ScottGu's Blog

Earlier this summer we announced a number of great changes to Windows Azure that make it a fantastic cloud environment to use for Dev/Test scenarios.  These Dev/Test capabilities work great even for scenarios where you are building apps that ultimately will still be deployed using on-premises servers.

Some of the dev/test changes we announced for Windows Azure included:

• No Charge for Stopped VMs
• Pay by the Minute Billing
• MSDN Use Rights Support on Windows Azure
• Heavily Discounted MSDN Dev/Test Rates – up to 97% discount off standard rates

We also introduced a new MSDN Monthly Monetary Credit program – which allows you to use up to $150 per month of free monetary credits on Windows Azure for dev/test scenarios.  These credits renew every month – enabling you to use $1000+ of free dev/test capacity every year. 

This morning we released some great updates to Windows Azure.  These new capabilities include:

• Dedicated Cache Service: Announcing the preview of our new distributed, dedicated, high performance cache service
• AutoScale: Schedule-based auto-scaling for Web Sites and Virtual Machines and richer AutoScale history logs
• Web Sites: New Web Server Logging Support to save HTTP Logs to Storage Accounts
• Operation Logs: New Filtering options on top of Operation Logs

All of these improvements are now available to use immediately (note: some are still in preview).  Below are more details about them.

This morning we released some major updates to Windows Azure.  These new capabilities include:

• SQL Server AlwaysOn Support: General Availability support with Windows Azure Virtual Machines (enables both high availability and disaster recovery)
• Notification Hubs: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Notification Hubs (broadcast push for Windows 8, Windows Phone, iOS and Android)
• AutoScale: Schedule-based AutoScale rules and richer logging support
• Virtual Machines: Load Balancer Configuration and Management
• Management Services: New Portal Extension for Operation logs + Alerts

All of these improvements are now available to use immediately (note: AutoScale is still in preview – everything else is general availability).  Below are more details about them.

Today we released the v2.1 update of the Windows Azure SDK for .NET.  This is a major refresh of the Windows Azure SDK and it includes some great new features and enhancements. These new capabilities include:

• Visual Studio 2013 Preview Support: The Windows Azure SDK now supports using the new VS 2013 Preview
• Visual Studio 2013 VM Image: Windows Azure now has a built-in VM image that you can use to host and develop with VS 2013 in the cloud
• Visual Studio Server Explorer Enhancements: Redesigned with improved filtering and auto-loading of subscription resources
• Virtual Machines: Start and Stop VM’s w/suspend billing directly from within Visual Studio
• Cloud Services: New Emulator Express option with reduced footprint and Run as Normal User support
• Service Bus: New high availability options, Notification Hub support, Improved VS tooling
• PowerShell Automation: Lots of new PowerShell commands for automating Web Sites, Cloud Services, VMs and more

All of these SDK enhancements are now available to start using immediately and you can download the SDK from the Windows Azure .NET Developer Center.  Visual Studio’s Team Foundation Service (http://tfs.visualstudio.com/) has also been updated to support today’s SDK 2.1 release, and the SDK 2.1 features can now be used with it (including with automated builds + tests).

Below are more details on the new features and capabilities released today:

This morning we released some great updates to Windows Azure. These new enhancements include:

• SQL Databases: Support for Automated SQL Export and a New Premium Tier SQL Database option
• Traffic Manager: New support for managing Windows Azure Traffic Manager in the HTML Portal
• AutoScale: Support for Windows Azure Mobile Services, AutoScale rules for Service Bus Queue Depth, Alerts on AutoScale actions
• Virtual Machines: Updates to the IaaS management experiences in the Management Portal

All of these improvements are now available to use immediately (note: some are still in preview).  Below are more details about them.

This morning we released a major set of updates to Windows Azure.  These updates included:

• Web Sites: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Web Sites with SLA
• Mobile Services: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Mobile Services with SLA
• Auto-Scale: New automatic scaling support for Web Sites, Cloud Services and Virtual Machines
• Alerts/Notifications: New email alerting support for all Compute Services (Web Sites, Mobile Services, Cloud Services, and Virtual Machines)
• MSDN: No more credit card requirement for sign-up

All of these improvements are now available to use immediately (note: some are still in preview).  Below are more details about them.

This week we released some great updates to Windows Azure that make it significantly easier to develop mobile applications that use the cloud. These new capabilities include:

Windows Azure provides a great environment for dev/test.  This is true both for scenarios where you want to dev/test in the cloud and then run the production app in the cloud, as well as for scenarios where you want to dev/test in the cloud and then run the production app using an existing on-premises Windows Server environment.