Archives
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Windows Azure: New Scheduler Service, Read-Access Geo Redundant Storage, and Monitoring Updates
This morning we released another nice set of enhancements to Windows Azure. Today’s new capabilities include:
- Scheduler: New Windows Azure Scheduler Service
- Storage: New Read-Access Geo Redundant Storage Option
- Monitoring: Enhancements to Monitoring and Diagnostics for Azure services
All of these improvements are now available to use immediately (note that some features are still in preview). Below are more details about them:
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Presentations I’m doing in Dublin and London Dec 2nd->5th
I’ll be in Ireland and the UK next week presenting at several events. Below are details on the talks I’ll be doing if you want to come along and hear them:
Dublin: Monday Dec 2nd
I’m doing two separate free events in Dublin on Monday:
- Windows Azure and the Cloud at Mon 1-3pm. This event is free to attend, and I’ll be doing a two hour keynote/overview session on Windows Azure as part of it. This will be a great talk to attend if you are new to Windows Azure and are interested in learning more about what you can do with it. Later sessions at the event also cover VS 2013, building iOS/Android apps with C# using Xamarin, and F# with Data and the Cloud. Lean more here and sign-up for free.
- Building Real World Application using Windows Azure at Mon 6:00-9:00pm. This event is also free to attend, and during it I’ll walkthrough building a real world application using Windows Azure and discuss patterns and best practice techniques for building real world apps along the way. The content is intermediate/advanced level (my goal is to melt your brain by the end) but doesn’t assume prior knowledge of Windows Azure. Learn more here and sign-up for free.
There is no content overlap between the two talks – so feel free to attend both if you want to!
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Windows Azure: General Availability Release of BizTalk Services, Traffic Manager, Azure AD App Access + Xamarin support for Mobile Services
This morning we released another great set of enhancements to Windows Azure. Today’s new capabilities include:
- BizTalk Services: General Availability Release
- Traffic Manager: General Availability Release
- Active Directory: General Availability Release of Application Access Support
- Mobile Services: Active Directory Support, Xamarin support for iOS and Android with C#, Optimistic concurrency
- Notification Hubs: Price Reduction + Debug Send Support
- Web Sites: Diagnostics Support for Automatic Logging to Blob Storage
- Storage: Support for alerting based on storage metrics
- Monitoring: Preview release of Windows Azure Monitoring Service Library
All of these improvements are now available to use immediately (note that some features are still in preview). Below are more details about them:
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Windows Azure: Import/Export Hard Drives, VM ACLs, Web Sockets, Remote Debugging, Continuous Delivery, New Relic, Billing Alerts and More
Two weeks ago we released a giant set of improvements to Windows Azure, as well as a significant update of the Windows Azure SDK.
This morning we released another massive set of enhancements to Windows Azure. Today’s new capabilities include:
- Storage: Import/Export Hard Disk Drives to your Storage Accounts
- HDInsight: General Availability of our Hadoop Service in the cloud
- Virtual Machines: New VM Gallery, ACL support for VIPs
- Web Sites: WebSocket and Remote Debugging Support
- Notification Hubs: Segmented customer push notification support with tag expressions
- TFS & GIT: Continuous Delivery Support for Web Sites + Cloud Services
- Developer Analytics: New Relic support for Web Sites + Mobile Services
- Service Bus: Support for partitioned queues and topics
- Billing: New Billing Alert Service that sends emails notifications when your bill hits a threshold you define
All of these improvements are now available to use immediately (note that some features are still in preview). Below are more details about them.
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Windows Azure: Announcing release of Windows Azure SDK 2.2 (with lots of goodies)
Earlier today I blogged about a big update we made today to Windows Azure, and some of the great new features it provides.
Today I’m also excited to also announce the release of the Windows Azure SDK 2.2. Today’s SDK release adds even more great features including:
- Visual Studio 2013 Support
- Integrated Windows Azure Sign-In support within Visual Studio
- Remote Debugging Cloud Services with Visual Studio
- Firewall Management support within Visual Studio for SQL Databases
- Visual Studio 2013 RTM VM Images for MSDN Subscribers
- Windows Azure Management Libraries for .NET
- Updated Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets and ScriptCenter
The below post has more details on what’s available in today’s Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release. Also head over to Channel 9 to see the new episode of the Visual Studio Toolbox show that will be available shortly, and which highlights these features in a video demonstration.
