The Azure SDK 2.7.1 for Visual Studio 2013 and Visual Studio 2015 has been released offering improvements to the Visual Studio Tools for Azure as well as providing enhancements of the customer experience for developers who are enrolled in either the DreamSpark or Cloud Solution Provider programs..
The previous Azure SDK 2.7 release added support in Visual Studio 2015 for accounts accessing Azure via Role Based Access Control, Cloud Solution Providers, DreamSpark and other account and subscription types. With the Azure SDK 2.7.1 these accounts and subscriptions are now supported in Visual Studio 2013 as well. The Azure SDK 2.7.1 also brings the Cloud Explorer tool window to Visual Studio 2013 so that all of the performance and scalability improvements available through Cloud Explorer in Visual Studio 2015 are also available in Visual Studio 2013.
The Azure Resource Manager Tools have been improved to include IntelliSense for more resource providers and to make deploying virtual machines with in-guest customization easier. IntelliSense will now show error checking for template language expressions including function name & parameter or variable checking.
Improvements to the HDInsight tools for Visual Studio provides big data developers with benefits from improvements to the Hive Job Operator view, the Hive Error Marker, and the Storm Topology Graph. There are also improvements to IntelliSense suggestions for HDInsight.
The Azure Resource Manager Tools have been updated as well to include better IntelliSense and to automate deployment of virtual machines with in-guest customization easier.