S.E.E.D. Blog Articles

Getting Started with Azure

By Melody Zacharias, ClearSight Solutions

When Microsoft comes out with something new that they want people to adopt, they are very generous! They usually start by giving the public the tools to needed to learn the new product. Azure is a perfect example. Microsoft’s FREE offer may not last long, so, if you are interested in learning about a very competitive cloud product, NOW is the time to take advantage of a great opportunity. Microsoft is offering a free trial to get you started. Nothing beats free access. I have been taking advantage of this offer and have found Azure to be quick to setup and get started. It has lots of features from SaaS to IaaS that allow you to get solutions up and running fast.

The free trial is easy to set up and only requires a few steps. Once set up you can go to the portal to discover all the new features you have to play with for free.

The Azure portal is a dashboard of the products and services available to you in Azure. This is a jumping off point to anything you want to do in Azure. From the portal you can access all of Microsoft’s resources and services, as well as get notifications on what is new. If you get stuck, a help page, is also available via the portal.

There are a multitude of things to explore and learn. Over the next few blog posts I will go more in depth with a few of these that are helpful to anyone wanting to explore SQL Server and/or BI related options as they relate to Azure.

In the mean time, I would encourage you to explore the Free Azure offer as you wait for my next post. Take a look around, see what is available. I’ll wager you will find a lot of helpful tools.

You may not be one for documentation but it is handy to have the reference if you need it. Documentation for all azure products are available here.

*Note that the top part of the documentation home page is for building solutions. Below that is the Data & Storage section which is focused on services and SQL Databases.

You just know that SQL is going to perform the best under a Microsoft system. The links you need are here.

Click on the “Try it now” green box to get started.

Microsoft will ask you to login to or create a new Microsoft account and then it is as simple as following the on screen instructions.

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