App fabric hybrid computing

Editor's Notes

• #2: Hello and welcome to my talk on Windows Server AppFabric, I must say I am super excited to be here in front of you and hosting this talk at an IASA event. Today we are going to discuss what is Windows Server AppFabric and how it is relevant to enterprise development that we do here, day in and day out.
• #4: So, coming back to ‘the real discussion’ and that’s what I believe we are all here for Here is a quick look at the agenda :- A high level overview of Windows Server AppFabric a look at its architecture, sort of a peek under the hood Quick demo on caching Windows Azure Appfabric Last but not the least QnA
• #5: Here we go...So, we are talking about Windows Server app Fabric and not the Windows Azure AppFabric...Windows Azure AppFabric is for the Cloud where as Windows Server AppFabric is for on-premise use i.e. It runs on Windows Server Although some of the concepts and API are similar to that of cloud offering but we will still focus on the Windows Server based sibling of AppFabric!
• #6: Windows Server AppFabric extends Windows Server to provide enhanced hosting, management, and caching capabilities for Web applications and middle-tier services. The AppFabric hosting features add service management extensions to Internet Information Services (IIS), Windows Process Activation Service (WAS), and the .NET Framework 4. This includes Hosting Services and Hosting Administration tools that make it easier to deploy, configure, and manage Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) based services. The AppFabric caching features add a distributed, in-memory object cache to Windows Server that makes it easier to scale out high-performance .NET applications, especially ASP.NET applications.Services and service-oriented architectures are being built into many types of applications today, from simply exposing some functionality as a service for others to use to an application itself being a complex coordination across many services. The need to construct applications that can easily participate and perform in this services world has never been greater. Modern applications typically have at their heart a data-driven transactional component (such as taking orders on a web site) together with highly distributed business logic that manages these transactions across a middle tier.http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee677312.aspx
• #7: One of the great truths of building software is this: Application developers shouldn’t spend their time creating infrastructure. Even though every application needs some supporting services, the people who write those applications ought to focus solely on creating value for their users. Whatever infrastructure is required should be provided by the platform they’re building on. Windows Server AppFabric aims to provide a set of extensions to Windows Server, such that windows developers can create faster, more scalable, and more manageable applications.
• #8: Highlight building blocks..HostingPersistanceMonitoringMessagingPower Shell Cmdlet APIsVisual Studio and IIS
• #10: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee677272.aspxhttp://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee677371.aspx
• #13: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/cc645013.aspx
• #18: Custom Session Provider included with CacheJust a configuration change enables session state to be cached across a clusterYou may want to enable HA on the cache used
• #19: AppFabric Caching Services stores all cached data in memory—it’s not written to disk. By default, each cached object is stored on only one machine in a cache cluster. To improve resilience if a cache server goes down, AppFabric Caching Services has a high-availability option that creates a secondary copy of each cached data item on another machine in the cluster. If the cache server holding the primary copy of this data fails, the secondary remains available. This example shows a read, but updates also work when the cache server holding a primary copy goes down. Once AppFabric Caching Services detects that the primary is unavailable, it promotes the existing secondary copy to a primary, then creates a new secondary copy. None of this is visible to the cache client—everything works just as if no failure had occurred. Whether or not the high-availability option is used, AppFabric Caching Services speeds up access to frequently accessed data. This is a good thing—it’s a useful addition to the application infrastructure provided by Windows Server. Providing better support for an application’s logic is also useful, however. How Windows Server AppFabric does this is described next.
• #21: Event collection:-The first AppFabric Windows service is the Event Collection service. Up to ten Event Collection service instances can run on a single server. Based upon the configured monitoring level, its role is to gather WCF and WF instrumentation events emitted by the .NET Framework runtime into an Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) session.  The Event Collection service then stores these events in the monitoring database. AppFabric uses event data to aggregate information about overall status of applications to assist in performance monitoring and troubleshooting. AppFabric Workflow Management ServiceThe second AppFabric Windows service is the Workflow Management service, which the hosting services use to manage instances of workflows.  The Workflow Management service activates a workflow service instance in an instance store when the instance is eligible to be activated.  The Workflow Management service retrieves commands from a message queue that is written to by an instance control provider, executes the commands, and then deletes commands from the queue if the command execution is successful.
• #26: Service Bus (Commercially available now; updated CTP delivered October 2010) provides secure messaging and connectivity capabilities that enable building distributed and disconnected applications in the cloud, as well as hybrid applications across both on-premise and the cloud. It enables using various communication and messaging protocols and patterns, and removes the need for the developer to worry about delivery assurance, reliable messaging and scale. Access Control (Commercially available now; updated CTP delivered August 2010) enables an easy way to provide identity and access control to web applications and services, while integrating with standards-based identity providers, including enterprise directories such as Active Directory®, and web identities such as Windows Live ID, Google, Yahoo! and Facebook.Caching (New CTP service delivered October 2010; commercially available in H1 CY11) accelerates performance of Windows Azure and SQL Azure based apps by providing a distributed, in-memory application cache, provided entirely as a service (no installation or management of instances, dynamically increase/decrease cache size as needed). Pre-integration with ASP.NET enables easy acceleration of web applications without having to modify application code.Integration (New CTP service coming in CY11) will provide common BizTalk Server integration capabilities (e.g. pipeline, transforms, adapters) on Windows Azure, using out-of-box integration patterns to accelerate and simplify development. It will also deliver higher level business user enablement capabilities such as Business Activity Monitoring and Rules, as well as self-service trading partner community portal and provisioning of business-to-business pipelines.Composite App (New CTP service coming in H1 CY11) will provide a multi-tenant, managed service which consumes the .NET based Composition Model definition and automates the deployment and management of the end to end application - eliminating manual steps needed by both developers and ITPros today. It also executes application components to provide a high-performance runtime optimized for cloud-scale services and mid-tier components (automatically delivering scale out, availability, multi-tenancy and sandboxing of application components). Finally, it delivers a complete hosting environment for web services built using Windows Communication Foundation (including WCF Data Services and WCF RIA Services) and workflows built using Windows Workflow Foundation. It’s a key characteristic of all AppFabric Middleware Services that they are consistently delivered as true multi-tenant services – you simply provision, configure, and use (no installation or management of machines/instances).
• #27: Microsoft is advancing its Windows Azure AppFabric cloud middleware platform to provide a full composite application environment for developing, deploying and managing composite applications. The AppFabric composition environment delivers three main benefits: Composition Model A set of .NET Framework extensions for composing applications on the Windows Azure platform. This builds on the familiar Azure Service Model concepts and adds new capabilities for describing and integrating the components of an application. It also provides a consistent composition model for both Windows Azure and Windows Server.Visual Design Experience A new Visual Studio based designer experience allows you assemble code from your existing application components, along with newer cloud services, and tie them together as a single logical entity.Managed as a service The Composite Application service is a multi-tenant, managed service which consumes the Composition Model definition and automates the deployment and management of the end to end application - eliminating manual steps needed by both developers and ITPros today. The composite application environment offers the following benefits:Greater developer productivity through rapid assembly, linking of components and automated deployment of the entire end-to-end application;Easier configuration and control of entire application and individual components;End-to-end application monitoring (events, state, health and performance SLAs);Easier troubleshooting (through richer diagnostics and debugging of the whole application);Performance optimization of the whole application (scale-out/in, fine-tuning, migration, etc); Integrated operational reporting (usage, metering, billing).