Windows Azure Connect CTP refresh

We are pleased to announce that the first CTP Refresh for Windows Azure Connect is now live.  Here are some of the enhancements included in this release:

· Co-administrators of a Windows Azure subscription can now manage Windows Azure Connect functionality for that subscription through the Windows Azure portal.

· An updated Windows Azure Connect Endpoint UI, including improved and more accurate status notifications, as well as built-in diagnostic capabilities.

· Support for installing Windows Azure Connect endpoints on non-English versions of Windows.

· “Under the cover” improvements including bug fixes and performance enhancements.

To take full advantage of the CTP Refresh, you will need to upgrade your Windows Azure Connect endpoints. For your on-premises Connect endpoints this will happen automatically over the next day if your machine is connected to the internet.  You can verify that your Connect endpoint has been upgraded by accessing the ‘About’ UI from the Connect tray icon as shown below.  (You can also confirm this by checking if the “Diagnostics” option is available from the Connect tray icon, as this is a new feature for CTP Refresh.)

image

image

For your Windows Azure roles that have been enabled for Connect, you will need to manually trigger an upgrade to the CTP Refresh version.  This can done in the following ways:

· Re-deploying your Windows Azure service.

· Deploying a new copy of the service and performing a VIP-swap operation (we recommend this option if you need to ensure no service downtime).

In both cases, as your Windows Azure role instances are brought online, they will be automatically updated to the CTP Refresh version of the Connect endpoint.

The current CTP Connect endpoints will continue to work fine and interoperate with upgraded Connect endpoints.  For the best experience, we recommend  that everyone upgrade all of their Connect endpoints to the CTP Refresh version.

We hope you find the CTP Refresh enhancements to be useful.  If you have questions or run into any problems, you can post your issue to the Windows Azure Connectivity support forum - https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/windowsazureconnectivity

 

--Jason Chen