Tag | Azure Posts
Let me state the obvious, for any application you develop you need to log information, errors, exceptions etc that can help you and others know what’s going on with your application When you create a new Windows Azure application using Visual Studio you will find the following snippet in your configuration file <system.diagnostics> <trace> <listeners> <addtype="Microsoft.Wind... Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Diag... Version=1.0.0.0, ...
This blog will help you prepare for an upcoming release of SQL Azure that will offer support for Data Federation. While no date has been provided for this feature, I was able to test an early preview and compiled a few lessons learned that can be shared publicly. Note however that certain items could not be shared in this blog because they are considered NDA material; as a result, you should expect additional guidance in future posts when the public Beta will be made available. What is Data Federation? ...
Apparatus is sponsoring and hosting the Windows Azure boot camp in Indianapolis. This will take place on September 24th, 2011. I will be one of the presenters for the event. Join us! Details are here: http://www.windowsazureboot... ...
Last week I was at the Microsoft WPC conference in Los Angeles. I’ve been to other Microsoft developer conferences like Tech Ed and PDC before, but this was my first WPC and it was a great experience. For one thing, the target audience is blatantly business, sales, and marketing. It was a weird feeling attending a Microsoft conference and not knowing *anybody* (although some familiar faces were found). I have links below to notes I made for the individual days of the conference, but I wanted to point ...
Introduction One of the first things I wanted to do after installing the Azure AppFabric June CTP was to create an AppFabric application that used the Bing Map SOAP services. That was when I hit my first roadblock. There is currently no option in the AppFabric Application Designer to add a reference to an external service. After asking around in the forums I learned that I should build an external service to do this. There is currently very little documentation on creating external services for Azure ...
Last day of WPC, so what should we start with? You guessed it – KEYNOTES! But Thursday was all about the regional keynotes, so all the Canadian partners packed into a room to hear from Canadian Microsoft executives. In Canada there are three different groups within Microsoft Canada – Small/Medium Business, Enterprise Business, and DPE. While in the past partners were slotted into one of the different groups, now moving forward we’re all just identified as playing in a certain area, not committed ...
The keynote session for the morning was a mixture of things. It started with an all-female rock band singing Cold Play’s “Viva la Vida”, then had all partners-of-the-year winners parade on stage, and then we got into the specific messaging part. There were five separate keynotes this morning from different business units within Microsoft. First up was Cloud. Note that I didn’t say Azure, although that’s part of it. Azure is the public cloud, but Microsoft talked up the Private Cloud a lot at this ...
I just got back from Microsoft’s 15,000 attendee-strong Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in Los Angeles, and I have to say, the company and its partners are pumped. How can this be, given the number of people who have written Microsoft’s eulogy of late? If Amazon owns the cloud, if Apple owns the consumer, if Google owns search, if Cisco owns unified communications, if EMC/VMWare owns virtualization, if Oracle and SAP own ERP and if Oracle/Siebel and Salesforce.com own CRM, how can Microsoft be ...
A new release of Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework is available on July 13th. We expect that its 17 new code samples would reduce developers’ efforts in solving the following typical programming tasks. Download address: http://1code.codeplex.com/r... Alternatively, 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, manage the downloaded samples in a centralized ...
I would like to invite you to visit us at WPC LA 2011 and learn how to move your mission-critical/Enterprise apps to the Win Azure Cloud. We will present our innovative migration solution Instant CloudMove at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC)tomorrow (July 13). Find us at the Windows Azure Building Blocks demo station where we’ll be showcasing the unique tools for moving business client/server applications such as é.VISOR by Limón GmbH to Azure Cloud. The original application is a data-centric ...
Today we are glad to announce HERMES, an Open Source Infrastructure for publish subscribe messaging model based on MongoDB and RESTful Services. This is 8th release of an open source project from TellagoDevLabs on Codeplex. Hermes is months of hard work by us, including Silvio Massari, Jose Romaniello and Gustavo Machado. Hermes is not BizTalk Server. BizTalk Server has pub-sub mechanism in its infrastructure but in very traditional way and it hasn’t provided a foundation that can be seamlessly used ...
I was checking the Windows Azure Appfabric June CTP; I was looking at the Azure Service Bus queues and topics. I noticed something interesting to me and hope we can take advantage of these new capabilities in applications like RFID. Working on BizTalk RFID or any RFID project for that matter, you would have noticed using duplicate tag elimination events during tag processing. For any one new to RFID, when RFID device reads tags it can read the same tag information more than once at a given interval. ...
Microsoft has released a number of training kits that have hands-on labs, articles, presentations and loads of information. The have become available for a range of products. They have also been updating them as more features or service packs come out. The links to them are listed below: Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4 Training Kit http://www.microsoft.com/do... Windows Azure Training Kit http://www.microsoft.com/do... SQL Server 2008 R2 for Developers ...
