Overview of updates to the Windows Azure platform for the month

The cloud platform of Windows Azure is updated almost every week. New features are constantly appearing in various subsystems of the platform. This review contains information about the latest Windows Azure updates announced since January 2013.



Review Content:

')

• The release of Windows Azure Media Services - cloud platform for media scenarios
• Windows Update Azure Service Bus, new functionality Notification Hubs
• Starting VM Depot - community repository of virtual machine images on Linux
• Lower prices for SQL Reporting Srevices services
• New services and expansion of availability of Windows Azure Store
• New projects, code samples for working with Windows Azure Mobile Services
• The next step in the development of Redis for Windows Azure
• $ 1 billion datacenter expansion
• Released System Center 2012 SP1 with integration functionality with Windows Azure
• SQL Server 2012 SP1 Cumulative Update 2 with backup function in Windows Azure released
• Windows Azure Summit : big conference
• Poster of the structure of Windows Azure services in Russian
• New materials, manuals, projects based on Windows Azure

All this you will learn from the article below.

The release of Windows Azure Media Services - cloud platform for media scenarios

In January, Scott Guthrie announced the wide availability of the final version of Windows Azure Media Services - a cloud platform for media scenarios and building media applications for all modern platforms and devices.



In his blog, Scott Guthrie announced the following innovations and improvements to Media Services:

• release of the final version and wide availability of the service (General Availability);
• service support and SLA guarantees ;
• readiness of Media Services for use in any project;
• Java SDK open source toolkit release ( on maven.org );
• New scaling functionality: the ability to reserve power for video streaming on demand;
• New functional dynamic packaging (dynamic packaging), which allows the user to store data in a single file format and stream content on a variety of adaptive protocols automatically;

You can read detailed information about innovations in Russian in this blog entry .



Visit the official Windows Azure Media Services page to learn more about the capabilities of the platform. Check out tutorials, articles, blogs, and friend information in the Windows Azure Media Services Development Center . Also on Channel9 a cycle of manuals on the media platform was launched, which will be gradually replenished.

Update Windows Azure Service Bus, new functionality Notification Hubs

Earlier in January, Scott Guthrie announced a new Windows Azure Service Bus messaging subsystem called Notification Hubs .



Notification Hubs (Notification Hubs) - this is a new feature offering an extremely scalable, cross-platform push-push infrastructure for millions of users and devices.



Distinctive features of the new service Notification Hubs:

• Cross-platform support for push notifications . Notification Node Service offers an API for sending notifications to various devices and platforms. You can send messages specific to each platform and in an independent format. Today, Windows 8 and Apple iOS platforms are supported. Android and Windows Phone support coming soon;
• Efficient tag / publish / subscription and multicast routing Notification node service is optimized specifically for sending low latency notifications to thousands and millions of devices. Your server backend can send one message to the notification node and millions of push notifications will be automatically sent to users. Devices and applications can be defined tags for each user during registration at the site, which can be used to filter users when sending messages. These tags can be any lines, which greatly simplifies the task of sending messages to a specific group of users;
• extreme scaling . Notification nodes and Windows Azure allow you to work with millions of devices and users without the need to build or redesign your own infrastructure. The publication / subscription routing mechanism allows you to efficiently and simply route and deliver notifications to millions of users without investing in your own infrastructure;
• use from application with any backend . Notification nodes can be integrated and used from any application with a server backend. Nodes work effectively in conjunction with Windows Azure Mobile Services. They can also be used by server applications hosted in Windows or Linux virtual machines (IaaS). Cloud Services and Windows Azure Web Sites solutions can also use notification nodes.

Details about the new functionality you can read in this article .

Starting VM Depot - community repository of virtual machine images on Linux

VM Depot is a project for the Windows Azure community launched by a team of Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc. responsible for open technology within the company. It is expected that portal content configured for different tasks of virtual machines will be created and published by developers and IT professionals.







At the start of the portal, more than 20 virtual machine images configured for various tasks and scenarios were available. Today, the portal has more than 70 images and their number is constantly growing. You can now share your own pre-configured way with the community by uploading it to VM Depot .



Details of the announcement you can read in Russian at this link .

Lower prices for SQL Reporting Services

On February 1, in the official Windows Azure blog , an important and pleasant announcement was made about another price reduction for the SQL Reporting Services cloud service. This time there was a significant price reduction - up to 82%!



