Getting Started with Windows Azure

30 Comments

• Thanks for the article. I like the improvements to the sign up process. I'm looking forward to future articles. I've considered Azure before, but it doesn't seem to be targeted toward small web sites or small developers. Coming from a small developer viewpoint Azure seems to be much more expensive than other hosts and it's not as straight-forward when you want to publish your site using Azure versus uploading files and databases on a conventional host.
  

• I don't have a mobile phone. Can you offer me an alternative way to sign up?
  

• Any plan that it would be available world wide, currently it does not accept credit card if you are not from the countries of that drop down, so eventually we have to move to AWS.
  

• @Harish,
  
  >>>>>>> Thanks very much for the Azure series, definitely looking forward to it. Just one quick question, does the spending limit feature eliminate concerns as posted by Lynn Langit
  
  We've done three things in the last month that help avoid situations like that:
  
  1) Introduced the spending limit feature so that people can't accidentally get billed from a free trial. Previously we saw that some customers would use more than the free trial and be surprised by a bill. The new changes/features ensures this never happens anymore.
  
  2) Added the account tab and the ability to see your bill in real-time. That enables you to understand what resources you are using and what they are costing you. In the past we saw some customers (who had exited the free trial) forget that they had something running that was costing them money. The new account tab allows users to see exactly what they are using and how much it is costing.
  
  3) Adding self-service account management so that you can change credit cards, delete subscriptions, and easily sign up for new ones. That takes much of the hassle of having to call a phone number to manage things.
  
  We think the above three things should help ensure a smooth experience going forward.
  
  Hope this helps,
  
  Scott
  

• @David,
  
  >>>>> I don't have a mobile phone. Can you offer me an alternative way to sign up?
  
  On the verification screen during sign-up you can select to have a SMS verification code sent to you, or alternatively there is also a number on the screen that you can call to verify (and you don't need a mobile phone to call it). That will enable you to sign-up without having a mobile phone.
  
  Hope this helps,
  
  Scott
  

• Sign up requirements too much. Don't have, don't want, never will have a LiveId. Should not have to give a CC# for a free trial. Do not want you to have my cell phone number.
  
  You guys need to make it EASY to sign up.
  

• So, if I'm not in one of the listed countries I can't try Azure?
  

• @Kazi, @Essam
  
  >>>>>> Any plan that it would be available world wide, currently it does not accept credit card if you are not from the countries of that drop down, so eventually we have to move to AWS.
  
  We are rolling Windows Azure out to more worldwide countries later this year. I believe you can change the drop-down in the sign-up wizard to reflect any country. If you have an international credit card you can then use that to sign-up. Send me email (scottgu@microsoft.com) if you have problems and I can connect you with someone to help.
  
  Thanks,
  
  Scott
  

• I just want to know what is the target audience? Small team (starting from one developer) or just for Company who can span a few thousands a month?
  
  The only thing stopping me to try azure is the price. I want heroku or appharbor like pricing model such as free to host small application and 10MB of database.
  
  I really hope you can change it for us, poor developers. :)
  

• Hi Scott, are there any plans to extend the "Spending Limit" feature to non trial/MSDN accounts?
  
  It appears to be currently '£0' or 'disabled' so I guess my question is when will it be possible to set it to '£200' and so set an upper bound on potential costs?
  

• As dc said, more needs to be done to allow developers to host smaller sites on Azure without incurring significant costs. For simple, low traffic sites, Azure does not compare favourably with the cost of shared hosting or the excellent AppHarbor platform. This is a real shame - Azure is a great platform that should not be restricted to those with deeper pockets.
  

• Hi Scott,
  Thanks for the info. One small remark about the free account. I've started using Windows Azure trial account, with a pretty simple sample project. After ~9 days, I got an email that stated that my account is suspended because I've reached spending limits. I was really surprised because I was the only person making some sample tests on the account. Well, it came out that I've reached my 'Storage Transactions' limit (10 000s) without even using the storage API (I haven't implemented any Blog, Table, Queue, services in my application). This was really strange, as my subscription summary told me that I was using 1000 transactions per day.
  After googling a while for the problem, I figured out that Windows Azure project in the Visual Studio, by default has 'Enable Diagnostics' checkbox checked, and surprise, this feature uses heavily 'Storage Transactions'.
  Even though, technically its my fault that I didn't disable Diagnostics, I believe it should have a default state 'uncheked', as the vast majority of newcomers will encounter this problem (I don't even known how Diagnostics can be used in my app).
  Moreover, I haven't seen in the official SDK any statement that points out that Diagnostics can consume your 'Storage Transactions'.
  
