Microsoft Azure White Paper

Windows Azure :

Ignatiuz Technologies LLC. 201 Exton Commons, Exton PA 19341.Tel: 484.876.1867 | Fax: 484.206.4141E-mail: 6 Jan 2012
info@ignatiuz.com|Web:www.ignatiuz.com

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Windows® Azure™ is the cloud services operating system that serves as
the development, service hosting, and service management environment for
the Azure Services Platform. Windows Azure provides developers on-
demand compute & storage to host, scale, and manage web applications
and services on the internet in Microsoft data centers.
Windows Azure Fabric

The Windows Azure fabric
provides two main areas of
functionality: compute (e.g.,
executing an application) and
storage (e.g., storing data on
disk), the foundational building
blocks for all cloud
applications. In addition to
these core services, Windows
Azure also comes with Service
Bus and Access Control
capabilities, which make it
easier to extend your .NET
The components of the Azure Services Platform can be used by local applications into the cloud.
applications running on a variety of systems, including various flavors of
Windows, mobile devices, and others. Those components include: Compute

Windows Azure: Provides a Windows-based environment for running The compute service
applications and storing data on servers in Microsoft data centers. offered by Windows Azure
makes it possible to “execute”
Microsoft .NET Services: Offers distributed infrastructure services to your applications in the cloud.
cloud-based and local applications. The compute service provides
you with a way to run your
Microsoft SQL Services: Provides data services in the cloud based on applications on a Windows
SQL Server. Server running in a virtual
machine hosted in Microsoft
Live Services: Through the Live Framework, provides access to data
data center.
from Microsoft’s Live applications and others. The Live Framework also
allows synchronizing this data across desktops and devices, finding and
downloading applications, and more.

Each component of the Azure Services Platform has its own role to play.


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Windows Azure

Windows Azure is a platform for running Windows applications and
storing their data in the cloud. Figure shows its main components. It Storage
provides a cloud computing fabric, hosted within Microsoft data centers, for
creating, deploying, managing, and distributing applications and services on It’s important to note
the Internet. that the Windows Azure
storage services are designed
to be very simple and highly
scalable. They provide
fundamental services for
BLOB storage, queue storage,
and simple table storage. You
interact with these services
through a simple REST API
based on HTTP requests. You
manipulate data in the storage
services through traditional
POST, PUT, and DELETE
requests, and your retrieve
information from the storage
services using simple GET
requests. This approach
makes it possible for anyone
to integrate with the storage
services, regardless of their
platform.
Windows Azure provides Windows-based compute and storage services for
cloud applications. It’s also important to note that
the Windows Azure storage
services are not relational and
you don’t query them using
SQL. If you need the richer
capabilities of a relational
database, turn to SQL Azure.


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Access Control Service
Working with identity is a
fundamental part of most
distributed applications. Based
on a user’s identity
information, an application
makes decisions about what
that user is allowed to do. To
convey this information,
applications can rely on
tokens defined using the
Security Assertion Markup
Language (SAML). A SAML
token contains claims, each of
Microsoft .NET Services which carries some piece of
information about a user. One
claim might contain her name,
Running applications in the cloud is an important aspect of cloud computing, another might indicate her
but it’s far from the whole story. It’s also possible to provide cloud-based role, such as manager, while a
services that can be used by either on-premises applications or cloud third contains her email
applications. Filling this gap is the goal of .NET Services address. Tokens are created
by software known as a
security token service (STS),
which digitally signs each one
to verify its source.


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Service Bus

Acess control Service is a
STS security token service in
the cloud. All communication
with the Access Control
Service relies on standard
protocols such as WS-Trust
and WS-Federation. This
makes the service accessible
from any kind of application on
any platform. And to define
rules, the service provides
both a browser-based GUI
and a client API for
programmatic access.

