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  1. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><rss version="2.0"><channel><title>ScottGu's Blog </title><link>https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/</link><description>Scott Guthrie lives in Seattle and builds a few products for Microsoft</description><item><title>I’m speaking at a Free AzureCraft event in London on June 3rd</title><link>https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/i-m-speaking-at-a-free-azurecraft-event-in-london-on-june-3rd</link><description>&lt;p&gt;I’ll be in the UK next week presenting at the free &lt;a href="http://www.azurecraft.uk/#overview" target="_blank"&gt;AzureCraft event&lt;/a&gt; being held on June 3rd and 4th.&amp;nbsp; This event was created by the UK Azure User Group and is a great way to learn about Azure as well as engage with the Azure community in the UK.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;What’s new in Azure Talk&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;I’ll be speaking on June 3rd from 9:30-11:30am on “What’s new in Azure”.&amp;nbsp; It is going to have a lot of new content and highlight some of the cool new services and capabilities in Azure that developers might not have had a chance yet to try out (while at the same time being understandable even to people who have never used Azure before).&amp;nbsp; Some of the topics + demos I’m planning to cover include:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;font color="#000000"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mobile apps with Xamarin&lt;/strong&gt; – Build native iOS, Android and Windows mobile apps + mobile DevOps&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;font color="#000000"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Azure Functions&lt;/strong&gt; – Listen and react to events using server-less code&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;font color="#000000"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Azure Container Service&lt;/strong&gt; – Build Docker based container applications with distributed orchestration&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;font color="#000000"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Azure DocumentDB&lt;/strong&gt; – Planet-scale NoSQL service, now with MongoDB API/Protocol support as well&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;font color="#000000"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Azure SQL Data Warehouse&lt;/strong&gt; – Store and query huge amounts of data&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;font color="#000000"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Azure IoT&lt;/strong&gt; – &lt;/font&gt;Connect any device to the cloud&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sneak Peak of new Azure Command Line Experience&lt;/strong&gt; – First look at something cool coming out soon&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;After my talk there are a bunch of additional talks throughout the day that will then go into even more depth on different Azure topics.&amp;nbsp; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Sign-up for Free&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;You can register for the event for free &lt;a href="https://www.microsoftevents.com/profile/form/index.cfm?PKformID=0x183009a05b"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp; The event on June 3rd (where I’m speaking) is being held at the Mermaid Puddle Dock, Blackfriars London.&amp;nbsp; On June 4th there is then a great set of additional talks + workshops being held at the Microsoft Reading campus.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;You can learn more about the overall event on the &lt;a href="http://www.azurecraft.uk/#overview" target="_blank"&gt;Azurecraft.uk web-site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Hope to see you there!&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Scott&lt;/p&gt;</description><pubDate>Tue, 24 May 2016 22:11:25 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="true">https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/i-m-speaking-at-a-free-azurecraft-event-in-london-on-june-3rd</guid><category>Azure</category><category>.NET</category><category>Community News</category><category>Data</category></item><item><title>Welcoming the Xamarin team to Microsoft</title><link>https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/welcoming-the-xamarin-team-to-microsoft</link><description>&lt;p&gt;As the role of mobile devices in people's lives expands even further, mobile app developers have become a driving force for software innovation. At Microsoft, we are working to enable even greater developer innovation by providing the best experiences to all developers, on any device, with powerful tools, an open platform and a global cloud.  &lt;p&gt;As part of this commitment I am pleased to announce today that Microsoft has signed an agreement to acquire &lt;a href="https://xamarin.com/"&gt;Xamarin&lt;/a&gt;, a leading platform provider for mobile app development.  &lt;p&gt;In conjunction with Visual Studio, Xamarin provides a rich mobile development offering that enables developers to build mobile apps using C# and deliver fully native mobile app experiences to all major devices – including iOS, Android, and Windows. Xamarin’s approach enables developers to take advantage of the productivity and power of .NET to build mobile apps, and to use C# to write to the full set of native APIs and mobile capabilities provided by each device platform. This enables developers to easily share common app code across their iOS, Android and Windows apps while still delivering fully native experiences for each of the platforms. Xamarin’s unique solution has fueled amazing growth for more than four years.  &lt;p&gt;Xamarin has more than 15,000 customers in 120 countries, including more than one hundred Fortune 500 companies - and more than 1.3 million unique developers have taken advantage of their offering. Top enterprises such as Alaska Airlines, Coca-Cola Bottling, Thermo Fisher, Honeywell and JetBlue use Xamarin, as do gaming companies like SuperGiant Games and Gummy Drop. Through Xamarin Test Cloud, all types of mobile developers—C#, Objective-C, Java and hybrid app builders —can also test and improve the quality of apps using thousands of cloud-hosted phones and devices. Xamarin was recently &lt;a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/9-enterprise-startups-that-run-the-internet-2015-12"&gt;named&lt;/a&gt; one of the top startups that help run the Internet.  &lt;p&gt;Microsoft has had a longstanding partnership with Xamarin, and have jointly built Xamarin integration into Visual Studio, Microsoft Azure, Office 365 and our Enterprise Mobility Suite to provide developers with an end-to-end workflow for native, secure apps across platforms. We have also worked closely together to offer the training, tools, services and workflows developers need to succeed.  &lt;p&gt;With today’s acquisition announcement we will be taking this work much further to make our world class developer tools and services even better with deeper integration and enable seamless mobile app dev experiences. The combination of Xamarin, Visual Studio, Visual Studio Team Services, and Azure delivers a complete mobile app dev solution that provides everything a developer needs to develop, test, deliver and instrument mobile apps for every device. We are really excited to see what you build with it.  &lt;p&gt;We are looking forward to providing more information about our plans in the near future – starting at the Microsoft //Build conference coming up in a few weeks, followed by Xamarin Evolve in late April. Be sure to watch my Build keynote and get a front row seat at Evolve to learn more!  &lt;p&gt;Thanks,  &lt;p&gt;Scott&lt;/p&gt;</description><pubDate>Wed, 24 Feb 2016 18:56:58 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="true">https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/welcoming-the-xamarin-team-to-microsoft</guid><category>Mobile</category><category>Azure</category><category>.NET</category><category>Visual Studio</category></item><item><title>AzureCon Keynote Announcements: India Regions, GPU Support, IoT Suite, Container Service, and Security Center</title><link>https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/azurecon-keynote-announcements-india-regions-gpu-support-iot-suite-container-service-and-security-center</link><description>&lt;p&gt;Yesterday we held our AzureCon event and were fortunate to have tens of thousands of developers around the world participate.&amp;nbsp; During the event we announced several great new enhancements to Microsoft Azure including: &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;General Availability of 3 new Azure regions in India &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Announcing new N-series of Virtual Machines with GPU capabilities&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Announcing Azure IoT Suite available to purchase &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Announcing Azure Container Service&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Announcing Azure Security Center&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;We were also fortunate to be joined on stage by several great Azure customers who talked about their experiences using Azure including: Jet.com, Nascar, Alaska Airlines, Walmart, and ThyssenKrupp. &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Watching the Videos&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/azurecon/#sessions" target="_blank"&gt;All of the talks&lt;/a&gt; presented at AzureCon (including the 60 breakout talks) are now available to &lt;a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/azurecon/#sessions" target="_blank"&gt;watch online&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp; You can browse and watch all of the sessions &lt;a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/azurecon/#sessions" target="_blank"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/videos/azurecon-2015-journey-to-the-intelligent-cloud/" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/ed3a062477c8_135CC/image_3.png" width="827" height="387"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/videos/azurecon-2015-journey-to-the-intelligent-cloud/" target="_blank"&gt;My keynote&lt;/a&gt; to kick off the event was an hour long and provided an end-to-end look at Azure and some of the big new announcements of the day.&amp;nbsp; You can watch it &lt;a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/videos/azurecon-2015-journey-to-the-intelligent-cloud/" target="_blank"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Below are some more details of some of the highlights:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Announcing General Availability of 3 new Azure regions in India&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Yesterday we announced the general availability of our new India regions: Mumbai (West), Chennai (South) and Pune (Central).&amp;nbsp; They are now available for you to deploy solutions into. &lt;p&gt;This brings our worldwide presence of Azure regions up to 24 regions, more than AWS and Google combined. Over 125 customers and partners have been participating in the private preview of our new India regions.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; We are seeing tremendous interest from industry sectors like Public Sector, Banking Financial Services, Insurance and Healthcare whose cloud adoption has been restricted by data residency requirements.&amp;nbsp; You can all now deploy your solutions too. &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Announcing N-series of Virtual Machines with GPU Support&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;This week we announced our new N-series family of Azure Virtual Machines that enable GPU capabilities.&amp;nbsp; Featuring NVidia’s best of breed Tesla GPUs, these Virtual Machines will help you run a variety of workloads ranging from remote visualization to machine learning to analytics. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The N-series VMs feature NVidia’s flagship GPU, the K80 which is well supported by NVidia’s CUDA development community. N-series will also have VM configurations featuring the latest M60 which was recently announced by NVidia. With support for M60, Azure becomes the first hyperscale cloud provider to bring the capabilities of NVidia’s Quadro High End Graphics Support to the cloud. In addition, N-series combines GPU capabilities with the superfast RDMA interconnect so you can run multi-machine, multi-GPU workloads such as Deep Learning and Skype Translator Training.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Announcing Azure Security Center&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;This week we announced the new Azure Security Center—a new Azure service that gives you visibility and control of the security of your Azure resources, and helps you stay ahead of threats and attacks.&amp;nbsp; Azure is the first cloud platform to provide unified security management with capabilities that help you prevent, detect, and respond to threats.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/ed3a062477c8_135CC/image_23.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; margin: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/ed3a062477c8_135CC/image_thumb_8.png" width="657" height="371"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The Azure Security Center provides a unified view of your security state, so your team and/or your organization’s security specialists can get the information they need to evaluate risk across the workloads they run in the cloud.&amp;nbsp; Based on customizable policy, the service can provide recommendations. For example, the policy might be that all web applications should be protected by a web application firewall. If so, the Azure Security Center will automatically detect when web apps you host in Azure don’t have a web application firewall configured, and provide a quick and direct workflow to get a firewall from one of our partners deployed and configured:  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/ed3a062477c8_135CC/image_24.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; margin: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/ed3a062477c8_135CC/image_thumb_9.png" width="838" height="563"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Of course, even with the best possible protection in place, attackers will still try to compromise systems. To address this problem and adopt an “assume breach” mindset, the Azure Security Center uses advanced analytics, including machine learning, along with Microsoft’s global threat intelligence network to look for and alert on attacks. Signals are automatically collected from your Azure resources, the network, and integrated security partner solutions and analyzed to identify cyber-attacks that might otherwise go undetected. Should an incident occur, security alerts offer insights into the attack and suggest ways to remediate and recover quickly. Security data and alerts can also be piped to existing Security Information and Events Management (SIEM) systems your organization has already purchased and is using on-premises.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/ed3a062477c8_135CC/image_25.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; margin: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/ed3a062477c8_135CC/image_thumb_10.png" width="848" height="489"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;p&gt;No other cloud vendor provides the depth and breadth of these capabilities, and they are going to enable you to build even more secure applications in the cloud.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Announcing Azure IoT Suite Available to Purchase&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href="http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/internet-of-things/overview.aspx"&gt;Internet of Things&lt;/a&gt; (IoT) provides tremendous new opportunities for organizations to improve operations, become more efficient at what they do, and create new revenue streams.&amp;nbsp; We have had a huge interest in our Azure IoT Suite which until this week has been in public preview.&amp;nbsp; Our customers like &lt;a href="http://www.microsoft.com/server-cloud/internet-of-things/industry-solutions.aspx"&gt;Rockwell Automation and ThyssenKrupp Elevators&lt;/a&gt; are already connecting data and devices to solve business problems and improve their operations. Many more businesses are poised to benefit from IoT by connecting their devices to collect and analyze untapped data with &lt;a href="http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/internet-of-things/azure-iot-suite.aspx"&gt;remote monitoring&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href="http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/internet-of-things/azure-iot-suite.aspx"&gt;predictive maintenance&lt;/a&gt; solutions. &lt;p&gt;In working with customers, we have seen that getting started on IoT projects can be a daunting task starting with connecting existing devices, determining the right technology partner to work with and scaling an IoT project from proof of concept to broad deployment. Capturing and analyzing untapped data is complex, particularly when a business tries to integrate this new data with existing data and systems they already have.&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href="http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/internet-of-things/azure-iot-suite.aspx"&gt;Microsoft Azure IoT Suite&lt;/a&gt; helps address many of these challenges.&amp;nbsp; The Microsoft Azure IoT Suite helps you connect and integrate with devices more easily, and to capture and analyze untapped device data by using our &lt;a href="http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/internet-of-things/azure-iot-suite.aspx"&gt;preconfigured solutions&lt;/a&gt;, which are engineered to help you move quickly from proof of concept and testing to broader deployment. Today we support &lt;strong&gt;remote monitoring&lt;/strong&gt;, and soon we will be delivering support for &lt;strong&gt;predictive maintenance&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;asset management&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;strong&gt;solutions&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;p&gt;These solutions reliably capture data in the cloud and analyze the data both in real-time and in batch processing. Once your devices are connected, &lt;a href="http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/internet-of-things/azure-iot-suite.aspx"&gt;Azure IoT Suite&lt;/a&gt; provides real time information in an intuitive format that helps you take action from insights. Our advanced analytics then enables you to easily process data—even when it comes from a variety of sources, including devices, line of business assets, sensors and other systems and provide rich built-in dashboards and analytics tools for access to the data and insights you need. User permissions can be set to control reporting and share information with the right people in your organization.  &lt;p&gt;Below is an example of the types of built-in dashboard views that you can leverage without having to write any code: &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/ed3a062477c8_135CC/image_5.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/ed3a062477c8_135CC/image_thumb_1.png" width="624" height="416"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;p&gt;To support adoption of the Azure IoT Suite, we are also announcing the new &lt;a href="http://www.Azure.com/certifiedforiot"&gt;Microsoft Azure Certified for IoT program&lt;/a&gt;, an ecosystem of partners whose offerings have been tested and certified to help businesses with their IoT device and platform needs. The first set of partners include Beaglebone, Freescale, Intel, Raspberry Pi, Resin.io, Seeed and Texas Instruments. These partners, along with experienced &lt;a href="http://www.microsoft.com/server-cloud/internet-of-things/partners.aspx"&gt;global solution providers&lt;/a&gt; are helping businesses harness the power of the Internet of Things today.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;You can learn more about our approach and the Azure IoT Suite at &lt;a href="http://www.InternetofYourThings.com"&gt;www.InternetofYourThings.com&lt;/a&gt; and partners can learn more at &lt;a href="http://www.azure.com/iotdev"&gt;www.azure.com/iotdev&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Announcing Azure IoT Hub&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;This week we also announced the public preview of our new Azure IoT Hub service which is a fully managed service that enables reliable and secure bi-directional communications between millions of IoT devices and an application back end. Azure IoT Hub offers reliable device-to-cloud and cloud-to-device hyper-scale messaging, enables secure communications using per-device security credentials and access control, and includes device libraries for the most popular languages and platforms.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Providing secure, scalable bi-directional communication from the heterogeneous devices to the cloud is a cornerstone of any IoT solution which Azure IoT hub addresses in the following way: &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Per-device authentication and secure connectivity&lt;/b&gt;: Each device uses its own security key to connect to IoT Hub. The application back end is then able to individually whitelist and blacklist each device, enabling complete control over device access.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Extensive set of device libraries&lt;/b&gt;: Azure IoT device SDKs are available and supported for a variety of languages and platforms such as C, C#, Java, and JavaScript.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;IoT protocols and extensibility:&lt;/b&gt; Azure IoT Hub provides native support of the HTTP 1.1 and AMQP 1.0 protocols for device connectivity. Azure IoT Hub can also be extended via the Azure IoT protocol gateway open source framework to provide support for MQTT v3.1.1. &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Scale:&lt;/b&gt; Azure IoT Hub scales to millions of simultaneously connected devices, and millions of events per seconds.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;Getting started with Azure IoT Hub is easy. Simply navigate to the &lt;a href="https://ms.portal.azure.com/"&gt;Azure Preview portal&lt;/a&gt;, and use the &lt;b&gt;Internet of Things-&amp;gt;Azure IoT Hub&lt;/b&gt;. Choose the name, pricing tier, number of units and location and select &lt;b&gt;Create&lt;/b&gt; to provision and deploy your IoT Hub: &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/ed3a062477c8_135CC/image_7.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/ed3a062477c8_135CC/image_thumb_2.png" width="624" height="391"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Once the IoT hub is created, you can navigate to&lt;b&gt; Settings&lt;/b&gt; and create new shared access policies and modify other messaging settings for granular control.  &lt;p&gt;The bi-directional communication enabled with an IoT Hub provides powerful capabilities in a real world IoT solution such as the control of individual device security credentials and access through the use of a device identity registry.&amp;nbsp; Once a device identity is in the registry, the device can connect, send device-to-cloud messages to the hub, and receive cloud-to-device messages from backend applications with just a few lines of code in a secure way. &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/documentation/services/iot-hub/"&gt;Learn more&lt;/a&gt; about Azure IoT Hub and get started with your own real world IoT solutions. &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Announcing the new Azure Container Service&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;’We’ve been working with Docker to integrate Docker containers with both Azure and Windows Server for some time. This week we announced the new Azure Container Service which leverages the popular Apache Mesos project to deliver a customer proven orchestration solution for applications delivered as Docker containers.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/ed3a062477c8_135CC/image%5B24%5D.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image[24]" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; margin: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image[24]" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/ed3a062477c8_135CC/image%5B24%5D_thumb.png" width="653" height="367"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;p&gt;The Azure Container Service enables users to easily create and manage a Docker enabled Apache Mesos cluster. The container management software running on these clusters is open source, and in addition to the application portability offered by tooling such as Docker and Docker Compose, you will be able to leverage portable container orchestration and management tooling such as Marathon, Chronos and Docker Swarm.  &lt;p&gt;When utilizing the Azure Container Service, you will be able to take advantage of the tight integration with Azure infrastructure management features such as tagging of resources, Role Based Access Control (RBAC), Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS) and the fully integrated user experience in the &lt;a href="https://portal.azure.com/"&gt;Azure portal&lt;/a&gt;. By coupling the enterprise class Azure cloud with key open source build, deploy and orchestration software, we maximize customer choice when it comes to containerize workloads. &lt;p&gt;The service will be available for preview by the end of the year. &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Learn More&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/azurecon/#sessions" target="_blank"&gt;Watch the AzureCon sessions online&lt;/a&gt; to learn more about all of the above announcements – plus a lot more that was covered during the day.&amp;nbsp; We are looking forward to seeing what you build with what you learn! &lt;p&gt;Hope this helps, &lt;p&gt;Scott </description><pubDate>Thu, 01 Oct 2015 05:43:17 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="true">https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/azurecon-keynote-announcements-india-regions-gpu-support-iot-suite-container-service-and-security-center</guid><category>Azure</category><category>Community News</category></item><item><title>Announcing General Availability of HDInsight on Linux + new Data Lake Services and Language</title><link>https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/announcing-general-availability-of-hdinsight-on-linux-new-data-lake-services-and-language</link><description>&lt;p&gt;Today, I’m happy to announce several key additions to our big data services in Azure, including the General Availability of HDInsight on Linux, as well as the introduction of our new Azure Data Lake and Language services. &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;General Availability of HDInsight on Linux &lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Today we are announcing general availability of our HDInsight service on Ubuntu Linux.&amp;nbsp; HDInsight enables you to easily run managed Hadoop clusters in the cloud.&amp;nbsp; With today’s release we now allow you to configure these clusters to run using both a Windows Server Operating System as well as an Ubuntu based Linux Operating System. &lt;p&gt;HDInsight on Linux enables even broader support for &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2015/07/15/azure-hdinsight-launches-isv-partner-program-at-wpc/"&gt; Hadoop ecosystem partners&lt;/a&gt; to run in HDInsight providing you even greater choice of preferred tools and applications for running Hadoop workloads. Both Linux and Windows clusters in HDInsight are built on the same standard Hadoop distribution and offer the same set of rich capabilities.  &lt;p&gt;Today’s new release also enables additional capabilities, such as, &lt;a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/hdinsight-hadoop-linux-information/#scaling"&gt;cluster scaling&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/hdinsight-extend-hadoop-virtual-network/"&gt;virtual network integration&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/hdinsight-hadoop-customize-cluster-linux/"&gt;script action support&lt;/a&gt;. Furthermore, in addition to Hadoop cluster type, you can now create &lt;a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/hdinsight-hbase-tutorial-get-started-linux"&gt;HBase&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/hdinsight-apache-storm-tutorial-get-started-linux/"&gt;Storm&lt;/a&gt; clusters on Linux for your NoSQL and real time processing needs such as &lt;a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/hdinsight-storm-develop-java-event-hub-topology/"&gt;building an IoT application&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Create a cluster&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;HDInsight clusters running using Linux can now be easily created from the &lt;a href="https://portal.azure.com/"&gt;Azure Management portal&lt;/a&gt; under the Data + Analytics section.&amp;nbsp; Simply select Ubuntu from the cluster operating system drop-down, as well as optionally choose the cluster type you wish to create (we support base Hadoop as well as clusters pre-configured for workloads like Storm, Spark, HBase, etc). &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/3d66647f8083_97AD/image_2.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/3d66647f8083_97AD/image_thumb.png" width="823" height="536"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;p&gt;All HDInsight Linux clusters can be managed by Apache Ambari. Ambari provides the ability to customize configuration settings of your Hadoop cluster while giving you a unified view of the performance and state of your cluster and providing monitoring and alerting within the HDInsight cluster. &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/3d66647f8083_97AD/image_6.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/3d66647f8083_97AD/image_thumb_2.png" width="896" height="504"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Installing additional applications and Hadoop components&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Similar to HDInsight Windows clusters, you can now customize your Linux cluster by installing additional applications or Hadoop components that are not part of default HDInsight deployment. This can be accomplished using Bash scripts with &lt;a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/hdinsight-hadoop-customize-cluster-linux/"&gt;script action&lt;/a&gt; capability.&amp;nbsp; As an example, you can now &lt;a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=623221"&gt;install Hue on an HDInsight Linux cluster&lt;/a&gt; and easily use it with your workloads: &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/3d66647f8083_97AD/image_10.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/3d66647f8083_97AD/image_thumb_4.png" width="845" height="515"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Develop using Familiar Tools &lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;All HDInsight Linux clusters come with SSH connectivity enabled by default. You can connect to the cluster via a SSH client of your choice. Moreover, SSH tunneling can be leveraged to remotely access all of the Hadoop web applications from the browser.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/3d66647f8083_97AD/image_8.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/3d66647f8083_97AD/image_thumb_3.png" width="624" height="424"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;New Azure Data Lake Services and Language&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;We continue to see customers enabling amazing scenarios with big data in Azure including &lt;a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCC44qnwLF0"&gt;analyzing social graphs&lt;/a&gt; to increase charitable giving, &lt;a href="https://customers.microsoft.com/Pages/CustomerStory.aspx?recid=21129"&gt;analyzing radiation exposure&lt;/a&gt; and using the signals from thousands of devices to simulate ways for utility customers to optimize their monthly bills. These and other use cases are resulting in even more data being collected in Azure. In order to be able to dive deep into all of this data, and process it in different ways, you can now use our Azure Data Lake capabilities – which are 3 services that make big data easy.  &lt;p&gt;The first service in the family is available today: Azure HDInsight, our managed Hadoop service that lets you focus on finding insights, and not spend your time having to manage clusters. HDInsight lets you deploy Hadoop, Spark, Storm and HBase clusters, running on Linux or Windows, managed, monitored and supported by Microsoft with a 99.9% SLA.  &lt;p&gt;The other two services, Azure Data Lake Store and Azure Data Lake Analytics introduced below, are available in private preview today and will be available broadly for public usage shortly. &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Azure Data Lake Store&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Azure Data Lake Store is a hyper-scale HDFS repository designed specifically for big data analytics workloads in the cloud. Azure Data Lake Store solves the big data challenges of volume, variety, and velocity by enabling you to store data of any type, at any size, and process it at any scale. Azure Data Lake Store can support near real-time scenarios such as the Internet of Things (IoT) as well as throughput-intensive analytics on huge data volumes. The Azure Data Lake Store also supports a variety of computation workloads by removing many of the restrictions constraining traditional analytics infrastructure like the pre-definition of schema and the creation of multiple data silos. Once located in the Azure Data Lake Store, Hadoop-based engines such as Azure HDInsight can easily mine the data to discover new insights. &lt;p&gt;Some of the key capabilities of Azure Data Lake Store include: &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Any Data&lt;/b&gt;: A distributed file store that allows you to store data in its native format, Azure Data Lake Store eliminates the need to transform or pre-define schema in order to store data.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Any Size: &lt;/b&gt;With no fixed limits to file or account sizes, Azure Data Lake Store enables you to store kilobytes to exabytes with immediate read/write access.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;At Any Scale: &lt;/b&gt;You can scale throughput to meet the demands of your analytic systems including the high throughput needed to analyze exabytes of data. In addition, it is built to handle high volumes of small writes at low latency making it optimal for near real-time scenarios like website analytics, and Internet of Things (IoT).&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;HDFS Compatible&lt;/b&gt;: It works out-of-the-box with the Hadoop ecosystem including other Azure Data Lake services such as HDInsight.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Fully Integrated with Azure Active Directory: &lt;/b&gt;Azure Data Lake Store is integrated with Azure Active Directory for identity and access management over all of your data.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Azure Data Lake Analytics with U-SQL&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;The new Azure Data Lake Analytics service makes it much easier to create and manage big data jobs. Built on YARN and years of experience running analytics pipelines for Office 365, XBox Live, Windows and Bing, the Azure Data Lake Analytics service is the most productive way to get insights from big data. You can get started in the &lt;a href="https://portal.azure.com/"&gt;Azure management portal,&lt;/a&gt; querying across data in blobs, Azure Data Lake Store, and Azure SQL DB. By simply moving a slider, you can scale up as much computing power as you’d like to run your data transformation jobs.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/3d66647f8083_97AD/image_12.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/3d66647f8083_97AD/image_thumb_5.png" width="885" height="510"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;p&gt;Today we are introducing a new &lt;a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2015/09/28/introducing-u-sql.aspx"&gt;U-SQL offering&lt;/a&gt; in the analytics service, an evolution of the familiar syntax of SQL.&amp;nbsp; U-SQL allows you to write declarative big data jobs, as well as easily include your own user code as part of those jobs. Inside Microsoft, developers have been using this combination in order to be productive operating on massive data sets of many exabytes of scale, processing mission critical data pipelines. In addition to providing an easy to use experience in the Azure management portal, we are delivering a rich set of tools in Visual Studio for debugging and optimizing your U-SQL jobs. This lets you play back and analyze your big data jobs, understanding bottlenecks and opportunities to improve both performance and efficiency, so that you can pay only for the resources you need and continually tune your operations. &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/3d66647f8083_97AD/image_14.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/3d66647f8083_97AD/image_thumb_6.png" width="845" height="540"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Learn More&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;For more information and to get started, check out the following links: &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/dn282640"&gt;Sign up for the Azure Data Lake Store and Analytics services preview&lt;/a&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.azure.com/datalake"&gt;Azure Data Lake&lt;/a&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/hdinsight/"&gt;Azure HDInsight&lt;/a&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/hdinsight-learn-map/"&gt;HDInsight Learning Map&lt;/a&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/azure/en-US/home?forum=hdinsight&amp;amp;filter=alltypes&amp;amp;sort=lastpostdesc"&gt;HDInsight forum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;Hope this helps, &lt;p&gt;Scott&lt;/p&gt;</description><pubDate>Mon, 28 Sep 2015 20:54:24 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="true">https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/announcing-general-availability-of-hdinsight-on-linux-new-data-lake-services-and-language</guid><category>Azure</category><category>Community News</category><category>SQL Server</category><category>Hadoop</category></item><item><title>Online AzureCon Conference this Tuesday</title><link>https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/online-azurecon-conference-this-tuesday</link><description>&lt;p&gt;This Tuesday, Sept 29th, we are hosting our online &lt;a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/azurecon/?wt.mc_id=azuremktg_hp_2_azurecon" target="_blank"&gt;AzureCon&lt;/a&gt; event – which is a free online event with 60 technical sessions on Azure presented by both the Azure engineering team as well as MVPs and customers who use Azure today and will share their best practices.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I’ll be kicking off the event with a &lt;a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/azurecon/?wt.mc_id=azuremktg_hp_2_azurecon" target="_blank"&gt;keynote at 9am PDT&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp; Watch it to learn the latest on Azure, and hear about a lot of exciting new announcements.&amp;nbsp; We’ll then have some fantastic sessions that you can watch throughout the day to learn even more.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/azurecon/?wt.mc_id=azuremktg_hp_2_azurecon" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/Online-AzureCon-Conference-this-Tuesday_11D6C/image_5.png" width="764" height="332"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Hope to see you there! &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Scott&lt;/p&gt;</description><pubDate>Mon, 28 Sep 2015 03:35:06 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="true">https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/online-azurecon-conference-this-tuesday</guid><category>Azure</category><category>Community News</category><category>.NET</category></item><item><title>Better Density and Lower Prices for Azure’s SQL Elastic Database Pools</title><link>https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/better-density-and-lower-prices-for-azure-s-sql-elastic-database-pools</link><description>&lt;p&gt;A few weeks ago, we &lt;a href="http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/announcing-great-new-sql-database-capabilities-in-azure"&gt;announced&lt;/a&gt; the preview availability of the new Basic and Premium Elastic Database Pools Tiers with our Azure SQL Database service.&amp;nbsp; Elastic Database Pools enable you to run multiple, isolated and independent databases that can be auto-scaled automatically across a private pool of resources dedicated to just you and your apps.&amp;nbsp; This provides a great way for software-as-a-service (SaaS) developers to better isolate their individual customers in an economical way.  &lt;p&gt;Today, we are announcing some nice changes to the pricing structure of Elastic Database Pools as well as changes to the density of elastic databases within a pool.&amp;nbsp; These changes make it even more attractive to use Elastic Database Pools to build your applications. &lt;p&gt;Specifically, we are making the following changes:  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Finalizing the eDTU price&lt;/b&gt; – With Elastic Database Pools you purchase units of capacity that we can call eDTUs – which you can then use to run multiple databases within a pool.&amp;nbsp; We have decided to &lt;u&gt;not&lt;/u&gt; increase the price of eDTUs as we go from preview-&amp;gt;GA.&amp;nbsp; This means that you’ll be able to pay a much lower price (about 50% less) for eDTUs than many developers expected.  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Eliminating the per-database fee &lt;/strong&gt;– In additional to lower eDTU prices, we are also eliminating the fee per database that we have had with the preview. This means you no longer need to pay a per-database charge to use an Elastic Database Pool, and makes the pricing much more attractive for scenarios where you want to have lots of small databases.  &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Pool density – &lt;/b&gt;We are announcing increased density limits that enable you to run many more databases per Elastic Database pool. See the chart below under “Maximum databases per pool” for specifics. This change will take effect at the time of general availability, but you can design your apps around these numbers.&amp;nbsp; The increase pool density limits will make Elastic Database Pools event more attractive.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/cd1e911c0dc0_B9F2/image_4.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/cd1e911c0dc0_B9F2/image_thumb_1.png" width="841" height="349"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Below are the updated parameters for each of the Elastic Database Pool options with these new changes:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/cd1e911c0dc0_B9F2/image_6.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/cd1e911c0dc0_B9F2/image_thumb_2.png" width="887" height="241"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;p&gt;For more information about Azure SQL Database Elastic Database Pools and Management tools go the technical overview &lt;a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/sql-database-technical-overview/"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;p&gt;Hope this helps, &lt;p&gt;Scott </description><pubDate>Wed, 23 Sep 2015 20:41:03 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="true">https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/better-density-and-lower-prices-for-azure-s-sql-elastic-database-pools</guid><category>azure</category><category>SQL Server</category><category>Community News</category></item><item><title>Announcing the Biggest VM Sizes Available in the Cloud: New Azure GS-VM Series</title><link>https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/announcing-the-biggest-vm-sizes-available-in-the-cloud-new-azure-gs-vm-series</link><description>&lt;p&gt;Today, we’re announcing the release of the new Azure GS-series of Virtual Machine sizes, which enable Azure Premium Storage to be used with Azure G-series VM sizes. These VM sizes are now available to use in both our US and Europe regions. &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/largest-vm-in-the-cloud/" target="_blank"&gt;Earlier this year&lt;/a&gt; we released the G-series of Azure Virtual Machines – which provide the largest VM size provided by any public cloud provider.&amp;nbsp; They provide up to &lt;strong&gt;32-cores of CPU, 448 GB of memory and 6.59 TB of local SSD-based storage&lt;/strong&gt;.&amp;nbsp; Today’s release of the GS-series of Azure Virtual Machines enables you to now use these large VMs with Azure Premium Storage – and enables you to perform up to &lt;strong&gt;2,000 MB/sec of storage throughput , more than double any other public cloud provider&lt;/strong&gt;.&amp;nbsp; Using the G5/GS5 VM size now also offers more than &lt;strong&gt;20 gbps of network bandwidth&lt;/strong&gt;, also more than &lt;strong&gt;double the network throughout provided by any other public cloud provider&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;p&gt;These new VM offerings provide an ideal solution to your most demanding cloud based workloads, and are great for relational databases like SQL Server, MySQL, PostGres and other large data warehouse solutions. You can also use the GS-series to significantly scale-up the performance of enterprise applications like Dynamics AX.  &lt;p&gt;The G and GS-series of VM sizes are available to use now in our West US, East US-2, and West Europe Azure regions.&amp;nbsp; You’ll see us continue to expand availability around the world in more regions in the coming months. &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;GS Series Size Details&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;The below table provides more details on the exact capabilities of the new GS-series of VM sizes:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;table class="MsoNormalTable" style="border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; mso-cellspacing: 0in; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-yfti-tbllook: 1184; mso-padding-alt: 1.5pt 1.5pt 1.5pt 1.5pt; mso-border-insideh: .5pt solid windowtext; mso-border-insidev: .5pt solid windowtext" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="890" border="1"&gt; &lt;tbody&gt; &lt;tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 0; mso-yfti-firstrow: yes"&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 1.5pt; padding-top: 1.5pt; padding-left: 1.5pt; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-right: 1.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt" valign="top" width="186"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal"&gt;&lt;b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-ascii-font-family: calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-hansi-font-family: calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;Size&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 1.5pt; padding-top: 1.5pt; padding-left: 1.5pt; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-right: 1.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt" valign="top" width="101"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal"&gt;&lt;b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-ascii-font-family: calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-hansi-font-family: calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;Cores&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 1.5pt; padding-top: 1.5pt; padding-left: 1.5pt; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-right: 1.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt" valign="top" width="125"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal"&gt;&lt;b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-ascii-font-family: calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-hansi-font-family: calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;Memory&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 1.5pt; padding-top: 1.5pt; padding-left: 1.5pt; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-right: 1.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt" valign="top" width="192"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal"&gt;&lt;b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-ascii-font-family: calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-hansi-font-family: calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;Max Disk IOPS&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 1.5pt; padding-top: 1.5pt; padding-left: 1.5pt; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-right: 1.