Windows Azure TourBenjamin DayBenjamin Day Consulting, Inc.

http://www.benday.comhttp://blog.benday.com

About the speaker

• Owner, Benjamin Day Consulting, Inc.– Email: benday@benday.com– Web: http://www.benday.com– Blog: http://blog.benday.com

• Trainer– Visual Studio Team System, Team Foundation Server

• Microsoft MVP for VSTS• Microsoft VSTS/TFS Customer Advisory Council• Microsoft Cloud Services Advisory Group• Leader of Beantown.NET INETA User Group

Agenda

• Big thanks to – Steve Marx @ Microsoft– Manuvir Das @ Microsoft– David Aiken @ Microsoft

• What is Windows Azure?• Develop Your Application• Deploy To Staging and Production • Some Stuff To Think About

The Azure Platform

The Azure Platform

The “cloud” in Cloud Services?

• Think data-center somewhere on the internet• Allows you to run your app• Allows you to read and write data

Ok. So what’s Windows Azure?

• Microsoft’s “cloud”– Every cloud has an Azure lining?

• Custom version of Windows– Optimized for utility computing applications– Always runs virtualized on the Azure Fabric

• Azure Fabric– Runs instances of your apps– Handles “everything”

• Azure Storage• Azure SDK for Visual Studio

Why Azure?

• “I’ve got my awesome data-center so…”• No more worrying about…

– Buying, configuring, maintaining hardware– Buying, configuring, maintaining the operating system – Network infrastructure

• Routers, Switches, Load Balancers– Your data-center’s power and internet connections– Failovers

• Worry less about…– App deployment– Capacity planning

• Focus on writing your app

Simple Scale Out

• Changes in traffic• Need more servers?• Need fewer servers?

I want everything…

• …and it should be easy.• Azure let’s you worry about writing your app• Don’t have to learn a whole bunch of new stuff• Leverage your existing dev skills

Azure: The Developer View

• Write it in Visual Studio– New project types– Debug your code

• .NET, ASP.NET, WCF, IIS7, LINQ• Azure Storage

– Database in the cloud– (with a few caveats)

• Desktop development versions of– Azure Fabric– Azure Storage

Demo 1: Hello, World

Hello, World: Discuss.

• Doesn’t look like much but…– that’s “internet scale”-able– Highly available

• Mostly stuff you already know

Debugging In The Cloud

• We can debug a service in Visual Studio• How do you debug a service that has been deployed?

– Answer: you don’t

• Logging is the answer• RoleManager.WriteToLog(eventLogName, message)

– Event log name values: Error, Information, Warning, Debug, Critical

Demo 1.1: Hello World + Logging

AZURE STORAGE

Azure Storage

• Simple database in the cloud– Tables

• “structured storage”– Blobs– Queues

• You don’t worry about replication• Scales like nobody’s business• Development version

– DevelopmentStorage.exe– Uses SQL Server Express

Table Storage

• Every row has RowKey & Partition Key• RowKey = primary key• PartitionKey

– Helps you tell Azure how to scale your data– You have to think about how you’ll be querying– By State? By Hour? Other?

RowKey PartitionKey FirstName LastName

1 MA Ben Day

2 MA John Malkovich

3 WA Bill Gates

4 CA Steve Jobs

PartitionKey

• Your partitions could be on different servers• Best practice: If you know your PartitionKey, add it to

the WHERE clause• No PartitionKey in the WHERE insane table scans• Recommendation: More partitions is (probably) better

• Think hard about your partition key in the beginning– Else, roll your own re-partitioning

Column Data Types

• Partition key and Row key– String (up to 64KB)

• Other properties– String (up to 64KB)– Binary (up to 64KB)– Bool– DateTime – GUID– Int– Int64– Double

Demo 2: Azure Table Storage

MORE THAN JUST ASPX

Utility Compute without a UI

• Azure uses the concept of “Roles”• Hello, World used a “Web Role”• The other role is a “Worker Role”

– Think windows service in the cloud

Web & Worker

Demo 3: Worker Role and a Queue

• In a web role, create an ASP.NET page– Creates a queue– Writes to a queue– Gets queue depth

• Worker Role– Reads the queue– “Processes” the message

DEPLOYMENT

Demo 4: Deploy To The Cloud

• Change the storage config to use production servers

MISCELLANEOUS

Things to think about

• No foreign keys• No triggers• No stored procedures• In Table storage, strings can only be 64k

– You’ll need to use a mix of Blob and Tables

• Think hard about what config values you put in web.config/app.config vs ServiceConfiguration.cscfg

The Big Questions

• When?– Sometime in 2009

• An actual Service Level Agreement (SLA)• More data-centers

– Now in US only– Global at go-live

• What will it cost?– It will depend on what you use

More resources

• My Blog– http://blog.benday.com– Sample code– More Azure content to come…

• Steve Marx’s blog– http://blog.smarx.com/ – Evangelist for the Azure team

• Azure.com

Final questions?

About the speaker

• Owner, Benjamin Day Consulting, Inc.– Email: benday@benday.com– Web: http://www.benday.com– Blog: http://blog.benday.com

• Trainer– Visual Studio Team System, Team Foundation Server

• Microsoft MVP for VSTS• Microsoft VSTS/TFS Customer Advisory Council• Microsoft Cloud Services Advisory Group• Leader of Beantown.NET INETA User Group