Blog.BrianLoesgen.com

New Azure ServiceBus Demo Available

2012-01-23T00:40:41Z

I’m pleased to announce that I FINALLY have finished and packaged up a cool little ServiceBus demo.

I say “finally” because this demo has a long lifeline, it began over a year ago. I enhanced it, and showed it to a colleague, Tony Guidici, for his comments. He ended up enhancing it, and putting it into his Azure book. I then took it back, enhanced it further, and, well, here it is. Thanks also to my colleagues David Chou and Greg Oliver for their feedback.

There are several resources associated with this demo:

High def video walkthrough: http://youtu.be/xKHl87_BFT0
Low def video walkthrough: http://youtu.be/c3KLhsjstco
Complete source code, http://servicebuseventdemo.codeplex.com/

Note that this is based on the current-when-I-did-this version 1.6 of the Azure SDK and .NET libraries.

At a high level, the scenario is that this is a system that listens for events, and when critical events occur, they are multicast to listeners/subscribers through the Azure ServiceBus. The listeners use the ServiceBus relay bindings, the subscribers use the topical pub/sub mechanism of the ServiceBus.

Why relay *and* subscription? They serve different models. For example, using the subscription model, a listener could subscribe to all messages, or just a subset based on a filter condition (in this demo, we have examples of both). All subscribers will get all messages. By contrast, a great example of the relay bindings is having a Web service deployed on-prem, and remoting that by exposing an endpoint on the ServiceBus. The ServiceBus recently introduced a load balancing feature, where you could have multiple instances of the same service running, but if a message is received only one of them is called.

Both models work very well for inter-application and B2B scenarios. Note that this demo is intended to show the various parts of the ServiceBus, in a real world scenario you would likely not have a subscription listener that in turn publishes to a relay.

The moving parts in this particular demo look like this:

Subscriptions are shown above as ovals, the direct lines are relay bindings. The red lines are critical events, the black line is all events.

The projects in the solutions are:

Their purposes are:

Client
EventPoint.ConsoleApp	Listens for critical messages multicast through the ServiceBus relay binding
EventPoint.ConsoleApp.Topics	Listens for critical messages multicast through the ServiceBus eventpoint-topics namespace
EventPoint.Generator	Test harness, publishes messages to the ServiceBus eventpoint-topics namespace
EventPoint.Monitor	WinForms app that listens for critical messages multicast through the ServiceBus relay binding
Cloud
EventPoint.CriticalPersister	Listens for critical messages multicast through the ServiceBus relay binding and persists them to SQL Azure
EventPoint.Data	Message classes
EventPoint_WebRole	Table browser UI to see all events that have been persisted to Azure table storage
EventPoint_WorkerRole	Worker role that sets up eventpoint-topics subscriptions for 1) All events and 2) critical (priority 0) messages that get multicast to the ServiceBus relay
Common
EventPoint.Common	Config, message factory to support push notifications
Microsoft.Samples.ServiceBusMessaging	NuGet package to support push notifications

There are a few things you’ll need to do in order to get the demo working. Remarkably few things actually, considering the number of moving parts in the flow diagram!

First off, in the admin portal, you will need to create two ServiceBus namespaces:

NOTE THAT SERVICEBUS NAMESPACES MUST BE GLOBALLY UNIQUE. The ones shown above are ones I chose, if you want to run the code you will have to choose your own and cannot re-use mine (unless I delete them).

The “eventpoint-critical” namespace is used for the relay bindings, the “eventpoint-topics” is used for the pub/sub (apparently you cannot use the same namespace for both purposes, at least at the time this was written). You don’t have to use those names, but if you change them, you’ll need to change them in the config file too, so I’d suggest just leaving it this way.

Because there are multiple types of apps, ranging from Azure worker roles through console and winforms apps, I created a single shared static config class that is shared among the apps. You can, and need to, update the app.config file with your appropriate account information:

Note: there are more things you need to change that did not fit in the screen shot, they will be self-evident when you look at the App.Config file.

To get the ServiceBus issuer name and secret, you may need to scroll as it is bottom-most right-hand side of the ServiceBus page:

Lastly, you’ll need to add the name/creds of your storage account to the Web and worker roles.

When you run the app, five visible projects will start, plus a web role and a worker role running in the emulator.

In the screen shot below, I generated 5 random messages. Three of them were critical, and you can see they were picked up by the console apps and the WinForms app.

Just as with Windows Azure queues, the Azure ServiceBus is a powerful tool you can use to decouple parts of your application. I hope you find this demo helpful, and that it gives you new ideas about how you can use it in your own solutions.

Azure Discovery Events

2012-01-22T20:15:22Z

We are going to be running another series of Windows Azure Discovery events in US West region.

Azure Discovery Events

We would like to offer you the opportunity to attend the Windows Azure Platform Discover Event. A Discover Event will provide a business and technical overview of the Windows Azure Platform. The target audience for these events includes business decision makers, technical decision makers, architects, and development leads. The sessions are targeted at the 100-200 level with a mix of business focused information as well as technical information.

