14 DAY TRIAL // The Windows Azure AppFabric April release is now live, with Microsoft introducing a number of changes in the update, kicking up a notch the Access Control service and modifying billing details for Service Bus usage. Customers will be able to take advantage of the same features and capabilities that early adopters have been testing in the Community Technology Preview (CTP) of the Access Control service, Microsoft informs.
Essentially, there is new version of the Access Control service included in the Windows Azure AppFabric April release, enhanced with goodies from the CTP. Of course, having graduated from CTP, the new capabilities can now be used into production.
A member of the Windows Azure AppFabric team enumerated some of the new capabilities:
“Federation provider and Security Token Service - Out of box federation with Active Directory Federation Services 2.0, Windows Live ID, Google, Yahoo, Facebook;
New authorization scenarios - Delegation using OAuth 2.0;
Improved developer experience - New web-based management portal; Fully programmatic management using OData; Works with Windows Identity Foundation;
Additional protocol support - WS-Federation, WS-Trust, OpenID 2.0, OAuth 2.0 (Draft 13).”
It’s important to underline that customers currently taking advantage of the old version of the Access Control service will be able to continue doing so.
Microsoft explains that the two variants of the service will be available and supported in parallel, and that customers will not be migrated automatically.
Those that head over to the AppFabric Management Portal will see both releases of Access Control side by side.
And speaking of the AppFabric Management Portal, customers need to say goodbye to the old ASP.NET Management Portal, and get used to leveraging the new Silverlight based Management Portal instead.
“Another change introduced in this release is in the way we calculate the monthly charge for Service Bus. From now on the computation of the daily connection charge will always assume a month of 31 days, instead of using the actual number of days in the current month. This is done in order to ensure consistency in the charges across months,” the Windows Azure AppFabric team representative added.