And two more:

Let’s go with the announcements…

New Azure Management portal (in Preview)

The new Azure portal combines all of the components of a cloud Application into a single development and management experience. It’s a really cool UI and completely touch-friendly. Take a lot at how it looks on a big touch-enabled screen.

You can already access the new portal here.  Some of the new components in the portal include:

• Simplified Resource Managament: You can now create, manage, and analyze your entire application as a single resource. Resource group is a new concept in Azure that serves as the lifecycle boundary for every resource contained within it. More information here.
• Integrated billing: You can now get access to usage and billing without exiting the portal.
• Gallery: Integrated Marketplace of over 130 free and paid services.
• Visual Studio Online: Many features now available without leaving the portal. Team Projects, the lightweight “Monaco” editor and Application Insights analytics.

This new portal is still in preview and some features are still not available.

Infrastructure as a Service

Several interesting announcements:

• New “Basic” Compute Tier: From A0 to A4 they offer similar CPU and memory as the “Standard” tier of instances but these instances cost up to 27% less. They don’t have the Azure load-balancer and autoscaling capabilities. In a few weeks, the basic tier will also be available for Memory Intensive Instances.

• Zone Redundant Storage: ZRS is a new redundancy option that keeps data durable by storing an equivalent of 3 copies of data across multiple facilities.  These facilities may be within the same region or across two regions.  ZRS will be priced 37.5% lower than Geo Redundant Storage GRS when it becomes available.

DevOps

Automation Service (public preview): This Service allows users to automate the creation, deployment, monitoring, and maintenance of resources in the Azure environment. You can orchestrate time-consuming tasks across Azure and third-party systems. For example, you can create a runbook to automate a complete deployment of your application. There is no charge for Azure Automation during preview, and the general availability date has not yet been determined. More information here.

AutoScale: AutoScale configure applications to automatically scale up or down to accommodate current demand, and use auto-scaling rules to minimize costs. Previously in public preview, AutoScale is now generally available for Virtual Machines, Cloud Services, Web Sites, and Mobile Services.

Scheduler: Using Scheduler, you can invoke actions—such as calling HTTP/S endpoints or posting a message to a storage queue—on any schedule. Scheduler is now generally available for Virtual Machines, Cloud Services, Web Sites, and Mobile Services. More information here.

Puppet/Chef partnership: Now fully integrated in Azure, using these technologies you will be able to more easily deploy and configure your cloud solutions. More information about Puppet here and Chef here.

SQL Database

Azure SQL Database Premium will soon have these new features:

Active Geo-Replication: You will be able to create up to 4 active, readable, secondaries in any Azure region and you can choose when to failover.

Database Restore Service: Restore your database to any point in time within the last 35 days in the case of a human or programmatic data deletion scenario. Simpler and more effective than current import/export workarounds.

Increased SLA: SLA will be increased to 99,95%.

New P3 tier: The new P3 tier will deliver higher performance for your database.

Maximum database size increased to 500GB

Web Apps

New “Basic” tier: Web Sites Basic tier is a new entry-level tier that provides support for small, medium and large virtual machine (VM) sizes and enables you to scale up to three VM instances. The Basic tier includes 10 GB of storage and supports custom domains. If you need features like AutoScale, Backup or web jobs, you will need to subscribe to the Standard tier. You can find more information here.

Updates for Standard tier: Standard tier will now include 5-SNI and 1-IP SSL certificates, 50GB of storage and new advanced capabilities including: live production debugging with up to 5 connections, 6 scheduled Web Jobs, 1 Scheduled Backup per day and 2 Site Slots to use as testing or staging environments.

Java Support: Web Sites have now the ability to host Java applications. This feature is in preview.

Other enhancements: WebSockets and live-debugging with Visual Studio are now generally available.

Mobile

Mobility Enhancements for Enterprise : New features in preview like Azure Active Directory integration, offline sync and Visual Studio support for .NET backend.

Kindle Mobile push notifications: Notification Hubs support now Kindle devices.

Identity Management

Azure Active Directory Premium : With the Premium edition of Azure AD you get all of the capabilities that Free has to offer, plus multi-factor authentication, self-Service password reset, company branding, etc. AD Premium is now generally available with a 99,9% SLA.

Other new features and announcements

Virtual Network Dynamic Routing Gateways and Point-to-Site : The use of Windows Server 2012 RRAS (Dynamic Routing Gateway) and Point-to-Site (or “software”) VPNs is now generally available. The Dynamic Routing VPN Gateway in a virtual network will now have the same SLA as the Static Routing VPN Gateway.

Azure Backup Price reduction: Effective April 1, you will see a significant price reduction for this service.

What do you think? Do you like these new announcements?

So let’s get started.