DATE	LOCATION	TIME	REGISTERATION LINK
January 31, 2012	Redmond, WA	9:00 AM – 1:00 PM	Register here
February 8, 2012	Boulder, CO	9:00 AM – 1:00 PM	Register here
February 27, 2012	Mountain View, CA	9:00 AM – 1:00 PM	Register here
March 1, 2012	Irvine, CA	9:00 AM – 1:00 PM	Register here

To register by phone, call: 1.877.MSEVENT (1.877.673.8368).

Christmas came early–December Azure update is HUGE

2011-12-13T00:30:19Z

There’s just too much to talk about in today’s December update to Windows Azure. There are enhancements across the board, starting with the initial sign-up experience, through to billing, and EVERYTHING in between. There have been pricing updates, SQL Azure size has gone up to 150gb, SQL Federation has now shipped (no longer CTP) enabling massive scale/perf SQL solutions, portal updates….

I could go on and on, but instead, read the official post here.

SQL Azure Data Sync

2011-12-04T22:35:01Z

I thought it would be fun to show the recently released SQL Azure Data Sync at the Azure DevCamp in Santa Monica a couple of days ago. This was my first exposure to the recently released CTP, and I was so impressed by how easy it was to set up a synchronization that I thought I would write it up.

You configure Data Sync by using the Azure portal. You create a “sync group” that contains “member databases”. The member databases are either on-premise or SQL Azure. The following is what my portal view looked like after I created these entities:

Setting up the actual synchronization flow is also done through the portal, this is where you:

add your cloud and on-prem databases
defining the synchronization schedule (ie: “sync every 60 minutes”)
define the sync flow (one way or bi-directional)
define conflict resolution
define a synchronization “hub” that is used to track synchronization

In my example, I had an on-premise database that I wanted to replicate to SQL Azure. This was a one-way flow, from on-prem to a SQL Azure instance I had in North Central US. What was super-cool was that in front of the audience, I provisioned a brand new SQL Azure server in South East Asia, and added it to the sync group so that it too would receive changes I made to the on-premise database. Elapsed time was a couple of minutes, because I was pausing to explain. That’s mind-boggling if you think back a few years to what it would have taken to achieve the same result.

Here’s what my sync flow looked like at the end of the demo:

The team has done a great job, this was incredibly easy and intuitive to set up yet is also a very powerful capability for geo-distributed applications.

November 2011 Azure Updates now available

2011-11-14T21:00:55Z

Various new updates for Windows Azure were just released (Azure SDK for .NET updates shown below):

Windows Azure SDK (November 2011,)—Multiple updates to the Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio 2010 that simplify development, deployment, and management on Windows Azure. The full Windows Azure SDK can be downloaded via the Web Platform installer here.
Windows Azure HPC Scheduler SDK— Works in conjunction with the Windows Azure SDK and includes modules and features to author high performance computing (HPC) applications that use large amounts of compute resources in parallel to complete work. The SDK is available here for download.
Windows Azure Platform Training Kit—Includes hands-on labs, demos, and presentations to help you learn how to build applications that use Windows Azure. Compatible with the new Windows Azure SDK and Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio 2010. The training kit can be downloaded here.

You can read about the specifics here.

Great session on Monitoring and Troubleshooting Windows Azure apps

2011-10-13T18:12:26Z

I just watched a great session from Build on monitoring and troubleshooting Windows Azure applications.

Michael Washam did a great job highlighting various techniques, as well as showing off the great work that’s been done on the Azure PowerShell CmdLets. He has several posts about that on his blog:

http://michaelwasham.com

The Build session is:

http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/BUILD/BUILD2011/SAC-859T

Enjoy!

Windows Azure DevCamp in Mountainview Oct 28-29

2011-10-12T18:48:00Z

Event Location

Mt. View, CA
Date Oct. 28-29, 2011
Time 8:00AM - 6:00PM Location
Silicon Valley Center
1065 La Avenida St Building 1
Mt. View, CA 94043
REGISTER NOW >>
Events run from
8:00 AM - 6:00 PM

Featured Presenter

James Conard
James Conard is the Senior Director of the Windows Azure Evangelism team at Microsoft. His team is responsible for helping developers build applications in Windows Azure by providing key development resources including toolkits, samples, and training kits and by engaging with the community through conferences, training events and Developer Camps.
We'll also see presentations from: Bruno Terkaly , Wade Wegner, Roger Doherty, Nick Harris and Bruno Nowak

Come join us for 2 days of cloud computing!
Developer Camps (DevCamps for short) are free, fun, no-fluff events for developers, by developers. You learn from experts in a low-key, interactive way and then get hands-on time to apply what you've learned.
What am I going to learn at the Windows Azure
Developer Camp?
At the Azure DevCamps, you'll learn what's new in developing cloud solutions using Windows Azure. Windows Azure is an internet-scale cloud computing and services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers. Windows Azure provides an operating system and a set of developer services used to build cloud-based solutions. The Azure DevCamp is a great place to get started with Windows Azure development or to learn what's new with the latest Windows Azure features.

