Azure Portal and Training Kit Transformed

Both the Azure portal and training kit evolved over the years. Portal is easy to navigate, build and manage Azure services. It also have all the useful help links.

I recently installed Azure Training kit and surprised on looking at all the demos, presentation for each and every artifacts. The content would be very helpful for the developer community to jump-in into Azure world.  

Installation experience is also good. The pros is all the required component can be installed from the same wizard (which in turns use the Web platform Wizard). The con part is the memory it takes and sometime get stuck.

Check out the Trainig kit here: Windows Azure Training Kit - January Refresh

Windows Azure AppFabric name is missing!

When I was searching for Azure Appfabric, I noticed there is no more Appfabric term being used.

Specifcally when I noticed in the Appfabric blog that they are moving from this blog to general Windows Azure Team blog, it is clear that no more Appfabric term.

So what happens to all the services - Windows Azure Service Bus, Windows Azure Access Control, Windows Azure Caching etc... It's look like still all services exists only the name changes from Appfabric to just Azure.

In a way, it is better, during inital days, I was confused between Azure Appfabric and Windows Server Appfabric. But I am sure, it will take some time for deverlopers to understand this brand name change.

Check all my Azure related blogs: http://arunmvp.blogspot.com/search/label/Azure

What is the Windows Azure platform?

The Windows Azure platform is nothing but Microsoft’s cloud computing services platform. Windows Azure, Microsoft SQL Azure and AppFabric are the key components of the Windows Azure platform. Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform is a group of cloud technologies, each providing a specific set of services to end users.

Key Components:

·         Windows Azure Compute: Windows Azure compute service enables developers to run any applications starting from .NET, Java, PHP etc… In Windows Azure for an application to scale out, it will run multiple copy of the code in various virtual machines.  Windows Azure application consists of Web role instances and/or Worker role instances, each of which runs in its own Windows virtual machine.

·      Windows Azure Storage: The Windows Azure storage services provide storage for binary and text data, messages, and structured data in Windows Azure

·         Microsoft SQL Azure: Provides relational cloud database solution

·         Windows Azure platform Services (Connectivity, Identiry and Perforamance) : It includes services like: AppFabric Access Control, AppFabric Service Bus, CDN and AppFabric Caching Service.

Check all my Azure related blogs: http://arunmvp.blogspot.com/search/label/Azure

Azure Pattern - Scale Application

In Windows Azure for an application to scale out, it will run multiple copy of the code in various virtual machines. Windows Azure application consists of Web role instances and/or Worker role instances, each of which runs in its own Windows virtual machine.

Web role instance nothing but which accepts a HTTP/HTTPS request and respond back to customer web request via IIS 7 (ASP.NET Application). This instance needs to run in an IIS 7 Web Server only.

Worker role instance will do some background job (similar to Windows Service) and doesn’t expose to outside world directly. For instance one can use Worker role process to do some parallel bulk computing operations and then share with web role instance. A worker role can have any number of HTTP, HTTPS, or TCP endpoints. 

Queue: It allows Web role instances to communicate asynchronously with Worker role instances. It acts as a reliable and persistent messaging between services.  

Windows Azure services may be comprised of one or both types of roles and can run multiple instances of each type. Web / Worker Role instances can be added or removed based on demand and allow applications to quickly and economically scale-up or down as per the need. Windows Azure also exposes set of API’s to programmatically control the role instances.  

The typical Pattern for scaling up application on demand would look like below:

How to: Use Windows Azure Diagnostics to Monitor and Collect Logging Data
How to Initialize the Windows Azure Diagnostic Monitor
How to Collect Data from IIS 7.0 Failed Request Trace Logs
How to Collect Data from Windows Event Logs
How to Collect Data from Crash Dumps
How to Collect Data in a Custom Log
How to Use the Windows Azure Diagnostics Configuration File
How to Configure the TraceListener in a Windows Azure Application
How to Use Trace Messages in a Windows Azure Application
How to Collect Data from Performance Counters
How to Create and Update Custom Performance Counters
How to Query Performance Counter Data
How to Specify a Storage Account for Transfers
How to Schedule a Transfer
How to Perform an On-Demand Transfer
How to View Diagnostic Data Stored in Windows Azure Storage
How to Remotely Change the Diagnostic Monitor Configuration

Azure Storage

The Windows Azure storage services provide storage for binary and text data, messages, and structured data in Windows Azure

Option 1: Blob – Contains binary data: Blobs are organized by container.  Each storage account will be partitioned by hierarchal containers which in turns have one or many blobs. We can store huge amount of data (text, audio, video, images etc…) with association of metadata like author details etc…

Two types of blobs:

·         Block blobs, which are optimized for streaming. Block blobs are comprised of blocks, each of which is identified by a block ID. Contain up to 200 GB.

·         Page blobs, which are optimized for random read/write operations. Page blobs are a collection of pages. Contain up to 1 TB.

A URL to refer to a blob includes the account name, the container name, and the blob name, as follows: http://myaccount.blob.core.windows.net/mycontainer/myblob

Sharing Policy: Container ACL access:

·         Full public read access: Container and blob data can be read via anonymous request.

