Microsoft Azure Platform Overview

March, 2010Dmytro Maleev

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Clouds?

Microsoft Azure Overview

Windows Azure

SQL Azure

Windows Azure App Fabric

References

Q&A

Agenda

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Clouds?

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Windows Azure: Provides a Windows-based environment for running applications and storing data on servers in Microsoft data centers.

SQL Azure: Provides data services in the cloud based on SQL Server.

App Fabric: Offers distributed infrastructure services to cloud-based and local applications.

Microsoft Azure Overview

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Part of the larger Azure Services Platform, Windows Azure is a platform for running Windows applications and storing data in the cloud.

Windows Azure

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Services Provided by Windows Azure

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.NET 3.5 SP1

Server 2008 – 64bit

Full Trust

Web Role

IIS7 Web Sites (ASP.NET, FastCGI)

Web Services (WCF)

Worker Role

Stateless Servers

Http(s)

What is Compute Service?

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Blobs, Tables, Queues

Designed for the cloud

3 replicas

Guaranteed consistency

Accessible directly from the internet via REST API

Does not require compute

Access via storage account

Sample Storage Client in SDK

What is Storage?

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Binary Large Object

Blobs stored in Containers

1 or more Containers per account

Scoping is at container level

…/Container/blobpath

Metadata, accessed independently

Private or Public container access

Content Delivery Network

Windows Azure Drive

Snapshot Drive

Blobs

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Two types of Blobs: Block blobs and Page blobs.

Block Blobs:

Optimized for streaming.

1 Block Blob 64mb or up to 50.000 Block Blobs with Max Size 4mb each.

Writing a block blob is two steps operation.

Page Blobs:

Optimized for random read/write operations and provide the ability to write to a range of bytes in a blob.

Page blobs are a collection of pages. A page is a range of data that is identified by its offset from the start of the blob.

Write to page blobs happen in-place and are immediately committed to the blob.

The maximum size for a page blob is 1 TB. A page written to a page blob may be up to 1 TB in size.

Understanding Blobs

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This is not DATABASE Tables!  Table service offers structured storage in the form of tables

Entities and properties (rows & columns)

Tables scoped by account

Designed for billions+

Scale-out using partitions

Partition key & row key

Operations performed on partitions

Efficient queries

No limit on number of partitions

Use ADO.NET Data Services

LINQ

Tables

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Tables store data as collections of entities. Entities are similar to rows. An entity has a primary key and a set of properties. A property is a name, typed-value pair, similar to a column.

An entity may have up to 255 properties, including the 3 system.

An entity always has the following system properties:

PartitionKey property

RowKey property

Timestamp property

Tables, Entities, and Properties

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Simple asynchronous dispatch queue

Create and delete queues

Message:

Retrieved at least once

Max size 8kb

Operations:

Enqueue

Dequeue

RemoveMessage

Queues

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Microsoft SQL Azure Database is a cloud-based relational database platform built on SQL Server technologies.

Familiar SQL Server relational model

Familiar Development Model

High Availability

Scalability

Uses existing APIs & tools

Friction free provisioning and reduced management

SQL Azure Firewall

Accessible to all from PHP, Ruby, and Java

SQL Azure

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Access Scenarios

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Constants

Constraints

Cursors

Index management and rebuilding indexes

Local temporary tables

Reserved keywords

Stored procedures

Statistics management

Transactions

Triggers

Tables, joins, and table variables

Transact-SQL language elements

User-defined functions

Views

SQL Azure. Supported

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Common Language Runtime (CLR)

Database file placement

Database mirroring

Distributed queries

Distributed transactions

Filegroup management

Global temporary tables

Spatial data and indexes

SQL Server configuration options

SQL Server Service Broker

System tables

Trace Flags

SQL Azure. Not supported

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2 types of accounts:

1GB databases.

10GB databases.

Only SQL Authentication.

Currently SQL Azure supports a maximum of five databases including the master database, so only four user databases can be created.  

Multiple Active Result Sets (MARS) is not supported

“Huron” Data Sync

SQL Azure. Additional facts.

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Originally known as BizTalk Services, the functions provided by .NET Services address common infrastructure challenges in creating distributed applications.

Windows Azure App Fabric

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Access Control: An increasingly common approach to identity is to have each user supply an application with a token containing some set of claims. The application can then decide what this user is allowed to do based on these claims. Doing this effectively across companies requires identity federation, which lets claims created in one identity scope be accepted in another. It might also require claims transformation, modifying claims when they’re passed between identity scopes. The Access Control service provides a cloud-based implementation of both.

Service Bus: Exposing an application’s services on the Internet is harder than most people think. The goal of Service Bus is to make this simpler by letting an application expose Web services endpoints that can be accessed by other applications, whether on-premises or in the cloud. Each exposed endpoint is assigned a URI, which clients can use to locate and access the service. Service Bus also

Access Control & Service Bus

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Access Control

If user is a manager

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Claims!

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How it works?

Does user has a GoldMember claim?

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Service Bus.

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Problem Description

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Possible Usage

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Official Microsoft Azure Site:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/

Windows Azure Training Kit:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=413E88F8-5966-4A83-B309-53B7B77EDF78&displaylang=en

Windows Azure Application. Riviera:

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/riviera

Windows Azure Application examples:

http://blogs.msdn.com/goto100/archive/2009/12/23/multi-tenanted-applications-on-windows-azure-and-sql-azure-added-to-my-todo-list-for-2010.aspx

References

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Q&A

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