Azure Updates: VM Apps; IoT Central; StorSimple

Microsoft shared details about VM Apps, a service intended to simplify the management and global sharing of application packages. With VM Apps, customers can store app packages in Azure Compute Gallery, replicating and sharing app packages automatically to VMs and Virtual Machine Scale Sets.

An Azure team member wrote:

The create experience is as simple as packaging all the application related files (including install and uninstall scripts) in a compressed package and uploading it to Azure. Package management is simplified with logical grouping and versioning capabilities available with the feature. These packages can then be shared with other users in your organization, across subscriptions, and tenants, who can deploy them on VM. Shared Applications give you the flexibility to make application packages available to a VM, even if the VM is locked down with no internet access.

With the offering, customers can define pre-deployment app settings or do a default configuration across all deployments, deploy across subscriptions with IAM, or use proxies for packages to prevent direct access.

Azure IoT Central has added step-by-step instructions to connect phones as devices so that users can try out features. When a phone is connected to IoT Central, users can view raw data like altitude and battery level going from the phone to the app. The new capability allows users to remotely execute commands, configure remote jobs, and set up new rules.