every other Wednesday for deployment help, feature requests, and general feedback.
Other fixes worth knowing about
- Several Power BI report fixes: tag expansion with special characters, unattached disk counts, a date-range calculation that was dropping the first 5 days of data, and EA department scope handling in pricesheet exports.
- Azure Optimization Engine changed its default SQL database backup redundancy to LRS and fixed underutilized-disk recommendations for Premium SSD v2 disks.
Where this leaves your practice
If your hub has been running for a while, this release is worth a look purely for the reliability and permission fixes. FinOps toolkit office hours are a good place to ask about Parquet exports, Landing Zone compliance requirements, or anything else in this release. No agenda, no prep required.