(Editors Note: Updated the post 4/29/2015)

With out a doubt the easiest and fastest way to get started with Visual Studio 2015 Release Candidate is to use the Azure virtual machine image that was also released today.  This has gotten to be so mainstream that when we make preview builds available to our MVPs half of them are now choosing virtual machines as their experience of choice.   Note: If you are using the Azure preview portal this Virtual Machine image will be available tomorrow.

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As recently as a year ago I couldn’t imagine what I would need cloud based resources for…I had my solid state drives and the process of updating my Team Foundation Server instances down to an art form….Now i couldn’t imagine my life without my virtual machines in Azure! So when I saw we were releasing Visual Studio 2015 RC by Soma; I immediately went my Azure Gallery to see if it was there…and sadly it wasn’t.   But one of the perks of working at Microsoft is the fact I often know the people that own the release channels so I sent out a quick piece of email to “Boris” and the reply was “No worries, we will have it up in an hour”…well here it is an hour later and true to his word the VM is live!

Thanks Boris!

If you are an MSDN Subscriber and you are not taking advantage of your included (i.e. FREE) Azure minutes you really are missing out!

For folks that are still old school, you can download the release candidate today and read about the new features and known issues in this first Visual Studio  2015 Release Candidate