A quick summary before going into details:

Services released to General Availability: 77

Services released in Preview: 33

Price reductions: 7

April 2013

Services released to General Availability

• Azure Virtual Machines (IaaS) (link)
• High memory VM instances A6/A7 (link)
• Dynamic Remote Desktop Support (link)
• Virtual Network including cross-premises connectivity (link)
• Software VPN Device support for Site-to-Site connectivity (link)
• New VM Image Templates (including SQL Server, BizTalk Server and SharePoint) (link)
• Azure Active Directory (link)
• Django available in the Azure Web Application Gallery (link)
• Azure SDK for Ruby (v0.5.0) (link)

New services in Preview

• Point-to-Site VPN (link)

Important News

• 21-33% Price reduction on Virtual Machines and Cloud Services (link)
• Public commitment to match Amazon Web Services prices for compute, storage and bandwidth (link)

May 2013

Services released to General Availability

• WebMatrix 3 with full integration with Azure Web Sites (link)
• AMQP support in Service Bus (link)

New services in Preview

• Azure datacenters in China (link)

Commercial News

• Announcement of major expansion of Azure services in Asia (link)
• New Azure-based Cyber Threat Intelligence Program (C-TIP) (link)

June 2013

Services released to General Availability

• Azure Web Sites (link)
• Azure Mobile Services (link) including SSL support (link)
• Free 20MB SQL DB for Mobile Services and Web Sites (link)
• Azure Active Directory sync without ADFS (link)

New services in Preview

• Azure Media Services: DASH through Dynamic Packaging, Win 8 client update (link)
• AutoScale support for Web Sites, Cloud Services and Virtual Machines (link)
• 2 factor authentication (link)
• Alerts – rule-based notifications for Virtual Machines, Cloud Services, Web Sites and Mobile Services (link)
• Mobile Services: custom API, Git Source Control, Node.js NPM module support, .NET API via NuGet, Android broadcast push notification support (link)

Important News

• No charge for stopped VM’s and pay by the minute billing (link)
• MSDN: Discounted rates, monetary credits, software use rights and better portal tracking (link)
• MSDN: removed credit card requirement (link)
• $200 monetary credit for free trials (link)

July 2013

Services released to General Availability

• Azure SQL database automated SQL Export (link)
• Richer custom create wizard for virtual machines (link)
• Exposing the cloud service behind the virtual machines (link)
• Azure Marketplace available in 50 additional countries including Bing OCR service (link)
• Azure SDK 2.1 for .NET released (link)

New services in Preview

• Azure SQL database Premium Tier (link)
• Traffic Manager integrated with Azure Management Portal (link)
• AutoScale comes to Mobile Services, Service Bus and introduces trends and alerts (link)
• Application Access Enhancements for Azure Active Directory (link)

Commercial News

• Citrix XenDesktop 7 & XenApp 6.5 support (link)
• World-wide Partner Conference in Houston (link to Azure news)

August 2013

Services released to General Availability

• Dynamic IP address restrictions in Azure Web Sites (how-to link)
• SQL Server AlwaysOn support in VM’s – enables HA and DR (link)
• Azure Notification Hubs – broadcast push for Win8, WinPhone, iOS and Android (link)
• Virtual Machines: support for configuring load balancer probes (link)
• Management Services: new portal extension for operation logs and alerts (link)

New services in Preview

• Schedule-based AutoScale rules and richer logging support (announcement)

Important News

• Gartner recognizes Microsoft as Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) visionary (link)
• Deloitte has issued a Service Organization Control (SOC) 2 Type 2 report for Windows Azure in security, availability and confidentiality trust principles (link)
• Old Windows Azure Management Portal capabilities retiring
  

September 2013

Services released to General Availability

• Azure Active Directory: Richer directory management and Multi Factor Authentication (link)
• Cloud Services/Virtual Machines: New memory intensive A5 VM size (14 GB RAM, 2 CPU cores (Cloud Services and Virtual Machines)
• Web Sites: Web Server Logging to Azure Storage Accounts (link)
• Azure Operation Logs: new filtering options on top of operation logs (link)
• Juju support comes to Ubuntu Linux VM images (Link)
• Storage client library 2.1 released (link)
• IP and domain restrictions feature of IIS enabled for Websites (link)
• Support for AlwaysOn Availability Groups (link)

New services in Preview

• Virtual Machines: Oracle VM images in gallery supporting WebLogic, Database, Java, Oracle Linux (link)
• Windows Azure Dedicated Cache (Link)
• AutoScale introduces schedule-based auto-scaling for Web Sites, VM’s and richer AutoScale logs history (link)
• MPLS network connection direct to Windows Azure with AT&T in the US (Link)
• Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager enters public preview

Commercial News

• MSDN subscriptions can remove, re-instate and temporarily remove spending limits without VM loss (link)
• Azure Professional Direct Support extended to additional countries, including Australia
• FedRAMP certification achieved (link)

