Today, in less than three months since its announcement, Microsoft’s Windows Azure team has announced a refresh to the Windows Azure SDK and Windows Azure tools for Visual Studio. The Community Technology Preview (CTP), announced at Microsoft’s PDC ’08 event in October, was launched to gather feedback from the Developer community, and this updated SDK and tools release is one way Microsoft is incorporating feedback in the Windows Azure offering.

The newly announced SDK and Tools includes:

• Improved integration with Visual Studio
• Performance improvements with execution and debugging scenarios
• Improvements to Storage Client and ASP.Net provider samples
• Added support to debug Silverlight in a web role
• Bug and performance fixes based on customer feedback

Download the Windows Azure SDK – CTP January 2009

Download the Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio – CTP January 2009 

Update: Customers who install the Windows Azure SDK on Windows 7 Beta may experience issues running web role projects through the local development fabric. Both the Windows 7 Beta and Windows Azure SDK teams are currently working through the issue and will release a fix/workaround as soon as possible.