Microsoft has released an update for Azure SDK 2.2 with support for remote debugging and a preview of management libraries for .NET

The support for the debugger means you can debug code running on Azure Web Sites and Cloud Services using Visual Studio’s debugger. Discussing the new support on his blog, Scott Guthrie said:

“With live, remote debugging support from within Visual Studio, you are now able to have more visibility than ever before into how your code is operating live in Windows Azure.”

Support for remote debugging Cloud Services is available now, and Microsoft plans to enable support for remote debugging web sites ‘shortly’.

Another Visual Studio-related improvement is support for integrated sign-in from Visual Studio. This lets you see and manage all your applications and services that are running in Windows Azure. It means you can develop, test and manage Windows Azure resources within Visual Studio without having to download or use management certificates.

Firewall management support with SQL databases has also been added to the new release. By default, Microsoft enables a security firewall around SQL databases hosted within Azure, which means only your application and IP addresses you approve can connect to them. However, while developing it means you can’t connect to and manage the database remotely from within Visual Studio if the security firewall blocks your instance of Visual Studio from connecting to it. The new support means you can enable and configure the security firewall directly from within Visual Studio.

The preview of the Windows Azure Management Libraries for .NET is potentially the most interesting addition in the longer term. The libraries enable automation of Cloud Services, Virtual Machines, Virtual Networks, Web Sites and Storage Accounts. The libraries are designed to let you automate tasks using any .NET language (e.g. C#, VB, F#, etc). Until now the automation capability was only available through the Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets or to developers who were willing to write their own wrappers for the Windows Azure Service Management REST API.

The new NET APIs map to the underlying REST endpoints, and according to Scott Guthrie expose the following.NET functionality:

• Portable Class Library (PCL) support targeting applications built for any .NET Platform
  
  
• Shipped as a set of focused NuGet packages with minimal dependencies to simplify versioning
  
  
• Support async/await task based asynchrony (with easy sync overloads)
  
  
• Shared infrastructure for common error handling, tracing, configuration, HTTP pipeline manipulation, etc.
  
  
• Built on top of popular libraries like HttpClient and Json.NET

The SDK is available on the Windows Azure Developer Center.