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What's New in the Windows Azure Tools
In this topic, you can find information about each release of Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio, including which features each release includes and each Visual Studio product supports.
In this topic
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April 2013 Release (Version 2.0)
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October 2012 Release (Version 1.8)
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August 2012 Release (Version 1.71)
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June 2012 Release (Version 1.7)
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November 2011 Release (Version 1.6)
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September 2011 Release (Version 1.5)
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August 2011 Release (Version 1.4)
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December 2010 Release (Version 1.3)
 Note |
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| For information about what's new in the Windows Azure platform, the Windows Azure SDK, and the Windows Azure Management Portal, see What's New in Windows Azure. |
April 2013 Release (Version 2.0)
| Task | Supported in the following Visual Studio products | Description |
|---|---|---|
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Customize diagnostic data collection for a running role, a running instance, or for the deployment as a whole. |
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You can configure the type of diagnostic information that Windows Azure collects, including logs and traces from your application, performance counters, event logs, diagnostics logs, logs from Internet Information Services (IIS), and crash dumps. For more information, see Configuring Windows Azure Diagnostics. |
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Create tables in Windows Azure storage, and edit table data. |
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You can create tables and directly edit table data in Server Explorer. By using the Query Builder, you can also customize the kinds of data elements (called entities) that appear in a table. For more information, see Browsing Storage Resources with Server Explorer. |
October 2012 Release (Version 1.8)
| Task | Supported in the following Visual Studio products | Description |
|---|---|---|
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Target the .NET Framework 4.5 and Windows Server 2012
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You can create projects that target the .NET Framework 4.5 and that will run on Windows Server 2012 virtual machines. You can change the target framework for existing projects to the .NET Framework 4.5, as long as you manually reset the osFamily setting in the .csdef file for your project. For more information and instructions, see Managing Operating System and Framework Versions. |
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Easily work with storage account resources from Server Explorer. View, upload, and edit blobs in your storage accounts. Create Windows Azure queues, and send messages to them, all without writing any code. |
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You can manage storage account resources (blobs, tables, and queues) by using Server Explorer. With the ability to create and edit these resources from Visual Studio, you can now get started more quickly without writing a lot of code to create and set up these resources. You can also more easily test your cloud services by using Windows Azure queues and sending messages to them to test the behavior of the services. For more information, see Browsing Storage Resources with Server Explorer. |
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Automatically download storage account information from your subscription. |
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You can easily download the connection information for the storage account of your choice from your Windows Azure subscription. You no longer have to log into the Management Portal, navigate to your storage account, copy a subscription ID or storage account name, and then paste it into Visual Studio. For more information, see Setting Up Services Required to Publish a Cloud Service from Visual Studio. |
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Publish to specific data centers, thereby ensuring that your cloud services and storage accounts run in the same data center. |
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You can easily verify that your cloud service is deployed to the same data center as the storage account that your service uses. The Publish Wizard displays the data center location so that you can control this important setting. For more information, see Publish Windows Azure Application Wizard. |
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Publish to a Windows Azure appliance directly from the Windows Azure Publish Wizard. |
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A Windows Azure appliance is a privately hosted instance of Windows Azure. If you have access to a cloud appliance, you can publish to it by providing the service management URL. For more information, see How to: Publish a Cloud Service to a Windows Azure Appliance. |
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Debug web pages by using the ASP.NET page inspector. |
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You can open the page inspector by opening the shortcut menu for a web project and then choosing View In Page Inspector. The page inspector provides internal information that’s often useful for debugging. For more information, see Using Page Inspector in ASP.NET MVC. |
 Warning |
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The format of .publishsettings files have changed with this release. You can't use an earlier version of the Windows Azure Tools to open a .publishsettings file that was created with the 1.8 version. You can use the 1.8 version to open .publishsettings files that were created with earlier versions of the tools. You can determine whether a .publishsettings file uses the new format by opening it in a text editor and looking for the SchemaVersion element. If the file contains the element <SchemaVersion="2.0">, the file is in the 1.8 format. If you try to use an earlier version to open a file that's in the 1.8 format, the file fails to open, and the following error message appears: The file File.publishsettings does not contain valid publish settings for Windows Azure. |
August 2012 Release (Version 1.71)
An update to the Windows Azure Tools (Version 1.71) was released in August 2012. The 1.71 release is required for use with Visual Studio 2012 but contains no other features. The other components of the Windows Azure SDK weren't updated for the 1.71 release.
