Microsoft announced the general availability of Azure Automation, Runbook Gallery, Event Hubs, and Microsoft Antimalware, plus the public previews of Azure Data Factory, Stream Analytics, Azure Batch, and SQL Database business-continuity features.
Azure Automation and Runbook Gallery generally available
Azure Automation enables the creation, deployment, monitoring, and maintenance of resources in Azure environments using a highly scalable and reliable workflow-execution engine.
As part of this release, Microsoft also announced the availability of the Automation Runbook Gallery. This new feature puts existing Automation sample, utility, and scenario runbooks right at your fingertips to help you quickly get up and running with your automation tasks.
Azure Event Hubs generally available
Azure Event Hubs is a real-time, highly scalable, and fully managed data-stream ingestion service. As the onramp for stream processing in the cloud, Event Hubs enables publish-subscribe data distribution in a flexible platform-as-a-service (PaaS) model that can scale with your needs and provide a durable buffer between event publishers and event consumers.
Microsoft Antimalware for Cloud Services and VMs generally available
Microsoft Antimalware for Cloud Services and Virtual Machines (VMs) is now generally available for identifying and removing viruses, spyware, and other malicious software. It offers real-time protection from the latest threats, on-demand scanning, basic configuration management, and monitoring—all at no additional charge. You can select the Antimalware security extension when you create a VM and configure the feature for both cloud services and VMs programmatically using APIs/PowerShell.
Azure Data Factory in public preview
Increasingly, organizations need to gather insights from a diverse set of on-premises and cloud data sources and streams, using a combination of traditional and transformative analytics and services. Azure Data Factory gives you an agile way to manage the production of trusted information from these complex processes—making it easier to create, orchestrate, and manage data-processing pipelines over a range of transformation services and diverse data sources. You can quickly connect to data in Azure Storage or your on-premises SQL Server implementations. Choose from custom C# transformations or Apache Hive and Pig scripts running on Azure HDInsight for Apache Hadoop implementations.
Data Factory offers IT professionals holistic monitoring and management for these processes, including a view of data production and data lineage down to the source systems. With Data Factory, you can transform raw data assets into trusted, easily consumable information that can be broadly shared with BI and analytics tools.
Azure Stream Analytics in public preview
Powered by Azure, Stream Analytics is an event-processing engine that helps uncover insights from devices, sensors, cloud infrastructure, and existing data properties in real time. Thanks to out-of-the-box integration with Event Hubs, this combined solution can ingest millions of events, as well as produce analytics to help you better understand patterns or trigger an action during real-time data streaming.
Stream Analytics is highly scalable and requires no hardware or other upfront cost, installation, or setup. Developers simply describe their desired analytic function in SQL-based query syntax, and the system transparently deals with distribution for scale, performance, and resiliency.
Azure Batch in public preview
Azure Batch is a new platform service that enables you to run large-scale parallel and HPC applications in the cloud. Azure Batch makes it easy to cloud-enable your applications and run jobs without setting up or managing a cluster and job scheduler. Use the SDK to integrate client applications with Azure Batch through a variety of languages, stage data to Azure, and build job-execution pipelines. You can use Azure Batch as part of your workflows and to deliver self-service applications as a service. Sign up for the preview program in the Azure Management Portal, and start using Azure Batch as soon as your subscription is approved. During public preview, the service will be offered at a discount in all the regions it’s available.
Azure SQL Database business continuity features with new visualizations in public preview
Now available to try in the Azure Preview Portal, new functionality allows you to manage existing SQL Database business-continuity features with greater ease and a highly visual graphic interface. Features include Active and Standard Geo-Replication, plus Point-in-Time Restore. Additionally, Active Geo-Replication offers map-based configurations with “click-to-add” secondaries for breakthrough disaster-recovery administration. You can also more easily manage database alerts and events within the portal.