October 2013

Services released to General Availability

• Cloud Services: Windows Server 2012 R2 and .NET 4.5.1 support (link)
• Virtual Machines: Support for Windows Server 2012 R2 (link)
• Virtual Machines: Delete Attached Disks, Availability Set Warnings, SQL AlwaysOn Configuration (link)
• Backup Services: Windows Azure Backup Services (link)
• Active Directory: securely manage hundreds of SaaS apps (link)
• Enterprise Management: Use AD to Better Manage Azure (link)
• Azure SDK 2.2: A massive update including extended Visual Studio (link)
• System Center 2012 Configuration Manager and Endpoint Protection support (link)
• Azure Pack: Use Azure features on-premises (link)

New services in Preview

• Partnership with Equinix to provide peering exchange locations for connections to Azure that are low latency, fast and private (announcement)
• Hyper-V Recovery Manager (link)
• Active Directory: Securely manage hundreds of SaaS applications

Important News

• Enterprise purchasing options announced starting on November 1st (link)
• Price Cuts: Up to 22% Price Reduction on Memory-Intensive Instances (link)

November 2013

Services released to General Availability

• Virtual Machines: New VM Gallery, ACL support for VIPs (link)
• HDInsight: Hadoop as a service in Azure (link)
• BizTalk Services (link)
• Traffic Manager (link)
• Notification Hubs: Segmented customer push notification (link)
• Web Sites: WebSocket and Remote Debugging Support (link); diagnostics support for auto logging to blog storage (link)
• TFS & GIT: Continuous Delivery Support for Web Sites + Cloud Services (link)
• Developer Analytics: New Relic support for Web Sites + Mobile Services (link)
• Service Bus: Support for partitioned queues and topics (link)
• Windows Azure Rights Management (link)
• Active Directory: free tier now GA (link)
• Storage: alerting base on storage metrics (link)
• Mobile Services: AD, optimistic concurrency and Xamarin support (link)

New services in Preview

• Azure Storage: Import/Export Hard Disk Drives to your Storage Accounts (link)
• Active Directory Premium Offering: group-based provisioning and access management, customized access panel and detailed machine learning-based security reports. (link)
• Azure Monitoring Service Library preview release (link)

Important News

• Billing: New Billing Alert Service that sends email notifications when your bill hits a threshold you define (link)
• Notification Hubs: price reduction (link)

December 2013

Services released to General Availability

• Monitoring enhancements: Premium SQL Database monitoring, web site diagnostics storage account creation, Mobile Services operation logs history (link)
• Windows Azure Web Sites: IP and Domain restrictions (link)

New services in Preview

• Windows Azure Scheduler: new scheduling service (link)
• Windows Azure Storage: Read-Access Geo Redundant Storage option (link)

Important News

• Expanding Windows Azure Capacity – Brazil (link)
• Dublin data centre expanding (link)
• Microsoft launches worldwide Cloud OS network (link)
• Windows Azure VM Readiness Assessment (link)

January 2014

Services released to General Availability

• Cloud Services: A8 and A9 high performance instances (link)
• Web Sites: staged publishing support (link)
• Web Sites: Always on support (link)
• Web Sites: metrics updated every minute for monitoring and new metrics for alerting (link)
• SQL Database: new metrics for alerting (link)
• Hyper-V Recovery Manager: general availability release (link)
• Mobile Services: support for SenchaTouch (link)

New services in Preview

• Web Sites: Azure WebJobs (link) 

Important News

• Reducing prices by up to 10.5% for block blobs storage, up to 28% for locally redundant disks / page blobs storage and storage transactions by 50% (link)
• Windows Azure validated for PCI DSS compliance (link)
• New Windows Azure Network Security Whitepaper (link)
• Gartner rates Windows Azure in the leader quadrant of “Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Application Platform as a Service”
• Publishing Azure and Office 365 server configurations to Open Compute Project (link)

February 2014

Services released to General Availability

• Virtual Machines: VM Agent and Background Information Support (link)
• Virtual Network: customer assigned fixed private IP addresses via PowerShell
• Multi Factor Authentication: MFA for O365 at no cost and no cost tier for Azure administrators (link)
• Mobile Services: Notification Hub Integration, PhoneGap support (link)
• Active Directory: More SaaS apps, more reports, self-service group management (link)
• BizTalk Services: EDIFACT protocol support, Service Bus Integration, Backup and Restore (link)
• Monitoring: Service Outage Notifications integrated within Management Portal

New services in Preview

• Web Sites: Backup and Restore Support (link)
• Billing Alert Service: Quickly and easily create customized billing alerts that help you monitor and manage billing activity for your Windows Azure accounts.
• HDInsight: now supports Hadoop 2.2 clusters in preview (link)
• Mobile Services: .NET support (link)
• ExpressRoute: private, reliable and low latency connections to Azure with Equinix, AT&T and Level 3 (link)
• Azure Active Directory Premium: self-service group management (link)

