Are you ready? Introduction to Cloud Computing and Windows Azure

Editor's Notes

• #10: On-demand - Resources should be always available when you need them, and you have control over turning them on or off to ensure there’s no lack of resource or wastage happen.Scalable - You should be able to scale (increase or decrease the resource) when necessary. The cloud providers should have sufficient capacity to meet customer’s needs.Multi-tenant - Sometimes you may be sharing the same resource (e.g. hardware) with another tenant. But of course, this is transparent to the customer. Cloud provider shall responsible the security aspect, ensuring that one tenant won’t be able to access other’s data.Self-service computation and storage resource - Related processes including: billing, resource provisioning, and deployment should be self-service and automated, involving much less manual processing. If a machine where our service is hosted fails, the cloud provider should be able to failover our service immediately.Reliability - Cloud provider should be able to provide customer reliability service, committing to uptimes of their service.Utility-based subscription - You will pay the cloud provider as a utility based subscription, just like paying your electricity bill – without any upfront investment.
• #11: Public CloudPublic cloud provider refers to the cloud platform that targets any types of customers, regardless of whether they’re an independent consumer, enterprise, or even public sector. Normally, public cloud providers are considered prominent players which have invested huge amount of capital. Windows Azure Platform by Microsoft, AWS by Amazon, AppEngine and Gmail by Google, etc. are all examples of public cloud services. Customers who possess sensitive data and application normally do not feel comfortable using public cloud due to privacy, policy, and security concerns. Remember, for public cloud, the application and data will be stored in the provider’s data center.Private CloudPrivate cloud is infrastructure that’s hosted internally, targeting specific customers or sometimes exclusively within an organization. Setting up a private cloud is normally more affordable when compared to a public cloud. As the matter of fact, there are many organizations who have implemented their own private cloud system with product offering from vendors such as IBM, HP, Microsoft, and so on. Customers who possess sensitive data and application feel more comfortable going with this approach since the data and application are hosted privately.Hybrid CloudHybrid cloud is the combination of public and private clouds, or sometimes on-premise services. Customers who look into this solution generally want to utilize the scalability and cost-competitiveness that public cloud providers offer, but also want to retain their sensitive data on-premise or in a private cloud. With the benefits derived from both deployment models, the hybrid model solution has become more popular nowadays.IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)IaaS helps you to take care of some of the components, starting from networking to provisioning the OS. But you are responsible for the middleware, runtime, data, and application. Sometimes IaaS vendors will just provide the OS but will not manage updates or patches for you. You basically just rent the virtual machine (VM) with the preferred OS installed. They won’t care what you do with the VM.Example of IaaS market players: Amazon Web Service, Rackspace, and VMware vCloud.PaaS (Platform as a Service)Paas is one level up from IaaS, where cloud providers not only take care of the components that IaaS does; but also manage the platform-level components like middleware and runtime. Middleware such as applications / web server (IIS, JBoss, Tomcat, etc.) and runtime (.NET Framework, Java runtime) will be pre-installed. As a customer, you just need to focus on managing application and data.Example of PaaS market player: Google AppEngine, Windows Azure Platform, and force.com.SaaS (Software as a Service)SaaS is probably the most common one as we may have been using it, unaware that they are actually cloud services. SaaS takes care of all the stacks from networking to application level. You don’t even manage the application and data storage. All you need to do is to use the system.Example of SaaS market player: GMail, Office 365, and Google Docs.
• #28: This slide shows how the various options compare, then explicitly illustrates where the Windows Azure platform fits in. It’s meant to make clear in the audience’s mind the exact place in this broad area that we’re about to dig into more deeply.Before we can understand the Microsoft cloud computing strategy, we must understand how the industry sees the landscape.Traditionally all information technology was managed by customers on their own premises. This model provides the customer with a high degree of control, but at a high cost of capital expenditure and maintenance.Another model is known as “infrastructure as a service ,” or IaaS, and is defined by hardware, either physical or virtual. In this model, a provider uses services in the cloud to offer the end user hardware for computing or storage needs. The end user maintains control of the operating system and applications on the hardware.The second model is “platform as a service,” or PaaS, and is used to facilitate the development, testing, deployment, and ongoing maintenance of applications. In this model, the provider maintains and administers the underlying infrastructure for the end user.The third model is “software as a service,” or SaaS. SaaS supplies finished services and applications over the Internet to customers who pay on a per-use basis. This is the most common form of cloud computing delivered today. Windows Azure Platform is a Paas. Think of Windows Azure and the Platform as the operating system of the cloud. You have Windows Client which is your client PC Operating System, Windows Server which is your Operating system for your data centers and Windows Azure is your operating system for the cloud. With Windows Azure Platform, however, Microsoft manages and maintains the platform, freeing up your IT resources to focus on business objectives. Also, because Windows Azure Platform provides dynamic capacity that can scale up or down to meet your changing needs, you achieve better resources utilization and lower costs.
