Hands-on Lab: Develop your first cloud application and learn all major Windows Azure capabilities
During summer we decided to create a new Windows Azure Hands-On Lab which provides an overview of Microsoft offering for cloud-based computing. We run the lab in different location in Switzerland. The feedback was great and so now we want to make it available to the whole developer community.
So, if you are new to Windows Azure and you want to get up to speed in developing applications for Azure, this is the lab for you (download).
The lab is divided into 4 main parts: in the first part you will create a simple on-premises ASP.NET Web Application using a local SQL Server database. Then you will bring the local on-premises SQL Server database into the cloud (SQL Azure) and connect the local on premises ASP.NET app to the new created SQL Azure database. In the third part you are going to transform your on-premises ASP.NET application in an application which can live in the cloud. In order to do that you are going to use the local development environment (this is being created during the installation of the Windows Azure Tools for VS 2010).In the last part of the lab you are going to deploy the whole solution into the cloud.
The Hands-On Lab also covers deploying the application to Windows Azure and SQL Azure respectively. This step requires
· Internet access and
· an Azure Account :
è if you don’t have an Azure account you can open one using one of the following subscription types that are free of charge (for a given amount of services):
o Alternatively, if you have an MSDN subscription, you are already entitled to use, for test purposes, a given amount of Windows Azure services free of charge (more details here).
Note that you will need your credit card to sign up. However, it WON’T BE BILLED if you will be using less than the amount of services included with your subscription. Otherwise, it will be billed for the overages.
You can visit the Microsoft Online Services Customer Portal to look up your usage at any time.
To buy a subscription, take the following steps:
· STEP 1: Sign in to the Microsoft Online Services Customer Portal
è Remark: You will need a live id. If you don’t have one, click on the sign-up button.
· STEP 2: Select your location (for ex. Switzerland) and click continue.
· STEP 3: Select the Services tab and click Buy Now for the service of your choice.
· STEP 4: Follow the instructions on the web page.
Have fun!
The Swiss DPE Team