Introduction to Microsoft Windows Azure

Lynn Langit

@lynnlangit

http://www.LynnLangit.com

It’s an Operating System In the Cloud

Simple Answer?

Microsoft Data CentersVision Go Inside Energy EfficientContainers

San Antonio

Chicago

Dublin

Amsterdam

Hong Kong

Singapore

North American Data Centers European Data Centers Asian Data Centers

IaaS, PaaS and SaaS

• Infrastructure as a Service• Platform as a Service• Software as a Service

InfrastructureServers · Storage · Network

IaaSPlatform

OS & Application Stack

InfrastructureServers · Storage · Network

PaaSApplications

Packaged Software

PlatformOS & Application Stack

InfrastructureServers · Storage · Network

SaaS

Upgrades

Patching

Zero downtime

Memory

Hard drive failure

Network

Server acquisition

Environments

Routers

Load balancers

Installing OS

Storage

Where the Cloud is Compelling

App Characteristic Example

Massive scale Outback promo on Facebook

High reliability eCommerce apps (Coke, Dominos)

Variable load Online tax preparation (CCH)

Unpredictable lifetime Hurricane relief site

Requiring parallel processing Genome sequencing

Scale fast or fail fast Web sites (Kelley Blue Book)

Not good fit for in-house data center Frequently updated app

Needing external storage Online video archive

No desire to manage infrastructure SaaS apps (Quark’s Promote app)

Main Components

Cloud Fabric Web RolesWorker RolesStorage (Including SQL Azure)Dev FabricApp Fabric (Access Control, Service Bus)

Windows Azure Cloud Fabric

• Multiple virtual instances• Easy provision of applications• Detect failures• Spin up new instances to replace the failed ones• How many instances and what role they will play• Load balances and DNS• Elasticity of the service… scaling up/down number of instances

Windows Azure Roles

Windows Azure Roles• Web Role

– for web application programming in ASP.NET or PHP• Worker Role

– for performing work on behalf of the web role– may be written in .NET, Ruby, Java– to improve scalability by increasing parallelism and

asynchronicity– used for background work

Windows Azure Role Details

• Web Roles– single HTTP endpoint and a single HTTPS endpoint for external

clients

• Worker Roles– internal endpoints for HTTP, TCP – may receive work from Windows Azure Storage Queues

• Web and Worker Roles• can make outbound HTTP/S or .NET Framework class library

socket connections to Internet accessible resources• can access Windows Azure Storage services via REST APIs or the

Windows Azure Storage Client Library

Websites

• Support for up to 10 websites during trial• Support for SQL Server or MySQL• Included gallery – Drupal, DNN, Wordpress,

more..

Quick create website tools

Portal

Demo

Spinning up a VM

With Microsoft Windows Azure

Developer Experience

The Windows Azure SDK - 1

The Windows Azure SDK - 2

Windows Azure SDK Features

• C# and VB Visual Studio project templates and more – Windows Azure Cloud Service solution with multiple roles.

• Tools to manage and configure roles• Local Development Fabric• Local Development Storage services• Local Cloud Service debugging support• Cloud Service package and deployment builderNote:• No SDK Required for SQL Azure

Windows Azure Roles in Visual Studio

MSDN Offer

Storage

• Blobs – Large Data Store• Queues – Background work processing• Tables – Very Fast / Scalable Storage• Drives – NTFS Formatted Page Blobs • SQL Azure – Relational SQL in the Cloud

Getting Started with Windows Azure Data Storage

Account Name / Key

• AccountName– A unique name identifying the Azure Data Storage

• AccountKey– A blob of encrypted data used for authentication

Windows Azure Data Storage Blobs

• Unstructured data storage• Partitioned by container• Unlimited containers

Azure Storage Explorer

Azure Storage Explorer• “Azure Storage Explorer is a useful GUI tool for inspecting and

altering the data in your Azure cloud storage projects including the logs of your cloud-hosted applications. All three types of cloud storage can be viewed: blobs, queues, and tables.”

• http://azurestorageexplorer.codeplex.com/

Examining Windows Azure Data Storage

Windows Azure Data Storage - Tables

• provides scalable, available, and durable structured (or semi-structured) storage in the form of tables.

• contain entities, and the entities contain properties.• are scalable to billions of entities and terabytes of data, and

may be partitioned across thousands of servers.• support ACID transactions over single entities and rich queries

over the entire table.• Simple and familiar .NET and REST programming interfaces are

provided via ADO.NET Data Services. • http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=153401

Windows Azure Data Storage – Tables (Terms Part 1)• Table – contains a set of entities. • Entity (Row) – Entities are the basic data items stored in a

table. • Property (Column) – This represents a single value in an entity.

• PartitionKey – The first key property of every table. The

system uses this key to automatically distribute the table’s entities over many storage nodes.

Windows Azure Data Storage – Tables (Terms Part 2)• RowKey – A second key property for the table. This is the

unique ID of the entity within the partition it belongs to. • Timestamp – Every entity has a version maintained by the

system.• Partition – A set of entities in a table with the same partition

key value.• Sort Order – There is a single index provided for the CTP, where

all entities in a table are sorted by PartitionKey and then RowKey

SQL Azure Management Portal

SQL Azure and Windows Azure Table Comparison

SQL Azure Tables• Fully structured• Strongly typed• Relational (RDMS)• Highly scalable

Windows Azure Tables• Semi-structured• Loosely typed• Non-Relational (Not RDMS)• Massively scalable

Management

Summary

What is AzureInfrastructure Web RolesWorker RolesStorage (Including SQL Azure)Cloud Fabric, Dev Fabric, App Fabric

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