We are pleased to announce new capabilities in the latest Azure Storage Service release and updates to our Storage Client Libraries. This latest release allows users to take advantage of increased block sizes of 100 MB, which allows block blobs up to 4.77 TB, as well as features like incremental copy for page blobs and pop-receipt on add message.

REST API version 2016-05-31

Version 2016-05-31 includes these changes:

• The maximum blob size has been increased to 4.77 TB with the increase of block size to 100 MB. Check out our previous announcement for more details.
• The Put Message API now returns information about the message that was just added, including the pop receipt. This enables the you to call Update Message and Delete Message on the newly enqueued message.
• The public access level of a container is now returned from the List Containers and Get Container Properties APIs. Previously this information could only be obtained by calling Get Container ACL.
• The List Directories and Files API now accepts a new parameter that limits the listing to a specified prefix.
• All Table Storage APIs now accept and enforce the timeout query parameter.
• The stored Content-MD5 property is now returned when requesting a range of a blob or file. Previously this was only returned for full blob and file downloads.
• A new Incremental Copy Blob API is now available. This allows efficient copying and backup of page blob snapshots.
• Using If-None-Match: * will now fail when reading a blob. Previously this header was ignored for blob reads.
• During authentication, the canonicalized header list now includes headers with empty values. Previously these were omitted from the list.
• Several error messages have been clarified or made more specific. See the full list of changes in the REST API Reference.

Check out the REST API Reference documentation to learn more.

New client library features

.NET Client Library (version 8.0.1)

• All the service features listed above
• Support for portable class library (through the NetStandard 1.0 Façade)
• Key rotation for client side encryption for blobs, tables/ and queues

For a complete list of changes, check out the change log in our Github repository.

Storage Emulator

• All the service features listed above

The storage emulator v4.6 is available as part of the latest Microsoft Azure SDK. You can also install the storage emulator using the standalone installer.

We’ll also be releasing new client libraries for Java, C++, Python and NodeJS to support the latest REST version in the next few weeks along with a new AzCopy release. Stay tuned!