ACS FAQ

Access Control makes it easy to add identity and access control capabilities to web applications and services through industry standard protocols. The version of the service that was released in April 2011 adds the following capabilities:

• Integrated federation with Active Directory Federation Services 2.0, Windows Live ID (Microsoft account), Google, Yahoo, and Facebook.
  
  
• Delegation using OAuth 2.0.
  
  
• New web-based management portal.
  
  
• Full programmatic management using OData.
  
  
• Works with Windows Identity Foundation and tooling.
  
  
• WS-Federation, WS-Trust, OpenID 2.0, OAuth 2.0 (Draft 13).
  
  

Access Control is included in the Windows Azure subscription offers, as well as the Pay-As-You-Go offers. There is no difference in the inclusion in offers or the price between the previous and the new version of the service.

The Pay-As-You-Go Compute price is $1.99 per 100,000 transactions. However, we are running a promotion and will not charge for the usage of the service until January 1st 2012. Additionally, if you buy the subscription offers or the introductory special Pay-As-You-Go plan, you will not be charged for overage above and beyond the allotted amount that is part of your offer.

No. Because the April 2011 version of the service is not completely backward compatible with previous versions, it runs in parallel with the previous version. For more information about the differences between the January 2010 release and the April 2011 release versions of the service, seeRelease Notes..

If you are on a subscription offer, your subscription fee will not change. However, you will not have to pay for overage beyond the allocated amount that is part of your offer until December 1, 2012. If you are on a Pay-As-You-Go plan, you will see a temporary drop in your bill due to the promotion that ends on December 1, 2012.

The promotion is available to Windows Azure subscription customers and you will not be charged for overage beyond the allocated amount that is included in your offer.

Yes, the promotion will cover both versions of the service.

See the information provided on Guidelines for Migrating an ACS 1.0 Namespace to an ACS 2.0 Namespace.

No, you cannot.