Come for one day, come for both. Either way, you'll learn a ton. Here's what we'll cover.
Agenda

Day 1

• Getting Started with Windows Azure

• Using Windows Azure Storage

• Understanding SQL Azure

• Securing, Connecting, and Scaling Windows Azure Solutions

• Windows Azure Application Scenarios

• Launching Your Windows Azure App

Day 2

On Day 2, you'll have the opportunity to get hands on developing with Windows Azure. If you're new to Windows Azure, we have step-by-step labs that you can go through to get started right away. If you're already familiar with Windows Azure, you'll have the option to do build an application using the new Windows Azure features and show it off to the other attendees for the chance to win prizes. Either way, Windows Azure experts will be on hand to help.

Compilation of Windows Azure Sessions from BUILD

2011-09-19T16:38:04Z

The following is a great compilation of Azure sessions that were presented at //BUILD. I’m not sure who put this together originally (I suspect OakLeaf Systems), but it’s making the rounds and I thought I’d post it here for public consumption.

Enjoy!

Windows Azure and Cloud Session Content from the //BUILD/ Windows Conference 2011

Following are full descriptions and links to slide decks and video archives of sessions in the Windows Azure and Cloud Computing tracks presented at the //BUILD/ Windows Conference 2011 held in Anaheim, CA on 9/13 through 9/16/2011.

Windows Azure

Building and running HPC apps in Windows Azure by Greg Burgess

Windows Azure is an ideal environment for deploying compute-intensive apps that take advantage of the scale-on-demand capability of the cloud. The HPC Pack for Windows Azure provides a job scheduler, management tools, and a set of runtimes for developing and deploying parallel and scale-out apps. This talk will present app examples and best practices for using the HPC Pack in Windows Azure to rapidly create scalable compute and data-intensive services. Programming models include parallel apps using MPI, scale-out apps using WCF and data intensive apps using HPC to LINQ.

Cloud, Applications, Scalability, Elasticity, Windows Azure, Parallel Computing, WCF
SAC-452T
Day 4
Slides
MP4
WMV (Medium)
WMV (High)

Analyzing "big data" with LINQ to HPC by Ade Miller

"Big data" refers to unstructured data sets so large that they cannot be analyzed using traditional database tools. Today, big data are becoming more common; it is prevalent not just in Web traffic, but also in industries like oil & gas, finance and manufacturing. Based on Microsoft Research’s Dryad project, LINQ to HPC is a programming model and distributed runtime for building analysis solutions for big data. It goes beyond MapReduce and leverages the LINQ programming model and HPC scheduler to execute optimized query graphs across a cluster of machines. In this session, you will learn how to use LINQ to HPC on both Windows Azure and an on-premise Windows cluster to build analytic apps that deal with big data. These apps will be able to scale out to hundreds of machines without having to deal with scheduling, data replication and node failure complexities generally associated with programming a large, distributed data-parallel system.

Cloud, Applications, Scalability, Windows Azure, Parallel Computing
SAC-453T
Day 4
Slides
MP4
WMV (Medium)
WMV (High)

Building Web APIs in Windows Azure with WCF to reach any device by Glenn Block

Web app developers today are facing new challenges around how to expose data and services to multiple devices, browser apps and other cloud services. In this session we’ll explore how the Windows Communication Foundation Web API makes it easy for developers to expose their services and data to a broad set of clients and take advantage of rich emerging Web standards like WebSockets. We’ll show how simple it is to create new Web APIs, whether you are building Web apps or standalone services to expose existing functionality or data.

Your devices + OData + Windows Azure == happiness by Mike Flasko

We are currently undergoing a massive proliferation of connected devices ranging from phones to PCs, each with its own requirements and capabilities. This can lead to significant developer frustration as we try to create great end-user experiences across devices. The OData protocol (http://odata.org) was created to provide a simple, common way to interact with data on the Web from any platform or device. In this session, we’ll show you how the dynamic duo of OData and Windows Azure can be used to create rich, Web-friendly and scalable Web APIs that provide the capabilities you need to bring happiness to all your device programming experiences. Finally, we’ll mash up the data we’ve exposed with data provided by existing OData sources including Netflix, eBay, Facebook, SAP, and others.

Scalability, Elasticity, Windows Azure, Odata
SAC-836T
Day 4
Slides
MP4
WMV (Medium)
WMV (High)

Getting started with Windows Azure by Brian Prince

Windows Azure is Microsoft's cloud platform for quickly building and running scalable apps. In this demo-focused session, you will learn how to get started building your first Windows Azure app. You will see how to build and deploy an app to the cloud and consume several Windows Azure Platform services.

What's new in Windows Azure by James Conard

Windows Azure is constantly being updated to include new features and services. In this session, you will learn more about some of the latest enhancements to the Windows Azure Platform.

Introduction to Windows Azure: the cloud operating system by Mark Russinovich

Come join Mark Russinovich for an overview of Microsoft’s new cloud OS. Assuming no prior knowledge of Windows Azure, this session will start by explaining the Windows Azure Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) app philosophy and how it differs from that of traditional server apps. Then, demonstrating key concepts with a real Windows Azure service built and deployed to the cloud, we’ll describe the Windows Azure service model, including concepts like update and fault domains. The session will then conclude by discussing the different service update options and detail the recovery steps Windows Azure follows when it detects that a service or a hardware device has failed.

