Develop and Deploy

Building a cloud based application does not require special skills. You and your team can use the familiar tools with Visual Studio 2010 to start developing, deploying and testing cloud based applications using your MSDN benefits at no cost to you. You can use the learning’s by following the roadmap below to build competency on the cloud application development.

1. Create your first emulator application

   • Visual Studio 2010 developers can create a new Windows Azure project and run it in the Windows Azure compute emulator. The compute emulator simulates the Windows Azure environment on your local computer so that you can run and test your application locally before deploying it. For additional information about the compute emulator, see Overview of the Windows Azure Compute Emulator
   • You can use the Cloud Service template in Visual studio to help you simplify creation of the Windows Azure application and include the tools necessary to run and manage applications in the cloud.
   • Windows Azure currently supports the following types of roles:
     • Web role – A web role is customized for web application programming as supported by IIS 7 and ASP.NET. The benefit of using this type of role is that the IIS setup is done for you. This role is best used for providing a web based frontend for your hosted service. It is not suited for long running processes. For more information see Overview of the Web Role.
     • Worker role – A worker role is useful for generalized development, and may perform background processing for a web role. When you have a need for a background process that performs long running or intermittent tasks, you should use this role. For more information see Developing a Background Service.
     • VM role – A VM role enables you to define the configuration and updates of the operating system for the virtual machine. While a web role and a worker role run in a virtual machine, the VM role is the virtual machine, which gives you full control of operations. When you have long and complicated installations in the operating system or special setup issues, you should use this role. This role is especially suited for migrating existing applications to run as hosted services in Windows Azure. For more information see Overview of the Windows Azure VM Role.

2. Deploy your first application to the cloud: Applications are deployed to Windows Azure as hosted services using tools integrated in Visual Studio 2010. To deploy your application to the Windows Azure platform

   • Prepare your application for deployment by publishing your Windows Azure project from the solution explorer by choosing “Create Service Package only” option. Note: the Package (cspkg file) is created in a local folder and you will need to remember the location of the folder to deploy your application using the management portal. For more information see, Walkthrough: Create a Simple Windows Azure Application.
   • You can deploy your application to Windows Azure by using the Management Portal at http://windows.azure.com. Create a new “Hosted Service” by following the steps on the management portal, choose deploy to production and make sure to start the service after the successful deployment in the staging environment. Note: while running through the deployment process make sure to load the correct cspkg file you created earlier in the process. For more information see, Walkthrough: Deploy and run your Windows Azure application.
   • Once your application is deployed in production your application is consuming Windows Azure resources and you can browse to it using the URL in the “DNS Name” property in your management console.

3. Manage your cloud applications: The Windows Azure Management Tool was created to manage your hosted services and storage accounts in Windows Azure. This tool provides you with the ability to manage hosted services, diagnostics, certificates, storage, queues, tables etc. from a single management console. For more information see Windows Azure Management Tool (MMC).

Windows Azure Platform Learning and Readiness

MPN has set up a Windows Azure learning path and a Microsoft SQL Azure learning path to help you update your Windows Azure technology platform skills or acquire new ones. Find training for both sales and technical professionals.