Digest of news of the Windows Azure platform, February 2014

As part of this news digest, the Windows Azure cloud platform contains basic announcements for developers, IT professionals, and for all professionals interested in cloud technologies and the Windows Azure platform.

In this issue:

• New regional Windows Azure data centers launched.
• A new service ExpressRoute - private networks from the data center to Windows Azure.
• Reduced prices for push notification service Notification Hubs.
• Presents prices and availability dates for Oracle tools in Windows Azure
• Web Sites . Support for backup and recovery sites
• Mobile Services . Support server code on .NET. Integration with Notification Hubs. PhoneGap support. Client SDK.
• HDInsight (Hadoop) . Hadoop 2.2 support
• Java development . Developer Toolkit Update
• Management and monitoring . Notifications of platform crashes on the portal. Increase the limit on the number of co-administrators. New PowerShell cmdlets.
• Virtual machines VM Agent support and background information service.
• Active Directory . More SaaS services in the directory. Reporting. Group management.
• BizTalk Services . EDIFACT protocol support. Service Bus Integration. Backup and restore.
• Optional . Free books. Microsoft Research Summer School. Windows Azure - to millions of fans .

New regional data centers Windows Azure

The Windows Azure platform continues to expand not only with the constant increase of services and tools for developers and IT professionals, but also with infrastructure. On February 25, two new Windows Azure data centers were announced with a region in Japan.

Now, cloud platform users have access to eight regions of the platform for hosting applications, services and infrastructure.

As part of the announcement, several figures were presented: the company has already invested more than $ 15 billion in cloud infrastructure, offering more than 200 cloud services for more than 1 billion customers in 90 markets around the world.

New cloud service - ExpressRoute

Scott Guthrie announced the new Windows Azure ExpressRoute cloud service, which is a dedicated, private, high-performance network channel for direct connection of customer data centers with Windows Azure infrastructure.

Windows Azure ExpressRoute allows cloud platform clients to connect to their data centers the power of Windows Azure bypassing Internet channels, which makes working with the cloud more transparent for the data center, allows you to achieve a guaranteed speed of data exchange and enhanced security.

Today, the ExpressRoute service is in the status of a preview and is available only to customers in the United States. Those interested can subscribe to the trial use of the service . A description of the service and its availability can be found on this page .

Reduced prices for push notifications

The service of centralized mass distribution of push-notifications for a variety of mobile platforms Notification Hubs received another price correction. Service prices for the Basic tariff were reduced almost four times: from 2,599 rubles to 693 rubles. The current pricing for the service is presented below:

Presents pricing and availability dates for Oracle software in Windows Azure

Last June, Microsoft and Oracle announced a strategic partnership supporting the deployment of Oracle products on the Windows Azure platform. In February, prices were presented for placing Oracle software in the Windows Azure infrastructure.

The prices listed below include a license for Oracle products.

Users are available images based on Linux and Windows. Users can access existing licenses. Detailed information on licensing is available on the official portal .

Commercial availability of Oracle server hosting will be available from March 12.

Web Sites. Support for backup and recovery sites

Sites hosted in Windows Azure Web Sites received new functionality. Now developers and administrators have the opportunity to create backup copies of sites and restore them, if necessary, directly from the administration portal.

Creating a backup of Windows Azure Web Sites involves creating a snapshot of the current version of the deployed application along with the code and any databases that are used by the site: SQL Database or MySQL. Users have the option of manual backup or setting up automatic backup on schedule.

The new functionality is available for users of the Standard level at no additional charge.

New features of Windows Azure mobile services

In February, Windows Azure mobile services, which offer developers to quickly get a ready-made single backend for all popular mobile platforms, received the next update.

Support server .NET code . The long-awaited novelty. For a long time, developers were encouraged to use mobile services and write server-side code in JavaScript based on Node.js. With the release of the update, developers can use their skills and developments in .NET / C # and ASP.NET Web API to develop the server code of their mobile backend.

With the release of the update, the following benefits have become available to developers:

1. Ability to use ASP.NET Web API and Visual Studio along with mobile services for mobile application development
2. The ability to publish any existing Web API as a mobile service backend with authentication and push notifications integration
3. Use all the features of the ASP.NET Web API, including OData controllers and third-party frameworks like Breeze
4. Possibility of local and remote debugging of the server mobile backend code in Visual Studio
5. Your WebAPI code will be automatically launched, run, managed and scaled thanks to mobile services.

For a detailed study of the new functionality, you can refer to the new manuals:

• Getting started with Mobile Services .NET for the Windows Store , Windows Phone and iOS .
• Getting started with data and Mobile Services .NET for the Windows Store , Windows Phone .
• Getting started with authentication and Mobile Services .NET for the Windows Store , Windows Phone
• Getting started with push notifications and Mobile Services. NET for the Windows Store , Windows Phone .

