Windows Azure Fieldnote Summary Windows Azure Drives [1] provide a means to represent a file based (disk drive) persistent storage option for the various role types within Windows Azure Compute. Each of the roles within Windows Azure can mount and utilize for persistent storage (that survives reboot, reimaging, and updated deployments, of a role instances). During the mounting of a VHD as a CloudDrive, the managed classes have no means to control the drive letter assignment this directly through...
This is the second post about SQL Azure Federation. In my first post I described a little bit about the theory of data partitioning, included the different between the horizontal partitioning and the vertical partitioning. I also talked about the features need to be done when we implemented the horizontal partitioning. And finally, I described some basic concept about SQL Azure Federation. In this post, I will demonstrate how to use SQL Azure Federation in the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)....
We’ve used dbdeploy.net on a number of projects and have found it to be a useful tool, especially around CI environments. We recently started a Windows Azure project that uses SQL Server and discovered that DbDeploy.Net didn’t work. There have been a few nagging issues with DbDeploy.Net as well, like the lack of support for recursive script directories, and when we looked into the code base, we discovered that it’s not really written to modern software development standards, and that getting it there...
Once you upgrade to the Windows Azure SDK 1.6 you also get the updated Microsoft Service Bus assemblies (version 1.6.0.0) that you can use for working with Windows Azure Service Bus (yeah, no longer AppFabric Service Bus) One of the standard implementations of Service Bus is to use the CredentialType, Credentials (the service bus namespace and the issuer key and issuer name) to create the service bus namespace URI. Once you upgrade to Windows Azure Service Bus (Microsoft.ServiceBus) version 1.6.0.0,...
I have been working on Windows Azure Service Bus for the recently concluded Azure Camps Yes, it is no longer referred as “Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus”. All the 3 components i.e. Service Bus, Access Control and Caching are hereinafter referred to as simply Windows Azure Service Bus, Caching & Access Control Service, to minimize the complexity in referring to them. Also, Service Bus and the related releases usually come as an out of bound release and are usually behind in terms of the Windows...
Windows Azure Platform How to Sort Azure Table Store results Chronologically How to upload your Excel and CSV data to the Cloud - Blob Storage SQL Azure Database Notification and Job Scheduling Service for SQL Azure SQL Azure Tutorials – Blog SQL Azure Tutorials - Helping you with Cloud Databases How to build a SQL Server Reporting Services report with SQL Azure? Middleware in the cloud SAP meet Azure Service Bus – EAI/EDI December 2011 CTP Azure Service Bus EAI/EDI December 2011 CTP – New Mapper...
The SQL Azure Federation had been publically launched several weeks ago and this is one of the most existing features I’m looking forward. This might be the first post of SQL Azure Federation, and hopefully not the last one. Some Backgrounds SQL Azure Federation was mentioned in about 2009. The Microsoft told that there will be a feature in SQL Azure allow users to split one database into many based on some sort of rules But from the client side perspective, user can interact their data as if in...
I presented two talks on windows azure recently. One among them was focusing on Windows Phone 7 app development. The other one was on MVC3 ASP .Net app. The idea was to introduce how Windows Azure can be leveraged in both these exciting platforms. The talk was demo centric; below are the slides and the demo / webcasts recordings links for the same. Talk one- Building Windows Phone Applications with Windows Azure Platform and Visual Studio 2010 Demo included: Creating a Demo application from VS 2010...
The awesome Azure team is at it again! Earlier this month, they released an early preview of the new Windows Azure SDK for Node.js. They have just released the December Update with several new features, including: Windows Azure PowerShell for Node.js 0.5.1 update, IISNode 0.1.13 update Node.js 0.6.6 update from Joyent, Installer in-place upgrade support for all these components Numerous bug fixes in all three components Read more about it at the Azure team blog. Haven’t tried it yet? Get started...
Wishing a very happy and blessed New Year to you in advance! A new release of Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework is available on December 29th. We expect that its 11 new code samples covering typical programming scenarios in Windows Phone 7, ASP.NET, WPF, Windows Shell, and WDK would ease your development in the coming New Year. You can download the code samples using Sample Browser or Sample Browser Visual Studio extension. They give you the flexibility to search samples, download samples on demand,...
There are a lot of reasons why the 2011 holiday season is a great time to take a look at Azure development. There are a number of offers and releases that allow you to start to explore cloud-based development on the Microsoft platform, best of all; they are all pretty much free to take advantage of. $0 Spending Limit on Azure Trial & MSDN Accounts Ever since the introduction of billing for Windows Azure it has always been an issue for many developers wanting to learn Azure that, if you are not...