June 2012 Release (Version 1.7)
| Task | Supported in the following Visual Studio products | Description |
|---|---|---|
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Develop cloud services by using the most recent version of Visual Studio. |
Visual Studio 2012 |
You can install this release of the Windows Azure SDK, which includes the Windows Azure Tools, either in the same instance of Visual Studio 2012 as the previous release of the SDK or in another instance. If you install these releases of the SDK side by side, you can still open projects that were created with the previous release, but all new projects will be created with the current release. For more information, see How To: Upgrade Projects to the Current Version of the Windows Azure Tools |
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Create and consume a distributed caching service that's hosted by a role or that runs as a separate role in a cloud service. |
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By using role-based caching, you can set up general-purpose data caches, in addition to the output caches and session state caches on a per-role basis in Windows Azure cloud services. For more information, see How to: Use Windows Azure Caching. |
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Explore workflow in worker roles by using service bus tasks and queues in Server Explorer. Also, create worker roles that use service bus queues. |
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A service bus provides an efficient message queue system for worker roles in Windows Azure. For more information, see Service Bus. |
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Explore virtual machines and service bus queues. Also, start a remote desktop (RDP) session directly from a virtual machine or a cloud service in the Server Explorer window of Visual Studio. |
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In Server Explorer, you can monitor the status of virtual machines and log into them. For more information about how to manage virtual machines, see Managing Windows Azure Virtual Machines. |
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Use the lightweight database, SQL Server Express LocalDB, during the development process. |
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SQL Server Express LocalDB is a lightweight database that’s for developers and that requires no administration or management of instances of SQL Server. Visual Studio 2012 installs LocalDB on the local machine by default. The storage emulator can now be initialized and backed by LocalDB. You can use LocalDB when you run and debug your application locally. For more information, see How to: Upgrade to SQL Server Express LocalDB and SQL Server 2012 Express LocalDB. |
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Use ASP.NET MVC4 web roles in your cloud services. |
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You can create ASP.NET MVC4 roles from a template. Also, if you already have an MVC4 project, you can add Windows Azure publishing support to it. For more information, see What's New in ASP.NET MVC 4. |
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Set up your cloud services to automatically deploy when you make code changes. |
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You can add Windows Azure projects to Team Foundation Service, which is a cloud-based version-control system that’s based on Visual Studio Team Foundation Server. You can manage source code, work items, projects, builds, and publication to Windows Azure without any servers on your premises. For more information, see Continuous Delivery for Cloud Applications in Windows Azure. |
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Deploy cloud services more quickly. |
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Several improvements make deploying Windows Azure applications faster. You can deploy only those components that have changed since the last deployment. If you aren't concerned about keeping an application available at all times, you can update all instances simultaneously instead of incrementally. |
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You can test and run cloud services locally by using Internet Information Services (IIS) Express. |
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When you debugging an application locally, you can run IIS Express in the compute emulator, as a lightweight alternative to installing a server to run IIS. In this release, you still need elevated permissions to run cloud services in the Windows Azure emulator. For more information, see IIS Express Overview. |
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Use the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) in your cloud services. |
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Windows Azure supports UDP in the Endpoints tab of the role designer. |
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Add files and folders to your roles. |
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You can add content to your roles by creating a folder or adding files to your role projects in Solution Explorer. When you publish, your files are deployed to Windows Azure and are available to the cloud service that’s running. |
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Create storage connection strings for Diagnostics and Caching more easily. |
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When you use the Publish Wizard to publish to Windows Azure, you can automatically update your configuration files with the connection information for your storage account. If you’ve already added a connection string, it isn’t replaced.Because the tools change the active .cscfg file before publishing your cloud service to Windows Azure, you have explicit visibility and control over the values. For more information, see Publish Windows Azure Application Wizard. |
November 2011 Release (Version 1.6)
The following table describes features that were added to the tools and SDK version 1.6, which was released in November 2011.
| Feature | Supported in the following Visual Studio products | Description |
|---|---|---|
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Publish Windows Azure Application Wizard |
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This wizard simplifies downloads of settings and certificates, permits the use of multiple subscriptions with a set of credentials, and lets you save settings to profiles. For more information, see Publish Windows Azure Application Wizard. |
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Command-Line Build for Windows Azure |
Not Applicable |
You can follow this procedure to build and package applications for Windows Azure. For more information, see Command-Line Build for Windows Azure. |
September 2011 Release (Version 1.5)
With the release of the latest tools and SDK version 1.5 (September 2011), the feature described in the following table has been added.
| Feature | Supported in the following Visual Studio products | Description | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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Publish an Existing Web Application to Windows Azure |
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If you want to deploy your existing Web application to Windows Azure, you can now publish to Windows Azure directly from your Web project. For more information about this feature, see How to: Migrate and Publish a Web Application to Windows Azure from Visual Studio.
