Below are some frequently asked questions about Windows Azure HDInsight Service.  

Q: How to enable the Windows Azure HDInsight Service preview?

A: To use Windows Azure HDInsight Service, you need a Windows Azure account that has the Windows Azure HDInsight feature enabled.

• If you don't have an account, you can create a free trial account in just a couple of minutes. For details, see Windows Azure Free Trial.
• If you have an existing account but need to enable the Windows Azure HDInsight preview, see Enable Windows Azure preview features.

Q: How can I get data up to HDInsight?

A: Windows Azure HDInsight Service provides two options in how it manages its data, Azure Storage Vault (ASV) and Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS). HDFS is designed to store data used by Hadoop applications. Data stored in Windows Azure Blob Storage can be accessed by Hadoop applications using Windows Azure Storage Vault (ASV), which provides a full featured HDFS file system over Windows Azure Blob storage. It has been designed as an HDFS extension to provide a seamless experience to customers by enabling the full set of components in the Hadoop ecosystem to operate directly on the data it manages. Both options are distinct file systems that are optimized for storage of data and computations on that data. For the benefits of using ASV, see Using Windows Azure Blob Storage with HDInsight.

To upload data to ASV, you have the following options:

• Use one of the 3rd party Windows Azure Storage tools like Azure Storage Explorer.
• Use Interactive JavaScript Console.
• Use Hadoop Command Line.
• Use Sqoop to import data from SQL Server or SQL Database.

For more information, see How to Upload Data to HDInsight.