When going to the Windows Azure portal you can choose for the different services on the portal, one of the things you see is the Dashboard. The Dashboard is aggregation of a couple of performance counters.
Now there is a new option: Web Endpoint Status. With this option you can automate the monitoring of the availability of your Windows Azure website from an other Windows Azure datacenter.
The setup is relatively easy. Go to the Configure tab.
Enter the URL and check the Windows Azure datacenters to test from. Ready.
Besides the dashboard there is also logging.
Again a super addition to the portal! And the best part it is not only available for Windows Azure websites, but also for Cloud services and for Windows Azure Mobile Services.
Ok, from a monitoring perspective this is far from optimal, but it is a great first step! It shows the fact Microsoft is thinking about monitoring in addition to Windows Azure portal a lot. So this looks like a promise.