Azure PowerShell 1.0 and Azure Portal Enhancements Released

Microsoft has released the 1.0 version of the Azure PowerShell cmdlets for automating processes with Azure including better support for Resource Manager, VM disk encryption with Azure Vault, and inclusion of Azure Data Lake and Notification Hub cmdlets.  Also released were new user experience improvements in the Azure Preview Portal such as notification enhancements and adding Marketplace access directly in the New menu.

Azure PowerShell 1.0 includes the following items from the Azure Blog.

• Enable better support for Azure Resource Manager cmdlet use side by side with Azure Service Management cmdlets in Azure Automation. While Resource Manager cmdlets don’t ship out of the box in Azure Automation yet, they will soon. Until then, they can be imported manually as described here. Please follow Azure Automation for updates on when the modules will ship out of the box.
• Separate Azure Service Management and Resource Manager functionality to provide clarity regarding features of Azure the cmdlets target
• Enforce semantic versioning and ensure cmdlets authored against a given major version of Azure PowerShell will not encounter breaking changes from updates to Azure PowerShell
• Availability of Azure PowerShell through WebPI and PowerShell Gallery to enable quicker delivery of new features and defect resolutions
• Improvements in the Azure PowerShell documentation and continued focus on documentation
• Certificate Authentication Support for Azure Resource Manager
• Virtual Machine disk encryption through Azure Key Vault
• Introduction of Azure Data Lake and Notification Hub cmdlets
• Improvements for Resource Manager, Web Apps and many other Azure services

For more information including installation instructions and how to get started with Azure PowerShell 1.0, check out their blog post.

Azure Preview Portal also received a bit of polishing with these enhancements from the Azure Blog.

• Navigation improvements
  • Improved interactions when browsing resources
  • Taking action on a resource directly from browse
  • Simplified default dashboard
• Notification improvements
• Marketplace search available in New menu
• Simplified resource blades
• Customization improvements and important announcement
• Visual update: improved dark theme

For more information on the new Azure Preview Portal user experience, read this blog post.