Check out the Top Five most popular news at SilverlightShow for SilverlightShow Top 5 News for July 4 - 10, 2011. Here are the top 5 news on SilverlightShow for last week: Strange times in the world of Microsoft developers New eBook released 'Silverlight in the Azure cloud' by Gill Cleeren Getting Started with Node.js and Mango How to Create a Circular Loader using XAML Update Your Windows Phone to Mango Today Visit and bookmark SilverlightShow. Stay in the 'Light ...
It’s cool when you have to use a map of the world to show how your application is deployed. I’ve added a webcast on AppFabric Caching using a very distributed application. The application is tested in Stockholm Sweden with the database located in South East Asia, and the Cache in South-central US. The application is then deployed to the South-central US data center, accessing the database in South East Asia. The point of all this is to show how the AppFabric cache can be used to reduce latency in ...
One of the things that I have really enjoyed in the process of working with SQL Azure is the SQL Azure Management options. Mind you, it does not have a built-in backup tool, yes there are other options. redgate SQL Azure Backup Currently, Red Gate has a SQL Azure Backup tool (since it is Beta, it is free for the time being). Obviously, in order to use the tool the network/ip address from which you will be connecting has to be enrolled into the Azure Firewall for your account. The first step … connect. ...
The installation process took some getting used to. but understanding the purpose and work done with the Azure Companion helped tremendously. There are 3 different ways from getting this in place, using the With SSL package, the Without SSL, and the source code version. It is always helpful when someone has gone through the trouble of documenting their steps. So, in implementing my Intentional Thinking 2.0 blog site running WordPress on Azure, I followed the post/article published by John White. ...
Just received notification from Microsoft.
My first MVP- in SCVMM! - MS Technical Computing group was folded into Azure Virtualization.
Thats all for now!
Last night, (Tuesday, June 28), at the KC .NET User group meeting, George Westwater gave a terrific presentation on NoSQL. The best way to define it (the best way is to see George explain it, and he says he will record his presentation and make it available through his blog – link above) is databases that does not use relational technology. And his point, and this is true – I have been around awhile – is that non-relational databases have been used for over 50 years in the business. He points out ...
Blue Syntax is happy to announce the release of their SQL Azure database backup product! Enzo Backup for SQL Azure offers unparalleled backup and restored functionlity and flexibility of a SQL Azure database. You can download the beta release here: http://www.bluesyntax.net/b... With Enzo Backup for SQL Azure, you can: Create a backup blob, or a backup file from a SQL Azure database Restore a SQL Azure database from a backup blob, or a backup file Perform limited backup and restore of SQL ...
Well, Saturday was my presentation on Programming with Windows Azure, and it went well. Everything worked as I had wanted and I got to everything that I had planned. I did not even need my emergency backup filler. I only hope that the folks who attended got something from it. As for the whole conference, I think it was a resounding success. There were a LOT of good sessions to attend and people to meet. I had a great time, and I look forward to next year with great anticipation. Kudos to all (Lee, ...
I’ve just published a webcast on creating and deploying AppFabric applications using the Azure AppFabric June CTP. As the bits are very new I have not had much time to get into the details of how it all works yet, but I will be taking a deeper look over the summer and webcasting on what I am finding out. The “Introduction to AppFabric Applications” webcast is here ...
That's it!!! After many days and nights... and an amazing set of challenges, I just released the Enzo Backup for SQL Azure BETA product (http://www.bluesyntax.net). Clearly, that was one of the most challenging projects I have done so far. Why??? Because to create a highly redundant system, expecting failures at all times for an operation that could take anywhere from a couple of minutes to a couple of hours, and still making sure that the operation completes at some point was remarkably challenging. ...
I am really happy to announce that I have been accepted as a speaker at the 2011 PASS Conference in Seattle. The topic? It will be about SQL Azure scalability using shards, and the Data Federation feature of SQL Azure. I will also talk extensively about the community open-source sharding library Enzo SQL Shard (enzosqlshard.codeplex.com) and show how to make the most out of it. In general, the presentation will provide details about how to properly design an application for sharding, how to make ...
Microsoft has announced availability of the June CTP for Windows Azure AppFabric. See http://blogs.msdn.com/b/app... This is an exciting release and provides greater insight into where the AppFabric team is heading in terms of developer and management tooling. Microsoft is offering space in the cloud to experiment with the CTP, but this is limited, so register early to get a namespace! You can download the SDK for the June ...
The Membership API came in .NET 2.0 and was a huge enhancement in building web applications with users, managing roles, permissions etc., The Membership API by default uses SQL Express and until Visual Studio 2008, it was available only through the ASP.NET Configuration manager screen (Website – ASP.NET Configuration) or (Project – ASP.NET Configuration) and for every application, one has to manually visit this place to start using the Security and other settings. Upon doing that the default SQL ...
