Registering for the Windows Azure Developer Portal

To deploy hosted applications to Windows Azure, you first need to register and get an account. At the moment of writing this chapter, Windows Azure and related services in the platform are in Community Technology Preview, which means free evaluation. When this book is live, Azure will no longer be in CTP, meaning that you will have to pay to use services because Microsoft will be already charging customers for using Azure. If you are interested in Microsoft cloud computing and in purchasing services, ensure you read this page about pricing first: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/pricing/. Only if you decide to pay for cloud computing services, go to the following link: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/account/ and click Get Your Account. At this point you need to log in with a valid Windows Live ID. After you’ve logged in, follow the instructions shown to get your tokens. You will also receive an email with instructions to follow to activate your token on Windows Azure. Only when you are a registered user can you visit the Windows Azure Developer portal that is located at the following address: http://windows.azure.com. Your new account will give you access to two main features: the Service Hosting, which is where you will publish your applications, and the Storage Account where you will have access to the blog storage, queues, and tables. Later in this chapter you see how to manage applications within the Windows Azure Developer Portal. Before going into that, you need to enable Visual Studio 2010 for cloud development.