Signup for a Windows Azure account

First you need to signup for a Windows Azure account and get an invitation code to setup the server.

Visit http://www.azure.com for that.

Setup the development environment

Download and install the following from http://www.microsoft.com/azure/sdk.mspx

Windows Azure SDK

Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio

Create a new Windows Azure "Web Cloud Service" project in Visual Studio 2008

Now write some simple code:

Build the solution:

Now we are ready to package it for publishing our application to Windows Azure:

The above step creates a couple of files for us:

Create a new project in the online Azure Services Developer Portal

Click on New Project and select Hosted Services:

Enter a name for the project

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Enter a name for your hosted service:

Deploy our application to the Windows Azure Cloud

Now we are ready to upload the files created by the Publish step from Visual Studio 208 earlier:

Select the application package file:

And then the Configuration file:

 

 

Our application is now uploaded to the Windows Azure Cloud:

The Application is first deployed to a Staging environment:

 

Start the Application in the Staging Environment

We can now Run the Application:

The Application is now ready to be tested in the Staging environment:

 

Test the Application in the Staging Environment

This is the Application running from the Windows Azure Cloud Staging environment:

Wow! The application is available on the Internet and is working!

Deploy the application into Production

Now click on the image with the arrow to deploy the Application into the Production environment:

The application is now up and running into the Windows Azure Cloud production environment!