·         Public read access for blobs only: Blob data within this container can be read via anonymous request, but container data is not available.

·         No public read access: Container and blob data can be read by the account owner only.

Windows Azure Drives: A Windows Azure drive acts as a local drive mounted on the file system and is accessible to code running in a role. The data written to a Windows Azure drive is stored in a page blob defined within the Windows Azure Blob service, and cached on the local file system.

Delivering High-Bandwidth Content with the Windows Azure Content Delivery Network:

This Windows Azure CDN feature enables customers to provide maximum bandwidth content to their users. As of now, Windows Azure CDN has 18 locations globally (United States, Europe, Asia, Australia and South America). As Windows Azure CDN caches Windows Azure blobs at strategically placed locations which is close to the location from which the request being made.  This is applicable to only blobs that are in public blob containers, which are available for anonymous access.

For more details, refer here: http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsazure/archive/2009/11/05/introducing-the-windows-azure-content-delivery-network.aspx

Option 2: Table - Entity Data Store: Tables store data as collections of entities. Table made up of rows / columns. Entities are similar to rows. A property is a name, typed-value pair, similar to a column. Don’t consider this as a RDBMS; it is more similar to ADO.NET Data services with reduced sub set including integer, string etc... It is mainly for store durable and scalable data structure that can be queried. It is equivalent of Amazon SimpleDB.

The operations are almost similar to that of a conventional database – tables. You can create, query and delete.

Option 3: Queue: It allows Web role instances to communicate asynchronously with Worker role instances. It acts as a reliable and persistent messaging between services.

In all the above options, Windows Azure storage keep the data replicated in many places and ensure data safety. Even one data copy being deleted or missed out can be available from another data copy from a data center. Isn’t this cool? Yes, this is nice feature which provides reliability and business continuity.

Moreover each of the data storage has a named URI (universal resource identifier) which can be accessible by any application including on cloud or on premises application through REST. REST defines an architectural style based on a set of constraints for building things the “Web” way. For more information on REST, refer my blog.

URL template: http://myaccount.queue.core.windows.net/myqueue?comp=metadata

Check all my Azure related blogs: http://arunmvp.blogspot.com/search/label/Azure

Wanna Try Windows Azure?

Do you want to try / explore Windows Azure, then check here: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/free-trial/ 

Free trial includes the following:
Free Trial Details:

compute VM	750 small compute hours per month
relational database	1GB web edition SQL Azure database
storage	20GB with 50,000 storage transactions
bandwidth	Unlimited inbound / 20GB Outbound

Scenarios where we can use Windows Azure Platform?

Key Scenarios where we can use Windows Azure Platform?

Please remember one point, cloud computing is not the ONLY best option for all scenarios. It suits best for some key scenarios. 

One can leverage Azure platform in various scenarios, few thoughts:

• Speed to Market: Small vendors or initial startup company can utilize windows azure platform to deploy their application without worrying about the infrastructure. Based on the application popularity they can scale up the platform.
• Peak Load (Predictable and unpredictable): Enterprise applications can utilize windows azure platform especially during peak load. For instance, in support.xbox.com site, the load is at its peak during Christmas Holiday season. We can’t just add more hardware just for few weeks, unless we have something like Azure where one can scale up or down the hardware in minutes with very less cost. Another best example would be IRCTC, Indian railway online ticket booking web site, this will be always at its peak at 8.00 – 8.30 A.M (that’s the time Tatkal is open), Azure is a place where we can set such that only for this specific time frame to scale the hardware resources to serve the end client.
• Limited Time frame: In scenarios where we want to expose an application for only specific time frame. For instance, a movie release, the web site provides all the movie information review etc. This site will exist for minimal duration depends on film.
• Scalability: Scenarios where one no need to worry about capacity planning. Increase or reduce the capacity real time.
• Heavy Computing: Scenarios where you need to do large scale processing like analytics. You can leverage cloud for infinite computing capacity.

Check all my Azure related blogs: http://arunmvp.blogspot.com/search/label/Azure

Do I really need to consider Cloud Computing?!

(Image From Wiki)

To answer the question why cloud computing, first we need to look into what is the existing traditional way of computing, deploying and maintain the applications and what are the available options:

Option 1: Companies can have their own servers with required software and connectivity. In this option, we need to spend more initial infrastructure cost and we have complete control.

Option 2: Hosted Servers on rental. You have less control over here, but the user no need to worry about the maintenance of the server including hardware and software.  But one key downside in this approach is you need to still pay even your application usage is idle.

With both these options, we have still the following open questions:

1. How to scale up or down your hardware very quickly with very low cost?
2. How to reduce your operation costs based on the usage?
3. How to provide high availability / business continuity?
4. How quickly I can make my application Go-Live?

Cloud computing is a new emerging third option which answer the above questions.  

Option 3:    Cloud computing which is a scalable virtualized hosting environment. Cloud computing users can avoid capital charges on hardware, software, and services. Just pay the provider only for what we use (consumption based model). Charging will be similar to resources consumed, like electricity or subscription time-based, like a newspaper.

What are the Benefits?