Important News

• Azure Media Services pricing lowered for three highest usage tiers and metering name change (link)
• Notification Hubs: price of basic tier decreasing (link)
• Windows Azure Japan data center opens (link)
• Windows Azure storage metering changing to reflect Geo Redundant Read Only Access storage
• Management: Co-admin limit increased from 10 to 200 users (link)
• Monitoring: Service Outage Notifications Integrated within Management Portal (link)
• See which services are available in each Azure region (link)

March 2014

Services released to General Availability

• Full support for Oracle Database, Oracle WebLogic Server and Java (link)
• Azure Traffic Manager support for Web Sites (link)
• Azure HDInsight supporting Hadoop 2.2 (link)
• SQL Server 2014 available in Azure (link)
• SQL Server Backup to Windows Azure Tool (link)
• Azure datacenters in China (link)

New services in Preview

• WebJobs SDK for .NET (link)

Important News

• Windows Azure renamed to Microsoft Azure (link)
• Cutting prices on compute by up to 35% and storage by up to 65%

As you see, quite a long list. And there is more to come.

Stay tuned!

XML Travelgate is a company founded in 2012 in Palma de Mallorca (Spain). Our goal is providing technology partnerships for OTAs, tour operators, wholesalers, incoming agencies, etc. Our philosophy is to do only one thing but being the best at it. That is why we are 100% dedicated to doing XML integrations for the travel industry. We specialize in the development of integrations and only solve the inter-system's connectivity problem. Our mission is to help companies connect to each other seamlessly so they can instantly buy and sell to each other.

The Product

We think that nowadays integrations are the very core of any travel company and therefore it is crucial to keep them well maintained. We develop and maintain integrations between any travel product supplier such as hotels, airlines and travel product sellers, such as (online) travel agencies or wholesalers. We have already developed more than 150 integrations for several different travel products: flights, hotels, ferries, rail, car rentals and transfers.

The Motivation

Besides developing integrations, the other half of our mission is maintaining them. To do it well, we constantly monitor the traffic and status of every request processed by our systems. That requires total control of is using our integrations, which means we must host them in a controlled environment to be able to log every request and status. So we have built a web service that allows our clients to send us requests and we forward them to the required supplier. Since our inception, the strategy has been to use a cloud service, paying only for what we needed (we could not predict the traffic we would have eventually), scalability and savings in sys-admin costs.

The Requirements

As our integrations were developed using Microsoft technology it seemed natural to use the Microsoft cloud. Nevertheless before we chose Windows Azure we studied the different cloud platforms available to determine which was more suitable. The requirements of our application were:

1. Scalability: We needed to build an application that could be scaled up horizontally.

2. Reliability: Our service must be stable. Any downtime could mean the loss of a client and potentially close down our company and partners.

3. Performance: Our clients are other machines connecting to our web service as opposed to people accessing web sites. They have a timeout limit for every request and after that the connection is simply dropped.

4. On-demand: the travel industry is heavily seasonal. In the high season (summer) traffic can increase up to 10 times. We must be flexible and allow for those peaks without any downtime.

5. Reaction Time: as part of our maintenance service we must be able to deploy updates and improvements to our integrations very quickly. Updates have to be deployed very fast as we realize any small bug can cause losses.

6. Price: being a startup we cannot afford to buy machines and infrastructure to run our service. We must be able to grow in hardware as the business grows.

7. Audit: ability to save requests for later inspection.

The Architecture

To fully understand the architecture of our application one has to comprehend how the application has to handle requests. When machines connect to our service they have a timeout limit and if no response is received within the timeout the connection gets dropped and the request is lost. We cannot send them the typical “Please be patient your request is taking longer than expected” message. To simplify how it works, once the web server receives a request it must instantiate the library in charge of connecting to the supplier. Once the response is received this library processes the data and delivers the result back to the web server which in his turn responds it back to the client.

We have 3 APIs (transportation, hotel and car) and we wanted to have them as totally separated services not dependable on each other. It made sense to have only one entry point for all requests and pass the responsibility of instantiating libraries further down the line. For that we needed machines specialized in each API and some way of passing the data from the web server to these machines. When we first looked into Windows Azure we realized that they all were exactly what we needed. The infrastructure fit perfectly with our needs. Most of our initial requirements were met. All we needed to do was decide which cloud to use.

Why Windows Azure?

We narrowed down our choices to the two main cloud providers: Windows Azure and Amazon Web Services. First we looked at the costs. Both were pretty much the same. Then we looked at the infrastructure, also very similar. Basically we were already working with Microsoft technology. Microsoft is a very stable company and very trustworthy. But the main advantage for us was that with Windows Azure we could use a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) approach, so we could focus on our product and not on managing the infrastructure. That increased our agility and reduced or risks. It just seemed very logical to use Windows Azure. And today we can say with confidence that we’ve made the right choice!

