Windows Azure Management Tool Available

Microsoft has made available for download the Windows Azure Management Tool (MMC) designed to streamline the management process associated with storage accounts in the Redmond company's Cloud operating system. Essentially the solution will simplify various tasks such as creating, but also debugging, and exploring storage solutions. “Developed as a managed MMC, the tool allows you to create and manage both blobs and queues. Easily create and manage containers, blobs, and permissions. Add and remove queues, inspect or add messages or empty queues as well,” reads an excerpt from the tool's official description.

The Windows Azure MMC's features fall under a total of three categories related to storage accounts, blobs and queues. According to Neil Hutson, Microsoft evangelist, the Windows Azure Management Tool is capable of helping testers “manage multiple storage accounts (makes it easy to manage all your accounts). Easily switch between remote and local storage services. Manage your blobs: create containers and manage permissions; upload files or even entire folders; read metadata or preview the blob contents; manage your queues. Create new queues: monitor queues; read (peek) messages; post new messages to the queue; purge queues.”

The software giant has warned that the Windows Azure Management Tool will not work on top of its latest development milestone of Windows 7. Microsoft explained that the Windows Azure MMC is designed to leverage the operating system's PowerShell, and that an unspecified bug in the Release candidate Build 7100 of Windows 7 prevents the tool from working properly. However, Windows Azure testers have the possibility to turn to previous releases of Windows, without coming across this issue. Microsoft started serving public downloads of Windows 7 RC Build 7100 on May 5th, 2009. At this point in time downloads are still live and up for grabs from the Redmond company.

Windows Azure Management Tool is available for download here.