What's New for the Windows Azure Developer? Lots!!

What’s New for the Windows Azure
Developer? Lots!!

July 2012

About Me

Michael S. Collier
National Architect,
Windows Azure

michael.collier@neudesic.com
@MichaelCollier
www.MichaelSCollier.com

What Are We Talking About?

• Meet Windows Azure & TechEd Key Announcements
• Windows Azure Web Sites
• Windows Azure Virtual Machines
• Windows Azure Storage
• Visual Studio Tools Updates
• Miscellaneous Bits of Awesomesauce

Windows Azure Web Sites (WAWS)

Create a Web Site in Seconds

Simple Your Choice Fast
Create a web site your ASP, ASP.NET Deployment in seconds
self PHP, node.js (TFS, Git, FTP, WebDepl
oy)

Select from a gallery Develop on Dashboard monitoring
Windows, OSX, and
Linux Rapid Scalability

Windows Azure Web Sites (WAWS)

Source: TechEd NA - Windows Azure Web Sites - Under the Hood (AZR305)

Scaling Options with WAWS

Shared Reserved
Single tenant in a multi-tenant Just you
pool
Scale to handle more requests; Scale to increase performance –
not increase performance can pick more and larger VMs.
Quota limit No quota limit
10 for free Pay by hour
• Ability to set app settings via portal
– Merges from web.config and that which is stored in DB
• Custom domain name – use Reserved
• No SSL support . . . yet

Windows Azure Virtual Machines

Easy Options for Getting Started
1. Create new VM from image in VM Image Gallery

2. Customize image and capture for future use (cloud
composition)

3. Image Portability

Provision via Image Gallery

• Getting Started
– Management Portal
– Scripting (PowerShell, CLIs)
• Pick Image and VM Size
– XS, Small, Medium, Large or XL
– Microsoft
• Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
• Windows Server 2012 RC
• Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 w/ SQL Server Evaluation Edition
– Linux
• MySuse
• CentOS
• OpenSUSE
• Ubuntu
• Save to Blob Storage

Virtual Machines

• Disk Management
– OS Disk
– Data Disk
• Store your application data
• Max of 1TB in size and 16 disks (varies by VM size)
• SLA
– 99.95% for multi-instance roles
– 99.9% for single instance (coming soon)
• You manage the system
– SCOM
– 3rd party mgmt tools like RightScale and OpsCode
• Mixed Mode (PaaS + IaaS == Better Together)

Demo

WINDOWS AZURE VIRTUAL
MACHINES

So Many Choices! When do I use what?

Web Sites Web Roles (Cloud Services) Virtual Machines
Modern Web Apps Multi-tier Applications Server Applications
• “Basic” web apps or services • Web and worker roles • SQL Server
• Uses SQL Database • Scale independently • SharePoint
• Scale out or up on demand • Active Directory
• MySQL
• MongoDB
Continuous Deployment Advanced Administration VHD – Image or Gallery
• Git • Admin access • Cloud composition
• Team Foundation Service • Remote Desktop • Upload your own VHD
• Elevated privileges • Select from gallery
• Startup tasks/scripts
• IIS Configuration
Open Source Apps Advanced Networking OS Choice – Windows or Linux
• WordPress, Orchard, Drupal, • Windows Azure Connect • Windows Server versions
DotNetNuke, etc. • Windows Azure Virtual Network • Various Linux flavors
• Network Isolation
MySQL-as-a-Service

What’s New in

WINDOWS AZURE STORAGE

Improved Pricing and Management

• 10x Price Reduction for Storage Transaction
– $0.01 / 100,000 transactions ($1 per 10 million transaction)
• Configuration of Storage Analytics
– Configuration via management portal
– Detailed and configurable charts
• Monitoring Storage Metrics
– Configuration via management portal
– Display in management portal

Geo Redundant vs. Locally Redundant
Storage
• Geo Redundant
– 3 replicas in the location & 3 replicas in secondary location
(region)
– Enabled by default
– Update before or after account creation
• Locally Redundant
– 3 replicas in the location / data center / sub region
– Data may be lost in disaster scenario
– 23%-34% discount over GRS pricing (dependent on storage
amt.)

