Archive for October, 2008

Since we give out a pre-beta of Windows 7 at PDC and made the Windows Azure SDK available, its only a matter of time before someone would try them together. To save you lots of pain/time you should know this: current builds of Windows 7 do not support Windows Azure – hopefully this will be fixed soon, because Windows 7 is sweet!

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The Azure Services Training Kit will include hands-on labs, presentations, and samples to help you understand how to build applications that utilize the Azure Services Platform.  This PDC preview release of the training kit includes 11 hands-on labs that cover the broad set of services including Windows Azure, .NET Services, SQL Services, and Live Services.   These are the same hands on labs that was available to attendees at PDC!

You can download the Azure Services Training Kit from the Microsoft Download Center here.

Over the next few weeks we will also be releasing several samples and scenario-based demos that can be used to both demonstrate the value proposition of these services and understand how to use the SDKs, Tools, and Services themselves. 

The Windows Azure hands-on labs can be used locally with the Windows Azure developer fabric that is included with the Windows Azure SDK.   However, the .NET Services, SQL Services, and Live Services labs require a registered service account.   Please see the section below about obtaining an invitation code.

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Finally, i can write something in my blog! Over the last 9 months i have been working as the Windows Azure technical evangelist, working with early adopters such as Full Armor, Sentient, Lake Quincy & n/software.

You can see some of the results in the Ray Ozzy’s PDC keynote from Monday http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/KYN01/ and on the Windows Azure Gallery at http://gallery.cloudapp.net/.

For a deeper view of Windows Azure, check out the channel 9 videos Charles Torre did with Manuvir Das Introducing Windows Azure, and Steve Marx Windows Azure for Developers. There are also a bunch of screencasts the team did on http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cc994380.aspx.

Look out for some cool demos, training kits and samples from the team in the next few weeks and months.

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