Mine[craft] your Azure - Minecraft servers now in the Azure Marketplace

Kurt Shintaku's Blog - INFO: Minecraft Servers added to Azure Gallery/Marketplace

Do you have an Azure account or an MSDN subscription?
Do you or folks in your family play Minecraft?

...

Microsoft Azure Marketplace - Minecraft Server

Minecraft is a game about breaking and placing blocks. At first, people built structures to protect against nocturnal monsters, but as the game grew players worked together to create wonderful, imaginative things.

It can also be about adventuring with friends or watching the sun rise over a blocky ocean. It's pretty. Brave players battle terrible things in The Nether, which is more scary than pretty. You can also visit a land of mushrooms if it sounds more like your cup of tea.

This gallery package will set up a preconfigured Minecraft server running on Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS. You can connect to it using the DNS name (e.g. name.cloudapp.net) of the virtual machine on port 25565.

Ahhh.... So we finally know why Microsoft has been working so hard to add Linux support to Azure... :P