Announcing DevOps style deployments using Visual Studio 2015 Preview and Azure

This post introduces the integration of Visual Studio 2015 Preview and Azure SDK 2.5 for DevOps-style deployments of ASP.NET applications to Azure. It details the creation of 'Cloud Deployment Projects' within Visual Studio, which leverage JSON-based deployment templates (Azure CSM) to define and provision Azure resources like websites and SQL databases. The process involves connecting to Visual Studio Online (VSO), creating environments by specifying parameters for Azure subscriptions, resource groups, and locations, and then deploying the application. The post also explains the behind-the-scenes compilation, upload to Azure storage, and provisioning steps involved in the deployment process, and clarifies the distinction between Azure Resource Groups and Environments.