The Azure SDK is a collection of tools, runtime binaries, client libraries, and templates that considerably simplify the development, testing, and deployment of Azure services and applications. Note: The Azure SDK is available for several development platforms, including Microsoft .NET, Java, Node.js, Python, Ruby, and PHP. You can download the most recent version of the SDK for each of them from the Azure Downloads page.

The Azure SDK for .NET installs numerous components, including:

  • Microsoft ASP.NET and Web Tools for Visual Studio to facilitate the creation, deployment, and management of web apps.
  • Azure Tools for Visual Studio to simplify working with applications hosted in Azure Platform as a Service (PaaS) cloud services and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) virtual machines.
  • Azure Authoring Tools to automate the deployment and configuration of Azure PaaS cloud services deployment packages.
  • The Azure emulation environment, which consists of the Azure compute and storage emulators to simulate Azure compute and storage services within the Visual Studio interface.
  • Azure Storage Tools to provide tools, such as AzCopy, that allow you to optimize the transfer of data into and out of an Azure Storage account.
  • Azure Libraries for .NET, such as NuGet packages for Azure Storage, Azure Service Bus, and Azure Cache, to make it possible to develop Azure projects while offline. Note: NuGet is the package manager for the Microsoft development platform.
  • Azure Resource Manager Tools, including templates, snippets, and scripts to assist with creating and deploying Azure Resource Management resources.
  • Azure Diagnostics with Visual Studio Application Insights integration and support for the profiler to allow you to identify and diagnose performance-related issues in live Azure apps and services.
  • Docker Tools for Visual Studio to provide support for Windows containers.
  • Azure Service Fabric Tools to enable creating, deploying, and upgrading Azure Service Fabric projects from within Visual Studio.
  • Azure HDInsight Tools for Visual Studio to allow you to run your Hive query and provide insight into HDInsight job execution.
  • Azure Data Factory Tools to simplify Azure Data Factory authoring.

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Marcos Nogueira azurecentric.com Twitter: @mdnoga