Free Azure Tools For Development

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There are a ton of free resources available for Azure cloud development, and right now, many of them are free. I’ll try to keep this list updated as I come across great finds. Note: Older tools won’t be listed. Although Azure is out of CTP/Beta, it is evolving. Older solutions that have not been updated typically don’t work with newer bits. I won’t waste your time.

Let’s start first with the Azure Framework. Yes, it’s free. And until you deploy to the cloud, all of your local development testing is also…free of charge. Once you’ve downloaded the bits, take a look at these great tools and SDKs.

Samples, Guidance, SDKs, White Papers

Windows Azure SDK February 2010 Update

APIs, tools, documentation and samples to get started with Windows Azure.
Download from Microsoft.

Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 1.1

Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio extend Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2010 to enable the creation, configuration, building, debugging, running and packaging of scalable web applications and services on Windows Azure. Note that installation includes the Windows Azure SDK
Download from Microsoft

Windows Azure AppFabric SDK v1.0 April 2010

This SDK includes API libraries and samples for building connected applications with the .NET platform. It spans the entire spectrum of today’s Internet applications – from rich connected applications with advanced connectivity requirements to Web-style applications that use simple protocols such as HTTP to communicate with the broadest possible range of clients.
Download from Microsoft.

Windows Azure Platform Training Kit

A comprehensive set of training materials including videos, hands on labs and sample applications that cover Windows Azure, .Net Service Bus, and SQL Azure.
Download from Microsoft.

Windows Azure Toolkit for Facebook

A getting started toolkit for Facebook app developers to get their solutions running on Azure.
Download from Codeplex.

Windows Azure Guidance

Sample projects, applications and walk-thru’s provided by the Microsoft Azure evangelist team.
Download from CodePlex.

Lokad.Cloud

A .Net O/C (object to cloud) Mapper for Azure. A full execution framework with dedicated Worker Roles, Web Roles, and a self contained Administrative Console.
The O/C Mapper is a toolkit library to manage storage functions. The execution framework lets you define a set of services to be run in the WorkerRole providing a lot built-in features such as task scheduling, queue processing and app administration from a built-in web console.
Download from the Project Home at Google Code

SQL Azure Management Tools

SQL Server 2008 R2 Express with Management Tools

Whether you want to give this free local SQL Database engine a spin is up to you. It has tremendous value (it’s free!), but what you’re really interested in is the “Management Tools” part of the deal.That installs SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). You can directly connect to SQL Azure, create databases (no need for the web dashboard on sql.azure.com), and query. In fact, you can do just about anything against a SQL Azure database that you can with a standard SQL Server database with SSMS.
Download from Microsoft.

SQL Azure Migration Wizard

This CodePlex project has been kept up to date with changes and enhancements and is a great utility for porting local databases to the cloud. Specifically, the Migration Wizard will allow you to move from SQL Server to SQL Azure, SQL Azure to Server and SQL Azure to SQL Azure.
Download from CodePlex.

Microsoft SQL Azure Data Sync

A series of components that improve the experience of synchronizing with SQL Azure. This download includes runtime components that optimize performance and simplify the process of synchronizing with the cloud. The Sync Framework Power Pack for SQL Azure contains a database provider for Sync Framework (SQLAzureSyncProvider) that is specifically tuned for SQL Azure and a stand-alone utility ( SQL Azure Data Sync Tool for SQL Server) that enables synchronization between an on-premise SQL Server database and SQL Azure. Additionally, the Sync Framework Power Pack for SQL Azure contains a Visual Studio plug-in that demonstrates how to add offline capabilities to applications which synchronize with SQL Azure by using a local SQL Server Compact database.
Download from Microsoft.

Windows Azure Tools

Windows Azure MMC

Available from Microsoft, you can now manage all storage functions of Windows Azure from a familiar MMC interface. Also allows for the configuration of intrumenting diagnostics per source (perf counters, file based, app logs, infrastructure logs, event logs)
Download from MSDN Code Gallery.

Cerebrata Cloud Storage Studio

A Windows Client for managing your Azure Storage. You can explore/edit tables, blobs and queues. Note that you still can’t do much with xDrive here. But you can review all of those tables, messages and create them on the fly.
Note that there is a 30 day trial, and the application has a free developer version. That will allow you o manage local Azure storage only. The fully featured version will allow for local and cloud storage management.
Download from Cerebrata.

Cerebrata Azure Diagnostics Monitor (beta)

A Windows client that lets you view, download and manage diagnostics data from Azure applications. Note that this application is currently in beta, and is free of charge. ~~It is unknown whether this tool will remain free, or if~~ According to Cerebrata there will be a trial version after commercial release, good for 30 days, as well as free usage for local development storage only.
Download from Cerebrata

CloudBerry Explorer for Azure Blob Storage

A Windows client for viewing and managing Blob storage on Azure. Note that the free version is limited to local development storage only. In addition, it time bombs after 3 months, at which point you need to renew your registration (free).
Download from CloudBerry.

Azure Table Query

This is a CodePlex project that provides a Web Role with the ability to perform ad-hoc LINQ queries against Azure Table Storage.
Download from CodePlex. .

Azure Log Fetcher

A command line application which will download all your IIS logs from Azure and delete them from the cloud. You can create a .bat file and set it in task scheduler to run automatically. It will optionally email you upon success or failure. For more information check the article.
Download from MSDN

http://www.cerebrata.com Gaurav Mantri

Hi David,

Thanks for mentioning our Cloud Storage Studio and Azure Diagnostics Manager products. It’s much appreciated. I would like to provide few comments:

- Cloud Storage Studio supports X Drive. You can upload VHDs from your computer as page blobs using Cloud Storage Studio and then mount them as X Drive through your application. Cloud Storage Studio also has Subscription Management feature wherein you can manage your hosted services (create/deploy/delete/upgrade/swap etc.) using Cloud Storage Studio.

- Azure Diagnostics Manager is currently in public beta. We hope to go live with this in a few weeks time. You’ll get a 30 day trial once we go live and after that you can use it against development storage (same as Cloud Storage Studio).

- We have a “free” Azure Explorer as well. It’s called Cloud Storage Studio/e. It is completely browser based and is built using Silverlight. Though I must admit that we have not worked on it in ages and is not as feature rich as Cloud Storage Studio but it has basic storage management capabilities.

Thanks

Gaurav Mantri
Cerebrata Software
http://www.cerebrata.com
http://www.summitcloud.com admin

Thanks for the notes, I’ve updated the listing. I tried the xDrive functionality, and while it looks like you can upload the BLOB, I was hoping to browse folders/files..but perhaps that was not the intention/feature set.
I was really hoping to ditch the tether to local VHD management and do all of that file management from within CloudStorage Studio.
http://sondreb.com/ SondreB

The link to the Windows Azure Toolkit for Facebook is wrong. Correct URL should be: http://facebookazuretoolkit.codeplex.com/
http://www.summitcloud.com admin

@SondreB:
Thanks! Fixed.
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… Microsoft offers free Windows Azure services for MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network) and BizSpark members. Microsoft BizSpark is a global program that helps software startups succeed by giving them access to Microsoft software development tools; …