1. Windows Azure Boot Camp Webcast
Trainer: Evmenenko Arseny
Company: IT Everest

2. Today’s Schedule Module Cloud Computing & Azure Web Roles Worker Roles
Queues
Tables
Blobs
Cloud Computing Scenarios

3. Intro to cloud computing and Azure

4. Cloud-Addressable Challenges Facing Today’s Enterprise1 1 5
Infrastructure costs are fixed and ongoing, and distract from the mission of reducing business process friction
Leveraging past investments to provide future value
Many data centers at limit—real estate, capacity, cooling and power
Matching capacity to demand
Maintaining security while increasing access and transparency—within and outside the organization 2 6
Security, access, and transparency across the value chain: suppliers, partners, etc. 3 7
Lack of a common platform 4

5. And in a non-Cloud view, there are inefficiencies in addressing those issues
Allocated IT-capacities
Load Forecast
“Under-supply“ of capacities
“Waste“ of capacities
Fixed cost of IT-capacities
IT CAPACITY
To build an application or solution in a legacy world, you have to think about network, OS, storage, and scale. But they have little to do with what you really want to build, an application.
But what if there were a different way.
Barrier for
innovations
Actual Load
TIME

6. However, in a Cloud View IT CAPACITY Time Load Forecast
Allocated IT capacities
No “under-supply“
IT CAPACITY
Reduction of “over-supply“
Possible reduction of IT-capacities in case of reduced load
This is the idea behind Cloud Computing, and in this case the Windows Azure platform, which allows you to run at scale, on the internet.
In short, if you have to pay upfront for peak capacity, money will be wasted. Think of Cloud Computing and Windows Azure more like electricity – a utility. You pay only for what you need, and only when you turn it on.
You can stop worrying about where the peak is, stop paying up front, and save a lot of money
Reduction of initial investments
Actual Load
Time

7. Benefits of Cloud Computing
SHARING "PERISHABLE AND INTANGIBLE" COMPUTING
POWER AMONG MULTIPLE TENANTS OPTIMIZES
COSTS FOR ALL
PAY FOR ACCESS
– NOT OWNERSHIP –
OF IT RESOURCES
IMPROVE TIME-TO-MARKET FOR NEW APPLICATIONS, SERVICES, AND SOLUTIONS
STAFF AND PLAN FOR TYPICAL USAGE. SCALE TO THE CLOUD AT PEAK TIMES – PLANNED OR UNPLANNED
End of quarter reporting, tax-time,
payroll, slashdot effect

8. Introducing Windows Azure
WEB & CLOUDS
Web applications
Third party cloud
Developer Experience
Use existing skills and tools
Compute
Storage
Management
Relational data
Connectivity
Access control
Whether an application runs in the cloud, uses services provided by the cloud, or both, some kind of application platform is required. Viewed broadly, an application platform can be thought of as anything that provides developer-accessible services for creating applications. In the local, on-premises Windows world, for example, this includes technologies such as the .NET Framework, SQL Server, and more. To let applications exploit the cloud, cloud application platforms must also exist. And because there are a variety of ways for applications to use cloud services, different kinds of cloud platforms are useful in different situations. Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform is a group of cloud technologies, each providing a specific set of services to application developers. The Windows Azure platform can be used both by applications running in the cloud and by applications running on local systems.
The components of the Windows Azure platform can be used by local applications running on a variety of systems, including various flavors of Windows, mobile devices, and others. Those components include:
 Windows Azure: Provides a Windows-based environment for running applications and storing data on servers in Microsoft data centers.
 Microsoft SQL Azure: Provides data services in the cloud based on SQL Server.
 Microsoft Azure platform App Fabric: Offers distributed infrastructure services to cloud- based and local applications.
Each component of the Windows Azure platform has its own role to play. This overview describes all four, first at a high level, then in a bit more detail.
Composite applications
LOB Applications
ON-PREMISES

12. Video of IT Preassembled Components - http://www. microsoft
Video of IT Preassembled Components c70ef77981c
Gen4 Vision ccbb63e4e

13. Windows Azure
The Fabric Controller automates load balancing and computes resource scaling
Security and Control Features include storage encryption, access authentication, and over-the-wire encryption using HTTPS. Industry certification is part of the Windows Azure roadmap.
Computation provides application scalability. Developers can build a combination of web and worker roles. Those roles can be replicated as needed to scale the applications and computational processing power.
Storage Services allow customers to scale to store large amounts of data – in any format – for any length of time, only paying for what they use or store.
Read the slide headlines, answer questions
Geographically distributed, state-of-the-art data centers host your applications and data, internet-accessible from everywhere you choose to allow.

