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Azure SDK for .NET 2.4 Release Notes

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This document contains the release notes for the Azure SDK for .NET 2.4 release and describes New Features in the SDK, New Features in the SDK and Visual Studio 2013 Update 3, New Features in Visual Studio 2013 Update 3, Known Issues, and Breaking Changes.

The Azure SDK for .NET version number (2.4) is determined by the core Azure service runtime assembly using semantic versioning. Other client libraries packaged inside the Azure SDK for .NET, along with their respective NuGet packages, follow independent versioning based on the semantic versioning scheme.

The Azure SDK for .NET 2.4 includes Azure Storage 4.1.0, Azure Service Bus 2.4.1.1, Azure Caching 1.7.0, and Azure Configuration Manager 2.0.3 libraries. You can also download these libraries from their respective NuGet packages.

For more information related to this release, see the following resources:

New Features in the SDK

The following are new features and updates in the Azure SDK for .NET 2.4:

  • Cloud Services – New Networking Capabilities in the Service Model- The following capabilities have been available in IaaS via PowerShell.  With the Azure SDK 2.4 release they are now available for Cloud Services via the Service Model.

    • Internal Load Balancing (ILB)- Enables users to run highly available services that are accessible only within a trust boundary. When used inside a Virtual Network, endpoints exposed through ILB will be accessible only within a virtual network and an on-premise network. The ILB settings are defined at a deployment level in the service model. For more information, see Internal Load Balancing.

    • Public IP addresses for virtual machines and role instances - Users are now able to obtain public facing, external IPs for their VMs or role instances. Any traffic on these public IP addresses, on any port, will be directed to the specified VM or role instance. For more information, see Instance-Level Public IP Addresses.

    • Configurable Idle Timeout for Azure Load Balancer- The Azure Load Balancer supports a configurable TCP idle timeout. You can now set a duration between 4 and 30 minutes for inbound connections, only. This configurable idle timeout period allows your application to maintain TCP connections for up to 30 minutes even if there is no activity on the connection.

  • Users are no longer required to upgrade to a newer version of the SDK to use new Azure Virtual Machine sizes, starting in Azure SDK version 2.4. The list of approved virtual machine sizes can be found here: Virtual Machine and Cloud Service Sizes for Azure.

  • Support for Microsoft Azure Storage File Service- Using MicrosoftAzureStorageTools 2.4.1, users can now upload and download files. For more information, see Introducing Microsoft Azure File Service. Support is also available in Azure PowerShell in version 0.8.5 and later.

  • Support for Service Bus Event Hub – Azure SDK version 2.4 supports the Service Bus Event Hub feature (currently in preview). Event Hub allows for Internet-of-Things scenarios that require large data ingestion rates.

  • Remotely debug 32-bit virtual machines– Visual Studio now enables you to debug native 32-bit Azure virtual machines. See Debugging a Cloud Service or Virtual Machine in Visual Studio for more information.

  • Configure virtual machines and manage virtual machine extensions – Visual Studio now provides an easier way to view and manage virtual machine settings and extensions. See Create and Manage Azure Virtual Machines in Visual Studio for more information.

  • Create virtual machine snapshots – You can now save or restore the status of your Azure virtual machines by using snapshots in Visual Studio. A snapshot captures the current state of your virtual machine. You can create multiple snapshots and restore them later if you need to. See Create and Manage Azure Virtual Machines in Visual Studio for more information.

  • Enhanced storage support – You can now view storage activity logs and provision read-access geo-redundant storage from Visual Studio. See Browsing Storage Resources with Server Explorer for more information.

New Features in the SDK and Visual Studio 2013 Update 3

Try out these features which are also available in Visual Studio 2013 Update 3:

  • Publishing support for Microsoft Azure WebJobs-

    • Visual Studio can now publish console application projects as WebJobs.

    • Standalone console applications can now be published as WebJobs without having a Website.

    • WebJobs can be scheduled using the new tooling experience, which sets up an Azure Scheduler job to run the WebJobs on scheduled intervals.

    • For information on Azure WebJobs tooling support, see How to deploy WebJobs.

New Features in Visual Studio 2013 Update 3

The following features are in Visual Studio 2013 Update 3 and are not part of the Azure SDK:

  • Mobile Service project creation- When creating a new ASP.NET project, Mobile Services can now be provisioned in Azure through the One ASP.NET dialog. When developers finish authoring a Mobile Service, an instance will be already setup and ready to use in Azure as a published destination.

  • Push notifications- You can use the Push Notification Wizard to add push notifications for clients that use mobile services with a .NET backend. See Quickstart: Adding push notifications for a mobile service (.NET backend). Previously, the wizard supported only JavaScript mobile services.

  • Notification hub registrations- In Visual Studio, you can now view and edit the list of client devices that are registered for a notification hub.

Known Issues

The following are known issues in the Azure SDK for .NET 2.4:

  • Visual Studio Update- the Azure SDK will not install on machines that contain versions prior to Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 RTM. Customers that have a pre-release version of Update 3 installed will be required to upgrade to Update 3 RTM. New installations will automatically include Update 3 as part of Visual Studio 2013 Express for Web.

  • Azure Storage 4.1.0 package requires Nuget package manager version 2.5 and above. Nuget 2.5 was shipped alongside VS 2012 update 4 but can also be upgraded standalone.

Breaking Changes

The following are breaking changes in the Azure SDK for .NET 2.4:

  • The Full Compute Emulator is deprecated- The Full Compute Emulator is deprecated in SDK 2.4.  As with SDK 2.3, all new Cloud Services projects now use Emulator Express by default.  Emulator Express allows you to test your multi-role Cloud Services locally without requiring administrator privileges.  Unlike Full Compute Emulator, however, Emulator Express only supports one instance per role.

See Also

Introducing Azure