Configuring the local machine for development

First, let's talk about operating systems; more specifically, the operating systems supported by the Windows Azure Development Fabric. Windows Azure is a relatively new platform, released to the world in February 2010 as a production environment. It was developed after the release of Windows Vista, and Windows Vista SP1 is the earliest supported operating system for local development. Windows Vista SP1, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 are also supported for local development. The Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio will install a local Development Fabric and development storage, which allows us to develop, test, and debug locally without pushing our application into the cloud. We can think of the local development fabric and storage as an Azure emulator. The Development Fabric (and other local tools) requires one of the Windows operating systems mentioned above. When it's time to deploy our application, we'll use these same tools...