Microsoft Updates Azure Capabilities

Microsoft recapped the series of updates to is Azure cloud services over the last 10 days.  These include:

Web Sites: SSL is now included at no additional charge in standard tiers. Up to 500 websites can be hosted in a single standard tier hosting plan.  Azure web-sites run in VMs isolated to host only specified web applications (for predictable performance and security isolation).  The user can scale-up/down the number of VMs either manually or using our built-in AutoScale functionality.  The pricing for standard tier web-sites is based on the number of VMs.

A Traffic Manager and Java support were added as well.

Virtual Machines: Support for Chef and Puppet extensions, Basic Pricing tier for Compute Instances

Virtual Network: General Availability of DynamicRouting VPN Gateways and Point-to-Site VPN. This allows individual computers to be connected to a Virtual Network in Azure. The DynamicRouting VPN Gateway in a Virtual Network will now carry the same 99.9% SLA as the StaticRouting VPN Gateway.

Mobile Services: Preview of Visual Studio support for .NET, Azure Active Directory integration and Offline support;

Notification Hubs: Support for Kindle Fire devices and Visual Studio Server Explorer integration

Storage: General Availability release of Read Access Geo Redundant Storage

Active Directory Premium: General Availability release

Scheduler service: General Availability release

Automation: Preview release of new Azure Automation service

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