Under The Hood

Our Windows Azure solution consists of the following Azure services:

1. Web Role Cloud Service: In charge of receiving every request and forwarding it to the appropriate worker role using WCF. Our first solution used the Service Bus to pass messages between web and worker roles. Although it worked, we had problems when passing more than 100 messages per second. When a request arrives or leaves an event is triggered and sent to an Azure Queue for statistical purposes.

2. Worker Role Cloud Service: We built specialized worker roles for each of our 3 APIs: hotel, transportation and car. Here is where our client’s request into each supplier request is transformed, sent to the supplier and transformed back to our client’s response format. If the message needs to be audited it gets sent to a Service Bus. When the worker receives a request or finishes handling it an event is triggered and sent to an Azure Queue for statistical purposes.

3. Audit (Worker) Role: Subscribes to the Audit Service Bus and saves messages in a storage when needed.

4. Azure Queues: Used to store statistical information later to be inserted in SQL database.

5. SQL Database: Stores statistical information about every request with its status and time consumed.

6. Service Bus: Used to store messages for audition purposes.

7. Blob Storage: Used to store audited XML messages exchanged with suppliers.

This solution is deployed in 2 datacenters balanced by Windows Azure Traffic Manager. Until now it has enabled us virtually unlimited scalability. We use Paraleap’s Azure Watch to scale our systems up and down according to CPU and many other performance counters. We are pushing Windows Azure to its limits by adding a lot of traffic and so far and after some tuning the response has been more than satisfactory.

The Figures

Let’s see some details about this change:

• To enable more than 2 simultaneous sessions you will need to purchase RDS Subscriber Access Licenses (SALs) through the Microsoft Services Provider Licensing Agreement (SPLA) for each user or device that will access your solution on Windows Azure. SPLA is separate from an Azure agreement and is contracted through an authorized SPLA reseller. Click here for more information about SPLA benefits and requirements.
• RDS Client Access Licenses (CALs) purchased from Microsoft VL programs such as EA, do not get license mobility to shared cloud platforms, hence they cannot be used on Azure. UPDATE (12/3/2014): Effective January 1, 2014, Volume Licensing customers who have active Software Assurance on their RDS User CALs are entitled to RDS CAL Extended Rights, which allow use of their RDS User CAL with Software Assurance against a Windows Server running on Windows Azure or other service providers’ shared server environments. This RDS User CAL Software Assurance benefit allows each User to access RDS functionality only on one shared server environment (i.e. Windows Azure or a third party server) in addition to access the respective on premise servers. More details are available in Appendix 2 of the Software Assurance benefit section of the PUR (Product Use Rights).
• Windows ‘Client’ OS (e.g. Windows 8) virtual desktops, or VDI deployments, will continue to not be allowed on Azure, because Windows client OS product use rights prohibit such use on multi-tenant/shared cloud environments.
• Customers can use 3rd party application hosting products that require RDS sessions functionality (e.g. Citrix XenDesktop), subject to product use terms set by those 3rd party providers, and provided these products leverage only RDS session-hosting (Terminal Services) functionality. Note that RDS SALs are still required when using these 3rd party products.

These new licensing has been updated in the latest Microsoft Product Use Rights docs and in the Windows Azure Licensing FAQ.

So if you are a service provider with a legacy application that needs RDS to work (eg. WinForms based solution), you can now offer it to your customers on Windows Azure.

UPDATE (12/3/2014): For technical details to create a reliable desktop hosting solution please read the Windows Azure Desktop Hosting - Reference Architecture and Deployment Guides.

Hope it helps.

I will try to summarize them:

