Creating a Windows Azure account

Signing up for a Windows Azure account is a relatively easy process. Go to http://azure.com/ and click on Sign up to begin the sign up process.

Windows Azure is a consumption-based hosting service that requires you to pay for the resources that you consume. Microsoft charges for the usage of each distinct service that they offer, based on the consumption of that individual resource or service, for example, CPU hours, Internet bandwidth, storage, AppFabric, or SQL Azure. The various components of Windows Azure will be explored further in Chapter 2,Introduction to Windows Azure.