Windows Azure - Platform Management Tool (MMC)

The Platform Management Tool is a desktop application and it allows the developers to manage:

• Hosted Services
• Perform Diagnostics
• Certificates
• Storage Services
• Blob, Table, Queue
• Command Based Operations

Download

The latest tool can be downloaded from codeplex.com

Source Code

The source code of the tool is available here.

Using the MMC

Download the tool and execute the setup.



The files will be extracted to the specified folder. Now execute the StartHere.cmd file from location C:\WindowsAzure\MMC. The following wizard will appear.



Click Next to continue and it will do a scan of the system.



If all the required software found the status will be green. Click Next to continue and the installation will be started. A command window will be prompted like below:



Now press any key to continue and within few seconds the installation will be completed. The following screen will be visible



The MMC tool will be automatically started as below. (You can also launch it from the desktop icon)



Expand the Windows Azure Management item and click on the Service Management item.



Enter your Subscription ID in the appearing dialog. (Subscription ID can be retrieved from the Windows Azure Portal)

Then Click on the API Certificate button. Your certificate will be automatically populated in the appearing dialog as shown below: (If no certificates are listed, then you need to create and add certificate into your azure account. This is explained in the previous article)



Select the certificate and click Ok.

Now click Connect from the right pane as shown below:



Wait for a while and you will be connected to the service. Now you can explore the hosted services, storage services by clicking the respective item from the left pane.

The figure below shows the content of Blob Containers.



Summary

In this article the MMC tool was introduced. It should be noted that the Storage functionalities of the tool can be achieved with the Server Explorer of Visual Studio.