• General availability of Windows Azure Mobile Services: This service, that has been in preview for some time, enables companies to easily create a mobile backend for every device. Mobile services simplifies user authentication, push notification, server side data and business logic for Windows 8, Windows Phone, iOS, Android and HTML5 apps. Mobile Services is now available in three tiers: Free, Standard and Premium. You can read more about it on ScottGu’s blog.
• General availability of Windows Azure Web Sites Standard and Free tiers: Web Sites is perfect for hosting a web presence and the fastest way to build, scale and manage Web applications. Windows Azure Web Sites is open and supports many frameworks and languages like .NET, PHP, Python and Node.JS. We announced General Availability of of Windows Azure Web Sites Standard and Free tiers. You can read pricing details in this page. We also announced general availability support for custom domain SSL certificate bindings for web sites running using the Standard tier. You can find more information on the Windows Azure Blog.
• Auto-Scaling, alerts and monitoring: We’ve just announced the availability in preview mode of auto scaling for Virtual Machines, Cloud Services, Mobile Services and Web Sites. During this preview, the service will be free of charge. Auto Scaling allows users to define scaling rules directly in the Windows Azure Management Portal to automatically scale your application dynamically on your behalf. As there is no charge for stopped VMs and we are billing at a per-minute granularity, we can now fully leverage the elasticity of the cloud to really lower our operational costs. Now it’s also possible to configure threshold based alerts on monitoring metrics. You will receive e-mails based on those alerts.
• Cloud Load Testing: With the new Visual Studio 2013 preview and Team Foundation Service you can now easily test our new cloud testing service for free with a limited quantity per month. You can get more information about this service in this post and get started here.
• Windows Azure SQL Database Premium: Announced yesterday at WPC, this new offer allows you to reserve capacity (CPU and RAM) for your Windows Azure SQL Databases so you can have better and more predictable performance while not needing to worry about maintaining the servers or high availability issues. Please read this post if you want to get more details about this new offering.
• New features for Windows Azure Active Directory: Today, there are more than 3 million companies already using Windows Azure Active Directory. We have just announced the availability, in preview and at no cost, new application access enhancements for Windows Azure Active Directory. Basically, these new features enable single sign-on for many popular pre-integrated cloud apps such as Office365, Box, Salesforce and others. You can find more detailed information in the Active Directory Team Blog. It’s important to say that there is no cost to participate in this preview and these features will remain at no cost when they reach general availability. You can enable the preview here.
• New Windows Azure virtual machines images available: SQL Server 2014, Windows Server 2012 and Visual Studio 2013 preview images are now available in the Virtual Machines Images Gallery to help you to easily test these new products.
• Support for Windows Azure HPC Pack: This enables you to offload your HPC workloads to Windows Azure. More information in this article and here you can find the updated list of supported workloads in Windows Azure.
• MSDN Cloud Benefits: There are important benefits now for MSDN subscribers:
• Monthly Windows Azure Credits: First month after activation you receive $200 of Windows Azure credits. After the first month we provide the following monthly credits: $50 for Professional, $100 for Premium and $150 for Ultimate
• MSDN Use Rights now supported on Windows Azure Virtual Machines so you can use your dev/test MSDN server licenses in Windows Azure.
• Discounted MSDN Dev/Test Rates: MSDN subscribers receive a 33% discount on Windows Azure Virtual Machines and 25% discounts on Cloud Services, HDInsight and Web Sites Standard.
• No need for credit card during sign-up
• Oracle support: Oracle announced a new strategic partnership with Microsoft. As part of this partnership Oracle will support Oracle software on Windows Server Hyper-V and Windows Azure. This includes also their Java stack. You can read more about this partnership in the official Microsoft Blog.
• Windows Azure Storage new features: We announced at Build that all queues are now geo replicated for Geo Redundant Storage accounts. In addition, new features were announced to be released by the end of 2013. The most significant ones are:
• Secondary read-only access that can be utilized to read an eventually consistent copy of your geo-replicated data.
• Windows Azure Import/Export will enable customers to ship terabytes of data in/out of Windows Azure Blobs by shipping disks.
• You can find more details about upcoming Azure Storage features in the Windows Azure Storage Team Blog.

As you can see, there are a bunch of improvements worth looking at.

Hope it helps.

Announcing true cloud economics:

Per minute billing with no minimums

Starting June 3, 2013, Virtual Machines, Web Roles and Worker Roles are going to be billed by the minute versus being billed by the hour.  SQL Server and BizTalk Server running in Virtual Machines will also be billed by the minute. And, we have no minimums unlike competition – the other cloud providers. Paying for what you use in the cloud is great; no longer being rounded to the nearest hour and no minimums -- even better.

Stop running virtual machine and stop billing

Starting June 3, 2013, when you shut down your virtual machines, the billing meters will stop as well.  No need to delete stopped instances to manage compute costs. From dev and test to application hosting in Virtual Machines, cloud economics just keeps getting better for all kind of workloads. Of course you can automate this process using Windows Azure Management API, System Center 2012 SP1, or using third-party solutions like RightScale or AppDynamics. It’s also very useful to use the free service from MetricsHub to monitor and set all kind of alerts (e-mail and SMS).

Dev/Test scenarios in the cloud

MSDN software in Windows Azure

Starting June 3, 2013, we are allowing using MSDN dev/test software licenses on Windows Azure. This allows to install and use Your MSDN dev/test server images for SQL Server, SharePoint, BizTalk, etc. at no extra charge within Windows Azure virtual machines. Microsoft server software that is supported by Windows Azure Virtual Machines is listed here.

