What's New in Windows Azure

New web site

We have redesigned the Windows Azure web site featuring new Developer Centers for .NET, Node.js, Java, and PHP. The Develop Centers contain with new tutorials, how-tos, and common tasks to help you get started on Windows Azure. For more information, see the Developer Center.

Windows Azure SDK for Node.js - November 2011

The Windows Azure SDK for Node.js provides libraries and tools that allow Node.js developers to easily develop, build, and deploy Windows Azure applications. This SDK release includes support for the following features:

• Node.js libraries for accessing the Windows Azure Storage blob, table, and queue services.
  
  
• The Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets for Node.js, which provides a command-line environment for developing and deploying Node.js applications.
  
  

Along with being packaged as a downloadable SDK, source code for the Node.js libraries is available on GitHub.com. You can find details about the Node SDK, including download links and new content, tutorials, and samples, in the Node.js Node.js Developer Center page on the Windows Azure website.

Windows Azure SDK for Java - December 2011 CTP

The Windows Azure SDK for Java includes libraries and tools to support Java developers in using Windows Azure. The Windows Azure Libraries for Java provide Java libraries that allow you to access Windows Azure services. You do not need to host your application in Windows Azure to benefit from the Windows Azure Libraries for Java. The following functionality is included in these libraries:

• Windows Azure storage (blob and queue)
  
  
• Windows Azure service runtime
  
  
• Windows Azure service bus
  
  

As with the SDK for Node.js, the libraries for Java are available as a packaged download and are also made available as an open source project on GitHub.com.

Another component of the Windows Azure SDK for Java is the Windows Azure Plugin for Eclipse with Java. The plugin facilitates the development and deployment of Windows Azure applications from within your Eclipse environment. More details about the plugin are available later in this post.

You can find more details about the Java SDK, including download links and new content, tutorials, and samples, in the Java Developer Center on the Windows Azure website.

Windows Azure Plugin for Eclipse with Java December 2011 CTP

You can use this Plugin to facilitate the development of Windows Azure applications from within your Eclipse environment. The Windows Azure Plugin for Eclipse with Java is developed by Persistent Systems Ltd, and is sponsored and designed by Microsoft, and it is also an Open Source project.  This plugin release contains many new features, such as session affinity, real time emulator startup output, sample startup scripts, remote Java application debugging, configuration UI for local storage and environment variables, and more. For details, see What's New in the Windows Azure Plugin for Eclipse with Java.

For additional information, see Java Developer Guidance.

New Tools for Open Source Software technologies

As part of our continuing work with Open Source Software (OSS) communities, we are releasing a number of tools to help Windows Azure developers work with OSS technologies.  Here are some of the highlights:

• MongoDB — Microsoft has been working with 10gen to provide MongoDB database integration for Windows Azure, including deployment packaging, documentation, and code samples.
  
  
• SQL Azure Federation — The SQL Azure Federations feature has been released, and the sharding interoperability specification has been released under the Microsoft Open Specification Promise.
  
  
• Solr/Lucene — We have released a set of code tools and configuration guidelines for hosting the Solr/Lucene open source enterprise search platform in Windows Azure.
  
  
• Memcached — The memcached developer community has provided guidance on how to deploy memcached, a distributed memory object caching system, on Windows Azure using non-.NET languages.
  
  

Additional information on these tools and download links, see the Port 25 blog post Openness Update for Windows Azure.

Simplified Subscription Sign up Experience

• Simplified Sign-up Process — You can now sign up for new subscriptions with three simple steps.
  
  
• Improved Subscription Management and Real-Time Usage Visibility — Spending limits on newly created 3 Month free trial and MSDN subscriptions ensure that you will only get charged for Windows Azure when you’re ready.  In addition you can cancel unneeded subscriptions and view recent billing details directly from the Windows Azure Billing Portal.
  
