Windows Azure Getting Started Tutorial series (i): Creating the first Webrole program

This is the first article in a series of Windows Azure introductory teaching articles. In the first tutorial, we will learn how to create a webrole program (C # language) in Visual Studio 2010.

Before you start this tutorial, make sure that you download and install the latest Windows Azure development tools from the Windows Azure platform download. This tutorial uses Visual Studio 2010 as a development tool.

Step One: Create a solution and project

Open Visual Studio 2010 with administrator privileges, click File, select New, click the Project button:

In the pop-up window as shown, select Windows Azure project template, name the item firstwebrole, click OK to create the project:

After the pop-up window appears, click the ASP. NET Web Role, ">" button, as shown. This step generates a new Webrole item in the right window. Click OK.

Step Two: Observe the generated project

The project structure looks like this:

Step Three: Run the program

Press the F5 key to start the debugging program. If you are running a Windows Azure project for the first time, you will see the Development Storage initialized window and click the OK button directly:

Then meet the following page:

So far we have created the first Webrole program. If you pay attention, you will find a program icon in the taskbar, see:

This is the Windows Azure Emulator, which lets us test our programs locally to see if they can run on Windows Azure platform. Typically, you can run on Windows Azure platform if your local test passes, but there are some exceptions. For these questions, we'll cover them in more detail in a future article.

In the second article of this tutorial series, we will publish this program to Windows Azure platform so that this page can be accessed by any user on the Internet.

Windows Azure Getting Started Tutorial series (i): Creating the first Webrole program