Heavily Discounted MSDN Dev/Test Rates

Starting June 3, 2013, we are also announcing a new billing rate for customers who have MSDN subscriptions. MSDN subscribers receive a 33% discount on Windows Virtual Machines, and 25% discounts on Cloud Services, HDInsight, and Reserved Websites. For example: the standard price for an Extra Large (A4) virtual machine with Windows is 0,5362 €/hour. The price for MSDN subscribers is 0,3575 €/hour (a 33% price reduction). What’s even better, the standard price for a A4 machine with SQL Server Standard is 1,3554 €/hour but with if you need it for dev/test and you have MSDN subscription, you will still pay 0,3575 €/hour. You can find additional details on the MSDN Benefits here.

MSDN Monthly monetary credits

The new Windows Azure MSDN benefit offers up to 115 € per month (40€/month for MSDN Professional Subscribers, 75€/month for MSDN Premium Subscribers and 115€/month for MSDN Ultimate Subscribers) in credits to use on any service they want for development and testing - including Virtual Machines (VMs), Web Sites, Cloud Services, Mobile Services, Storage, SQL Database, Content Delivery Network, HDInsight, Media Services, and many more. We think that this simplifies the Windows Azure MSDN benefit to a single measure of credits and increases the flexibility by enabling the use of these credits across any combination of Windows Azure services. It’s important also to understand that Windows Azure MSDN benefit is for development and test purposes only and does not carry a financially-backed SLA. Production workloads must be run on regular subscriptions.

We have also improved our portal so it’s easier to track your MSDN credit usage. Here is an example of the detailed usage page of a MSDN Azure subscription:

More options for hybrid architectures

Additional Options for Building Virtual  Private Network

Starting June 3, 2013, there are even more device options in setting site to site connections with Virtual Networks:  WatchGuard, F5 and Citrix virtual private network (VPN) devices in addition to Cisco, Juniper will be supported.  Additionally, the recent enhancements to the ‘Site-to-Site” connectivity enables users to use Windows Server 2012 RRAS (Routing and Remote Access) as an on-premises VPN server. This gives you the flexibility of using a software based VPN solution to connect on-premises networks to Windows Azure.

Additional Security Option for Virtual Machines: Public Endpoint Access Control Lists (ACL)

We are adding an additional security option so that administrators can control inbound traffic to Virtual Machines. You simply define how traffic from outside of your corporate firewall communicates with your Virtual Machine public endpoints through PowerShell and soon it will be available in the management portal. To specify ACLs to the endpoints, you will need to download Windows Azure PowerShell cmdlets June 2013 or latest update from here. There is also a good post from Michael Washam with sample scripts and more details.

Other interesting enhancements

SSL Support with Web Sites: With yesterday’s update, Windows Azure Web Sites now support Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) for custom domains.

Windows Azure Active Directory: We now offer a free tool that enables you to securely sync your on-premises Active Directory without having to setup ADFS. If you have worked with ADFS in the past, you probably know that this will really simplify the process to enable your directory in the cloud. Yesterday’s update also includes support to manage an existing Windows Azure Active Directory (such as the one that your organization already uses with Office 365) with a Windows Azure account

New BizTalk Services: We are announcing the public preview of Windows Azure BizTalk Services, a new integration service in Windows Azure that provides robust EDI processing and cloud application integration.  BizTalk Services allows you to easily integrate your Windows Azure, SaaS, B2B, and on-premises applications though a configuration-driven experience. You can sign up for the Preview here.

If you want more information about all these new announcements, I strongly suggest you reading these posts:

• Faster development, global scale, unmatched economics… Windows Azure delivers.
• Windows Azure: Announcing New Dev/Test Offering, BizTalk Services, SSL Support with Web Sites, AD Improvements, Per Minute Billing

Hope this helps.

Pero veamos en detalle lo que se anunció exactamente:

· Dos nuevos tipos de Máquinas Virtuales con mayor memoria:

- Instancia A6: 4 cores de CPU y 28 GB RAM

- Instancia A7: 8 cores de CPU y 56 GB RAM

· Acuerdos de Nivel de Servicio (SLAs) mensuales: hasta 99,95% para Máquinas Virtuales y 99,9% para Virtual Network efectivos desde el 16 de Abril.

· Soporte Técnico para Máquinas Virtuales y Virtual Network.

· Reducción de los precios de las Máquinas Virtuales Windows en un 22% para instancias estándar con efectividad 1 de Junio de 2013 (comparados con los previamente anunciados). Ver precios.

· 29% de reducción inmediata en los precios de instancias estándar con Linux. Ver precios.

· Compromiso público de mantener siempre los precios más baratos o iguales que Amazon Web Services para computación, almacenamiento y transferencia de datos.

· Más valor en las ofertas gratuitas para desarrolladores (MSDN), partners (MPN) y versiones de evaluación de 90 días: 50 horas adicionales por mes para su uso con instancias de alta memoria y horas adicionales para probar SQL Server. Habrá más beneficios que se anunciarán a partir del 1 de Junio.

· Nuevas imágenes pre-construidas para su uso por horas (incluyen la licencia), con soporte directo desde Microsoft: para comenzar, SQL Server 2012 y BizTalk Server 2013. Y más productos en el futuro.

