Azure Billing Alerts, ACLs and More ..
We have just released some major updates for Azure which solve a couple of problems that I see quite often with customers:
- Billing Alerts: You can now set alerts on your subscription to send you an email when your billing reaches a certain level. This is often requested as customers are worried that the elastic nature of Azure will see them over spend too quickly. This is a preview service and you can sign up here Billing Alert Service Preview.
- VM ACLs: This is another commonly requested feature and an essential one in my opinion for our Hybrid Cloud strategy. This was something that could be done via script but now is supported within the management dashboard. ACLs allow you to configure access rules for VM endpoints. This means, coupled with Virtual Networks, certain tiers of your applications can be isolated from other tiers or indeed the public domain. This is critical for customers looking to connect their on premise solutions to the public cloud.
- WebSocket Support for Websites: WebSockets are used by many developers to add real-time communication support to their websites. Azure websites now has full support for web sockets and frameworks like SignalR and socket.io.
To get a more detailed look at the features check out Scott’s Blog: