1. Release History (Sitecore Azure)

Some of the issues described on this page contain internal reference numbers. You can use these reference numbers when communicating with Sitecore about a particular issue or feature.

December 23, 2011

Sitecore Azure 1.1.0 rev.111222 is released.

Change log.

New Features

Provisioning and setup of Azure services is now fully automated and integrated into the deployment process.
Adds support for third party Azure service providers.
Adds support for multiple environments in the same installation.
Adds Support for deploying to staging or production slots, and for swapping webroles into place.
Adds Support for Azure SDK 1.6, which now includes the AppFabric SDK.
Updated UI.
Enhanced inspection dialog, deployment dialog.
Onscreen deployment log with filtering.
Adds /sitecore/service/heartbeat.html which can be used as monitoring endpoint in conjunction with Windows Azure Traffic Manager.
Adds several new points of extension.
Adds Ability to add additional connection strings to WebRole configuration. (348396)

Important changes

The environment file format has been changed. Sitecore Azure 1.1 will not accept environment files created in the previous format. The new format now supported optional embedding of a management certificate.
The Hosted service and Storage account for a deployment are now placed in an affinity group pr. default.

Issues resolved

SCA doesn’t show the size of databases correctly, but displays -1 KB instead. (349991)
Possibility to add additional connection strings to WebRole configuration. (348396)
Sitecore Analytics *.config files causes the exception after deploying to the cloud. (345602)
Sitecore Azure database definition node is added directly to web.config file. (347484)

September 28, 2011

Sitecore Azure 1.0.5 rev.110919 is released.

Change log.

Improvements

Sitecore Azure 1.0.5 adds support to the Windows Azure SDK 1.4 Refresh.

Issues resolved:

For tables with a large amount of data, the Publish operation could result in a timeout (351602)

July 06, 2011

Sitecore Azure 1.0.4 rev.110608 is released.

Change log.

Improvements

Added support for Sitecore 6.5 (346848)
Added support for the Appfabric Caching session state provider. –Detailed instructions can be found in the Getting Started Guide. (346574)
Added support for the .NET 4.0 framework (343730)
Added periodic flushing of certificate cache (344735)
Changed the default value for enableNativeCodeExecution to false (344788)
Changed the default value for EnableEventQueue to true (344915)
Fixed a problem performing in-place upgrades (344823, 342723, 344620)
Fixed deployment crash on missing indexes (343584)

April 14, 2011

Sitecore Azure 1.0.3 rev.110401 is released.

Change log.

Improvements

Added support for Azure web role diagnostics and logging to storage account.
Added support for in-place upgrades (341982).
Improved and optimized deployment process. (340492, 339915, 341112)
Improved setup procedure.
Added support for multiple deployments sharing a database (341769)
Added a setting for database sizes (337834, 339104)

Important Changes

Terminology change from “Subscription file” to “Environment file” (341213)
Improved and optimized deployment process. (340492, 339915, 341112)
Improved setup procedure.
Added support for Azure 1.4 SDK (341840)

Using Diagnostics
Diagnostics is preconfigured to use the storage account that was provided in environment file. Log information is stored in the following tables:

Storage Account Table	Contains
WADDiagnosticInfrastructureLogsTable	Windows Diagnostic Infrastructure logs
WADDirectoriesTable	IIS 7 log
WADLogsTable	Sitecore logs. This is the same logs that are stored under <Data Folder>/logs for regular Sitecore installation
WADPerformanceCountersTable	Windows performance counters. For current release only \Processor(_Total)\% Processor Time is stored
WADWindowsEventLogsTable	Windows Event logs

For more information please refer to following articles:
• Take Control of Logging and Tracing in Windows Azure
• Azure@home Part 8: Worker Role and Azure Diagnostics
• http://convective.wordpress.com/2010/12/01/configuration-changes-to-windows-azure-diagnostics-in-azure-sdk-v1-3/

January 24, 2011

Sitecore Azure 1.0.2 rev.110122 is released.

Change log.

Important changes

Support of Sitecore CMS 6.4.
Minor bugfixes.
Improvements in data loss prevention.

January 6, 2011

Sitecore Azure 1.0.1 rev.101230 is released.

Change log.

Important changes

Microsoft Azure SDK is not required to be installed on a server anymore. The package contains all necessary DLL files.
A self-signed certificate is not generated automatically during Azure startup. This scenario could only work if app pool runs under the account with administrator's permissions. To create and install certificate you should navigate to /Sitecore/admin/Azure folder and run MakeCert.bat. This will create new certificate, import it to the <Local Computer>/Personal/Certificates storage, and export public part to the /Sitecore/admin/Azure folder.

Issues resolved

Unused Sitecore.Azure.Deployment.dll file was removed from the project.
Refreshing files might fail with the exception: “Webrole Async Task Failed(System.Net.WebException)” (337696).
Sitecore Azure did not see the installed MS Azure SDK 1.3 throwing the error message “Missing Windows Azure SDK” (337880).
The Sitecore.Azure.dll assembly referred to the specific version of Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient.dll assembly (338065).

October 27, 2010

Sitecore Azure 1.0.0 is released.

2. Known Issues

Lucene indexes are not supported in Azure environment

Reference number: 352937

Usage of Lucene indexes is not currently supported for Sitecore instances deployed using Sitecore Azure. When publishing to Sitecore Azure CD environment, Lucene indexes will be automatically removed from the configuration.

3. Configuration File Changes

This section describes the changes to the web.config file and other configuration files between Sitecore Azure releases.