Starting February 1, the price for every 200 reports is reduced from $ 0.88 to $ 0.16 per hour. For more information, please refer to the page for price details . Information about SQL Reporting Services is located here .

New services and expansion of availability of Windows Azure Store

The cloud store of services and data of Windows Azure Store continues the development. In January, it became available for 11 countries in Europe and America. Unfortunately, Russia is not yet in the list of countries.



The Windows Azure Store offers unified unified access to third-party services for Windows Azure projects with a single billing and control panel.















In January, the services of the following partners were added to the Windows Azure Store:

• Active Cloud Manager - monitoring resources and services and automatically scaling up and down;
• Embarke - unique profiles for your customers, communication
• EZDRM - DRM Platform on Demand
• Scheduler - Task Scheduler Service, CRON
• Pusher is a set of APIs and libraries for building real-time information exchange functions.

We look forward to the appearance of the Windows Azure Store in Russia.

New projects, code samples for working with Windows Azure Mobile Services

For Windows Azure developers, several new demonstration projects are available that implement real-world scenarios for using Windows Azure Mobile Services in mobile applications. Projects are available in source code for personal study.

• Geolocation sample end to end using Windows Azure Mobile Services
• Windows Azure Mobile Services and Bus Services Enqueue and Dequeue Messages
• Capture, Store and Email App Feedback using Windows Azure Mobile Services
• Upload File to Windows Azure Blob Storage using Windows Azure Mobile Services
• Create a Game Leaderboard using Windows Azure Mobile Services

Details

The next step in the development of Redis for Windows Azure

A team of open technologies Microsoft announced the next step towards full integration of in-memory DB Redis with Windows Azure.

• Redis 2.6 pre-release released
• 64-bit installer for Windows Azure released

Details can be found in this announcement .

$ 1 billion datacenter expansion

Earlier in January, Microsoft announced its intention to significantly expand the capacity of a data center in Virginia, USA. The company invests an additional $ 348 million, expanding the total investment in the data center to $ 1 billion.

Released System Center 2012 SP1 with integration functionality with Windows Azure

In January, a service pack was released for System Center 2012, in which, along with other features, the ability to integrate an enterprise with Windows Azure was added.



Additional materials:

• Integrating ConfigMgr 2012 SP1 with Azure ( link )
• Windows Azure Online Backup in System Center 2012 and Windows Server 2012 ( link )

SQL Server 2012 SP1 Cumulative Update 2 with backup function in Windows Azure released

In January, a regular cumulative set of updates was released in SQL Server 2012, in which, among other things, new features were presented that allow you to specify URLs for backup addresses, including the Windows Azure cloud.







Details



The new update also makes it easy to create VHDs for deploying SQL Server in Windows Azure virtual machines.

Windows Azure Summit: big conference

In January, the official announcement of the big Russian Windows Azure Summit conference took place. The conference will take place on February 20, 2013 in Moscow .



Windows Azure Summit will be the largest free conference, reports will be held in parallel in four rooms. You can view the program at this link . Venue and other information you can find on the official website of the conference .



Alas, the registration for the conference has already been closed, since we have a huge interest in the topic from the community and all the places for the conference were closed in just a couple of weeks.



However, we will organize a live broadcast of the conference, and later we will publish a video of all the reports.

Poster of the structure of Windows Azure services in Russian

We are glad to present you a poster localized into Russian (pdf) with the structure of Windows Azure services in Russian.

New materials, manuals, projects based on Windows Azure

This section lists some of the new materials and tutorials on Windows Azure, as well as projects using the platform.

• A separate Windows Azure Web Sites resource , Cheat Sheet , has been launched, where you can find a detailed description of command line commands and other information on managing Windows Azure Web Sites.
• Great whitepaper on choosing between the Windows Azure SQL Database and hosting SQL Server in a virtual machine
• Results of testing the placement of Team Foundation Server in a Windows Azure virtual machine
• A report from the Patterns & Practices Symposium 2013 conference on autoscaling resources in Windows Azure
• A story about how the Voting Information Project (VIP) was built using Windows Azure during a US vote
• An article on the integration and use of Windows Azure Blob Storage with Dynamics CRM

DevCon 2013

On my own behalf, I want to add that the theme of the Windows Azure cloud platform and all new products will be deeply discussed at the DevCon 2013 conference on behalf of specially invited members of the Windows Azure team.



Read more about the conference in this announcement . Registration is now open !