The initial entry point for Azure developers moving ASP.NET applications to the cloud is the Windows Azure Development
Portal at http://bit.ly/PbtOV (https://windows.azure.com/Cloud/Provisioning/Default.aspx), which requires logging in with a Windows Live ID. Azure Community Technical Previews (CTPs) require separate GUID tokens for

Windows Azure, which includes
o Azure Hosted Services
o Storage Accounts

SQL Azure

Live Services, which includes
oLive Framework: Community Technology Preview
oLive Services: Existing APIs

Live Services: Existing APIs isn’t a CTP and doesn’t require a token; you receive a Compute Only Live Services: Existing APIs account with each Windows Azure account. As of early 2009, a Windows Azure token entitles you to one Hosted Services account, two Storage Accounts, as well as one Hosted Deployment and Hosted Deployment Instance. You request Azure tokens through a Microsoft Connect page that you access by clicking the Billing link on the Development Portal’s Summary – My Projects page.

The below figure shows the Account page for the January 2009 CTP, which links to pages for setting up and managing SQL Azure, .NET Services and Live Services accounts. This page lets you redeem Azure and Live Framework CTP tokens provided by e-mail, and a Live Alerts page for specifying how and when to receive messages containing application-critical alerts, newsletters, and portal updates.

The March 2009 CTP introduced geolocation, which permits account holders to specify the data centers in which to store Hosted Services and Storage Accounts. Two choices were offered when this book was written: USA-Northwest (Quincy, WA) and USA-Southeast (San Antonio, TX.) You add sets of Hosted Services and Storage Accounts to an Affinity Group to assure that services and storage run in the same data center, which improves performance.

The below figure shows part of the Tokens page with several Windows Azure tokens redeemed. You paste the GUID received in a message from an Azure team member into the Resource Token ID text box and click Claim Token to add one or more entries for the appropriate entity or entities to the list.

If you want to develop Live Framework-enabled web sites or Mesh-enabled web applications, request a Live Framework CTP token by e-mail from meshctpe@microsoft.com. After you receive and redeem the Live Framework token, download and install current CTPs of the Live Framework SDK and the Live Framework Tools for Visual Studio from links on the Live Services SDK page at http://bit.ly/oJIoz (http://dev.live.com/liveframework/sdk/). You must redeem a Live Framework token to download the Live SDK and Tools.