Azure: How to activate the MSDN Premium Special Account

When setting up your Azure account, one thing you’ll need to do is select an Azure product to add to your shopping cart. Currently there’s only one product type available to the general public: Azure Platform Introductory Special. This is essentially a pay-per-use account, with a 25 free monthly compute-hours, one SQL Azure database for 3 months,  and 500MB in/500MB out per month. Beyond that, you’re paying standard Azure rates. You can see the rate breakdowns here.

If you’re an MSDN Premium subscriber, you have a significantly-better offer available: Windows Azure Platform MSDN Premium. This plan offers 750 monthly compute-hours, 3 SQL Azure databases, and 7GB in/14GB out per month, for 8 months (see all details here).  However, it’s not exactly easy to get this offer activated. Here’s how:

 

MSDN Subscription Portal

First, navigate to your MSDN subscription at http://msdn.microsoft.com. Sign in and click My Account:

Now you should see your full account details, along with all available services. Select the Azure service option:

 

Microsoft Online Services Customer Portal

This will take you to the Microsoft Online Services Customer Portal. Login with the same Live ID as your MSDN subscription. If this is your first time here, you’ll need to fill out some profile information:

. Once that’s done, you’ll see the MSDN Premium subscription offer in your cart:

Now all that’s left is to agree to the terms and checkout. You’ll have to provide your credit card information, but this is only used for covering charges beyond those provided for free.

Once you complete this step, you should now have the MSDN Premium Azure product. Select the Subscription tab to confirm:

Note: It’s possible that the status is pending, which simply means the account is still being provisioned. Chances are, if you refresh this page in a few minutes, it should be active.

If you made it this far, congratulations! You should now have Azure activated with your MSDN Premium benefits.

 

Azure Developer Portal

Now it’s time to visit the Azure portal, at www.azure.com:

Click Account (in the top-right corner). This will show you the various portal links:

Click Go to the Windows Azure Developer Portal.

At this point, simply login with your Live ID. Since its your first time, you’ll be asked to create an Azure project. Once you do, you’ll see it listed in My Projects:

Finish Line

And… you should now be all ready to add an Azure application service to your account! Now go run to Visual Studio, build your Hello Azure World! (a rite of passage), deploy it to your new Azure service, and go brag to all your friends!