Inside Windows Azure: the cloud operating system by Mark Russinovich

Mark Russinovich goes under the hood of Microsoft’s new cloud OS . Intended for developers that have already gotten their hands dirty with Windows Azure and understand its basic concepts, this session gives an inside look at the architectural design of Windows Azure’s compute platform. You’ll learn about Microsoft’s data center architecture, what goes on behind the scenes when you deploy and update a Windows Azure app and how it monitors and responds to the health of machines, its own components and the apps it hosts.

Identity and access management for Windows Azure apps by Vittorio Bertocci

This talk discusses the role of the Windows Azure AppFabric Access Control Service (ACS) in managing identity and access control for apps running on the Windows platform . ACS offers developers the means to offload most of the complexity of handling authentication, regardless of where the app will be hosted or from where it will be consumed, to a cloud-hosted service. After a brief introduction to the approach behind ACS, the talk will highlight how developers can take advantage of Windows Identity Foundation to easily connect to ACS, and will demonstrate various scenarios ACS unlocks such as enabling Windows 8 apps to authenticate users from Facebook, Google, or Windows Live ID and reusing AD accounts with apps hosted in Windows Azure without requiring Windows Azure Connect

Monitoring and troubleshooting Windows Azure apps by Michael Washam

Your app is in the cloud now, alleviating all of the problems traditional apps had such as performance issues, crashes and memory leaks, right? Join us as we dig deep into Windows Azure diagnostics with PowerShell and other techniques you can use from instrumentation to debugging to keep your app safe from problems that go bump in the night.

Using cloud storage from Windows apps by Wade Wegner

Modern apps don't just store data on local disks. Your users expect to have 24/7 access to their files and settings wherever they go. This session will show you how you can use Windows Azure Storage and SQL Azure to store your data to give your users the experience they expect. We will have an in depth look into how to handle scale so that your app gives your users the data they want when they want it. We will also look at the security solutions available on Windows Azure to ensure your user's data remains protected. You will leave this session with an understanding of when and how to use each of the various storage solutions in the Windows Azure platform to enhance your modern Windows app.

Scalability, Elasticity, SQL, Windows Azure, Database
SAC-861T
Day 4
Slides
MP4
WMV (Medium)
WMV (High)

Building loosely-coupled apps with Windows Azure Service Bus Topics and Queues by Clemens Vasters

In this session, you will learn how the new publish and subscribe messaging capabilities provided by the Windows Azure Service Bus can be used to interconnect services and apps. You will see examples of using pub/sub for decoupled communications inside Windows Azure using Queues and Topics, and you will also learn how to use Service Bus to bridge between services spread across cloud and local servers. Finally, you will see how Windows and Windows Phone apps can use the Service Bus to build continuous client experiences.

Delivering notifications with the Windows Push Notification Service and Windows Azure by Darren Louie and Nick Harris

Notifications extend the reach of your app to the desktop but with a large user base timely delivery can be challenging without the right tools. In this session we’ll review the notification options available to modern apps, demonstrate how you can deliver notifications using Windows Azure, and discuss features provided by Windows Azure to scale your notification solution. By the end of this session you will understand how to use Windows Azure to rapidly develop a notification enabled service for Windows apps.

Building apps with Windows Workflow Foundation and Windows Azure by Jurgen Willis and Josh Twist

Windows Workflow Foundation shipped with .NET 4 and is a great way to build extensible apps, model long-running processes and orchestrate services. In this session, we’ll look at the options available to leverage Workflow Foundation in Windows Azure, starting with the capabilities on offer today, before taking a peek into the future and looking at some new features that the team is working on for running and managing workflows in Azure.

Scalability, Elasticity, Windows Azure, .NET Framework, Workflow
SAC-867T
Day 4
Slides
MP4
WMV (Medium)
WMV (High)

Building device & cloud apps by Wade Wegner

So, you’re building apps that span multiple devices apps and you’re curious about what the cloud can offer. Is it possible to deploy scalable Web apps and services on Windows Azure? How about storing data in the cloud? Is it possible to use the cloud for push notifications to the device? In this session, you'll learn how to build Windows 8, Windows Phone, Android and even iOS apps that are backed by scalable cloud services with the Windows Azure platform. This demo-focused session will cover the end-to-end experience and address how to tackle issues such as authentication, storage and notifications across a wide range of devices.

Cloud, Windows Phone, Scalability, Windows Azure
SAC-868T
Day 3
Slides
MP4
WMV (Medium)
WMV (High)

Building global and highly-available services using Windows Azure by David Aiken

Building global and highly-available services requires more than just building a stateless Web app. A myriad of factors need to be considered including architecting for high availability, data replication and traffic management. In this session, you will learn how Windows Azure assists in building and running global and highly-available services.

Building scalable web apps with Windows Azure by Matthew Kerner

Learn proven patterns and practices to build your next scalable Web app. You will see how to harness the power of both the modern browser and the cloud to build a lightning fast Web app. We will go in depth into the architecture of a highly scalable Web app built on Windows Azure and learn how to effectively use various scaling techniques such as asynchronous Web services, cache aside and job queuing on Windows Azure. Additionally, we will demonstrate when and how to use the various data storage solutions in Windows Azure to maximize performance. You will leave this session with the code samples, tools, and knowledge you need to scale your next Web app.