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt" valign="top" width="283"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal"&gt;&lt;b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-ascii-font-family: calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-hansi-font-family: calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;Max Disk Bandwidth &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal"&gt;&lt;b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-ascii-font-family: calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-hansi-font-family: calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;(MB per second)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 1"&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 1.5pt; padding-top: 1.5pt; padding-left: 1.5pt; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-right: 1.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt" valign="top" width="186"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-ascii-font-family: calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-hansi-font-family: calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;Standard_GS1&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 1.5pt; padding-top: 1.5pt; padding-left: 1.5pt; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-right: 1.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt" valign="top" width="101"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 7.5pt 0in; line-height: normal" align="center"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-ascii-font-family: calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-hansi-font-family: calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;2&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 1.5pt; padding-top: 1.5pt; padding-left: 1.5pt; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-right: 1.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt" valign="top" width="125"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 7.5pt 0in; line-height: normal" align="center"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-ascii-font-family: calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-hansi-font-family: calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;28&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 1.5pt; padding-top: 1.5pt; padding-left: 1.5pt; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-right: 1.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt" valign="top" width="192"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 7.5pt 0in; line-height: normal" align="center"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-ascii-font-family: calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-hansi-font-family: calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;5,000&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 1.5pt; padding-top: 1.5pt; padding-left: 1.5pt; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-right: 1.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt" valign="top" width="283"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 7.5pt 0in; line-height: normal" align="center"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-ascii-font-family: calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-hansi-font-family: calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;125&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 2"&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 1.5pt; padding-top: 1.5pt; padding-left: 1.5pt; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-right: 1.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt" valign="top" width="186"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 7.5pt 0in; line-height: normal" align="center"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-ascii-font-family: calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-hansi-font-family: calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;Standard_GS2&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 1.5pt; padding-top: 1.5pt; padding-left: 1.5pt; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-right: 1.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt" valign="top" width="101"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 7.5pt 0in; line-height: normal" align="center"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-ascii-font-family: calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-hansi-font-family: calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;4&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 1.5pt; padding-top: 1.5pt; padding-left: 1.5pt; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-right: 1.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt" valign="top" width="125"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 7.5pt 0in; line-height: normal" align="center"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-ascii-font-family: calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-hansi-font-family: calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;56&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 1.5pt; padding-top: 1.5pt; padding-left: 1.5pt; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-right: 1.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt" valign="top" width="192"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 7.5pt 0in; line-height: normal" align="center"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-ascii-font-family: calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-hansi-font-family: calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;10,000&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 1.5pt; padding-top: 1.5pt; padding-left: 1.5pt; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-right: 1.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt" valign="top" width="283"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 7.5pt 0in; line-height: normal" align="center"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-ascii-font-family: calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-hansi-font-family: calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;250&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 3"&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 1.5pt; padding-top: 1.5pt; padding-left: 1.5pt; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-right: 1.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt" valign="top" width="186"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 7.5pt 0in; line-height: normal" align="center"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-ascii-font-family: calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-hansi-font-family: calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;Standard_GS3&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 1.5pt; padding-top: 1.5pt; padding-left: 1.5pt; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-right: 1.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt" valign="top" width="101"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 7.5pt 0in; line-height: normal" align="center"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-ascii-font-family: calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-hansi-font-family: calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;8&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 1.5pt; padding-top: 1.5pt; padding-left: 1.5pt; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-right: 1.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt" valign="top" width="125"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 7.5pt 0in; line-height: normal" align="center"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-ascii-font-family: calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-hansi-font-family: calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;112&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 1.5pt; padding-top: 1.5pt; padding-left: 1.5pt; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-right: 1.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt" valign="top" width="192"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 7.5pt 0in; line-height: normal" align="center"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-ascii-font-family: calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-hansi-font-family: calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;20,000&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 1.5pt; padding-top: 1.5pt; padding-left: 1.5pt; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-right: 1.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt" valign="top" width="283"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 7.5pt 0in; line-height: normal" align="center"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-ascii-font-family: calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-hansi-font-family: calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;500&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 4"&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 1.5pt; padding-top: 1.5pt; padding-left: 1.5pt; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-right: 1.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt" valign="top" width="186"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 7.5pt 0in; line-height: normal" align="center"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-ascii-font-family: calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-hansi-font-family: calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;Standard_GS4&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 1.5pt; padding-top: 1.5pt; padding-left: 1.5pt; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-right: 1.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt" valign="top" width="101"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 7.5pt 0in; line-height: normal" align="center"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-ascii-font-family: calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-hansi-font-family: calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;16&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 1.5pt; padding-top: 1.5pt; padding-left: 1.5pt; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-right: 1.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt" valign="top" width="125"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 7.5pt 0in; line-height: normal" align="center"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-ascii-font-family: calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-hansi-font-family: calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;224&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 1.5pt; padding-top: 1.5pt; padding-left: 1.5pt; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-right: 1.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt" valign="top" width="192"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 7.5pt 0in; line-height: normal" align="center"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-ascii-font-family: calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-hansi-font-family: calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;40,000&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 1.5pt; padding-top: 1.5pt; padding-left: 1.5pt; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-right: 1.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt" valign="top" width="283"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 7.5pt 0in; line-height: normal" align="center"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-ascii-font-family: calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-hansi-font-family: calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;1,000&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 5; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes"&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 1.5pt; padding-top: 1.5pt; padding-left: 1.5pt; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-right: 1.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt" valign="top" width="186"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 7.5pt 0in; line-height: normal" align="center"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-ascii-font-family: calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-hansi-font-family: calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;Standard_GS5&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 1.5pt; padding-top: 1.5pt; padding-left: 1.5pt; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-right: 1.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt" valign="top" width="101"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 7.5pt 0in; line-height: normal" align="center"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-ascii-font-family: calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-hansi-font-family: calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;32&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 1.5pt; padding-top: 1.5pt; padding-left: 1.5pt; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-right: 1.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt" valign="top" width="125"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 7.5pt 0in; line-height: normal" align="center"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-ascii-font-family: calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-hansi-font-family: calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;448&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 1.5pt; padding-top: 1.5pt; padding-left: 1.5pt; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-right: 1.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt" valign="top" width="192"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 7.5pt 0in; line-height: normal" align="center"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-ascii-font-family: calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-hansi-font-family: calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;80,000&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: windowtext 1pt solid; border-right: windowtext 1pt solid; border-bottom: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 1.5pt; padding-top: 1.5pt; padding-left: 1.5pt; border-left: windowtext 1pt solid; padding-right: 1.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt" valign="top" width="283"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 7.5pt 0in; line-height: normal" align="center"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-ascii-font-family: calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-hansi-font-family: calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;2,000&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Creating a GS-Series Virtual Machine&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Creating a new GS series VM is very easy.&amp;nbsp; Simply navigate to the &lt;a href="http://portal.azure.com/"&gt;Azure Preview Portal&lt;/a&gt;, select New(+) and choose your favorite OS or VM image type: &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/87c53b90a5cd_12FAD/image_2.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/87c53b90a5cd_12FAD/image_thumb.png" width="628" height="358"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;p&gt;Click the Create button, and then click the pricing tier option and select “View All” to see the full list of VM sizes. Make sure your region is West US, East US 2, or West Europe to select the G-series or the GS-Series:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/87c53b90a5cd_12FAD/image_4.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; margin: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/87c53b90a5cd_12FAD/image_thumb_1.png" width="628" height="466"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;When choosing a GS-series VM size, the portal will create a storage account using Premium Azure Storage. You can select an existing Premium Storage account, as well, to use for the OS disk of the VM:  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/87c53b90a5cd_12FAD/image_6.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; margin: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/87c53b90a5cd_12FAD/image_thumb_2.png" width="627" height="312"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;p&gt;Hitting Create will launch and provision the VM.   &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Learn More&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;If you would like more information on the GS-Series VM sizes as well as other Azure VM Sizes then please visit the following page for additional details: &lt;a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/virtual-machines-size-specs/"&gt;Virtual Machine Sizes for Azure&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;p&gt;For more information on Premium Storage, please see: &lt;a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=521898"&gt;Premium Storage overview&lt;/a&gt;. Also, refer to &lt;a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/storage-premium-storage-preview-portal/#using-linux-vms-with-premium-storage"&gt;Using Linux VMs with Premium Storage&lt;/a&gt; for more details on Linux deployments on Premium Storage.  &lt;p&gt;Hope this helps, &lt;p&gt;Scott&lt;/p&gt;</description><pubDate>Wed, 02 Sep 2015 17:51:22 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="true">https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/announcing-the-biggest-vm-sizes-available-in-the-cloud-new-azure-gs-vm-series</guid><category>Azure</category><category>Community News</category></item><item><title>Announcing Great New SQL Database Capabilities in Azure</title><link>https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/announcing-great-new-sql-database-capabilities-in-azure</link><description>&lt;p&gt;Today we are making available several new SQL Database capabilities in Azure that enable you to build even better cloud applications.&amp;nbsp; In particular:  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;We are introducing two new pricing tiers for our&amp;nbsp; Elastic Database Pool capability.&amp;nbsp; Elastic Database Pools enable you to run multiple, isolated and independent databases on a private pool of resources dedicated to just you and your apps.&amp;nbsp; This provides a great way for software-as-a-service (SaaS) developers to better isolate their individual customers in an economical way. &lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;We are also introducing new higher-end scale options for SQL Databases that enable you to run even larger databases with significantly more compute + storage + networking resources.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;Both of these additions are available to start using immediately.&amp;nbsp; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Elastic Database Pools&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;If you are a SaaS developer with tens, hundreds, or even thousands of databases, an elastic database pool dramatically simplifies the process of creating, maintaining, and managing performance across these databases within a budget that you control.&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/4061141898ad_13703/image_7.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/4061141898ad_13703/image_thumb_2.png" width="864" height="483"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;p&gt;A common SaaS application pattern (especially for B2B SaaS apps) is for the SaaS app to use a different database to store data for each customer.&amp;nbsp; This has the benefit of isolating the data for each customer separately (and enables each customer’s data to be encrypted separately, backed-up separately, etc).&amp;nbsp; While this pattern is great from an isolation and security perspective, each database can end up having varying and unpredictable resource consumption (CPU/IO/Memory patterns), and because the peaks and valleys for each customer might be difficult to predict, it is hard to know how much resources to provision.&amp;nbsp; Developers were previously faced with two options: either over-provision database resources based on peak usage--and overpay. Or under-provision to save cost--at the expense of performance and customer satisfaction during peaks.  &lt;p&gt;Microsoft created elastic database pools specifically to help developers solve this problem.&amp;nbsp; With Elastic Database Pools you can allocate a shared pool of database resources (CPU/IO/Memory), and then create and run multiple isolated databases on top of this pool.&amp;nbsp; You can set minimum and maximum performance SLA limits of your choosing for each database you add into the pool (ensuring that none of the databases unfairly impacts other databases in your pool).&amp;nbsp; Our management APIs also make it much easier to script and manage these multiple databases together, as well as optionally execute queries that span across them (useful for a variety operations).&amp;nbsp; And best of all when you add multiple databases to an Elastic Database Pool, you are able to average out the typical utilization load (because each of your customers tend to have different peaks and valleys) and end up requiring far fewer database resources (and spend less money as a result) than you would if you ran each database separately.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The below chart shows a typical example of what we see when SaaS developers take advantage of the Elastic Pool capability.&amp;nbsp; Each individual database they have has different peaks and valleys in terms of utilization.&amp;nbsp; As you combine multiple of these databases into an Elastic Pool the peaks and valleys tend to normalize out (since they often happen at different times) to require much less overall resources that you would need if each database was resourced separately:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img alt="databases sharing eDTUs" src="https://acomdpsstorage.blob.core.windows.net/dpsmedia-prod/azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/sql-database-elastic-pool/20150817050110/databases.png" width="1024" height="200"&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Because Elastic Database Pools are built using our SQL Database service, you also get to take advantage of all of the underlying database as a service capabilities that are built into it: 99.99% SLA, multiple-high availability replica support built-in with no extra charges, no down-time during patching, geo-replication, point-in-time recovery, TDE encryption of data, row-level security, full-text search, and much more.&amp;nbsp; The end result is a really nice database platform that provides a lot of flexibility, as well as the ability to save money.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;New Basic and Premium Tiers for Elastic Database Pools&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Earlier this year at the //Build conference we announced our new Elastic Database Pool support in Azure and entered public preview with the &lt;strong&gt;Standard Tier&lt;/strong&gt; edition of it.&amp;nbsp; The Standard Tier allows individual databases within the elastic pool to burst up to 100 eDTUs (a DTU represents a combination of Compute + IO + Storage performance) for performance.&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;Today we are adding additional &lt;strong&gt;Basic&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Premium Elastic Database Pools &lt;/strong&gt;to the preview to enable a wider range of performance and cost options.  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;Basic Elastic Database Pools are great for light-usage SaaS scenarios.&amp;nbsp; Basic Elastic Database Pools allows individual databases performance bursts up to 5 eDTUs. &lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;Premium Elastic Database Pools are designed for databases that require the highest performance per database. Premium Elastic Database Pools allows individual database performance bursts up to 1,000 eDTUs.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;Collectively we think these three Elastic Database Pool pricing tier options provide a tremendous amount of flexibility and optionality for SaaS developers to take advantage of, and are designed to enable a wide variety of different scenarios.  &lt;h3&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;font style="font-weight: bold"&gt;Easily Migrate Databases Between Pricing Tiers&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;One of the cool capabilities we support is the ability to easily migrate an individual database between different Elastic Database Pools (including ones with different pricing tiers).&amp;nbsp; For example, if you were a SaaS developer you could start a customer out with a trial edition of your application – and choose to run the database that backs it within a Basic Elastic Database Pool to run it super cost effectively.&amp;nbsp; As the customer’s usage grows you could then auto-migrate them to a Standard database pool without customer downtime.&amp;nbsp; If the customer grows up to require a tremendous amount of resources you could then migrate them to a Premium Database Pool or run their database as a standalone SQL Database with a huge amount of resource capacity.  &lt;p&gt;This provides a tremendous amount of flexibility and capability, and enables you to build even better applications.  &lt;h3&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;font style="font-weight: bold"&gt;Managing Elastic Database Pools&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;One of the the other nice things about Elastic Database Pools is that the service provides the management capabilities to easily manage large collections of databases without you having to worry about the infrastructure that runs it.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;You can create and mange Elastic Database Pools using our Azure Management Portal or via our Command-line tools or REST Management APIs.&amp;nbsp; With today’s update we are also adding support so that you can use T-SQL to add/remove new databases to/from an elastic pool.&amp;nbsp; Today’s update also adds T-SQL support for measuring resource utilization of databases within an elastic pool – making it even easier to monitor and track utilization by database.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/4061141898ad_13703/image_13.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/4061141898ad_13703/image_thumb_5.png" width="798" height="1291"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;h3&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;font style="font-weight: bold"&gt;Elastic Database Pool Tier Capabilities&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;During the preview, we have been and will continue to tune a number of parameters that control the density of Elastic Database Pools as we progress through the preview.  &lt;p&gt;In particular, the current limits for the number of databases per pool and the number of pool eDTUs is something we plan to steadily increase as we march towards the general availability release.&amp;nbsp; Our plan is to provide the highest possible density per pool, largest pool sizes, and the best Elastic Database Pool economics while at the same time keeping our 99.99 availability SLA.  &lt;p&gt;Below are the current performance parameters for each of the Elastic Database Pool Tier options in preview today:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;table class="MsoTable15Grid4Accent1" style="border-top: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-collapse: collapse; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-yfti-tbllook: 1184; mso-padding-alt: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="1"&gt; &lt;tbody&gt; &lt;tr style="mso-yfti-irow: -1; mso-yfti-firstrow: yes; mso-yfti-lastfirstrow: yes"&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: #5b9bd5 1pt solid; border-right: medium none; background: #5b9bd5; border-bottom: #5b9bd5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: #5b9bd5 1pt solid; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-alt: solid #5b9bd5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-left-alt: solid #5b9bd5 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid #5b9bd5 .5pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: accent1; mso-background-themecolor: accent1" valign="top" width="276"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal; mso-yfti-cnfc: 5"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ" style="color: ; mso-themecolor: background1"&gt;&lt;font color="#ffffff"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: #5b9bd5 1pt solid; border-right: medium none; background: #5b9bd5; border-bottom: #5b9bd5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid #5b9bd5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid #5b9bd5 .5pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: accent1; mso-background-themecolor: accent1" valign="top" width="301"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ" style="color: ; mso-themecolor: background1"&gt;&lt;font color="#ffffff"&gt;Basic Elastic&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: #5b9bd5 1pt solid; border-right: medium none; background: #5b9bd5; border-bottom: #5b9bd5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid #5b9bd5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid #5b9bd5 .5pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: accent1; mso-background-themecolor: accent1" valign="top" width="312"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ" style="color: ; mso-themecolor: background1"&gt;&lt;font color="#ffffff"&gt;Standard Elastic&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: #5b9bd5 1pt solid; border-right: #5b9bd5 1pt solid; background: #5b9bd5; border-bottom: #5b9bd5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-alt: solid #5b9bd5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid #5b9bd5 .5pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: accent1; mso-background-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-right-alt: solid #5b9bd5 .5pt; mso-border-right-themecolor: accent1" valign="top" width="312"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ" style="color: ; mso-themecolor: background1"&gt;&lt;font color="#ffffff"&gt;Premium Elastic&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 0"&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; background: #deeaf6; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-background-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-background-themetint: 51" valign="top" width="1202" colspan="4"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal; mso-yfti-cnfc: 68" align="center"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;Elastic Database Pool&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 1"&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153" valign="top" width="276"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal; mso-yfti-cnfc: 4"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;eDTU range per pool (preview limits)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-left-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-right-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-left-themetint: 153" valign="top" width="301"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;100-1200 eDTUs&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-left-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-right-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-left-themetint: 153" valign="top" width="312"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;100-1200 eDTUs&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-left-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-right-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-left-themetint: 153" valign="top" width="312"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;125-1500 eDTUs&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 2"&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; background: #deeaf6; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-background-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-background-themetint: 51" valign="top" width="276"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal; mso-yfti-cnfc: 68"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;Storage range per pool&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; background: #deeaf6; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-left-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: accent1; mso-background-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-right-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-background-themetint: 51; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-left-themetint: 153" valign="top" width="301"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;10-120 GB&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; background: #deeaf6; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-left-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: accent1; mso-background-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-right-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-background-themetint: 51; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-left-themetint: 153" valign="top" width="312"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;100-1200 GB&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; background: #deeaf6; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-left-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: accent1; mso-background-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-right-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-background-themetint: 51; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-left-themetint: 153" valign="top" width="312"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;63-750 GB&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 3"&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153" valign="top" width="276"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal; mso-yfti-cnfc: 4"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;Maximum database per pool (preview limits)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-left-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-right-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-left-themetint: 153" valign="top" width="301"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;200&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-left-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-right-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-left-themetint: 153" valign="top" width="312"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;200&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-left-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-right-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-left-themetint: 153" valign="top" width="312"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;50&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 4"&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; background: #deeaf6; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-background-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-background-themetint: 51" valign="top" width="276"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal; mso-yfti-cnfc: 68"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;Estimated monthly pool and add-on &lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;eDTU costs (preview prices)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; background: #deeaf6; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-left-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: accent1; mso-background-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-right-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-background-themetint: 51; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-left-themetint: 153" valign="top" width="301"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;Starting at $0.2/hr (~$149/pool/mo).&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;Each additional eDTU $.002/hr (~$1.49/mo)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; background: #deeaf6; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-left-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: accent1; mso-background-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-right-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-background-themetint: 51; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-left-themetint: 153" valign="top" width="312"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;Starting at $0.3/hr (~$223/pool mo).&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;Each additional eDTU $0.003/hr (~$2.23/mo)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; background: #deeaf6; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-left-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: accent1; mso-background-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-right-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-background-themetint: 51; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-left-themetint: 153" valign="top" width="312"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;Starting at $0.937/hr (`$697/pool/mo).&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;Each additional eDTU $0.0075/hr (~$5.58/mo)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 5"&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153" valign="top" width="276"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal; mso-yfti-cnfc: 4"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;Storage per eDTU&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-left-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-right-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-left-themetint: 153" valign="top" width="301"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;0.1 GB per eDTU&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-left-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-right-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-left-themetint: 153" valign="top" width="312"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;1 GB per eDTU&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-left-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-right-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-left-themetint: 153" valign="top" width="312"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;.5 GB per eDTU&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 6"&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; background: #deeaf6; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-background-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-background-themetint: 51" valign="top" width="1202" colspan="4"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal; mso-yfti-cnfc: 68" align="center"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;Elastic Databases&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 7"&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153" valign="top" width="276"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal; mso-yfti-cnfc: 4"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;eDTU max per database (preview limits)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-left-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-right-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-left-themetint: 153" valign="top" width="301"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;0-5&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-left-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-right-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-left-themetint: 153" valign="top" width="312"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;0-100&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-left-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-right-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-left-themetint: 153" valign="top" width="312"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;0-1000&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 8"&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; background: #deeaf6; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-background-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-background-themetint: 51" valign="top" width="276"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal; mso-yfti-cnfc: 68"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;Storage max per DB&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; background: #deeaf6; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-left-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: accent1; mso-background-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-right-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-background-themetint: 51; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-left-themetint: 153" valign="top" width="301"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;2 GB&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; background: #deeaf6; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-left-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: accent1; mso-background-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-right-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-background-themetint: 51; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-left-themetint: 153" valign="top" width="312"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;250 GB&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; background: #deeaf6; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-left-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: accent1; mso-background-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-right-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-background-themetint: 51; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-left-themetint: 153" valign="top" width="312"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;500 GB&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 9; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes"&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153" valign="top" width="276"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal; mso-yfti-cnfc: 4"&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;Per DB cost (preview prices)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-left-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-right-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-left-themetint: 153" valign="top" width="301"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;$0.0003/hr (~$0.22/mo)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-left-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-right-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-left-themetint: 153" valign="top" width="312"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;$0.0017/hr (~$1.26/mo)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; border-right: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; border-bottom: #9cc2e5 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-left-alt: solid #9cc2e5 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-right-themecolor: accent1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-left-themetint: 153" valign="top" width="312"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN-NZ"&gt;$0.0084/hr (~$6.25/mo)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt; &lt;p&gt;We’ll continue to iterate on the above parameters and increase the maximum number of databases per pool as we progress through the preview, and would love your feedback as we do so.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;New Higher-Scale SQL Database Performance Tiers&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;In addition to the enhancements for Elastic Database Pools, we are also today releasing new SQL Database Premium performance tier options for standalone databases.&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;Today we are adding a new &lt;strong&gt;P4&lt;/strong&gt; (500 DTU) and a &lt;strong&gt;P11&lt;/strong&gt; (1750 DTU) level which provide even higher performance database options for SQL Databases that want to scale-up. The new P11 edition also now supports databases up to 1TB in size.  &lt;p&gt;Developers can now choose from 10 different SQL Database Performance levels.&amp;nbsp; You can easily scale-up/scale-down as needed at any point without database downtime or interruption.&amp;nbsp; Each database performance tier supports a 99.99% SLA, multiple-high availability replica support built-in with no extra charges (meaning you don’t need to buy multiple instances to get an SLA – this is built-into each database), no down-time during patching, point-in-time recovery options (restore without needing a backup), TDE encryption of data, row-level security, and full-text search.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/4061141898ad_13703/image_17.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/4061141898ad_13703/image_thumb_7.png" width="835" height="470"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Learn More&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;You can learn more about SQL Databases by visiting the &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com"&gt;http://azure.microsoft.com&lt;/a&gt; web-site.&amp;nbsp; Check out the &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/sql-database/" target="_blank"&gt;SQL Database product page&lt;/a&gt; to learn more about the capabilities SQL Databases provide, as well as read the &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/services/sql-database/" target="_blank"&gt;technical documentation&lt;/a&gt; to learn more how to build great applications using it.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Summary&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Today’s database updates enable developers to build even better cloud applications, and to use data to make them even richer more intelligent.&amp;nbsp; We are really looking forward to seeing the solutions you build.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Hope this helps,&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Scott&lt;/p&gt;</description><pubDate>Thu, 27 Aug 2015 16:13:09 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="true">https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/announcing-great-new-sql-database-capabilities-in-azure</guid><category>Azure</category><category>Community News</category><category>SQL Server</category></item><item><title>Announcing Windows Server 2016 Containers Preview</title><link>https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/announcing-windows-server-2016-containers-preview</link><description>&lt;p&gt;At DockerCon this year, Mark Russinovich, CTO of Microsoft Azure, demonstrated the first ever application built using code running in both a Windows Server Container and a Linux container connected together. This demo helped demonstrate Microsoft's vision that in &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2014/10/15/new-windows-server-containers-and-azure-support-for-docker/"&gt;partnership&lt;/a&gt; with Docker, we can help bring the Windows and Linux ecosystems together by enabling developers to build container-based distributed applications using the tools and platforms of their choice.  &lt;p&gt;Today we are excited to release the first preview of Windows Server Containers as part of our &lt;a href="http://blogs.technet.com/b/server-cloud/archive/2015/08/19/new-windows-server-preview-fuels-application-innovation-with-containers-software-defined-datacenter-updates.aspx" target="_blank"&gt;Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 3&lt;/a&gt; release. We’re also announcing great updates from our close collaboration with Docker, including enabling support for the Windows platform in the Docker Engine and a preview of the Docker Engine for Windows. Our Visual Studio Tools for Docker, which we previewed earlier this year, have also been updated to support Windows Server Containers, providing you a seamless end-to-end experience straight from Visual Studio to develop and deploy code to both Windows Server and Linux containers. Last but not least, we’ve made it easy to get started with Windows Server Containers in Azure via a dedicated virtual machine image.  