14. Compute in Windows Azure
GOAL:
SCALABILITY
Two instance types: Web Role & Worker Role
Windows Azure applications are built with
web role instances, worker role instances,
or a combination of both.
Scale out by replicating instances as needed.
Allow applications to scale
user and compute processing independently.
The Windows Azure Compute service can run many different kinds of applications. A primary goal of this platform, however, is to support applications that have a very large number of simultaneous users. (In fact, Microsoft has said that it will build its own SaaS applications on Windows Azure, which sets the bar high.) Reaching this goal by scaling up—running on bigger and bigger machines—isn’t possible. Instead, Windows Azure is designed to support applications that scale out, running multiple copies of the same code across many commodity servers.
To allow this, a Windows Azure application can have multiple instances, each executing in its own virtual machine (VM). These VMs run 64-bit Windows Server 2008, and they’re provided by a hypervisor (based on Hyper-V) that’s been modified for use in Microsoft’s cloud. To run an application, a developer accesses the Windows Azure portal through her Web browser, signing in with a Windows Live ID. She then chooses whether to create a hosting account for running applications, a storage account for storing data, or both. Once the developer has a hosting account, she can upload her application, specifying how many instances the application needs. Windows Azure then creates the necessary VMs and runs the application.
It’s important to note that a developer can’t supply her own VM image for Windows Azure to run. Instead, the platform itself provides and maintains its own copy of Windows. Developers focus solely on creating applications that run on Windows Azure.
With Windows Azure, two different instance types are available for developers to use: Web role instances and Worker role instances.
Each instance runs on its own VM (virtual machine), replicated as needed.

15. Defining the Web and Worker Roles
WEB ROLE
WORKER ROLE
Interacts with end-user
or web services
Handles incoming
HTTP/HTTPS requests
Develop with Microsoft and
non-Microsoft tools:
ASP.NET, WCF, other .NET tools
Java, PHP, etc.
Can only receive inbound traffic when configured properly
Initiates their own requests
for data or tasks from
the queue
Similar to a "batch job"
or Windows service
As its name suggests, a Web role instance can accept incoming HTTP or HTTPS requests. To allow this, it runs in a VM that includes Internet Information Services (IIS) 7. Developers can create Web role instances using ASP.NET, WCF, or another .NET technology that works with IIS. Developers can also create applications in native code—using the .NET Framework isn’t required. (This means that developers can upload and run other technologies as well, such as PHP.) And as Figure 3 shows, Windows Azure provides built-in hardware load balancing to spread requests across Web role instances that are part of the same application.
By running multiple instances of an application, Windows Azure helps that application scale. To accomplish this, however, Web role instances must be stateless. Any client-specific state should be written to Windows Azure storage or passed back to the client after each request. Also, because the Windows Azure load balancer doesn’t allow creating an affinity with a particular Web role instance, there’s no way to guarantee that multiple requests from the same user will be sent to the same instance.
Worker role instances aren’t quite the same as their Web role cousins. For example, by default they can’t accept requests from the outside world. Their VMs don’t run IIS, and a Worker application can’t (by default) accept any incoming network connections. Instead, a Worker role instance initiates its own requests for input. It can read messages from a queue, for instance, as described later, and it can open connections with the outside world. Given this more self-directed nature, Worker role instances can be viewed as akin to a batch job or a Windows service.
A developer can use only Web role instances, only Worker role instances, or a combination of the two

16. Storage in Windows Azure
GOAL:
SCALABLE, DURABLE STORAGE
Tables: simply structured data, accessed using WCF Data Services
Queues: serially accessed messages or requests, allowing web-roles and worker-roles to interact
Blobs: large, unstructured data (audio, video, etc)
Windows Azure storage is an application managed by the Fabric Controller
Windows Azure applications can use native storage or SQL Azure
Application state is kept in storage services, so worker roles can replicate as needed
Regardless of how it’s stored—in blobs, tables, or queues—all data held in Windows Azure storage is replicated three times. This replication allows fault tolerance, so losing a copy isn’t fatal. The system guarantees consistency, however, so an application that reads data it has just written will get what it expects. Windows Azure storage can be accessed either by a Windows Azure application or by an application running someplace else. In both cases, all three Windows Azure storage styles use the conventions of REST to identify and expose data. Everything is named using URIs and accessed with standard HTTP operations. A .NET client can also use WCF Data Services and LINQ, but access to Windows Azure storage from, say, a Java application can just use standard REST.

17. Providing Security with Windows Azure
PHYSICAL:
Microsoft data centers with modern and current security processes
Redundant power supplies from separate providers, battery and diesel backup generators, climate control, and fire prevention and suppression
CONTINUITY:
Multiple data centers in different geographies
Users can choose single location or geo-distributed data centers
Storage data is replicated multiple times
LOGICAL:
Storage encryption and authentication
HTTPS
Optimized for Cloud access with no admin access to guests or applications
Applications and users not allowed to update the underlying environment
COMPLIANCE & CERTIFICATION:
Microsoft is committed to complying with all local laws
Industry certification is a core part of the Windows Azure roadmap
Customers are ultimately responsible for the security and compliance of their services or applications–Windows Azure is a platform
List of certifications available on Azure.com
Read the slide, invite questions

18. Windows Azure Pricing Meters
COMPUTE
STORAGE
BANDWIDTH
Virtual Machine instances
Load balancers, routers, etc.
Relational DB instances
Automated service management
Fabric controller operations Load balancer programming
Blob Storage
Table Storage
Multiple replicas
Ingress/Egress (to/from internet only)
PRICE
$0.12 / hour per size unit
PRICE
$0.15 / GB stored / month
Storage transactions: $0.01 / 10k
PRICE
Bandwidth: $0.10 IN; $0.15 OUT; / GB
Read the slide. Emphasize lower costs, refer to consumption based model and peak usage above
SQL Azure
PRICE
1GB db : $9.99/month
5 GB db: $49.95/month *
10 GB db : $99.99/month
50 GB db: $499.95/month *
Data transfers = $0.10 in / $0.15 out / GB
* Starting June 28, 2010
Easy to use
Reliable
Compatible with what you have

19. Windows Azure Platform Service Guarantee
Role instance monitoring and restart
Compute connectivity
Database availability
Storage service will be available/ reachable (connectivity)
Your storage requests will be processed successfully
Storage availability
.NET Service Bus endpoint will have external connectivity
Message operation requests will be processed successfully
Service availability
All running roles will be continuously monitored
If role is unhealthy, we will detect and initiate corrective state
Your service is connected and reachable via web
Internet facing roles will have external connectivity
Database is connected to the internet gateway
Availability monitoring every 5- minute interval
Read the slide
Automated Systems Management
>99.95%
>99.9%
>99.9%
>99.9%

20. Development Environment
The Developer Tools
Development Environment
Vista+
Must enable local IIS features
Visual Studio 2008/2010
Must run as local Admin
.NET 3.5 SP1 / .NET 4.0
Local SQL instance
Azure SDK
Provides local devfabric and dev storage
Complete local simulation of the cloud fabric
90% of the local devfabric is the same as the cloud fabric
Includes handy project templates
Deployment and management tools
Includes client storage library
AppFabric SDK
Provides libraries and tools to use ACS and Service Bus
Includes ACM.exe and AF Configuration Management Browser source.

21. Web Roles

22. What is the web role?
A web role hosts an IIS based web site or service.
Supports HTTP and HTTPS and certificates
Automatically load balanced by Azure
Can be internal only, but usually public facing
Runs on IIS7
Usually runs an ASP.NET site.

