As you may know, OnMSFT.com runs on Azure, and while we’re not in the portal every day, it’s one of the many good reasons for our move to Microsoft’s cloud. Even though we’re running on an Ubuntu Linux box for our WordPress installation, we use the portal for access to backups, for some nice graphics based quick looks at how the virtual machine is performing, and to log in to the server. Having everything laid out in a familiar interface, with some (but not all) of the command line esoterica filtered out by point and click Windows-style commands has been a refreshing change, and a very useful one for this not-a-dev Windows-centric webmaster.
So it’s good to see that the Azure Portal continues to get better, and Microsoft recently listed the recent changes in a blog post. We won’t go into detail on every change, you can head over to the Azure Blog for all the latest, but some of the highlights include Global Search improvements, faster resource browsing, and expanded use of a tabbed browsing experience with Name, Resource Group, and Subscription columns now supporting tabs. The VM computer name and hostname display has been improved, the experience to create Azure Container Instances has been completely redone, Azure Kubernetes Service has gained new integrations, and a new Azure Storage Data Transfer feature has been introduced.
If you’re a regular Azure user, you should find new features that make your workflow better, and if you’re just starting out, you should find even more reasons to give Azure a try.