New Storage Service Features

• “2012-02-12” version of REST API
– SDK 1.7.1
– https://github.com/WindowsAzure/azure-sdk-for-
net/tree/sdk_1.7.1
• SAS for Tables and Queues
• Cross-Account Copying of Blobs
• Improved Blob Leasing

Shared Access Signature Updates

• Blobs
– Unbounded access time (previously 1 hour)
• Tables
– Grant access to entire table (“tn”)
– Grant access to partition key range (“startpk/endpk”) and row key
(“startrk/endrk”) (startpk, startrk), (endpk, endrk)
– Permissions: Query (“r”), Add (“a”), Update (“u”), Delete (“d”)
– Time Range: Unbounded (expiry time must be set)
• Queues
– Permissions: Read or Peak (“r”), Add (“a”), Update (“u”), Process
(“p”)*

Expanded Blob Copy

• Copying between storage accounts and within accounts is
async
• Only for destination accounts >= June 7, 2012
• Copy source is a URL
– Versioned change (use URL with 2012-02-12 version)
– Publically accessible or pre-authenticated via a SAS
– Can be a blob outside of Windows Azure!
• Asynchronous Copy
– Copy Blob returns 202 (Accepted) instead of 201 (Created)
– Copy operation is scheduled to run in background using spare
bandwidth (no SLA on how fast operation will complete)
– Poll to check on copy progress (number of bytes copied / total)
– May acquire infinite lease on source & destination

Improved Blob Leasing

• Control over blob lease time
– 15 seconds up to 60 seconds
– Infinite
• Changing of the lease ID
– Pass the lease ID to another process, preventing original
process from changing the blob
• Ability to provide a time to keep lease when breaking it
– Shorten time remaining on the lease when breaking
• Lease on the container
– Prevent something from deleting the container
– No impact on blobs in the container

But Wait . . .

THERE’S MORE!

Caching (Preview)

• In addition to Shared Caching
• Role-Based Caching
– Available memory on existing web or worker role (co-located)
– Dedicated worker role (dedicated)
– No premium charge – just the cost of the roles
– Additional features
• High availability
• Notifications
• Multiple named caches
• Memcached wire protocol

Custom Health Probes (Pages)

• Fabric Controller pings the Guest Agent
– Checks if the instance is alive
– Can’t determine if app can service requests
• Create a custom page to verify service logic
– Used by FC to check if service is “healthy”

Service Bus Explorer (Visual Studio)

• New to June 2012 tools
• Queues & Topics
• Send/Receive test msgs
• Queue Properties

• Not as robust as Service
Bus Explorer
(http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsazure/Service-Bus-Explorer-f2abca5a)

New Role Templates

• New Visual Studio templates for common scenarios
• Cache Worker Role
• Worker Role with Service Bus Queue

Emulator Updates

• Using IIS Express
– Full IIS available if/when needed
• SQL Server Express 2012 LocalDB

Side-by-Side SDK Support

• SDK 1.6 and SDK 1.7 live together
• No need to uninstall previous version
• Change in .csproj file
• Easy upgrade from SDK 1.6 TO 1.7

NuGet Packages

• Visual Studio uses latest version from NuGet
– Easier to keep current (if you want)
• Assemblies:
– WindowsAzure.Storage
– WindowsAzure.ServiceBus
– Microsoft.WindowsAzure.ConfigurationManager

Cloud Configuration

• CloudConfigurationManager.GetSetting(“MySetting”);

Quick Hits

• Windows Azure Active Directory
– Includes Access Control Services (ACS)
– Incorporates AD features in O365
– Graph API
• Windows Azure Virtual Network
– Hardware based networking
– Configuration script for your hardware
– Control IP addresses and machine names
– Control VNet
• Windows Azure Media Services
– Ingest, encode, transform, and distribute
– SmoothStreaming
– PowerShell based configuration (currently)
– Powering London 2012 Olympics

Let’s Wrap It Up!

• Get started quickly with Web Sites
• Do what you want with Virtual Machines
• Helpful & powerful updates to Storage Services
• SDK updates
• Enhancements to Visual Studio tooling

Resources

• Windows Azure Web Sites, Web Roles, and VMs: When to use
which?
– http://blogs.msdn.com/b/silverlining/archive/2012/06/27/windows-azure-
websites-web-roles-and-vms-when-to-use-which.aspx
• Windows Azure Web Sites - Under the Hood (AZR305), Yochay
Kiriaty & Craig Kitterman
– http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2012/AZR305
• New Windows Azure Storage Features, Improved Manageability,
and Lower Prices
– http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazurestorage/archive/2012/06/12/teched-
2012-new-windows-azure-storage-features-improved-manageability-and-
lower-prices.aspx
• Windows Azure Virtual Machines
– https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/home/features/virtual-machines/
• Deep Dive Into Windows Azure Virtual Machines – From the Cloud
Vendor and Enterprise Perspective (AZR313)
– http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2012/AZR313

What's New for the Windows Azure Developer? Lots!!

What's New for the Windows Azure Developer? Lots!!

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