Async, Scalability, Elasticity, Windows Azure
SAC-870T
Day 4
Slides
MP4
WMV (Medium)
WMV (High)

Building social games for Windows 8 with Windows Azure by Nathan Totten

Building a great social gaming experience for your users can be a challenging task. Your game has to be well designed, have a great user interface and perform under the most demanding conditions. This session will show how Windows 8 empowers you to build great user experiences with languages and tools you already know, and how Windows Azure can enable new scenarios in your games. We will discuss proven and effective patterns such as message queuing and background processing that you can use to build high -performance services on Windows Azure. We will demonstrate various technologies such as Windows Azure CDN and Traffic Manager that will allow you to scale your game to millions of users around the world. You will leave this session with concrete examples and code that you can use to build a great social games on Windows 8.

Building Windows 8 and Windows Azure apps by Steve Marx

This session discusses both the fundamental concepts of Windows Azure and how it can be applied to provide connected experiences for Windows 8 users. After covering fundamentals, we will demonstrate how to use the development environment, consume Windows Azure compute and storage and ultimately the various app deployment methods. At the end of this session, you will be empowered to begin building and deploying your own Windows 8 and Windows Azure apps.

F# 3.0: data, services, Web, cloud, at your fingertips by Don Syme

Modern programming thrives on rich spaces of data, information and services. With F# 3.0 and Visual Studio 11, you now have a tool that massively simplifies information-rich analytical programming. F# 3.0 provides integrated support for F# Information Rich Programming, a new and powerful way of integrating data and services into your programming experience. In this talk, we will describe the new features of F# 3.0, including the first released version of F# Type Providers and F# Queries, with apps to leverage technologies such as SharePoint, Azure Data Market, OData, Entity Framework and SQL Server.

Inside Windows Azure storage: what's new and under the hood deep dive by Brad Calder

Windows Azure Storage provides a scalable and reliable storage service for accessing Blobs, Tables, and Queues for Microsoft's new cloud OS. In this session, you will learn in depth about new Blob, Table and Queue features and how to use the new Windows Azure Storage Analytics to understand your app's usage of storage. In addition, you'll get an under-the-hood tour of the architecture and design of Windows Azure Storage, and you will learn what goes on behind the scenes to replicate, load balance and scale out access to your data.

Scalability, Elasticity, SQL, Windows Azure
SAC-961T
Day 2
Slides
MP4
WMV (Medium)
WMV (High)

Taking your Application Lifecycle Management to the cloud with the Team Foundation Service by Doug Neumann

You’ve heard about the brand new Team Foundation Service that brings together Team Foundation Server and Windows Azure and now it’s time to find out how to get started. In this talk we’ll start you off with creating your account, setting up projects, issue tracking and much more. We’ll also show you how Team Foundation Service differs from Team Foundation Server and what that means to you.

Cloud Computing

Power your app with Live services by Dare Obasanjo

Windows 8 enables users to log into any device with a single Microsoft account and continuously interact with your app on all of their devices. Your customers will expect the ability to bring their documents, photos, videos, and contacts with them as they move between their devices. Come see how you can enable great on-the-go experiences by integrating Live services into your app. You’ll learn how to take advantage of single sign on using a Microsoft account instead of creating your own authentication infrastructure. You’ll also see how to use the SkyDrive service for free cloud-based storage of your customers’ photos, videos, and documents. We’ll dive into the details of the Live SDK and show how to use Visual Studio to easily enable these experiences.

The complete developer's guide to the SkyDrive API by Steve Gordon

More and more users are becoming familiar with the concept of "the Cloud." More than ever, users are storing their data in the Cloud. SkyDrive is one of the world's leading cloud storage and document collaboration services. Learn how you can easily allow your users to read and write documents, photos, and other files from/to their SkyDrive via simple REST APIs.

Metro style apps, Cloud, Roaming, REST

Making apps social and connected with HTTP services by Alexander Corradini and Suhail Khalid

People want apps that are social and connected - enabling them to upload pictures and share them with friends, download magazines, read news, or use the next big service on the Internet. Today’s popular services allow users to do these things over HTTP, but this can be tedious because of lengthy documentation, various authentication protocols and response formats. Come learn how Windows 8 makes it easy to provide a great social and connected experience by providing these HTTP services through a platform that is simple, rich, and enables multitasking - keeping your customers engaged in your apps.

Building Xbox LIVE games for Windows 8 by Avi Ben-Menahem

Xbox LIVE, Microsoft's premier entertainment service, is coming to Windows 8. Whether you are developing a game or another kind of entertainment app for Windows 8, Xbox LIVE can help your app stand out in the crowd and help engage and delight users. You will learn about how to implement our well-loved features like Achievements, Multiplayer, Avatars and Community and brand new ones like roaming storage and profiles

Using Windows Server 8 for building private and public IaaS clouds by Sandeep Singhal, Jeff Woolsey and Yigal Edery

Windows Server 8 is the first operating system to be optimized to support Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) for building private and public clouds. With Windows Server 8, customers will be able to build scalable and flexible clouds, rapidly migrate their existing apps and services, and efficiently manage and monitor the cloud. With hundreds of new features in Hyper-V, encompassing networking, storage and more, Windows Server 8 creates several new opportunities for software, hardware and solution partners, as well as hosters, to extend and manage clouds. This session provides an overview of how Windows Server 8 enables IaaS and the rich, new development opportunities provided by the release.