  
• Streamlined Billing — Review key usage and billing details at a glance with summary view invoices. In-depth reports can be run across multiple information fields if desired. You can also take advantage of offer recommendations based on usage estimates and existing entitlements you have from various Microsoft programs.
  
  

Concurrent with the release of these new capabilities for managing your use of Windows Azure, (e.g., spending limits, real-time access to usage and charges), we will retire our monthly email notifications reporting when you reach 75%, 100% and 125% of the compute hours included in your offer.

Non-.NET Windows Azure projects supported on Code Gallery

• Scoped Search - Search on any of these applications will include results for any of the Windows Azure scoped MSDN Library, Windows Azure Forums, and Windows Azure Samples Gallery applications.
  
  
• Support for PHP, Java and Node.js samples - The Windows Azure samples site supports the upload and detection of PHP, Java, and Node.js Windows Azure samples.
  
  

SQL Azure Enhancements

The SQL Azure Q4 2011 Service release is now available and offers greater flexibility for scaling on demand, and simplifies database monitoring and management. Here are some of the highlights:

• Increased Database Size — We are tripling the maximum database size in SQL Azure from 50GB to 150GB and introducing SQL Azure Federation to simplify the setup, management, and automation of shards for greater elastic scale.
  
  
• Price Cap for Large Databases — In addition to the increase in DB size, we are also introducing a price cap which lowers the effective cost per GB for customers with large databases.  This change allows customers with 50 GB databases and larger to continue to grow without additional costs. Customers that use 150 GB DBs will see their effective price per GB drop by 67%.
  
  
• SQL Azure Federation — With SQL Azure Federation, databases can be elastically scaled out using the sharding pattern. This new feature makes it dramatically easier to set up an elastic database tier that can repartition based on application workloads to provide unlimited scale, great economics, and simplified multi-tenancy for modern cloud applications
  
  
• Refreshed SQL Azure Management Portal — The new portal has a Metro-style user interface with new features including new workspaces with the ability to more easily monitor databases, drill-down into schemas, query plans, spatial data, indexes/keys, and query performance. The new portal also supports SQL Azure Federation.
  
  

Lower Data Transfer Prices and Simplified Pricing for Service Bus

To provide the best possible value to our customers:

• We have reduced the price on Data Transfers.
  
  
• We have changed the way we charge for Service Bus to increase value and simplify usage breakdown.
  
  

For more information, see Pricing Overview.

Windows Azure SDK Renamed

The Windows Azure SDK has been renamed the Windows Azure SDK for .NET.

The Windows Azure Service Bus and Caching client libraries are now the Windows Azure .NET Libraries and is installed with the Windows Azure SDK.

The Windows Azure .NET Libraries 1.6 – November 2011 includes assemblies for the service bus and for caching. The service bus and cache include the enhancements outlined below.

Service bus enhancements:

• Support for ports in messaging operations: You can now specify that messaging operations use port 80 or port 443. Set the ConnectivityMode enumeration to Http.
  
  
• Exception contract refinements: The November 2011 release adds and improves existing exception messages throughout the service bus managed API set.
  
  
• Relay load balancing: You can now open multiple listeners (up to 25) on the same endpoint. When the service bus receives a request for your endpoints, the system load balances which of the connected listeners receives the request or connection/session.
  
  

Caching enhancements:

• Client side connection pooling: Connection pooling now enables all DataCacheFactory instances to share the same pool of connections. This makes it easier to manage your connections within each role instance. For more information, see Understanding and Managing Connections.
  
  
• Performance improvement for cache access times: The client-side caching binaries have been optimized to improve access times of cached objects. You can take advantage of this improvement by building and running on the latest SDK without changing any code.
  
  
• Custom serialization: You now have the option of implementing a custom serializer for caching, in order to optimize the serialized form of your objects in the cache. For more information, see How to: Use a Custom Serializer with Windows AzureCaching.
  