So we’ve been working on an iOS app, that makes use of awesome power of Azure coupled with the ability to write an app that works truly offline and syncs when a network connection is available. I am just going through App Store approval. I will give an update as soon as I know the outcome...
I just finished reading new book on Microsoft BizTalk 2010 written by BizTalk colleagues Kent Weare, Richard Seroter, Thiago Almeida, Sergei Moukhnitski, and Carl Darski. There are many good books that explore core BizTalk features for beginners, intermediate, and advanced developers. This one stands out by the fact that it covers relatively less documented aspect of BizTalk development – integrating with different line of business applications. The subject is vast and diverse so attempt to fit it...
I was playing with the new Membership API (System.Web.Providers) for the upcoming Virtual TechDays While I was trying out a lot of options for using as DB store, one of the obvious choices was SQL Azure. With SQL Azure, I could offload the Database hosting capabilities to Azure and just focus on my application code. Of course, it comes at a cost and SQL Azure is a subscription based database available in different sizes and rates there of. One of the challenges I faced was, working with the Membership...
Yesterday, Microsoft announced the forthcoming release of BizTalk Server 2010 R2 on the BizTalk Server blog site. This is advanced notice, given that this new version will ship six months after the release of Windows 8, expected in the second half of next year. On this basis, we can expect the new version of BizTalk Server to arrive in 2013. Given the BizTalk team’s previous record of name changes, I wonder if this will eventually be released as BizTalk Server 2013. Microsoft has been refreshingly...
Daytona - Iterative MapReduce on Windows Azure Overview MapReduce is a framework for processing highly distributable problems across huge datasets using a large number of compute nodes. It is a generic mechanism that comprises 2 steps: Map step: The master node takes the input, partitions it up into smaller sub-problems, and distributes them to worker nodes. The worker node processes the smaller problem, and passes the answer back to its master node. Reduce step: The master node then collects the...
Build 2011 announced the September release of the Windows Azure Service Bus. For those of you who have just tuned in, the WA Service Bus is part of the AppFabric middleware that enables almost seamless connectivity between applications that are restricted to limited connectivity options by their firewall or custom security protocols. By leveraging the service bus one can build distributed applications on cloud or hybrid solutions featuring on-premise and cloud apps while maintaining the worthwhile...
The Microsoft team will be conducting an event in Cebu regarding Windows Azure this coming December 8, 2011 at 8:30 am to 5:00 pm. So if you are new to Azure and want to learn this new exciting developer platform then don't hesitate to join and register!For more details please visit: http://www.microsoft.com/ph... you guys there! =}...
Overview Windows HPC Server 2008 is infrastructure for high-end applications that require high performance computing clusters – i.e. for scaling out parallelizable across many compute nodes in a grid. These compute nodes can be coordinated by a head node , which in turn can be proxied via a service broker node that exposes a SOA WCF interface for job scheduling. Additional functionality includes the ability to coordinate between job processes running on nodes via MPI (message passing interface)....
Is this blog post worth your time? It’s not challenging setting up the Load Test Rig in the Cloud, it’s more challenging to convince enterprises to embrace the cloud. Not all enterprises will accept their business critical applications being profiled from a VM hosted outside their network. Though through Windows Azure Connect you can join the Cloud hosted Role to the on premise domain effectively forcing the domain policies on the external VM but how many enterprises will authorize you to do this?...
On November 28th, 2011 I had the opportunity to give a presentation at the St. Louis .NET User Group on my experiences developing software for the Windows Azure and SQL Azure platform. Having been at PDC in 2009 for the announcement of Azure and been able to work on a number of Azure projects since that time I frequently see many Azure talks that are either: A) too high level and marketing oriented as they never tell you anything important or B) too low level and focused on a specific feature that...
I have had a total of 2 years, 3 months, 2 hours of Windows Azure developer experience and it humiliates me to suicidal extents to confess that I am hardly conversant with the platform’s native Diagnostics technicalities. “I am Tinu Thomas and I am a diagnostic-ignorant Azure Developer.” Oh my god…how could he?? Now that we have that past us <sheepish grin>, I would also like to bask in the afterglow of redemption. Thanks to a much-needed job transition phase, I was able to find enough time...
I was poking around today and found this great article on caching: http://www.cloudcomputingde... Caching is a great way to boost application performance and keep down overhead on a database or file system. Its also great when you have say 3 web roles as shown in this articles Figure 2 that can share the same cache. If one of the roles goes offline then the cache is still there and can be used. You can change out your asp.net caching to use this pretty...
Windows Azure Platform How to Sort Azure Table Store results Chronologically How to upload your Excel and CSV data to the Cloud - Blob Storage SQL Azure Database Notification and Job Scheduling Service for SQL Azure SQL Azure Tutorials – Blog...
