Microsoft launches new features for Windows Azure improvement

Today we've released improvements to Windows Azure that include:

Active Directory: Full distribution of Windows Azure AD, now available for product use. Service Backup: This new service can provide a secure offsite backup of Windows servers in the cloud. Website: Enhancements to monitoring and diagnostic functions

All of these improvements are now available directly (note: Some services are still in the preview version), with detailed descriptions of these improvements as follows:

Activity directory: Announces full distribution

I'm excited to announce that the Windows Azure Active Directory is fully released, which means it can be used by the product.

All Windows Azure users can now easily create and use Windows Azure active catalogs to manage identities and protect their applications and organizations. Most notably, this support is free (create catalogs, populate users, write apps that don't need to be charged)

Create a new directory

All Windows Azure users, including users who manage their Windows Azure account with Microsoft IDs, can create a new directory by clicking the Active Directory tab to the left of the Windows Azure Management portal Interface , and then click the "Create your Directory" link:

Clicking on the "Create Your directory" link above will prompt you for some directory settings, including the domain name that your directory uses temporarily (later, you can use DNS to map to any domain you want to customize, such as: mycompanyname.com):

When you click on the "OK" button, Windows Azure will provide you with a new Active Directory in the Cloud. After a few minutes, you have a directory of cloud-hosted deployments that you can use to manage identities and protect applications and organizations:

Managing users through the directory

Once the catalog is created, you can manage and populate new users with it:

You can choose to maintain a "cloud only" directory, fully hosted in Windows Azure. Alternatively, if you deploy a Windows Server Active Directory on your client, you can set up a federation or directory to synchronize with the Windows Azure Active Directory that you deploy in the cloud. Once you do this, whenever you add or remove a user from the Active Directory of the client, the change can be immediately reflected in the cloud. This is useful for businesses and organizations that want to use a single place to manage user security.

On the Windows Azure Management Portal Panel, click the Directory Integration tab, which provides instructions and steps for how to start:

Start Application

Starting with today's release, we can dramatically simplify the workflow for authorizing and canceling directory access. This makes it relatively easy to establish secure Web pages and deploy mobile applications in the cloud, and supports a single point of Access (SSO) enterprise Activity directory.

In the directory you manage, you can start an application that has SSO or more directory permissions by clicking the "Integrated Apps" tab:

Clicking on the "Add an app" link will show you a quick wizard to start SSO or license the directory to this app:

Scenario Integration

The Windows Azure Active Directory supports most widely used authentication and authorization protocols. You can find a detailed description of these protocols here.

Today's comprehensive release contains support for SAML 2.0 – its ability to support a single sign-on/exit from any Web or mobile application to Windows Azure Active Directory. SAML is a particularly popular open standard in enterprise applications that is supported by all languages, operating systems, and frameworks.

Today's publication of the Windows Azure Active Directory also includes support for Windows Azure Active Directory graphics – using the REST API site to support programmatic access to the directory. Here you can find a detailed description of the Windows Azure Active Directory.

In the following time, we will launch support for the OAuth 2.0/openid preview, as well as support from any Web page or mobile application to Windows Azure Active Directory boot single sign-on/exit.

For a discussion of new support for today's Active Directory, refer to Alex Simon's message on the Active Directory blog. Refer also to the guidelines on the Windows Azure Active Directory documentation and windowsazure.com Web site on MSDN.

Windows Azure Backup: Provides secure offsite backup of Windows servers in the cloud

Today's Windows Azure Update also contains a preview of many excellent new services that make it easy to start backup and restore protection through Windows Server.

With the new Windows Azure backup service, we can add Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, Windows Server, Windows Server Essentials and System Center Data Homeowner Manager SP1 offsite backup to support in the cloud. You can manage cloud backups with familiar backup tools used by administrators in the server, which provide similar experience for configuring, monitoring, and restoring backups for local or Windows Azure storage. When the data is backed up into the cloud, the authorized user can easily recover the backup to any server. Because of the ability to support incremental backups, only changed files are transferred to the cloud. This helps ensure efficient use of storage space, reduces bandwidth consumption, and restores multiple versions of data at a fixed point in time. Configurable data retention policies, data compression, encryption, and tuning the data transfer also increase flexibility and increase effectiveness.

Managing backups in the Cloud

Before you start, you first need to log in to Windows Azure Backup preview.

Log on to the Windows Azure Management Portal Panel, click the New button, select Recovery Services Policy, and then create a backup Vault:

Once the backup vault is created, a simple guide will be displayed to help you register Windows Servers:

Once the service is registered, you can use the appropriate local management interface (such as the Microsoft Management console snap-in, System Center Data homeowner Manager console, or Windows Server Essentials Dashboard) to configure scheduled backups and selective recoveries. You can follow the following tutorial to learn:

Tutorial: Use Windows Azure Backup agent to schedule backups this textbook is to help you set up a backup schedule for your registered Windows servers. It also describes how to use Windows PowerShell cmdlets to set up a customized backup schedule. Tutorial: Using Windows Azure Backup agent to recover files and folders This textbook helps you recover data from backups. It also tells you how to use Windows PowerShell cmdlets to accomplish the same task.

On the Windows Azure Admin Entry panel, you can drill down to the backup value and click on the Servers tab to see which Windows servers are configured to use. You can click the Protected Items tab to view entries that have been backed up from the server.

Web page: Improved monitoring and diagnostics

The Windows Azure Update now also contains a series of new monitoring and diagnostic capabilities for Windows Azure Web pages. It makes it easy to start/turn off tracking and storing log information, and it's easy to recover or import to a developer's machine via FTP (to ensure that developers can see these in real time, which is useful when you try to debug problems and deploy applications remotely). Streaming support allows you to monitor the trajectory of your log files-so you can only get what you add-when you click on what you want to check rather than downloading the entire log.

The new tracking can be well integrated with the. NET system.diagnostics Library and ASP.net's built-in tracking capabilities. can also work with other languages and frameworks. Real-time streaming tools are cross-platform and can work with Windows, MAC, and Linux development machines.

Read Scott Hanselman's awesome tutorial and blog post, which includes how to take advantage of these new features. Very, very flexible.

Other interesting Things

In addition to the above features, today's release contains a number of other very good improvements, including

Hdinsight: We started our new hdinsight Hadoop Service 3 weeks ago. Today's update adds the ability to view diagnostic metrics for the Hdinsight service on the Windows Azure Management panel (they appear on the dashboard as well as other services). This makes it easy to monitor the number of active maps and to reduce the tasks currently running on the server.

Action log: Windows Azure Operations Audit log (you can refer to the Setting tab on the left side of Windows Azure Admin panel) to show the account of the user who executed each operation. This makes it easy to track what users do on your server.

Media Service: When video coding on the portal, you can choose a wider range of preset types.

Virtual machine: Appends the default OS disk size to the new virtual machine, allowing you to specify a default username.

Summary

All of the above features can now be used directly (note: Some services are still previewed). If you don't have a Windows Azure account, you can sign up for a free trial immediately. Go to the Windows Azure Development Center to learn more about how to use it to build applications.