The Windows Azure Platform Training Course freely available on MSDN includes a comprehensive set of hands-on labs and videos that are designed to help you quickly learn how to use Windows Azure, SQL Azure,and the Windows Azure AppFabric.
Windows Azure is an internet-scale cloud computing and services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services which can be used individually or together. It gives developers the choice to build web applications; applications running on connected devices, PCs, or servers; or hybrid solutions offering the best of both worlds. New or enhanced applications can be built using existing skills with the Visual Studio development environment and the .NET Framework. With its standards-based and interoperable approach, the services platform supports multiple internet protocols, including HTTP, REST, SOAP, and plain XML
Microsoft SQL Azure delivers on the Microsoft Data Platform vision of extending the SQL Server capabilities to the cloud as web-based services, enabling you to store structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data.
As applications collaborate across organizational boundaries, ensuring secure transactions across disparate security domains is crucial but difficult to implement. Windows Azure platform AppFabric provides hosted authentication and access control using powerful, secure, standards-based infrastructure.
This release provides new and updated hands-on labs for the Windows Azure November 2010 release and the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 1.3. Some of these new hands-on labs demonstrate how to use new Windows Azure features such as Virtual Machine Role, Elevated Privileges, Full IIS, and more. This release also includes hands-on labs that were updated in late October 2010 to demonstrate some of the new Windows Azure AppFabric services that were announced at the Professional Developers Conference (https://microsoftpdc.com) including the Windows Azure AppFabric Access Control Service, Caching Service, and the Service Bus.