Windows Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Released

This morning the Windows Azure Team announced the general availability of Windows Azure Infrastructure Services. In this release you'll find production ready virtual machines for Windows Server, SQL Server, BizTalk and SharePoint Server, as well as several Linux distributions. Creating and managing a virtual machine is easily done via the Windows Azure Management Portal or remotely via PowerShell and Secure Shell (SSH).  In this release you'll also find built-in load balancing and virtual network support. Windows Azure IaaS is live in production backed by an enterprise SLA, supported by Microsoft Support, and ready for your production applications.

For a deep dive into some of these features, see Microsoft Corporate Vice President Scott Guthrie's blog post.  Sound interesting? Go get a free three month trial.