Free Month of Windows Azure

Microsoft is offering a FREE Windows Azure Platform One Month Pass, so you can put Windows Azure and SQL Azure through their paces.  No Credit Card Required.

Learn about the Windows Azure platform with no steep learning curve.  With the Windows Azure platform you pay only for what you use, scale up when you need capacity, and pull back when you don’t.

Sign Up for Free Month of Windows Azure

Web-Based Management Tools for SQL Azure

Microsoft has released web-based management tools (code-named “Houston”) for SQL Azure databases.  Houston provides basic database management tasks like authoring and executing queries, designing and editing a database schema, and editing table data.  Houston is designed to be lightweight and easy to use.

SQL Azure is a cloud-based database for websites running on the .NET platform.  SQL Azure allows developers to implement a scalable and secure custom web application without worrying about installing and updating software or managing physical hardware.

Project Houston Homepage
MSDN Blog Article

LightSwitch Public Beta 1

Visual Studio LightSwitch is a simplified way to build business applications for the cloud and the desktop.  LightSwitch provides a variety of pre-built templates and tools to quickly build business applications that target Windows Client or Windows Azure.  LightSwitch creates Silverlight applications that can run in the browser, out-of-the-browser, or in the cloud.  You can also use Visual Studio 2010 Professional, Premium or Ultimate to extend and customize your application even further.

Download Public Beta 1
LightSwitch Homepage

Visual Studio LightSwitch

Visual Studio LightSwitch is the simplest way to build business applications for the cloud and the desktop.

LightSwitch provides a variety of pre-built templates and tools to quickly build business applications that target Windows Client or Windows Azure.  LightSwitch creates Silverlight applications that can run in the browser, out-of-the-browser, or in the cloud.  You can also use Visual Studio 2010 Professional, Premium or Ultimate to extend and customize your application even further.

The first beta of LightSwitch will be publicly available on August 23.

LightSwitch Homepage
Introducing Visual Studio LightSwitch

Windows Azure Free eBook

Eric Nelson has collected a series of articles on the Windows Azure cloud computing platform and assembled them into a free ebook, “The Windows Azure Platform: Articles from the Trenches — Volume One”.  Here is the blurb on the front cover: 

Developers have been exploring the possibilities opened up by the Windows Azure Platform for Cloud Computing.  This book pulls together great articles from many of those developers who have been active with the Windows Azure Platform to hopefully help others become successful.  There are twenty articles in this first volume covering everything from getting started to implementing best practices for elastic applications.

Windows Azure Free eBook

Windows Azure Tools and SDK 1.1

Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio enable the creation, configuration, building, debugging, running and packaging of scalable web applications and services on the Windows Azure cloud computing platform.

New for version 1.1:

• Windows Azure Drive: Enable a Windows Azure application to use existing NTFS APIs to access a durable drive. This allows the Windows Azure application to mount a page blob as a drive letter, such as X:, and enables easy migration of existing NTFS applications to the cloud.
• OS Version Support: Allows a Windows Azure application to choose the appropriate Guest OS to run on in the cloud.
• Numerous bug fixes

Version 1.1 supports Visual Studio 2008 and the upcoming Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate.  Use the November 2009 release with VS 2010 Beta 2.

Windows Azure Tools and SDK 1.1

Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio July 2009 CTP

Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio extend Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 to enable the creation, building, debugging, running and packaging of scalable web applications and services on Windows Azure cloud. Installation includes the Windows Azure SDK.

New for the July 2009 CTP:

• Support for developing and deploying services containing multiple web and worker roles. A service may contain zero or more web roles and zero or more worker roles with a minimum of one role of either type.
• New project creation dialog that supports creating Cloud Services with multiple web and worker roles.
• Ability to associate any ASP.NET Web Application project in a Cloud Service solution as a Web Role
• Support for building Cloud Services from TFS Build
• Enhanced robustness and stability

Note this is a CTP release and should not be used on production systems.