Where is the "New Virtual Machine Role" menu option in Visual Studio 2010?

A while back I wrote about the new-ish VM Role feature in Windows Azure (still in beta right now). You can read that post here.

If you're not sure what the VM Role is, then this MSDN post should clear that up for you.

Once you have joined the VM Role beta programme, the status should have changed in the Azure Portal to Active, and you should have received an email with links to .reg files which alter relevant Azure Visual Studio registry keys which in turn enables this menu option in Visual Studio.

Figure 1: Active VM Role feature

Unfortunately for me, I received no such email. So I searched the Internet for them and found the location where they can be downloaded.

For 64-bit operating systems see here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=206860
For 32-bit operating systems see here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=205313

Alternatively, you can simply use this key for 64-bit:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010\1.0]
"VirtualMachineRoleEnabled"=dword:00000001

For 32-bit:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010\1.0]
"VirtualMachineRoleEnabled"=dword:00000001
Once you have run either of those commands, or edited your registry manually, restart Visual Studio and you should now see the new menu option that will enable you to create a VM role to deploy to Windows Azure:

Figure 2: The new "New Virtual Machine Role" menu option

Enjoy!