  

HPC integration

The Windows Azure SDK for .NET now includes modules that allow developers using the Windows Azure HPC Scheduler SDK to create Windows Azure deployments that support compute-intensive, parallel applications that can scale when offered more compute power. For more information, see Windows Azure HPC Scheduler.

The Windows Azure HPC Scheduler SDK enables developers to define a Windows Azure deployment that includes:

• Job scheduling and resource management
  
  
• Support for distributed runtimes MPI, SOA, and LINQ to HPC (CTP)
  
  

  Note
  LINQ to HPC is in Community Technology Preview (CTP). This feature will not offer release-level support.

• Web-based job submission
  
  
• Persistent state management of job queue and resource configuration
  
  

For more information on the Windows Azure Scheduler SDK, see Getting Started with Application Deployment with the Windows Azure Scheduler.

Updates to the Storage Client Managed Code APIs

The November 2011 release includes a number of updates to the Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient namespace.

• Managed library updates for the Queue service include:
  
  
  • The new UpdateMessage method, for updating queue message contents and the invisibility timeout.
    
    
  • A new overload for AddMessage that provides the ability to make a message invisible until a future time.
    
    
  • The new SetMessageContent methods, to set the contents of a message.
    
    
  • The limit on the size of a message has been increased from 8KB to 64KB.
    
    
• The managed library adds the Get Service Settings and Set Service Settings methods for working with settings for the Blob, Queue, or Table services, including settings for configuring analytics.
  
  

Updates to the Windows Azure storage emulator

The Windows Azure storage emulator includes some support for the latest version of the storage services (version 08-11-2011). New support includes the following enhancements to the storage emulator:

• The limit on the size of a message has been increased from 8KB to 64KB.
  
  
• The storage emulator supports a new range header format for the Get Blob (REST API) operation.
  
  
• The storage emulator includes visibility timeout support for Put Message.
  
  

See Differences Between the Storage Emulator and Windows Azure Storage Services for a full list of emulator differences.

Fixed bugs in the Windows Azure SDK

• Windows Azure SDK Compute Emulator Fails to Start
  
  

Optimized storage emulator startup experience

The DSinit command-line tool runs at install time to improve the first run experience of the storage emulator.

Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio

The Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio supports an enhanced publishing experience and wizard for connecting to your Windows Azure subscriptions and configuring the target deployment environment. With the updated Windows Azure Tools, you can:

• Download publish settings and credentials from the Windows Azure management portal. It’s no longer necessary to create and manage service certificates to publish a service from Visual Studio.
  
  
• Link more than one subscription to your account credentials.
  
  
• Create hosted services and storage accounts easily from within Visual Studio.
  
  
• Use the in-place deployment upgrade feature by default. This feature helps with performance for services with a single role instance and uses fewer compute hours for upgrading.
  
  
• Enable remote desktop by simply checking a box and filling in your user name and password. You no longer have to create and upload a certificate to enable remote desktop.
  
  
• View more verbose Windows Azure deployment status messages in the Windows Azure Activity Log window.
  
  
• Configure multiple profiles to store your target publishing environment settings.
  
  

Employ MSBuild and Team Build support for packaging your service using command-line parameters.

For development scenarios that use Team Build server machines, the Windows Azure Tools can be installed on machines with no Visual Studio installation; only the files and targets needed to perform builds are installed.

For more information, see What's New in the Windows Azure Tools.

SDK Tools Enhancements

CSUpload – Adds the Add-ServiceCertificate option to allow for uploading certificates from the command line and retrieving basic information about hosted services. For more information, see CSUpload Command-Line Tool.

CSEncrypt – CSEncrypt is a new tool for generating remote desktop encryption certificates and encrypting password from the command line. For more information, see CSEncrypt Command-Line Tool.

CSPack – Packages created by CSPack are no longer encrypted. It is recommended that you do not store sensitive data in the package contents. For more information, see CSPack Command-Line Tool.

Schema/Process Enhancements

Adds support for directly launching programs as entry points for worker roles using the new ProgramEntryPoint element.

