If you’re an Azure Government customer, you likely have particular needs when it comes to managing your Azure implementation. Today, Microsoft announced a new portal just for you, which his intended to make it easier for you to access all of your various Azure resources.
As the Azure Government Cloud blog outlined:
We are happy to provide a preview of our new Azure Government Portal (http://portal.azure.us). This portal provides an integrated experience allowing users to manage their Azure services and applications. Services included in the preview of the new Azure Government Portal are – Virtual machines (classic), Cloud services (classic), Storage accounts (classic), Virtual networks (classic), Audit Logs, and RBAC. Over the coming months, we will expand the number of Azure services with a UX in the new portal. The classic portal (http://manage.windowsazure.us) will continue to co-exist with the new portal so you can continue to access all your resources while we migrate.
With the new portal. Azure Government customers will be able to manage compute, storage, and network resources in one place. In addition, available virtual machine images will be accessible in the portal, as will Windows Server and SQL Server images. Availability will vary across services, but it’s Microsoft’s intention that the migration from the old to the new portal will be seamless.
There are a number of known issues to keep in mind:
Dashboard
- Sharing dashboards doesn’t work at this time.
- Service Help is not yet available. Clicking on Service Health will open a blade that says “Loading…” but will not resolve.
Portal extensions
- The Internet of Things blade is visible, but is not available in Azure Government.
- Clicking on Browse will open up a new blade with additional extensions. Extensions that will not work at this time: API Management Services, Biztalk, CDN endpoints (classic), Machine learning workspace, Marketplace add-ons, RemoteApp collections, Service health, Templates.
- If you try to view Audit logs from the browse menu, it will not work. You can view Activity logs from other entry points (for example from resource or from resource group).
- Requesting support through the Help and Support UI is not yet available. You will see an error message if you try to click on any Help and Support related items.
Provisioning experiences
- Resources created through the old portal and through PowerShell can be managed in the new portal.
- You will only see a few VM images in the new portal, but you can still provision VM images through the old portal and through PowerShell.
- Resource Manager mode is not yet available. When deploying Virtual Machines, Virtual Networks, or Storage accounts, do not select the Resource Manager option.
You’ll want to check in with your Azure Government administrator to get up to speed on the new portal, and of course, if you’re that administrator then you’ll likely want to check in with Microsoft to see what’s up. Let us know in the comments what you think about Microsoft’s efforts to make managing Azure implementations easier.
