Now that you know a lot about the functionality of Microsoft Azure, you might be interested in trying Azure yourself. Microsoft made it very easy to try Microsoft Azure. Customers get a free trial for 30 days and a credit of $200/€150.
Within a few minutes from now, you will be able to log in to a Windows of a Linux server running in Azure.
The requirements to subscribe for a free Azure subscription are as follows:
A credit card, which is used to authenticate you. It will not be charged.
A Microsoft (LiveID) account.
A mobile phone to receive an authorization code via SMS.
You will not be charged on the credit card. If the credit given by Microsoft has reached the value of zero, the trial stops.
To try out Azure go to http://www.windowsazure.com and click on Free Trial.
Microsoft customers who have an MSDN subscription with Visual Studio receive free Microsoft Azure usage credits per month and discounts on services like Virtual Machines. The free usage credits range from ...