Microsoft releases some great improvements to Windows Azure

This morning we released some great improvements to the Windows http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/13357.html ">azure." These new features include:

· Virtual network: New point of arrival connection (very cool!) ), which supports software VPN devices and dynamic DNS

· Virtual machines: Remote PowerShell and Linux SSH configuration promotion

· Cloud services: Provides Remote Desktop support dynamic Web/worker role

· Ruby SDK: A new Windows Azure SDK to support Ruby

All of these improvements are now available immediately (note: Some services are still in the preview version). Here are their more detailed information:

Virtual networks: New point of arrival connectivity and software VPN device support

Last week we announced that Universal virtual network support will be part of our IaaS release.

Virtual networks allow you to create a private, stand-alone network on Windows Azure and then treat it as an extension of your on-premises data center. For example, you can assign a private IP address to a virtual machine in a virtual network, designate a DNS, and use a VPN device to securely connect to your on-premises infrastructure in a secure manner.

Here is an example of a typical station arrival scenario implemented via Secure station VPN connection:

Today, we are excited to announce that we have greatly expanded the capabilities of virtual networks to achieve 3 new scenarios:

New Point of arrival connection

In today's release we have added a great new feature that allows you to establish a VPN connection between your PC and Windows Azure virtual network without a VPN device. We call this new feature the point of arrival virtual private network. This feature greatly simplifies the establishment of a secure connection between Windows Azure and the client computer, regardless of whether the connection originated from your office environment or from a remote location.

This is especially useful for developers who want to avoid corporate firewalls or remote locations to connect to Windows Azure virtual networks (and virtual machines inside). Because this is the point of connection, this does not require any of their IT staff to do any activity to implement, nor to install or configure the VPN hardware. Just use the built-in Windows VPN client tunnel to wear to your Windows Azure virtual network. This tunnel uses the Secure Sockets Tunneling Protocol (SSTP) to automatically traverse firewalls and proxies, giving you complete security.

The following picture shows the new implementation of the point of arrival scene:

In addition to making it easy for developers to connect to Windows Azure directly using a VPN connection to a machine, the new point of arrival VPN supports some other cool new scenes:

· Small businesses (or departments in large enterprises) that do not have VPN devices or network experts to manage VPN devices can now safely connect to their azure deployments with point-to-point VPN features. Because the VPN software you want to connect to is built into windows, it's really handy to use.

· You can quickly establish a secure connection without relying on the help of your network administrator, even if your computer is outside the corporate agent or firewall. This is great in some cases, such as when you are at a client site or telecommuting (or a coffee shop).