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Windows Azure: Backup Services Release, Hyper-V Recovery Manager, VM Enhancements, Enhanced Enterprise Management Support
This morning we released a huge set of updates to Windows Azure. These new capabilities include:
- Backup Services: General Availability of Windows Azure Backup Services
- Hyper-V Recovery Manager: Public preview of Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager
- Virtual Machines: Delete Attached Disks, Availability Set Warnings, SQL AlwaysOn Configuration
- Active Directory: Securely manage hundreds of SaaS applications
- Enterprise Management: Use Active Directory to Better Manage Windows Azure
- Windows Azure SDK 2.2: A massive update of our SDK + Visual Studio tooling support
All of these improvements are now available to use immediately. Below are more details about them.
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Windows Azure: Announcing Support for Windows Server 2012 R2 + Some Nice Price Cuts
Today we released some great updates to Windows Azure:
- Virtual Machines: Support for Windows Server 2012 R2
- Cloud Services: Support for Windows Server 2012 R2 and .NET 4.5.1
- Windows Azure Pack: Use Windows Azure features on-premises using Windows Server 2012 R2
- Price Cuts: Up to 22% Price Reduction on Memory-Intensive Instances
Below are more details about each of the improvements:
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Announcing the Release of Visual Studio 2013 and Great Improvements to ASP.NET and Entity Framework
Today we released VS 2013 and .NET 4.5.1. These releases include a ton of great improvements, and include some fantastic enhancements to ASP.NET and the Entity Framework. You can download and start using them now.
Below are details on a few of the great ASP.NET, Web Development, and Entity Framework improvements you can take advantage of with this release. Please visit http://www.asp.net/vnext for additional release notes, documentation, and tutorials.
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Windows Azure: New Virtual Machine, Active Directory, Multi-Factor Auth, Storage, Web Site and Spending Limit Improvements
This week we released some great updates to Windows Azure. These new capabilities include:
- Compute: New 2-CPU Core 14 GB RAM instance option
- Virtual Machines: Support for Oracle Software Images, Management Operations on Stopped VMs
- Active Directory: Richer Directory Management and General Availability of Multi-Factor Authentication Support
- Spending Limit: Reset your Spending Limit, Virtual Machines are no longer deleted if it is hit
- Storage: New Storage Client Library 2.1 Released
- Web Sites: IP and Domain Restriction Now Supported
All of these improvements are now available to use immediately. Below are more details about them.
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MSDN Subscribers: Windows Azure Aston Martin Sweepstakes through Sept 30th
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.
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Windows Azure: New Distributed, Dedicated, High Performance Cache Service + More Cool Improvements
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.
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Windows Azure: General Availability of SQL Server Always On Support and Notification Hubs, AutoScale Improvements + More
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.
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Announcing the release of the Windows Azure SDK 2.1 for .NET
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:
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Windows Azure July Updates: SQL Database, Traffic Manager, AutoScale, Virtual Machines
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.
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Windows Azure: General Availability of Web Sites + Mobile Services, New AutoScale + Alerts Support, No Credit Card Needed for MSDN
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.
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Windows Azure: Major Updates for Mobile Backend Development
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:
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Windows Azure: Announcing Major Improvements for Dev/Test in the Cloud
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.
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Windows Azure: Announcing New Dev/Test Offering, BizTalk Services, SSL Support with Web Sites, AD Improvements, Per Minute Billing
This morning we released some fantastic enhancements to Windows Azure:
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Announcing the release of AMQP support with Windows Azure Service Bus
For the past five years, Microsoft has been working with a diverse group of companies to develop the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) standard. The group of 20+ companies consisted of tech vendors, including Red Hat and VMware, and enterprises like JPMorgan Chase and Credit Suisse. The goal has been to build an open, wire-level protocol standard for messaging that enables easy interoperability between different vendor products. Back in October 2012, the OASIS standards organization announced the approval of AMQP 1.0 as an OASIS Standard and, on the same day, we released a preview implementation of it with Windows Azure Service Bus.
