Azure Management Portal

We build the first cloud application; itz time to host it in Microsoft Cloud center. As the first step, logged into the azure home page (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure). On right top location, therez a link called SignIn. Using msn account (ganscloud@hotmail.com), I created an account for azure platform with extra small instance. As of now, itz more than sufficient for my proof of concept (POC) model. For more information on cloud hosting cost, plz refer the site (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/offers/)

Account is succesfully set up in cloud space and the domain is named as 'http://ganesansenthilvel.cloudapp.net/'. Itz time to host after creating the account. To do so, we need to build the cloud application in Release mode of VS2010 IDE. It will create two files at bin\Release\Publish folder namely (1) HelloAzure.cspkg (cloud app package file) and (2) ServiceConfiguration.cscfg (cloud app configuration file).

On getting into cloud management portal, we have two regions to host our first cloud application. They are (1) Staging (2) Production. Staging can be used as pre production i.e. customer acceptance testing zone. Once, the user signed off, Staging app can be easily shifted to Production zone by clicking the middle double arrowed button. Staging URLs are self generated numbers, where as production version is meaningful complete url. In our app, itz ganesansenthilvel.cloudapp.net. Isn't it cool?

Buttons in the attached image, are self descriptive. Upgrade button is used to import cspkg and cscfg files in the cloud space. Suspend button is used to stop the running cloud app. OS Settings is helpful to configure the cloud Operating System.