Microsoft Azure Automation

Microsoft launched a new service to simplify public, private, and hybrid clouds management. Using the Microsoft Azure Automation preview you can automate the creation, deployment, monitoring, and maintenance of resources in your Microsoft Azure environment using runbooks, which under the hood are Windows PowerShell workflows. Those in turn, provide a highly reliable service that can create checkpoints and resume your workflows when errors, crashes, and network issues occur. The service can integrate and connect into any system that exposes an API over typical Internet protocols. Out of box, Azure Automation ships with integration into many Azure services, including:

• Web Sites (management)
• Cloud Services (management)
• Virtual Machines (management and WinRM support)
• Storage (management)
• SQL Server (management and SQL support)

For more information:

• Get started with Azure Automation
• Automation Library
• Authoring Runbooks
• Backing up Azure Automation