Using your free Azure VM to host Visual Studio 2012

In case you don’t want to put Windows 8 on your system right now, you can generate apps using the free Azure VM (at least free for 90 days) with the Visual Studio Express for Windows 8.  This is pretty cool.

So in this video I am going to describe how to use the Azure VM with Visual Studio Express for Windows 8 or any version of Visual Studio to build and upload Windows Store applications.  Thanks to Bret Stateham for his assistance.

First you will need to create a Windows Azure site, this is easy to do as long as you have a credit card.  There will be no charge to your credit card, rather it is needed for somewhat unique identification.  If you are in my class at CSULA and don’t have a credit card, which isn’t unusual for students, you are in a team and the VM can be used by up to 4 end users, so just use one of the VMs that your team mates have generated.  Otherwise, if you have used up your free 90 day access, then the monthly charge is pretty low, not sure what the cost will be when you are reading this, but it is pretty cheap, or if you have MSDN (NOT DREAMSPARK or MSDNAA), then you get a one year subscription.  Pretty cool.

First of all (there will be a video a little lower on this blog), go to https://windowsazure.com and go through the sign up process.  Once you get to that point, then the video will make sense, there are two videos, both slightly speeded up (my voice isn’t that high, but any slower it is boring):

Installing Visual Studio on your Azure VM