Oct 26, 2010 09:31 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft is offering customers leveraging the Windows Azure platform a solution designed to simplify monitoring of their Cloud assets.

The Windows Azure Application Monitoring Management Pack is now available to organizations that have already adopted System Center Operations Manager 2007 and System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2.

However, this is not the final version of the monitoring solution, but only the Release Candidate.

Customers will be able to leverage the Release Candidate (RC) of the Monitoring Management Pack (MP) for Windows Azure version 6.1.7686.0, for the time being.

As the RC label implies, this Build of the Monitoring Management Pack for Windows Azure is not finalized yet, but despite this, Microsoft is encouraging customers to go beyond simply test driving it, and consider deployment into production environments.

In this regard, the Redmond company will offer support for companies that download the MP in their production deployments.

“As more customers adopt Windows Azure to develop and deploy application, we know that integrating the management of those applications into their existing console is an important requirement,” revealed Sacha Dawes, Sr. Product Planner System Center Product Management.

“This management pack enables Operations Manager customers to monitor the availability and performance of application that are running on Windows Azure.”

The bits are live on the MP page on Microsoft Pinpoint, however, downloads might not be available immediately.

“Due to replication times, some customers may have to wait up to 24 hours from this notice before being able to download the bits,” Dawes added.

For the time being, the Windows Azure Application Monitoring Management Pack is in RC stage, but the software giant is working its way to RTW.

According to Dawes, Windows Azure Application Monitoring Management Pack will be released to web in the first half of 2011.

“The Windows Azure MP includes the following capabilities:

•Discovery of Windows Azure applications. •Status of each role instance. •Collection and monitoring performance information. •Collection and monitoring of Windows events. •Collection and monitoring of the .NET Framework trace messages from each role instance. •Grooming of performance, event, and the .NET Framework trace data from Windows Azure storage account. •Change the number of role instances,” Dawes added.