Windows Azure Platform Overview

Editor's Notes

• #3: Slide Objectives:Explain how Microsoft thinks of the cloudSpeaking Points:There are numerous terms and definitions floating around in the industry for “the cloud”, “cloud computing”, “cloud services”, etc.Microsoft thinks of the cloud as simply an approach to computing that enables applications to be delivered at scale for a variety of workloads and client devices.The cloud can help deliver IT as a standardized service…freeing you up to focus on your business
• #4: Slide Objectives:Understand the challenges of irregular load in applicationsUnderstand the challenges of both too much capacity and not enough capacity and the sort of groups they impact within a customerUnderstand that traditionally IT capacity is purchased in a stepwise fashion involving capital expenditure at each pointSpeaking Points:To understand the value and opportunity for cloud computing, I believe it’s important to think about how IT capacity is typically used by applications today in most environments.Today most organizations significantly over estimate or underestimate the amount of resources they need to run their applications.This leads to a higher cost for the infrastructure and the delivery of the overall applications. Build Steps:Forecast load is to grow steadilyPlanned capacity grows in a stepwise fashion. Need to plan in advance due to hardware lead timesActual load is highly variable over timePeriods where we have excess capacity. Capital laying idle, opex wasted powering and cooling serversPeriods where we have insufficient capacity and our customers get a bad experience
• #7: Slide Objectives:Explain the three established terms in the industry for cloud servicesSpeaking Points:With this in mind, it’s important to understand how to talk about our Cloud Services offerings.There is a lot of confusion in the industry when it comes to the cloud. It’s important that you understand both what is happening in the industry and how we think about the cloud. This is the most commonly used taxonomy for differentiating between types of cloud services.The industry has defined three categories of services:IaaS – a set of infrastructure level capabilities such as an operating system, network connectivity, etc. that are delivered as pay for use services and can be used to host applications. PaaS – higher level sets of functionality that are delivered as consumable services for developers who are building applications. PaaS is about abstracting developers from the underlying infrastructure to enable applications to quickly be composed. SaaS – applications that are delivered using a service delivery model where organizations can simply consume and use the application. Typically an organization would pay for the use of the application or the application could be monetized through ad revenue. It is important to note that these 3 types of services may exist independently of one another or combined with one another. SaaS offerings needn’t be developed upon PaaS offerings although solutions built on PaaS offerings are often delivered as SaaS. PaaS offerings also needn’t expose IaaS and there’s more to PaaS than just running platforms on IaaS.
• #8: Slide Objectives:Explain the differences and relationship between IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS in more detail.Speaking Points:Here’s another way to look at the cloud services taxonomy and how this taxonomy maps to the components in an IT infrastructure. Packaged SoftwareWith packaged software a customer would be responsible for managing the entire stack – ranging from the network connectivity to the applications. IaaSWith Infrastructure as a Service, the lower levels of the stack are managed by a vendor. Some of these components can be provided by traditional hosters – in fact most of them have moved to having a virtualized offering. Very few actually provide an OSThe customer is still responsible for managing the OS through the Applications. For the developer, an obvious benefit with IaaS is that it frees the developer from many concerns when provisioning physical or virtual machines. This was one of the earliest and primary use cases for Amazon Web Services Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2). Developers were able to readily provision virtual machines (AMIs) on EC2, develop and test solutions and, often, run the results ‘in production’. The only requirement was a credit card to pay for the services.PaaSWith Platform as a Service, everything from the network connectivity through the runtime is provided and managed by the platform vendor. The Windows Azure Platform best fits in this category today. In fact because we don’t provide access to the underlying virtualization or operating system today, we’re often referred to as not providing IaaS.PaaS offerings further reduce the developer burden by additionally supporting the platform runtime and related application services. With PaaS, the developer can, almost immediately, begin creating the business logic for an application. Potentially, the increases in productivity are considerable and, because the hardware and operational aspects of the cloud platform are also managed by the cloud platform provider, applications can quickly be taken from an idea to reality very quickly.SaaSFinally, with SaaS, a vendor provides the application and abstracts you from all of the underlying components.
