Azure has a local simulation environment that ships with the SDK - you could try that out if you want to play with it. On the cloud, programs like Bizspark get

Azure has a local simulation environment that ships with the SDK - you could try that out if you want to play with it. On the cloud, programs like Bizspark get you there at lower cost. If you have a MSDN subscription, you get a ton of free hours/storage every month - you can run decent sized websites off that