Some great features in the January 2014 Windows Azure update

Access Scott's Weblog to learn details of the latest Windows Azure update on
January 16.

Here is an abbreviated version for your speedy review.

The following are the enhancements that you can see is update:

• Web Sites: Staged Publishing Support and Always On Support
• Monitoring Improvements: Web Sites + SQL Database Alerts
• Hyper-V Recovery Manager: General Availability Release
• Mobile Services: Support for SenchaTouch
• PCI Compliance: Windows Azure Now Validated for PCI DSS Compliance

These take effect immediately (either the relese or in the preview item).

Web Sites: Staged Publishing Support:
Staged site publishing can be enabled. The staged site URL is different from that
of main site. This is very helpful in site/app development before going to
production and deployment from staging to production can be instantaneous for
content as well as configuration.

Web Sites: Always On Support
Now 'AlwaysOn' has come to the Web Sites as well. With this enabled you can see
if anything needs attention as the site is pinged periodically to verify that
the site is running smoothly.

Monitoring Improvements: Web Sites + SQL Database Alerts
There is nothing like enough monitoring, the more you can monitor the better you are
prepared to handle problems. The two new improvements introduced with this
update are:

• Metrics updated every minute for Windows Azure Web Sites
• Alerting for more metrics from Windows Azure Websites and Windows Azure SQL Databases

Now you can create alerts to 6 different services:

• Cloud Service
• Mobile Service
• SQL Database (New Today!)
• Storage
• Virtual Machine
• Web Site (More Metrics Today!)

Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager: General Availability Release

This release to production is ready including enterprise SLA.

Mobile Services: Support for SenchaTouch

You need to add an extension from SenchaTouch. SenchaTouch is a well know HTML/JavaScript-based development framework for building cross-platform mobile apps and web sites. With today’s addition, you can easily use Mobile Services with your SenchaTouch app.

Windows Azure Now Validated for PCI DSS Compliance

Windows Azure is now validated for compliance with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards (DSS) by an independent Qualified Security Assessor (QSA):Neohapsis.

All Microsoft Datacenters appears to be covered from looking at the http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=389875. Here is a screen shot of what is covered:
image.

 

Have a good week end!

 

Windows Azure SDK 2.2 Released

In this release (pretty big) you can remotely debug your Azure applications (Cloud services, Azure sites, and so on) with Visual Studio. A preview of Windows Azure Management Libraries for .NET is also included. Of course integrated sign-in is supported which means as far as resources are concerned it is a one stop service. Another enhancement is to do with Firewall management. In Windows Azure the firewall you configure surrounds the Azure services and you can manage them from client applications such as SSMS and Visual Studio with Windows Azure Firewall APIs. There is a new Windows Azure PowerShell as well.

Here is a complete list from Scott Guthrie's blog.

• 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

Here is my experience in installing Windows Azure SDK 2.2

I started with Visual Studio 2013 Express RC for web and clicked on the Get the SDK link which is listed as a project.

 

This allowed me the download the Web Platform Installer 4.6 shown.

 

 

This begins the installation as shown for the SDK 2.2

 

 

Clicking Install begins checking for prerequisites etc. as shown.

 

 

This is what I see after this window disappears.

 

 

Then this shows up again.

Then I am asked to reboot. Actually this happened twice (?).

 

 

Rebooted the computer.

 It came back with another screen similar to the previous one. The next two pictures shows all the installed items.

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 The Web Platform Installer came up again for reboot. I just dismissed it.

 

Anyway a bunch of changes were made and lots of new programs (versions in some cases) were added as shown.

 

Looks like my Visual Studio 2013 RC for web is gone and is replaced by another program which is called a Express Preview for web in the shortcut but which is really.

Here is a screen showing signing on to windows Azure from the new program above.

 

The interface has undergone a lot of changes but the basics of working with Windows SQL Databases has not changed that much and they are comprehensively documented in my book here, .

 

 

http://www.packtpub.com/microsoft-sql-azure-enterprise-application-development/book

 

and in my blogs.