Windows Azure Account 3 Months Free Trial

3-Month Free Trial

We offer a free trial for 3 months for any new customer. Each month, the free trial will allow you to use

• Compute: 750 hours of a Small Compute Instance* (can run one small instance full-time or other sizes at their equivalent ratios)
• Storage: 20GB with 50k Storage transactions
• Data Transfers: 20GB outbound / Unlimited inbound data transfer
• Relational Database: 1GB Web Edition SQL Azure database
• Access Control: 100k transactions
• Service Bus: Free through March 31, 2012
• AppFabric Caching: 128MB cache

We require a credit card or debit card for identification, but you are capped by default at the free level to ensure you will never be charged. Here is how it works:

For all new subscriptions, we set a $0 (USD) Spending Limit on your subscription so you don’t accidently exceed the monthly benefit shown above. If you use more in a month than the above amounts, you will exceed your $0 (USD) Spending Limit and your service will be disabled for that month. Your service will be re-enabled at the start of your next billing period and, while your storage accounts and databases are retained with no loss of data, you will need to redeploy your hosted service(s). If you choose to turn off your Spending Limit, any overage, i.e., monthly usage in excess of the above amounts, will be charged at the Pay-As-You-Go rates.

After the first 3 months, if you wish to continue using your subscription, simply turn off your Spending Limit and your subscription automatically converts to a Pay-As-You-Go subscription. Otherwise, your subscription will expire after 3 months.

SQL Azure new Capabilities and Benefits

 

Capabilities and Benefits of SQL Azure

No physical administration required

• SQL Azure is a managed service - you do not have to install, patch or manage hardware or software.
• There is no need for you to create virtual machines or manually manage high availability. Every SQL Azure database has built-in high-availability, failover, and redundancy.

Scale On-Demand

• SQL Azure Federation gives you the flexibility to scale out depending on your needs while paying only for what you use.
• You can rely on business-ready SLAs and global datacenters to offer highly available services to users.

Innovate faster

• SQL Azure does not require new skillsets, programming models or tools - it works with the same SQL Server tools and APIs you use today.
• Use an existing ecosystem of developer and management tools.
• Enable new scenarios with services like Data Sync and Reporting to connect to mobile devices, HTML5 web applications, and location-aware services.
• Consume or monetize premium datasets from commercial data providers and government sources with Windows Azure Marketplace.

Pricing and Metering for SQL Azure Database

SQL Azure supports a flexible subscription-based pricing model and supports both a pay-as-you-go and 6 month commitment offer. SQL Azure can be purchased independently or with other Windows Azure platform products. You can provision multiple SQL Azure databases for your application(s) and can use either the Web or Business Edition offering. A single Web Edition database can support up to 5 GB of data and uses billing increments of 1GB. A Business Edition database will support up to 150 GB, and uses 10 GB billing increments.

Database

Web Edition (up to 5 GB) : $9.99 per 1 GB of database per month

Business Edition (up to 150 GB) : $99.99 per 10 GB of database per month  (Maximum charge of $499.95 per database)*

*This maximum amount is calculated based on the accumulated charges for each database you deploy over the entire billing month.

Customers are billed based on the peak database size in a day, rolled up to the next billing increment. SQL Azure Database is charged as a monthly fee for each database, but that database fee is amortized over the month and charged on a daily basis. This daily fee is dependent on which database type used (Web Edition or Business Edition). For example, if a customer utilizes three 10 GB Business Edition databases for 1 day in a billing month, their daily usage for that day would show a little less than 0.1 10 GB Business Edition database (3 databases / 31 days).
Visit Microsoft.com to get in-depth information on SQL Azure and SQL Server for public and private cloud scenarios.

 

SQL Azure Federation

SQL Azure Federation is a core feature of SQL Azure that enables the database tier to be elastically scaled out across multiple nodes. This new feature makes it dramatically easier for you to set up an elastic database tier that can repartition based on application workloads. SQL Azure Federation provides you unlimited scale, great price-performance and simplified multi-tenancy for modern cloud applications.