You can read about the integration of the .NET code of mobile services with the version control tool here .

Integration with Notification Hubs . Another great news related to the mobile backend in the cloud is the announcement of the support for the push notification service Notification Hubs.

Mailing notifications from the Windows Azure Mobile Services mobile backend was available earlier, including through Notification Hubs, but this support was not functional enough. With the update, the following full Notification Hubs features are available to developers:

• advanced functionality of targeted notification notifications via tag support;
• bulk broadcast push notifications;
• personalization and localization of push notifications through the template mechanism.

New integration feature with Notification Hubs is still available as a preview. Developers can use it on the Push tab in their administration panel.

Integration with PhoneGap . As you know, Windows Azure mobile services offer a single backend for multiple mobile platforms. Among them: Windows, Windows Phone, iOS, Android and mobile applications HTML5 / JS. Recently, this list has been expanded with support for the Xamarin application development platform and the Sencha framework .

With the February update, developers have become available to deeper integration of the mobile backend with the popular framework PhoneGap.

Updated Client SDK 1.1.3 . Developers have become available new versions of client SDK for different platforms. About innovations and changes in them can be found in this announcement .

New features of virtual machines

In February, a new VM Agent functionality was introduced for the IaaS platform in Windows Azure and virtual machines.

VM Agent is the ability to automatically and transparently place in each virtual machine (Windows or Linux) a special process that will help to perform advanced functions for managing virtual machines and the cloud infrastructure as a whole.

The agent itself does not offer any special features, but it allows you to install and use useful extensions, which are software for expanding the functions of virtual machines, simplifying their management. Over time, you will see many such extensions. The team currently offers one such demo extension - Background Info Extension (BGInfo).

BGInfo is an extension for VM Agent that allows you to display useful information about a virtual machine on the desktop when connected to it via RDP. This information allows you to quickly obtain information about the settings and configuration of the machine.

HDInsight service update (Hadoop clusters on request)

HDInsight - a cloud-based 100% -compatible implementation of the Windows Azure-based Hadoop ecosystem has received another update.

Now users of Windows Azure HDInsight are available for deployment on demand clusters based on Hadoop 2.2. The new version offers an order of magnitude increased responsiveness (up to 40x) for requests, data compression (up to 80%) to reduce storage requirements, support and all the benefits of YARN .

To start working with HDInsight clusters, you can visit our portal AzureHub.ru or official documentation at the following link .

Upgrade Java Development Tools for Windows Azure

Microsoft Open Technologies announced the release of the February update of Windows Azure Toolkit for Eclipse tools, which are a set of tools with integration into Eclipse for the development of Java applications to place them in the cloud environment of Windows Azure.

This release introduces the following innovations and updates: support for SSL and SSL offloading, enhanced support for the latest versions of GlasFish and Azul Zulu OpenJDK, a new option for selecting instances of A5 roles, a choice of Windows Server 2012 R2, improvements in the menu and new options.

Details can be found in this article on Habré.

New management and monitoring features

The administration, management and monitoring functions of Windows Azure are constantly evolving and improving. In February, several useful innovations were made.

Notifications of platform crashes on the portal . Unfortunately, on the Windows Azure platform is rare, but some services fail. To improve the understanding and timely inform customers of such situations, support for real-time crash notification was added to the Windows Azure portal.

Now users will receive notifications about failures in the work of the services they use directly on the portal:

• notification of degradation of quality and performance
• partial unavailability of services
• total performance degradation
• total unavailability of services
• notifications from the security control service

Along with the notification, users are provided with real-time detailed information about the incident:

Increase the limit on the number of co-administrators . Previously, Windows Azure account administrators could create up to 10 co-administrators who were given the rights to manage cloud capacity as part of a subscription. However, the restriction of only 10 co-administrators did not suit many users.

With the February update, the limit on the number of co-administrators has been increased from 10 to 200 for each subscription. This will allow more efficient work with the power of one subscription to large development teams.

New PowerShell cmdlets . Administration tools via the command line and Windows Azure PowerShell scripts are constantly updated with support for the latest platform features.

The new version of Windows Azure PowerShell offers dozens of new cmdlets that will allow you to work with new platform features:

• Web Sites cmdlets with styling support, WebJobs, and others;
• cmdlets for virtual machines with support for extensions and others;
• cloud service cmdlets with support for extensions, static IP installations and others;
• storage cmdlets with metrics and logging support and others;
• ExpressRoute cmdlets.

A detailed list and description can be found on the GiHub page of this open toolbox.

Windows Azure Active Directory innovations

Expansion of the SaaS Solutions Catalog . The directory of cloud SaaS solutions that are supported in Windows Azure Active Directory has been extended to 600 applications to provide the Single Sign-On (SSO) feature. Let me remind you that among them are such popular services as Box, Google Aps, Dynamics CRM, Office 365, Citrix services and many others.

