We’ve heard from many developers on UserVoice who have been asking for a managed RavenDB service hosted on Azure.  We are very excited to announce the availability of a managed RavenDB service in the Azure Store.  This new Add-on is powered by RavenHQ, the official host for RavenDB.  Azure developers now have access to RavenHQ’s fully-managed cloud of RavenDB servers hosted on Azure, and offered in a variety of scalable plans.  Using the new RavenHQ Add-on, you’ll never have to worry about installation, updates, availability, performance, security or backups again when using RavenDB on Azure.

What is RaveDB? RavenDB is a transactional, open-source Document Database written in .NET, offering a flexible data model designed to address requirements coming from real-world systems. RavenDB allows you to build high-performance, low-latency applications quickly and efficiently. Data in RavenDB is stored schema-less as JSON documents, and can be queried efficiently using Linq queries from your .NET code or using RESTful API using other tools. Internally, RavenDB makes use of indexes which are automatically created based on your usage, or created explicitly by the consumer. RavenDB is built for web-scale, and offers replication and sharding support out-of-the-box.

To get started using RavenHQ’s fully managed RavenDB service, sign into the Azure Management Portal and select “New” in the bottom tool bar.

Next, select “Store”.

Scroll through the alphabetical list of Add-ons and find “RavenHQ Database”, after selecting it, click the next arrow.

Scroll through the available plans and choose the one right for you.  After choosing the right plan for you, name your resource and then complete the purchase.  Add-on charges are included in your existing Azure bill.

After completing purchase, your RavenHQ Database will be provisioned in moments.  Once available, you can select your RavenHQ Database and access the connection info by clicking the “Manage your add-on” link.

Clicking the “Manage your add-on” link for a RavenHQ Database will take you to a secure page on RavenHQ’s site displaying your connection info.

You’re now ready to use your new RavenDB running on Azure.  For sample code showing how to use RavenDB with ASP .NET MVC or ASP.NET WebAPI, please see the RavenDB samples documentation.