Patterns

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December 26, 2011

Windows Azure DevCamp in Farmington, CT

Posted by Bill Wilder under Azure, Bill gave a talk, Cloud Computing, Events, Patterns, Programming, Trip Report
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Earlier this month I hung out with Jim O’Neil at the Farmington, CT offering of the Windows Azure DevCamp series. The format of the camp was a quick-ramp introduction to the Windows Azure Platform followed by some hands-on coding on the RockPaperAzure challenge.

Jim introduced cloud and presented specifics on Blob and Table storage services and SQL Azure. I had the opportunity to present one of the sections – mine was a combination of Windows Azure Compute services + the Windows Azure Queue service with some basics around using these services to assemble “cloud native” applications. The official slides for the Windows Azure DevCamp series appear to be here, though my slides were a little different and are also available (WindowsAzureDeveloperCamp-FarmingtonCT-07Dec2011-BillWilder). At the end, Jim also ran through the creation of a RockPaperAzure “bot” and it was (literally!) game on as attendees raced to create competitive entries.

I took a few photos at the event – some of Jim presenting, some showing participants at the end coming to claim their prizes from the RockPaperAzure challenge – and none from the middle!

 

December 19, 2011

Cloud Architecture Patterns on Azure with North Shore .NET User Group

Posted by Bill Wilder under Azure, Bill gave a talk, Cloud Computing, Events, Patterns
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Last week on Wednesday I went to hang out with a bunch of nice folks in Ipswich, MA at the 2nd meeting of the North Shore .NET User Group. It was an especially fun group with beer served before the talk! :-)

I spoke about Cloud Architecture Patterns like sharding, NoSQL, queue-based compute separation for scalability and reliability – with specific examples from the Windows Azure Platform such as SQL Azure Federations, Azure Table Storage, and Web Role + Queue + Worker Role patterns. The slides from my talk are here: nsnug-big-ideas-in-software-architecture-bill-wilder-14-dec-2011. (UPDATE: Note that I don’t seem to have the exact deck I used for the talk. As Ryan CrawCour pointed out, the deck I posted claims that SQL Azure is limited to 50 GB and Federations has not yet shipped, but at the talk I am certain I presented the 150 GB limit and a recently released Federations. I think I made the changes on the train en route to the event and somehow didn’t save them. Sorry! We’ll need to live with this small skew. Post a comment here if there are questions…)

There was definitely some good discussion and many questions. In fact, the following question came up, and I didn’t have a great response, but turns out there’s a timely response from Mr. SQL Azure Federations himself: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/cbiyikoglu/archive/2011/12/15/so-isn-t-the-root-database-a-bottleneck-for-federations-in-sql-azure.aspx

Also hope to see some nsnug folks at future Boston Azure User Group meetings and our planned Boston Azure Bootcamp in June 2012!

 

November 4, 2011

Visiting Harvard – CSCI E-175 – Cloud Computing and Software

Posted by Bill Wilder under Azure, Bill gave a talk, Cloud Computing, Events, Patterns, Programming
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Just got back from Harvard where I teamed up with Jim O’Neil to talk about the Windows Azure Cloud Platform to the class CSCI E-175 Cloud Computing and Software as a Service. This was at the invitation of the Dr. Zoran B. Djordjevic – who also hosted us last year, and the year before that it was Jim and some guy named Chris.

Like last year, the class was engaged, asking tough and interesting questions… which is all the more impressive since this class meets on FRIDAY NIGHT. Must be a Harvard thing… Anyhow, we went from around 5:30 – 8:00… ON FRIDAY NIGHT. :-)

Below are the resources I mentioned at the end of my talk, and the slide deck I used is here: Harvard-WhyAzureIsAwesome-Bill-Wilder-04-Nov-2011

Also, hope to see all of you at Boston Azure user group meetings! Feel free to contact me with any follow-up questions.

The slide deck Jim O’Neil used is here, plus here are a few action shots of Jim doing his thang:

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