Programming Microsoft's Clouds: Windows Azure™ and Office 365

Part IV

Working with Azure

• Chapter 8: Setting Up Azure
• Chapter 9: Identity in Azure
• Chapter 10: Leveraging Blob Storage

Chapter 8

Setting Up Azure

What’s in This Chapter?

• Setting up your Windows Azure account
• Getting your development environment set up for Windows Azure
• Making your first Windows Azure application
• Deploying your first Windows Azure application
• Controlling your Service by programming it

To host a working application on Windows Azure, you need to have a Windows Azure subscription and set it up for your application. In this chapter you learn how to do this, and you learn about the management portal through which you can manage subscriptions and hosted applications. But before you can even think about deploying an application, you need to develop it, and that means you need a development environment. You don’t just need a development tool; you need an environment that emulates Windows Azure as it works in the cloud. Apart from setting up the environments, in this chapter you learn about the components that make up the Windows Azure hosting environment and the development environment. You also learn about the role of each component, and how to work with the core components, by creating a simple application and deploying it to the Windows Azure production environment.

Getting Windows Azure

Getting Windows Azure isn’t about downloading and installing software. It’s an online service, so you need to register to gain access; after this, you can view a management portal ...