Faster and better privacy with Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute

You want something that is private and more reliable then this is the way to go.

ExpressRoute is a private route that you can establish between Azure Datacentr and your enterprise data whehter it is on your enterprise or colocation environment. It is private conneciton and does not go over the Internet (public).

ExpressRoute is now in GA (General Availability) and provides:

• Higher reliability
• Faster Speed
• Lower Latency
• Higher reliability

as compared to what you can get over the Internet.

 

As it has entered GA, Microsoft offers 99.99% SLA on ExpressRoute uptime. Microsoft is offering offering two new tiers of bandwith use for the Exchange Provider scenario: 200 Mbps and 500 Mbps.

The following are ExchangeRoute partners (all the biggies in Telecom):

Read more here:
http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/expressroute/

Windows Azure Managment Improvements in the wings

In a recent blog post Scott Guthrie outlined Windows Azure Management
improvements to come. Some of them are still in 'preview' stage.
However, if you are a Windows Azure subscriber you can check them out.

Here is a listing of the improvements in preview with a brief summary:

ExpressRoute Preview
ExpresRoute provides an option for virtual Sites to connect which is
private and dedicated between a private network and a Microsoft Data
Center. This according to Scott, provides a 'guaranteed [sic] network
quality-of-service and the ability to use Azure as a natural extension
of an existing private network or datacenter'

Web Sites Backup and Restore Preview:
Get a snapshot of app services for backup. Backup can be manual or
scheduled. The snapshots includes all data related elements (MySQL,
SQL) and is free for those who have a subscribed to a 'Standard-tier'
plan.

Service Outage Notifications:
This is customized for each service and includes service interruptions,
performance degradatons and other related notifications.

VM Agent
A new VM agent to help manage VM Extensions (for example the recently
added extension BG Info) and gets created when a VM is created using
'quick create' option.

Single Sign-On Support for SaaS Apps:
Windows Azure Active Directory(AD) now supports 600 SaaS apps for integrated
single sign-on rolled out in October of last year.

WAAD Premium Preview Reporting:
Well this is premium and has more features than the free Windows Azure
Active Directory(WAAD). If you are worried about security this may be
the one feature you care about. The 'reports' tab reports on suspicious
logons; 'irregular sing-in activity', etc.

BizTalk Services Updates:
Quoted from the blog, "BizTalk Services now supports the EDIFACT protocol and it can pull
messages from service bus queues without writing to another service. "

Hadoop 2.2 Preview:
HD Insight services now supports Hadoop 2.2 at preivew time. Hadoop 2.2
is expected to support faster queries response time; improved data compression, support for YARN, described as an OS for Hadoop 2.0.

Review Scott's blog to read more about all these features here:
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2014/02/20/azure-expressroute-dedicated-networking-web-site-backup-restore-mobile-services-net-support-hadoop-2-2-and-more.aspx

and this;

http://rcpmag.com/articles/2014/02/24/windows-azure-management-improvements.aspx