The goal of this series of blog posts is to help readers understand how to set up Couchbase Server on Windows Azure, starting with a single node developer setup and progressing to a production-ready setup with multiple nodes and failover. To follow along, readers need an Azure subscription, which can be obtained for free. The first post sets up a single node Couchbase Server for testing and development purposes, including creating a Virtual Machine, installing Couchbase Server, configuring the VM's security settings, and setting up the Couchbase Console. The post also mentions that the recommended hardware for Couchbase is 4 cores and sufficient RAM, but notes that a smaller VM like A1 can be used for setup and configuration purposes. The author has run tests on their own single node Couchbase Server and obtained results of around 75-125 ops per minute with full writes only, noting that network latency could be minimized by running the test from an Application Server on the same Virtual Network as the Cluster.