The one big topic at the PDC 08 in LA was, Microsoft’s new cloud os. Last week I got a invitation token to test their service.
But the first big step before I could use their storage was to install the required Azure SDK and Visual Studio Tools. The first part installed fine, but when it came to debugging, the troubles began.

First a message appeared to tell me that “Development Storage” needs to do some initialization.

After I proceeded the trouble began. The initialization software should create a new user in the SQL DB onto my local machine, but it failed, because it didn’t put the username in quotes.

So my next step was to create a new user manually via the Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt.

And go to the directory C:\Program Files\Windows Azure SDK\v1.0\bin and enter the following line:
dsinit /server:”.sqlexpress” /forceCreate /user:”<your pc name>\<your username>”
Hit Enter and it should process your request.

Finally you should see the success message below.

Now you’re able to debug your Azure Websites onto your local machine.