With Windows Azure Active Directory and the directory provided, you can easily integrate single sign-on with your Microsoft services and third-party services through a single account.

Premium mode and reporting . For large corporate clients, Windows Azure Active Directory provides a new Premium mode . In February, for users of the Premium mode, additional reporting functionality was introduced that helps to better understand the consumption of third-party services and access to them within the company.

Reports for premium subscribers are available on the Reports tab.

Group management . In February, users of a premium subscription to Windows Azure Active Directory were offered new self-management functionality for user groups.

With the help of the new portal, not only administrators, but also ordinary users of the company will be able to create groups, find them, join and exclude their participation from groups.

About these and other announcements of Windows Azure Active Directory can be found in the blog of the development team .

New BizTalk Services Cloud Service

Cloud implementation of some BizTalk server features - Windows Azure BizTalk Services has been updated.

EDIFACT protocol support . The cloud service now natively supports the EDIFACT protocol (United States / Electronic Data Interchange For Administration, Commerce and Transport) - an international standard for messaging.

Support message bus service bus . BizTalk Services can now easily be integrated with the Windows Azure Service Bus cloud messaging service, queues and topics. The updated BizTalk Services SDK offers support for retrieving messages from their Service Bus queues out of the box.

Along with support for the Service Bus, BizTalk Services has added support and Shared Access Signatures (SAS) for working with message queues.

Backup and restore support . In February, the ability to backup and restore was added to the BizTalk Srevices service, which is easy to configure and use through the management portal.

Account administrators can configure service backups in the Configure tab of the control panel .

Additional announcements

I would like to share some additional news about the Windows Azure platform.

Free books . New free e-books are available for developers and IT administrators.

We are pleased to present you an e-book Introducing Windows Azure for IT Professionals (.pdf) that will help you get information about the Windows Azure cloud platform and deployment of enterprise infrastructure in the cloud. The book was specifically translated into Russian and is available for download completely free of charge. You can download the book from our portal http://AzureHub.ru (.pdf).

A free e-book “ Cloud Design Patterns ” has been published, featuring twenty-four cloud patterns and ten tutorials on the theme of cloud application design. The content of the book demonstrates how each pattern individually fits into the overall picture of the architecture of cloud applications. The book is illustrated with code examples and tips for using each pattern. Download the book at the following link . Source codes of the book can be downloaded on a separate link .

Microsoft Research Summer School . The traditional annual Microsoft Research Summer School opens registration on February 6, 2014. This year, training seminars for young scientists will be held from July 30 to August 6. The school is organized by a division of Microsoft - Microsoft Research, with the support of Yandex and the Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov. The goal of the Summer School this year will be to teach the new generation of researchers the skills to create cloud tools and systems needed in the age of big data.

Applicants for participation must complete an application by March 15, 2014, inclusive. The system is already open for registration, submission of applications will start on February 6, 2014.

For more information about Microsoft Research Summer School, please visit cloud2014.cs.msu.ru/en/ab/about . You can apply for participation at cmt.research.microsoft.com/msrcloud2014

Windows Azure - to millions of fans . Millions of fans and guests of the Games quickly received the necessary information in real time on the site sochi2014.com thanks to the Windows Azure platform. It ensured the availability of the necessary computing resources during peak loads, the volume of which was almost impossible to predict in advance. The Windows Azure platform is ideal for the rapid creation and operation of dynamic, cost-effective and high-performance information systems.

During the entire period of the sports competitions, the following statistics on the smooth operation of the site sochi2014.com provided by Windows Azure were collected:

• During the Olympic Games in Sochi, the official site had over 100 million visits.
• The maximum number of users came from Russia, USA, Canada, Ukraine and France.
• Competitions in figure skating and the unofficial medal standings attracted the most attention.
• At the time of peak load, over 175 thousand visitors were present at the same time, which was 15 times the number of users during periods of minimum consumption. They looked through pages with online results, making more than 90 thousand requests per second.
• Over 5 million users visited the site daily. They viewed more than 30 million pages.
• Windows Azure was used to provide information for mobile devices on all platforms (more than 6 million copies of the official Sochi 2014 applications have been installed to date).
• The number of site views during the Games has exceeded 500 million, and the number of requests to Azure virtual machines amounted to more than 25 billion.
• The consulting and technical support department of corporate customers, under whose leadership the design and implementation of the official website was carried out, also provided technical support. The team, numbering 23 experts, worked on the site during the entire period of the games in 24/7 mode.

To provide access to the Games news from various mobile platforms, Microsoft, together with its partners, developed a single interface with the infrastructure hosted in Windows Azure, as well as two mobile applications running on the Windows Phone platform - the Sochi 2014 Guide and the Sochi 2014 Results . They entered the Top 20 free applications of the Windows Phone Store in Russia, they were downloaded by more than 1 million people.

Read more in the official press release .