Windows Azure Now Offers Extra Small Instances

We are introducing the Extra Small Windows Azure compute instance to make the process of development, testing and trial easier for enterprise developers on Windows Azure. The beta for Extra Small instances is available now in your management portal.

You choose the size of the virtual machines that run applications on Windows Azure based on your resource requirements.

Prices begin at a nickel for each compute hour and includes up to 20 gigs of Azure storage, on a 1 gigahertz computer with 768 megs of memory. Windows Azure compute instances come in five unique sizes to enable complex applications and workloads.

The Extra Small instance will also make Windows Azure more affordable for developers interested in running smaller applications on the platform.

Each Windows Azure compute instance represents a virtual server. Although many resources are dedicated to a particular instance, some resources associated to I/O performance, such as network bandwidth and disk subsystem, are shared among the compute instances on the same physical host. During periods when a shared resource is not fully utilized, you are able to use a higher share of that resource.

For more information about the sizes available for compute instances, see Windows Azure Compute.

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Bruce D. KyleISV Architect Evangelist | Microsoft Corporation