Claims-based identity is on its
way to becoming the standard
The Service Bus allows an application to register endpoints, then have other
approach for distributed
applications discover and use those endpoints to access its services.
environments. By providing an
The Service Bus assigns anorganization a URI root, below which you’re free STS in the cloud, complete
to create any naming hierarchy you like. This allows your endpoints to be with rules-based claims
assigned specific, discoverable URIs. Your application must also open a transformation, the Access
connection with the Service Bus for each endpoint it exposes. The Service Control Service makes this
Bus holds this connection open,Along with making communication easier, modern approach to identity
the Service Bus can also improve security. Because clients now see only an more attractive.
IP address provided by the Service Bus, there’s no need to expose any IP
addresses from within your organization. This effectively makes your
application anonymous, since the outside world can’t see its IP address.
The Service Bus acts as an external DMZ, providing a layer of indirection to
deter attackers. And finally, the Service Bus is designed to be used with the
Access Control Service, allowing rules-based claims transformation. In fact,
the Service Bus accepts only tokens issued by the Access Control Service
STS.

An application that wishes to expose its services via the Service Bus is
typically implemented using WCF. Clients can be built with WCF or other
technologies, such as Java, and they can make requests via SOAP or
HTTP. Applications and their clients are also free to use their own security


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mechanisms, such as encryption, to shield their communication from
attackers and from the Service Bus itself.

Exposing applications to the outside world isn’t as simple as it might seem.
The intent of the Service Bus is to make implementing this useful behavior
Lifecycle of a Windows
as straightforward as possible.
Azure Application

Workflow Service
Once you have deployed your
Windows Workflow Foundation is a general technology for creating application to Windows Azure,
workflow-based applications. One classic scenario for workflow is controlling you have many ways to
a long-running process, as is often done in enterprise application manage it and the role
integration. More generally, WF-based applications can be a good choice instances on which it is
for coordinating many kinds of work. Especially when the work being running. For example, you can
coordinated is located in different organizations, running the controlling logic easily scale the number of
in the cloud can make sense. instances for any given role up
or down in order to meet
The Workflow Service allows this. By providing a host process for WF 3.5- business needs. You can also
based applications, it lets developers create workflows that run in the cloud. change configuration settings
and distribute the changes out
to the role instances without
having to redeploy any of the
code. If you discover a bug or
want to add a small feature to
your role code, you can
upload the new code to
Windows Azure and have it
distribute it to the appropriate
role instances. Windows
Azure does this while ensuring
that your application remains
accessible to your customers;
the details of how it does this
are described later in this
article.

: The Workflow Service allows creating WF-based applications that can
communicate using HTTP or the Service Bus.


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WF-based applications aren’t the right approach for everything. When this
kind of solution is needed, however, using a workflow can make a
developer’s life much easier. By providing a manageable, scalable way to
host WF applications in the cloud, the Workflow Service extends the reach
Finally, if you want to make
of this useful technology.
significant changes to your
code, Windows Azure offers a
Microsoft SQL Services
way for you to upload the new
One of the most attractive ways of using Internet-accessible servers is to code and test it in a staging
handle data. This means providing a core database, certainly, but it can also area while customers access
include more. The goal of SQL Services is to provide a set of cloud-based the old code. Then, once you
services for storing and working with many kinds of data, from unstructured feel confident with the new
to relational. code, you can move it from
staging to production so that
new client requests now run
against the new code.

Manageability
SQL Azure Database offers
the high availability and
functionality of an enterprise
data center without the
administrative overhead that is
associated with an on-premise
solution. This
self-managing capability
enables organizations to
provision data services for
SQL Azure is a key component of the Microsoft data platform offering
applications throughout the
flexibility and scalability; reliability and security; and developer agility. Let’s
enterprise without adding to
begin by looking at some of these features.
the support burden of the
central IT department
Live Services or distracting technology-
savvy employees from their
While the idea of cloud platforms is relatively new, the Internet is not. core tasks to maintain a
Hundreds of millions of people around the world use it every day. To help departmental database
them do this, Microsoft provides an expanding group of Internet application.
applications, including the Windows Live family and others. These
applications let people send instant messages, store their contact
information, search, get directions, and do other useful things.

All of these applications store data. Some of that data, such as contacts,
varies with each user. Others, like mapping and search information,


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doesn’t -we all use the same underlying information. In either case, why not
make this data available to other applications? While controls are required-
freely exposing everyone’s personal information isn’t a good idea-letting
applications use this information can make sense.

