G’day,
I’ve been looking around a bit lately at Azure Data Explorer (ADX) Clusters and the Kusto Query Language (KQL).
I recently learned that Microsoft is letting people experience the wonders of ADX for free.
I assumed – wrongly as it turned out – that you would need an Azure subscription in order to do this, but in fact you do not.
In order to test this, I grabbed myself a brand new free email address from outlook.com
I then opened a brand new InPrivate window in the Edge browser and made 100% sure that none of my other Microsoft accounts were being picked up.
The next step was to navigate to http://aka.ms/kustofree in the InPrivate window
I was immediately asked to log in with my new outlook.com account, which I duly did. After that I was transported to https://dataexplorer.azure.com/freecluster
Note that this new email address has to be an MSA, although you do not have to sign up for any Azure account – free or otherwise.
After that, there’s a big button in the middle of the screen that will allow you to create a brand new free cluster – and database as it turns out.
Fill in a few details in the subsequent dialog box
Use your own cluster and database names above. Accept the terms and conditions and enjoy.
As you might expect, you get all of the core features – but you’ll get some more if you upgrade at some stage. The table on this page will outline exactly what you are getting. The free cluster lasts for one year – but the docs seem to indicate that this could be extended. However, you’ll probably have a good idea of functionality after one year.
So, what are you waiting for, try out the new free cluster.
We’ll look at getting some data in there next time, but if you can’t wait for that there’s some more details here
Have a great day
cheers
Marty.