Cloud, OEM, Scalability, Virtualization, Elasticity
SAC-429T
Day 2
Slides
MP4
WMV (Medium)
WMV (High)

Designing the building blocks for a Windows Server 8 cloud by Ross Ortega and Yigal Edery

When building servers, networks and storage for cloud scale data centers, many complex tradeoffs and technologies must be considered. These tradeoffs include performance, reliability, security, flexible virtual machine deployment, storage architecture selection and interoperability with the existing architecture. Each choice influences the other considerations. This session presents a few canonical architectures that highlight interesting tradeoffs for the design of servers and systems focused on cloud deployments.

Cloud, OEM, Scalability, Virtualization, Elasticity
SAC-430T
Day 3
Slides
MP4
WMV (Medium)
WMV (High)

Network acceleration and other NIC technologies for the data center by Don Stanwyck and Michael Nanakul

Clouds place new demands on performance and scalability. Partners can build cloud-scale infrastructure with Windows Server 8. In this session, we will cover several new technologies that make it possible for platform and hardware partners to provide performant and cost-effective cloud scale solutions.

Enabling multi-tenancy and converged fabric for the cloud using QoS by Charley Wen and Richard Wurdack

Converged fabric and multi-tenancy pose new challenges in the data center where businesses are required to provide predictable network performance and SLAs. Today, a common solution is costly hardware overprovisioning and complex wiring. In this session, we will describe how Windows Server 8 enables data centers to use QoS and DCB-capable hardware to guarantee network bandwidth to a service. Because Windows Server 8 provides predictable network performance in a converged fabric environment, businesses will be able to virtualize and consolidate network I/O intensive workloads on a single 10GbE NIC thereby reducing costs and improving service. Partners, through familiar PowerShell and WMI interfaces, will be able to integrate these QoS features to provide a better service on Windows Server 8.

Building secure, scalable multi-tenant clouds using Hyper-V Network Virtualization by Murari Sridharan and Yu-Shun Wang

'Any service at any server in any cloud.' Next generation data centers should allow dynamic resource allocation and consolidation across large resource pools. The topological constrains of today’s data center networks limit how services can be assigned to servers. Windows Server 8 enables you to create an agile, multi-tenant cloud on top of your existing infrastructure by virtualizing the network. Network virtualization decouples server configuration from network configuration to provide a virtual dedicated network to each tenant. This allows seamless migration of workloads, while continuing to provide security isolation between tenants. Partners have the opportunity to become multi-tenancy aware and provide the next generation of services, devices, appliances, both physical and virtual, to augment and complete the Windows offering to build secure, scalable, multi-tenant public and private clouds.

Cloud, OEM, Scalability, Virtualization, Elasticity
SAC-442T
Day 3
Slides
MP4
WMV (Medium)
WMV (High)

Optimal cloud performance with BranchCache by Andrew Cunningham and Tyler Barton

The cloud has enormous potential to reduce operational expenses and achieve new levels of scale, but moving workloads away from the people who depend on them can increase networking costs and hurt productivity. Users expect high performance and don’t care where their apps are hosted. BranchCache can improve the performance of cloud-based apps and reduce bandwidth consumption with a shared cache of data. It speeds up HTTP and SMB communication without requiring app changes or new infrastructure in the office or the data center. In this session, we’ll explore the BranchCache platform and protocols, and explain how they can be used to optimize apps deployed in public and private clouds.

Performance, Cloud, Scalability, Storage
SAC-592T
Day 3
Slides
MP4
WMV (Medium)
WMV (High)

Create experiences that span devices by John Sheehan

Your customers will expect your app to deliver a continuous experience even as they switch between apps and move between their devices. Come learn how to ensure your customers never lose their place in your app even when it is moved to the background or accessed on a new device. You will also discover how to enable customers to personalize your app with settings and ensure those settings flow automatically to all of their devices. We will show you how you can enable this continuous, cloud-powered experience with only a few lines of code.

BizTalk Server 2010 Unleashed has shipped!

2011-09-16T16:43:42Z

I am proud to say that BizTalk Server 2010 Unleashed has finally shipped.

This is my eighth book. It never ceases to amaze me how long this process can take when you’re working with a bunch of highly-skilled super-busy individuals.

This book is actually the second BizTalk “Unleashed” book I have done. The first was back in the days when BizTalk Server 2004 was released, where I had the honor of working with Scott Woodgate (that name means something to longtime BizTalkers) and Stephen Mohr on BizTalk Server 2004 Unleashed, which was at the time the definitive reference book for BizTalk developers.

