In a previous article, I covered Microsoft’s announcement that public cloud platform Windows Azure was now making available infrastructure grade virtual machines (VMs). These VMs would have persistent storage and will compete with other Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) public cloud providers like Amazon and Rackspace. Azure Virtual Network, a means to connect on-premise computers with Azure VMs using a BYOD IPSEC tunnel, was also announced. The new service is still in a trial period (”IaaS preview”), with a free trial for the public, and a discounted price for existing Azure customers.
How to participate in the Azure IaaS VM trial
You can get started with Windows Azure infrastructure VMs with a 90-day free trial (see Figure A for the sign-up page). If you already have an Azure subscription, and you purchased Windows Azure compute hours in the last year for Azure Platform as a Service (PaaS) VMs, during the IaaS preview your IaaS hours are billed just like a PaaS VM with the only change being that Microsoft bills you for two-thirds of the actual hours you use. This is because IaaS is not in full production support and Microsoft wants to give customers a discount.
To learn more and to read the entire article at its source, please refer to the following page, Getting started with Azure IaaS and the new Windows Azure Portal- TechRepublic Blogs
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