I had similar experience using the βnewβ preview portal when deploying databases. This portal uses the resource manager to deploy its resources, which is a new way of doing things. Anyway, I used the PowerShell command:
Get-AzureResourceGroupLog -Name ResourceGroupName
This gave me detailed information about what happens with the deployment. I had to set up my data center because the one I was trying to use was hot.
I will talk a little more about the other options this command has here: http://devian.co/?p=1181
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