  Regards
  

• Hi Scott,
  
  I have a question regarding credit cards and billing addresses for a windows live account. I have previously tried to sign up for a developer account for the Windows Phone, but since I've moved my the country of the billing address on my Live account doesn't match my current country. This results in me being unable to register a credit card and thus I am also unable to create the account at create.msdn.com (I have no intention to create a new account since I have lots of services connected to my current account). Has this scenario been fixed or will I have the same problem trying to create an account for Azure? Also, will this scenario be fixed for Windows Phone development anytime soon (or has it already been fixed)?
  
  /Rob
  

• Can you just ditch the free trial altogether, and make the lowest level of everything just be free? Then, if we exceed the lowest level, we have to go higher and start paying.
  

• Scott,
  
  Is Azure going to be a viable option for hosting small applications? I'm currently using AppHarbor for cloud-based applications which seems to be very friendly to small apps with limited traffic. Being a .net developer, I would love to have Azure in my tool belt as well, but it looks like the primary target audience of this platform is large apps with big databases and lots of traffic.
  
  This is fine, there is certainly a lot of money in that. However, it doesn't really encourage young developers such as myself to give it a try.
  

• After all this time reading and hearing about Azure, I still can't sign up :P Iceland is still not in the list, not even for a trial account :(
  

• This is a definite improvement from my last experience with Azure, trials and billing, which was just a complete nightmare (had to threaten legal action to get my bill removed, but that is another story).
  
  One improvement I can think of is to simply remove the time limit: I would really like to start using Azure, but given other project work, my activity will be starting and stopping quite a bit.
  
  Why not just have the existing (reasonable) usage limits for the trial, and when you use them up the trial is over?
  
  David
  

• Hi Scott, I've been trying to register for the free trial, but it hangs during step one. It just shows "Loading offers..." with an animated ajax gif and the country dropdown at the bottom. Tried in both IE9 and Chrome.
  
  Also, as others have noted above, I do not see my country in the dropdown box listed, does this mean I will not be able to register until Azure is available in South Africa? There is no "Other" country option.
  

• Scott,
  
  Awesome video. Learned more about Azure in that hour and a half than...
  
  You mentioned that Sql Azure was getting a walk thru that day - is the video available?
  
  Paul.
  

• This is a great improvement. Thanks Scott.
  

• Scott,
  
  Finally! A no obligation/no change of being billed $43/nanosecond because you don't know what you are doing. Great post. MS Needs to promote the heck out of this with a big Ad.
  
  NEW Azure Trial: You can never be billed unless you sign up for a full account
  We know some of you have been weary of trying azure, because you don't want to reck up charges before you fully understand the system and how billing works..."
  
  - Brett
  

• Hello Scott,
  There’s has been a definite improvement with the Azure experience, and the new Azure trial is great.
  Also it gives us a lot more confidence, now that you are behind it!
  
  If only you could have a price model more like Heroku, or AWS (free usage tier micro instance, using Windows Server 2008 R2)
  
  I’m not sure if there’s technical limits or maybe more political, but that would please the other 80%(in my opinion) of .net developers .
  

• @David Porter: you can call support to complete signup. There should be a link on the page which will give you the number to call. We're working on additional ways to make this simpler.
  

• If you get the free trial beware of the default setting to use Diagnostic it's all over the fourms there are about ten thousands storage transactions a day which eats up the free trial in 3 - 10 days you have to release your spending to continue the use of your free trial once you release your spending limit you can't reverse it this is an expected result it has to do with the latest SDK pepole on the fourms are not happy calling it a scam and of course the azure team is no addressing this issue no one from Microsoft is again I like the idea of Azure it's the Azure team I'm disgusted with I'd fire half of them if I was in charge
  

• This is the worst horor story I seen with the free trial
  http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsazurepurchasing/thread/cc1f3025-5bbe-4654-b4fe-b242dce3b05b you can read more of them at
  http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsazurepurchasing/threads
  

• I'm trying to use the pricing calculator, and the 6 month plan price doesn't make sense. I set it to 1 small instance vm with 2gb relational database. The amount shows $109.98/mo. I click the 6-month plan radio button, and the amount changes to $151.98/mo. The price shouldn't go up.
  

• Hi Scott,
  
  Are there any plans to change the firewall rules for SQL Azure? Currently I have to add the entire IP address range for my ISP as I am assigned dynamic IP addresses, which somewhat dilutes the security provided by the firewall.
  
  Can MAC and/or DNS rules be incorporated in the future please? This would allow me to use a service such as DynDNS.
  
  - Andy
  

• Is there a performance SLA for SQL Azure? I see that there's an availability (uptime) SLA of 99.95%, but I don't see any performance SLA.
  
  It looks like SQL Azure is multi-tenent, so I wonder how we can get (and measure) performacne in a predicatable way?
  

• Hello Scott,
  
  Do you plan to add Georgia to the countries list?
  
  I am from Georgia and I cannot even try the Azure.
  

• wow, its looking so pretty