Please stay tuned and come back here regularly as we are working
on refreshing the tutorials to deliver up to date and useful
content for our PHP developers.

Setting up a Windows Azure Account

To get your PHP application running on Windows Azure you will
need a Windows Azure subscription.

If you don't have one, you can create one here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/offers/
(You'll need a Windows Live ID to sign up.) ; You may
choose the Windows Azure Platform Introductory
Special, which allows you to get started for free as long
as you limit your usage. ; (For complete pricing details, see
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/pricing/.) ;
After you purchase your subscription, you will have to activate it
before you can begin using it (activation instructions will be
provided in an e-mail after signing up).

New Windows Azure Portal

Windows Azure has recently updated the management portal to a
much improved user interface (Silverlight based). ; If you
decide not to use the new version, you can still go back to the
"old" portal. ; But note that the "old" version will be shut
down sometime in early 2011.

The only difference is that this time, we don't use the
"--RunDevFabric" parameter. ; Once the command is executed, you
should get this:

The deployment package and configuration is ready and the
command line tool tells you where to get it. ; Note that you
have the option to specify where you want the package to go, by
using the argument:

If you have followed the tutorial to the letter, you can
navigate quickly to your working directory by typing "%TEMP%" in
the File Name entry, and hit enter:

Then go to the "WACmdLineTools\PHPInfo_Build\PHPIndo"
directory:

Choose a label for the deployment, and click
Deploy:

It will take a few minutes for your application to deploy.

When your application has deployed, click
Run.

It will take several more minutes for your application to be
available (It will go through phases of "Initializing", "Busy", and
finally "Ready"):

When you click on the Web Site URL provided, you should see your
application running in the cloud:

Congratulations, you have built your first Windows Azure cloud
application!

Deploying your
first PHP application with the new Windows Azure
Portal

The main interface looks like this. Click on "New Hosted
Service" to deploy your PHP application:

Then provide the information about your deployment:

When you click OK, you may see a warning: This deployment
has at least one role with only one instance. We recommend that you
deploy at least two instances per role to ensure high availability
in case one of the instances becomes unavailable.

For testing purpose, you may ignore the warning.

Your package is now being deployed:

Once the deployment is done, your application is ready to use on
the staging environment. ; You can test it by clicking on the
"DNS name" link.

If you want to switch to the production environment, just select
the deployment and click "Swap VIP".

Now, you should see this:

Congratulations, you have built your first Windows Azure cloud
application!