Azure SDK 1.1, Azure Tools for VS 2008/VS 2010(RC) 1.1 released and Azure Drive Beta

Microsoft Downloads - Windows Azure Software Development Kit (February 2010)

“The Windows® Azure™ SDK provides developers with the APIs, tools, documentation, and samples needed to develop Internet-scale applications that run on Windows Azure.

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Version:	1.1
Date Published:	2/1/2010
Language:	English
Download Size:	22 KB - 21.2 MB*

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New in the February 2010 SDK

• Windows Azure Drive: Enable a Windows Azure application to use existing NTFS APIs to access a durable drive. This allows the Windows Azure application to mount a page blob as a drive letter, such as X:, and enables easily migration of existing NTFS applications to the cloud.
• OS Version support: Allows a Windows Azure application to choose the appropriate Guest OS to run on in the cloud.

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Microsoft Downloads - Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 1.1 (February 2010)

“Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio extend Visual Studio 2008 and the upcoming Visual Studio 2010 RC to enable the creation, configuration, building, debugging, running and packaging of scalable web applications and services on Windows Azure. Installation includes the Windows Azure SDK. (For VS 2010 Beta 2 please use the November 2009 release)

File Name:	VSCloudService.exe
Version:	1.1.30131.1501
Date Published:	2/1/2010
Language:	English
Download Size:	2.7 MB - 15.2 MB*

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New for version 1.1:

• Windows Azure Drive: Enable a Windows Azure application to use existing NTFS APIs to access a durable drive. This allows the Windows Azure application to mount a page blob as a drive letter, such as X:, and enables easy migration of existing NTFS applications to the cloud.
• OS Version Support: Allows a Windows Azure application to choose the appropriate Guest OS to run on in the cloud.
• Bug Fixes
  • StorageClient: Expose account key from storage credentials, expose continuation tokens for pagination, and reduce maximum buffer size for parallel uploads.
  • Windows Azure Diagnostics: Fix path corruption for crash dumps, OnDemandTransfer now respects LogLevelFilter.
  • VS 2010: Improved packaging performance.
  • VS 2010: Support for linked files in Web projects.
  • VS 2010: Support for ASP.NET web project web.config transformations.
  • Certificate selection lists certificates from LocalMachine\My instead of CurrentUser\My.
  • Right click on Role under Roles folder to select whether to launch the browser against HTTP, HTTPS or not at all.

Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio includes:

• C# and VB Project creation support for creating a Windows Azure Cloud Service solution with multiple roles.
• Tools to add and remove roles from the Cloud Service.
• Tools to configure each Role.
• Integrated local development via the Development Fabric and Development Storage services.
• Running and Debugging a Cloud Service in the Development Fabric.
• Building and packaging of Cloud Service Packages.
• Browsing to the Windows Azure Developer Portal.

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Windows Azure Team Blog - Beta Release of Windows Azure Drive

“Today we are providing access to a beta release of Windows Azure Drive (announced as XDrive at PDC 2009).

Customers have told us that they want to take their already running Windows applications and run them in the cloud using the standard Windows NTFS APIs, and make sure that the data is durable. With Windows Azure Drive, your Windows Azure applications running in the cloud can use existing NTFS APIs to access a durable drive. This can significantly ease the migration of existing Windows applications to the cloud, enabling customers a more seamless migration experience while simultaneously reducing the amount of time it takes to move their applications from your own Windows environment to a Windows Azure environment. The Windows Azure application can read from or write to a drive letter (e.g., X:\) that represents a durable NTFS volume for storing and accessing data. The durable drive is implemented as a Windows Azure Page Blob containing an NTFS-formatted Virtual Hard Drive (VHD).

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Azure is one place I’d like to play in in the coming year…