Released to enhance developer productivity for classic cloud resources, version 2.9.6 introduced several stability improvements over the initial 2.9 release:
Microsoft Web Platform Installer (WebPI) was the original distribution method. Since WebPI is no longer supported, the command-line approach using webpicmd.exe is unreliable today. microsoft azure sdk 2.9.6 download
Support for referencing resources existing outside the current template and running server-side validation on templates before deployment. Released to enhance developer productivity for classic cloud