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Announcing the Release of WebMatrix 3
I’m excited to announce the release of WebMatrix 3. WebMatrix is a free, lightweight web development tool we first introduced in 2010, and which provides a great, focused web development experience for ASP.NET, PHP, and Node.js.
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Announcing the release of Windows Azure SDK 2.0 for .NET
This morning we released the v2.0 update of the Windows Azure SDK for .NET. This is a major refresh of the Windows Azure SDK with some really great new features and enhancements. These new capabilities include:
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Windows Azure: Improvements to Virtual Networks, Virtual Machines, Cloud Services and a new Ruby SDK
This morning we released some great enhancements to Windows Azure. These new capabilities include:
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Windows AzureConf this Tuesday
This Tuesday, April 23, we’ll be hosting Windows AzureConf – a free online event for and by the Windows Azure community. It will be streamed online from 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM PST via Channel 9, and you can watch it all for free.
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ASP.NET Web API: CORS support and Attribute Based Routing Improvements
We’ve seen a huge adoption of ASP.NET Web API since its initial release. In February we shipped the ASP.NET and Web Tools 2012.2 Update – which added a number of additional enhancements to both Web API and the other components of ASP.NET.
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Windows Azure: General Availability of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
This morning we announced the general availability release of our Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) support for Windows Azure – including our new Virtual Machine and Virtual Network capabilities. This release is now live in production, backed by an enterprise SLA, supported by Microsoft Support, and is ready to use for production apps. If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using it today.
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Windows Azure Global Bootcamp on April 27th – sign up now
On April 27, something very cool is happening. A bunch of Windows Azure MVP's and community activists are organizing a Global Windows Azure Bootcamp. This is a completely free, one-day training event for Windows Azure, all organized by the community, and presented in person all over the World.
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Windows Azure: Active Directory Release, New Backup Service + Web Site Monitoring and Log Improvements
Today we released some great enhancements to Windows Azure. These new capabilities include:
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Introducing the new class at the Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure
We launched the Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure, powered by TechStars, to give early stage startups full access to Windows Azure and to help them succeed by connecting each company to leading technical and business mentors. I’m happy to share that the new spring 2013 class features a healthy mix of exciting solutions and an impressive list of founders whose feedback will directly inform future Windows Azure releases.
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Windows Azure: New Hadoop service + HTML5/JS (CORS), PhoneGap, Mercurial and Dropbox support
Today we released a number of great enhancements to Windows Azure. These new capabilities include:
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Windows Azure Updates: Android Support, SQL Reporting Services, Active Directory, More…
This past weekend we released a number of enhancements to Windows Azure. These new capabilities include:
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Announcing release of ASP.NET and Web Tools 2012.2 Update
I’m excited to announce the final release of the ASP.NET and Web Tools 2012.2 update. This update is a free download for Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5, and adds some great additional features to both ASP.NET and Visual Studio.
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Startup Accelerator for Windows Azure: Demo Day
Earlier this month, the 10 startups in our Fall 2012 Accelerator class got the chance to pitch to a room full of investors, mentors and technology enthusiasts. Over three hundred people joined us on the Redmond campus to see the final pitches in person.
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Windows Azure Store: New add-ons and expanded availability
During the BUILD 2012 conference we announced a new capability of Windows Azure: the Windows Azure Store. The Windows Azure Store makes it incredibly easy for you to discover, purchase, and provision premium add-on services, provided by our partners, for your cloud based applications. For example, you can use the Windows Azure Store to easily setup a MongoDB database in seconds, or quickly setup an analytics service like NewRelic that gives you deep insight into your application’s performance.
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Broadcast push notifications to millions of mobile devices using Windows Azure Notification Hubs
Today we released a number of great enhancements to Windows Azure.
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Announcing Release of Windows Azure Media Services
I’m excited to announce the general availability (GA) release of Windows Azure Media Services. This release is now live in production, supported by a new media services dev center, backed by an enterprise SLA, and is ready to be used for all media projects.
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“Unplugged” LIDNUG online talk with me on Wednesday (Jan 9th)
Update: A recording of the talk is now posted.