Windows Azure Software Development Kit (March 2009 CTP)

Brief Description

The Windows® Azure™ SDK provides developers with the APIs, tools, documentation, and samples needed to develop Internet-scale applications that run on Windows Azure.

Overview

The Azure Services Platform is designed to help developers quickly and easily create, deploy, manage, and distribute web services and applications on the Internet. Windows Azure is an operating system for the cloud that serves as the development, run-time, and control environment for the Azure Services Platform. Windows Azure provides developers on-demand compute & storage to host, scale, and manage web applications on the internet through Microsoft data centers.

Windows Azure is elastic, flexible, and interoperable. With Windows Azure developers can achieve high levels of service availability and application interoperability while maintaining freedom of choice.

The Windows Azure SDK provides developers with the tools and APIs needed to develop, deploy, and manage scalable services in Windows Azure.

New in March 2009 CTP

Support for developing managed full trust applications. This includes support for calling native code via Platform Invocation Services (P/Invoke) and for spawning native processes.

Support for developing FastCGI applications.

Support for rewrite rules via IIS 7.0 URL Rewrite Module.

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System Requirements

Supported Operating Systems: Windows Server 2008 Enterprise; Windows Server 2008 Standard; Windows Vista Business; Windows Vista Business 64-bit edition; Windows Vista Home Premium; Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit edition; Windows Vista Ultimate; Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit edition

Required Software

Windows Vista SP1 (when installing on Windows Vista)

.NET Framework 3.5 SP1

IIS 7.0 (with ASP.NET, WCF HTTP Activation and optionally CGI)

Microsoft SQL Server Express 2008 or Microsoft SQL Server Express 2005 or Microsoft SQL Server 2008

Hotfix: Support for FastCGI on Development Fabric

Recommended Software

Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio (includes both the Windows Azure SDK and the Tools)

IIS7.0 URL Rewrite Module

Windows PowerShell (needed for CloudDrive sample)

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Instructions

Important: Make sure you have the latest service pack and critical updates for the version of Windows that you are running. To find recent security updates, use Windows Update.
Before installing the SDK, you must first install the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 and enable IIS 7.0. For more information, please download and read the Windows Azure SDK release notes, available on this page.

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