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If you have an MSDN Subscription you get Azure benefits which you can use to develop in the cloud. In this post I’d like to share what’s involved in activating these.

As you can see there are some pretty hefty benefits available that you can start using immediately. To get going log into the MSDN Subscription site http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions and log in to see your account.

After you select the MSDN Subscription you’re working with, click the link to Activate Windows Azure. It will navigate to the Azure account management page and begin the process of activation. Depending on the level of subscription you have you’ll see details on the amount of resources that are included with your benefits. All that will be required to activate them is a credit card.

Next enter your credit card info, and click to continue…Note that although the credit card is required for activation, a cap is applied to the account and your subscription will be suspended if your reach any of the usage limits for the duration of the billing cycle (month).

After validating the credit card your account is provisioned. To see information about your active subscriptions click on the Account link to see details. As the third screen shows my account has a $0 spending limit attached to it, so I will not be billed for the duration of my subscription unless I remove the cap. More on that in another post.

Happy Coding!