Introducing Windows Azure

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Windows Azure Team

27 Oct 2008 6:21 PM

Comments 8

Today at the Professional Developers Conference, Microsoft announced our Community Technology Preview of Windows Azure. Windows Azure enables you to host your web applications in Microsoft data centers on a scalable and highly available software platform. Windows Azure is a comprehensive platform that we designed and built with developers in mind:

Windows Azure provides a scalable and highly available virtualized hosting environment on which you can develop and deploy .NET applications. Our environment includes machines and load balancers, so that you can create your own scalable applications.
Windows Azure provides a storage service that includes support for blobs, tables and queues, which means that you can concentrate your development efforts on your core business logic.
Deploying services on the Windows Azure platform is a simple process of creating a declarative service model that the Fabric Controller interprets to orchestrate the service’s deployment. The fabric controller monitors software and hardware activity and adapts dynamically to any changes or failures. The Fabric Controller controls the data center resources and manages them as a shared pool for services. You are freed from worrying about procuring hardware or day-to-day management concerns.
Windows Azure provides you with a rich developer experience, which includes a complete desktop development environment. This allows you to write, debug and test your Windows Azure applications on your desktop prior to deployment to the data center. Visual Studio integration makes this a familiar and powerful experience.

We are releasing Windows Azure technology in a staged way, exposing more and more new functionality over time. For instance, support for native code will be released in 2009.

Starting today, you sign up for access to the Windows Azure tech preview at http://www.azure.com. Please give it a try and let us know what you think!

Amitabh Srivastava

Comments

infoblog » Introducing Windows Azure

27 Oct 2008 7:16 PM

PingBack from http://blog.a-foton.ru/index.php/2008/10/28/introducing-windows-azure/
lynds146

27 Oct 2008 8:49 PM

is this something people will be able to buy or is this strictly something that can be downloaded from the website?
ChrisLamont

29 Oct 2008 4:15 AM

Since the current link for Windows-Azure specific forums goes to this blog post, I'll post my question here.

Will the Windows Azure platform expose enough services for the developer to create his or her own version of Live Services, SQL Services, or .NET Services if desired? In other words, will the Microsoft-branded services use any undocumented, or unreleased OS functions to operate, or will all applications regardless of manufacturer be treated equal?

I get the impression from Ray Ozzie's Channel 9 interview that each application is sandboxed by URI's (a potential good thing), but I haven't seen anything that explicitly states that all internal applications will be using publicly disclosed OS interfaces. (Still, it is early for PDC, and the answer may be coming soon...)
davidjjon77

21 Nov 2008 7:43 PM

This is probably obvious however I could use a link to some directions on how to create a classical ASMX web service that runs on Windows Azure that I could use to retrieve stored images using a Silverlight client.

David Roh

JK@SilverlightAzure.com
stevennagy

25 Dec 2008 5:22 PM

Azure looks great, .NET Services in particular. I'm interested to explore how well large table data scales and what you can do with indexing.

I've kicked off a new blog about the whole topic and hope to assist the community in exploring this fantastic concept.

I've found a few blogs around the place including those mentioned on the Azure site, but is there any you could recommend? Obviously this one is not being updated frequently.

Cheers,

Steve
Windows Azure Team

16 Jan 2009 9:54 AM

Thanks for the comments, we were obviously slow to get this blog started. Look for new posts next week.
Microsoft Japan Forum Operators Blog

23 Feb 2009 11:42 PM

こんにちは！フォーラムオペレーターの服部清次です。少しの間続いていた暖かい日も終わってしまい、また冬らしい寒さが戻ってきましたが、皆さん、お元気ですか？街中ではマスク姿の人も多く、僕の周りでも、風邪をひいている人をちらほら見かけます。
SudhirKirloskar

26 Nov 2009 3:44 AM

It's great move from Microsoft. We have just moved one of our internal application to Azure. And it is working fine. Especially post launch of the Azure SDS things are pretty smooth.

Prior to the launch of Azure-SDS it was huge task of modifying all queries. But now it sounds easy.

I have heard that 10GB is going to be the limit for all cloud databases? Is it true? Or is it going to be only a temporary limitation?