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Windows Server Containers&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Windows Server Containers create a highly agile Windows Server environment, enabling you to accelerate the DevOps process to efficiently build and deploy modern applications. With today’s preview release, millions of Windows developers will be able to experience the benefits of containers for the first time using the languages of their choice – whether .NET, ASP.NET, PowerShell or Python, Ruby on Rails, Java and many others. &lt;p&gt;Today’s announcement delivers on the promise we made in &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2014/10/15/new-windows-server-containers-and-azure-support-for-docker/"&gt;partnership&lt;/a&gt; with Docker, the fast-growing open platform for distributed applications, to offer container and DevOps benefits to Linux and Windows Server users alike. Windows Server Containers are now part of the Docker open source project, and Microsoft is a founding member of the Open Container Initiative. Windows Server Containers can be deployed and managed either using the Docker client or PowerShell. &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Getting Started using Visual Studio&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;The preview of our &lt;a href="http://aka.ms/vslovesdocker" target="_blank"&gt;Visual Studio Tools for Docker&lt;/a&gt;, which enables developers to build and publish ASP.NET 5 Web Apps or console applications directly to a Docker container, has been updated to include support for today’s preview of Windows Server Containers. The extension automates creating and configuring your container host in Azure, building a container image which includes your application, and publishing it directly to your container host. You can download and install this extension, and read more about it, at the Visual Studio Gallery here: &lt;a href="http://aka.ms/vslovesdocker"&gt;http://aka.ms/vslovesdocker&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;p&gt;Once installed, developers can right-click on their projects within Visual Studio and select “Publish”: &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/d3b237e15f2b_12AFF/image_6.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/d3b237e15f2b_12AFF/image_thumb_2.png" width="672" height="672"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;p&gt;Doing so will display a Publish dialog which will now include the ability to deploy to a Docker Container (on either a Windows Server or Linux machine): &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/d3b237e15f2b_12AFF/image_8.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; margin: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/d3b237e15f2b_12AFF/image_thumb_3.png" width="906" height="712"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;p&gt;You can choose to deploy to any existing Docker host you already have running: &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/d3b237e15f2b_12AFF/image_10.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; margin: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/d3b237e15f2b_12AFF/image_thumb_4.png" width="791" height="474"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;p&gt;Or use the dialog to create a new Virtual Machine running either Window Server or Linux with containers enabled.&amp;nbsp; The below screen-shot shows how easy it is to create a new VM hosted on Azure that runs today’s Windows Server 2016 TP3 preview that supports Containers – you can do all of this (and deploy your apps to it) easily without ever having to leave the Visual Studio IDE: &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/d3b237e15f2b_12AFF/image_4.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/d3b237e15f2b_12AFF/image_thumb_1.png" width="843" height="701"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;      &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Getting Started Using Azure&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;In June of last year, at the first DockerCon, we enabled a streamlined Azure experience for creating and managing Docker hosts in the cloud. Up until now these hosts have only run on Linux. With the new preview of Windows Server 2016 supporting Windows Server Containers, we have enabled a parallel experience for Windows users.  &lt;p&gt;Directly from the Azure Marketplace, users can now deploy a Windows Server 2016 virtual machine pre-configured with the container feature enabled and Docker Engine installed. Our quick start guide has all of the details including screen shots and a walkthrough video so take a look here &lt;a href="https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/windowscontainers/quick_start/azure_setup"&gt;https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/windowscontainers/quick_start/azure_setup&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/d3b237e15f2b_12AFF/image_14.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; margin: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/d3b237e15f2b_12AFF/image_thumb_6.png" width="916" height="563"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;p&gt;Once your container host is up and running, the quick start guide includes step by step guides for creating and managing containers using both &lt;a href="https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/windowscontainers/quick_start/manage_docker"&gt;Docker&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/windowscontainers/quick_start/manage_powershell"&gt;PowerShell&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Getting Started Locally Using Hyper-V&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Creating a virtual machine on your local machine using Hyper-V to act as your container host is now really easy. We’ve published some PowerShell scripts to GitHub that automate nearly the whole process so that you can get started experimenting with Windows Server Containers as quickly as possible. The quick start guide has all of the details at &lt;a href="https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/windowscontainers/quick_start/container_setup"&gt;https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/windowscontainers/quick_start/container_setup&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;p&gt;Once your container host is up and running the quick start guide includes step by step guides for creating and managing containers using both &lt;a href="https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/windowscontainers/quick_start/manage_docker"&gt;Docker&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/windowscontainers/quick_start/manage_powershell"&gt;PowerShell&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/d3b237e15f2b_12AFF/image_12.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; margin: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/d3b237e15f2b_12AFF/image_thumb_5.png" width="877" height="562"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Additional Information and Resources&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;A great list of resources including links to past presentations on containers, blogs and samples can be found in the &lt;a href="https://msdn.microsoft.com/virtualization/community/community_overview"&gt;community&lt;/a&gt; section of our documentation. We have also setup a dedicated &lt;a href="https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/home?forum=windowscontainers"&gt;Windows containers&lt;/a&gt; forum where you can provide feedback, ask questions and report bugs. If you want to learn more about the technology behind containers I would highly recommend reading Mark Russinovich’s blog on “&lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2015/08/17/containers-docker-windows-and-trends/"&gt;Containers: Docker, Windows and Trends&lt;/a&gt;” that was published earlier this week. &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Summary&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;At the //Build conference earlier this year we talked about our plan to make containers a fundamental part of our application platform, and today’s releases are a set of significant steps in making this a reality.’ The decision we made to embrace Docker and the Docker ecosystem to enable this in both Azure and Windows Server has generated a lot of positive feedback and we are just getting started. &lt;p&gt;While there is still more work to be done, now users in the Window Server ecosystem can begin experiencing the world of containers. I highly recommend you download the Visual Studio Tools for Docker, create a Windows Container host in Azure or locally, and try out our PowerShell and Docker support. Most importantly, we look forward to hearing feedback on your experience. &lt;p&gt;Hope this helps, &lt;p&gt;Scott   </description><pubDate>Wed, 19 Aug 2015 16:01:46 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="true">https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/announcing-windows-server-2016-containers-preview</guid><category>Azure</category><category>.NET</category><category>Visual Studio</category><category>Windows Server</category><category>Community News</category></item><item><title>Released Today: Visual Studio 2015, ASP.NET 4.6, ASP.NET 5 &amp; EF 7 Previews</title><link>https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/released-today-visual-studio-2015-asp-net-4-6-asp-net-5-ef-7-previews</link><description>&lt;p&gt;Today is a big day with major release announcements for &lt;a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=517106"&gt;Visual Studio 2015&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=517106"&gt;Visual Studio 2013 Update 5&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href="https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/5a4x27ek.aspx"&gt;.NET Framework 4.6&lt;/a&gt;. All these releases have been covered in great detail on &lt;a href="http://aka.ms/somavs2015rtm"&gt;Soma’s Blog&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2015/07/20/visual-studio-2015-and-visual-studio-2013-update-5-released.aspx"&gt;Visual Studio Blog&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2015/07/20/announcing-net-framework-4-6.aspx"&gt;.NET Blog&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;Join us online for the &lt;a href="https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/visualstudio-release-event-vs"&gt;Visual Studio 2015 Release Event&lt;/a&gt;, where you can see Soma, Brian Harry, Scott Hanselman, and many other demo new Visual Studio 2015 features and technologies. This year, in a new segment called “In The Code”, we share how a team of Microsoft engineers created a real app in 3 days. There will be opportunities along the way to interact in live Q&amp;amp;A with the team on subjects such as Agile development, web and cloud development, cross-platform mobile dev and much more.&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;In this post I’d like to specifically talk about some of the ground we have covered in ASP.NET and Entity Framework.&amp;nbsp; In this release of Visual Studio, we are releasing ASP.NET 4.6, updating our Visual Studio Web Development Tools, and updating the latest beta release of our new ASP.NET 5 framework.&amp;nbsp; Below are details on just a few of the great updates available today:  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;ASP.NET Tooling Improvements &lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Today’s VS 2015 release delivers some great updates for web development.&amp;nbsp; Here are just a few of the updates we are shipping in this release:  &lt;h3&gt;&lt;em&gt;JSON Editor&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;JSON has become a first class experience in Visual Studio 2015 and we are now giving you a great editor to allow you to maintain your JSON content.&amp;nbsp; With support for JSON Schema validation, intellisense, and support for SchemaStore.org writing and producing JSON content has never been as easy.&amp;nbsp; We’ve also added intellisense support for bower.json and package.json files for bower and npm package manager use.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/0b347a6c9535_6CC6/image_6.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/0b347a6c9535_6CC6/image_thumb_2.png" width="437" height="356"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;h3&gt;&lt;em&gt;HTML Editor Updates &lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;Our HTML editor received a lot of attention in this update.&amp;nbsp; We wanted to deliver an editor that kept up with HTML 5 standards and provided rich support for popular new frameworks and libraries.&amp;nbsp; We previously shipped the bootstrap responsive web framework with our ASP.NET templates, and we are now providing intellisense for their classes with an indicator icon to show that they are bootstrap CSS classes.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/0b347a6c9535_6CC6/image_10.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/0b347a6c9535_6CC6/image_thumb_4.png" width="567" height="178"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;This helps you keep clear the classes that you wrote in your project, like the page-inner class above, and the bootstrap classes marked with the B icon.  &lt;p&gt;We are also keeping up with support for the emerging web components standard with the import link for the web components that markup imports.  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/0b347a6c9535_6CC6/image_12.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/0b347a6c9535_6CC6/image_thumb_5.png" width="739" height="339"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;p&gt;We are also providing intellisense for AngularJS directives and attributes with an appropriate Angular icon so you know you’re triggering AngularJS functionality  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/0b347a6c9535_6CC6/image_14.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/0b347a6c9535_6CC6/image_thumb_6.png" width="544" height="89"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;h3&gt;&lt;em&gt;JavaScript Editor Improvements &lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;With the VS 2015 release we are introducing support for AngularJS structures including controllers, services, factories, directives and animations.&amp;nbsp; There is also support for the new EcmaScript 6 features such as classes, arrow functions, and template strings. We are also bringing a navigation bar to the editor to help you navigate between the major elements of your JavaScript.&amp;nbsp; With JSDoc support to deliver intellisense, JavaScript development gets easier.  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/0b347a6c9535_6CC6/image_16.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/0b347a6c9535_6CC6/image_thumb_7.png" width="515" height="307"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;h3&gt;&lt;em&gt;ReactJS Editor Support &lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;We spent some time with the folks at Facebook to make sure that we delivered first class capabilities for developers using their ReactJS framework.&amp;nbsp; With appropriate syntax highlighting and intellisense for React methods, developers should be very comfortable building React applications with the new Visual Studio:  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/0b347a6c9535_6CC6/image_18.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/0b347a6c9535_6CC6/image_thumb_8.png" width="605" height="318"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;h3&gt;&lt;em&gt;Support for JavaScript package managers like Grunt and Gulp and Task Runners &lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;JavaScript and modern web development techniques are the new recommended way to build client-side code for your web application.&amp;nbsp; We support these tools and programming techniques with our new Task Runner Explorer that executes grunt and gulp task runners.&amp;nbsp; You can open this tool window with the Ctrl+Alt+Backspace hotkey combination.  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/0b347a6c9535_6CC6/image_20.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/0b347a6c9535_6CC6/image_thumb_9.png" width="451" height="345"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;p&gt;Execute any of the tasks defined in your gruntfile.js or gulpfile.js by right-clicking on the task name in the left panel and choosing “Run” from the context menu that appears.&amp;nbsp; You can even use this context menu to attach grunt or gulp tasks to project build events in Visual Studio like “After Build” as shown in the figure above.&amp;nbsp; Every time the .NET objects in your web project are completed compiling, the ‘build’ task will be executed from the gruntfile.js  &lt;p&gt;Combined with the intellisense support for JavaScript and JSON editors, we think that developers wanting to use grunt and gulp tasks will really enjoy this new Visual Studio experience.&amp;nbsp; You can add grunt and gulp tasks with the newly integrated npm package manager capabilities.&amp;nbsp; When you create a package.json file in your web project, we will install and upgrade local copies of all packages referenced.&amp;nbsp; Not only do we deliver syntax highlighting and intellisense for package.json terms, we also provide package name and version lookup against the npmjs.org gallery.  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/0b347a6c9535_6CC6/image_22.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/0b347a6c9535_6CC6/image_thumb_10.png" width="494" height="317"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;p&gt;The bower package manager is also supported with great intellisense, syntax highlighting and the same package name and version support in the bower.json file that we provide for package.json.  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/0b347a6c9535_6CC6/image_24.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/0b347a6c9535_6CC6/image_thumb_11.png" width="490" height="267"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;p&gt;These improvements in managing and writing JavaScript configuration files and executing grunt or gulp tasks brings a new level of functionality to Visual Studio 2015 that we think web developers will really enjoy.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;ASP.NET 4.6 Runtime Improvements&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Today’s release also includes a bunch of enhancements to ASP.NET from a runtime perspective.  &lt;h3&gt;&lt;em&gt;HTTP/2 Support&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;Starting with ASP.NET 4.6 we are introducing support for the HTTP/2 standard.&amp;nbsp; This new version of the HTTP protocol delivers a true multiplexing of requests and responses between browser and web server.&amp;nbsp; This exciting update is as easy as enabling SSL in your web projects to immediately improve your ASP.NET application responsiveness.  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/0b347a6c9535_6CC6/image_26.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/0b347a6c9535_6CC6/image_thumb_12.png" width="353" height="529"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;p&gt;With SSL enabled (which is a requirement of the HTTP/2 protocol), IISExpress on Windows 10 will begin interacting with the browser using the updated protocol.&amp;nbsp; The difference between the protocols is clear.&amp;nbsp; Consider the network performance presented by Microsoft Edge when requesting the same website without SSL (and receiving HTTP/1.x) and with SSL to activate the HTTP/2 protocol:  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/0b347a6c9535_6CC6/image_28.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/0b347a6c9535_6CC6/image_thumb_13.png" width="372" height="262"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/0b347a6c9535_6CC6/image_30.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/0b347a6c9535_6CC6/image_thumb_14.png" width="375" height="262"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;p&gt;Both samples are showing the default ASP.NET project template’s home page.&amp;nbsp; In both scenarios the HTML for the page is retrieved in line 1.&amp;nbsp; In HTTP/1.x on the left, the first six elements are requested and we see grey bars to indicate waiting to request the last two elements.&amp;nbsp; In HTTP/2 on the right, all eight page elements are loaded concurrently, with no waiting.  &lt;h3&gt;&lt;em&gt;Support for the .NET Compiler Platform &lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;We now support the new .NET compilers provided in the .NET Compiler Platform (codenamed Roslyn).&amp;nbsp; These compilers allow you to access the new language features of Visual Basic and C# throughout your Web Forms markup and MVC view pages.&amp;nbsp; Our markup can look much simpler and readable with new language features like string interpolation:  &lt;p&gt;Instead of building a link in Web Forms like this:  &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;font face="Consolas"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&lt;font style="font-size: 9.5pt"&gt;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;font style="font-size: 9.5pt"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font color="#0000ff"&gt;&amp;lt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font color="#800000"&gt;a&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font color="#ff0000"&gt;href&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font color="#0000ff"&gt;="/Products/&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: yellow"&gt;&lt;font style="background-color: #ffff00"&gt;&amp;lt;%&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font color="#0000ff"&gt;:&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt; model.Id &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: yellow"&gt;&lt;font style="background-color: #ffff00"&gt;%&amp;gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font color="#0000ff"&gt;/&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: yellow"&gt;&lt;font style="background-color: #ffff00"&gt;&amp;lt;%&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font color="#0000ff"&gt;:&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt; model.Name &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: yellow"&gt;&lt;font style="background-color: #ffff00"&gt;%&amp;gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font color="#0000ff"&gt;"&amp;gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: yellow"&gt;&lt;font style="background-color: #ffff00"&gt;&amp;lt;%&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font color="#0000ff"&gt;:&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt; model.Name &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: yellow"&gt;&lt;font style="background-color: #ffff00"&gt;%&amp;gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font color="#0000ff"&gt;&amp;lt;/&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font color="#800000"&gt;a&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font style="font-size: 9.5pt" color="#0000ff"&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;We can deliver a more readable piece of markup like this:  &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;font face="Consolas"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&lt;font style="font-size: 9.5pt"&gt;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;font style="font-size: 9.5pt"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font color="#0000ff"&gt;&amp;lt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font color="#800000"&gt;a&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font color="#ff0000"&gt;href&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font color="#0000ff"&gt;="&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: yellow"&gt;&lt;font style="background-color: #ffff00"&gt;&amp;lt;%&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font color="#0000ff"&gt;:&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font color="#a31515"&gt;$"/Products/&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;{model.Id}&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font color="#a31515"&gt;/&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;{model.Name}&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font color="#a31515"&gt;"&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: yellow"&gt;&lt;font style="background-color: #ffff00"&gt;%&amp;gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font color="#0000ff"&gt;"&amp;gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: yellow"&gt;&lt;font style="background-color: #ffff00"&gt;&amp;lt;%&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font color="#0000ff"&gt;:&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt; model.Name &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: yellow"&gt;&lt;font style="background-color: #ffff00"&gt;%&amp;gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font color="#0000ff"&gt;&amp;lt;/&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font color="#800000"&gt;a&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font style="font-size: 9.5pt" color="#0000ff"&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;We’ve also bundled the &lt;a href="https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.CodeDom.Providers.DotNetCompilerPlatform"&gt;Microsoft.CodeDom.Providers.DotNetCompilerPlatform NuGet package&lt;/a&gt; to enable your Web Forms assets to compile significantly faster without requiring any changes to your code or project.  &lt;h3&gt;&lt;em&gt;Async Model Binding for Web Forms &lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;Model binding was introduced for Web Forms applications in ASP.NET 4, and we introduced async methods in .NET 4.5&amp;nbsp; We heard your requests to be able to execute your model binding methods on a Web Form asynchronously with the new language features.&amp;nbsp; Our team has made this as easy as adding an async=”true” attribute to the @Page directive and return a Task from your model binding methods:  &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;font face="Consolas"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&lt;font style="font-size: 9.5pt"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;font style="font-size: 9.5pt"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font color="#0000ff"&gt;public&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font color="#0000ff"&gt;async&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font color="#2b91af"&gt;Task&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&amp;lt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font color="#2b91af"&gt;IEnumerable&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&amp;lt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font color="#2b91af"&gt;Product&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font style="font-size: 9.5pt"&gt;&amp;gt;&amp;gt; myGrid_GetData()&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font face="Consolas"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&lt;font style="font-size: 9.5pt"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;font style="font-size: 9.5pt"&gt;{&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;font face="Consolas"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&lt;font style="font-size: 9.5pt"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;font style="font-size: 9.5pt"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font color="#0000ff"&gt;var&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt; repo = &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font color="#0000ff"&gt;new&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font color="#2b91af"&gt;Repository&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font style="font-size: 9.5pt"&gt;();&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;font face="Consolas"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&lt;font style="font-size: 9.5pt"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;font style="font-size: 9.5pt"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font color="#0000ff"&gt;return&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font color="#0000ff"&gt;await&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font style="font-size: 9.5pt"&gt; repo.GetAll();&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: ; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 0%; color: ; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;font face="Consolas"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&lt;font style="font-size: 9.5pt"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;font style="font-size: 9.5pt"&gt;}&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/font&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;We have a &lt;a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/b/webdev/archive/2015/06/11/cool-web-forms-features-in-2015-async-model-binding.aspx"&gt;blog post demonstrating with more information and tips about this feature&lt;/a&gt; on our MSDN Web Development blog.  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;ASP.NET 5 &lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I introduced ASP.NET 5 back in February and shared in detail what this release would bring. I’ll reiterate just a few high level points here, &lt;a href="http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/introducing-asp-net-5"&gt;check out my post Introducing ASP.NET 5&lt;/a&gt; for a more complete run down.&amp;nbsp; &lt;/em&gt; &lt;p&gt;ASP.NET 5 works with .NET Core as well as the full .NET Framework to give you greater flexibility when hosting your web apps. With ASP.NET MVC 6 we are merging the complimentary features and functionality from MVC, Web API, and Web Pages. With ASP.NET 5 we are also introducing a new HTTP request pipeline based on our learnings from Katana which enables you to add only the components you need with an opt-in strategy. Additionally, included in this release are multiple development features for improved productivity and to enable you to build better web applications. ASP.NET 5 is also open source. You can &lt;a href="https://github.com/aspnet/home"&gt;find us on GitHub&lt;/a&gt;, view and download the code, submit changes, and track when changes are made.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;The ASP.NET 5 Beta 5 runtime packages are in preview and not recommended for use in production, so please continue using ASP.NET 4.6 for building production grade apps. For details on the latest ASP.NET 5 beta enhancements added and issues fixed, check out the &lt;a href="https://github.com/aspnet/Home/releases/tag/v1.0.0-beta5"&gt;published release notes for ASP.NET 5 beta 5&lt;/a&gt; on GitHub. To get started with ASP.NET 5 get the &lt;a href="http://asp.net/vnext"&gt;docs and tutorials on the ASP.NET site&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;To learn more and keep an eye on all updates to ASP.NET, checkout the &lt;a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/b/webdev"&gt;Webdev blog&lt;/a&gt; and read along with the tutorials and documentation at www.asp.net/vnext  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Entity Framework &lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;With today’s release, we not only have an update to Entity Framework 6 that primarily includes bug fixes and community contributions, but we also released a preview version of Entity Framework 7, keep reading for details:  &lt;h3&gt;&lt;em&gt;Entity Framework 6.x &lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h3&gt; &lt;p&gt;Visual Studio 2015 includes Entity Framework 6.1.3. EF 6.1.3 primarily focuses on bug fixes and community contributions; you can see a list of the changes included in EF 6.1.3 in this &lt;a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/b/adonet/archive/2015/03/10/ef6-1-3-rtm-available.aspx"&gt;EF 6.1.3 announcement blog post&lt;/a&gt;. The Entity Framework 6.1.3 runtime is included in a number of places in this release. In EF 6.1.3 when you can create a new model using the Entity Framework Tools in a project that does not already have the EF runtime installed, the runtime is automatically installed for you. Additionally, the runtime is pre-installed in new ASP.NET projects, depending on the project template you select.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/0b347a6c9535_6CC6/image_32.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/0b347a6c9535_6CC6/image_thumb_15.png" width="737" height="516"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;To learn more and keep an eye on all updates to Entity Framework, checkout the &lt;a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/b/adonet"&gt;ADO.NET blog&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Entity Framework 7 &lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Entity Framework 7 is in preview and not yet ready for production yet. This new version of Entity Framework enables new platforms and new data stores. Universal Windows Platform, ASP.NET 5, and traditional desktop applications can now use EF7. EF7 can also be used in .NET applications that run on Mac and Linux. Visual Studio 2015 includes an early preview of the EF7 runtime that is installed in new ASP.NET 5 projects.&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/0b347a6c9535_6CC6/image_34.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/0b347a6c9535_6CC6/image_thumb_16.png" width="736" height="461"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;p&gt;For more information on EF7, check out the &lt;a href="https://github.com/aspnet/EntityFramework/wiki/What-is-EF7-all-about"&gt;GitHub page for what is EF7 all about&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/0b347a6c9535_6CC6/image_36.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/0b347a6c9535_6CC6/image_thumb_17.png" width="748" height="613"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Summary &lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Today’s Visual Studio release is a big one that we are proud to share with you all. Thank you for your continued support by providing feedback on the interim releases (CTPs, Preview, RC).&amp;nbsp; We are really looking forward to seeing what you build with it.  &lt;p&gt;Hope this helps,  &lt;p&gt;Scott  &lt;p&gt;P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/scottgu"&gt;@scottgu&lt;/a&gt;</description><pubDate>Mon, 20 Jul 2015 15:14:21 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="true">https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/released-today-visual-studio-2015-asp-net-4-6-asp-net-5-ef-7-previews</guid><category>ASP.NET</category><category>.NET</category><category>Community News</category><category>Visual Studio</category></item><item><title>New Azure Billing APIs Available</title><link>https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/new-azure-billing-apis-available</link><description>&lt;p&gt;Organizations moving to the cloud can achieve significant cost savings.&amp;nbsp; But to achieve the maximum benefit you need to be able to accurately track your cloud spend in order to monitor and predict your costs. Enterprises need to be able to get detailed, granular consumption data and derive insights to effectively manage their cloud consumption.  &lt;p&gt;I’m excited to announce the public preview release of two new Azure Billing APIs today: the &lt;a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/billing-usage-rate-card-overview/"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Azure Usage API&lt;/b&gt; and &lt;b&gt;Azure RateCard API&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;b&gt; &lt;/b&gt;which provide customers and partners programmatic access to their Azure consumption and pricing details:  &lt;p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Azure Usage API&lt;/b&gt; – A REST API that customers and partners can use to get their usage data for an Azure subscription. As part of this new Billing API we now correlate the usage/costs by the resource tags you can now set set on your Azure resources (for example: you could assign a tag “Department abc” or “Project X” to a VM or Database in order to better track spend on a resource and charge it back to an internal group within your company). To get more details, please read &lt;a href="https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/mt219001"&gt;the MSDN page on the Usage API&lt;/a&gt;. Enterprise Agreement (EA) customers can also use this API to get a more granular view into their consumption data, and to complement what they get from the EA Billing CSV. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Azure RateCard API &lt;/b&gt;– A REST API that customers and partners can use to get the list of the available resources they can use, along with metadata and price information about them. To get more details, please read &lt;a href="https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/mt219004"&gt;the MSDN page on the RateCard API&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;You can start taking advantage of both of these APIs today.&amp;nbsp; You can write your own custom code that uses the APIs to construct your own custom reports, or alternatively you can also now take advantage of pre-built bill tracking systems provided by our partners which already integrate the APIs into their existing solutions.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Partner Solutions&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Two of our Azure Billing partners (&lt;a href="https://www.cloudyn.com/microsoft-azure/"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Cloudyn&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://www.cloudcruiser.com/partners/microsoft/"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Cloud Cruiser&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/a&gt;) have already integrated the new Billing APIs into their products:  &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Cloudyn&lt;/b&gt; has integrated with Azure Billing APIs to provide IT financial management insights on cost optimization. You can read more about their integration experience in &lt;a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/billing-usage-rate-card-partner-solution-cloudyn/"&gt;Microsoft Azure Billing APIs enable Cloudyn to Provide ITFM for Customers&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Cloud Cruiser&lt;/b&gt; has integrated with the Azure RateCard API to provide an estimate of what it would cost the customer to run the same workloads on Azure. They are also working on integrating with the Azure Usage API to provide insights based on the Azure consumption. You can read more about their integration in &lt;a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/billing-usage-rate-card-partner-solution-cloudcruiser/"&gt;Cloud Cruiser and Microsoft Azure Billing API Integration&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;You can adopt one or both of the above solutions immediately and use them to better track your Azure bill without having to write a single line of code.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/abeb1f29193d_135B0/image_2.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin: 15px 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/abeb1f29193d_135B0/image_thumb.png" width="624" height="216"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Cloudyn's integration enables you to view and query the breakdown of Azure usage by resource tags (e.g. “Dev/Test”, “Department abc”, “Project X”):&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/abeb1f29193d_135B0/image_4.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin: 15px 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/abeb1f29193d_135B0/image_thumb_1.png" width="624" height="434"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Cloudyn's integration showing trend of estimated charges over time:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/abeb1f29193d_135B0/image_6.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin: 15px 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/abeb1f29193d_135B0/image_thumb_2.png" width="624" height="335"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Cloud Cruiser's integration to show estimated cost of running workload on Azure:&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/abeb1f29193d_135B0/image_8.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin: 15px 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/Windows-Live-Writer/abeb1f29193d_135B0/image_thumb_3.png" width="624" height="338"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Using the Billing APIs directly&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;You can also use the new Billing APIs directly to write your own custom reports and billing tracking logic.&amp;nbsp; To get started with the APIs, you can leverage the code samples &lt;a href="https://github.com/Azure/BillingCodeSamples"&gt;on Github&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;p&gt;The Billing APIs leverage the new Azure Resource Manager and use Azure Active Directory for Authentication and follow the Azure Role-based access control policies.&amp;nbsp; The code samples we’ve published show a variety of common scenarios and how to integrate this logic end to end.  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Summary&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;The new Azure Billing APIs make it much easier to track your bill and save money.  &lt;p&gt;As always, please reach out to us on the &lt;a href="http://feedback.azure.com/forums/170030-billing"&gt;Azure Feedback forum&lt;/a&gt; and through the &lt;a href="https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/azure/en-US/home?forum=windowsazurepurchasing"&gt;Azure MSDN forum&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;p&gt;Hope this helps,  &lt;p&gt;Scott&lt;/p&gt;</description><pubDate>Thu, 25 Jun 2015 05:59:52 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="true">https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/new-azure-billing-apis-available</guid><category>Azure</category><category>Community News</category></item><item><title>Announcing General Availability of Azure Premium Storage</title><link>https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/announcing-general-availability-of-azure-premium-storage</link><description>&lt;p&gt;I’m very excited to announce the general availability release of &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/storage/premium-storage/" target="_blank"&gt;Azure Premium Storage&lt;/a&gt;. It is now available with an enterprise grade SLA and is available for everyone to use.  &lt;p&gt;Microsoft Azure now offers two types of storage: Premium Storage and Standard Storage. Premium Storage stores data durably on Solid State Drives (SSDs) and provides high performance, low latency, disk storage with consistent performance delivery guarantees.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/AnnouncingGeneralAvailabilityofAzurePrem_13B74/image_2.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/AnnouncingGeneralAvailabilityofAzurePrem_13B74/image_thumb.png" width="624" height="352"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Premium Storage is ideal for I/O-sensitive workloads - and is especially great for database workloads hosted within Virtual Machines.&amp;nbsp; You can optionally attach several premium storage disks to a single VM, and &lt;strong&gt;support&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;strong&gt;up to 32 TB of disk storage per Virtual Machine and drive more than 64,000 IOPS per VM at less than 1 millisecond latency for read operations&lt;/strong&gt;. This provides an incredibly fast storage option that enables you to run even more workloads in the cloud.  &lt;p&gt;Using Premium Storage, Azure now offers the ability run more demanding applications - including high-volume SQL Server, Dynamics AX, Dynamics CRM, Exchange Server, MySQL, Oracle Database, IBM DB2, MongoDB, Cassandra, and SAP solutions.  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Durability&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Durability of data is of utmost importance for any persistent storage option. Azure customers have critical applications that depend on the persistence of their data and high tolerance against failures. Premium Storage keeps three replicas of data within the same region, and ensures that a write operation will not be confirmed back until it has been durably replicated. This is a unique cloud capability provided only be Azure today.  &lt;p&gt;In addition, you can also optionally create snapshots of your disks and copy those snapshots to a Standard GRS storage account - which enables you to maintain a geo-redundant snapshot of your data that is stored &amp;gt; 400 miles away from your primary Azure region for disaster recovery purposes.  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Available Regions&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Premium Storage is available today in the following Azure regions:  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;West US  &lt;li&gt;East US 2  &lt;li&gt;West Europe  &lt;li&gt;East China  &lt;li&gt;Southeast Asia  &lt;li&gt;West Japan&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;We will expand Premium Storage to run in all Azure regions in the near future.  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Getting Started&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;You can easily get started with Premium Storage starting today. Simply go to the Microsoft Azure Management Portal and create a new Premium Storage account. You can do this by creating a new Storage Account and selecting the “Premium Locally Redundant” storage option (note: this option is only listed if you select a region where Premium Storage is available).  &lt;p&gt;Then create a new VM and select the “DS” series of VM sizes. The DS-series of VMs are optimized to work great with Premium Storage. When you create the DS VM you can simply point it at your Premium Storage account and you’ll be all set.  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Learning More&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Learn more about Premium Storage from &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2015/04/16/azure-premium-storage-now-generally-available-" target="_blank"&gt;Mark Russinovich's blog post on today's release&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp; You can also see a &lt;a href="http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Regular-IT-Guy/Azure-Premium-Storage-Demo" target="_blank"&gt;live 3 minute demo of Premium Storage&lt;/a&gt; in action by watching &lt;a href="http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Regular-IT-Guy/Azure-Premium-Storage-Demo" target="_blank"&gt;Mark Russinovich’s video on premium storage&lt;/a&gt;. In it Mark shows both a Windows Server and Linux VM driving more than 64,000 disk IOPS with low latency against a durable drive powered by Azure Premium Storage.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/AnnouncingGeneralAvailabilityofAzurePrem_13B74/image_4.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/AnnouncingGeneralAvailabilityofAzurePrem_13B74/image_thumb_1.png" width="624" height="368"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;You can also visit the following links for more information:  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/storage/premium-storage/" target="_blank"&gt;Premium Storage overview&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=521969"&gt;Premium Storage REST operations&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=521965"&gt;"DS" series VM specifications&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=533289&amp;amp;clcid=0x409"&gt;Channel 9 video on Premium Storage&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Summary&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;We are very excited about the release of Azure Premium Storage. Premium Storage opens up so many new opportunities to use Azure to run workloads in the cloud – including migrating existing on-premises solutions.  &lt;p&gt;As always, we would love to hear feedback via comments on this blog, the &lt;a href="http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsazure/en-US/home?forum=windowsazuredata"&gt;Azure Storage MSDN forum&lt;/a&gt; or send email to &lt;a href="mailto:mastoragequestions@microsoft.com"&gt;mastoragequestions@microsoft.com&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;p&gt;Hope this helps,  &lt;p&gt;Scott&lt;/p&gt;</description><pubDate>Thu, 16 Apr 2015 17:01:22 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="true">https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/announcing-general-availability-of-azure-premium-storage</guid><category>Azure</category><category>Community News</category></item><item><title>Announcing the new Azure App Service</title><link>https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/announcing-the-new-azure-app-service</link><description>&lt;p&gt;In a mobile first, cloud first world, every business needs to deliver great mobile and web experiences that engage and connect with their customers, and which enable their employees to be even more productive.&amp;nbsp; These apps need to work with any device, and to be able to consume and integrate with data anywhere.  &lt;p&gt;I'm excited to announce the release of our new Azure App Service today - which provides a powerful new offering to deliver these solutions.&amp;nbsp; Azure App Service is an integrated service that enables you to create web and mobile apps for any platform or device, easily integrate with SaaS solutions (Office 365, Dynamics CRM, Salesforce, Twilio, etc), easily connect with on-premises applications (SAP, Oracle, Siebel, etc), and easily automate businesses processes while meeting stringent security, reliability, and scalability needs.  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Azure App Service&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Azure App Service includes the Web App + Mobile App capabilities that we previously delivered separately (as Azure Websites + Azure Mobile Services).