• #36: Speaker Notes:As you saw you can use both Windows Server or LinuxYou can install any software you want in the virtual machine. It’s your virtual machineYou can also setup a virtual private network to connect VMs to your on-premises infrastructure
• #37: Speaker Notes:There are a few aspects of the Windows Azure Virtual machines feature that I want to talk more about.One of the ability to have Virtual Machine Portability between Windows Azure and different environments. All of the virtual machines running in Windows Azure are using what we call the VHD file format. VHD is an open specification that we’ve released. We use VHDs in a variety of other products including Windows Server virtualization.
• #38: Speaker Notes:The benefit of using the same file format is that it’s really easy open file format is that it’s really easy …The benefit is that since we’re using an open file format, you have the ability to take a VM from your own data center and upload it to Windows AzureYou don’t have to run an import / export process. You simply upload it and it worksThere’s no conversion tools or agent you have to install in the VM, it just works. [Transit to next slide]
• #39: Speaker Notes:You can also take, for example, either the Windows or Linux VMs that we created in Windows Azure and we make it really easy for you to download the VHD locally and you can then boot it up on a local server in whatever environment that you want. Again you don’t have to export it or convert it, just click and download it. It’s not a one way street[Transit to next slide]
• #40: Speaker Notes:The other thing this offers is that it not only allows you to run in Windows Azure as a data center but it also allows you to run in other service providers as well.You can take VMs from any of these locations and move them into another data center[Transit to next slide]
• #41: Speaker Notes:The end result is that you have a lot of flexibility, a lot of portability, and ensures that you have no lock-in
• #42: Speaker Notes:The other neat thing that we’re doing with Windows Azure now is making it possible for you to mount durable drives to your virtual machine. We’re trying to do it in way that it is very reliable, consistent, and delivers a high performance.One of the things that’s different about how we enabled it is that when you mount a drive either in the portal or in the command line we are backing the disk with the Windows Azure Storage system that we’re running in the cloud todayThere are a couple nice characteristics about the storage system.Replication One is that we triple replicate the content within the data center. If a disk ever goes bad that you data is on then we have two other copies of the data that we can work with and we do not have any interruption of serviceWe can then spin up a new replica once we detect a disk is badFrom your VMs perspective you never know that an issue actually occurred[Transit to next slide]So you get much more reliability and an always on experience even when hardware failsNotes:Mentioned that Windows Azure Virtual Machines are backed by a durable store. Let’s spend a few minutes talking about how this works.
• #46: Speaker Notes:Another thing that is nice about the Windows Azure Storage solution is that we have support for Continuous storage geo-replicationWhat this means is that whenever you save something in the storage system, in the background we can automatically replicate the data to another datacenter. We guarantee that these data centers are several hundred miles apart so that in the case of a natural disaster or a complete data center failure you can be ensured that a copy of your data exists somewhere else. You don’t have to set anything up to enable it. It’s automatically enabled by default.You can turn it off if there are policy reasons why you wouldn’t want it enabled. The end result is that you can deliver more robust solutions with even greater integrity
• #47: Speaker Notes:TransitionVirtual machine capabilities are one of the great features as part of this Azure release.Next one I want to talk about are Windows Azure Web SitesBasically with Windows Azure Web Sites there is a managed service that you can use to run web sites and web APIs. You don’t have to worry or think about VMs, servers, or infrastructure. You can simply focus on building and deploying HTTP based applications.Enables you to build web sites using ASP.NET, Node.js, or PHPAllows you to use any tool and any operating system to build these sites including Windows, OS X, and Linux. You can easily deploy these sites using the tools and infrastructure you know. We support several flexible deployment options including FTP, GIT, and Team Foundation ServicesWhat is nice about this offering is that not only does it enable to very quickly get going, but it also allows you to start with a free offer in a shared environment. You can then scale up these sites using reserved instances for higher performance and isolation and scale out these sites as your web site becomes successful and you have increased load.