Adds support for directly including local directory contents from local system into application package using the new ProgramEntryPoint and NetFxEntryPoint elements.

Adds support for retrieving values from the runtime process environment using xPath values.

For more information, see WebRole Schema and WorkerRole Schema.

Compute Emulator Enhancements

Adds support for fixed ports in the compute emulator.

The Compute emulator allocates unique local loop back IPs which makes ports more stable and predictable..

The compute emulator has been refactored to share more code with cloud components and improve fidelity when emulating services for testing purposes.

There are performance improvements to speed up startup time in cloud and development fabric.

For more information, see Overview of Running a Windows Azure Application with Local Storage.

Bug Fixes

Fixed issues with failed error request logs were not being transferred in the cloud.

Bug fixes and performance improvements to handle full IIS websites with a large number of files.

Storage Emulator Bug Fixes

Updates to support Parallel Block uploads which previously failed.

Updates to block blobs using “latest” for existing block is now supported

PutBlob on page blob now clears the all the data too to match the cloud behavior

Service Management API additions and Updates

New APIs

• Rollback Update Or Upgrade - Cancels an in progress upgrade or configuration change to a deployment and returns the deployment to its state before the upgrade or configuration change was started.
  
  
• Get Subscription - Returns account and resource allocation information on the specified subscription.
  
  

Updated APIs

• Get Hosted Service Properties adds the Locked and RollbackAllowed properties.
  
  
• Get Deployment returns enhanced InstanceStatus information.
  
  

The RoleEnvironment class adds the IsEmulated property that allows you to determine whether the service is running locally or in the cloud.

Service Management Enhancements Enabled by SDK 1.5

The limit on upgrade domains is increased to 20 which is enforced during package validation.

Windows Azure Service Bus

The September 2011 release introduces enhancements to the service bus that improve publish/subscribe capabilities and introduce new durable, or “brokered” messaging capabilities through features such as queues, topics, and subscriptions. It also enables new scenarios on the Windows Azure platform, such as the following:

• Asynchronous Cloud Eventing – Distribute event notifications to occasionally connected clients (for example, phones, remote workers, kiosks, and so on).
  
  
• Event-driven Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) – Building loosely coupled systems that can easily evolve over time.
  
  
• Advanced Intra-App Messaging– Load leveling and load balancing for building highly scalable and resilient applications.
  
  

SQL Azure

SPARSE columns: SQL Azure now supports sparse columns that are optimized for null values. For more information, see Using Sparse Columns, CREATE TABLE (SQL Azure Database) and ALTER TABLE (SQL Azure Database).

THROW statement: The THROW statement can be used to raise an exception and transfer execution to a CATCH block of a TRY…CATCH construct. For more information, see THROW (Transact-SQL).

Ad-hoc Query Paging Implementation: You can specify a range of rows returned by a SELECT statement based on row offset and row count values that you provide. This is useful when you want to control the number of rows sent to a client application for a given query. For more information, see ORDER BY Clause (Transact-SQL).

Improved Spatial Type support: Support for additional spatial data types. For a full list of data types supported by SQL Azure, see Data Types (SQL Azure Database).

Increased Spatial Precision: SQL Azure now supports increased precision of spatial data types. This will have an impact on persisted computed columns as well as any index or constraint defined in terms of the persisted computed column. For more information, see Backward Compatibility.

New Version Number: SQL Azure now returns a version of 11.mm.bbbb.rr for @@VERSION and the ProductVersion property returned by SERVERPROPERTY. For information on the impact of this change, see Backward Compatibility.

