Feature Updates to the Windows Azure Portal

Lots of activity over at the Windows Azure portal this weekend, including some exciting new features and major improvements to existing features. Here are the highlights:

Support for Managing Co-administrators

• Set up account co-administrators to allow others to share service management duties for each Azure subscription

Import/Export support for SQL Databases

• Export existing SQL Azure databases to blob storage using SQL Server 2012’s BACPAC format.
• Create a new SQL Azure database from an

existing BACPAC stored in blob storage

Storage Container Management and Access Control

• Create blob storage containers directly within the portal
• Edit their public/private access settings
• Drill into storage containers and see the blobs contained within them

Improved Cloud Service Status Notifications

• Detailed health status information about cloud services and roles as they transition between states

Virtual Machine Experience Enhancements

• Option to automatically delete corresponding VHD files from blob storage when deleting VM disks

Service Bus Management and Monitoring

• Ability to create and manage service bus Namespaces, Queues, Topics, Relays and Subscriptions
• Rich monitoring of Topics, Queues, and Subscriptions with detailed and customizable dashboard metrics
• Entity status (Topic, Queue, or Subscription) can be changed interactively via dashboard
• Direct links to the Access Control Services (ACS) namespaces when working with service bus access keys

Media Services Monitoring Support

• Monitor encoding jobs that are queued for processing as well as active, failed and queued tasks for encoding jobs

The above features are all now live in production and available to use immediately.  If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using them today.

Stay tuned to my twitter feed for Windows Azure announcements, updates, and links: @clinted

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