• #10: Speaking Points:I suspect most if not all of you in this room are familiar with the Windows Azure Platform today.Today the platform consists of a set of foundational services SQL Azure relational databaseAppFabric provides services that can be used by any apps – hosted in Windows Azure, on-premises, or hosted in another environment. Questions:How many of you are building applications for Windows Azure?How many are using SQL Azure?How many are using the Access Control service today? The Service Bus?Notes:Windows Azure StoryWe are building an open platform to run your applications in the cloud. Your apps are .NET, Java, PHP, etc. We love everyone.We are going to help you migrate your existing apps to the cloud. The cloud platform is the future. Enables scale, self-service, lowers friction, etc. We provide the best cloud platform for building new apps. (aka n-tier, web services, etc.)
• #11: Recommended demos from the Windows Azure Platform Training Kit:Hello Windows Azure
• #12: Slide objectives: Summarize what the audience just saw with the Hello Windows Azure demo.Speaking Points: What you sawSo we just saw a number of things within this simple demo.First you saw a simple ASP.NET web application, like many of you have built before.We created the application using Visual Studio 2010, tools many of you are familiar with.We were able to model the roles and instances for our Windows Azure application in a simple config file.You saw how the Windows Azure development fabric provides a local environment for developing, debugging, and testing our applications – which is integrated directly with Visual Studio. Finally, you saw how we could deploy our applications to Windows Azure and in a matter of minutes have the application running in the cloud and switch from staging to production.What Windows Azure ProvidedWhat is more exciting then this simple application is what you didn’t see, but what Windows Azure provided.First, Windows Azure provided an environment to run code – to run our ASP.NET application.It provided all of the infrastructure such as machines, rack space, connectivity, and switches.It also automated and simplified the deployment and configuration. At no point did we have to remote into machines or FTP files or synchronize our application across machines. This automated service management was provided by Windows Azure.Windows Azure also provided isolation for us – where our application is isolated from other apps that either we would develop or other organizations would develop. We also saw how by simply specifying the number of instances in the service model, Windows Azure delivered key capabilities such as redundancy and load balancing for our application.Ultimately, what this results in is abstraction and flexibility.
• #13: Slide Objectives:Introduce Windows Azure Storage and some of the key features/capabilities of the storage serviceSpeaking Points:The design point is for the cloud is availability of storage, there are 3 replicas of data, and we implement guaranteed consistency. In the future there will be some transaction support and this is why we use guaranteed consistency.There are 4 types of storageTables = Key value storeQueues = a simple queuing mechanismBlobs = Binary file storage in the cloudDrives = A mechanism that allows a VHD in a blob to be mounted as an NTFS drive into a Compute roleBlobs, tables, and queues hosted in the cloud, close to your computation Authenticated access and triple replication to help keep your data safe Easy access to data with simple REST interfaces, available remotely and from the data centerAccess is via a storage account – you can have multiple storage accounts per live id.Although the native API is REST web service, there is a .NET storage client in the SDK that. This makes working with storage much easier from .NET
• #14: Slide Objectives:Understand basic concept of a CDNUnderstand at a high level how Windows Azure CDN worksSpeaking Points:The Windows Azure CDN provides edge nodes around the worldData stored in CDN enabled storage accounts is retrieved from the origin storage container and cached at each edge node in a lazy load fashionWindows Azure Customers have control over how long data is cached for.Windows Azure CDN has 20 locations globally (United States, Europe, Asia, Australia and South America) and continues to expandThe benefit of using a CDN is better performance and user experience for users who are farther from the source of the content stored in the Windows Azure Blob service. Windows Azure CDN provides worldwide high-bandwidth access to serve content for popular events.Noteshttp://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2009/11/05/introducing-the-windows-azure-content-delivery-network.aspx
• #16: Slide Objectives:Introduction to SQL AzureExplain SQL Azure DatabaseIndicate that other services are coming in the futureSpeaking Points:SQL Azure provides Microsoft SQL Server in the cloudBroadly compatible with online SQL ServerIn the future other services are plannedDataSync- to sync data between On premise and the cloudNotesCloud-based relational database service built on SQL Server® technologies. It provides a highly available, scalable, multi-tenant database service hosted by Microsoft in the cloud. SQL Azure Database helps to ease provisioning and deployment of multiple databases. Developers do not have to install, setup, patch or manage any software. High availability and fault tolerance is built-in and no physical administration is required.http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/sqlazure/ http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9686976
