StartPad Countdown 4 - Windows Azure

Windows Azure
 John Bravenec
Lead Program Manager
Windows Azure
Microsoft

The Windows Azure Platform
Web and clouds
Third party cloud
Web applications
Compute
Storage
Management
Management
Relational data
Connectivity
Interoperability
Access control
On-premises
On-premises systems
Composite applications

Windows Azure is
a place to run your applications.

Windows Azure is
a cloudcomputing platform,
so it’s designed to scale.

Windows Azure is
a utility computing platform,
so you pay for what you use.

Inside are many servers.

with VMs running Windows.

We call this the Fabric,

and it’s where your app runs.
Your Application

Management tasks are automated by the
Fabric Controller.

You tell the Fabric Controller what to do, and it figures out how to do it.

For this to work, you need to tell us about your application.

The Service Model
What are the components (roles)?
How do they interact?
At what scale?
Web role
Worker role
Web role
Worker role
Web role
Worker role
LB

Windows Azure does scale out.

Stateless compute
+ Durable storage
= Scalable application

Storage is just another app.
Storage Service

Durable Storage
Three abstractions:
Three replicas of everything
Shared key authentication
REST API
Blobs
Tables
Queues
…

Blobs
Like files
Up to 50GB each
8KB metadata each
Stored in containers
Public or private access at container level

Tables
Entities with properties
Non-relational
Partitioned for scale
No fixed schema
ADO.NET Data Services

Queues
Asynchronous message passing
8KB messages
Two-phase commit
…

Web role
Worker role
Web role
Worker role
Web role
Worker role
LB
Storage
Putting it All Together

Developer experience is key.

Making Your Life Easier
Simulated cloud on your laptop
Development fabric
Development storage
Local debugging
Command-line + Visual Studio add-in
ASP.NET providers
Storage client library
Management portal

Web Role
Receives internet traffic
Hosted by IIS
Typically ASP.NET
Partial trust

Worker Role
Doesn’t receive internet traffic
Runs forever
.NET assembly
Partial trust

Debugging
Locally, what you would expect
In the cloud, logging

Deployment and Maintenance
Deploy
Web portal
Upload in browser or to storage
APIs
Upload to storage
Maintain
Scale, upgrade, reconfigure in portal, APIs
Retrieve logs, set up alerts

Questions?