Windows Azure, SQL Azure and Windows Phone 7 at TechEd 2010
Here is the summary of the announcements made at TechEd 2010:
SQL Azure
- 50 GB database option will be available on June 28th; until now only 1 GB and 10GB
- SQL Azure Development Accelerator Core subscription allows 50GB databases at 25% discount; this 6 month offer will be available on August 1st
- SQL Azure support for Spatial Data types like Geography and Geometry and Spatial Data queries within T-SQL query language. This will be available at the next service upgrade which will happen in a few weeks.
- Data Sync Service for SQL Azure allows the synchronization of distributed data across multiple data centers. This is available as a CTP at https://www.sqlazurelabs.com.
- Microsoft SQL Server Web Manager(SSWM) is a web based database management tool that will be available as a CTP in summer 2010
- Access 10 connectivity support for natively connecting to cloud based SQL Azure
More details can be obtained from the SQL Azure blog: https://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlazure/archive/2010/06/07/10020947.aspx.
Windows Azure
New Windows Azure Tools + SDK
- Full support for Visual Studio 2010 RTM
- .NET 4 support
- Cloud Storage Explorer to display read-only view of Azure Storage from within Visual Studio Server Explorer
- Deploy Azure applications directly from Visual Studio
- Service monitoring to track the state of deployed services from the Visual Studio Server Explorer
- IntelliTrace support for services running in the cloud to simplify the process of debugging. More details at https://blogs.msdn.com/b/jnak/archive/2010/05/27/using-intellitrace-to-debug-windows-azure-cloud-services.aspx
The new (June 2010 release) Windows Azure tools can be downloaded from : https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2274a0a8-5d37-4eac-b50a-e197dc340f6f&displaylang=en.
Production launch of Windows Azure CDN (Content Delivery Network)
- Azure CDN is available in 19 locations globally – United States, Europe, Asia, and North American Locations
- Supports public web content (e.g. images, javascript files, downloadable media clips, etc.) caching at the edge locations. Only progressive downloads and no streaming media in this version
- Billing starts on July 1st and the following are the pricing details:
- $0.15 per GB for data transfers from European and North American locations
- $0.20 per GB for data transfers from other locations
- $0.01 per 10,000 transactions
- Azure CDN works in conjunction with Windows Azure Storage.
- More details on CDN pricing can be found at https://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2010/05/28/announcing-pricing-for-the-windows-azure-cdn.aspx
Windows Azure OS Auto-upgrade Feature
- Service developers and operators now can configure for auto-upgrade to the latest OS version. See https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee924680%28v=MSDN.10%29.aspx for list of Azure guest OS versions.
- The upgrades are done in place and does it according to the “upgrade domain” concept. It doesn’t do all services instance VMs at once
- The guest OS version can be configured on the Azure portal or through <ServiceConfigiration> supplied during deployment. More details at https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee758710(v=MSDN.10).aspx
Windows Phone 7
In addition to reaffirming the Windows Phone 7 strategy Microsoft announced the following enterprise features:
- Integrates with SharePoint through the SharePoint Workspace client
- Windows Phone 7 supports IT managed EAS policies such asRequire Password, Password Strength, Remote Wipe and Reset to Factory Settings with multiple failed unlock attempts.
- Supports secure access to on-premise applications and network resources using Forefront Universal Access Gateway (UAG).
- Support mobile access to BPOS from Outlook Mobile and the Office Hub
More details can be found at Windows Phone 7 Means Business blog post: https://windowsteamblog.com/windows_phone/b/windowsphone/archive/2010/06/07/windows-phone-7-means-business.aspx.
Hope this helps.
- Hanu
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