23. DevFabric
The DevFabric is a local simulation of the real fabric and fabric controller.
Based on 90% of the real fabric code
Uses a local SQL instance to simulate storage
Best way to debug your application
Use the DevFabric UI to watch your processes

24. DevFabric UI

25. DevStorage UI

26. Debugging in the cloud?
No. No debug for you.

27. Debugging locally
You can debug locally just like a normal ASP.NET application.
Full support for multiple instances.

28. Looking at configuration.
Configuration is handled by two files.
ServiceDefinition.csdef
ServiceConfiguration.cscfg
Role Specific
Service Specific

29. GUI
Double click on Role Name in Azure Project

30. Settings

31. Endpoints

32. Certificates

33. Deploying to the cloud
You must create an Azure account, then a service, and then you deploy your code.
We can deploy from the portal, from script (API), or Visual Studio.
VS builds two files.
Encrypted package of your code
Your config file
Can take 20 minutes
(which is better than six months)

34. Portal

35. demo Deploying to the cloud
You can either deploy, and then come back to it later, or show screen shots (which will be ready shortly).
demo

36. Visual Studio Deploy a management certificate
Connect to your service account
Publish inside of VS2010
Easy integration with IntelliTrace and Storage

37. Basic Worker Roles

38. What is a worker role? Windows Server 2008 .NET 3.5 sp1 / 4.0
Focused on backend processing and non-HTTP service hosting
By default, does not allow inbound connections

39. Common uses Batch processing Queue processing
Hosting non-HTTP WCF services

40. Local Storage Each role can define an amount of local storage.
Protected space on the local drive.
Considered volatile storage.
You can define several resources.
Size is between 1MB and 20GB.
Defined in .csdef.

41. Local Resource Configuration

42. Input endpoints Internal endpoints Expose a WCF service to the public.
Enrolled in the Azure load balancer.
Any number of HTTP, HTTPS, and TCP endpoints.
Internal endpoints
Expose a WCF service to other internal instances.
NOT enrolled in the Azure load balancer.
Any number of HTTP, HTTPS, and TCP endpoints.
Usually used in a peer-to-peer like manner.

43. Endpoints Model Input Endpoint Internal Endpoint Internet LB SVC SVC
Worker Role 0 Instance 0
SVC
Worker Role 0 Instance 2
Worker Role 0 Instance 1
Worker Role 1 Instance 0
SVC
Worker Role 1 Instance 2
Worker Role 1 Instance 1

44. Configuring an Endpoint

45. Four Ways to do More PHP on Azure Threads External Processes
Native Libraries

46. FastCGI Enabled any CGI module Provide .exe in project as content
Add CGI Web Role
Define app path in web.roleconfig
Add handler to web.config
Change default doc in web.config

47. Background Threads You can create and work with threads.
Just like a normal server, be smart on how you do it.
Consider Parallel Extensions for .NET
Use a thread just like normal:
Thread t = new Thread
(new ThreadStart(Sample.Start));
t.Start();

48. Using External Processes
Sometimes you have an .exe that you have to leverage.
Use the traditional approach:
Use the Process class
Set parameters
Call Start, then WaitForExit
var process = new Process();
var startInfo = process.StartInfo;
startInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
startInfo.CreateNoWindow = true;
startInfo.FileName = Server.MapPath(cmdPath);
startInfo.Arguments = arguments;
startInfo.WorkingDirectory = Path.GetDirectoryName(startInfo.FileName);
startInfo.RedirectStandardError = true;
startInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
process.Start();
process.BeginErrorReadLine();
process.BeginOutputReadLine();
process.WaitForExit();
return process.ExitCode;

49. Messaging with Queues

50. What is a queue? Queues are used to store messages
They are FIFO, and one way
A queue name must be lower case name, and URL friendly
First In, First Out

51. Messages A queue can hold an unlimited number of messages
Messages must be serializable as XML
Limited to 8KB in size

52. Queue Terminology

53. Storage Infrastructure
Each item in storage is stored in triplicate.
The backend store is the same for queues, tables, and blobs.

54. Accessing Storage with REST
Use when a library isn’t available
All features are available
Lacks Intellisense
Results in opaque code

55. With client library Automatically referenced in a cloud project
Supplies a nice .NET API on top of the REST API
You will need the following:
Account Name - movieconversion
Account Shared Key – NOcqFlqUwJPLlm…
Endpoint - blob.core.windows.net
-or-
UseDevelopmentStorage=true

56. Add a message

57. Peek a message
Peeking lets you see the contents without ‘getting’ the message.
Handy when trying to determine how to handle a message without consuming it.

58. Get a message
The visibility is 30 seconds and can be as long as 2 hours.

59. Deleting a Message
The Message Id and the Pop Receipt must match for a successful delete.

60. Polling Most queues are polled in an infinite loop
Make your processes idempotent

61. Long Queues
A queue that collects messages for a period of time while the consumer is offline.
The consumer might come online once a day to process all messages, then sleep again.
Useful for messaging to an external vendor.

62. Using Azure Tables

63. What is the Table Service?
Simple
Highly scalable
Cost effective
Non-relational
Hierarchical

64. Storage Account: MovieData
Table Structure
Account
Table
Storage Account: MovieData
Star Wars
Matrix
Fan Boys
Table Name: Movies
Mike Collier
Mr. Anderson
Bill Gates
Table Name: Customers
Entity
Tables store entities.
Entity schema can vary in the same table.

65. Is not relational Can Not-
Create foreign key relationships between tables.
Perform server side joins between tables.
Create custom indexes on the tables.

66. Required Properties All entities must have the following properties:
Timestamp
PartitionKey
RowKey

67. Creating a Table Tables can be created and destroyed in code.
Wire up your storage in the on_start method.
Use a CloudTableClient to access the table.

68. Create a Context Class WCF Data Services needs a context class.
CloudTableClient.CreateTablesFromModel() – Uses property with IQueryable<T> in class derived from TableServiceContext.
“movies” – entity set which DataServiceContext is tracking.%
WCF Data Services needs a context class.
This represents your connection to the table.

69. Adding an Entity
Other operations are just like normal WCF Data Services,
such as delete, update, etc.

70. Deleting an Entity
Keep the entity, or use a lightweight copy for better performance.

71. Replication Guarantee
All data exists in three replicas
Replicas are created as needed
A write operation is not complete until it has written to all three replicas.
Reads are only load balanced to replicas in sync.
Server 1
Server 2
Server 3 P1 P1 P1 P2 P2 P2 Pn Pn Pn

72. Partition Key and Row Keys matter!
Performance
Super Fast
Unique Partition Key
Very Fast
Partition Key + Row Key
Slower
Only Partition Key
No Row Key
Slowest
No Partition Key
Partition Key and Row Keys matter!

73. Guidance Treat entity schema as a data contract.
New properties should be optional.
Consider self configuration and setup during startup.
Use tables as a cache of relational data.

74. Costs Storage = $0.15 / GB stored / month
Storage transactions = $0.01 / 10K
Data transfers = $0.10 in / $0.15 out / GB - ($0.30 in / $0.45 out / GB in Asia)*

75. Using BLOB Storage In this module- What is BLOB storage?
How do I access it?
What is Azure Drive?

76. What is a BLOB
Binary Large OBject

77. Current Storage Solutions
SQL Servers
Challenges with cost, performance and backup
Network Share
Single point of failure
Directly Attached Storage
Storage Area Network
Can be very expensive, specialized training, only for most important files
All have backup and geo issues

78. Storage Account: MovieConversion
BLOBs in Azure & Size
Each BLOB can be up to 1TB in size
You can have as many containers and BLOBs as you want.
Containers can be created/destroyed on the fly
Storage Account: MovieConversion
Job1.mpg
Job2.mpg
Header.png
Container: Originals
Job 9.mpg
Index.docx
Job8.pdf
Container: Completed

79. BLOB Addresses Each BLOB has an address.

80. Containers Similar to a top level folder Has an unlimited capacity
Can only contain BLOBs
Each container has an access level:
Private
Default, will require the account key to access
Full public read
Public read only
Full public read – anonymous access; ability to list contents of container; access to container data
Public read only – anonymous access; only list blob – not contents of container; no access to container data

81. Storage Infrastructure
Each item in storage is stored in triplicate.
The backend store is the same for queues and tables.

82. Working with Containers

83. Working with BLOBs

84. <httpRuntime executionTimeout="300" maxRequestLength="51200"/>
Uploading a BLOB
Other Options
UploadFile
UploadText
UploadFromStream
<httpRuntime executionTimeout="300" maxRequestLength="51200"/>

85. Downloading a BLOB Other Options DownloadText DownloadByteArray
DownloadToFile

86. Container & BLOB Metadata
Simple Dictionary.
Must call SetMetadata() to persist to the store.

87. Snapshotting
Pins a version of your BLOB that is read only.

88. CloudBlobDirectory Container: Pictures Cartoon/Color/Mouseman
Cartoon/Video/SuperBat
Cartoon/TV/Jokester
Directories are ‘/’ in blob names. Use GetDirectoryReference, GetSubdirectory, and ListBlobs to work with directories.

89. Azure Content Delivery Network
20 edge cache servers worldwide
Requests go to local cache first
Enhanced performance for client
Latency to file
File from different domain allows for parallel download
Enabled by storage account in portal
Pricing
You basically pay for the transactions, and the bandwidth out of the CDN
Details on pricing of CDN
$0.15 per GB for data transfers from European and North American locations
$0.20 per GB for data transfers from other locations
$0.01 per 10,000 transactions

90. Windows Azure Drive Formats a Page Blob as an NTFS volume
Essentially like a VHD
Azure roles can mount as drive letter
Easy way to support legacy file system code
Can automatically use local storage as a cache for drive reads
Uses blob leases for drive lock. No shared access.
Can upload a normal VHD as a page blob to use for your drive.

91. Windows Azure Drive API
Create Drive - Creates a Page Blob formatted as a single partition NTFS volume VHD.
Initialize Cache – Allows an application to specify the location and size of the local data cache for all Windows Azure Drives mounted for that VM instance.
Mount Drive – Takes a formatted Page Blob and mounts it to a drive letter for the Windows Azure application to start using.
Get Mounted Drives – Returns the list of mounted drives. It consists of a list of the drive letter and Page Blob URLs for each mounted drive.
Unmount Drive – Unmounts the drive and frees up the drive letter.
Snapshot Drive – Allows the client application to create a backup of the drive (Page Blob).
Copy Drive – Provides the ability to copy a drive or snapshot to another drive (Page Blob) name to be used as a read/writable drive.

92. Guidance Manage connection strings/keys in cscfg
Do not share keys, wrap with a service
Strategy for accounts and containers
You can assign a custom domain to your storage account

93. Cloud Computing Scenarios
In this module-
Discover some of the common uses

94. We are all excited about the cloud

95. The trick is knowing what your systems need,
and how the cloud can help.

96. Not everything has to or can live in the cloud

97. Only move to the cloud that which can benefit

98. The core strategy is ‘hybrid’

99. Take a look at your system portfolio.
You have one right?

100. Look for pain or distractions

101. Only 2 reasons to use the cloud
Improve Bottom Line
Improve Strategery

102. Determine an ROI Consider: Current hosting costs Current staff costs
Cooling/power/space
Migration costs
Licensing

103. Common scenarios

104. Dynamic scale / reduce costs

105. Disposable computing

106. Startups & POCs IT CAPACITY Time Load Forecast No “under-supply“
Allocated IT capacities
No “under-supply“
IT CAPACITY
Reduction of “over-supply“
Possible reduction of IT-capacities in case of reduced load
Reduction of initial investments
Actual Load
Time

107. Common roadblocks

108. Security Concerns

109. Regulatory & Certification

110. Local hardware integration

111. Decompose your systems into pieces. This leads to flexibility.

112. How do things connect? Plan on service facades.
Cloud
App
Accounting
Service
Accounting

113. Design for scale.
It leads to
*-ability.

114. Decouple. Decouple. Decouple.

115. Trainer: Evmenenko Arseny
Company: IT Everest