Storage in the Windows Azure Platform - ericnel

Storing data in the cloud
Eric Nelson
Microsoft UK
Email: eric.nelson@microsoft.com
Blog: http://geekswithblogs.net/iupdateable
Twitter: http://twitter.com/ericnel and http://twitter.com/ukmsdn
Podcast: http://bit.ly/msdnpodcast
Newsletter: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/flash

Storage in the Cloud
Queues
Blobs
Tables
Relational

Agenda

Storage in the Cloud…
Windows Azure Storage and SQL Azure

Solve using the Cloud aka Windows Azure Platform
Browser
p1 p2 p3
Web Role
N L B
Worker Role
N L B
Browser
AzureStorage
Web Role
Browser
Worker Role
Worker Role
Browser
Web Role
Browser
You don’t see this bit
or…
Maybe you do

Solve using the Cloud aka Windows Azure Platform
SQLAzure
Browser
p1 p2 p3
Web Role
N L B
Worker Role
N L B
Browser
AzureStorage
Web Role
Browser
Worker Role
Worker Role
Browser
Web Role
Browser
Ok, you definitely do

3 Important Services
3 Critical Concepts
Windows Azure
Compute and Storage
SQL Azure
Storage
.NET Services
Connecting
Computation
Web and Worker
Storage
Table, Blob, Relational
Messaging
Queues, Service Bus

Blobs, Tables, Relational

Queues

Provides structured storage
Massively scalable tables (TBs of data)
Self scaling
Highly available
Durable
Familiar and easy-to-use API, layered
.NET classes and LINQ
ADO.NET Data Services – .NET 3.5 SP1
REST – with any platform or language
Introduction to Tables

No join
No group by
No order by
“No Schema”
Not a Relational Database

Table
A Table is a set of Entities (rows)
An Entity is a set of Properties (columns)
Entity
Two “key” properties form unique ID
PartitionKey – enables scale
RowKey – uniquely ID within a partition
Data Model

Key Example – Blog Posts
Partition 1
Partition 2
Getting all of dunnry’s blog posts is fast
Single partition
Getting all posts after 2008-03-27 is slow
Traverse all partitions

Query a Table
REST:
GET http://account.table.core.windows.net/Customer?$filter=%20PartitionKey%20eq%20value
LINQ:
var customers = from o in context.CreateQuery<customer>(“Customer”) where o.PartitionKey == value select o;
Azure
Table Storage
Worker Role
http://account.table.core.windows.net

Demo: Windows Azure Storage

Lessons LearnedAzure Storage – Entity Group Transactions
Different Entity types in the same table
E.g. PK = CustomerId
Customer, Order and OrderDetails in the same table

SQL Azure (July 2009)aka SQL Data Servicesaka SQL Server Data Services

On Premise Programming Model
This is what we do on-premise...
Data
TDS
RDBMS
Client
SQL Server

Same for the cloud?
So, is this is what we would like to do in the cloud...
Data
TDS
RDBMS
Client
SQL Server

SQL Azure can do this
Data
TDS
RDBMS
Client
SQL Azure

SQL Azure can also do this
HTTP
TDS
RDBMS
Browser
Web Role
SQL Azure

And this!
Queue
TDS
HTTP
RDBMS
Browser
Web Role
Worker Role
SQL Azure

Which means you can easily migrate from this
“The Data Center”
TDS
HTTP
RDBMS
Browser
Web Tier
Bus. Logic
SQL Server

To this… Windows Azure and SQL Azure
“The Cloud”
Queue
TDS
HTTP
RDBMS
Browser
Web Role
Worker Role
SQL Azure

Demo: SQL Azure

Lessons LearnedSQL Azure
From the database “down” it’s just SQL Server
Well, almost …
Many tools don’t work today
System catalog is different
Above the database is taken care of for you
You can’t really change anything

Tooling
SSMS partially works – “good enough”
Can not create connection using Visual Studio designer
Other tools may work better
No BCP (currently)
DDL
Must be a clustered index on every table
No physical file placement
No indexed views
No “not for replication” constraint allowed
No Extended properties
Some index options missing (e.g. allow_row_locks, sort_in_tempdb ..)
No set ansi_nulls on

Types
No spatial or hierarchy id
No Text/images support.
Use nvarchar(max)
XML datatype and schema allowed but no XML index or schema collection.
Security
No integrated security

Development
No CLR
Local temp tables are allowed
Global temp tables are not allowed
Cannot alter database inside a connection
No UDDT’s
No ROWGUIDCOL column property

Lessons LearnedSQL Azure vs Windows Azure Tables
SQL Server is very familiar
SQL Azure *is* SQL Server in the cloud
Windows Azure Storage is…very different 
Make the right choice
Understand Azure storage
Understand SQL Azure
Understand they are totally different
You can use both

Lessons Learned SQL Azure vs Windows Azure Tables
SQL Azure is not always the best storage option
SQL Azure costs more
Delivers a *lot* more functionality
SQL Azure is more limited on scale

Lessons Learned SQL Azure and Sharding
Can be done
Many 10GB databases
Not fun 

In Summary

Resources
Slides, links and more
http://geekswithblogs.net/iupdateable
Azure Training Kit (August update)
www.azure.com
Sign up, links to resources etc
http://www.cerebrata.com