For this new book, I was able to assemble a “dream team” of BizTalk MVPs and experts. The author team (with Twitter handles) is:

me (@brianloesgen)
Charles Young (@cnayoung)
Jan Eliasen (@jan_eliasen)
Scott Colestock (@scolestock)
Anush Kumar
Jon Flanders (@jonflanders)

It was an honor working with this stellar team to create this book. I’d also like to thank the team at SAMS for their professionalism and great work throughout the process.

Somewhere along the line, we doubled the size of the book, an indication of the depth of the content we incorporated into it.

So BizTalkers, there you go, you can order it now. Enjoy!

Staying cool under pressure

2011-08-29T00:19:26Z

Usually when I do travel posts it’s about good stuff. This one is not. This one is about a potentially catastrophic experience I had yesterday, I decided to post it because I’ve always wondered what this would feel like, and now I know.

I’m advanced diver, over 300 dives in many parts of the world in many different conditions. In those dives I’ve my share of “exciting moments” (just like anyone driving a car might while driving). However, in the past, my exciting moments have always involved wildlife, and generally very large wildlife. This was different.

Picture this: morning in Cozumel Mexico. I’m diving with a high-end dive shop, with top notch ultra-experienced and qualified dive masters. I am nitrox (enriched air, more oxygen) certified, and we have nitrox. I’m on the boat with my son, four other advanced divers, dive master and captain. It’s a beautiful morning. We decided to go to Punta Sur and do “Devil’s Throat”, a favorite dive, very advanced, but not without risks. It’s deep (~110ft, ~30m), and there are confined passageways. This is absolutely not for the casual diver, and only a small percentage of divers in Cozumel go there.

We hit the water, and everything is fine. We start our descent. On the way down I noticed I was having a little trouble equalizing, but nothing serious or too unusual, but nowhere near enough to abort the dive. At about 90ft, my equalization problems get worse. Shortly after, we start on the passageways.

We’re swimming in the passageways in a pre-determined single file order and continuing do descend. My left ear won’t clear. I know better than to force it, as that could rupture my ear drum and put a damper on the rest of the trip. Because my ear won’t clear, the water pressure around me now exceeds the air pressure in my middle ear. In layman’s terms: “it hurts”. But it didn’t hurt so badly that I wanted to abort (awkward given I was Number 3 and there were 3 other divers behind me). So, I sucked it up and carried on.

(here’s the hard part, I am going to try to eloquently convey what happened next, although I don’t think words come close to describing the feeling I had).

First, I lost all sense of direction, I didn’t know what was up and what was down. I looked at my computer, I was at 105ft (you can’t just “pop up” to the surface from there).

Next, things started to spin slowly. I it was like I was in a tunnel with my body spinning on axis, only I knew it wasn’t, my brain was making it seem this way.

Next came the really fun part, the spinning accelerated, and my vision started to blur. Although I think my body was still, my eyes were seeing this crazily spinning-out-of-control vortex, and it was spinning FAST. Remember 2001 A Space Odyssey, or when spaceships in movies go to warp speed? It was like that, a chaotic kaleidoscopic swirling blur rotating impossibly fast. If I concentrated really hard, I could get enough visual stability to kind of get a sense of what was directly in front of me, but just that, only a rough idea, I couldn’t really see it.

I knew where I was, I was totally lucid, I knew how much time I had left at that depth (105ft!), and most importantly I stayed calm. The passage got darker and turned downwards at 90 degrees. I’m not sure how I managed to do that downward turn, but I’ll bet I wasn’t very graceful.

Next, fortunately, we emerged from the passageway, and were in open water, although still in a confined space. The two divers ahead of me had gone on, but I didn’t know that at the time. I couldn’t orient myself or communicate with my fellow divers (it’d be like being in a spinning clothes dryer try to write on a slate). I could only see blurs, and could not tell what was a diver, a coral head or water. It was very disconcerting, a quick descent into utter incomprehensible madness. Worst perhaps was that I knew I couldn’t believe what my eyes were telling my brain they were seeing, because I knew it wasn’t real. My only thought was: “Stay calm. What can I do now to get out of this?”.

Somewhere in all of that there was a “pop” in my left ear. Because I was so disoriented, I don’t know if that was before or after my “wild light-speed kaleidoscope ride”, but after that, the pain in my ear was fine. Some place in the back of my brain I started wondering if I had just ruptured my ear drum, but that was the least of my problems at the time.

Eventually, everything stopped turning, and the vision blur went away. I completed the dive, ascended with no issues, and went on to do the second dive (without incident) a shipwreck that was shallower, but there were enclosed passageways, ascending decks, dark places, etc. I was understandably a bit nervous after my “swirling vortex” encounter a few hours prior, but had no problems. Then, I even did a night dive, which was a record (for me) 2 hours long, and just spectacular.

This morning I thought it may be an idea to get my ear looked at. Verdict: inner ear infection. Doctor said “don’t dive for 3 or 4 days”, I said “I understand what you’re saying, but NO! That’s not going to happen. I’m only here for a few more days. Give me whatever it takes to make me better FAST”. So: shot of steroids (“so strong we can only do this once”), high dose of a special type of targeted Amoxicillin, and an anti-inflammatory that is not approved for use in the US/UK/Canada, has been banned in some countries. But the EU says the benefits outweigh the risks, so I’ll go with that. She didn’t seem surprised at my reaction, I’ll bet most advanced divers say the same, “just fix it”.

