NTFS Cloud Volumes Windows Azure Drive Beta Now Live

Concomitantly with general availability of Windows Azure, Microsoft introduced the first Beta of XDrive, designed to offer customers running the Redmond company’s Cloud platform with durable NTFS volumes for their applications. As of February 2nd, 2010, Microsoft is providing early adopters access to the Windows Azure Drive Beta. Windows Azure Drive is designed to streamline the migration of traditional client-based applications running on top of Windows into Windows Azure.

In this manner, Microsoft acted on feedback from customers which told the company that they would welcome the possibility of taking their Windows applications in the cloud as long as they could take advantage of the standard Windows NTFS APIs, with the mention that the data was durable. Windows Azure Drive is designed to allow devs to have Windows Azure applications leverage NTFS APIs to access a durable drive.

“This can significantly ease the migration of existing Windows applications to the cloud, enabling customers a more seamless migration experience while simultaneously reducing the amount of time it takes to move their applications from your own Windows environment to a Windows Azure environment. The Windows Azure application can read from or write to a drive letter (e.g., X:\) that represents a durable NTFS volume for storing and accessing data. The durable drive is implemented as a Windows Azure Page Blob containing an NTFS-formatted Virtual Hard Drive (VHD),” revealed Brad Calder, Windows Azure Storage.

Windows Azure GA on February 1st, 2010, also marked the release of Windows Azure Guest OS 1.1, and of version 1.1 development tools. Windows Azure Drive can only be accessed along with Windows Azure Guest OS 1.1, but customers will also need the latest release of the Windows Azure software development kit (SDK).

“For the beta release of Windows Azure drive, customers will be billed only for the storage space used by the Page Blob and the read/write transactions to the Page Blob. This will be incorporated into the standard Windows Azure usage rates and there will not be a separate line item on the bill,” Calder added.

Windows Azure Software Development Kit (February 2010) version 1.1 is available for download here.
Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 1.1 (February 2010) is available for download here.