Windows Azure December News: Platform Update, TechEd Russia Video, New Training Kit

Good afternoon friends! A few days before the New Year holidays I wanted to share with you good news from the world of the Windows Azure cloud platform.



The first is to talk about the December update platform, in which for developers there are many new useful and convenient features and tools.

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We are very proud of the TechEd Russia 2012 conference, where the Windows Azure theme was presented very widely by the most important people from the development team: Scott Guthrie, Mark Russinovich, Slava Kavsan, Dmitry Robsman, Kirill Gavrilyuk and others. Our New Year's gift for you is published video recordings of all reports on cloud topics.



And one more good and pleasant news is the update of the Windows Azure Training Kit training package, to which new materials have been added for independent study of the cloud platform by developers or IT professionals.



All of this will be discussed in more detail below.

The next update of the Windows Azure platform

Scott Guthrie in his blog described in detail the innovations in the platform Windows Azure. We list them with respect to each of the subsystems of the platform.

Windows Azure Mobile Services

An extremely important and useful task scheduler tool has been added to mobile services, which allows developers to use the ready-made infrastructure to run arbitrary code on a schedule and at a certain periodicity.















You can use this mechanism for any purpose: notifying users at regular intervals, checking the status of services, receiving data from third-party services, clearing the database of obsolete data, etc. It is important that to solve these problems you do not need to deploy your own infrastructure and write your own code.



Read more about the new functionality here .



Other innovations in Windows Azure Mobile Services:

• availability of service in a new region - North Europe
• full support for the service API through command line tools, including for creating and deleting services, changing scripts, etc.

Windows Azure Web Sites

The cloud service Web Sites has received new opportunities for scaling projects. Now, developers can scale the solution from a free tariff and a site's shared mode to a reserved mode with 10 copies of quad-core VMs with a total memory capacity of 70 GB in seconds. Previously offered only 3 copies of the VM.







The shared hosting mode also received an increase in scaling capabilities; now developers can place their solution simultaneously on 6 copies, and not on three as it was before.



Other new features of Windows Azure Web Sites:

• when creating a new website, the ability to publish it immediately from version control systems (Git, TFS, GitHub, BitBucket) has been added
• SignalR library now officially works in Web Sites!

SQL Data Sync SQL Data Sync

In this update, the long-awaited support for managing the SQL Data Sync service has been added to the new Windows Azure Management Portal, which allows you to create and configure a data synchronization server between SQL storages.



In the new portal you can use and customize all the functions of the SQL Data Sync service.

Windows Azure Active Directory and Access Control Management (ACS)

Another long-awaited innovation in the new Windows Azure management portal is the integration of Windows Azure Active Directory management and Access Control.







So far, only the first step has been taken in fully transferring the ACS functionality to the new portal. You can create a namespace that will be managed through a separate portal. With subsequent updates, developers will see more and more new management features available from the new portal.

Windows Azure Media Services

The Windows Azure Media Services media services subsystem is one of the most sought after parts of Windows Azure, and it is booming. The following improvements have been made to the Media Services platform update:

• work and task management directly from the portal
• adding content not only from external sources, but also from Windows Azure Storage
• ability to scale media service account to increase performance

Windows Azure Virtual Networks

In response to feedback and suggestions from developers and IT professionals, working with virtual networks has been simplified on some steps in advanced virtual network configuration scenarios.

Portal: filtering resources by subscription

Another small but useful innovation concerns the administration portal. Now users can filter the cloud resources presented in the portal by the different subscriptions that they have.

TechEd Russia 2012 Conference Reports

We are glad to share with you a video of TechEd Russia 2012 conference reports on Windows Azure:

• Scott Guthrie
• Plenary talk of a track of development of applications for a public cloud of Windows Azure (in Russian) and in English
• Scott Guthrie - question and answer session (in English) and Russian
• Mark Russinovich
• Virtual machines and networks in Windows Azure (in Russian) and in English
• The internal structure of Windows Azure (in English) and in Russian
• Dmitry Robsman
• Using Media Services to solve cloud processing tasks
• Roundtable with Dmitry Robsman - first-hand Windows Azure cloud platform - technology,
• Slava Kavsan
• How to ensure the security of customers and their services in the Windows Azure cloud (in English) and in Russian
• Kirill Gavrilyuk
• Windows 8 + Windows Phone. Developing Mobile Solutions with Windows Azure - Part I
• Windows 8 + Windows Phone. Developing mobile solutions with Windows Azure - Part II
• David Cheppel
• What is important to know when developing your first SaaS application (in Russian) and in English
• Understanding business models of software as a service (SaaS) (in English) and in Russian
• What is Windows Azure and how can you use it (in English) and in Russian
• An architectural look at basic services and basic storage options for Windows Azure data (in Russian ) and in English
• Dmitry Sotnikov
• Migrating ASP.NET applications to Windows Azure
• Andrei Moore
• Using the Windows Azure Access Control Service to solve the problem of centralized user authentication
• Denis Reznik
• Practical implementation of data storage and processing scripts in Windows Azure
• Alexey Goldbergs
• Practical application of security mechanisms in the public cloud
• Nikolay Salnikov
• Authentication based on claims in traditional and cloud environments with Active Directory Federat
• Vladimir Mamykin
• Secure clouds for IT managers - global and Russian practice

Windows Azure Training Kit - December 2012

Another big news of the Windows Azure cloud platform in December was the update of the Training Kit training package, which added:

• Demonstrations from the Build conference - full-fledged examples of cloud applications Event Buddy Demo and BUILD Clips Demo
• Updated presentations on Windows Azure Mobile Services with a description of the new functionality of the scheduler
• Added Windows Azure Mobile Services labs with a description of the new scheduler functionality.

You can download the updated package at the following link .

Happy New Year!

Taking this opportunity, I want to congratulate all the developers and IT specialists on the upcoming holidays. Windows Azure came to Russia only six months ago. But even during these half a year there was a lot of good news about the platform. And be sure that next year Windows Azure will bring many pleasant surprises and will delight everyone who uses it.