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 Caution |
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| Breaking Change: The Windows Azure project file (.ccproj) has a different structure for version 1.5 (September 2011) Release of the Windows Azure Tools from previous versions. When you open a solution that contains a Windows Azure project, any existing .ccproj files are changed to this new structure. This upgraded .ccproj file is incompatible with previous versions of the Windows Azure Tools. |
August 2011 Release (Version 1.4)
With the release of the latest tools and SDK version 1.4 (August 2011), the features described in the following table have been added.
| Feature | Supported in the following Visual Studio products | Description |
|---|---|---|
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Multiple Service Configurations |
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If you want to run your Windows Azure application locally to debug it and you also want to publish your application to Windows Azure, this typically requires different values for the settings for your roles. For example, you might want to run four instances of a role in Windows Azure, but just one instance when you debug in your local environment. You can now have multiple service configurations in your Windows Azure project that enable you to define these different values. You can then select which one you want to use. For more information about this feature, see Configuring a Windows Azure Project. |
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Profiling a Windows Azure application when it runs in Windows Azure |
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You can now profile your Windows Azure application when it runs in Windows Azure to determine any performance issues. When you publish your Windows Azure application from Visual Studio, you can choose to profile the application and select the profiling settings that you require. A profiling session is started for each instance of a role. For more information about this feature, see Testing the Performance of a Cloud Service. |
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Package validation |
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When you create a package or publish your Windows Azure application, warnings or errors now occur to enable you to fix issues that would prevent the application from being deployed or published. By receiving a warning or error at the packaging stage, you can save time by fixing these issues before you deploy your Windows Azure application. You do not have to wait for the deployment to complete and then have the deployment fail. For more information about how to treat warnings as errors or fix any warnings that occur when you create a package, see Troubleshooting Package Validation Warnings and Errors. |
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MVC 3 web role support |
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You can now add an MVC 3 web role to your solution when you create a Windows Azure project. You can select which type of MVC 3 project you want to create. In addition, this web role automatically adds the necessary assemblies as references to the project and makes sure that they are deployed as part of the service package when you publish this application. For more information about MVC 3, see MVC 3. |
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Caution |
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| Breaking Change: When you build your Windows Azure application the folder named csx is no longer created by the Version 1.4 (August 2011) release. The files in this folder enabled you to use csrun to run your application using the Windows Azure compute emulator. If you used the contents of this folder with Team Build to run your application locally and test the application before you deployed, you must now set the PackageForComputeEmulator property to true in your build template. |
 Important |
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| With the release of the 1.4.1 Refresh of Windows Azure SDK and Windows Azure Tools Version 1.4 (March 2011), Web Deploy was enabled for the Windows Azure Visual Studio tools. When you are developing and testing a Windows Azure application, you can use Web Deploy to publish changes incrementally for your web roles. Web Deploy is not for use in a production environment. For more information about how to use Web Deploy, see Enable Web Deploy When You Publish Your Application. |
December 2010 Release (Version 1.3)
| Feature | Supported in the following Visual Studio products | Description | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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Remote Desktop |
Visual Studio 2010 Visual Web Developer 2010 |
With the Remote Desktop support in the tools, you can easily set up and configure the remote desktop connections for your Roles. For more information about remote desktop support, see Using Remote Desktop with Windows Azure Roles. |
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Virtual Network |
Visual Studio 2010 Visual Web Developer 2010 |
With the Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio, you can enable Windows Azure Connect for your roles. Windows Azure Connect allows you to set up IP connection between roles run in Windows Azure and local computers. See Using Windows Azure Connect to Create Virtual Networks for more information.
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Virtual Machine (VM) Role |
Visual Studio 2010 Visual Web Developer 2010 |
With the Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio, you can add a VM role to your Windows Azure project, select the VHD for your VM role, configure and deploy the VM role as simple as other role types.
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IIS Support |
Visual Studio 2010 Visual Web Developer 2010 |
Full IIS is supported for building and deploying web roles, both in the development environment and in Windows Azure. See Developing a Web Application for more information. |
See Also