· Soporte de los productos más utilizados de Microsoft en Máquinas Virtuales: los siguientes productos han sido certificados para uso en Windows Azure y por tanto son plenamente soportados:

• Windows Server 2008 R2 y posteriores
• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 64 bits y posteriores
• Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2012 y posteriores
• Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 y posteriores
• Microsoft System Center 2012 SP1 y posteriores
• Project Server 2013 y posteriores
• Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 y posteriores
• Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 y posteriores
• Microsoft BizTalk Server 2013 y posteriores

Día a día se van añadiendo más productos a la lista. La lista actualizada de productos soportados se puede encontrar aquí.

Es importante indicar que hay básicamente 4 formas de licenciar estos productos en Windows Azure:

- Pago por hora: Sólo disponible, a día de hoy, para SQL Server y BizTalk Server. La licencia de Windows Server va siempre incluida.

- Service Provider License Agreement (SPLA): Para aquellos casos en los que la aplicación preste servicios a terceros. La licencia se paga mensualmente en función del producto, número de servidores, etc. Más detalles aquí.

- Self-hosted applications: En esta guía se puede encontrar más información.

- Movilidad de Licencias a través de Software Assurance: Para aquellos casos en los que la aplicación sea de uso interno. Más detalles aquí.

Por tanto, una empresa que esté utilizando SQL Server como parte de un servicio a terceros (un CRM en Windows Azure, por ejemplo), podrá licenciar el SQL Server en modo pago por hora o bien usando licenciamiento SPLA.

Algunos recursos adicionales de interés

Guía sobre SQL Server en máquinas virtuales de Windows Azure

Mejores prácticas de rendimiento de SQL Server en Windows Azure

Máquinas virtuales Linux en Windows Azure

Máquinas virtuales Windows en Windows Azure

Guía de despliegue de SharePoint 2013 en Windows Azure

Guía detallada de despliegue de SharePoint 2010 en Windows Azure

Despliegue de SharePoint 2010 en Windows Azure

Escalabilidad de Team Foundation Server en Windows Azure IaaS

Instalar MySQL en una máquina virtual OpenSUSE en Windows Azure

Instalar MongoDB en una máquina virtual CentOS en Windows Azure

BizTalk Server 2013 en máquinas virtuales de Windows Azure

Post de Scott Guthrie con más información sobre el lanzamiento de IaaS

Como conclusión, desde ahora no sólo tenemos la mejor plataforma PaaS para nuevas aplicaciones sino que podemos migrar las aplicaciones existentes en modo IaaS y empezar a beneficiarnos de las ventajas de cloud. Y lo mejor de todo es que podemos también combinar ambos modelos, algo que ningún otro proveedor cloud permite a día de hoy.

Y para terminar, tres ejemplos de empresas que cuentan como están ya utilizando estos nuevos servicios: Telenor, Digital Air Strike y Blackbaud

Y si puedes, mañana día 23 se celebra la Windows Azure Conf. La puedes seguir en directo desde las 18:00 por streaming.

Para profundizar en estos temas, existe un excelente artículo en MSDN que os recomiendo leer con atención:

Best Practices for the Design of Large-Scale Services on Windows Azure Cloud Services

Y también es lectura obligada:

Scaling Applications Using Windows Azure Cloud Services

que bien podemos resumir en este poster:

¿Habéis tenido que diseñar aplicaciones altamente escalables? ¿Qué recomendaciones haríais?

Como siempre, espero que haya sido útil y se agradece cualquier comentario.

 

Si formas parte de la industria del juego este evento es una oportunidad única que no debes perderte. Quedan pocas plazas por lo que, si estás interesado, regístrate cuanto antes. A continuación tenéis toda la información:

El Juego ha cambiado: Oportunidades con el Cloud y las “cuatro pantallas”

La industria del juego mueve ya más de 68 mil millones de dólares a nivel global. Desde Microsoft hemos organizado este exclusivo evento orientado a aquellas empresas o desarrolladores individuales involucrados en el desarrollo y publicación de juegos y que estén interesados en abarcar un mercado global y “las 4 pantallas”. Si es así, ¡te esperamos el 9 de Abril en Londres!

Puedes registrarte y acceder a toda la información en este enlace.

Las plazas son muy limitadas por lo que te recomendamos registrarte cuanto antes.

Tendremos speakers de compañías líderes en la industria como Pottermore, Rovio, Nokia, etc.

Esta es la agenda completa:

Logística del evento

El evento se celebra en el Hotel Sofitel London Heathrow, junto al aeropuerto para que puedas ir y venir en el día si quieres. Si prefieres alojarte en el hotel, hemos bloqueado algunas habitaciones a un precio especial. Puedes reservar tu habitación por e-mail dando el código “MICRO70413”