Windows Azure now features VM Depot integration

Microsoft Open Technologies unveiled the VM Depot public preview early last month, and the software giant has just announced that its community-driven open-source virtual machine image catalog is now integrated into the company's cloud platform, Windows Azure.

The new feature is available through the Windows Azure management portal and is designed to ease the handling of virtual machine images from VM Depot. The cloud platform's users can take advantage of open-source stacks, "based on supported Linux distributions, made available by members of the community and directly provision the files as personal images straight from the Windows Azure portal".

To take advantage of the new functionality, users will have to choose the "BROWSE VMDEPOT" option within the "Virtual Machines" tab and select the needed files from the list of available images. Windows Azure users can also use distribution filters.