Just last month, Microsoft's Azure service got a more transparent and powerful disaster recovery capability geared towards IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) virtual machines. To further help out when issues arise, the Redmond giant has added a new feature called Azure Service Health.
Regular users of the platform may know that there is a dedicated Azure status portal, which gives an overview of services affected, broken down by region. However, Azure Service Health aims to provide a personalized report on the exact part of the Azure infrastructure that affects your virtual machines, as well as to give you information about when the issues started, and what is being done. You'll also be able to prepare for upcoming "changes and maintenance scheduled for your Azure resources." An overview can be seen in the video below.
Beyond just supplying a centralized dashboard to manage all the service related issues, Service Health also allows users to download a PDF summary of the current issue, and share the document with those who do not have access to the management portal. Additionally, a history section allows users to see past issues, and there's even an option to create alerts, so the entire team using affected Azure resources can be aware of predicaments with Azure as they arise.
Azure Service Health is available right now, in preview.