Ease of Migration Functions: SQL Azure now provides functions that emulate functionality found in the expression languages of many desktop applications, and can help ease the path of migration for information workers more familiar with desktop applications such as Microsoft Access. However these functions will also be useful to experienced users of SQL Azure/

The new functions are:

Conversion functions

• PARSE
  
  
• TRY_PARSE
  
  

Date and time functions

• DATEFROMPARTS
  
  
• DATETIME2FROMPARTS
  
  
• DATETIMEFROMPARTS
  
  
• DATETIMEOFFSETFROMPARTS
  
  
• EOMONTH
  
  
• SMALLDATETIMEFROMPARTS
  
  
• TIMEFROMPARTS
  
  

Logical functions

• CHOOSE
  
  
• IIF
  
  

String functions

• CONCAT
  
  
• FORMAT
  
  

In addition to these 14 new functions, one existing function has been changed. The existing LOG function now has an optional second base parameter.

For more information, see Functions (SQL Azure Database).

New Management Portal for SQL Azure: The Database Manager for SQL Azure has been replaced with a new Management Portal for SQL Azure. The Management Portal for SQL Azure has two workspaces. The Database Schema workspace has the functionality contained in the old Database Manager portal; a Transact-SQL query editor, and support for creating, altering, and dropping tables, views, and stored procedures. The Database Life Cycle workspace supports creating, altering or dropping databases. It also supports extracting data-tier application (DAC) packages from existing databases, or using a DAC package to create a new database. For more information, see Management Portal for SQL Azure.

Data-tier Applications: SQL Azure supports the new data-tier application (DAC) features introduced in SQL Server Code Named “Denali” Customer Technology Preview 3 (CTP 3). You can export both the object definitions and data from a database as a DAC export (.bacpac) file, then import them to create a new database on a different SQL Azure server or an instance of the SQL Server Database Engine. You can use the DAC export and import features to make logical backups of your SQL Azure databases, or to migrate databases. For more information, see Tools and Utilities Support (SQL Azure Database). The DAC features in CTP 3 and SQL Azure also support all of the objects supported in SQL Azure database, except for DDL triggers.

DAC Export Import Service: SQL Azure introduces a Data-tier Application export import service that is built on the DAC tools and which exports and imports a database directly between SQL Azure and the Windows Azure Blob storage service. You can submit export or import requests to the service by using the Windows Azure Platform Management Portal. For more information, see How to: Export a Data-tier Application (SQL Azure) and How to: Import a Data-tier Application (SQL Azure).

A service can now have a total of 25 input endpoints and 25 internal endpoints which can be allocated across the 25 roles allowed in a service. For example, if have 5 roles you can allocate 5 input endpoints per role or you can allocate 25 input endpoints to a single role or you can allocate 1 input endpoint each to 25 roles.

The following significant changes have been made in this release of the Management Portal:

• Localization: The Portal is now available in 11 additional languages. The Portal is now available in 11 languages; newly supported languages are Japanese, German, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, French, Italian, Spanish, Korean, Russian, and Brazilian Portuguese. Users can choose their desired language from the language chooser in the top left pane of the Portal.
  
  
• Right-click menus: The Portal now supports right-click menus in the Hosted Services, Storage & CDN pane.
  
  
• Performance improvements: With the addition of a local temporary cache and optimized network bandwidth utilization, users should see significantly lower initial load times. When the new portal first loads, it prompts users to increase the local storage amount. Sensitive data is not stored in the local temporary cache so there are no security risks.
  
  
• Enhanced delete deployment: Users will be able to delete running deployments. In earlier versions, users had to wait for a deployment to stop before they deleted it.
  
  

Guest OS updates

The June OS update of Windows Azure Guest OS (1.14 and 2.6) contains Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Platform Update 1. This update contains support for Windows Workflow Foundation 4 (WF4), including State Machine Activities, SQL WF4 Instance Store on SQL Azure, and Compensation for custom hosts.

This platform update only modifies.NET Framework 4 runtime files. For more information about the details please visit the KB article page : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2478063

Although there is no anticipated any impact to your applications with this update, we recommended that you check the compatibility of your application before choosing to upgrade to this new Windows Azure Guest OS version.