 

Capabilities and Benefits of SQL Azure Federation

Unlimited Scalability

• Federations enable horizontal partitioning or ‘sharding’ of data across many nodes to gain unlimited scalability in the application.

Elasticity for the best price-performance

• The online repartitioning of the database tier combined with the pay-as-you-go model in SQL Azure enables administrators to easily optimize cost and performance by changing the number of databases/nodes they engage for their database workload at any given time.

Simplified multi-tenancy

• With federations, applications can repartition to promote any tenant of a multi-tenant database to a single database node per tenant without incurring downtime for the reconfiguration.

SQL Azure Data Sync

Microsoft SQL Azure Data Sync is a cloud-based data synchronization service which provides uni-directional and bi-directional data sync. Data Sync allows data to be easily shared between SQL Azure and on-premises SQL Server databases, as well as between multiple SQL Azure databases.

Capabilities and Benefits of SQL Azure Data Sync

Managed service

• There is no need to write complex database logic to synchronize and transfer data between databases.
• Use the point-and-click portal to quickly configure and schedule synchronization.

Control synchronization

• Specify exactly what tables and columns to synchronize, setup filters to sync only a subset of rows, set the conflict resolution policy for two-way sync, and specify how frequently data should be synchronized.

On-premises and cloud

• Enables multiple synchronization scenarios spanning both cloud and on-premises databases.
• Enable one-way as well as bi-directional data movement across SQL Azure and on-premises SQL Server databases.

Cloud-to-cloud synchronization

• Data can be shared between multiple databases, irrespective of whether the databases are in the same data center or span multiple geographic regions.

Announcing simplified data transfer billing meters and swappable compute instances

Beginning October 1st, we will make two billing related updates to the Windows Azure Platform to increase flexibility and simplicity for our customers.

First, the price of extra small compute will be reduced by 20 percent. Additionally, the compute allocations for all of our offers will be simplified to small compute hours. To deliver additional flexibility to our customers, these hours can also be used for extra small compute at a ratio of 3 extra small compute hours per 1 hour of small compute. Customers can also utilize these hours for other compute sizes at the standard prescribed ratios noted in their rate plan. Additionally, current Introductory Special offer customers and customers who sign up for this offer prior to October 1st will receive both 750 extra small compute hours and 750 small compute hours for the months of August and September to ensure maximum value and flexibility in advance of this enhanced offer.

Details on compute allotment by offer can be found below.

	Prior to October 1		Beginning on October 1
Offer:	Extra Small	Small	Extra Small	Small	Extra Small Equivalent
Introductory Special*	750	750	-	750	2,250
Cloud Essentials	750	25	-	375	1,125
MSDN Professional	750	-	-	375	1,125
MSDN Premium	1,500	-	-	750	2,250
MSDN Ultimate	-	1,500	-	1,500	4,500

*Note: On August 1, we increased the number of small hours included in this offer from 25 to 750. For the months of August and September, Introductory Special users will get both 750 extra small compute hours and 750 small compute hours. Once small hours and extra-small hours are swappable beginning on October 1, Introductory Special will only include 750 small hours.

We are also simplifying our data transfer meters to utilize only two zones, "Zone 1" and "Zone 2". The zone meter system will simplify the current meter system that includes multiple regions and separate meters for both standard data transfers and CDN. Data centers in Europe and North America will be reported and charged under Zone 1 and those for the rest of the world will be classified as Zone 2. This change will ease customer's ability to monitor data transfers and understand billing charges. The price per GB for outbound data transfers will not change. Customers will also gain the flexibility to utilize CDN data transfers against any data transfer amounts included with their offer. For billing periods that overlap September and October, customers will see both the current regional and new Zone 1 and 2 meters on their invoice These changes are part of our ongoing commitment to deliver world class services in a simple and flexible way to customers.

The Windows Azure Platform Team

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