We’ve talked a lot about Windows Azure on Codeguru recently. With the cloud gaining traction and with our coverage of a lot of .NET on this site, it make sense that we’d also have Azure coverage.
Microsoft Windows Azure continues to evolve rapidly. This week Microsoft announced even more enhancements including the general availability of Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager> There were also a number of Website updates that provide capabilities for you to create and manage applications, and test content in a staging environment before making the switch over to production.
You can find out more on the newest Azure changes on Scott Guthrie’s blog and the Windows Azure blog. Here is a list Microsoft provided talking about these newest updates:
Windows Azure Updates
- Security
- PCI Compliance: As credit card fraud and security continues to be a huge concern for a growing number of organizations, Microsoft is thrilled to announce that Windows Azure has been validated for compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DDS). The PCI DDS is the global standard that any organization of any size must adhere to in order to accept payment cards, and to store, process, and/or transmit cardholder data. By providing PCI DDS validated infrastructure and platform services, Windows Azure delivers a compliant framework for customers to run secure and compliant applications. What’s more, this enables customers to easily achieve PCI DDS certification for those applications using Windows Azure.
- Expanded ISO Certification: In related news, Windows Azure completed its annual ISO audit, significantly expanding the product scope to include SQL Database, Active Directory, Traffic Manager, Web Sites, BizTalk Services, Media Services, Mobile Services, Service Bus, Multi-Factor Authentication, and HDInsight, among others. This expanded certification reaffirms Microsoft’s commitment to implementing internationally recognized information security controls so that customers can comply with the laws and regulations applicable to their use scenarios.
- Web Sites
- Site Slots: This feature empowers customers to test website content in a staging environment before swapping into production. In other words, when developers are ready to go live with their content, they can seamlessly flip the switch and transfer their content onto a public site.
- WebJobs: This feature enables developers to simplify how they manage small tasks and daily maintenance for their web applications.
- Disaster Recovery & Storage:
- Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager General Availability: Knowing storage and cloud are key areas of interest for you, it’s worth noting that included with these AUX updates is the new Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager service. With this technology, customers have access to a cloud-integrated disaster recovery solution that can simply and cost-effectively protect applications by automating the replication of running VMs to a secondary site. Windows Azure provides health monitoring of the primary site, stores your customized recovery plan, and orchestrates the recovery of services at your secondary site in the event of an outage.