The document discusses architecting applications for the Windows Azure cloud platform. It covers designing applications with a cloud mindset of unreliable hardware and network connections. It then summarizes the design of a multi-tenant website called Pingy that monitors the availability of external websites. The design progressed through several iterations to improve scalability, availability, and authentication using features of Windows Azure such as worker roles, queues, storage, and AppFabric. Examples and source code for Pingy are provided for further reference.

1. 2010 SPALIO 27 D.
Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Architecting Cloud-based Applications
for Windows Azure Platform
Sergejus Barinovas
Architect, Adform

2. 2010 SPALIO 27 D.
Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Quiz
Who has heard about
Windows Azure Platform?

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Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Quiz
Who has attended any
Windows Azure presentation?

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Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Quiz
What parts does Windows
Azure Platform consist of?

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Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Answer
• Windows Azure Compute
– Web Role
– Worker Role
• Windows Azure Storage
– Blob Storage
– Drive Storage
– Table Storage
– Message Queue Storage
• SQL Azure
– Project Huston
• Windows Azure
AppFabric Client Access
• Windows Azure
AppFabric Service Bus
• Project Dallas
• Project Sydney

6. 2010 SPALIO 27 D.
Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Topic Background
Who has attended any
Windows Azure presentation?

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Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Topic Background
Who knows how, when and what
part of Windows Azure to use?

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Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Topic Background
Why?

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Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Topic Background
Lack of practical presentations!
Captain Obvious

10. 2010 SPALIO 27 D.
Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Disclaimer
This is not a marketing
bu presentation

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Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Disclaimer
This is not an overview of
Windows Azure Platform

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Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Disclaimer
This is a practical design session
how to leverage Windows Azure

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Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
ARCHITECTING FOR THE CLOUD

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Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Our Current Mindset
• We have enough hardware resources
– Powerful servers
– Fast hard drives

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Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Our Current Mindset
• Number of servers is more or less fixed
– Failures are very unlike
– All maintenance and new hardware is planned
in advance

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Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Our Current Mindset
• We have reliable network connection
– Connection time-out is a BUG, not a FEATURE

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Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Cloud Mindset
• Only mid-range hardware is available and it can
FAIL
– No powerful servers
– No fast hard drives

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Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Cloud Mindset
• Number of servers is dynamic (unknown)
– Implies scale-out architecture

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Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Cloud Mindset
• Network connection will always FAIL
– Every operation should have retries

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Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
ARCHITECTING PINGY

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Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
What’s Pingy?
Multi-tenant SaaS, that enables monitoring
availability and response times of the external
Web sites

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Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Pingy Subscriptions
• Personal
– Free of charge
– Monitoring up-to 2 web sites
– Facebook, LiveID and Google authentication

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Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Pingy Subscriptions
• Professional
– 49€/year
– Custom branding
– Monitoring up-to 20 web sites
– Facebook, LiveID and Google authentication

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Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Pingy Subscriptions
• Enterprise
– 99€/year
– Custom branding
– Monitoring up-to 200 web sites
– Active Directory authentication

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Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Architectural Goals
• Scalability
• Availability
• Performance

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Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Design Iteration #1
Web site Data store
External
web sites
Login()
Save(Url, Period)
Ping
service
GetUrls(Period)
Ping(Url)
Save(Results)
GetStatistics()

27. 2010 SPALIO 27 D.
Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Design Iteration #1: On-Premise Architecture
• Web site
– Stateless ASP.NET application within IIS
• Ping service
– .NET executable within Windows service
• Data store
– SQL Server

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Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Design Iteration #1: Windows Azure Architecture
• Web site
– Stateless ASP.NET app within Web Role
• Ping service
– .NET executable within Worker Role
• Data store
– SQL Azure / Windows Azure Table Storage

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Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Windows Azure Roles
• Worker Role
– Windows Server 2008 x64
– .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 and 4.0
– Native Code Full Trust
• Web Role
– Everything Worker Role has
– IIS 7
– ASP.NET (3.5 SP1 and 4.0)
– Fast CGI
• VM Role