&amp;nbsp; It also includes powerful new Logic/Workflow App and API App capabilities that we are introducing today for the very first time - along with built-in connectors that make it super easy to build logic workflows that integrate with dozens of popular SaaS and on-premises applications (Office 365, SalesForce, Dynamics, OneDrive, Box, DropBox, Twilio, Twitter, Facebook, Marketo, and more).&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;All of these features can be used together at one low price.&amp;nbsp; In fact, the new Azure App Service pricing is &lt;u&gt;exactly the same price as our previous Azure Websites offering&lt;/u&gt;.&amp;nbsp; If you are familiar with our Websites service you now get all of the features it previously supported, plus additional new mobile support, plus additional new workflow support, plus additional new connectors to dozens of SaaS and on-premises solutions &lt;u&gt;at no extra charge&lt;/u&gt;.&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;u&gt;Web + Mobile + Logic + API Apps&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Azure App Service enables you to easily create Web + Mobile + Logic + API Apps:  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/AnnouncingthenewAzureAppService_122D1/image_4.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/AnnouncingthenewAzureAppService_122D1/image_thumb_1.png" width="828" height="457"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;p&gt;You can run any number of these app types within a single Azure App Service deployment.&amp;nbsp; Your apps are automatically managed by Azure App Service and run in managed VMs isolated from other customers (meaning you don't have to worry about your app running in the same VM as another customer).&amp;nbsp; You can use the built-in AutoScaling support within Azure App Service to automatically increase and decrease the number of VMs that your apps use based on the actual resource consumption of them.&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;This provides an incredibly cost-effective way to build and run highly scalable apps that provide both Web and Mobile experiences, and which contain automated business processes that integrate with a wide variety of apps and data sources.  &lt;p&gt;Below are additional details on the different app types supported by Azure App Service.&amp;nbsp; Azure App Service is generally available starting today for Web apps, with the Mobile, Logic and API app types available in public preview:  &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Web Apps&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/u&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The Web App support within Azure App Service includes 100% of the capabilities previously supported by Azure Websites.&amp;nbsp; This includes:  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;Support for .NET, Node.js, Java, PHP, and Python code  &lt;li&gt;Built-in AutoScale support (automatically scale up/down based on real-world load)  &lt;li&gt;Integrated Visual Studio publishing as well as FTP publishing  &lt;li&gt;Continuous Integration/Deployment support with Visual Studio Online, GitHub, and BitBucket  &lt;li&gt;Virtual networking support and hybrid connections to on-premises networks and databases  &lt;li&gt;Staged deployment and test in production support  &lt;li&gt;WebJob support for long running background tasks&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;Customers who have previously deployed an app using the Azure Website service will notice today that they these apps are now called "Web Apps" within the Azure management portals.&amp;nbsp; You can continue to run these apps exactly as before - or optionally now also add mobile + logic + API app support to your solution as well without having to pay anything more.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mobile Apps&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/u&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The Mobile App support within Azure App Service provides the core capabilities we previously delivered using Azure Mobile Services.&amp;nbsp; It also includes several new enhancements that we are introducing today including:  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;Built-in AutoScale support (automatically scale up/down based on real-world load)  &lt;li&gt;Traffic Manager support (geographically scale your apps around the world)  &lt;li&gt;Continuous Integration/Deployment support with Visual Studio Online, GitHub, and BitBucket  &lt;li&gt;Virtual networking support and hybrid connections to on-premises databases  &lt;li&gt;Staged deployment and test in production support  &lt;li&gt;WebJob support for long running background tasks&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;Because we have an integrated App Service offering, you can now run both Web and Mobile Apps using a single Azure App Service deployment.&amp;nbsp; This allows you to avoid having to pay for a separate web and mobile backend - and instead optionally pool your resources to save even more money.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Logic Apps&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/u&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The Logic App support within Azure App Services is brand new and enables you to automate workflows and business processes.&amp;nbsp; For example, you could configure a workflow that automatically runs every time your app calls an API, or saves data within a database, or on a timer (e.g. once a minute) - and within your workflows you can do tasks like create/retrieve a record in Dynamics CRM or Salesforce, send an email or SMS message to a sales-rep to follow up on, post a message on Facebook or Twitter or Yammer, schedule a meeting/reminder in Office 365, etc.&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;Constructing such workflows is now super easy with Azure App Services.&amp;nbsp; You can define a workflow either declaratively using a JSON file (which you can check-in as source code) or using the new Logic/Workflow designer introduced today within the Azure Portal.&amp;nbsp; For example, below I've used the new Logic designer to configure an automatically recurring workflow that runs every minute, and which searches Twitter for tweets about Azure, and then automatically send SMS messages (using Twilio) to have employees follow-up on them:  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/AnnouncingthenewAzureAppService_122D1/image_14.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/AnnouncingthenewAzureAppService_122D1/image_thumb_6.png" width="900" height="468"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;Creating the above workflow is super easy and takes only a minute or so to do using the new Logic App designer.&amp;nbsp; Once saved it will automatically run within the same VMs/Infrastructure that the Web Apps and Mobile Apps you've built using Azure App Service use as well.&amp;nbsp; This means you don't have to deploy or pay for anything extra - if you deploy a Web or Mobile App on Azure you can now do all of the above workflow + integration scenarios &lt;u&gt;at no extra cost&lt;/u&gt;.&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;Azure App Service today includes support for the following built-in connectors that you can use to construct and automate your Logic App workflows:  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/AnnouncingthenewAzureAppService_122D1/image_9.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/AnnouncingthenewAzureAppService_122D1/image_thumb_2.png" width="800" height="450"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Combined the above connectors provide a super powerful way to build and orchestrate tasks that run and scale within your apps.&amp;nbsp; You can now build much richer web and mobile apps using it.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Azure-Friday/Azure-App-Service-Logic-Apps-with-Josh-Twist" target="_blank"&gt;Watch this Azure Friday video about Logic Apps&lt;/a&gt; with Scott Hanselman and Josh Twist to learn more about how to use it.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;u&gt;API Apps&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The API Apps support within Azure App Service provides additional support that enables you to easily create, consume and call APIs - both APIs you create (using a framework like ASP.NET Web API or the equivalent in other languages) as well as APIs from other SaaS and cloud providers.  &lt;p&gt;API Apps enable simple access control and credential management within your applications, as well as automatic SDK generation support that enables you to easily expose and integrate APIs across a wide-variety of languages.&amp;nbsp; You can optionally integrate these APIs with Logic Apps.  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Getting Started&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Getting started with Azure App Service is easy.&amp;nbsp; Simply sign-into the &lt;a href="http://portal.azure.com/" target="_blank"&gt;Azure Preview Portal&lt;/a&gt; and click the "New" button in the bottom left of the screen.&amp;nbsp; Select the "Web + Mobile" sub-menu and you can now create Web Apps, Mobile Apps, Logic Apps, and API Apps:  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/AnnouncingthenewAzureAppService_122D1/image_8.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/AnnouncingthenewAzureAppService_122D1/image_thumb_3.png" width="793" height="793"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;You can create any number of Web, Mobile, Logic and API apps and run them on a single Azure App Service deployment at no additional cost.&amp;nbsp; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Learning More&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;I'll be hosting a special Azure App Service launch event online on March 24th at 11am PDT which will contain more details about Azure App Service, a great demo from Scott Hanselman, and talks by several customers and analytics talking about their experiences.&amp;nbsp; You can watch the online event for free &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/campaigns/azure-march-announcement/" target="_blank"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Also check out our new Azure Friday App Service videos with Scott Hanselman that go into detail about all of the new capabilities, and show off how to build Web, Mobile, Logic and API Apps using Azure App Service:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Azure-Friday/Azure-App-Service-Web-Apps-with-Yochay-Kiriaty" target="_blank"&gt;Web Apps&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Azure-Friday/Azure-App-Service-Mobile-Apps-with-Kirill-Gavrylyuk" target="_blank"&gt;Mobile Apps&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Azure-Friday/Azure-App-Service-Logic-Apps-with-Josh-Twist" target="_blank"&gt;Logic Apps&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Azure-Friday/Azure-App-Service-API-Apps-with-Scott-Hunter" target="_blank"&gt;API Apps&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;Then visit our &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/app-service/" target="_blank"&gt;documentation center&lt;/a&gt; to learn more about the service and how to get started with it today.&amp;nbsp; Pricing details are available &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/app-service/" target="_blank"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Summary&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Today’s Microsoft Azure release enables a ton of great new scenarios, and makes building great web and mobile applications hosted in the cloud even easier.  &lt;p&gt;If you don’t already have a Azure account, you can sign-up for a &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/free-trial/" target="_blank"&gt;free trial&lt;/a&gt; and start using all of the above features today.&amp;nbsp; Then visit the &lt;a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/" target="_blank"&gt;Microsoft Azure Developer Center&lt;/a&gt; to learn more about how to build apps with it.  &lt;p&gt;Hope this helps,  &lt;p&gt;Scott  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.twitter.com/scottgu" target="_blank"&gt;twitter.com/scottgu&lt;/a&gt;</description><pubDate>Tue, 24 Mar 2015 14:23:42 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="true">https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/announcing-the-new-azure-app-service</guid><category>Azure</category><category>Community News</category><category>ASP.NET</category></item><item><title>Introducing ASP.NET 5</title><link>https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/introducing-asp-net-5</link><description>&lt;p&gt;The first preview release of ASP.NET 1.0 came out almost 15 years ago.&amp;nbsp; Since then millions of developers have used it to build and run great web applications, and over the years we have added and evolved many, many capabilities to it.&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;I'm excited today to post about a new release of ASP.NET that we are working on that we are calling ASP.NET 5.&amp;nbsp; This new release is one of the most significant architectural updates we've done to ASP.NET.&amp;nbsp; As part of this release we are making ASP.NET leaner, more modular, cross-platform, and cloud optimized.&amp;nbsp; The ASP.NET 5 preview is now available as a preview release, and you can start using it today by &lt;a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=521794"&gt;downloading&lt;/a&gt; the latest CTP of Visual Studio 2015 which we just made available. &lt;p&gt;ASP.NET 5 is an open source web framework for building modern web applications that can be developed and run on Windows, Linux and the Mac. It includes the MVC 6 framework, which now combines the features of MVC and Web API into a single web programming framework.&amp;nbsp; ASP.NET 5 will also be the basis for SignalR 3 - enabling you to add real time functionality to cloud connected applications. ASP.NET 5 is built on the .NET Core runtime, but it can also be run on the full .NET Framework for maximum compatibility. &lt;p&gt;With ASP.NET 5 we are making a number of architectural changes that makes the core web framework much leaner (it no longer requires System.Web.dll) and more modular (almost all features are now implemented as NuGet modules - allowing you to optimize your app to have just what you need).&amp;nbsp; With ASP.NET 5 you gain the following foundational improvements: &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;Build and run cross-platform ASP.NET apps on Windows, Mac and Linux&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Built on .NET Core, which supports true side-by-side app versioning &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;New tooling that simplifies modern Web development&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Single aligned web stack for Web UI and Web APIs&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Cloud-ready environment-based configuration&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Integrated support for creating and using NuGet packages&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Built-in support for dependency injection&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Ability to host on IIS or self-host in your own process&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;The end result is an ASP.NET that you'll feel very familiar with, and which is also now even more tuned for modern web development.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Flexible, Cross-Platform Runtime&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;ASP.NET 5 works with two runtime environments to give you greater flexibility when hosting your app. The two runtime choices are: &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;.NET Core &lt;/strong&gt;– a new, modular, cross-platform runtime with a smaller footprint.&amp;nbsp; When you target the .NET Core, you’ll be able to take advantage of some exciting new benefits: &lt;p&gt;1) You can deploy the .NET Core runtime with your app which means your app will run with this deployed version of the runtime rather than the version of the runtime that is installed on the host operating system. Your version of the runtime runs side-by-side with versions for other apps. You can update that runtime, if needed, without affecting other apps, or you can continue running on the same version even though other apps on the system have been updated.&amp;nbsp; This makes app deployment and framework updates much easier and less impactful to other apps running on a system. &lt;p&gt;2) Your app is only dependent on features it really needs. Therefore, you are never prompted to update/service the runtime for features that are not relevant to your app. You will spend less time testing and deploying updates that are perhaps unrelated to the functionality of your app. &lt;p&gt;3) Your app can now be run cross-platform. We will provide a cross-platform version of .NET Core for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X systems.&amp;nbsp; Regardless of which operating system you use for development or which operating system you target for deployment, you will be able to use .NET. The cross-platform version of the runtime has not been released yet, but we are working on it on &lt;a href="https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr"&gt;GitHub&lt;/a&gt; and plan to have an official preview of it out soon. &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;.NET Framework &lt;/strong&gt;– The API for .NET Core is currently more limited than the full .NET Framework, so you may need to modify existing apps to target .NET Core. If you don't want to have to update your app you can instead run ASP.NET 5 applications on the full .NET Framework (version 4.5.2 and above).&amp;nbsp; When doing this you have access to the complete set of .NET Framework APIs. Your existing applications and libraries will work without modification on this runtime.  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;MVC 6 - a unified programming model&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;MVC, Web API and Web Pages provide complementary functionality and are frequently used together when developing a solution. However, in past ASP.NET releases, these programming frameworks were implemented separately and therefore contained some duplication and inconsistencies. With MVC 6, we are merging those models into a single programming model. Now, you can create a single web application that handles the Web UI and data services without needing to reconcile differences in these programming frameworks. You will also be able to seamlessly transition a simple site first developed with Web Pages into a more robust MVC application. &lt;p&gt;You can now return Razor views and content-negotiated data from the same controller and using the same MVC filter pipeline.  &lt;p&gt;In addition to unifying the existing frameworks we are also adding new features to make server-side Web development easier, like the new tag helpers feature. Tag helpers let you use HTML helpers in your views by simply extending the semantics of tags in your markup. &lt;p&gt;So instead of writing this: &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; color: black"&gt;@&lt;span style="background: white; mso-highlight: white"&gt;Html.ValidationSummary(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;true&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;, &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: #a31515; mso-highlight: white"&gt;""&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;, &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;new&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; { @class = &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: #a31515; mso-highlight: white"&gt;"text-danger"&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; })&lt;?xml:namespace prefix = "o" /&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&amp;lt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: maroon; mso-highlight: white"&gt;div&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: red; mso-highlight: white"&gt;class&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;="form-group"&amp;gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; color: black"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;@&lt;span style="background: white; mso-highlight: white"&gt;Html.LabelFor(m =&amp;gt; m.UserName, &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;new&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; { @class = &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: #a31515; mso-highlight: white"&gt;"col-md-2 control-label"&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; })&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&amp;lt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: maroon; mso-highlight: white"&gt;div&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: red; mso-highlight: white"&gt;class&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;="col-md-10"&amp;gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; color: black"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;@&lt;span style="background: white; mso-highlight: white"&gt;Html.TextBoxFor(m =&amp;gt; m.UserName, &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;new&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; { @class = &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: #a31515; mso-highlight: white"&gt;"form-control"&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; })&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; color: black"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;@&lt;span style="background: white; mso-highlight: white"&gt;Html.ValidationMessageFor(m =&amp;gt; m.UserName, &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: #a31515; mso-highlight: white"&gt;""&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;, &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;new&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; { @class = &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: #a31515; mso-highlight: white"&gt;"text-danger"&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; })&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&amp;lt;/&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: maroon; mso-highlight: white"&gt;div&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; line-height: 107%; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&amp;lt;/&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: maroon; line-height: 107%; mso-highlight: white"&gt;div&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; line-height: 107%; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;You can instead write this: &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&amp;lt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: maroon; mso-highlight: white"&gt;div&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: yellow; color: red; mso-highlight: yellow"&gt;asp-validation-summary&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: yellow; color: blue; mso-highlight: yellow"&gt;="ModelOnly"&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: red; mso-highlight: white"&gt;class&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;="text-danger"&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: maroon; mso-highlight: white"&gt;div&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&amp;lt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: maroon; mso-highlight: white"&gt;div&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: red; mso-highlight: white"&gt;class&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;="form-group"&amp;gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&amp;lt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: maroon; mso-highlight: white"&gt;label&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: yellow; color: red; mso-highlight: yellow"&gt;asp-for&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: yellow; color: blue; mso-highlight: yellow"&gt;="UserName"&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: red; mso-highlight: white"&gt;class&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;="col-md-2 control-label"&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: maroon; mso-highlight: white"&gt;label&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&amp;lt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: maroon; mso-highlight: white"&gt;div&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: red; mso-highlight: white"&gt;class&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;="col-md-10"&amp;gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&amp;lt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: maroon; mso-highlight: white"&gt;input&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: yellow; color: red; mso-highlight: yellow"&gt;asp-for&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: yellow; color: blue; mso-highlight: yellow"&gt;="UserName"&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: red; mso-highlight: white"&gt;class&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;="form-control"&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;/&amp;gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&amp;lt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: maroon; mso-highlight: white"&gt;span&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: yellow; color: red; mso-highlight: yellow"&gt;asp-validation-for&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: yellow; color: blue; mso-highlight: yellow"&gt;="UserName"&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: red; mso-highlight: white"&gt;class&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;="text-danger"&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: maroon; mso-highlight: white"&gt;span&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&amp;lt;/&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: maroon; mso-highlight: white"&gt;div&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&amp;lt;/&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: maroon; mso-highlight: white"&gt;div&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Tag helpers make authoring your views more natural and readable. They also simplify customizing the output of HTML helpers with additional markup while letting you take full advantage of the HTML editor. &lt;p&gt;For more examples of creating MVC 6 apps, see these &lt;a href="http://www.asp.net/vnext/overview/aspnet-vnext" target="_blank"&gt;tutorials&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Modern web development&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;This week's ASP.NET 5 preview also includes a number of other great development features that enable you to build even better web applications:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dynamic Development&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;In Visual Studio 2015, we take advantage of dynamic compilation to provide a streamlined developer experience. You no longer have to compile your application every time you want to see a change. Instead, just (1) edit the code, (2) save your changes, (3) refresh the browser, and then (4) see your change automatically appear.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/IntroducingASP.NET5_12282/image_2.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/IntroducingASP.NET5_12282/image_thumb.png" width="624" height="317"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;p&gt;You enjoy a development experience that is similar to working with an interpreted language without sacrificing the benefits of a compiled language.  &lt;p&gt;You can also optionally use other code editors to work on your ASP.NET 5 projects. Every function within the Visual Studio user interface is matched with cross-platform command-line operations. &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Integration with Popular Web Development Tools (Bower, Grunt and Gulp)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Another exciting feature in Visual Studio 2015 is built-in support for Bower, Grunt, and Gulp - popular open source tools that we think should be in every Web developer’s toolkit.  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;Bower is a package manager for client-side libraries, including both JavaScript and CSS libraries.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Grunt and Gulp are task runners, which help you to automate your web development workflow. You can use Grunt or Gulp for tasks like compiling LESS, CoffeeScript, or TypeScript files, running JSLint, or minifying JavaScript files.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Bower: &lt;/b&gt;To add a JavaScript library to your ASP.NET project add it directly in the bower.json config file:  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/IntroducingASP.NET5_12282/image_14.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/IntroducingASP.NET5_12282/image_thumb_6.png" width="451" height="290"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Notice that Visual Studio gives you IntelliSense with a list of available packages. The next time you open the solution, Visual Studio automatically restores any missing packages, so you don’t need to check the packages into source control.  &lt;p&gt;For server-side packages, you’ll still use NuGet Package Manager.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Grunt: &lt;/b&gt;In modern web development, you can find yourself managing a lot of tasks, just to build your app: Compiling LESS, TypeScript, or CoffeeScript files, linting, JavaScript minification, running JS unit tests, and so on. Every team will have its own set of requirements, depending on the particular tools that you use. Task runners make it easier to manage and coordinate these tasks. Visual Studio 2015 will support two popular task runners, Grunt and Gulp.  &lt;p&gt;For example, let’s say you want to use Grunt to compile LESS files. Just go into package.json and add the &lt;a href="https://github.com/gruntjs/grunt-contrib-less"&gt;grunt-contrib-less&lt;/a&gt; package, which is a third-party Grunt plugin.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/IntroducingASP.NET5_12282/image_16.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/IntroducingASP.NET5_12282/image_thumb_7.png" width="401" height="308"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Use the new Task Runner Explorer in Visual Studio 2015 to bind the task to a build step (pre-build, post-build, clean, or when the solution is opened).  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/IntroducingASP.NET5_12282/image_18.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/IntroducingASP.NET5_12282/image_thumb_8.png" width="470" height="369"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;This makes it incredibly easy to automate common tasks within your projects - and have them work both for you, as well as across a team wide project.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;u&gt;Simplified dependency management&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;In ASP.NET 5 you manage dependencies by adding NuGet packages. You can use the NuGet Package Manager or simply edit the JSON file (project.json) that lists the NuGet packages and versions used in your project. The project.json file is easy to work with and you can edit it with any text editor, which enables you to update dependencies even when the app has been deployed to the cloud. &lt;p&gt;The project.json file looks like: &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/IntroducingASP.NET5_12282/image_4.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/IntroducingASP.NET5_12282/image_thumb_1.png" width="420" height="420"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;In Visual Studio 2015, IntelliSense assists you with finding the available NuGet packages that you can add as dependencies. &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/IntroducingASP.NET5_12282/image_6.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/IntroducingASP.NET5_12282/image_thumb_2.png" width="389" height="167"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;And, Intellisense can even help you with the available versions: &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/IntroducingASP.NET5_12282/image_8.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/IntroducingASP.NET5_12282/image_thumb_3.png" width="358" height="171"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;u&gt;Cloud-ready configuration&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;In ASP.NET 5, we eliminated the need to use Web.config file for configuration values. We wanted to make it easier for you to deploy your app to the cloud and have the app automatically read the correct configuration values for that environment. The new system enables you to request named values from a variety of sources (such as JSON, XML, or environment variables). You can decide which formats work best in your situation. &lt;p&gt;In the Startup.cs file, you can now add or remove the sources for configuration values. &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/IntroducingASP.NET5_12282/image_10.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/IntroducingASP.NET5_12282/image_thumb_4.png" width="292" height="135"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The above code snippet shows a project that is set up to retrieve configuration values from a JSON file and environmental variables. You can change this code if you need to specify other sources. In the specified config.json file, you could provide the values. &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/IntroducingASP.NET5_12282/image_12.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/IntroducingASP.NET5_12282/image_thumb_5.png" width="586" height="238"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;In your host environment, such as Azure, you can set the environmental variables and those values are automatically used instead of local configuration values after the application is deployed. You can deploy your application without worrying about publishing test values. &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;u&gt;Dependency injection (DI)&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Dependency Injection (DI) is supported in existing ASP.NET frameworks, like MVC, Web API and SignalR, but not in a consistent and holistic way. ASP.NET 5 provides a built-in DI abstraction that is available in a consistent way throughout the entire web stack. You can access services at startup, in middleware, in filters, in controllers, in model binding and virtually any part of the pipeline where you want to use your services. ASP.NET 5 includes a minimalistic DI container to bootstrap the system, but you can easily replace the default container with your container of choice (Autofac, Ninject, etc). Services can be singleton, scoped to the request or transient. &lt;p&gt;For example, to see how to use constructor injection with ASP.NET MVC 6, create a new ASP.NET 5 Starter Web project and add a simple time service: &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;using&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; System;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;namespace&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; WebApplication1&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;{&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;public&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;class&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: #2b91af; mso-highlight: white"&gt;TimeService&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;{&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;public&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; TimeService()&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;{&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;Ticks = &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: #2b91af; mso-highlight: white"&gt;DateTime&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;.Now.Ticks.ToString();&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;}&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;public&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: #2b91af; mso-highlight: white"&gt;String&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; Ticks { &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;get&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;set&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;; }&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;}&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;}&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;The simple service class sets the current Ticks when the constructor is called. &lt;p&gt;Next, register the time service as a transient service in the ConfigureServices method of the Startup class: &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;public&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;void&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; ConfigureServices(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: #2b91af; mso-highlight: white"&gt;IServiceCollection&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; services)&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;{&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;services.AddMvc();&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;services.AddTransient&amp;lt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: #2b91af; mso-highlight: white"&gt;TimeService&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&amp;gt;();&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; line-height: 107%; mso-highlight: white"&gt;}&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="color: black"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Then, update the HomeController to use constructor injection and to write the Ticks when the TimeService object was created. &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;public&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;class&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: #2b91af; mso-highlight: white"&gt;HomeController&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; : &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: #2b91af; mso-highlight: white"&gt;Controller&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;{&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;public&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: #2b91af; mso-highlight: white"&gt;TimeService&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; TimeService { &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;get&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;set&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;; }&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;public&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; HomeController(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: yellow; color: #2b91af; mso-highlight: yellow"&gt;TimeService&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: yellow; color: black; mso-highlight: yellow"&gt; timeService&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;)&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;{&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;TimeService = timeService;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;}&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;public&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: #2b91af; mso-highlight: white"&gt;IActionResult&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; About()&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;{&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;ViewBag.Message = TimeService.Ticks + &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: #a31515; mso-highlight: white"&gt;" From Controller"&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;System.Threading.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: #2b91af; mso-highlight: white"&gt;Thread&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;.Sleep(1);&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;return&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; View();&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;}&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: green; mso-highlight: white"&gt;// Code removed for brevity&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; line-height: 107%; mso-highlight: white"&gt;}&lt;/span&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Notice the controller doesn't create a TimeService. It's injected when the controller is instantiated. &lt;p&gt;In MVC 6 you can use the [Activate] attribute to inject services via properties. You can use [Activate] not just on controllers but also on filters, and view components. This means you can simplify your controller code like this: &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;public&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;class&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: #2b91af; mso-highlight: white"&gt;HomeController&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; : &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: #2b91af; mso-highlight: white"&gt;Controller&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;{&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: yellow; color: black; mso-highlight: yellow"&gt;[&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: yellow; color: #2b91af; mso-highlight: yellow"&gt;Activate&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: yellow; color: black; mso-highlight: yellow"&gt;]&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;public&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: #2b91af; mso-highlight: white"&gt;TimeService&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; TimeService { &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;get&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;set&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;; }&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: green; mso-highlight: white"&gt;// Code removed for brevity&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; line-height: 107%; mso-highlight: white"&gt;}&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; color: black; line-height: 107%"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;MVC 6 also supports DI into Razor views via the @inject keyword. In the code below, I’ve injected the time service into the about view directly and defined a TimeSvc property by which it can be accessed: &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; color: black"&gt;@&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;using&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; WebApplication23&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: yellow; color: black; mso-highlight: yellow"&gt;@inject &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: yellow; color: #2b91af; mso-highlight: yellow"&gt;TimeService&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: yellow; color: black; mso-highlight: yellow"&gt; TimeSvc&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&amp;lt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: maroon; mso-highlight: white"&gt;h3&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; color: black"&gt;@&lt;span style="background: white; mso-highlight: white"&gt;ViewBag.Message&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&amp;lt;/&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: maroon; mso-highlight: white"&gt;h3&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&amp;lt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: maroon; mso-highlight: white"&gt;h3&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: yellow; color: black; mso-highlight: yellow"&gt;@TimeSvc.Ticks&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; From Razor&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&amp;lt;/&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: maroon; mso-highlight: white"&gt;h3&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;When you run the app, you can see different ticks values from the controller and the view. &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/IntroducingASP.NET5_12282/image_20.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/IntroducingASP.NET5_12282/image_thumb_9.png" width="498" height="358"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Fast HTTP performance&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;ASP.NET 5 introduces a new HTTP request pipeline that is modular so you can add only the components that you need. The pipeline is also no longer dependent on System.Web. By reducing the overhead in the pipeline, your app can experience better throughput and a more tuned HTTP stack. The new pipeline is based on many of the learnings from the Katana project and also supports &lt;a href="http://owin.org/"&gt;OWIN&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;To customize which components are used in the pipeline, use the Configure method in your Startup class. The Configure method is used to specify which middleware you want to “use” in your request pipeline. ASP.NET 5 already includes ported versions of many of the middleware from the Katana project, like middleware for static files, authentication and diagnostics. The following image shows some of the features you can add or remove to the pipeline for your project. &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;public&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;void&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; Configure(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: #2b91af; mso-highlight: white"&gt;IApplicationBuilder&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; app)&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;{&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: green; mso-highlight: white"&gt;// Add static files to the request pipeline.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;app.UseStaticFiles();&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: green; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;// Add cookie-based authentication to the request pipeline.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;app.UseIdentity();&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: green; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;// Add MVC and routing to the request pipeline.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;app.UseMvc(routes =&amp;gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;{&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;routes.MapRoute(&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;name: &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: #a31515; mso-highlight: white"&gt;"default"&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;,&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;template: &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: #a31515; mso-highlight: white"&gt;"{controller}/{action}/{id?}"&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;,&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;defaults: &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;new&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; { controller = &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: #a31515; mso-highlight: white"&gt;"Home"&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;, action = &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: #a31515; mso-highlight: white"&gt;"Index"&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; });&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: consolas; background: white; color: black; line-height: 107%; mso-highlight: white"&gt;});&lt;/span&gt; &lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;You can also write your own middleware components and add them to the pipeline. &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Open source&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;We are developing ASP.NET 5 as an open source project on &lt;a href="https://github.com/aspnet/home"&gt;GitHub&lt;/a&gt;. You can view the code, see when changes were made, download the code, and submit changes. We believe making ASP.NET 5 open source will we make it easier for you to understand the code, understand our intended direction, and contribute to the project. &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/IntroducingASP.NET5_12282/image_22.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/IntroducingASP.NET5_12282/image_thumb_10.png" width="624" height="345"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Docs and tutorials&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;To get started with ASP.NET 5 you can find docs and tutorials on the ASP.NET site at &lt;a href="http://asp.net/vnext"&gt;http://asp.net/vnext&lt;/a&gt;. The following tutorials will guide you through the steps of creating your first ASP.NET 5 project. &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.asp.net/vnext/overview/aspnet-vnext/grunt-and-bower-in-visual-studio-2015"&gt;Manage Client-Side Web Development in Visual Studio 2015, Using Grunt and Bower&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.asp.net/vnext/overview/aspnet-vnext/vc"&gt;View components and Inject in ASP.NET MVC 6&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;Also read &lt;a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/b/webdev/archive/2015/02/23/aspnet-5-updates-for-feb-2015.aspx" target="_blank"&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; for even more ASP.NET and Web Development improvements coming this week.