The dates for the Las Vegas and Phoenix Azure Boot Camps have been finalized. Las Vegas - August 17 and 18 Phoenix - August 24 and 25 Salt Lake City - September 23 and 24 These boot camps are a FREE two day deep dive class to get you up to speed on developing for Windows Azure. Information and Registration information about all Azure Boot Camps can be found here: http://www.azurebootcamp.co... Scott ...
I hit this error when I deployed an app built with Entity Framework onto Windows Azure. Obviously, I wasn’t explicitly using DataReader so it kind of puzzled me. As it happens every time It worked well with local database, application running local and database on SQL Azure. But once I used the Dev Fabric to test the application locally, it failed and gave the above error. Entity Framework relies on using Multiple Active Results Sets (MARS), and it would be a part of connection string multipleactiveresultsets=True. ...
Recently, I was deploying an MVC 3 Application on Windows Azure. The deployment took longer than expected and the Roles were just restarting/repairing and it couldn’t just start the role instances. Only thing that seemed to have worked was uploading the Packages. Post that, the Roles were simply unable to start and be ready. I deleted the deployment, re-created the package and deployed. Still no avail. It would successfully upload the package but post that the roles would never be able to start. ...
In the next generation of SQL Server, codename “Denali”, there is a new feature named Data-tier Application Framework v2.0 Feature Pack CTP to enhance the data import and export with SQL Server, and currently it had been available in SQL Azure Labs. Run Data-tier Application Locally From the portal we know that the Data-tier Application CTP2 can be executed from the development machine through an EXE utility. So what we need to do is to download the components listed below. Only one thing, the SQLSysClrTypes.msi ...
I recently spent far too long debugging a problem with our Azure application. We have two Azure cloud projects, and they both started refusing to start at about the same time, with different error messages. The web applications they house both worked absolutely fine when deployed to local IIS. There turned out to be two different problems - both very simple - so I thought I'd share what they turned out to be :) Problem 1 One application failed to start in Azure, with the error message "Unable to ...
Great content available to get started with Windows Azure and SQL Azure. Windows Azure SQL Azure Introductory Videos Introductory Videos Deep Dive Deep Dive Tutorials Case Studies Case Studies Events Events ...
In two weeks, June 16, I will be hosting a First Look event at Centriq Training on Windows Azure. Although I will be talking about various things, such as 'what is cloud computing", "why Windows Azure", and the like, my intent will be to actually show you how to write code for Azure using Visual Studio 2010, how to use Windows Azure storage, and how to use Web and Worker Roles. I think you will enjoy attending this event. For more information, check out the Centriq Training website, www.centriq.com ...
Has the cloud backlash started? Stallman's cloudburst when he railed against the dangers of allowing our data to be locked up offsite and online (http://www.guardian.co.uk/... was perhaps predictable, but he is not the only voice to have suggested that cloud vendors are overselling the benefits and ignoring the risks. On the one hand we have some very large corporations (Amazon, Google and Microsoft in particular) pushing the advantages of migrating ...
I spent some time today summarising the new features in the Windows Azure AppFabric May CTP for SolidSoft consultants. Microsoft released the CTP a couple of weeks ago and has a second CTP coming out later this month. I might as well publish this here, although it has been widely blogged on already. There is nothing that you can’t glean from reading the release documents, but hopefully it will serve as a shorter summary. The May CTP is all about the AppFabric Service Bus. The bus has been extended ...
When we build an application that will be deployed on Windows Azure, one thing we should keep in mind is that the assemblies installed on the virtual machines on Windows Azure are very limited. It only contains the default assemblies in .NET 3.5 SP1 and .NET 4.0. For those references not included on Windows Azure, we should set their Copy Local = True. As the image shown above I set the unity reference as Copy Local = True as I pretty know that in Windows Azure the assemblies of Enterprise Library ...
With thanks to Wriju for doing the work to pull these together. How to: Build a Windows Azure Application How to Configure Virtual Machine Sizes How to Configure Connection Strings How to Configure Operating System Versions How to Configure Local Storage Resources How to Create a Certificate for a Role How to Create a Remote Desktop Protocol File How to Define Environment Variables Before a Role Starts How to Define Input Endpoints for a Role How to Define Internal Endpoints for a Role How to Define ...
In early 2010 I “complained” about the way we were explaining the Windows Azure Platform on our web site and pointed at a (IMHO) much better way of doing it by one of our competitors. A lot has changed since early 2010 and we now have some great resources – one of the best being “the super-slidy Windows Azure Pricing Calculator”. It comes highly recommended Check out http://www.microsoft.com/wi... P.S. and well done to the folks who created it! Related Links Sign up to ...