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Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
VM Instances
• Automatically high available and fault-tolerant
• OS updates and patches are applied automatically
• Scale-up VM instance
VM Instance Size CPU Memory Instance Storage I/O Performance
Small 1.6 GHz 1.75 GB 225 GB Moderate
Medium 2 x 1.6 GHz 3.5 GB 490 GB High
Large 4 x 1.6 GHz 7 GB 1,000 GB High
Extra Large 8 x 1.6 GHz 14 GB 2,040 GB High

31. 2010 SPALIO 27 D.
Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
SQL Azure
• Relational database as a service
• A subset of full SQL Server 2008
• Automatically high available and fault-tolerant
• Implements same TDS protocol as a regular SQL does
– Existing tools just works
• Editions
– Web (up-to 5 GB)
– Business (up-to 50 GB)

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Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Windows Azure Table Storage
• Provide massively scalable structured storage
• No schema stored for a table (NoSQL)
• Mandatory Properties for every entity
– PartitionKey & RowKey
– Timestamp
• Automatic partitioning by PartitionKey

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Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Blob
storage
Design Iteration #1: Custom Branding
Web site
Login()
Save(Files)
Upload(Theme)
?
Data store
Ping
service
External
web sites

34. 2010 SPALIO 27 D.
Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Design Iteration #1: Custom Branding
Web site Data store
Login()
Save(Files)
Shared
Files
Upload(Theme)
Blob
storage
Data store
Ping
service
External
web sites
http://<account>.blob.core.windows.net/<container>/<blobname>

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Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Blob Storage
• Provide a simple interface for storing named files
along with the metadata
• Block Blob
– Targeted at streaming workloads
– Size limit 200 GB per Blob
• Page Blob
– Targeted at random read/write workloads
– Size limit 1 TB per Blob
• CDN Option

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Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Design Iteration #2: Scalability
Web
sites
Data
store
External
web sites
Login()
GetUrls()
Save()
Ping
service
Ping()
Web
sites
Blob
storage
Upload()
Theme()
Table
storage
Save()
GetStats()

37. 2010 SPALIO 27 D.
Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Design Iteration #2: Scalability
Web
sites
Data
store
External
web sites
Login()
Ping
scheduler
GetUrls()
ExecuteTask()
Save()
Pingers
Ping()
Pingers
Web
sites
Blob
storage
Upload()
Theme()
Table
storage
Save()
GetStats()

38. 2010 SPALIO 27 D.
Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Design Iteration #2: Scalability
Web
sites
Data
store
External
web sites
Login()
Ping
scheduler
GetUrls()
Save()
Pingers
Message
queue
Ping()
Pingers
GetTask()
Web
sites
Blob
storage
Save()
Upload() QueueTask()
Theme()
Table
storage
GetStats()

39. 2010 SPALIO 27 D.
Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Windows Azure Queue Storage
• Provide reliable storage and delivery of messages
– Two-step consumption
• Messages put into queue can be processed in any
order and multiple times

40. 2010 SPALIO 27 D.
Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Design Iteration #3: SSO Authentication
Web site
Table
storage
External
web sites
Login()
Save()
Ping
scheduler
GetUrls()
QueueTask()
Save()
GetStats()
Pingers
Message
queue
Ping()
Pingers
GetTask()
Web
sites
Blob
storage
Upload()
Theme()

41. 2010 SPALIO 27 D.
Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
SSO Authentication Challenges
• Multiple authentication protocols and identity providers
• Integrated Active Directory authentication from the
Cloud

42. 2010 SPALIO 27 D.
Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Windows Azure AppFabric Access Control
• Federated, claims-based single sign-on authentication
as a service
• Supports:
– Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) 2
– OAuth, WS-Trust and WS-Federation protocols
– Live ID, Google, Yahoo and Facebook identity providers
– SAML 1.1, SAML 2.0 and SWT formats

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Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Summary
• IIS, Web – Web Role
• Windows Service – Worker Role
• SQL Server – SQL Azure, Table Storage
• NoSQL – Table Storage
• Shared Files – BLOB Storage
• Message Queues – Queue Storage
• SSO Authentication – AppFabric Access Control

44. 2010 SPALIO 27 D.
Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Examples, Source Code
• http://sergejus.blogas.lt/tag/pingy
• http://sergejus.blogas.lt/tag/windows-azure

45. 2010 SPALIO 27 D.
Microsoft Partnerių konfrencija 2010
Architecting Cloud-based Applications for
Windows Azure Platform
Q&A