Windows Azure made PaaS-centric updates to the cloud

One of Microsoft's Windows Azure teams introduced a new upgrade and add-on update to its previous cloud-centric service called PaaS to make it more widely available to developers, enterprise CIOs, IT managers, or other C Level performer. The highlights include the following:

• Lasting Windows and Linux Virtual Machines (WAVMs) are derived from portable * .vhd images that you can download and run natively without remediation, delivering long-awaited IaaS capabilities without cloud lock-in.

• Attach the Data-Disk to the WAVM, install it and format it as a drive to enable specific off-site backup support Command Windows Azure to replicate data continuously, at least 400 miles away from your primary data center Secondary data center for backup.

Figure 1 HTML 5 Windows Azure Management Portal

There are up to ten free shared Windows Azure Web Sites (WAWS) per subscription, and some open source content management systems make Windows Azure available to cost-conscious users.

• Windows Azure Active Directory (WAzAD) and virtual networks and enable cross-connect for enterprise-class hybrid clouds.

• The HTML 5 Management Portal has built-in monitoring capabilities that let tablets and smart devices, as well as PCs, regulate WAVM, cloud services, and storage (see Figure 1).

• REST Management APIs Powershell for Windows, downloadable BASH for Mac, and Unix tools make it easier to automate management operations.

• Installation of Windows Azure SDK 1.7 coexists with v1.6 and provides tools to support Visual Studio 2010 and 2012 RC; users can choose which SDK to use when creating a new project.

• Distributed Cache Performance Provides a low-latency, flexible cache that you can allocate as a percentage of the memory of your cloud services (called hosting) or the new cache that comes with a new cache of work roles.

• The new Windows Azure SDK supports Python, Django, and Windows-installed IPython notebooks, Mac and Linux installers to broaden development and device reach.

• Ten times less transaction costs, now $ 0.10 / million, reducing Windows Azure storage costs.

• New Local Redundant Storage (LRS) offers a 23% to 34% discount, reducing the geo-redundant storage costs for users who expect to recover from a single data center failure.

• Launching SQL Reporting, formerly SQL Azure Reporting Services, means that users will incur a fee of $ 0.88 per hour, equivalent to 200 reports per hour, starting August 1.

• Windows Azure Media Services, currently in the public preview phase, is able to build workflows for creation, management, and media distribution.

WAVM users can choose from a range of products, a Linux OS, such as OpenLogic CentOS 6.2, SUSE Enterprise Server, openSUSE 12.1 and Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS (see Figure 2). WAWS offers a wide range of options including: Acquia Drupal 7, DasBlog, DotNetNuke Community or Professional Edition, Drupal Commerce Kickstart, Joomla! 2.5, mojoPortal, Orchard CMS, Umbraco CMS 5 or WordPress CMS as well as e- . The Windows Azure SDK source code and client libraries are released under the Apache 2 license and maintained in the Git repository. You can deploy applications to Web sites using FTP, Git, TFS, and Web Deploy.

Step One in the process of creating a virtual machine in Figure 2 provides more Linux choices than a Windows server. The next three steps are to configure and deploy the VM.

Clumping all new performance into a megafunction release instead of weekly release as in Amazon Web Services results in overloading of information.

Scott Guthrie is committed to the performance of Windows Azure upgrades, and these upgrades will not be as "Spring Wave" as those, but will occur with smaller, more frequent intensities. At the same time, Windows Azure is even better for today's infrastructure-as-a-service competitors, such as IBM, HP and Oracle.