Blue Syntax has been working with Microsoft and the Central Region DPE's to help train at many of the Azure Boot Camps throughout the Central Region, including Dallas, St. Louis, Nashville, and Indianapolis. Blue Syntax is proud to announce that they are holding Azure Boot Camps on the West Coast starting in June. The cities and dates are as follows: San Francisco - June 13 and 14 Phoenix - TBD Las Vegas - TBD Salt Lake City - September 23 and 24 Irvine - TBD Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Irvine dates ...
Cihan Biyikoglu had just announced the SQL Azure Federation Products Evaluation Program had just been opened for nomination. If you are interest in data partitioning, or you had been run into the problem to shard your data, or the 50GB SQL Azure database was not enough to your application, then you can raise your nomination here and hopefully can play with the cool feature earlier than others. I had sent my nomination, god bless me. Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes ...
This blog is the first one of a series of blogs addressing programming practices and lessons learned related to cloud computing. While most developers will be familiar at least conceptually with the techniques exposed, I will provide background information and code samples in an attempt to explain why they are so critical in cloud software development. While most of the information provided will be using Windows Azure and/or SQL Azure, these concepts apply to cloud computing in general. Exponential ...
Several attendees asked me to share the roadmap slide from the developer track at Tech.Days 2011 this week. This is my summary as of May 23rd 2011. Beta Extra Small compute instance Windows Azure VM Role CTP Windows Azure Connect Windows Azure Traffic Manager SQL Azure OData Service (labs) SQL Azure Reporting (Limited CTP) SQL Azure Data Sync (labs) AppFabric Service Bus enhancements (labs) Announced SQL Azure Backup and Restore SQL Azure Federations SQL Azure codename “Austin” AppFabric Developer ...
Kevin Williamson has a great post on the overall flow of things from the point of publishing of your package up on the Windows Azure Developer Portal to Run(). These are good things to know as many times you need to inject steps, tasks, context at various stages of your service instance’s lifetime. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kwi... Windows Azure Role Architecture - Windows Azure - Troubleshooting & Debugging - Site Home - MSDN Blogs ...
Scott Klein, co-founder of Blue Syntax Consulting and SQL MVP, was our speaker at the West Palm Beach .Net User Group May meeting. Scott spoke and demonstrated code on Azure’s AppFabric. We would like to thank Scott for making time to share with us despite his busy schedule. We would also like to thank our sponsors: CompTec for hosting our meeting and Sherlock Technology for the free pizza/soda. Below please find a few photos of the event ...
For those that attended TechEd NA 2011 last week in Atlanta it should be no surprise that more and more companies are betting on the Azure platform, whether it is Windows Azure or SQL Azure. There have been developments, changes and improvements for every aspect of the Windows Azure platform in general. And with that tools from 3rd parties to enhance or extend the experience. That is the case when we look at SQL Azure Backup from Redgate. A way to simplify and sync your SQL Azure data to local SQL ...
This is a placeholder for the folks who attended the Microsoft UK tech days developer track on the Windows Azure Platform and asked me to share my decks asap. I will create a much more detailed posting once both days are done. Download decks: New Old or Pink – it is all good Windows Azure Platform Roadmap The main links from the day are: Connect with my team if you are an ISV (or similar) in the UK – http://bit.ly/ukisvfirststop (Including our blog, LinkedIn group and Microsoft Platform Ready assistance ...
This week was TechEd in Atlanta and an opportunity for the Windows Azure Platform product groups to make some announcements on new and future technologies and services. I’m collating them over on my team blog – check them out: Windows Azure Platform announcements from TechEd Atlanta May 2011 ...
Its been a while since I blogged. Its been hard balancing blogging time, work and many other activities. Most my days and even evenings have been cluttered with a number of tasks ranging from mundial to critical. There is some which have been most interesting include very nice lessons I took from from some of the people I respect in the industry. I will try and highlight some of the things I did in below. 1) The DataObjects.NET contribution programme. From February this year I quickly responded to ...
For Microsoft these days, great things are happening at the macro level, and yet there’s fits-and-starts progress down below. This year’s Tech Ed North America conference represented, in event-form, that very duality. On the one hand, this was the largest Tech Ed in my memory, with 10,000 attendees. But the customary Microsoft 2-day, all-morning keynote format was shortened to a Day 1, 90-minute talk on Cloud and Visual Studio. Microsoft’s cloud push reached an almost fever pitch; but various new ...
If you are trying to get up to speed on Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 you can get a training kit from Microsoft website for free. It is 411 MB exe file and after install you can navigate thru presentations, labs and demos. http://www.microsoft.com/do... N. Overview The Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit includes presentations, hands-on labs, and demos. This content is designed to help ...