Billing changes

For billing periods that begin on or after July 1, 2011, all inbound data transfers for both peak and off-peak times will be free. For more information, see Announcing Free Ingress for all Windows Azure Customers starting July 1st, 2011.

Service Management API updates

On June 11th, 2011 the following updates were made to the Service Management API were released. For additional information on the updates, see Service Management Versioning.

• Create Storage Account: Creates a new storage account in the specified subscription.
  
  
• Delete Storage Account: Deletes a storage account in the specified subscription.
  
  
• Update Storage Account: Updates the label and/or the description for a storage account in the specified subscription.
  
  

The following Service Management APIs were updated.

• Get Deployment added new properties.
  
  
• List Subscription Operations added new properties
  
  

Windows Azure SDK 1.4 refresh to enable web developers to increase their development productivity by simplifying the iterative development process of web based hosted services by integrating with the Web Deployment Tool.

New content

• Operations on Affinity Groups: New additions to the Service Management API.
  
  
• Planning and Designing Applications for Windows Azure: New resource landing page that provides links to topics on planning and designing applications.
  
  
• Windows Azure Code Quick Start: Provides samples of C# code that demonstrate basic ways of interfacing with Windows Azure.
  
  

Content Updates

• Managing Certificates in Windows Azure: Provides new topics that address using SSL certificates in Windows Azure.
  
  
• Windows Azure Code Samples: New samples have been added to the index.
  
  
• Delivering High-Bandwidth Content with the Windows Azure CDN: Revised, reorganized, and expanded to cover the new features available in the Windows Azure Platform Management Portal.
  
  

A recent update has changed the manner in which endpoints can be distributed among roles in a hosted service. A service can now have a total of 25 input endpoints which can be allocated across the 5 roles allowed in a service. For example, you can allocate 5 input endpoints per role or you can allocate 25 input endpoints to a single role. Internal endpoints are limited to 5 per role. Input and Internal endpoints are allocated separately.

The Windows Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN) has been enhanced to provide the following new features:

1. Windows Azure CDN for Hosted Services
   
   Developers can use the Windows Azure Web and VM roles as “origin” for objects to be delivered at scale via the Windows Azure Content Delivery Network. Static content in your website can be automatically edge-cached at locations throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, Australia and South America to provide maximum bandwidth and lower latency delivery of website content to users.
   
   
2. Serve secure content from the Windows Azure CDN
   
   A new checkbox option in the Windows Azure management portal to enable delivery of secure content via HTTPS through any existing Windows Azure CDN account.
   
   

For more information on these features, see Overview of the Windows Azure CDN.

Windows Azure SDK 1.4 represents a stability release of the SDK. It includes bug fixes and enhancement:

1. Resolved an issue that caused full IIS fail when the web.config file was set to read-only.
   
   
2. Resolved an issue that caused full IIS packages to double in size when packaged.
   
   
3. Resolved an issue that caused a full IIS web role to recycle when the diagnostics store was full.
   
   
4. Resolved an IIS log file permission Issue which caused diagnostics to be unable to transfer IIS logs to Windows Azure storage.
   
   
5. Resolved an issue preventing csupload to run on x86 platforms.
   
   
6. User errors in the web.config are more easily diagnosable.
   
   
7. Enhancements to improve the stability and robustness of Remote Desktop to Windows Azure Roles.
   
   

Windows Azure includes new features and capabilities to help you deploy and manage your cloud services.

For the list of known issues and SDK installation requirements, see Windows Azure SDK Release Notes (November 2010).

• Virtual Machine (VM) Role
  
  
• Remote Desktop Access
  
  
• Windows Azure Connect
  
  
• Extra Small Instance
  
  
• Redesigned Management Portal
  
  
• Windows Server 2008 R2
  
  
• Elevated Privileges for Startup Tasks
  
  
• Full IIS in Web Role
  
  
• Compute and Storage Emulators
  
  
• Code Samples
  
  

For more information all of the new features of Windows Azure all of which were announced at Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2010, see Windows Azure PDC Announcements.