After releasing the pricing scheme and the business model, Microsoft announced a new set of tools for Windows Azure.

Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio extend Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 to enable the creation, building, debugging, running and packaging of scalable web applications and services on Windows Azure.

The most interesting feature is probably the support for multiple roles. Now one can deploy many web/worker roles.

What’s new in the Windows Azure SDK?

• The Windows Azure SDK supports developing and deploying services containing multiple web and worker roles. A service must include at least one role, of either type, and may include zero or more web roles, and zero or more worker roles.
• The new PowershellRole sample hosts the Powershell runtime within a Windows Azure role. It demonstrates a simple remote console web role as well as a worker role whose implementation is a Powershell script. The host also includes the CloudDrive sample snap-in to provide access to Windows Azure Storage from script.

What’s new in Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio

• New project creation dialog
• Support for developing and deploying services containing multiple web and worker roles. A service may contain zero or more web roles and zero or more worker roles with a minimum of one role of either type.
• Ability to associate any ASP.NET Web Application project in a Cloud Service solution as a Web Role
• Support for building Cloud Services from TFS Build
• Enhanced robustness and stability

The new CTP Release can be downloaded from this link.