Sweden Windows Azure Group (SWAG) and Sweden .NET User Group (SweNUG) will be hosting a “Security in the Cloud” and Christmas event this Thursday. Sergio Molaro and Robert Folkesson will be presenting on different aspects of cloud security, there will be good food, good drinks and prizes in a great location. If you are in Stockholm it’s free to register to attend here ...
Welcome to Part 2, In Part 1 we discussed the advantages of creating a Test Rig in the cloud, the Azure edge and the Test Rig Topology we want to get to. In Part 2, Let’s start by understanding the components of Azure we’ll be making use of followed by manually putting them together to create the test rig, so… let’s get down dirty start setting up the Test Rig. What Components of Azure will I be using for building the Test Rig in the Cloud? To run the Test Agents we’ll make use of Windows Azure Compute...
In this Issue: Michael Collier, Samidip Basu, Jesse Liberty, Dhananjay Kumar, and Michael Crump. Above the Fold: WP7: "31 Days of Mango | Day #16: Isolated Storage Explorer" Samidip Basu Metro/WinRT/W8: "1360x768x32 Resolution in Windows 8 in VirtualBox" Michael Crump Shoutouts: Michael Palermo's latest Desert Mountain Developers is up Michael Washington's latest Visual Studio #LightSwitch Daily is up Alex Golesh releases a Silverlight 5-friendly version of his external map manifest file tool: Utility:...
The software industry lives within an interesting paradox. IT in the enterprise moves slowly and cautiously, upgrading only when safe and necessary. IT interests intentionally live in the past. On the other hand, developers, and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) not only want to use the latest and greatest technologies, but this constituency prides itself on gauging tech’s future, and basing its present-day strategy upon it. Normally, we as an industry manage this paradox with a shrug of the shoulder...
Azure is fascinating, but even more fascinating is the marriage of Azure and TFS! Introduction Recently a client I worked for had 2 major businesses critical applications being delivered, with very little time budgeted for Performance testing, we immediately hit a bottleneck when the performance testing phase started, and the in house infrastructure team could not support the hardware requirements in the short notice. It was suggested that the performance testing be performed on one of the QA environments...
Herve Roggero, SQL Azure MVP, has created a virtual community to focus on Azure. Here is the outline from Herve: User Group Name: Azure Florida Association Purpose: Start a virtual Florida user group that targets the Azure platform Venues: Most meetings will be virtual; however I plan to host a few physical events across Florida if possible from time to time; physical events may be a few hours long with potentially more than one speaker Possible Topics: The topics will touch Azure generally speaking,...
So I was asked today how to do cross joins in SQL Azure using Linq. Well the simple answer is you cant do it. It is not supported but there are ways around that. The solution is actually very simple and easy to implement. So here is what I did and how I did it. I created two SQL Azure Databases. The first Database is called AccountDb and has a single table named Account, which has an ID, CompanyId and Name in it. The second database I called CompanyDb and it contains two tables. The first table I...
I am proud to announce the creation of a new virtual user group: the Azure Florida Association. The missiong of this group is to bring national and internaional speakers to the forefront of the Florida Azure community. Speakers include Microsoft employees, MVPs and senior developers that use the Azure platform extensively. How to learn about meetings and the group Go to http://www.linkedin.com/gro... First Meeting Announcement Date: January 25 2012 @4PM ET Topic: Demystifying SQL Azure...
Microsoft has just announced the Windows Azure SDK 1.6 and the Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio 1.6. Now people can download the latest product through the WebPI. After you downloaded and installed the SDK you will find that The SDK 1.6 can be stayed side by side with the SDK 1.5, which means you can still using the 1.5 assemblies. But the Visual Studio Tools would be upgraded to 1.6. Different from the previous SDK, in this version it includes 4 components: Windows Azure Authoring Tools, Windows...
The latest version of the AppFabric ServiceBus now has support for queues and topics. Today I will show you a bit about using queues and also talk about some of the best practices in using them. If you are just getting started, you can check out this site for more info on Windows Azure. One of the 1st things I thought if when Azure was announced back when was how we handle fault tolerance. Web sites hosted in Azure are no much of an issue unless they are using SQL Azure and then you must account...
The updates are installed, all you want to do now is get connected, authenticated and get going. The first step needed here is to open Visual Studio 2010, once opened then you need to get to Team Explorer. Once there, you will click on the Connect to Team Project button on the toolbar. If you had a connection defined to another TFS environment, this will be adding one more, so you click on Servers… On the next dialog, you will click on Add… Then you will proceed to provide the details of your Team...
