Tools available – Visual Studio 2010

In order to develop, deploy the cloud application, you must have network connectivity and a Windows Azure developer account.  To create a developer account, you need to sign-up for an invitation code and redeem the invitation code on the Azure Services Developer Portal located at:  http://windows.azure.com/.

 Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio extend Visual Studio 2008 and the upcoming Visual Studio 2010 RC to enable the creation, configuration, building, debugging, running and packaging of scalable web applications and services on Windows Azure.

System Requirements

·         Supported Operating Systems: Windows 7; Windows Server 2008; Windows Server 2008 R2; Windows Vista

·         IIS 7.0 (with ASP.NET, WCF HTTP Activation, Static Content, and optionally CGI).

·         Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 SP1, the upcoming Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 RC or Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition with SP1.

 Please find the step-by-step snapshots for key items:

Snapshot to create the developer account:

Snapshot for choosing the Azure Subscription:

  

Snapshot for installing Azure Tools:

 

Snapshot after Cloud being enabled in VS 2008:

Snapshot for the Cloud service solutions:

  

Snapshot to create a Storage account:

  

Configuring Cloud Service

 A cloud service project contains two configuration files: ServiceDefinition.csdef and ServiceConfiguration.cscfg.

• The ServiceDefinition.csdef file contains the metadata details such as role it has, instances etc.. These configuration settings can be read at runtime using the Windows Azure Service Hosting Runtime API. This file cannot be updated while your service is running in Windows Azure.
• The ServiceConfiguration.cscfg file sets values for the configuration settings defined in the service definition file and specifies the number of instances to run for each role. This file can be updated while your service is running in Windows Azure.

Snapshot for prompting from Staging to Production: