PDC Day 1 – Lap Around Windows Azure Notes

    Session #1:

    Windows Azure Platform:

  1. Windows Azure
  2. SQL Azure
  3. AppFabric

    …plus developer tools and "Dallas"

    Azure does "Compute" "Management" and "Storage"

    SQL Azure is a relational DB as a service.

    Demo is of a tickmaster-type application that uses Azure.

    TicketDirect Architecture:

    "Compute" using Web and Worker roles to process tickets

    Using the service bus to communicate with on-premise services.

    Storage of data in SQL Azure

    Printing of tickets is offloaded to the site (i.e. venue).

    Site receives a message via service bus to print the ticket for pickup at role call

Another Demo, sample app, of basic CRUD web app.

CRUD is standard ASP.NET SqlDataSource control with SQL commands, that works with SQL Express but runs in the cloud

Demo’d using Trace.Write which writes out to the development console logger and can also write to the Azure Storage logging subsystem

Migrated to SQL Azure by just changing the connection string

Storage (BLOBs, Tables, and Queues)

NEW – Add ability to mount Azure storage as NTFS drive

Coming soon – Ability to manage VMs with admin privileges

Create snapshots of your VMs

When up-scaling, Azure will deploy your app on top of your custom VM image

SQL Azure:

Only pay for what you use

Do not worry about disaster recovery

Change a connection string an have effortless switch to SQL Azure

Sync framework to sync SQL DBs in the cloud with on-premise data

Service Bus:

Securely connect apps (on-premise with cloud)

Tunneling technology

Services bus is a middle man for communication between

Access Control:

Provides outsourcing of claims-based RESTful services

Integrates with ADFS v2