Check out the Fault Tolerance Framework: http://windowsazurecat.com/... This is really sweet. You can download the source code, then open it in VS and build it. Then plug into your app to get fault tolerance for SQL Azure, Windows Azure storage, Service Bus and Caching Service. Once you have it built and referenced in your project, it only takes a few minutes to plumb your application to use it. Next week (hopefully) I will post a new WPF app that uses ServiceBus...
Just a gentle reminder that this blog has moved to http://ericnelson.wordpress... (as I still get folks contacting me via here) and a shout out for a great initiative (probably!) I’m pulling together to offer six weeks of FREE technical and commercial help to UK companies to explore the Windows Azure Platform starting in Jan 2012. Check out http://www.sixweeksofazure....
The Azure Table service, provides a semi-structured storage in the form of tables that contain a collection of entities, these entities have primary keys and set of properties. A property is a name, typed-value pair. Every entity in table storage has two key properties, Partition Key and the Row key which together uniquely identify each entity in the table. The Table Service API is compliant with REST API provided by WCF Data Services. In order to use the WCF Data Services Client Library to access...
I wanted to have a VM that I could access remotely and thought why not take advantage of the VM role. So I just documented my steps, for those of you might be interested, but more importantly for myself, if I have to do this again. the server image that is used for the VM role in windows Azure consists of a base VHD and may or may not have differencing VHD. to create the base VHD you can use Hyper-V Manager. Creating the Base VM image In Hyper-V manager connect to your server , right-click the server...
Azure for the ITPro View more presentations from Enrique Lima...
We have gone through several iterations of the Windows Azure Platform Training Kit in the past, and while it was not a complex process to get up and running for me, well that was not the story for many. I had the chance of participating in a Windows Azure Bootcamp, and while the attendees were aware of the requirements on the systems, well it was not as easy to get going. You can get the October refresh here: http://www.microsoft.com/do... I believe that is the reason for...
If you develop applications in SQL Azure, you may end up in a situation where your code needs to know if it is operating in the root database or in a Federation Member, or if it is connected to a regular user database. Two ways can be used to make this determination: using system tables, or using the USE FEDERATION command. Using System Tables This approach is the easiest to implement since it relies a SQL call only, without much logic in your application code. Assuming your code is currently connected...
I’ve just published an article on deadlettering on “Deadlettering in Azure AppFabric Service Bus Brokered Messaging”. It looks at how deadlettering can be used to handle poison messages, and messages that do not meet business rules. The article will be included in the next release of “The Developer’s Guide to AppFabric”, a free e-book on Azure AppFabric development. The latest edition of the e-book is available for download here...
I am really proud to be part of the SolidQ BI Center of Excellence and work with Carl and others on the team. Check out the press release on Carl and the COE. In the future there will lots more info I am blogging about that the COE uncovers. Expect to see lots of stuff continue here on MVC, SL, WPF and Windows Azure. Ken...
Today the Microsoft announced that the In-Place Upgrade feature had had some improvements. The major one would be, now the user could be able to change the VM Size by In-Place Upgrade, without redeploying the whole service. What We Did Before Before this improvement, since the VM Size was defined in the CSDEF file, we have to redeploy the service to change the VM Size property. This means we would remove the existing roles and VMs and then ask the Windows Azure to reallocate the new VMs with the...
I have been developing an MVC3 application with the intention of deploying to the Cloud. It was configured to use Forms Authentication with SQL Membership on SQL Azure. Everything seemed to be working perfectly locally, but after I deployed the Membership.ValidateUser no longer seemed to work. I could use the Providers to get information from the database (e.g. Membership.GetUser would return an existing account) which meant the database connection was fine and user existed, just the validation failed....
Today's $10 Deal of the day book from APress at http://www.apress.com/97814... is Introducing .NET 4.0 With Visual Studio 2010 "You may know what's happening in C#, but what about the Azure cloud? How is that going to affect your work? What are the limitations of the pLINQ syntax? Introducing .NET 4.0: with Visual Studio 2010 guides you through the innovations that matter and helps you to seize new opportunities confidently and quickly. "...
When using the storage client library to access Azure Storage, it is recommended that we make use of the Async calls to execute queries against the Azure Tables/Blobs. TableClient and BlobClient expose methods to execute queries asynchronously, for e.g. blobClient.BeginListContain... : which retrieves the list of Blob Containers in our storage. cloudTableClient.BeginListT... : which retrieves the list of tables in Azure strorage and many more Then there is CloudTableQuery class...
I’ll be presenting a session on “Extending to the Cloud” at the Sweden Windows Azure User Group next week. Extending to the Cloud Extending to the cloud involves developing hybrid applications that leverage the capabilities of cloud based platforms. Many of the Windows Azure solutions developed today involve extending the capabilities of existing applications and infrastructure to leverage the capabilities of Azure. These hybrid applications allow developers to combine the best of both worlds. Existing...