Introduction to Microsoft Introduction to Microsoft Introduction to Microsoft
Windows Windows Windows
Windows Azure Azure Azure Azure
Overview of Windows Azure Platform Overview of Windows Azure PlatformOverview of Windows Azure Platform Overview of Windows Azure Platform
Microsoft Windows Azure Platform is a Platform as a Service offering from Microsoft. It was announced in 2009 and became available in 2010. Since then Microsoft has been constantly improving the platform by adding new features.
Windows Azure Platform is aiming at becoming the preferred platform for both, the new age web developers and enterprises. For the web developers building scalable web applications, it offers compute, storage, and caching along with CDN services. It also has enterprise specific features like Active Directory integration, virtual networking and business intelligence capabilities.
Microsoft Windows Azure Platform Microsoft Windows Azure Platform Microsoft Windows Azure Platform Microsoft Windows Azure Platform
Though Windows Azure Platform is designed for the developers building applications on the Microsoft platform, developers building applications on Java and PHP environments can also leverage this. Microsoft is investing in the right set of tools and plug-ins for Eclipse and other popular developer power Microsoft’s Cloud infrastructure. Windows Azure abstracts the underlying hardware and brings an illusion that it is just one instance of OS.
Because this OS runs across multiple physical servers, there is a layer on the top that coordinates the execution of processes. This layer is called the Fabric. In between the Fabric and the Windows Azure OS, there are Virtual Machines (VM) that actually run the code and the applications. As a developer, you will only see two services at the top of this stack. They are 1) Compute and, 2) Storage.
Compute Compute Compute Compute
You interact with the Compute service when you deploy your applications on Windows Azure. Applications are expected to run within one of the three roles called Web Role, Worker Role and VM Role. Web Role is meant to host
typical ASP.NET web applications or any other CGI web applications. Worker Role is to host long running processes that do not have any UI. Think of the Web Role as an IIS container and the Worker Role as the Windows Services container. Web Role and Worker Role can talk to each other in multiple ways. The Web Role can also host WCF Services that expose a HTTP endpoint. The code within Worker Role will run independent of the Web Role.
Through the Worker Role, you can port either .NET applications or native COM applications to Windows Azure. Through Worker Role, Windows Azure offers support for non-MS environments like PHP, Java and Node.js. VM Role enables running applications within a custom Windows Server 2008 R2 image. This will enable enterprises to easily port applications that have dependencies or 3rd party components and legacy software.
Storage Storage Storage Storage
When you run an application, you definitely need storage to either store the simple configuration data or more complex binary data. Windows Azure Storage comes in three flavors. 1) Blobs, 2) Tables and, 3) Queues.
Blobs can store large binary objects like media files, documents and even serialized objects. Table offers flexible name/value based storage. Finally, Queues are used to deliver reliable messages between applications. Queues are the best mechanism to communicate between Web Role and Worker Role. The data stored in Azure Storage can be accessed through HTTP and REST calls. Cloud services. Service Bus provides secure connectivity between
on-premise and Cloud services. It can be used to register, discover and consume services irrespective of their location. Services hosted behind firewalls and NAT can be registered with the Service Bus and these services can be then invoked by the Cloud Services. The Service Bus abstracts the physical location of the service by providing a URI that can be invoked by any potential consumer. needs and different identity-management infrastructures. Access Control enables enterprises to integrate their on-premise security mechanisms like Active Directory with the Cloud based authentication. Developers can program Access Control through simple WCF based services.
Caching Caching Caching Caching
Caching provides an in-memory caching service for applications hosted on Windows Azure. This avoids the disk I/O and enables applications to quickly fetch data from a high-speed cache. Cache can store multiple types of data including XML, Binary, Rows or Serialized CLR Objects. Web applications that need to access read-only frequently can access the cache for better
SQL Azure is Microsoft SQL Server on the Cloud. Unlike Azure Storage, which is meant for unstructured data, SQL Azure is a full-blown relational database engine. It is based on the same DB engine of MS SQL Server and can be
queried with T-SQL. Because of its fidelity with MS SQL, on-premise applications can quickly start consuming this service. Developers can talk to SQL Azure using ADO.NET or ODBC API. PHP developers can consume this through native PHP API. Through the Microsoft SQL Azure Data Sync, data can be easily synchronized between on-premise SQL Server and SQL Azure.
This is a very powerful feature to build hubs of data on the Cloud that always stay in sync with your local databases. For all practical purposes, SQL Azure can be treated exactly like a DB server running in your data center without the overhead of maintaining and managing it by your teams. Because Microsoft is responsible for installation, maintenance and availability of the DB service, business can only focus on manipulating and accessing data as a service. With the Pay-as-you-go approach, there is no upfront investment