• #53: Speaker Notes:We’ve talked about Virtual Machines and we’ve talked about Web Sites, now let’s talk about Cloud ServicesCloud Services is another model we support for building applications. Enables you to build what we sometimes refer to as infinitely scalable applications. They can support 1 to hundreds or thousands of courseSupport not only web based deployments, but also multi-tier architectures where you might have a combination of front ends, middle tiers, as well as virtual machines running as part of your solution.Supports automated application management, so it is really easy to deploy, scale out, isolate, and recover from any type of hardware failure. As well as support for automated updates.
• #54: Transition:Let’s spend a few minutes talking about what happens when we deploy a cloud service in Windows Azure.
• #60: Speaker Notes:One of the other things we do with Windows Azure to enable that is provide a bunch of Application Building BlocksThese are managed services that we run that provide a lot of value so you can avoid standing up the infrastructure for common capabilitiesYou always can stand up VMs and put anything you want in itBut in a lot of cases you will find that we have built in services that we deliver or that are delivered by our partnersWhat’s cool is that you can use any of these services with a VM, with a Web Site, or with a Cloud Service – so you have flexibility in how you will consume them.
• #63: 7. SQL Azure Requires Clustered IndexesWhen you first attempt to migrate your applications to SQL Azure, the first thing you’re likely to notice is that SQL Azure requires all tables to have clustered indexes. You can accommodate this by building clustered indexes for tables that don’t have them. However, this usually means that most databases that are migrated to SQL Azure will usually require some changes before they can be ported to SQL Azure.6. SQL Azure Lacks Access to System TablesBecause you don’t have access to the underlying hardware platform, there’s no access to system tables in SQL Azure. System tables are typically used to help manage the underlying server and SQL Azure does not require or allow this level of management. There's also no access to system views and stored procedures.5. SQL Azure Requires SQL Server Management Studio 2008 R2To manage SQL Azure databases, you must use the new SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 2008 R2. Older versions of SSMS can connect to SQL Azure, but the Object Browser won’t work. Fortunately, you don’t need to buy SQL Server 2008 R2. You can use the free version of SSMS Express 2008 R2, downloadable from Microsoft's website.4. SQL Azure Doesn't Support Database Mirroring or Failover ClusteringSQL Azure is built on the Windows Azure platform which provides built-in high availability. SQL Azure data is automatically replicated and the SQL Azure platform provides redundant copies of the data. Therefore SQL Server high availability features such as database mirroring and failover cluster aren't needed and aren't supported.3. No SQL Azure Support for Analysis Services, Replication, Reporting Services, or SQL Server Service BrokerThe current release of SQL Azure provides support for the SQL Server relational database engine. This allows SQL Azure to be used as a backend database for your applications. However, the other subsystems found in the on-premises version of SQL Server, such as Analysis Services, Integration Services, Reporting Services, and replication, aren't included in SQL Azure. But you can use SQL Azure as a data source for the on-premises version of Analysis Services, Integration Services, and Reporting Services.2. SQL Azure Offers No SQL CLR SupportAnother limitation in SQL Azure is in the area of programmability: It doesn't provide support for the CLR. Any databases that are built using CLR objects will not be able to be moved to SQL Azure without modification.1. SQL Azure Doesn't Support Backup and RestoreTo me, one of the biggest issues with SQL Azure is the fact that there no support for performing backup and restore operations. Although SQL Azure itself is built on a highly available platform so you don’t have to worry about data loss, user error and database corruption caused by application errors are still a concern. To address this limitation, you could use bcp, Integration Services, or the SQL Azure Migration Wizard to copy critical database tables.
• #65: Why is the Cloud Difficult to Embrace - We Have a Need to Own Stuff!60% of our Computing Resources Never Get Used
• #75: Introduce YourselfThank Everyone Bit-WizardsBit-Wizards creates innovative software solutions that solve real world business problems, allowing our customers to be more profitable & efficientIn Business Since 2000Based in Fort Walton Beach, in the Panhandle of FloridaProject Based Software EngineeringAll Developers are Degreed & Microsoft CertifiedCore Business AreasSoftware DevelopmentSoftware IntegrationWeb DesignE-CommerceGraphic DesignAwards2009 & 2010 Inc 5000 HonoreeAddy Award Winning Web Designs2011 Florida’s Top Companies to Watch2010 & 2011 Florida Trend Magazine’s Best Places to Work ForKentico Gold PartnerMicrosoft Managed Gold PartnerGold Software DevelopmentGold Application IntegrationGold Digital MarketingGold Independent Software Vendor ISVSilver Web DevelopmentSilver Data PlatformSilver Portals & CollaborationSilver Content Management