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Hope this help,&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Scott&lt;/p&gt;</description><pubDate>Mon, 23 Feb 2015 20:41:56 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="true">https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/introducing-asp-net-5</guid><category>.NET</category><category>ASP.NET</category><category>Community News</category></item><item><title>Azure: Machine Learning Service, Hadoop Storm, Cluster Scaling, Linux Support, Site Recovery and More</title><link>https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/azure-machine-learning-service-hadoop-storm-cluster-scaling-linux-support-site-recovery-and-more</link><description>&lt;p&gt;Today we released a number of great enhancements to Microsoft Azure. These include:  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Machine Learning&lt;/strong&gt;: General Availability of the Azure Machine Learning Service  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hadoop&lt;/strong&gt;: General Availability of Apache Storm Support, Hadoop 2.6 support, Cluster Scaling, Node Size Selection and preview of next Linux OS support  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Site Recovery&lt;/strong&gt;: General Availability of DR capabilities with SAN arrays&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;I've also included details in this blog post of other great Azure features that went live earlier this month:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SQL Database&lt;/strong&gt;: General Availability of SQL Database (V12)  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Web Sites&lt;/strong&gt;: Support for Slot Settings  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;API Management&lt;/strong&gt;: New Premium Tier  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DocumentDB&lt;/strong&gt;: New Asia and US Regions, SQL Parameterization and Increased Account Limits  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Search&lt;/strong&gt;: Portal Enhancements, Suggestions &amp;amp; Scoring, New Regions  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Media&lt;/strong&gt;: General Availability of Content Protection Service for Azure Media Services  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Management&lt;/strong&gt;: General Availability of the Azure Resource Manager&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;All of these improvements are now available to use immediately (note that some features are still in preview).&amp;nbsp; Below are more details about them:  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Machine Learning: General Availability of Azure ML Service&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Today, I’m excited to announce the General Availability of our &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/machine-learning/" target="_blank"&gt;Azure Machine Learning service&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp; The Azure Machine Learning Service is a powerful cloud-based predictive analytics service that makes it possible to quickly create analytics solutions.&amp;nbsp; It is a fully managed service - which means you do not need to buy any hardware nor manage VMs manually.  &lt;p&gt;Data Scientists and Developers can use our &lt;a href="https://studio.azureml.net/" target="_blank"&gt;innovative browser-based machine learning IDE&lt;/a&gt; to quickly create and automate machine learning workflows.&amp;nbsp; You can literally drag/drop hundreds of existing ML libraries to jump-start your predictive analytics solutions, and then optionally add your own custom R and Python scripts to extend them.&amp;nbsp; Our Machine Learning IDE works in any browser and enables you to rapidly develop and iterate on solutions:  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/ca460606a347_13209/image_24.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/ca460606a347_13209/image_thumb_11.png" width="624" height="545"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;p&gt;With today's General Availability release you can easily discover and create web services, train/retrain your models through APIs, manage endpoints and scale web services on a per customer basis, and configure diagnostics for service monitoring and debugging. Additional new capabilities with today's release include:  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;The ability to create a configurable custom R module, incorporate your own train/predict R-scripts, and add python scripts using a large ecosystem of libraries such as numpy, scipy, pandas, scikit-learn etc. You can now train on terabytes of data using “Learning with Counts”, use PCA or one-class SVM for anomaly detection, and easily modify, filter, and clean data using familiar SQLite. &lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;Azure ML Community Gallery that allows you to discover &amp;amp; learn experiments, and share through Twitter and LinkedIn. You can purchase marketplace apps through an Azure subscription and consume finished web services for Recommendation, Text Analytics, and Anomaly Detection directly from the Azure Marketplace. &lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;A step-by-step guide for the Data Science journey from raw data to a consumable web service to ease the path for cloud-based data science. We have added the ability to use popular tools such as iPython Notebook and Python Tools for Visual Studio along with Azure ML.&lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get Started&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;p&gt;You can learn the basics of predictive analytics and machine learning using our &lt;a href="https://studio.azureml.net/" target="_blank"&gt;step-by-step data science guide and tutorials&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp; No sign-up or credit card is required to get started using Azure Machine Learning (you can use the machine learning IDE and try experiments for free):  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/ca460606a347_13209/image_30.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/ca460606a347_13209/image_thumb_14.png" width="828" height="803"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Also browse our &lt;a href="http://gallery.azureml.net/" target="_blank"&gt;machine learning gallery&lt;/a&gt; to run existing machine learning experiments others have already built - and optionally publish your own experiments for others to learn from:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/ca460606a347_13209/image_28.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/ca460606a347_13209/image_thumb_13.png" width="828" height="803"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Machine Learning and predictive analytics will fundamentally change the way all applications are built in the future.&amp;nbsp; The new &lt;a href="https://studio.azureml.net/" target="_blank"&gt;Azure Machine Learning service&lt;/a&gt; provides an incredibly powerful and easy way to achieve this.&amp;nbsp; Start using it for production apps today!  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;HDInsight: General Availability of Apache Storm, Cluster Scaling, Hadoop 2.6, Node Sizes, and Preview of HDInsight on Linux&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Today I’m happy to also announce several major enhancements to HDInsight, our managed Hadoop service for powering Big Data workloads in Azure.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;General Availability of Apache Storm support&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;With today's release, we are making it easy for you to do real-time streaming analytics using Hadoop by providing Apache Storm as a fully managed Service and making it generally available on HDInsight. This makes it incredibly easy to stand up and manage Storm clusters. As part of the Storm service on HDInsight we have improved productivity by enabling some key features:  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;Integration with our Azure &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/event-hubs/" target="_blank"&gt;Event Hubs&lt;/a&gt; service - which allows you to easily process any data that is collected via Event Hubs  &lt;li&gt;First class .NET experience on top of Apache Storm giving you the option to use both Java and .NET with it  &lt;li&gt;Library of spouts and bolts let you easily integrate other Azure services like SQL, HBase and DocumentDB  &lt;li&gt;Visual Studio integration that makes it easy for developers to do full project management from within the Visual Studio environment&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;Creating Storm cluster and running a sample topology&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;You can easily spin up a new Storm cluster from the &lt;a href="https://manage.windowsazure.com/"&gt;Azure management portal&lt;/a&gt;. The Storm Dashboard allows you to either upload an existing Storm topology or pick one of the sample topologies from the dropdown.&amp;nbsp; Topologies can be authored in code, or higher level programming models like &lt;a href="https://storm.apache.org/documentation/Trident-tutorial.html"&gt;Trident&lt;/a&gt; can be used. You can also monitor and manage all the topologies that are currently on your cluster via the Storm Dashboard.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/ca460606a347_13209/image_34.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/ca460606a347_13209/image_thumb_16.png" width="807" height="563"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;.NET Topologies and a Visual Studio Experience&lt;/u&gt;  &lt;p&gt;One of the big improvements we have done on top of Storm is to enable developers to write Storm topologies in .NET. One of the things I am particularly excited about with the Storm release is the Visual Studio experience that we have enabled for Storm on HDInsight. With the latest version of the Azure SDK, you will get Storm project templates under HDInsight. This will quickly get you started with writing Storm topologies without having to worry or setup the right references or write the skeleton code that is needed for every Storm topology.  &lt;p&gt;Since Storm is available as part of the HDInsight service, all HDInsight features also apply to Storm clusters. For example, you can easily scale up or scale down a Storm cluster with no impact to the existing running topologies. This will enable you to easily grow or shrink Storm clusters depending on the speed of ingest data and latency requirements with no impact on the data which is being processed.&amp;nbsp; At the time of the cluster creation you have the choice to pick from a long list of available VMs to use for their Storm cluster on HDInsight.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;HDInsight 3.2 Support&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;p&gt;I’m pleased to announce the availability of the next major version of Hadoop in HDInsight clusters for Windows and Linux. This includes Hadoop 2.6, Hive 0.14, and substantial updates to all of the components in the stack.&amp;nbsp; Hive 0.14 contains work to improve performance and scalability through Tez, adds a powerful cost based optimizer, and introduces capabilities for handling UPDATE, INSERT and DELETE SQL statements, temporary tables which live for the duration of a development session and more. You can find more details on the Hive 0.14 release &lt;a href="https://issues.apache.org/jira/secure/ReleaseNote.jspa?projectId=12310843&amp;amp;version=12326450"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; Pig 0.14 adds support for ORC, allowing a single high performance format to be leveraged across Pig and Hive.&amp;nbsp; Additionally Pig can now target Tez instead of Map/Reduce, resulting in substantial performance improvements by changing the execution engine. Details on the Pig 0.14 release are &lt;a href="https://issues.apache.org/jira/secure/ReleaseNote.jspa?projectId=12310730&amp;amp;version=12326954"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp; These bring the latest improvements in the open source ecosystem to HDInsight.&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;To get started with a 3.2 cluster, use the &lt;a href="https://manage.windowsazure.com/"&gt;Azure Management portal&lt;/a&gt; or the command-line. In addition to the VS tools for Storm, we've also updated the VS tools to include Hive query authoring.&amp;nbsp; We've also added improved statement completion, local validation, access in Visual Studio to the YARN task logs, and support for HDInsight clusters on Linux. In order to get these, you just need to install the &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/"&gt;Azure SDK for Visual Studio&lt;/a&gt; which contains the latest HDInsight tooling.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cluster Scaling&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Many of our customers have asked for the ability to change HDInsight cluster sizes on the fly.&amp;nbsp; This capability is now accessible in both the Azure portal, as well as through the command line and SDK's.&amp;nbsp; You can grow or shrink a Hadoop cluster to fit your workload by simply dragging the sizing slider.&amp;nbsp; We'll add more nodes to your cluster while it is processing and when your larger jobs are done, you can reduce the size of the cluster.&amp;nbsp; If you need more cores available in your subscription, you can open a Billing support ticket to request a larger quota.&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Node Size Selection&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Finally, you can also now specify the VM sizes for the nodes within your HDInsight cluster.&amp;nbsp; This lets you optimize your cluster's resources to fit your workload.&amp;nbsp; We've made the entire A and D series of VM sizes available.&amp;nbsp; For each of the different types of roles within a cluster, we'll let you specify the machine type.&amp;nbsp; This allows you to tune the amount of CPU, RAM and SSD available to your jobs.&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;HDInsight on Linux &lt;/strong&gt; &lt;p&gt;Today we are also releasing a preview version of our HDInsight service that allows you to deploy HDInsight clusters using Ubuntu Linux containers.&amp;nbsp; This expands the operating system options you can use when running managed Hadoop workloads on Azure (previously HDInsight only supported Windows Server containers).  &lt;p&gt;The new Linux support enables you to easily use familiar tools like SSH and Ambari to build Big Data workloads in Azure.&amp;nbsp; HDInsight on Linux clusters are built on the same Hadoop distribution as the Windows clusters, are fully integrated with Azure storage, and make it easy for customers leveraging Hadoop to take advantage of the SLA, management and support that HDInsight offers.&amp;nbsp; To get started, sign up for the preview &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/preview/"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp; You can then easily create Linux clusters using the &lt;a href="https://manage.windowsazure.com/"&gt;Azure Management Portal&lt;/a&gt; or via our command-line interfaces.  &lt;p&gt;SSH connectivity to your HDInsight clusters is enabled by default for all HDInsight on Linux clusters. You can use an SSH client of your choice to connect to the cluster.&amp;nbsp; Additionally, SSH tunneling can be leveraged for forwarding traffic from your browser to all of the Hadoop web applications. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Learn More&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;p&gt;For more information about Azure HDInsight, check out the following resources:  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/hdinsight/"&gt;Azure HDInsight&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/hdinsight-learn-map/"&gt;HDInsight Learning Map&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/azure/en-US/home?forum=hdinsight&amp;amp;filter=alltypes&amp;amp;sort=lastpostdesc"&gt;HDInsight forum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Site Recovery: General Availability of Enterprise DR with SANs&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;With today’s Azure release, we are also &lt;a href="http://aka.ms/asr_san_ga_blog"&gt;adding another significant capability&lt;/a&gt; to Azure Site Recovery’s disaster recovery and replication portfolio. Enterprises that seek to leverage their Storage Area Network (SAN) Arrays to enable high performance synchronous and asynchronous replication across their on-premises Hyper-V private clouds can now orchestrate end-to-end storage array-based replication and disaster recovery with Azure Site Recovery and System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM).  &lt;p&gt;The addition of SAN as a replication channel enables key scenarios such as Synchronous Replication, Multi-VM Consistency, and support for Guest Clusters with Azure Site Recovery. With support for Shared VHDX and iSCSI Target LUNs, ASR will now be able to better meet the needs of enterprise-class applications such as SQL Server, SharePoint, and SAP etc.  &lt;p&gt;To enable SAN Replication, in the &lt;a href="https://manage.windowsazure.com/"&gt;Azure Management Portal&lt;/a&gt; select SAN when configuring SCVMM clouds in ASR. ASR in turn validates that the cloud being configured has host clusters that have been correctly zoned to a Storage Array, either via Fibre Channel or iSCSI. Once the cloud configuration is complete and the storage pools have been mapped, Replication Groups (group of storage LUNs that replicate together and thereby enable multi-VM replication consistency) can be enabled for replication. ASR automates the creation of target LUNs, target Replication Groups, and starts the array-based replication.&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;Here’s an example of a Recovery Plan that can failover a SQL Guest Cluster deployed on a Replication Group:&lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/ca460606a347_13209/image_36.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/ca460606a347_13209/image_thumb_17.png" width="623" height="517"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Learn More&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Visit the &lt;a href="http://aka.ms/asr_san_ga_blog_forum"&gt;Azure Site Recovery forum on MSDN&lt;/a&gt; for additional information.  &lt;p&gt;Getting started with &lt;a href="http://aka.ms/asr_san_ga_blog_landingpage"&gt;Azure Site Recovery&lt;/a&gt; is easy - all you need is to simply &lt;a href="http://aka.ms/asr_san_ga_blog_azuretrial"&gt;sign up for a free Microsoft Azure trial&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;SQL Database: General Availability of SQL Database (V12)&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Earlier this month we released the general availability version of our &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/sql-database-preview-whats-new/"&gt;SQL Database (V12) service version&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp; We introduced a &lt;a href="https://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/azure-premium-storage-remoteapp-sql-database-update-live-media-streaming-search-and-more" target="_blank"&gt;preview of this new release&lt;/a&gt; last December, and it includes a ton of new capabilities. These include:  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Better management of large databases. &lt;/strong&gt;We now support heavier database workload management with parallel queries&lt;i&gt;,&lt;/i&gt; table partitioning, online indexing, worry-free large index rebuilds with the previous 2GB size limit removed, and&lt;em&gt; &lt;/em&gt;more&lt;em&gt; &lt;/em&gt;alter database commands. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Support for more programmability capabilities: &lt;/strong&gt;You can now build even more robust applications with CLR, T-SQL Windows functions, XML index, and change tracking support. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Up to 100x performance improvements &lt;/b&gt;with support for In-memory columnstore queries for data mart and analytic workloads. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Improved monitoring and troubleshooting:&lt;/b&gt; Extended Events (XEvents) and visibility into over 100 new table views via an expanded set of Database Management Views (DMVs). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;New S3 performance level: &lt;/strong&gt;Today's preview introduces a new pricing option for SQL Databases. The new "S3" performance tier delivers 100 DTU of performance (twice the DTU level of the existing S2 tier) and all of the features available in the Standard tier. It enables an even more cost effective way to run applications with higher performance needs. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;You can now take advantage of all of these features in general availability - with all databases backed by an enterprise grade SLA.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;Upcoming Security Features&lt;/u&gt;  &lt;p&gt;I'm also excited to announce a number of new security features that will start rolling out this month and this spring.&amp;nbsp; These features will help customers better protect their cloud data and help further meet corporate and industry compliance policies. These security enhancements include:  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;Row-Level Security  &lt;li&gt;Dynamic Data Masking  &lt;li&gt;Transparent Data Encryption &lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;Available in preview today, customers can now implement &lt;a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=522705"&gt;Row-Level Security&lt;/a&gt; on databases to enable implementation of fine-grained access control over rows in a database table for greater control over which users can access which data.  &lt;p&gt;Coming soon, SQL Database will introduce Dynamic Data Masking which is a policy-based security feature that helps limit the exposure of data in a database by returning masked data to non-privileged users who run queries over designated database fields, like credit card numbers, without changing data on the database. Finally, Transparent Data Encryption is coming soon to SQL Database V12 databases for encryption at rest on all databases.  &lt;p&gt;Stay tuned over the coming months for details as we continue to rollout the V12 service general availability and upcoming security features.  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Web Sites: Support for Slot Settings&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/websites/" target="_blank"&gt;Azure Web Sites service&lt;/a&gt; has always provided the ability to store application settings and connection strings as a part of your Web Site’s metadata.&amp;nbsp; Those settings become available at runtime via environment variables and, if you use .NET, the standard configuration manager API.&amp;nbsp; This feature has now been updated to work better with another Web Sites feature: deployment slots.&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;Deployment slots provide an easy way for you to safely deploy and test new releases of your web applications prior to swapping them live into production.&amp;nbsp; Let’s say you have a website called mysite.azurewebsites.net with a deployment slot at mysite-staging.azurewebsites.net.&amp;nbsp; You can swap these slots at any given time, and with no downtime. This provides a nice infrastructure for upgrading your website. Until now, when you swapped the staging slot with the production site, all settings and connection strings would swap as well. Sometimes that’s exactly what you want and it works great.&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;But what if, for testing purposes, your site uses a database and you explicitly want each slot to have its own database (e.g. a production database and a testing database)?&amp;nbsp; Prior to this month's release that would have been difficult to automate since the swap operation would move the staging connection string to the production site and vice versa. You would have to do something unnatural like going to the staging slot and manually updating the settings to the production values before performing the swap operation. Then, you would execute the swap, and finally manually update the staging settings to point to the staging database. That workflow is very complicated and error prone.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;New Slot Settings Support&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Slot specific settings are the solution to this problem.&amp;nbsp; Simply go to the &lt;a href="https://portal.azure.com/"&gt;Azure Preview Portal&lt;/a&gt;, navigate to your Web Site’s &lt;b&gt;Settings&lt;/b&gt; page, and you’ll see a new checkbox next to each app setting and connection string.&amp;nbsp; Check the boxes next to each app settings setting and/or connection string that should not participate in swap operations.&amp;nbsp; Each deployment slot has its own version of this settings page where you can go and enter the slot specific setting values.&amp;nbsp; You now have a lot more flexibility when it comes to managing deployment slots and flowing configuration between them during swaps:  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/ca460606a347_13209/image_22.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/ca460606a347_13209/image_thumb_10.png" width="725" height="406"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;API Management: New Premium Tier&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Earlier this month we released a preview of our new Premium Tier for our API Management Service.&amp;nbsp; The Azure API Management Service provides a great offering that helps customers expose web-based APIs to customers - and provides support for API protection via rate-limiting, quotas and keys, detailed analytics, easy developer on-boarding and much more.  &lt;p&gt;As the strategic value of APIs increase, customers are demanding even more performance, higher availability and more enterprise-grade features. And in response we're delighted to introduce a new Premium tier of API Management which will offer a 99.95% SLA after preview and includes a number of key new features:  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Multiple Geography Deployment&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Until now each API Management service resided in a single region selected when the service is created. I’m pleased to announce the introduction of a new multi-region deployment feature that allows API publishers to easily distribute a single API Management service across any number of Azure regions. Customers who want to reduce latency for distributed API consumers and require extremely high availability can now enable multi-geo with minimal configuration.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/ca460606a347_13209/image_10.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/ca460606a347_13209/image_thumb_4.png" width="754" height="325"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Premium tier customers will now see an updated capacity section on the scale tab of the &lt;a href="https://manage.windowsazure.com/"&gt;Azure Management portal&lt;/a&gt;. Additional units and regions can be added with a few clicks of the relevant dropdown controls and API Management will provision additional proxies beyond the primary region in a matter of minutes.  &lt;p&gt;Multi-geo is particularly effective when combined with the API Management caching policy, which can provide a CDN-like capability for your mission critical and performance sensitive APIs. For more information on multiple-geography deployment, check out the &lt;a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=524318"&gt;documentation&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Azure Virtual Network / VPN integration&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Many customers are already managing their on-premises APIs using API Management's mutual certificate authentication to secure their backend. The new Premium offering introduces a great new capability for organizations that prefer to use a VPN solution or want to leverage their Azure ExpressRoute connection. Available in the Premium Tier, VPN connectivity settings are available on the configure tab of the &lt;a href="https://manage.windowsazure.com/"&gt;Azure Management Portal&lt;/a&gt; and can even be combined with multi-geo, with a separate VPN for each region. More information is available in the &lt;a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=524317"&gt;documentation&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/ca460606a347_13209/image_12.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/ca460606a347_13209/image_thumb_5.png" width="576" height="186"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Active Directory Integration &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Prior to today’s release, API Management's developer portal allowed developers to self-serve sign up using a custom account created with their e-mail address or using popular social identity providers like Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft account. Sometimes businesses and enterprises want more control and would like to restrict sign in options, often preferring Azure Active Directory.  &lt;p&gt;With our latest release, we now allow you to configure Azure Active Directory as an identity provider for Azure API Management. Administrators can disable all other identity providers and restrict access to APIs and documentation based on AD group membership. What's more, access can be extended to allow multiple AAD tenants to access your developer portal, making it even easier to share your APIs with business partners.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/ca460606a347_13209/image_14.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/ca460606a347_13209/image_thumb_6.png" width="597" height="396"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Learning More&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Check out the &lt;a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=524320"&gt;Azure Active Directory documentation&lt;/a&gt; for more information on the integration, and the &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/api-management/"&gt;pricing page&lt;/a&gt; for more information on the new premium tier.  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;DocumentDB: New Asia and US Regions, SQL Parameterization and Increased Account Limits&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Earlier this month we released the following new features and capabilities in our Azure DocumentDB service - which provides a fully managed NoSQL JSON database service:  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;New regional availability  &lt;li&gt;Larger accounts and documents: Increased the number of capacity units per account and upported document size doubled  &lt;li&gt;SQL parameterization: Support for handle and escape user input, preventing accidental exposure of data &lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;New Regions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;We have added new support for provisioning DocumentDB accounts in the East Asia, Southeast Asia, and US East Azure regions (in addition to our existing US West, East Europe and West Europe regions). We’ll continue to invest in regional expansion in order to give you the flexibility and choice you need when deciding where to locate your DocumentDB data.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Larger Accounts and Documents&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Throughout the preview process we’ve steadily increased the maximum document and database sizes.&amp;nbsp; With this month's release we've increased the maximum size of an individual document from 256Kb to 512Kb. The Capacity Unit (CU) limit per DocumentDB Account has also been raised from 5 to 50 which means you can now scale a single DocumentDB account to 500GB of storage and 100,000 Request Units of provisioned throughput. As always, our preview quotas can be adjusted on a per account basis - contact us if you have a need for increased capacity.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SQL Parameterization&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Instead of inventing a new query language, DocumentDB supports querying documents using SQL (Structured Query Language) over hierarchical JSON documents. We are pleased to announce that we have extended our SQL query capabilities by adding support for parameterized SQL queries in the &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/documentdb/"&gt;Azure DocumentDB &lt;/a&gt;REST API and SDKs. Using this feature, you can now write parameterized SQL queries. Parameterized SQL provides robust handling and escaping of user input, preventing accidental exposure of data through “SQL injection”.  &lt;p&gt;Let’s take a look at a sample using the .NET SDK. In addition to plain SQL strings and LINQ expressions, we’ve added a new SqlQuerySpec class that can be used to build parameterized queries.&amp;nbsp; Here’s a sample that queries a “Books” collection with a single user supplied parameter for author name:  &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; background: white; color: #2b91af; mso-highlight: white"&gt;IQueryable&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&amp;lt;Book&amp;gt; queryable = client.CreateDocumentQuery&amp;lt;Book&amp;gt;(&lt;?xml:namespace prefix = "o" /&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; text-indent: 0.5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;collectionSelfLink, &lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; text-indent: 0.5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;new&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; SqlQuerySpec {&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="mso-tab-count: 2"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;QueryText = &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; background: white; color: #a31515; mso-highlight: white"&gt;"SELECT * FROM books b WHERE (b.Author.Name = @name)"&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;,&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="mso-tab-count: 2"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;Parameters = &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;new&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; SqlParameterCollection()&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;{ &lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; text-indent: 0.5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; background: white; color: blue; mso-highlight: white"&gt;new&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt; SqlParameter(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; background: white; color: #a31515; mso-highlight: white"&gt;"@name"&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;, &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; background: white; color: #a31515; mso-highlight: white"&gt;"Herman Melville"&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;) &lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;}&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace: ; mso-layout-grid-align: none"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; background: white; color: black; mso-highlight: white"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-tab-count: 1"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;});&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9.5pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; color: black"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Note:  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;SQL parameters in DocumentDB use the familiar @ notation borrowed from T-SQL  &lt;li&gt;Parameter values can be any valid JSON (strings, numbers, Booleans, null, even arrays or nested JSON)  &lt;li&gt;Since DocumentDB is schema-less, parameters are not validated against any type  &lt;li&gt;You could just as easily supply additional parameters by adding additional SqlParameters to the SqlParameterCollection&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;The DocumentDB REST API also natively supports parameterization. The .NET sample shown above translates to the following REST API call. To use parameterized queries, you need to specify the Content-Type Header as &lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;application/query+json&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt; and the query as JSON in the body, as shown below.  &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="background: #f8f8f8; margin: 3.75pt; line-height: 14.4pt; tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;POST https://contosomarketing.documents.azure.com/dbs/XP0mAA==/colls/XP0mAJ3H-AA=/docs&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="background: #f8f8f8; margin: 3.75pt; line-height: 14.4pt; tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;HTTP/1.1 x-ms-documentdb-isquery: True &lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="background: #f8f8f8; margin: 3.75pt; line-height: 14.4pt; tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;x-ms-date: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 13:05:49 GMT &lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="background: #f8f8f8; margin: 3.75pt; line-height: 14.4pt; tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;authorization: type%3dmaster%26ver%3d1.0%26sig%3dkOU%2bBn2vkvIlHypfE8AA5fulpn8zKjLwdrxBqyg0YGQ%3d &lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="background: #f8f8f8; margin: 3.75pt; line-height: 14.4pt; tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;x-ms-version: 2014-08-21 &lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="background: #f8f8f8; margin: 3.75pt; line-height: 14.4pt; tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;Accept: application/json &lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="background: #f8f8f8; margin: 3.75pt; line-height: 14.4pt; tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;Content-Type: application/query+json &lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="background: #f8f8f8; margin: 3.75pt; line-height: 14.4pt; tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;Host: contosomarketing.documents.azure.com &lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="background: #f8f8f8; margin: 3.75pt; line-height: 14.4pt; tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;Content-Length: 50 &lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="background: #f8f8f8; margin: 3.75pt; line-height: 14.4pt; tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;{&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="background: #f8f8f8; margin: 3.75pt; line-height: 14.4pt; tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;"query": "SELECT * FROM books b WHERE (b.Author.Name = @name)",&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="background: #f8f8f8; margin: 3.75pt; line-height: 14.4pt; tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;"parameters": [&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="background: #f8f8f8; margin: 3.75pt; line-height: 14.4pt; tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;{"name": "@name", "value": "Herman Melville"}&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="background: #f8f8f8; margin: 3.75pt; line-height: 14.4pt; tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;&lt;span style="mso-spacerun: yes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/span&gt;] &lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="background: #f8f8f8; margin: 3.75pt; line-height: 14.4pt; tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt"&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;}&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: consolas; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Queries can be issued against document collections, as well as system metadata collections like Databases, DocumentCollections, and Attachments using the approach shown above. To try this out, download the latest build of the DocumentDB SDK on any of the supported platforms (&lt;a href="http://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.Azure.Documents.Client/"&gt;.NET&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="https://github.com/Azure/azure-documentdb-java/releases/tag/0.9.3"&gt;Java&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/documentdb"&gt;Node.js&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="https://github.com/Azure/azure-documentdb-js/releases"&gt;JavaScript&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href="https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pydocumentdb/0.9.4-preview"&gt;Python&lt;/a&gt;).  &lt;p&gt;As always, we’d love to hear from you about the DocumentDB features and experiences you would find most valuable. Submit your suggestions on the Microsoft Azure DocumentDB &lt;a href="http://feedback.azure.com/forums/263030-documentdb?filter=top&amp;amp;page=1"&gt;feedback forum&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Search: Portal Enhancements, Suggestions &amp;amp; Scoring, New Regions&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Earlier this month we released a bunch of great enhancements to our &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/search/"&gt;Azure Search&lt;/a&gt; service.&amp;nbsp; Azure Search provides developers with all of the features needed to build out search experiences for web and mobile applications without having to deal with the typical complexities that come with managing, tuning and scaling a large search service.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Azure Portal Enhancements &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Last month we added the ability to create and manage your search indexes from the &lt;a href="https://portal.azure.com/"&gt;Azure Preview Portal&lt;/a&gt;. Since then, you have told us that this has really helped to speed up development as it greatly reduced the amount of code required, but we also heard that you needed more. As a result, we extended the portal by adding the ability to add Scoring Profiles as well as configure Cross Origin Resource Sharing from the portal.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;Portal Support of Scoring Profiles&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/dn798928.aspx"&gt;Scoring Profiles&lt;/a&gt; boost items up in the search results based on different factors that you control. For example, below, I have a hotels index and all other things being equal, I want highly rated hotels close to the users’ current location to appear at the top of the users search results. To do this, in the &lt;a href="https://portal.azure.com/"&gt;Azure Preview Portal&lt;/a&gt;, choose &lt;b&gt;Add Scoring Profile&lt;/b&gt; and provide a name for it. In this case I am going to call it “closeToUser”. You can create one or more scoring profiles and name them as needed in the search request, allowing you to provide different search results based on different use cases.&lt;b&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/b&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/ca460606a347_13209/image_16.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/ca460606a347_13209/image_thumb_7.png" width="418" height="80"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Once closeToUser has been created, I can start adding weights and functions. For example, in this scoring profile, I chose to add:  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Weighting&lt;/b&gt;: Use hotelName as a weighted field, such that if the search term is found in the hotelName, it gets a weighted boost  &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Distance&lt;/b&gt;: Leverage the spatial capabilities of Azure Search to boost a hotel if it is found to be closer to the user’s specified location  &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Magnitude&lt;/b&gt;: Provide a boost to the hotels that have higher ratings&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;All of these functions and weights are then combined into a final score that is used to rank documents.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/ca460606a347_13209/image_18.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/ca460606a347_13209/image_thumb_8.png" width="423" height="327"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Scoring Profiles can often be tricky and it tends to be mixed with the rest of the query. With Azure Search, scoring profiles experience has been simplified and they are separated from search queries so the scoring model stays outside of application code and can be updated independently. In addition, these scoring profiles are modeled as a set of high-level scoring functions combined with a way to do the typical field weights making editing and maintenance of scoring much simpler.  &lt;p&gt;As demonstrated above, this user experience requires no coding and you can simply choose the fields that are important and apply the function or weight that makes the most sense. It is important to note that scoring profiles is a method of boosting the relevance of a document and should not be confused with sorting. There are a number of other functions available which you can learn more about in the &lt;a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/dn798928.aspx"&gt;MSDN documentation&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cross Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Web Browsers commonly apply a same-origin restriction policy to network requests, preventing client-side web applications from issuing requests to another domain for security reasons. For example, JavaScript code that came from http://www.contoso.com could not issue a request to another domain such as http://www.northwindtraders.com. For Azure Search developers, this is important in cases where all the data is already publicly accessible and they want to save on latency by going straight to the search index from mobile devices or a browser.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-origin_resource_sharing"&gt;CORS&lt;/a&gt; is a method that allows you to relax this restriction in a controlled way so you don’t compromise security. Azure Search uses CORS to allow JavaScript code inside browsers to make search requests directly to the Azure Search service and eliminate the need to proxy all requests through the originating server. We now offer the ability to configure CORS from the &lt;a href="https://portal.azure.com/"&gt;Azure Preview Portal&lt;/a&gt;, allowing you to easily enable cross-domain access and limit it to specific origins. This can be done from the index management portion of your search service as shown below.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/ca460606a347_13209/image_20.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/ca460606a347_13209/image_thumb_9.png" width="202" height="196"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tag Boosting&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;As discussed with Scoring Profiles, there are many examples of where you may want to boost certain relevant items. To this end, we have also introduced a new and highly requested function to our set of scoring profile functions called &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/search-api-scoring-profiles-2014-10-20-preview/"&gt;Tag Boosting&lt;/a&gt;. This feature is currently part of our &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/search-api-scoring-profiles-2014-10-20-preview/"&gt;experimental API version&lt;/a&gt;, made available to you so you can test and provide feedback on these potential new features.  &lt;p&gt;Tag Boosting allows you to boost documents that have tags in common with the search query. The tags for the search query are provided as a scoring parameter in each search request and then any document that contain these terms would get a boost. This capability can not only be helpful to enable search result customization, but could also be used for cases where you have specific items you want to promote. As an example, during a sporting event, a retailer might want to promote items that are related to the teams participating in that sporting event.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Improved Suggestions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Suggestions (auto-complete) is a feature that allows you to provide type-ahead suggestions as the user types. Just like scoring profiles, this is a great way to allow your users to find the content they are looking for quickly. When we first implemented search suggestions in Azure Search, we heard a number of requests to extend the capabilities of this feature to better suit your requirements. As a result, we have an entirely new implementation of suggestions to address these items. In particular, it will do infix matching for suggestions and if fuzzy matching is enabled, it’ll show more flexibility for spelling mistakes. It also allows up to 100 suggestions per result, has no limit in length other than field limits and doesn’t have the 3-character minimum length.  &lt;p&gt;This enhancement is still under the &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/search-api-scoring-profiles-2014-10-20-preview/"&gt;experimental API version&lt;/a&gt; as we are continuing to gather feedback. For more information on this and to see a more detailed example of suggestions, please see the post on the Suggestions in the &lt;a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=524417"&gt;Azure Blog&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;New Regions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;As a final note, I wanted to point out that we are continuing to expand the global footprint of Azure Search. With the addition of East Asia and West Europe you can now provision Azure Search services in 8 regions across the globe.  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Media: General Availability of Content Protection Service&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Earlier this month we released the general availability of our new Content Protection service&lt;strong&gt; &lt;/strong&gt;for Azure Media Services. This is backed by an enterprise grade SLA for all customers.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;We understand the importance of protecting your premium media content, and our robust new DRM offering features both static and dynamic encryption with first party PlayReady license delivery and an AES 128-bit key delivery service. You can either dynamically encrypt during delivery of your media or statically encrypt during the content processing workflow, and our content protection options are available for both live and on-demand workflows.  &lt;p&gt;For more information on functionality and pricing, visit the &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2014/09/10/announcing-public-availability-of-azure-media-services-content-protection-services/"&gt;Media Services Content Protection&lt;/a&gt; blog post, the &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/media-services/"&gt;Media Services Pricing&lt;/a&gt; webpage, or this &lt;a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn282272.aspx"&gt;Securing Media&lt;/a&gt; article.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Management: General Availability of the Azure Resource Manager&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Earlier this month we reached general availability of the new Azure Resource Manager, and now provide a world-side SLA of the service. The Azure Resource Manager provides a core set of management capabilities that are fundamental to the Microsoft Azure Platform and form the basis of our new deployment and management model for all Azure services.&amp;nbsp; You can use the Azure Resource Manager to deploy and manage your Azure solutions at no cost.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The Azure Resource Manager provides a simple, and customizable experience to manage your applications running in Azure along with enterprise grade authentication and authorization capabilities. Benefits include:  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Application Lifecycle Boundaries:&lt;/strong&gt; Azure Resource Manager provides a deployment container called a Resource Group that serves as the lifecycle boundary of resources/services deployed in it - making it easy for you to deploy, manage and visualize services that are contained within it. You no longer have to deploy parts of your application ala carte and then stitch them together manually. A resource Group container supports one-click deployment and tear down of the entire application in a single operation.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Enterprise Grade Access Control&lt;/strong&gt;: OAuth and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) are now natively integrated into Azure Management and consistently apply to all services supported by the Resource Manager. Access and operations performed on these services are also logged automatically to enable you to audit them later. You can now use a rich set of platform and resource specific roles that can be applied at the subscription, resource group, or resource level - giving you granular control over who has access to what operation within your organization.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rich Tagging and Categorization:&lt;/strong&gt; The Azure Resource Manager supports metadata tagging of resource groups and contained resources, and you can use this tagging support to group objects in ways suitable to your own needs such as management, billing or monitoring. For example, you could mark certain resources or resource groups as being "Dev/Test" and use that to help filter your resources or charge back their bills differently to internal groups in your organization.&amp;nbsp; This provides the power needed to manage and monitor departmental applications, subscriptions, and billing data in a more streamlined fashion, especially for larger organizations.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Declarative Deployment Templates:&lt;/strong&gt; The new Azure Resource Manager supports both an imperative API as well as a declarative template model that you can use to deploy rich multi-tier applications on Azure.&amp;nbsp; These applications can be composed from multiple Azure services (including both IaaS and PaaS based services) and support the ability for you to pass parameters and connection-strings across them.&amp;nbsp; For example, you could declarative create a SQL DB, Web Site and VM using a single template and automatically wire-up the connection-string details between them.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/ca460606a347_13209/image_8.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/ca460606a347_13209/image_thumb_3.png" width="909" height="510"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;u&gt;Learn More&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Check out the following resources to learn more about the Azure Resource Manager, and start using it today:  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/dn790568.aspx"&gt;Azure Resource Manager REST API Reference&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/dn835138.aspx"&gt;Azure Resource Manager Template Language&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/powershell-azure-resource-manager/"&gt;Using Windows PowerShell with Resource Manager&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn654592.aspx"&gt;Azure Resource Manager Cmdlets&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/xplat-cli-azure-resource-manager/"&gt;Using the Azure Cross-Platform Command-Line Interface with the Resource Manager&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Summary&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Today’s Microsoft Azure release enables a ton of great new scenarios, and makes building applications hosted in the cloud even easier.  &lt;p&gt;If you don’t already have a Azure account, you can sign-up for a &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/free-trial/" target="_blank"&gt;free trial&lt;/a&gt; and start using all of the above features today.&amp;nbsp; Then visit the &lt;a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/"&gt;Microsoft Azure Developer Center&lt;/a&gt; to learn more about how to build apps with it.  &lt;p&gt;Hope this helps,  &lt;p&gt;Scott  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.twitter.com/scottgu"&gt;twitter.com/scottgu&lt;/a&gt;</description><pubDate>Wed, 18 Feb 2015 16:06:22 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="true">https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/azure-machine-learning-service-hadoop-storm-cluster-scaling-linux-support-site-recovery-and-more</guid><category>Azure</category><category>Community News</category><category>SQL Server</category><category>.NET</category></item><item><title>ScottGu Azure event in London on March 2nd</title><link>https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/scottgu-azure-event-in-london-on-march-2nd</link><description>&lt;p&gt;On March 2nd I'm doing an &lt;a href="http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/a-morning-with-scott-gu-tickets-15551571168?aff=ukwaug" target="_blank"&gt;Azure event&lt;/a&gt; in London that you can attend for free.&amp;nbsp; I'll be speaking for about 2.5 hours and will do an end-to-end walkthrough of Microsoft Azure, show off a bunch of demos of great new features/capabilities, and talk about some of the improvements coming out over the next few months.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/ScottGuAzureeventinLondononMarch2nd_906A/logo%5B1%5D.jpg"&gt;&lt;img title="logo[1]" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline" border="0" alt="logo[1]" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/ScottGuAzureeventinLondononMarch2nd_906A/logo%5B1%5D_thumb.jpg" width="270" height="200"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;You can &lt;a href="http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/a-morning-with-scott-gu-tickets-15551571168?aff=ukwaug" target="_blank"&gt;sign-up and attend the event for free&lt;/a&gt; (while tickets last - they are going fast).&amp;nbsp; If you are interested sign-up now.&amp;nbsp; The event is being held at the Mermaid Conference &amp;amp; Events Centre in Blackfriars, London: &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/ScottGuAzureeventinLondononMarch2nd_906A/mermaidspic3%5B1%5D_2.jpg"&gt;&lt;img title="mermaidspic3[1]" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline" border="0" alt="mermaidspic3[1]" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/ScottGuAzureeventinLondononMarch2nd_906A/mermaidspic3%5B1%5D_thumb.jpg" width="555" height="232"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Hope to see some of you there!&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Scott&lt;/p&gt;</description><pubDate>Mon, 16 Feb 2015 18:16:51 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="true">https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/scottgu-azure-event-in-london-on-march-2nd</guid><category>Azure</category><category>Community News</category></item><item><title>Azure: Premium Storage, RemoteApp, SQL Database Update, Live Media Streaming, Search and More</title><link>https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/azure-premium-storage-remoteapp-sql-database-update-live-media-streaming-search-and-more</link><description>&lt;p&gt;Today we released a number of great enhancements to Microsoft Azure. These include:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Premium Storage&lt;/strong&gt;: New Premium high-performance Storage for Azure Virtual Machine workloads  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;RemoteApp&lt;/strong&gt;: General Availability of Azure RemoteApp service  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SQL Database&lt;/strong&gt;: Enhancements to Azure SQL Databases  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Media Services&lt;/strong&gt;: General Availability of Live Channels for Media Streaming  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Azure Search&lt;/strong&gt;: Enhanced management experience, multi-language support and more  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DocumentDB&lt;/strong&gt;: Support for Bulk Add Documents and Query Syntax Highlighting  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Site Recovery&lt;/strong&gt;: General Availability of disaster recovery to Azure for branch offices and SMB customers  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Azure Active Directory&lt;/strong&gt;: General Availability of Azure Active Directory application proxy and password write back support &lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;All of these improvements are now available to use immediately (note that some features are still in preview).&amp;nbsp; Below are more details about them:  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Premium Storage: High-performance Storage for Virtual Machines&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;I’m excited to announce the public preview of our new Azure Premium Storage offering. With the introduction of the new Premium Storage option, Azure now offers two types of durable storage: Premium Storage and Standard Storage. Premium Storage stores data durably on Solid State Drives (SSDs) and provides high performance, low latency, disk storage with consistent performance delivery guarantees.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/a2f3e6cdd02d_1280A/image_20.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/a2f3e6cdd02d_1280A/image_thumb_9.png" width="640" height="360"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Premium Storage is ideal for I/O-sensitive workloads - and is great for database workloads hosted within Virtual Machines.&amp;nbsp; You can optionally attach several premium storage disks to a single VM, and &lt;strong&gt;support&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;strong&gt;up to 32 TB of disk storage per Virtual Machine and drive more than 50,000 IOPS per VM at less than 1 millisecond latency for read operations&lt;/strong&gt;. This provides a wickedly fast storage option that enables you to run even more workloads in the cloud. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Using Premium Storage, Azure now offers the ability to "lift-and-shift" more demanding enterprise applications to the cloud - including SQL Server, Dynamics AX, Dynamics CRM, Exchange Server, MySQL, Oracle Database, IBM DB2, and SAP Business Suite solutions.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Premium Storage is now available in public preview starting today. To sign up to use the Azure Premium Storage preview, visit the &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/preview/"&gt;Azure Preview page&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;h4&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;u&gt;Disk Sizes and Performance&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h4&gt; &lt;p&gt;Premium Storage disks provide up to 5,000 IOPS and 200 MB/sec throughput depending on the disk size. When you create a new premium storage disk you get the option to select the disk size and performance characteristics you want based on your application performance and storage capacity needs.&amp;nbsp; For the public preview, we are offering three Premium Storage disk configurations:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;table class="GridTable7Colorful1" style="border-top: medium none; border-right: medium none; width: 5.75in; border-collapse: collapse; border-bottom: medium none; margin-left: 0.25pt; border-left: medium none; mso-border-alt: solid #666666 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: text1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-yfti-tbllook: 1184; mso-padding-alt: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="690" border="1"&gt; &lt;tbody&gt; &lt;tr style="height: 20.25pt; mso-yfti-irow: -1; mso-yfti-firstrow: yes; mso-yfti-lastfirstrow: yes"&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; height: 20.25pt; border-right: medium none; width: 139.5pt; background: white; border-bottom: #666666 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid #666666 .5pt; mso-background-themecolor: background1" valign="top" width="233"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; line-height: 106%; mso-yfti-cnfc: 517" align="center"&gt;&lt;b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: &amp;quot;Segoe UI&amp;quot;,sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-font-kerning: 12.0pt"&gt;Disk Types&lt;?xml:namespace prefix = "o" /&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; height: 20.25pt; border-right: medium none; width: 93.7pt; background: white; border-bottom: #666666 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid #666666 .5pt; mso-background-themecolor: background1" valign="top" width="156"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; line-height: 106%; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1" align="center"&gt;&lt;b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: &amp;quot;Segoe UI&amp;quot;,sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-font-kerning: 12.0pt"&gt;P10 &lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; height: 20.25pt; border-right: medium none; width: 90.8pt; background: white; border-bottom: #666666 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid #666666 .5pt; mso-background-themecolor: background1" valign="top" width="151"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; line-height: 106%; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1" align="center"&gt;&lt;b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: &amp;quot;Segoe UI&amp;quot;,sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-font-kerning: 12.0pt"&gt;P20&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; height: 20.25pt; border-right: medium none; width: 1.25in; background: white; border-bottom: #666666 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid #666666 .5pt; mso-background-themecolor: background1" valign="top" width="150"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; line-height: 106%; mso-yfti-cnfc: 1" align="center"&gt;&lt;b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: &amp;quot;Segoe UI&amp;quot;,sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-font-kerning: 12.0pt"&gt;P30&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr style="height: 22pt; mso-yfti-irow: 0"&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; height: 22pt; border-right: #666666 1pt solid; width: 139.5pt; background: white; border-bottom: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-background-themecolor: background1; mso-border-right-themecolor: text1; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-right-alt: solid #666666 .5pt" width="233"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right; line-height: 106%; mso-yfti-cnfc: 68" align="right"&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: &amp;quot;Segoe UI&amp;quot;,sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: calibri; mso-font-kerning: 12.0pt"&gt;Disk Size&lt;span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; height: 22pt; border-right: #666666 1pt solid; width: 93.7pt; background: #cccccc; border-bottom: #666666 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #666666 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: text1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-border-right-themecolor: text1; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #666666 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-border-left-alt: solid #666666 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: text1; mso-border-left-themetint: 153; mso-background-themetint: 51" width="156"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; line-height: 106%; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64" align="center"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: &amp;quot;Segoe UI&amp;quot;,sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: calibri; mso-font-kerning: 12.0pt"&gt;128 GB&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; height: 22pt; border-right: #666666 1pt solid; width: 90.8pt; background: #cccccc; border-bottom: #666666 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #666666 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: text1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-border-right-themecolor: text1; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #666666 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-border-left-alt: solid #666666 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: text1; mso-border-left-themetint: 153; mso-background-themetint: 51" width="151"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; line-height: 106%; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64" align="center"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: &amp;quot;Segoe UI&amp;quot;,sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: calibri; mso-font-kerning: 12.0pt"&gt;512 GB&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; height: 22pt; border-right: #666666 1pt solid; width: 1.25in; background: #cccccc; border-bottom: #666666 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #666666 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: text1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-border-right-themecolor: text1; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #666666 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-border-left-alt: solid #666666 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: text1; mso-border-left-themetint: 153; mso-background-themetint: 51" width="150"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; line-height: 106%; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64" align="center"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: &amp;quot;Segoe UI&amp;quot;,sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: calibri; mso-font-kerning: 12.0pt"&gt;1 TB&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr style="height: 22pt; mso-yfti-irow: 1"&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; height: 22pt; border-right: #666666 1pt solid; width: 139.5pt; background: white; border-bottom: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-background-themecolor: background1; mso-border-right-themecolor: text1; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-right-alt: solid #666666 .5pt" width="233"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right; line-height: 106%; mso-yfti-cnfc: 4" align="right"&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: &amp;quot;Segoe UI&amp;quot;,sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: calibri; mso-font-kerning: 12.0pt"&gt;IOPS per Disk&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: &amp;quot;Segoe UI&amp;quot;,sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; height: 22pt; border-right: #666666 1pt solid; width: 93.7pt; border-bottom: #666666 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #666666 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: text1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-border-right-themecolor: text1; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #666666 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-border-left-alt: solid #666666 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: text1; mso-border-left-themetint: 153" width="156"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; line-height: 106%" align="center"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: &amp;quot;Segoe UI&amp;quot;,sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-font-kerning: 12.0pt"&gt;500&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: &amp;quot;Segoe UI&amp;quot;,sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; height: 22pt; border-right: #666666 1pt solid; width: 90.8pt; border-bottom: #666666 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #666666 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: text1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-border-right-themecolor: text1; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #666666 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-border-left-alt: solid #666666 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: text1; mso-border-left-themetint: 153" width="151"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; line-height: 106%" align="center"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: &amp;quot;Segoe UI&amp;quot;,sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-font-kerning: 12.0pt"&gt;2300&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: &amp;quot;Segoe UI&amp;quot;,sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; height: 22pt; border-right: #666666 1pt solid; width: 1.25in; border-bottom: #666666 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #666666 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: text1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-border-right-themecolor: text1; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #666666 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-border-left-alt: solid #666666 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: text1; mso-border-left-themetint: 153" width="150"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; line-height: 106%" align="center"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: &amp;quot;Segoe UI&amp;quot;,sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-font-kerning: 12.0pt"&gt;5000&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: &amp;quot;Segoe UI&amp;quot;,sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt; &lt;tr style="height: 22pt; mso-yfti-irow: 2; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes"&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; height: 22pt; border-right: #666666 1pt solid; width: 139.5pt; background: white; border-bottom: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-background-themecolor: background1; mso-border-right-themecolor: text1; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-right-alt: solid #666666 .5pt" width="233"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right; line-height: 106%; mso-yfti-cnfc: 68" align="right"&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: &amp;quot;Segoe UI&amp;quot;,sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: calibri; mso-font-kerning: 12.0pt"&gt;Throughput per Disk&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: &amp;quot;Segoe UI&amp;quot;,sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; height: 22pt; border-right: #666666 1pt solid; width: 93.7pt; background: #cccccc; border-bottom: #666666 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #666666 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: text1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-border-right-themecolor: text1; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #666666 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-border-left-alt: solid #666666 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: text1; mso-border-left-themetint: 153; mso-background-themetint: 51" width="156"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; line-height: 106%; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64" align="center"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: &amp;quot;Segoe UI&amp;quot;,sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: calibri; mso-font-kerning: 12.0pt"&gt;100 MB/sec&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: &amp;quot;Segoe UI&amp;quot;,sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; height: 22pt; border-right: #666666 1pt solid; width: 90.8pt; background: #cccccc; border-bottom: #666666 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #666666 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: text1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-border-right-themecolor: text1; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #666666 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-border-left-alt: solid #666666 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: text1; mso-border-left-themetint: 153; mso-background-themetint: 51" width="151"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; line-height: 106%; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64" align="center"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: &amp;quot;Segoe UI&amp;quot;,sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-font-kerning: 12.0pt"&gt;150&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: &amp;quot;Segoe UI&amp;quot;,sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: calibri; mso-font-kerning: 12.0pt"&gt; MB/sec&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: &amp;quot;Segoe UI&amp;quot;,sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td style="border-top: medium none; height: 22pt; border-right: #666666 1pt solid; width: 1.25in; background: #cccccc; border-bottom: #666666 1pt solid; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-top: 0in; padding-left: 5.4pt; border-left: medium none; padding-right: 5.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid #666666 .5pt; mso-border-themecolor: text1; mso-border-themetint: 153; mso-border-bottom-themecolor: text1; mso-border-bottom-themetint: 153; mso-background-themecolor: text1; mso-border-right-themecolor: text1; mso-border-right-themetint: 153; mso-border-top-alt: solid #666666 .5pt; mso-border-top-themecolor: text1; mso-border-top-themetint: 153; mso-border-left-alt: solid #666666 .5pt; mso-border-left-themecolor: text1; mso-border-left-themetint: 153; mso-background-themetint: 51" width="150"&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; line-height: 106%; mso-yfti-cnfc: 64" align="center"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: &amp;quot;Segoe UI&amp;quot;,sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-font-kerning: 12.0pt"&gt;200&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: &amp;quot;Segoe UI&amp;quot;,sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: calibri; mso-font-kerning: 12.0pt"&gt; MB/sec&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: &amp;quot;Segoe UI&amp;quot;,sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt; &lt;p&gt;You can maximize the performance of your VMs by attaching multiple Premium Storage disks to them (up to the network bandwidth limit available to the VM for disk traffic). To learn the disk bandwidth available for each VM size, see the &lt;a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/dn197896.aspx"&gt;Virtual Machine and Cloud Service Sizes for Azure&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;h4&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;u&gt;Durability&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h4&gt; &lt;p&gt;Durability of data is of utmost importance for any persistent storage option. Azure customers have critical applications that depend on the persistence of their data and high tolerance against failures. Premium Storage keeps three replicas of data within the same region. In addition, you can also optionally create snapshots of your disks and copy those snapshots to a Standard GRS storage account - which enables you to maintain a geo-redundant snapshot of your data that is stored at least 400 miles away from your primary Azure region.  &lt;h4&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;em&gt;Learn More&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h4&gt; &lt;p&gt;You can learn more about Premium Storage disks &lt;a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=521898"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp; To sign up to use Premium Storage, go to the &lt;a href="http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/services/preview/"&gt;Azure Preview&lt;/a&gt; page, and sign up for Microsoft Azure Premium Storage service using your subscription.  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;RemoteApp: General Availability of Azure RemoteApp&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;I’m excited to announce the general availability of Azure RemoteApp. Using Azure RemoteApp, you can deploy Windows desktop applications in the cloud, and provide your users with an intuitive, high-fidelity, WAN-ready remote application experience.&amp;nbsp; Users can use the cloud-hosted Windows applications you enable on their phones, tablets, or PCs - &lt;strong&gt;including Windows, Mac, iOS and Android based devices&lt;/strong&gt;.&amp;nbsp; We are delivering RemoteApp with a &lt;strong&gt;super competitive price&lt;/strong&gt; - you can host your user's applications in the cloud for just &lt;strong&gt;$10/user/month&lt;/strong&gt;.&amp;nbsp; With today’s release, Azure RemoteApp is backed by an &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/legal/sla/"&gt;SLA&lt;/a&gt; and supported by Microsoft Support, offering the full scalability and security of the Azure cloud.  &lt;h4&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;u&gt;Getting Started&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h4&gt; &lt;p&gt;Setting up RemoteApp is easy. In the &lt;a href="https://manage.windowsazure.com"&gt;Azure Management Portal&lt;/a&gt;, select &lt;b&gt;NEW -&amp;gt; App Services -&amp;gt; RemoteApp -&amp;gt; Quick Create. &lt;/b&gt;Pick a name, region, select the scale configuration plan you want to use, pick one of the standard template images, and click OK. When you do this for the first time, your 30-day free trial will also start. This is a fully featured trial, available to all Azure customers.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/a2f3e6cdd02d_1280A/image_4.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/a2f3e6cdd02d_1280A/image_thumb_1.png" width="768" height="480"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;p&gt;A RemoteApp instance is an elastic, automatically scaled, collection of Windows Server VMs that are running the Remote Desktop Session Host role and host the applications. The VMs are all created based on the template image you provide. You can provide your own template image containing your custom apps, or use one of the standard template images we provide. One of these is for Office 365 ProPlus, which you can use if you have a subscription that contains the Office 365 ProPlus service:  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/a2f3e6cdd02d_1280A/image_6.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/a2f3e6cdd02d_1280A/image_thumb_2.png" width="768" height="480"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Once enabled, your users can quickly and easily connect to the applications you host in Azure.&amp;nbsp; They can use Windows, Mac, iOS and Android devices to connect to the RemoteApp service - enabling you to use Azure to run your Windows desktop applications anywhere in the world, on any device.  &lt;h4&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;u&gt;Enabling Hybrid Applications&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h4&gt; &lt;p&gt;Many business-critical Windows applications rely on on-premises infrastructure such as identity and machine management, and require access to on-premises databases and resources. Azure RemoteApp provides a hybrid deployment model that supports all of these scenarios.  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Hybrid Management&lt;/b&gt;: In a hybrid RemoteApp collection, the VMs which host your applications are joined to your AD domain. Therefore, you can use on-premises management tools like Group Policy, System Center, and many other enterprise management tools that rely on AD membership. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;b&gt;Federated Identity&lt;/b&gt;: You can use Azure Active Directory integrated with your on-premises AD and your users can logon with their familiar corporate identities. When the Windows applications starts, it is running in a fully domain-joined session, with the usual integrated authentication capabilities of a Windows domain. &lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hybrid Networking&lt;/strong&gt;: Windows applications in a hybrid RemoteApp collection can seamlessly access on-premises data and resources. This capability is built on Azure Virtual Networking with site-to-site VPN, providing cloud-premise virtual network connectivity. In the future, RemoteApp collections will support full range of Azure Networking capabilities, including ExpressRoute. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;h4&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;u&gt;Performance and Scale Configurations&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h4&gt; &lt;p&gt;With today's general availability release, we are offering two scale configurations: &lt;b&gt;BASIC &lt;/b&gt;and&lt;b&gt; STANDARD&lt;/b&gt;.  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;BASIC is intended for lighter, task-worker use cases, such as a single productivity application or a data-entry frontend to a line of business system. &lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;STANDARD is intended for typical productivity use cases such as using Outlook, Word, Excel and other knowledge worker line of business and productivity applications. &lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;You can select the scale configuration for your RemoteApp collection while creating it. If you want to change it later, you can do so using the &lt;b&gt;SCALE&lt;/b&gt; tab. Your applications and settings and your user data remain intact through this change.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/a2f3e6cdd02d_1280A/image_8.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/a2f3e6cdd02d_1280A/image_thumb_3.png" width="768" height="480"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;h4&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;u&gt;Pricing&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h4&gt; &lt;p&gt;We are making the RemoteApp service available at a very attractive, affordable price.&amp;nbsp; You can host a &lt;b&gt;line of business Windows application for as little as $10/user per month&lt;/b&gt; using the BASIC configuration.  &lt;p&gt;At the STANDARD level, you can host your users’ &lt;b&gt;entire productivity workspace for just $15/user per month&lt;/b&gt;.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h4&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;u&gt;Learn More&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h4&gt; &lt;p&gt;A variety of resources are available on the &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/remoteapp/"&gt;RemoteApp overview page&lt;/a&gt;. You can also &lt;a href="http://remoteapp.azure.com/"&gt;download the client for your device&lt;/a&gt; and take a test drive. Finally, &lt;a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rds/archive/2014/12/11/windows-apps-in-the-cloud-azure-remoteapp-now-generally-available.aspx"&gt;RDV Team blog&lt;/a&gt; discusses today’s new features in more detail.  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;SQL Databases: Now with SQL 2014 Features and Compatibility&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Today we are making available a preview of the next-generation release of our Azure SQL Database service.&amp;nbsp; We announced some of the preview's new features &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2014/11/05/preview-for-greater-sql-server-compatibility-coming-soon-to-azure-sql-database/"&gt;earlier in November&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp; Today's release delivers near-complete SQL Server 2014 engine compatibility and even better performance.  &lt;p&gt;Our internal benchmark tests (using over 600 million rows of data) show query performance improvements of around 5x with today's preview relative to our existing Premium Tier SQL Database offering and up to 100x performance improvements when using the new In-memory columnstore technology now supported with today's preview release.  &lt;h4&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;u&gt;Lots of great new features and improvements&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h4&gt; &lt;p&gt;Key highlights of today's preview include:  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Better management of large databases. &lt;/strong&gt;We now support heavier database workload management with parallel queries&lt;i&gt;,&lt;/i&gt; table partitioning, online indexing, worry-free large index rebuilds with the previous 2GB size limit removed, and&lt;em&gt; &lt;/em&gt;more&lt;em&gt; &lt;/em&gt;alter database commands. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Support for more programmability capabilities: &lt;/strong&gt;You can now build even more robust applications with CLR, T-SQL Windows functions, XML index, and change tracking support. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Up to 100x performance improvements &lt;/b&gt;with support for In-memory columnstore queries for data mart and analytic workloads. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Improved monitoring and troubleshooting:&lt;/b&gt; Extended Events (XEvents) and visibility into over 100 new table views via an expanded set of Database Management Views (DMVs). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;New S3 performance level: &lt;/strong&gt;Today's preview introduces a new pricing option for SQL Databases. The new "S3" performance tier delivers 100 DTU of performance (twice the DTU level of the existing S2 tier) and all of the features available in the Standard tier. It enables an even more cost effective way to run applications with higher performance needs. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;h4&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;u&gt;Learn More and Get Started&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h4&gt; &lt;p&gt;You can read more about the enhancements in today's preview on the &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/sql-database-preview-whats-new/"&gt;preview getting started page&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp; To use today's preview, you can navigate to the &lt;b&gt;SETTINGS&lt;/b&gt; part on the SQL Database blade in the &lt;a href="https://portal.azure.com/"&gt;Azure Preview Portal&lt;/a&gt; and upgrade to use the preview.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/a2f3e6cdd02d_1280A/image_10.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/a2f3e6cdd02d_1280A/image_thumb_4.png" width="624" height="348"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Try our the new features and give us your feedback!  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Media Services: General Availability of Live Media Streaming&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;I’m very excited to announce the General Availability of Live Channels&lt;b&gt; &lt;/b&gt;Media Streaming support.&amp;nbsp; Live Channels with Azure Media Services is the live services backbone that broadcasters such as &lt;strong&gt;NBC Sports&lt;/strong&gt; have used to deliver live online media streamed events such as &lt;strong&gt;English Premier League&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;NHL hockey&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;Sunday Night Football.&amp;nbsp; &lt;/strong&gt;A dozen international broadcasters also used it to seamlessly deliver live media streaming coverage of the &lt;strong&gt;2014 Sochi Winter Olympics&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;2014 FIFA World Cup&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;p&gt;You can now use Live Channels to stream events of your own - and scale to literally millions of users watching them.&amp;nbsp; Today's general availability release is backed by an enterprise-grade Service-Level Agreement (SLA)&lt;b&gt; &lt;/b&gt;for all customers.&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img title="Live Streaming" alt="Live Streaming" src="http://i.msdn.microsoft.com/dynimg/IC759890.png"&gt; &lt;h4&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;u&gt;Learn More&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h4&gt; &lt;p&gt;For more information on functionality and pricing, visit the &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2014/09/10/getting-started-with-live-streaming-using-the-azure-management-portal/"&gt;Getting Started with Live Streaming&lt;/a&gt; blog post, the &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/media-services/"&gt;Media Services&lt;/a&gt; webpage or &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/media-services/"&gt;Media Services Pricing&lt;/a&gt; webpage, or the &lt;a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn783466.aspx"&gt;Live Streaming&lt;/a&gt; MSDN section.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Search: Portal Management, Multi-language support&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;I am happy to announce a number of highly requested features available today in &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/search/" target="_blank"&gt;Azure Search&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp; Azure Search provides developers with all of the features needed to build out search experience for web and mobile applications without having to deal with the typical complexities that come with managing, tuning and scaling a real-world search service.&amp;nbsp; &lt;h4&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;u&gt;Azure Portal Enhancements &lt;/u&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h4&gt; &lt;p&gt;Helping developers setup and manage their services quickly and easily is a key goal of the &lt;a href="https://portal.azure.com/"&gt;Azure Management Portal&lt;/a&gt;. Today's release adds several new capabilities to the Azure Search support in the portal that makes it even easier to get started with Azure Search and reduce the need to write code.  &lt;p&gt;For example, you can now easily create a new index. In the portal, you can name the search index, set all of the fields, and assign the properties for each of them - all without writing any code:  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/a2f3e6cdd02d_1280A/image_12.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/a2f3e6cdd02d_1280A/image_thumb_5.png" width="624" height="317"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Once you create the index, you can also now drill into usage details like document counts and storage size. You can see all of the fields associated with this index as shown below:  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/a2f3e6cdd02d_1280A/image_14.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/a2f3e6cdd02d_1280A/image_thumb_6.png" width="429" height="595"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Index tuning is another enhancement now supported in the portal user interface. Boosting relevant items not only provides a better search experience, it also helps you achieve business objectives. For example, if you are searching a product index, you might want to boost documents where the result was found in the product name, as opposed to another document where the result was found in the product description. Or you may wish to use a scoring function that allows you to boost items that have high star ratings or that provide higher margins.  &lt;p&gt;The task of tuning an index was previously only available through the API. Starting today, using the &lt;a href="https://portal.azure.com/"&gt;Azure Preview portal&lt;/a&gt; you can create or alter &lt;a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/dn798928.aspx"&gt;scoring profiles&lt;/a&gt;, instantly tuning the results of your search queries without having to write a line of code:  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/a2f3e6cdd02d_1280A/image_16.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/a2f3e6cdd02d_1280A/image_thumb_7.png" width="589" height="459"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;h4&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;u&gt;Multilanguage Support across 27 Languages&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h4&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;With today’s release, Azure Search now has support for &lt;a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/dn879793.aspx"&gt;27 languages&lt;/a&gt;. This allows Azure Search to accommodate the unique characteristics of a given language, enabling word-breaking and text normalization to work as expected for each language. Part of this enhancement includes support for stemming in the relevant languages, reducing words to their &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stemming"&gt;word stems&lt;/a&gt;. For example, you can search for the word “runs” and find documents that say “run” or “running”.  &lt;p&gt;When creating an index you can choose to include content from multiple languages, allowing you to search and return results based on the chosen language of your user. For more information, you can visit the &lt;a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/dn879793.aspx"&gt;Language Support page&lt;/a&gt;. Over time, we will continue to enhance multi-language support to include additional languages.  &lt;h4&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;u&gt;API features&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h4&gt; &lt;p&gt;Last but not least, we’ve introduced a new &lt;a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/dn832684.aspx"&gt;Azure Search Management REST API&lt;/a&gt; that allows you to perform common administrative tasks, such as creating new services, and scaling services to allow for additional storage or higher query-per-second rates. You can see a sample of how to use this &lt;a href="https://azuresearchmgmtapi.codeplex.com/"&gt;Management API at CodePlex&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Document DB: Bulk Add Documents and Syntax Highlighting&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/documentdb/" target="_blank"&gt;DocumentDB&lt;/a&gt; is a NoSQL document database service designed for scalable and high performance modern applications.