• #17: Slide Objectives:Understand the key differentiators of SQL AzureUnderstand where a user has control and where the cloud runs thingsSpeaking Points:SQL Azure provides highly available SQL Server.Appears to be a SQL Server to the client.In reality is 3 transitionally consistent copies of the database that are fronted by a Gateway that appears to be a SQL serverSimple to provision- create a logical server in the Portal, execute a create DB Command to create a new databaseCan add and remove DBs easily from application to scale up and downCustomers look after logical optimizations like indexesSQL Azure manages the physical databaseNo need to install or patch software or other physical administrationAutomatic high availability and fault toleranceSimple provisioning and deployment of multiple databasesScale databases up or down based on business needsMulti-tenantIntegration with SQL Server and tooling including Visual StudioSupport for T-SQL based familiar relational database modelNoteshttp://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/sqlazure/http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsazure/sqlazure/default.aspx
• #18: Speaking Points:Another new service we’ll be introducing is SQL Azure Reporting. With SQL Azure Reporting we’re effectively delivering SQL Server Reporting services….well, as a serviceAgain, you don’t have to install or manage software inside of machine instances. Instead, you simply provision, configure, and use the service.Reports can be authored using existing tools and then simply uploaded to SQL Azure ReportingNotes:Report developers can author reports against data in SQL Azure using existing toolsReports can have rich Data Visualizations (Maps, Charts, Tablix) and can be exported to variety of rendering formats (Excel, Word, PDF)Developers/ISVs can use SOAP Web Service APIs to view and manage reportsURL access to directly view reports in IEagainst the Reporting ServiceDevelopers can embed Report Viewer control into Windows Azure application to render reports in connected mode
• #19: Slide Objectives: Define and enumerate the Windows Azure Platform AppfabricSpeaking Points: Much in the same way that SQL Services is about extending SQL Server to the cloud, we are also extending key .NET capabilities to the cloud as services.We call this the Windows Azure AppFabric. These services are really key components you would need for building distributed, connected applications. When we talk about connecting to your existing on-premises applications and enabling the composition of hybrid (Cloud + on-premises) applications – that is where the AppFabric really comes in.There are currently two AppFabric Services: the Service Bus & the Access Control ServiceService Bus:The Service Bus is designed to provide a general purpose application bus, available on the internet at internet scale. You can really thin of the Service Bus as being similar to an Enterprise Service Bus that many enterprise organizations have today. However, we believe that when providing a Service Bus as a programmable service on the internet, there are a wider range of scenarios for many more types of organizations.Fundamentally, the .NET Service Bus is about connecting applications across network and application boundaries and making key message exchange patterns such as publish and subscribe messaging very simple.Access Control:The Access Control service is designed to provide rules-driven, claims-based access control for applications. Essentially, this allows you to define authorization rules for your applications using the claims-based approach that we are adopting within many Microsoft products and technologies and that is becoming adopted in the industry.Notes: Windows Azure has the .NET Framework built into it so thatyou can use those services within your application.But just like your application must be designed to scale out, the services that we have built into Windows over time in .NET also need to be designed and built in a way that can scale out naturally. We want to create services for you, and that's the purpose of the AppFabric, creating a pool of resources available to you to take advantage of and do things within your application very simply. So we're including a built-in, scale-out implementation of a service bus. The service bus lets you connect your on-premises systems securely into the cloud, into the Azure environment, while allowing your data and your information to traverse firewalls, solving a problem that is a bane of many application developments.
• #20: Speaking Points:One of the new services that we’ll be announcing next month at PDC is the AppFabric Cache ServiceAppFabric Cache is a distributed, in-memory application cache for Windows Azure applicationsThere are two primary use cases for the AppFabric CacheFirst, as a session state provider for Windows Azure applicationsSecondly, as a data cache layer for Windows Azure Applications that use SQL Azure Databases or Windows Azure StorageIt’s important to understand that AppFabric Cache is provided as a serviceInstead of having to install or manage software on machines or instances, you simply provision, configure, and use the serviceThis service abstraction also provides more flexibility – so you can dynamically increase or decrease the cache size as neededFinally, with AppFabric Cache is uses the same programming model for both the cloud and on-premises with it’s on-premises equivalent being the Windows Server AppFabric Cache.
