Development storage simulates the Windows Azure storage services, so that you can debug code that calls into the storage services. After you are satisfied that your code is working in your local development environment, you can change your configuration files to point to the URIs for the Windows Azure storage services, and then test your code against data the production storage services in Windows Azure. In this mixed-mode configuration, you'll be running your service in the development fabric, but hosting your data in the cloud.

The format for URIs to address storage resources in the Windows Azure fabric versus the development fabric is explained in Understanding Storage Service URIs.

After you've debugged your service in mixed mode, you are ready to package the service for deploying to the Windows Azure fabric.

The following figure shows the stages of service development and deployment.

The CSPack Command-Line Tool packages your service to be deployed to the Windows Azure fabric. The cspack.exe utility generates a service package file that you can upload to Windows Azure via the Windows Azure developer portal. By default the package is named <service-name>.cspkg, but you can specify a different name if you choose.

Note that if you have installed the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft® Visual Studio®, you can package and deploy your service from within Visual Studio.

After you've packaged your service, you can deploy it to the developer portal. You'll need to upload the following two files:

• The service package file that you created with the cspack.exe utility.
  
  
• The service configuration file that provides configuration values for your service.
  
  

When you upload your service and the configuration file, you'll be provided with an internal staging URL that you can use to test your service privately in the Windows Azure fabric. When you're ready to put your service into production, you can swap the service from the staging URL to the production URL.

Concepts