To allow this, Microsoft has wrapped this diverse set of resources into a Low-Friction Provisioning
group of Live Services. Existing Microsoft applications, such as the When you use the traditional
Windows Live family, rely on Live Services to store and manage their on-premise data infrastructure,
information. To let new applications access this information, Microsoft the time that it takes to deploy
provides the Live Framework. and secure servers, network
components, and software can
slow your ability to prototype
or roll out new data-driven
solutions. However, by using a
cloud based solution such as
SQL Azure, you can provision
your data-storage needs in
minutes and respond rapidly
to changes in demand. This
reduces the initial costs of
data services by enabling you
to provision only what
Ignatiuz’s IT as a Services
you need, secure in the
knowledge that you can easily
To think about cloud. It’s common to divide cloud computing into three
extend your cloud-based data
categories:
storage if required at a future
time.

High Availability
SQL Azure is built on robust
and proven Windows Server®
and SQL Server technologies,
and is flexible enough to cope
with any variations in usage
and load.


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 Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), which provides flexible ways to create,
use, and manage virtual machines (VMs).
 Platform as a Service (PaaS), focused on providing the higher-level
capabilities—more than just VMs—required to support applications.
Scalability
 Software as a Service (SaaS), the applications that provide business value A key advantage of the cloud
for users.
computing model is the ease
with which you can scale your
Along with this familiar three-part breakdown, there’s another categorization
that’s also important for thinking about IT in the cloud era. These categories solution. Using SQL Azure,
describe where software runs, and there are again three choices: you can create solutions that
meet your scalability
 Global providers, firms that offer public cloud services for running requirements, whether your
software in data centers around the world. Examples include application is a small
Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. departmental application or
 Regional providers, hosters that offer cloud services for running the next global Web success
software in regional data centers. Many firms provide this service in story.
many countries.
 Enterprises, which run software on machines in their own on- Global Scalability
premises data centers. A pay-as-you-grow pricing
model allows you to quickly
provision new databases as
Ignatiuz with the Microsoft is uniquely positioned to provide this.
needed or scale down the
 As a global provider, Ignatiuz offers a range of SaaS applications services without the financial
including Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Dynamics CRM costs associated with unused
Online, and others. Microsoft also provides PaaS (and a form of capacity. With a database
IaaS) with the Windows Azure platform. scale out strategy your
 For regional providers, Ignatiuz provides hosted versions of application can utilize the
Exchange, SharePoint, and other applications, along with the ability processing power of hundreds
for hosters to offer IaaS services using Windows Server with Hyper- of servers and store terabytes
V, System Center, and the Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for of data.
Hosters.
SQL Azure runs in worldwide
 For enterprises, Ignatiuz provides on-premises applications and an
data centers, so you can
application platform built on Windows Server and SQL Server.
reach new markets
Customers can also implement on-premises IaaS using Windows
immediately. If you want to
Server with Hyper-V, System Center, and the Self-Service Portal.
target a specific region, you
The customer benefits of a comprehensive solution are very real. Moving can deploy your database at
applications gets easier, for example, since all three deployment options- the closest data center. You
enterprise, regional provider, and global provider-are based on a common can harness this global
software foundation. This common foundation also makes adopting cloud scalability to build the next
technologies easier, since they echo familiar on-premises solutions. Moving generation of Internet-scale
people between different areas is simpler, too-the same tools and skills are applications that have
used everywhere. And because a consistent identity and management


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infrastructure is used across the entire grid, user access is simplified and
management costs are lower.

Conclusion
worldwide reach, but without
the infrastructure costs and
management overhead.
In this paper we have discussed the service offered by Microsoft Windows
Azure platform. Azure development is been described with insights into how Multi-Tenant Support
Windows Azure can be used for those projects targeted to be developed in Independent software vendors
Azure. (ISVs) who develop
Software+Services (S+S)
External Reference offerings must provide
adequate isolation for
1. MSDN individual customers’ data.
2. Windows Azure website ISV’s must be able to charge
3. Introducing the Azure Services Platform-David Chapell each customer the right price
for the data storage services
that they have consumed.
SQL Azure provides the
flexibility that ISVs need to
segregate customer data and
implement multi-tenant billing,
which enables you to build a
global S+S solution quickly
and easily.

For more information about Ignatiuz call (484.876.1867) or visit the website at: www.ignatiuz.com


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