1. Agile: Ability to implement, deploy the solutions for end users very quickly.
2. Low Cost: Operation and capital cost will be less.
3. Scalability / Flexibility: Ability to scale up/down your application hardware / software in minutes.
4. Pricing Model: You pay for what you use. Based on the Usage of resources.
5. Reliability:  Multiple redundant sites and the quality maintained in Datacenters by Microsoft / Amazon etc makes more reliable. Most of the time, it will be 99.99% availability.
6. Maintenance: Less maintenance (Hardware / Software) as it will be takes care by service providers.
7. Better Operational models:  For instance, we can utilize in places where we require scale-up hardware only for particular time frame alone where the user load is heavy.
8. Easier Deployment: Simplified Application Deployment and management.

Check all my Azure related blogs: http://arunmvp.blogspot.com/search/label/Azure

Cloud Computing - How this idea emerged?!

Microsoft's Windows Azure Platform is a cloud platform offering hosted in Microsoft Data centers that provides wide range of useful services (Operating system and set of developer services) which can be consumed by both on-premises and on-cloud applications.

Cloud is nothing but just the internet and cloud computing refers to internet based computing. This is something didn’t appear suddenly, this technology is evolving from a long time frame. Basically cloud platforms utilize virtualization to share dynamically scalable resources (hardware / software) over Internet based on demand as a service.

A technical definition from Wikipedia: "a computing capability that provides an abstraction between the computing resource and its underlying technical architecture (e.g., servers, storage, networks), enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction." This definition states that clouds have five essential characteristics: on-demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity, and measured service.

How it evolved or How this idea emerged?

Let’s look back the history how this got evolved.  Data Center comes into existence as for all major IT companies for their business continuity (IT operation to up and running 24/7) through reliable infrastructure. Many companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, IBM etc having their own datacenters to manage their IT during 2000’s. But after dot-com bubble, the usage of the servers in the Data center is pretty low (80% unutilized) and most of the time the server computing is idle and not being used fully. But companies invested huge money in building the Data centers.  It forced them to utilize / better leverage the data centers for new business opportunities.  

Once Virtualization also emerge which helps in better hardware/software management and help running the data centers efficiently. By making the server farms virtualized, it helps a lot in cost savings with more server availability and maintenance. This helps them to increase / add the capabilities on fly by re-using the existing hardware to maximum utility.  

Amazon is one of the pioneers in utilizing their data centers to expose their servers computing power to public through Web Service around 2004. I am also one of the members of the Amazon Web Services which got very popular in quite a bit of time and got huge user base for the same.  To my opinion, most of the key services in cloud computing came from Amazon!

Check here - http://aws.amazon.com/products/?ref_=pe_undef for all their key products as of now across cloud computing, data storage, networking, monitoring, messaging etc…

  

That’s the WIN-WIN situation for both the consumers and the cloud computing service providers. Won't you agree?

Check all my Azure related blogs: http://arunmvp.blogspot.com/search/label/Azure

Cloud Computing using Windows Azure platform

Cloud computing is the key buzz word right now and many major companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Google etc betting on this platform.  The Windows Azure platform is nothing but Microsoft’s cloud computing services platform. Windows Azure, Microsoft SQL Azure and AppFabric are the key components of the Windows Azure platform.

Let's discuss about end – end information about Azure including what Windows Azure Platform is and how it benefits end customer in resolving their challenges, What’s for Developers, What’s for enterprise, challenges and other options available in cloud platform in the upcoming blogs. 

Check out here: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/home/tour/overview/ for a quick tour of what are all the scenarios that you can consider and what kind of applications one can build.

Check all my Azure related blogs: http://arunmvp.blogspot.com/search/label/Azure

Windows Azure compute

Windows Azure compute service enables developers to run any applications starting from .NET, Java, PHP etc… Developers now have the ability to choose the size of VMs to run their application based on the applications resource requirements. Windows Azure compute instances come in four unique sizes to enable complex applications and workloads.                   

Compute Instance Size	CPU	Memory	Instance Storage	I/O Performance
Small	1.6 GHz	1.75 GB	225 GB	Moderate
Medium	2 x 1.6 GHz	3.5 GB	490 GB	High
Large	4 x 1.6 GHz	7 GB	1,000 GB	High
Extra large	8 x 1.6 GHz	14 GB	2,040 GB	High

In Windows Azure for an application to scale out, it will run multiple copy of the code in various virtual machines.  Windows Azure application consists of Web role instances and/or Worker role instances, each of which runs in its own Windows virtual machine.

Web role instance nothing but which accepts a HTTP/HTTPS request and respond back to customer web request via IIS 7 (ASP.NET Application). This instance needs to run in an IIS 7 Web Server only.

Worker role instance will do some background job (similar to Windows Service) and doesn’t expose to outside world directly. For instance one can use Worker role process to do some parallel bulk computing operations and then share with web role instance. A worker role can have any number of HTTP, HTTPS, or TCP endpoints.

Windows Azure services may be comprised of one or both types of roles and can run multiple instances of each type. Web / Worker Role instances can be added or removed based on demand and allow applications to quickly and economically scale-up or down as per the need. Windows Azure also exposes set of API’s to programmatically control the role instances.