• #21: Speaking Points:At PDC09 we introduced a new way to find and discover data called “Dallas”Dallas is effectively a marketplace for discovering, purchasing, and selling dataSince the PDC we’ve been adding some new data providers and also improving the overall experienceAt PDC10 in just a month we’ll announce the released version of Dallas along with new data providers, improved OData support, and a new portal.One thing that is also interesting about Dallas is that it is entirely built on the Windows Azure Platform
• #22: Slide ObjectiveUnderstand that Microsoft has a long history in running data centres and online applications. Bing, Live, Hotmail etc….Understand the huge amount of innovation going on at the data center levelSpeaking Points:Microsoft is one of the largest operators of datacenters in the worldYears of ExperienceLarge scale trustworthy environmentsDriving for cost and environmental efficientlyWindows Azure runs in 3 regions and 6 datacenters todayData center innovation is driving improved reliability and efficiencyPUE = Power Usage Effectiveness = Total Facility power/IT Systems Power = Indication of efficiency of DCUnder 1.8 is very good, modern cloud DCs approaching 1.2Multi-billion dollar datacenter investment700,000+ square foot Chicago and the 300,000+ square foot Dublin, Ireland data centersMicrosoft cloud services provide the reliability and security you expect for your business: 99.9% uptime SLA, 24/7 support. Microsoft understands the needs of businesses with respect to security, data privacy, compliance and risk management, and identity and access control. Microsoft datacenters are ISO 27001:2005 accredited, with SAS 70 Type I and Type II attestations.Notes:http://www.globalfoundationservices.com/http://blogs.msdn.com/the_power_of_software/archive/2008/06/20/microsoft-s-pue-experience-years-of-experience-reams-of-data.aspxhttp://blogs.msdn.com/the_power_of_software/archive/2008/06/27/part-2-why-is-energy-efficiency-important.aspx
• #25: Slide Objectives:Provide overview and detail on pricingDiscuss localization of pricingSpeaking Points:Windows Azure is charged per compute hour.Pricing is localized for global marketsDifferent VM sizes have a different number of CPUs and therefore are a multiple the single CPU rateCompute time, measured in service hours: Windows Azure compute hours are charged only for when your application is deployed.remove the compute instances that are not being used to minimize compute hour billing. Partial compute hours are billed as full hours.Storage, measured in GB: Storage is metered in units of average daily amount of data stored (in GB) over a monthly period. Data transfers measured in GB (transmissions to and from the Windows Azure datacenter).Data transfers within a sub region are free. Transactions, measured as application requests to the REST serviceSQL Azure is priced on a per database per month basisAppFabric Service Bus is based on a per connection modelAppFabric Access control is based on a per transaction modelAppFabric Service Bus connections can be provisioned individually on a “pay-as-you-go” basis or in a pack of 5, 25, 100 or 500 connections. For individually provisioned connections, you will be charged based on the maximum number of connections you use for each day. For connection packs, you will be charged daily for a pro rata amount of the connections in that pack (i.e., the number of connections in the pack divided by the number of days in the month). You can only update the connections you provision as a pack once every seven days. You can modify the number of connections you provision individually at any time.For AppFabric Access Control transactions, customers will be charged the actual number of transactions utilized for the billing period (i.e., not in discrete blocks of 100,000 transactions), plus data transfers in or out.Notes:http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/pricing/http://blogs.msdn.com/b/netservices/archive/2010/01/04/announcing-windows-azure-platform-commercial-offer-availability-and-updated-appfabric-pricing.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/pricing/
• #28: Speaking Points:At PDC10 in just over a month, we will introduce several new services including: Caching and Reporting. We will also have a new CTP for the Data Sync Service and Project Dallas will be finally available. Let’s drill into these services in a bit more detail.--Speaking Points:I suspect most if not all of you in this room are familiar with the Windows Azure Platform today.Today the platform consists of a set of foundational services SQL Azure relational databaseAppFabric provides services that can be used by any apps – hosted in Windows Azure, on-premises, or hosted in another environment. Questions:How many of you are building applications for Windows Azure?How many are using SQL Azure?How many are using the Access Control service today? The Service Bus?Notes:Windows Azure StoryWe are building an open platform to run your applications in the cloud. Your apps are .NET, Java, PHP, etc. We love everyone.We are going to help you migrate your existing apps to the cloud. The cloud platform is the future. Enables scale, self-service, lowers friction, etc. We provide the best cloud platform for building new apps. (aka n-tier, web services, etc.)