&amp;nbsp; DocumentDB is delivered as a fully managed service (meaning you don’t have to manage any infrastructure or VMs yourself) with an enterprise grade SLA.  &lt;p&gt;We now support some nice new capabilities for Document DB in the &lt;a href="https://portal.azure.com/"&gt;Azure Preview Portal&lt;/a&gt;:  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Add Documents: &lt;/strong&gt;Upload existing JSON documents via Document Explorer  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Query syntax highlighting: &lt;/strong&gt;Document DB SQL query &lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;These features make it even easier to get started and explore DocumentDB.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h4&gt;&lt;em&gt;Add Documents Support within the Azure Portal&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h4&gt; &lt;p&gt;The DocumentDB Document Explorer within the Azure Preview Portal now supports the uploading of existing JSON documents - which makes it easy to import and start using existing data stored in existing JSON files. Simply open Document Explorer and click the &lt;b&gt;Add Document &lt;/b&gt;command:  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/a2f3e6cdd02d_1280A/image_22.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/a2f3e6cdd02d_1280A/image_thumb_10.png" width="313" height="401"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;p&gt;In the new blade that opens, click the browse button to open a file explorer and select 1 or more JSON documents to upload. Note that Document Explorer currently supports up to 100 JSON document files in a single upload operation.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/a2f3e6cdd02d_1280A/image_24.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/a2f3e6cdd02d_1280A/image_thumb_11.png" width="624" height="280"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Once you’re satisfied with your selection, click the &lt;b&gt;upload&lt;/b&gt; button. The documents will automatically be added to the Document Explorer grid and aggregate results will be displayed as the upload operation is in progress.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/a2f3e6cdd02d_1280A/image_26.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/a2f3e6cdd02d_1280A/image_thumb_12.png" width="624" height="396"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Once the operation has completed, you can select up to another 100 documents to upload without having to close the Add Document blade.&amp;nbsp; This makes it easy to import data into your DocumentDB databases.  &lt;h4&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;u&gt;Query Explorer – Syntax Highlighting&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h4&gt; &lt;p&gt;We’ve also enabled basic keyword and value highlighting within Query Explorer.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/a2f3e6cdd02d_1280A/image_28.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/a2f3e6cdd02d_1280A/image_thumb_13.png" width="486" height="358"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;p&gt;This makes it even easier to experiment and test queries against your NoSQL databases.  &lt;p&gt;Please send us your feedback and suggestions on the Microsoft Azure DocumentDB &lt;a href="http://feedback.azure.com/forums/263030-documentdb?filter=top&amp;amp;page=1"&gt;feedback forum&lt;/a&gt;. If you haven’t tried DocumentDB yet, you can learn more about how to get started &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/documentdb/"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Disaster Recovery: GA of DR for Branch Offices &amp;amp; SMB Customers&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;I’m excited to announce the General Availability of the &lt;b&gt;Disaster Recovery (DR) to Azure for Branch offices and SMB feature &lt;/b&gt;in our Azure Site Recovery (ASR) service.&amp;nbsp; Today's new support enables consistent replication, protection, and recovery of Virtual Machines directly in Microsoft Azure.&amp;nbsp; With this new support we have extended the Azure Site Recovery service to become a simple, reliable &amp;amp; cost effective DR Solution for enabling Virtual Machine replication and recovery between Windows Server 2012 R2 and Microsoft Azure without having to deploy a System Center Virtual Machine Manager on your primary site.  &lt;p&gt;These features&lt;b&gt; &lt;/b&gt;builds on top of the Hyper-V Replica technology available in Windows Server 2012 R2 and Microsoft Azure to provide remote health monitoring, no-impact recovery plan testing and single click orchestrated recovery – all of this backed by an SLA that is enterprise grade.  &lt;h4&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;u&gt;Verify DR Plans with Confidence&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h4&gt; &lt;p&gt;The &lt;b&gt;Test Failover&lt;/b&gt; feature within Azure Site Recovery allows you to test your disaster recovery plans &lt;u&gt;without impacting your production workload&lt;/u&gt; which ensures that you can perform periodic DR drills to meet your compliance objectives. You can connect to the virtual machine running in Azure via RDP after enabling the appropriate endpoints for the virtual machine running in Azure.  &lt;p&gt;A &lt;b&gt;Planned Failover&lt;/b&gt; will do a shutdown of your on-premises machine, transfer all the last changes inside the virtual machine to Azure &amp;amp; then bring up an instance of the VM in Azure without any data loss. An &lt;b&gt;Unplanned Failover&lt;/b&gt; is usually triggered when your on-premises site has been hit by an unexpected disaster.  &lt;p&gt;If you are looking for failing over a multi-virtual machine application, you can do so using the &lt;a href="http://aka.ms/asr_ga_blog_rp_blog"&gt;One-Click Orchestration using Recovery Plans&lt;/a&gt; feature available in Azure Site Recovery. Recovery plans make failover and failback from Azure easy and ensure that you meet your Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) goals of your organization.  &lt;p&gt;Check out additional &lt;a href="http://aka.ms/b2a_blog_pricing"&gt;pricing&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href="http://aka.ms/b2a_blog_productinfo"&gt;product information&lt;/a&gt; about Azure Site Recovery, and &lt;a href="http://aka.ms/b2a_blog_trial"&gt;sign up for a free Azure trial&lt;/a&gt; and start using it today.  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Active Directory: GA of Application Proxy and Password Writeback support&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Today's Azure update includes some great updates to Azure Active Directory.  &lt;h4&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;u&gt;Azure Active Directory Application Proxy &lt;/u&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h4&gt; &lt;p&gt;The Azure Active Directory Application Proxy allows you to make your on-premises web applications securely accessible to users who want to use them from the cloud - and enables you to authenticate access to them using Azure AD.  &lt;p&gt;You can do this without changing your applications and without having to change your DMZ configuration. Just install a lightweight connector anywhere on your network and configure access to the application in your Azure Active Directory, and you can make your SharePoint, Outlook Web Access (or any other Web application that relies on Kerberos) available to users outside your corporate network.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/a2f3e6cdd02d_1280A/image_18.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/a2f3e6cdd02d_1280A/image_thumb_8.png" width="540" height="254"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;p&gt;With today's release we added support for Kerberos Constrained Delegation. Now, once a user has authenticated to Azure Active Directory, the Azure Active Directory Application Proxy can automatically authenticate users to your on-premises application.  &lt;h4&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;u&gt;Password Writeback for Azure Active Directory Premium Customers&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h4&gt; &lt;p&gt;With the new Password Writeback support in Azure AD Sync, you can now configure your Active Directory system so that any time a user or administrator changes a password in Azure AD, the new password is also written back to your on-premises Active Directory as well. So, for example, when a user forgets their password to your on-premises AD, they can reset their password using the Azure AD password reset service we provide in the cloud, and then use their new password to sign on to your on-premises AD.&amp;nbsp; This makes it easier for organizations to enable a variety of self-service IT and password reset features to their employees and partners.  &lt;h4&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;u&gt;Preview of security questions for password reset&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h4&gt; &lt;p&gt;With today's release we’re also introducing preview support that enables you to configure security questions for password reset scenarios. This enables users to register their answers to secret questions, and then use those answers to prove who they are when they go to reset a forgotten password.  &lt;h4&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;u&gt;Add your own password SSO for SaaS applications&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h4&gt; &lt;p&gt;With today's release we are introducing the preview of functionality that lets you configure password-based single sign-on for any web application that has an HTML sign-in page, even for applications that are not in the &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/active-directory/#all"&gt;Azure AD Application Gallery&lt;/a&gt;. You can also add any links to your users’ &lt;a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/dn308588.aspx"&gt;Azure AD Access Panel&lt;/a&gt;, such as deep links to specific SharePoint pages, or to web apps that use Active Directory Federation Services.  &lt;h4&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;u&gt;More Ways to Get AD Premium&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h4&gt; &lt;p&gt;We now support the ability to purchase Azure Active Directory Premium online at the &lt;a href="https://portal.office.com/commerce/catalog.aspx"&gt;Office 365 commerce catalogue&lt;/a&gt;, where you can purchase Azure AD Premium licenses for as many users as you want.&amp;nbsp; You can then easily manage your Azure Active Directory by navigating to &lt;a href="http://aka.ms/accessAAD"&gt;http://aka.ms/accessAAD&lt;/a&gt; or through the Office administration portal.&lt;u&gt;&lt;/u&gt;  &lt;p&gt;To learn more about these new capabilities and how you can start using them, read Alex Simons’ post on the &lt;a href="http://blogs.technet.com/b/ad/"&gt;Active Directory Team Blog&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Summary&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Today’s Microsoft Azure release enables a ton of great new scenarios, and makes building applications hosted in the cloud even easier.  &lt;p&gt;If you don’t already have a Azure account, you can sign-up for a &lt;a href="https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/free-trial/"&gt;free trial&lt;/a&gt; and start using all of the above features today.&amp;nbsp; Then visit the &lt;a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/"&gt;Microsoft Azure Developer Center&lt;/a&gt; to learn more about how to build apps with it.  &lt;p&gt;Hope this helps,  &lt;p&gt;Scott  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: &lt;/em&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.twitter.com/scottgu"&gt;twitter.com/scottgu&lt;/a&gt;</description><pubDate>Thu, 11 Dec 2014 19:14:56 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="true">https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/azure-premium-storage-remoteapp-sql-database-update-live-media-streaming-search-and-more</guid><category>Azure</category><category>.NET</category><category>Community News</category></item><item><title>Announcing Open Source of .NET Core Framework, .NET Core Distribution for Linux/OSX, and Free Visual Studio Community Edition</title><link>https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/announcing-open-source-of-net-core-framework-net-core-distribution-for-linux-osx-and-free-visual-studio-community-edition</link><description>&lt;p&gt;This week we are holding our &lt;a href="http://www.visualstudio.com/connect-event-vs"&gt;Connect() developer event&lt;/a&gt; in New York City.&amp;nbsp; This is an event that is being streamed online for free, and it covers some of the great new capabilities coming with the Visual Studio 2015 and .NET 5 releases.&amp;nbsp; You can watch the event live as well as on-demand &lt;a href="http://www.visualstudio.com/connect-event-vs"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;p&gt;I just finished giving the opening keynote of the event during which I made several big announcements:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Announcing the Open Sourcing of the .NET Core Runtime and Libraries &lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Over the last several years we have integrated more and more open source technology into our .NET, Visual Studio, and Azure offerings.&amp;nbsp; We have also begun to open source more of our own code and technology as well.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Earlier this year, at the Build 2014 conference, I announced the creation of the &lt;a href="http://www.dotnetfoundation.org/" target="_blank"&gt;.NET Foundation&lt;/a&gt; – which is an independent organization designed to foster the development and collaboration of open source technologies for .NET.&amp;nbsp; We have now open sourced ASP.NET, EF, Web API, NuGet and the "Roslyn" C# and VB compilers under it.&amp;nbsp; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;It has been great to see the energy and innovation in these technologies since we made the open source announcements. We continue to have dedicated Microsoft teams working on each of them (several of the teams have more developers than ever before).&amp;nbsp; The open source process is now enabling the teams to collaborate even more with other developers in the community, and &lt;em&gt;every single one&lt;/em&gt; of the above projects have now accepted code contributions from developers outside Microsoft.&amp;nbsp; The combination is enabling an even richer flow of ideas, and even better products.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;em&gt;Open Sourcing the .NET Core Runtime and Libraries&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Today I’m excited to announce that we are going even further, and will be &lt;strong&gt;open sourcing the .NET Core Runtime&lt;/strong&gt;.&amp;nbsp; This will include everything needed to execute .NET code – including the CLR, Just-In-Time Compiler (JIT), Garbage Collector (GC), and core .NET base class libraries.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;We are releasing the source under the MIT open source license and are also issuing an explicit patent promise to clarify users patent rights to .NET.&amp;nbsp; This morning, we published the public repository on GitHub where the project will be hosted: &lt;a href="https://github.com/dotnet/corefx" target="_blank"&gt;https://github.com/dotnet/corefx&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Today’s source release includes many of the newer core .NET framework libraries (ImmutableCollections, SIMD, XML and MetadataReader).&amp;nbsp; These libraries are fully open, and are ready to accept contributions.&amp;nbsp; Over the next several weeks and months we will continue to transfer source (including the Core CLR which is not there right now but in the process of being moved) into the repository and likewise make it open for contributions.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;em&gt;What does this open sourcing mean?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/u&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Today’s open source announcement means that developers will have a fully supported, fully open source, fully cross platform .NET stack for creating server and cloud applications – including everything from the C#/VB compilers, to the CLR runtime, to the core .NET base class libraries, to the higher-level .NET Web, Data and API frameworks.  &lt;p&gt;It is an exciting day for .NET, and the new open source process will allow the .NET teams in Microsoft to collaborate even more deeply with other developers around the world.&amp;nbsp; The result is going to be even better products for everyone.  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Announcing .NET Core Framework on Linux and OSX&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Last month at a Cloud Event we held in San Francisco, Satya Nadella – our CEO – showed a slide like this one where he talked about how Microsoft loves Linux:  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/fa5d1ce7201f_EFDE/image_4.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/fa5d1ce7201f_EFDE/image_thumb_1.png" width="560" height="334"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;p&gt;We’ve worked hard with &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com" target="_blank"&gt;Azure&lt;/a&gt; to make it a first-class cloud platform for Linux based applications, and shared how more than 20% of all VMs running on Azure are Linux based.&amp;nbsp; In fact, we now have 5 different Linux distributions officially supported for use on Azure – with full integration within our management portal and command-line extensibility.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;u&gt;Bringing Core .NET to Linux and OS X&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Today I’m excited to announce the .NET side of our Linux support.&amp;nbsp; In addition to making the .NET server stack open-source, we are also going to release an official distribution of the .NET Core for Linux, as well as an official distribution of .NET Core for the Mac operation system as well.  &lt;p&gt;This will enable you to build .NET server and cloud applications and run them on both Windows Server and Linux.&amp;nbsp; It is going to enable every developer – regardless of what operating system they use to develop or target – to use .NET. And to do so on a fully open source runtime.  &lt;p&gt;We will be working closely with the Mono community as we complete our Linux port.&amp;nbsp; The Mono community have done a great job advancing .NET and Linux over the last decade.&amp;nbsp; Releasing the .NET Core source under an open source license is going to enable us to collaborate together much more closely going forward.&amp;nbsp; There are many Linux enhancements Mono has built that we would like to use, and likewise there are improvements Mono will be able to benefit from by being able to use the .NET source code.&amp;nbsp; Today’s set of announcements are a big win for everyone.  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Announcing Visual Studio Community Edition&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;I’m also excited to announce that we are launching a new &lt;u&gt;free edition &lt;/u&gt;of Visual Studio today that will empower even more developers to build great apps and solutions.  &lt;p&gt;The new Visual Studio Community 2013 edition is a full-featured IDE.&amp;nbsp; It supports multiple project types in one solution file in a single IDE, and has all of the productivity features and IDE extensibility capabilities (meaning you can use Xamarin, ReSharper, VsVim, and any other VSIX extension) that developers love in Visual Studio.  &lt;p&gt;It is now available &lt;u&gt;completely free&lt;/u&gt; for:  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;Any individual developer working on a commercial or non-commercial project  &lt;li&gt;Any developer contributing to an open source project  &lt;li&gt;Anyone in an academic research or course setting (e.g. students, teachers, classroom, online course)  &lt;li&gt;Any non-enterprise organization with 5 or fewer developers working on a commercial/non-commercial project together&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;We are making it available for download starting today, and developers can download and start using it immediately.&amp;nbsp; There is no program you need to join to use it – simply visit &lt;a href="http://www.visualstudio.com" target="_blank"&gt;www.visualstudio.com&lt;/a&gt;, click the download button, and you are good to go.&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;It is going to enable even more developers to take advantage of Visual Studio and build even better applications.&amp;nbsp; We are looking forward to seeing what you build with it.  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Summary&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;It has never been a better time to be a software developer.&amp;nbsp; Software is what enables organizations to succeed in today’s digital environment.&amp;nbsp; It is what enables businesses to connect better with customers, to deliver amazing new experiences, to drive new revenue streams, and to run operations more efficiently.  &lt;p&gt;Using the cloud, every software developer on the planet can now create and build solutions that can reach millions of users, with no upfront costs, powered by a cloud infrastructure that delivers completely global reach.&amp;nbsp; The impact an individual developer can now have has never been greater than it is today.  &lt;p&gt;Our goal at Microsoft is to provide developers with the platform and tools that will make them incredibly successful.&amp;nbsp; It is a mission we have had since the very beginning of the company.&amp;nbsp; Today’s .NET open source, cross platform, and Visual Studio Community edition announcements will enable the development technology we build to be leveraged by an even wider range of developers.&amp;nbsp; We are really excited to see some of the new apps and solutions that are built with it.  &lt;p&gt;In addition to the above announcements, we are also announcing and demoing tons of new features and services for the first time at our &lt;a href="http://www.visualstudio.com/connect-event-vs" target="_blank"&gt;Connect() event&lt;/a&gt; streamed from New York.&amp;nbsp; You can watch the online presentations &lt;a href="http://www.visualstudio.com/connect-event-vs" target="_blank"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp; Also read &lt;a href="http://aka.ms/soma-connect" target="_blank"&gt;Soma’s blog post&lt;/a&gt; for a summary of some of the new VS 2015 and .NET 5 capabilities we announced this week.  &lt;p&gt;Hope this helps,  &lt;p&gt;Scott  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: &lt;a href="http://www.twitter.com/scottgu" target="_blank"&gt;@scottgu&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;</description><pubDate>Wed, 12 Nov 2014 15:45:50 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="true">https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/announcing-open-source-of-net-core-framework-net-core-distribution-for-linux-osx-and-free-visual-studio-community-edition</guid><category>.NET</category><category>Community News</category><category>Visual Studio</category></item><item><title>Azure: Announcing New Real-time Data Streaming and Data Factory Services</title><link>https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/azure-announcing-new-real-time-data-streaming-and-data-factory-services</link><description>&lt;p&gt;The last three weeks have been busy ones for Azure.&amp;nbsp; Two weeks ago we &lt;a href="http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/docker-and-microsoft-integrating-docker-with-windows-server-and-microsoft-azure" target="_blank"&gt;announced a partnership with Docker&lt;/a&gt; to enable great container-based development experiences on Linux, Windows Server and Microsoft Azure.  &lt;p&gt;Last week we held our Cloud Day event and &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2014/10/20/azures-getting-bigger-faster-and-more-open/" target="_blank"&gt;announced&lt;/a&gt; our new &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2014/10/20/azures-getting-bigger-faster-and-more-open/" target="_blank"&gt;G-Series of Virtual Machines as well as Premium Storage offering&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp; The G-Series VMs provide the largest VM sizes available in the public cloud today (nearly 2x more memory than the largest AWS offering, and 4x more memory than the largest Google offering).&amp;nbsp; The new Premium Storage offering (which will work with both our D-series and G-series of VMs) will support up to 32TB of storage per VM, &amp;gt;50,000 IOPS of disk IO per VM, and enable sub-1ms read latency.&amp;nbsp; Combined they provide an enormous amount of power that enables you to run even bigger and better solutions in the cloud.  &lt;p&gt;Earlier this week, we officially opened our new &lt;a href="http://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2014/10/26/microsoft-azure-australia-geo-generally-available/" target="_blank"&gt;Azure Australia regions&lt;/a&gt; – which are our 18th and 19th Azure regions open for business around the world.&amp;nbsp; Then at TechEd Europe we &lt;a href="http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/azure-new-marketplace-network-improvements-new-batch-service-automation-service-more" target="_blank"&gt;announced another round of new features&lt;/a&gt; – including the launch of the new &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/" target="_blank"&gt;Azure MarketPlace&lt;/a&gt;, a bunch of great network improvements, our new &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/batch/" target="_blank"&gt;Batch computing service&lt;/a&gt;, general availability of our &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/automation/" target="_blank"&gt;Azure Automation service&lt;/a&gt; and more.  &lt;p&gt;Today, I’m excited to blog about even more new services we have released this week in the Azure Data space.&amp;nbsp; These include: &lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Event Hubs:&lt;/strong&gt; is a scalable service for ingesting and storing data from websites, client apps, and IoT sensors.  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stream Analytics&lt;/strong&gt;: is a cost-effective event processing engine that helps uncover real-time insights from event streams.  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Data Factory:&lt;/strong&gt; enables better information production by orchestrating and managing diverse data and data movement. &lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;Azure Event Hub is now available in general availability, and the new Azure Stream Analytics and Data Factory services are now in public preview.  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Event Hubs: Log Millions of events per second in near real time&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/event-hubs/" target="_blank"&gt;Azure Event Hub service&lt;/a&gt; is a highly scalable telemetry ingestion service that can &lt;strong&gt;log millions of events per second&lt;/strong&gt; in near real time.&amp;nbsp; You can use the Event Hub service to collect data/events from any IoT device, from any app (web, mobile, or a backend service), or via feeds like social networks.&amp;nbsp; We are using it internally within Microsoft to monitor some of our largest online systems.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Once you collect events with Event Hub you can then analyze the data using any real-time analytics system (like Apache Storm or our new Azure Stream Analytics service) and store/transform it into any data storage system (including HDInsight and Hadoop based solutions).&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Event Hub is delivered as a managed service on Azure (meaning we run, scale and patch it for you and provide an enterprise SLA).&amp;nbsp; It delivers:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;Ability to log millions of events per second in near real time  &lt;li&gt;Elastic scaling support with the ability to scale-up/down with no interruption  &lt;li&gt;Support for multiple protocols including support for HTTP and AMQP based events  &lt;li&gt;Flexible authorization and throttling device policies  &lt;li&gt;Time-based event buffering with event order preservation&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;The pricing model for Event Hubs is very flexible – for just $11/month you can provision a basic Event Hub with guaranteed performance capacity to capture 1 MB/sec of events sent to your Event Hub.&amp;nbsp; You can then provision as many additional capacity units as you need if your event traffic goes higher.&amp;nbsp; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;em&gt;Getting Started with Capturing Events&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;You can create a new Event Hub using the Azure Portal or via the command-line.&amp;nbsp; Choose New-&amp;gt;App Service-&amp;gt;Service Bus-&amp;gt;Event Hub in the portal to do so:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/282efe892640_10ED0/image_2.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/282efe892640_10ED0/image_thumb.png" width="870" height="327"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Once created, events can be sent to an Event Hub with either a strongly-typed API (e.g. .NET or Java client library) or by just sending a raw HTTP or AMQP message to the service.&amp;nbsp; Below is a simple example of how easy it is to log an IoT event to an Event Hub using just a standard HTTP post request.&amp;nbsp; Notice the Authorization header in the HTTP post – you can use this to optionally enable flexible authentication/authorization for your devices:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN" style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-ansi-language: en"&gt;POST https://your-namespace.servicebus.windows.net/your-event-hub/messages?timeout=60&amp;amp;api-version=2014-01 HTTP/1.1&lt;?xml:namespace prefix = "o" /&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN" style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-ansi-language: en"&gt;Authorization: SharedAccessSignature sr=your-namespace.servicebus.windows.net&amp;amp;sig=tYu8qdH563Pc96Lky0SFs5PhbGnljF7mLYQwCZmk9M0%3d&amp;amp;se=1403736877&amp;amp;skn=RootManageSharedAccessKey&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN" style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-ansi-language: en"&gt;ContentType: application/atom+xml;type=entry;charset=utf-8&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN" style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-ansi-language: en"&gt;Host: your-namespace.servicebus.windows.net&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN" style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-ansi-language: en"&gt;Content-Length: 42&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN" style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-ansi-language: en"&gt;Expect: 100-continue&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN" style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; color: black; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-ansi-language: en"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; line-height: normal; tab-stops: 45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt"&gt;&lt;span lang="EN" style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-ansi-language: en"&gt;{ "DeviceId":"dev-01", "Temperature":"37.0" }&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span lang="EN" style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; color: black; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-ansi-language: en"&gt;&lt;o:p&gt;&lt;/o:p&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Your Event Hub can collect up to millions of messages per second like this, each storing whatever data schema you want within them, and the Event Hubs service will store them in-order for you to later read/consume. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;u&gt;Downstream Event Processing&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Once you collect events, you no doubt want to do something with them.&amp;nbsp; Event Hubs includes an intelligent processing agent that allows for automatic partition management and load distribution across readers.&amp;nbsp; You can implement any logic you want within readers, and the data sent to the readers is delivered in the order it was sent to the Event Hub. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;In addition to supporting the ability for you to write custom Event Readers, we also have two easy ways to work with pre-built stream processing systems: including our new Azure Stream Analytics Service and Apache Storm.&amp;nbsp; Our new Azure Stream Analytics service supports doing stream processing directly from Event Hubs, and Microsoft has created an Event Hubs Storm Spout for use with Apache Storm clusters.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The below diagram helps express some of the many rich ways you can use Event Hubs to collect and then hand-off events/data for processing:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/282efe892640_10ED0/image_8.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/282efe892640_10ED0/image_thumb_3.png" width="621" height="297"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Event Hubs provides a super flexible and cost effective building-block that you can use to collect and process any events or data you can stream to the cloud.&amp;nbsp; It is very cost effective, and provides the scalability you need to meet any needs.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;em&gt;Learning More about Event Hubs&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/u&gt;  &lt;p&gt;For more information about Azure Event Hubs, please review the following resources:  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/event-hubs/"&gt;Azure Event Hubs&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/dn789972.aspx"&gt;Event Hubs Conceptual Overview&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/azure/en-US/home?forum=servbus"&gt;Azure Service Bus Forum&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/hdinsight-storm-sensor-data-analysis"&gt;Storm Spout Resources&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/stream-analytics/"&gt;Azure Stream Analytics Resources&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Stream Analytics: Distributed Stream Processing Service for Azure&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;I’m excited to announce the preview our new Azure Stream Analytics service – a fully managed real-time distributed stream computation service that provides low latency, scalable processing of streaming data in the cloud with an enterprise grade SLA. The new Azure Stream Analytics service &lt;strong&gt;easily scales from small projects with just a few KB/sec of throughput to a&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;strong&gt;gigabyte/sec or more of streamed data messages/events&lt;/strong&gt;.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;Our Stream Analytics pricing model enable you to run low throughput streaming workloads continuously at low cost, and enables you to only have to scale up as your business needs increase.&amp;nbsp; We do this while maintaining built in guarantees of event delivery, and state management for fast recovery which enables mission critical business continuity.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;em&gt;Dramatically Simpler Developer Experience for Stream Processing Data&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/u&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Stream Analytics supports a SQL-like language that dramatically lowers the bar of the developer expertise required to create a scalable stream processing solution. A developer can simply write a few lines of SQL to do common operations including basic filtering, temporal analysis operations, joining multiple live streams of data with other static data sources, and detecting stream patterns (or lack thereof).  &lt;p&gt;This dramatically reduces the complexity and time it takes to develop, maintain and apply time-sensitive computations on real-time streams of data. Most other streaming solutions available today require you to write complex custom code, but with Azure Stream Analytics you can write simple, declarative and familiar SQL.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;em&gt;Fully Managed Service that is Easy to Setup&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/u&gt;  &lt;p&gt;With Stream Analytics you can dramatically accelerate how quickly you can derive valuable real time insights and analytics on data from devices, sensors, infrastructure, or applications. With a few clicks in the Azure Portal, you can create a streaming pipeline, configure its inputs and outputs, and provide SQL-like queries to describe the desired stream transformations/analysis you wish to do on the data. Once running, you are able to monitor the scale/speed of your overall streaming pipeline and make adjustments to achieve the desired throughput and latency.  &lt;p&gt;You can create a new Stream Analytics Job in the Azure Portal, by choosing &lt;strong&gt;New-&amp;gt;Data Services-&amp;gt;Stream Analytics&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/282efe892640_10ED0/image_10.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/282efe892640_10ED0/image_thumb_4.png" width="624" height="272"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;em&gt;Setup Streaming Data Input&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Once created, your first step will be to add a Streaming Data Input.&amp;nbsp; This allows you to indicate where the data you want to perform stream processing on is coming from.&amp;nbsp; From within the portal you can choose &lt;strong&gt;Inputs-&amp;gt;Add An Input &lt;/strong&gt;to launch a wizard that enables you to specify this:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/282efe892640_10ED0/image_12.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/282efe892640_10ED0/image_thumb_5.png" width="624" height="264"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;We can use the Azure Event Hub Service to deliver us a stream of data to perform processing on. If you already have an Event Hub created, you can choose it from a list populated in the wizard above.&amp;nbsp; You will also be asked to specify the format that is being used to serialize incoming event in the Event Hub (e.g. JSON, CSV or Avro formats).&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;em&gt;Setup Output Location&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The next step to developing our Stream Analytics job is to add a Streaming Output Location.&amp;nbsp; This will configure where we want the output results of our stream processing pipeline to go.&amp;nbsp; We can choose to easily output the results to Blob Storage, another Event Hub, or a SQL Database:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/282efe892640_10ED0/image_16.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/282efe892640_10ED0/image_thumb_7.png" width="624" height="232"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Note that being able to use another Event Hub as a target provides a powerful way to connect multiple streams into an overall pipeline with multiple steps.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;em&gt;Write Streaming Queries&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Now that we have our input and output sources configured, we can now write SQL queries to transform, aggregate and/or correlate the incoming input (or set of inputs in the event of multiple input sources) and output them to our output target.&amp;nbsp; We can do this within the portal by selecting the &lt;strong&gt;QUERY&lt;/strong&gt; tab at the top.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/282efe892640_10ED0/image_14.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/282efe892640_10ED0/image_thumb_6.png" width="624" height="94"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;There are a number of interesting queries you can write to processing the incoming stream of data.&amp;nbsp; For example, in the previous Event Hub section of this blog post I showed how you can use an HTTP POST command to submit JSON based temperature data from an IoT device to an Event Hub with data in JSON format like so:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;span lang="EN" style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: &amp;quot;Courier New&amp;quot;; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: &amp;quot;Times New Roman&amp;quot;; mso-ansi-language: en"&gt;{ "DeviceId":"dev-01", "Temperature":"37.0" }&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;When multiple devices are streaming events simultaneously into our Event Hub like this, it would feed into our Stream Analytics job as a stream of continuous data events that look like the sequence below:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img alt="" src="https://acomdpsstorage.blob.core.windows.net/dpsmedia-prod/azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/stream-analytics-get-started/20141029115546/azurestreamanalyticssqloutput1.png"&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Wouldn’t it be interesting to be able to analyze this data using a time-window perspective instead?&amp;nbsp; For example, it would be useful to calculate in real-time what the average temperature of each device was in the last 5 seconds of multiple readings.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;With the Stream Analytics Service we can now dynamically calculate this over our incoming live stream of data just by writing a SQL query like so:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;form id="RunwayMasterForm" method="post"&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;div class="wa-container" data-tag-area="content" data-tag-group="body"&gt;&lt;section class="wa-section wa-section-documentationArticle"&gt; &lt;div class="wa-content"&gt;&lt;pre class="prettyprint  prettyprinted"&gt;&lt;span class="pln"&gt;SELECT &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="typ"&gt;DateAdd&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pun"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pln"&gt;second&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pun"&gt;,-&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="lit"&gt;5&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pun"&gt;,&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="typ"&gt;System&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pun"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="typ"&gt;TimeStamp&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pun"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pln"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="kwd"&gt;as&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pln"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="typ"&gt;WinStartTime&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pun"&gt;,&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pln"&gt; system&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pun"&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="typ"&gt;TimeStamp&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pln"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="kwd"&gt;as&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pln"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="typ"&gt;WinEndTime&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pun"&gt;,&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pln"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="typ"&gt;DeviceId&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pun"&gt;,&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pln"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="typ"&gt;Avg&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pun"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="typ"&gt;Temperature&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pun"&gt;)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pln"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="kwd"&gt;as&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pln"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="typ"&gt;AvgTemperature&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pun"&gt;,&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pln"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="typ"&gt;Count&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pun"&gt;(*)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pln"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="kwd"&gt;as&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pln"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="typ"&gt;EventCount&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pln"&gt;
  2.    FROM input
  3.    GROUP BY &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="typ"&gt;TumblingWindow&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pun"&gt;(&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pln"&gt;second&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pun"&gt;,&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pln"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="lit"&gt;5&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pun"&gt;),&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pln"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="typ"&gt;DeviceId&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="pln"&gt;
  4. &lt;/span&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/section&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/form&gt;
  5. &lt;p&gt;Running this query in our Stream Analytics job will aggregate/transform our incoming stream of data events and output data like below into the output source we configured for our job (e,g, a blog storage file or a SQL Database):&lt;/p&gt;
  6. &lt;p&gt;&lt;img alt="" src="https://acomdpsstorage.blob.core.windows.net/dpsmedia-prod/azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/stream-analytics-get-started/20141029115546/azurestreamanalyticssqloutput2.png"&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  7. &lt;p&gt;The great thing about this approach is that the data is being aggregated/transformed in real time as events are being streamed to us, and it scales to handle literally gigabytes of data event streamed per second.&lt;/p&gt;
  8. &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;em&gt;Scaling your Stream Analytics Job&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  9. &lt;p&gt;Once defined, you can easily monitor the activity of your Stream Analytics Jobs in the Azure Portal: &lt;/p&gt;
  10. &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/282efe892640_10ED0/image_20.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/282efe892640_10ED0/image_thumb_9.png" width="624" height="282"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
  11. &lt;p&gt;You can use the &lt;strong&gt;SCALE&lt;/strong&gt; tab to dynamically increase or decrease scale capacity for your stream processing – allowing you to pay only for the compute capacity you need, and enabling you to handle jobs with gigabytes/sec of streamed data.&amp;nbsp; &lt;/p&gt;
  12. &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;em&gt;Learning More about Stream Analytics Service&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  13. &lt;p&gt;For more information about Stream Analytics, please review the following resources:&lt;/p&gt;
  14. &lt;ul&gt;
  15. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/stream-analytics/" target="_blank"&gt;Stream Analytics Home Page&lt;/a&gt;
  16. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2014/10/29/announcing-azure-stream-analytics-for-real-time-event-processing/" target="_blank"&gt;Blog Post Announcing Stream Analytics Preview&lt;/a&gt;
  17. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/stream-analytics-get-started/" target="_blank"&gt;Getting Started with Stream Analytics Tutorial&lt;/a&gt;
  18. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/services/stream-analytics/" target="_blank"&gt;Stream Analytics Documentation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;
  19. &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Data Factory: Fully managed service to build and manage information production pipelines &lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
  20. &lt;p&gt;Organizations are increasingly looking to fully leverage all of the data available to their business.&amp;nbsp; As they do so, the data processing landscape is becoming more diverse than ever before – data is being processed across geographic locations, on-premises and cloud, across a wide variety of data types and sources (SQL, NoSQL, Hadoop, etc), and the volume of data needing to be processed is increasing exponentially. Developers today are often left writing large amounts of custom logic to deliver an information production system that can manage and co-ordinate all of this data and processing work.
