Why does Azure deployment take so long?

Question

I\'m trying to understand why it can take from 20-60min to deploy a small application to Azure (using the configuration/package upload method, not from within VS).

I\'ve

Answer 1

Check out this PDC10 video by Mark Russinovich. He goes into great detail on what's going on inside Azure with some insights into the (admittedly slow) deployment process.

Original link is no longer working. Here's another link to a version of the same presentation: https://channel9.msdn.com/events/Build/BUILD2011/SAC-853T