I rarely get to experience this - hence the blog entry. When is the last time you worked on something that was a proper first iteration release from Microsoft. Sure, we (all ) get plenty of BETA or ALPHA code; if you work hard and are lucky. Actually, there is plenty of BETA code around these days... But, how about pure, snow-white 1.0.0.0 releases? Pretty rare, eh?

Well that is what you get with the release of the Microsoft Cloud computing Azure Software Development Kit. Compared to the Platform SDK which weighs in at over a Gig of data (including samples of course) the Azure SDK is a lean 3.5 Meg.

That said, the requirements for the Azure SDK are pretty heavy and include;

• Windows Vista SP1 (when installing on Windows Vista)
• .NET Framework 3.5 SP1
• IIS 7.0 (with ASP.NET and WCF HTTP Activation)
• Microsoft SQL Server Express 2005 or Microsoft SQL Server Express 2008
• Windows PowerShell

And, when you try to download the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 you get the following message;

"We are sorry, the page you requested cannot be found." Oops. Even Microsoft can make mistakes when rolling out a new version, but this link has been dead for 3 weeks now.

I tried installing the Azure SDK and the installation logic required (was looking for) the prior installation of NET 3.5 SP1 - meaning that without this update, NO Azure SDK. You can't get Azure today, by following the Microsoft instructions.

So, a couple of questions;

1) Given that I am that Microsoft responds to dead-links pretty quickly - has no one else complained?
2) Does anyone care?


There are few people out there already writing about Microsoft's Azure.... And they seem to answer the question rather strongly.

Have a read of Brian's Comments here:
http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/brianmadden/archive/2008/11/17/What-does-Microsoft-Azure-have-to-do-with-us_3F00_-Hint_3A00_-not-much-today_2E00_.aspx

Or Hoff's here:
http://rationalsecurity.typepad.com/blog/2008/10/when-clouds-encircle-islands-things-get-foggy.html


I am going to do some more digging, but it appears that the answer to question 2 maybe, "No yet!"