Morals of this story:

always always remain calm on a dive, no matter what
never underestimate the effects of sinus/inner ear/ear infections on a dive
never exceed the limits of you abilities. I was able to handle what I went through because of training and experience, others with less experience/confidence could have had a far worse outcome

Three Azure Announcements on August Three

2011-08-04T15:53:23Z

Yesterday there was a flurry of announcements from the Windows Azure team, they were 3 for 3 on August 3. As there were three significant ones on the same day, I thought that warranted a blog post.

New Release of the Platform Training kit

A new release of the best resource going to learn about Windows Azure. Even if you’re experienced with the platform, it’s worth re-visiting this from time to time as the training kit is constantly evolving and getting richer.

You can get the training kit here.

New release of Windows Azure tools for Visual Studio 2010

Highlights are:

Profile applications running in Windows Azure
Create ASP.Net MVC3 Web Roles
Manage multiple service configurations in one cloud project
Improved validation of Windows Azure packages

You can download (using the Web Platform Installer) the tools here.

Windows Azure Storage Analytics

Logs and metrics around your Windows Azure storage (blobs, tables, queues) usage.

The Windows Azure team blog can be found at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/

New Video Tour of Microsoft Data Centers

2011-07-27T17:15:45Z

Earlier this year I have the pleasure of touring the data center in Chicago (which includes an Azure data center). I’ve been to many data centers before, but I was blown away by what I saw and heard. For obvious reasons, I couldn’t take pictures or blog about any of it (although I wanted to!).

The Microsoft data centers are run by our Global Foundation Services team. They do an amazing job, and are leading innovators in the data center space. A few days ago they released a video tour of some of the data centers. If you’ve ever wondered where exactly your Azure applications go when you deploy, what’s behind the Content Delivery Network (CDN) that Azure uses, or what goes on when you Bing search something, watch the video.

They are doing a phenomenal job of optimization, from power optimization through to cost and operational efficiencies. If you watch the video, I think you’ll be as impressed as I was.

Enjoy!

Multiple Windows Live IDs and Windows Azure

2011-07-21T19:04:29Z

[updated 7/21: added Wade’s tip as Tactic 4]

I have multiple Windows Live IDs (WLID), which has caused some confusion when I try to use the Windows Azure portal as I may have already signed in using another WLID, one that is not linked to my Azure account. I know this won’t be a common problem out there, but I am sure other people are in the same situation, so I thought I’d do a blog post about how to make this easier.

Tactic 1: Co-admin

[Thanks to David Aiken for this simple and effective approach, this is the one I will use from here on in]

A portal update earlier this year allowed have multiple administrators for a Windows Azure account. All you have to do is add the second WLID as a co-admin, and you’re done. This is seamless, transparent and elegant.

Tactic 2: In-private Browsing

Open a new instance of Internet Explorer, enable in-private browsing (Ctrl-Shift-P). When you go to the Azure portal you will be asked for a WLID (even if you are logged in outside that browser session with another WLID.

Tactic 3: Use a VM

I am a huge fan of VMs anyhow, and cringe when I install developer tools on my host/productivity machine. As these are separate machines, you can obviously use whichever WLID you want in either machine. However, even though I do development in a VM whenever possible, sometimes I won’t have a VM running and want to jump into the portal for something, in which case I will use Tactic 1.

Tactic 4: Use –nomerge

[Thanks to Wade Wegner for telling me about this one]

You can also use the –nomerge switch with Internet Explorer:

“C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe” -nomerge

Windows Azure Toolkit for Social Games!

2011-07-20T22:31:30Z

Just released yesterday folks… imagine… here’s a rough plan:

write a game, sell it for $2 each
sell 20 million copies
go shopping in your brand new Lamborghini

Enjoy!

http://watgames.codeplex.com/

Camp Time in San Diego, Cloud Camp and Code Camp this week

2011-06-13T19:18:58Z

[updated: San Diego CodeCamp is June 25/26]

We have two camps happening this week and next week in San Diego (and they’re pretty much guaranteed to be “bear free”, unlike this).

I will be speaking at both of them.

Tuesday June 14th, Cloud Camp, Hyatt Regency Mission Bay, 6:00PM, details here. This is the second Cloud Camp in San Diego this year, the first one was extremely well attended, and there was great feedback. This is an “un-conference” with no pre-designated session agenda, but, it’s a safe bet I’ll be in an Azure session.

Then, ~~this~~ NEXT weekend (Saturday and Sunday) brings the annual Code Camp. It will be held at UCSD at 9600 N. Torrey Pines Rd., La Jolla, CA 92037, and you can register for Code Camp here.

I will be doing three sessions (follow the links for details and registration):

The good news is that my three sessions are all on Saturday, in the order shown, in room 111. The bad news is that this means I’ll be speaking for 4 hours non-stop, so there will be Red Bull involved and perhaps throat lozenges. But, if you’ve been wondering about Azure, or using it, this is a great way to get a solid dose of it!