• #30: Slide Objectives:Understand Roles in generalUnderstand Web and Worker Roles at a high levelSpeaking Points:Windows Azure currently supports the following two types of roles:Web role: A web role is a role that is customized for web application programming as supported by IIS 7 and ASP.NET.Worker role: A worker role is a role that is useful for generalized development, and may perform background processing for a web role. A service must include at least one role of either type, but may consist of any number of web roles or worker roles. A worker role is started by a call to a well know managed code interface RoleEntryPoint. A worker role must extend this class and override the Start() methodA web role is a worker role with the addition of IIS being installed. i.e. it has all the features of and can do everything a worker role can do as wellNotes:http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd179341.aspx#Subheading1
• #32: 7 minStart in the new portalShow the new Portal Experience for Windows Azure and SQL AzureMultiple [email protected] – add as a buddy in messengerBrowse to the siteBrowse to our appShow how there are multiple sites running? What happens if you browse using the default URL?Show OS version and familyMention is also in the service configurationShow remoting into a machineMention that RDP works for all role typesServer 2008 R2Point out that there are multiple sites in IISSwitch to Visual StudioShow how we enabled RDP in service configShow how we have multiple sites in the service definition
• #33: Consider explaining stages of rolesRole entry pointWhen tasks execute
• #37: Slide Objectives:Affirm that SQL Azure is just a TDS server. Existing SQL Server consumers can connect to itSpeaking Points:Connecting to SQL Azure is simply a case of changing the connection string.The SQL Azure fabric ensures 3 transitionally consistent replicas of your data You will connect to a SQL Azure TDS gateway, this appears to be a SQL Server but will actually route your requests through to one of the three replicas stored in the DCAvoid injection attacks by using the SqlConnectionStringBuilder class. It is available from the .NET Framework to simplify creating the connection string. For more information, see Connection String Builders (ADO.NET).Carefully protect your connection string. A connection string presents a potential vulnerability if it is not secured. For more information, see Protecting Connection Information (ADO.NET).In order to completely secure your connection, especially when connecting to SQL Azure over the Internet, insure that the ADO.NET Encrypt and TrustServerCertificate connection parameters are set.For general considerations about connecting to databases in SQL Azure, see Guidelines for Connecting to SQL Azure Database.More on security of SQL Azure in Day 3Noteshttp://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee336243.aspx
• #39: Slide Objectives:Explain the SLAs for the Windows Azure PlatformSpeaking Points:
• #40: Slide Objectives:Understand each of the storage types at a high levelSpeaking Points:The Windows Azure storage services provide storage for binary and text data, messages, and structured data in Windows Azure. The storage services include:The Blob service, for storing binary and text dataThe Queue service, for storing messages that may be accessed by a clientThe Table service, for structured storage for non-relational dataWindows Azure drives, for mounting an NTFS volume accessible to code running in your Windows Azure serviceProgrammatic access to the Blob, Queue, and Table services is available via the Windows Azure Managed Library and the Windows Azure storage services REST APINotes:http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazurestorage/archive/2010/03/28/windows-azure-storage-resources.aspx
• #41: Speaking Points:
• #42: Speaking Points:So if you think about what we’ve talked about so far, we are changing the landscape.We believe that the way developers will be building apps is fundamentally changing. Instead of installing and managing software yourself, you can provision, configure, and use services.Applications will consists of numerous services, some of which are provided by the platform – by Microsoft and some of which are provided by 3rd parties.This new approach represents some new challenges as well. For instance,How do you deploy the application as a single unit?How do you upgrade the application as a unit?How can you monitor the application and isolation issues when they occur?How can you meter and track usage?If you’re an ISV, how can you stamp out an instance of this application in a multi-tenant and cost-effective way for your customers?
• #43: Speaking Points:The Composition model is a .NET-based declarative way to represent an application – a complete application.It will provide a way to compose, deploy, and manage an entire application as a single entityIt’s backed by a set of Visual Studio designers and tools as well as a .NET class library. In the cloud there will be a set of runtime services that can deploy and manage a complete application for you.Let me show you some screenshots of what we’re building. You’ll see a full demo on Thursday. Notes:Layers seamlessly on Windows Azure Service ModelExtends the core .NET value propositionModel for composite applications – stateless and statefulRich designer experience in Visual StudioSupports rich composition of artifacts across all tiersEnd-to-end description across development, deployment, and managementTargets Windows Azure and Windows Server (not disclosed at PDC)