  21. &lt;p&gt;To help make this process simpler, I’m excited to announce the preview of our new Azure Data Factory service – a fully managed service that makes it easy to compose data storage, processing, and data movement services into streamlined, scalable &amp;amp; reliable data production pipelines. Once a pipeline is deployed, Data Factory enables easy monitoring and management of it, greatly reducing operational costs.&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;em&gt;Easy to Get Started&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  22. &lt;p&gt;The Azure Data Factory is a fully managed service. Getting started with Data Factory is simple. With a few clicks in the &lt;a href="https://portal.azure.com/"&gt;Azure preview portal&lt;/a&gt;, or via our command line operations, a developer can create a new data factory and link it to data and processing resources.&amp;nbsp; From the new Azure Marketplace in the Azure Preview Portal, choose &lt;strong&gt;Data + Analytics –&amp;gt; Data Factory&lt;/strong&gt; to create a new instance in Azure:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/282efe892640_10ED0/image_24.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/282efe892640_10ED0/image_thumb_11.png" width="847" height="491"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
  23. &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;em&gt;Orchestrating Information Production Pipelines across multiple data sources&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/u&gt;
  24. &lt;p&gt;Data Factory makes it easy to coordinate and manage data sources from a variety of locations – including ones both in the cloud and on-premises.&amp;nbsp; Support for working with data on-premises inside SQL Server, as well as Azure Blob, Tables, HDInsight Hadoop systems and SQL Databases is included in this week’s preview release.&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;Access to on-premises data is supported through a data management gateway that allows for easy configuration and management of secure connections to your on-premises SQL Servers.&amp;nbsp; Data Factory balances the scale &amp;amp; agility provided by the cloud, Hadoop and non-relational platforms, with the management &amp;amp; monitoring that enterprise systems require to enable information production in a hybrid environment.
  25. &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;em&gt;Custom Data Processing Activities using Hive, Pig and C#&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  26. &lt;p&gt;This week’s preview enables data processing using Hive, Pig and custom C# code activities.&amp;nbsp; Data Factory activities can be used to clean data, anonymize/mask critical data fields, and transform the data in a wide variety of complex ways. &lt;/p&gt;
  27. &lt;p&gt;The Hive and Pig activities can be run on an HDInsight cluster you create, or alternatively you can allow Data Factory to fully manage the Hadoop cluster lifecycle on your behalf.&amp;nbsp; Simply author your activities, combine them into a pipeline, set an execution schedule and you’re done – no manual Hadoop cluster setup or management required.&amp;nbsp; &lt;/p&gt;
  28. &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;em&gt;Built-in Information Production Monitoring and Dashboarding&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  29. &lt;p&gt;Data Factory also offers an up-to-the moment monitoring dashboard, which means you can deploy your data pipelines and immediately begin to view them as part of your monitoring dashboard.&amp;nbsp; Once you have created and deployed pipelines to your Data Factory you can quickly assess end-to-end data pipeline health, pinpoint issues, and take corrective action as needed. &lt;/p&gt;
  30. &lt;p&gt;Within the Azure Preview Portal, you get a visual layout of all of your pipelines and data inputs and outputs. You can see all the relationships and dependencies of your data pipelines across all of your sources so you always know where data is coming from and where it is going at a glance. We also provide you with a historical accounting of job execution, data production status, and system health in a single monitoring dashboard:&lt;/p&gt;
  31. &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/282efe892640_10ED0/image_26.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/282efe892640_10ED0/image_thumb_12.png" width="866" height="444"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
  32. &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;em&gt;Learning More about Stream Analytics Service&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  33. &lt;p&gt;For more information about Data Factory, please review the following resources:&lt;/p&gt;
  34. &lt;ul&gt;
  35. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/data-factory-get-started/" target="_blank"&gt;Getting Started Tutorial for Data Factory&lt;/a&gt;
  36. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/services/data-factory"&gt;More Data Factory Tutorials&lt;/a&gt;
  37. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=516973"&gt;Install the PowerShell SDK&lt;/a&gt;
  38. &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=516903"&gt;Access our code sample repository&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;
  39. &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Other Great Data Improvements&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
  40. &lt;p&gt;Today’s releases make it even easier for customers to stream, process and manage the movement of data in the cloud.&amp;nbsp; Over the last few months we’ve released a bunch of other great data updates as well that make Azure a great platform to perform any data needs.&amp;nbsp; Since August:&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;We released a major update of our &lt;strong&gt;SQL Database service&lt;/strong&gt;, which is a relational database as a service offering.&amp;nbsp; The &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/sql-database/" target="_blank"&gt;new SQL DB editions&lt;/a&gt; (Basic/Standard/Premium ) support a 99.99% SLA, larger database sizes, dedicated performance guarantees, point-in-time recovery, new auditing features, and the ability to easily setup active geo-DR support.&amp;nbsp; &lt;/p&gt;
  41. &lt;p&gt;We released a preview of our new &lt;strong&gt;DocumentDB service&lt;/strong&gt;, which is a &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/documentdb/" target="_blank"&gt;fully-managed, highly-scalable, NoSQL Document Database service&lt;/a&gt; that supports saving and querying JSON based data.&amp;nbsp; It enables you to linearly scale your document store and scale to any application size.&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2014/10/09/azure-documentdb-profile-of-msn-health-and-fitness-2/" target="_blank"&gt;Microsoft MSN portal recently was rewritten to use it&lt;/a&gt; – and stores more than 20TB of data within it.&lt;/p&gt;
  42. &lt;p&gt;We released our new &lt;strong&gt;Redis Cache service&lt;/strong&gt;, which is a &lt;a href="http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/azure-redis-cache-disaster-recovery-to-azure-tagging-support-elastic-scale-for-sqldb-docdb" target="_blank"&gt;secure/dedicated Redis cache offering, managed as a service by Microsoft&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp; Redis is a popular open-source solution that enables high-performance data types, and our Redis Cache service enables you to standup an in-memory cache that can make the performance of any application much faster. &lt;/p&gt;
  43. &lt;p&gt;We released major updates to our &lt;strong&gt;HDInsight Hadoop service&lt;/strong&gt;, which is a 100% Apache Hadoop-based service in the cloud. We have also added built-in support for using two popular frameworks in the Hadoop ecosystem: &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2014/08/25/azure-hdinsight-makes-hbase-nosql-database-a-ga-feature/" target="_blank"&gt;Apache HBase&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2014/10/15/microsoft-brings-real-time-analytics-to-hadoop-with-storm-preview/" target="_blank"&gt;Apache Storm&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;
  44. &lt;p&gt;We released a preview of our new &lt;strong&gt;Search-As-A-Service offering&lt;/strong&gt;, which provides a &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/search/" target="_blank"&gt;managed search offering&lt;/a&gt; based on ElasticSearch that you can easily integrate into any Web or Mobile Application.&amp;nbsp; It enables you to build search experiences over any data your application uses (including data in SQLDB, DocDB, Hadoop and more). &lt;/p&gt;
  45. &lt;p&gt;And we have released a preview of our &lt;strong&gt;Machine Learning service&lt;/strong&gt;, which provides a &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/machine-learning/" target="_blank"&gt;powerful cloud-based predictive analytics service&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;nbsp; It is designed for both new and experienced data scientists, includes 100s of algorithms from both the open source world and Microsoft Research, and supports writing ML solutions using the popular R open-source language.&lt;/p&gt;
  46. &lt;p&gt;You’ll continue to see major data improvements in the months ahead – we have an exciting roadmap of improvements ahead.&lt;/p&gt;
  47. &lt;h4&gt;&lt;u&gt;Summary&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h4&gt;
  48. &lt;p&gt;Today’s Microsoft Azure release enables some great new data scenarios, and makes building applications that work with data in the cloud even easier.
  49. &lt;p&gt;If you don’t already have a Azure account, you can sign-up for a &lt;a href="https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/free-trial/"&gt;free trial&lt;/a&gt; and start using all of the above features today.&amp;nbsp; Then visit the &lt;a href="https://azure.com/"&gt;Microsoft Azure Developer Center&lt;/a&gt; to learn more about how to build apps with it.
  50. &lt;p&gt;Hope this helps,
  51. &lt;p&gt;Scott
  52. &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: &lt;/em&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.twitter.com/scottgu"&gt;twitter.com/scottgu&lt;/a&gt;</description><pubDate>Fri, 31 Oct 2014 06:39:05 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="true">https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/azure-announcing-new-real-time-data-streaming-and-data-factory-services</guid><category>Azure</category><category>.NET</category><category>Community News</category></item><item><title>Azure: New Marketplace, Network Improvements, New Batch Service, Automation Service, more</title><link>https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/azure-new-marketplace-network-improvements-new-batch-service-automation-service-more</link><description>&lt;p&gt;Today we released a major set of updates to Microsoft Azure. Today’s updates include:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Marketplace&lt;/strong&gt;: Announcing Azure Marketplace and partnerships with key technology partners  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Networking&lt;/strong&gt;: Network Security Groups, Multi-NIC, Forced Tunneling, Source IP Affinity, and much more  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Batch Computing&lt;/strong&gt;: Public Preview of the new Azure Batch Computing Service  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Automation&lt;/strong&gt;: General Availability of the Azure Automation Service &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Anti-malware&lt;/strong&gt;: General Availability of Microsoft Anti-malware for Virtual Machines and Cloud Services  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Virtual Machines&lt;/strong&gt;: General Availability of many more VM extensions – PowerShell DSC, Octopus, VS Release Management &lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;All of these improvements are now available to use immediately (note that some features are still in preview).&amp;nbsp; Below are more details about them:  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Marketplace: Announcing Azure Marketplace and partnerships with key technology partners&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Last week, at our &lt;a href="http://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2014/10/20/delivering-complete-cloud-every-business-industry-geography/" target="_blank"&gt;Cloud Day event&lt;/a&gt; in San Francisco, I announced a new Azure Marketplace that helps to better connect Azure customers with partners, ISVs and startups.&amp;nbsp; With just a couple of clicks, you can now quickly discover, purchase, and deploy any number of solutions directly into Azure.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;em&gt;Exploring the Marketplace&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/u&gt;  &lt;p&gt;You can explore the Azure Marketplace by clicking the Marketplace title that is pinned by default to the home-screen of the Azure Preview Portal:  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/10eca7a7dba9_492A/image_26.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/10eca7a7dba9_492A/image_thumb_12.png" width="834" height="513"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Clicking the Marketplace tile will enable you to explore a large selection of applications, VM images, and services that you can provision into your Azure subscription:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/10eca7a7dba9_492A/image_4.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/10eca7a7dba9_492A/image_thumb_1.png" width="879" height="565"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Using the marketplace provides a super easy way to take advantage of a rich ecosystem of applications and services integrated to run great with Azure.&amp;nbsp; Today’s marketplace release includes multi-VM templates to run Hadoop clusters powered by Cloudera or Hortenworks, Linux VMs powered by Unbuntu, CoreOS, Suse, CentOS, Microsoft SharePoint Server Farms, Cassandra Clusters powered by DataStax, and a wide range of security virtual appliances.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;You can click any of the items in the gallery to learn more about them and optionally deploy them.&amp;nbsp; Doing so will walk you though a simple to follow creation wizard that enables you to optionally configure how/where they will run, as well as display any additional pricing required for the apps/services/VM images that you select.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;For example, below is all it takes to stand-up an 8-node DataStax Enterprise cluster:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/10eca7a7dba9_492A/image_28.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/10eca7a7dba9_492A/image_thumb_13.png" width="847" height="800"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Solutions you purchase through the Marketplace will be automatically billed to your Azure subscription (avoiding the need for you to setup a separate payment method).&amp;nbsp; Virtual Machine images will support the ability to bring your own license or rent the image license by the hour (which is ideal for proof of concept solutions or cases where you need the solution for only a short period of time).&amp;nbsp; Both Azure Direct customers as well as customers who pay using an Enterprise Agreement can take advantage of the Azure Marketplace starting today.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;You can &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/" target="_blank"&gt;learn more&lt;/a&gt; about the Azure Marketplace as well as &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/" target="_blank"&gt;browse the items within it here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Networking: Lots and lots of New Features and Improvements&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;This week’s Azure update includes a ton of new capabilities to the Azure networking stack.&amp;nbsp; You can use these new networking capabilities immediately in the North Europe region, and they will be supported worldwide in all regions in November 2014.&amp;nbsp; The new network capabilities include:  &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;em&gt;Network Security Groups&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/u&gt;  &lt;p&gt;You can now create Network Security groups to define access control rules for inbound and outbound traffic to a Virtual machine or a group of virtual machines in a subnet. The security groups and the rules can be managed and updated independent of the life cycle of the VM.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;em&gt;Multi-NIC Support&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;You can now create and manage multiple virtual network interfaces (NICs) on a VM.&amp;nbsp; Multi-NIC support is a fundamental requirement for a majority of network virtual appliances that can be deployed in Azure. Having this support now enabled within Azure will enable even richer network virtual appliances to be used.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;em&gt;Forced Tunneling&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;You can now redirect or “force” all Internet-bound traffic that originates in a cloud application back through an on-premises network via a Site-to-Site VPN tunnel for inspection and auditing. This is a critical security capability for enterprise grade applications.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;em&gt;ExpressRoute Enhancements&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;You can now share a single ExpressRoute connection across multiple Azure subscriptions. Additionally, a single Virtual Network in Azure can now be linked to more than one ExpressRoute circuit, thereby enabling much richer backup and disaster recovery scenarios.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/10eca7a7dba9_492A/image_16.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/10eca7a7dba9_492A/image_thumb_7.png" width="374" height="201"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;u&gt;New VPN Gateway Sizes&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;To cater to the growing hybrid connectivity throughput needs and the number of cross premise sites, we are announcing the availability of a higher performance Azure VPN gateway. This will enable a faster ExpressRoute and Site-to-Site VPN gateways with more tunnels.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;em&gt;Operations and audit logs for VNet Gateways and ExpressRoute&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;You can now view operations logs for Virtual Network Gateways and ExpressRoute circuits. The &lt;a href="https://manage.windowsazure.com"&gt;Azure portal&lt;/a&gt; will now show operations logs and information on all API calls you make and important infrastructure changes made such as scheduled updates to gateways.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;u&gt;Advanced Virtual Network Gateway policies&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;We now enable the ability for you to control encryption for the tunnel between Virtual Networks. You now have a choice between 3DES, AES128, AES256 and Null encryption, and you can also enable Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) for IPsec/IKE gateways.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;u&gt;Source IP Affinity&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The Azure Load Balancer now supports a new distribution mode called Source IP Affinity (also known as session affinity or client IP affinity). You can now load balance traffic based on a 2-tuple (Source-IP, Destination-IP) or 3-tuple (Source-IP, Destination-IP and Protocol) distribution modes.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;u&gt;Nested policies for Traffic Manager&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;You can now create nested policies for traffic management. This allows tremendous flexibility in creating powerful load-balancing and failover schemes to support the needs of larger, more complex deployments.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;em&gt;Portal Support for Managing Internal Load Balancer, Reserved and Instance IP addresses for Virtual Machines&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;It is now possible to use the Azure Preview Portal to manage creating and setting up internal load balancers, as well as reserved and instance IP addresses for virtual machines.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Automation: General Availability of Azure Automation Service&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;I am excited to announce the General Availability of the Azure Automation service. Azure Automation enables the creation, deployment, monitoring, and maintenance of resources in an Azure environment using a highly scalable and reliable workflow engine. The service can be used to orchestrate time-consuming and frequently repeated operational tasks across Azure and third-party systems while decreasing operating expenses.  &lt;p&gt;Azure Automation allows you to build runbooks (PowerShell Workflows) to describe your administration processes, provides a secure global assets store so you don’t need to hardcode sensitive information within your runbooks, and offers scheduling so that runbooks can be triggered automatically.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Runbooks can automate a wide range of scenarios – from simple day to day manual tasks to complex processes that span multiple Azure services and 3rd party systems. Because Automation is built on PowerShell, you can take advantage of the many existing PowerShell modules, or author your own to integrate with third party systems.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;em&gt;Creating and Editing Runbooks&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/u&gt;  &lt;p&gt;You can create a runbook from scratch, or start by importing an existing template in the runbook gallery:  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/10eca7a7dba9_492A/image_8.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/10eca7a7dba9_492A/image_thumb_3.png" width="624" height="409"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Editing experience for runbooks can also be performed directly in the administration portal:  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/10eca7a7dba9_492A/image_10.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/10eca7a7dba9_492A/image_thumb_4.png" width="624" height="473"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;em&gt;Pricing&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/u&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Available as a pay-as-you-go service, Automation is billed based on the number of job run time minutes used in a given Azure subscription.&amp;nbsp; 500 minutes of free job runtime credits are also included each month for Azure customers to use at no charge.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;u&gt;Learn More&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;p&gt;To learn more about Azure Automation, check out the following resources:  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/tag/azure-automation/"&gt;Azure Automation Blogs&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/automation/"&gt;MSDN Documentation&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/home?forum=azureautomation"&gt;Azure Automation Forum&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://feedback.azure.com/forums/246290-azure-automation"&gt;User Voice&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Batch Service: Preview of Azure Batch - new job scheduling service for parallel and HPC apps&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;I’m excited to announce the public preview of our new Azure Batch Service. This new platform service provides “job scheduling as a service” with auto-scaling of compute resources, making it easy to run large-scale parallel and high performance computing (HPC) work in Azure. You submit jobs, we start the VMs, run your tasks, handle any failures, and then shut things down as work completes.  &lt;p&gt;Azure Batch is the job scheduling engine that we use internally to manage encoding for Azure Media Services, and for testing Azure itself. With this preview, we are excited to expand our SDK with a new application framework from GreenButton, a company Microsoft acquired earlier in the year. The Azure Batch SDK makes it easy to cloud-enable parallel, cluster, and HPC applications by describing jobs with the required resources, data, and one or more compute tasks.  &lt;p&gt;Azure Batch can be used to run large volumes of similar tasks or applications in parallel, programmatically. A command line program or script takes a set of data files as input, processes the data in a series of tasks, and produces a set of output files. Examples of batch workloads that customers are running today in Azure include calculating risk for banks and insurance companies, designing new consumer and industrial products, sequencing genes and developing new drugs, searching for new energy sources, rendering 3D animations, and transcoding video.  &lt;p&gt;Azure Batch makes it easy for these customers to use hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of cores, or more on demand. With job scheduling as a service, Azure developers can focus on using batch computing in their applications and delivering services without needing to build and manage a work queue, scaling resources up and down efficiently, dispatching tasks, and handling failures.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/10eca7a7dba9_492A/image_24.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/10eca7a7dba9_492A/image_thumb_11.png" width="624" height="351"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;p&gt;The scale of Azure helps batch computing customers get their work done faster, experiment with different designs, run larger and more precise models, and test a large number of different scenarios without having to invest in and maintain large clusters.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/batch/" target="_blank"&gt;Learn more&lt;/a&gt; about Azure Batch and start using it for your applications today.  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Virtual Machines: General Availability of Microsoft Anti-Malware for VMs and Cloud Services&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;I’m excited to announce that the Microsoft Anti-malware security extension for Virtual Machines and Cloud Services is now generally available.&amp;nbsp; We are releasing it as a &lt;u&gt;free capability&lt;/u&gt; that you can &lt;u&gt;use at no additional charge&lt;/u&gt;.  &lt;p&gt;The Microsoft Anti-malware security extension can be used to help identify and remove viruses, spyware or other malicious software.&amp;nbsp; It provides real-time protection from the latest threats and also supports on-demand scheduled scanning.&amp;nbsp; Enabling it is a good security best practice for applications hosted either on-premises or in the cloud.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;u&gt;&lt;em&gt;Enabling the Anti-Malware Extension &lt;/em&gt;&lt;/u&gt; &lt;p&gt;You can select and configure the Microsoft Antimalware security extension for virtual machines using the &lt;a href="https://portal.azure.com/"&gt;Azure preview portal&lt;/a&gt;, Visual Studio or API’s/PowerShell.&amp;nbsp; Antimalware events are then logged to the customer configured Azure Storage account via Azure Diagnostics and can be piped to HDInsight or a SIEM tool for further analysis. More information is available in the &lt;a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=398023&amp;amp;clcid=0x409"&gt;Microsoft Antimalware Whitepaper&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;p&gt;To enable antimalware feature on existing virtual machine, select the &lt;b&gt;EXTENSIONS&lt;/b&gt; tile on a Virtual Machine in the Azure Preview Portal, then click &lt;b&gt;ADD&lt;/b&gt; in the command bar and select the &lt;b&gt;Microsoft Antimalware &lt;/b&gt;extension. Then, click &lt;b&gt;CREATE&lt;/b&gt; and customize any settings:  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/10eca7a7dba9_492A/image_14.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/10eca7a7dba9_492A/image_thumb_6.png" width="918" height="578"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Virtual Machines: General Availability of even more VM Extensions&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;In addition to enabling the Microsoft Anti-Malware extension for Virtual Machines, today’s release also includes support for a whole bunch more new VM extensions that you can enable within your Virtual Machines.&amp;nbsp; These extensions can be added and configured using the same &lt;strong&gt;EXTENSIONS&lt;/strong&gt; tile on Virtual Machine resources within the Azure Preview Portal (the same screen-shot as in the Anti-malware section above).&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The new extensions enabled today include:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;u&gt;PowerShell Desired State Configuration&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The PowerShell Desired State Configuration Extension can be used to deploy and configure Azure VMs using &lt;a href="http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn249912.aspx"&gt;Desired State Configuration&lt;/a&gt; (DSC) technology. DSC enables you to declaratively specify how you want your software environment to be configured. DSC configuration can also be automated using the &lt;a href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/"&gt;Azure PowerShell &lt;/a&gt;SDK, and you can push configurations to any Azure VM and have them enacted automatically. For more details, please see this desired state configuration &lt;a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powershell/archive/2014/08/07/introducing-the-azure-powershell-dsc-desired-state-configuration-extension.aspx"&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/10eca7a7dba9_492A/image_20.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/10eca7a7dba9_492A/image_thumb_9.png" width="703" height="415"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp; &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;u&gt;Octopus&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://octopusdeploy.com/"&gt;Octopus&lt;/a&gt; simplifies the deployment of &lt;a href="http://ASP.NET"&gt;ASP.NET&lt;/a&gt; web applications, Windows Services and other applications by automatically configuring IIS, installing services and making configuration changes. Octopus integration of Azure was one of the top requested features on &lt;a href="http://feedback.azure.com/forums/216843-virtual-machines/suggestions/5730576-add-octopus-deploy-agent-installation-option"&gt;Azure UserVoice&lt;/a&gt; and with this integration we will simplify the deployment and configuration of octopus on the VM.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/10eca7a7dba9_492A/image_18.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/10eca7a7dba9_492A/image_thumb_8.png" width="692" height="464"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;u&gt;Visual Studio Release Management&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Release Management for Visual Studio is a continuous delivery solution that automates the release process through all of your environments from TFS through to production. Visual Studio Release Management is integrated with TFS and you can configure multi-stage release pipelines to automatically deploy and validate your applications on multiple environments. With the new Visual Studio Release Management extension, VMs can be preconfigured with the necessary components for required for Release Management to operate.  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/10eca7a7dba9_492A/image_22.png"&gt;&lt;img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="https://aspblogs.blob.core.windows.net/media/scottgu/WindowsLiveWriter/10eca7a7dba9_492A/image_thumb_10.png" width="624" height="393"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;h2&gt;&lt;u&gt;Summary&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Today’s Microsoft Azure release enables a ton of great new scenarios, and makes building applications hosted in the cloud even easier.  &lt;p&gt;If you don’t already have a Azure account, you can sign-up for a &lt;a href="https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/free-trial/" target="_blank"&gt;free trial&lt;/a&gt; and start using all of the above features today.&amp;nbsp; Then visit the &lt;a href="https://azure.com" target="_blank"&gt;Microsoft Azure Developer Center&lt;/a&gt; to learn more about how to build apps with it.  &lt;p&gt;Hope this helps,  &lt;p&gt;Scott  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: &lt;/em&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.twitter.com/scottgu" target="_blank"&gt;twitter.com/scottgu&lt;/a&gt;</description><pubDate>Tue, 28 Oct 2014 14:35:34 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="true">https://weblogs.asp.net:443/scottgu/azure-new-marketplace-network-improvements-new-batch-service-automation-service-more</guid><category>azure</category><category>Community News</category><category>.NET</category></item></channel></rss>

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