Hello Azure

If you are like me who were unable to start the Development Storage service when you first run your first "Hello World" Azure application, you may notice an error message in the output window:

"Windows Azure Tools: Failed to initialize the Development Storage service. Unable to start Development Storage. Failed to start Development Storage: the SQL Server instance ‘localhost\SQLExpress’ could not be found. Please configure the SQL Server instance for Development Storage using the ‘DSInit’ utility in the Windows Azure SDK."

By default, it is pointing to a named instance of SQLExpress and if you are using SQL Server like me, then you would need to do like what the error message said.

Go to where the devstore is installed i.e.
C:\Program Files\Windows Azure SDK\v1.0\bin\devstore

and type
dsinit /sqlinstance:.

Take note of the "." which indicates your current default unnamed SQL Server instance.

You will then be prompted with a screen that informs you that the installation is successful and the development storage is ready for use.

You can now start the Development Storage service.