Since this summary page is – by necessity – a point-in-time SNAPSHOT of what I see is going on, it will not necessarily be updated when event details change. So please always double-check with official event information!

I’ve attempted to list events of interest to the local Azure community – not just topics specific to the Windows Azure Cloud Platform. Know of any more cloud events of interest? Have any more information or corrections on the events listed? Please let everyone know about them by adding a comment.

Events are listed in the order in which they will occur.

January 2012 Events

1. Cloud Mixer + talk featuring Satya Nadella

• when: Thu 26-Jan-2012
  5:00 – 6:15 – Networking with MassTLC’s Cloud Community
  6:15 – 7:15 – Presentation and Q&A with Satya Nadella, President, Server and Tools Business, Microsoft
• where: NERD
• wifi: (usually)
• food: (perhaps during the networking segment?)
• cost: FREE,
• what:First a networking social – get to know other area folks interested in cloud, then the following:The transition to cloud computing has been talked about as one of the most profound shifts occurring in technology in decades. With the huge growth and broad range of computing devices increasingly available, we see a shift in “design point” to a world of connected devices and continuous services. In this talk, Satya Nadella, President, Server and Tools Business at Microsoft, will share what he learned running a global online service, Bing, and how these lessons are informing the direction of Microsoft’s cloud strategy.Nadella is one of very few people in the world who can speak first-hand about running an extremely large-scale cloud computing business. Having previously led R&D for Microsoft’s Online Services Division, which includes Bing and MSN, Nadella has practical and deep experience with cloud both from a technical and business perspective. Today, Nadella brings these experiences to bear in his current role, which includes accountability for the overall business and technical vision, strategy, operations, engineering and marketing for Microsoft’s $17+ billion Server and Tools Business.Join us to hear how Microsoft is focused on building a platform that spans public and private clouds to enable businesses to take advantage of this new design point.
• more info: http://126cloudmixer.eventbrite.com/
• register: http://126cloudmixer.eventbrite.com/
• twitter: @MassTLC and #CloudMixer

February 2012 Events

2. Boston Azure User Group meeting: Architecting for Failure: Why Cloud Architecture is Different & Hadoop

• when: Tuesday February 7, 2012, 6:00 – 8:30 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center, 1 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA (directions)
• wifi: Wireless Internet access will be available
• food: Pizza and drinks expected
• cost: FREE
• what: Architecting for Failure: Why Cloud Architecture is different – a talk by Michael Stiefel + a shorter intro talk on Hadoop on Windows Azure (currently in CTP) by Bill Wilder
• more info: See the Boston Azure cloud user group site for more info
• register: http://www.meetup.com/bostonazure/events/38945872/
• twitter: #bostonazure

3. Mass TLC Summit: The Big Data Disruption

• when: Wednesday, February 15, 2012 from 8:00 AM to noon
• where: Hosted at NERD Center, 1 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA (directions)
• wifi: Wireless Internet access expected
• food: Pizza and drinks expected
• cost: Costs money – see registration for details
• what: (quoted from registration site): “Join us as we take a deep dive into the future outlook of big data and how it is going to impact the tech industry down the road.
  

  Keynote Speaker:  Living Smarter

Session 1 – Crossing the Big Data Chasm
Moderated by: Mike Stonebraker, Professor, MIT
Panelists to date:
Fritz Knabe, Distinguished Engineer, Netezza
Christopher Ahlberg, Chief Executive Officer/Co-Founder, Recorded Future
This session will explore the hype versus reality of Big Data. Discussion will include the transformational opportunity it represents for the technology industry and offer a true perspective on why One Size Doesn’t Fit All. Panelists will discuss the different tools and approaches for a variety of outcomes.

Session 2 – From Hype to Reality
Moderated by:  Andy Palmer, Startup Specialist
Panelists to date:
Puneet Batra, Chief Data Scientist, Kyruus
This panel session will take a deep dive into the challenges, successes, failures and lessons learned of the early adopters of big data initiatives. The panelists will give insight using their own case studies as evidence of what has and has not worked.

• more info: http://21512bigdata.eventbrite.com/
• register: http://21512bigdata.eventbrite.com/
• twitter: @MassTLC #BigData

4. Boston Azure User Group meeting: Solving Access Control in the Cloud: from WIF to ACS

• when: Thu February 23, 2012, 6:00 – 8:30 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center, 1 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA (directions)
• wifi: Wireless Internet access will be available
• food: Pizza and drinks expected
• cost: FREE
• what: Solving Access Control in the Cloud: from WIF to ACS featuring Brock Allen – a deep dive into Claims, Windows Identity Foundation (WIF), and the Access Control Service (ACS) from Windows Azure
• more info: See the Boston Azure cloud user group site for more info
• register: RSVP here
• twitter: #bostonazure

March 2012 Events

5. Windows Azure: Focus on your application. Not the infrastructure.

• when: Thu March 8, 2012, 8:30 AM – noon
• where: 201 Jones Road, Waltham, MA (directions)
• wifi: not needed
• food: coffee!
• cost: FREE
• what: (quoted from registration site)
  Microsoft Windows Azure and Microsoft SQL Azure enable you to build, host and scale applications in Microsoft datacenters. They require no up-front expenses, no long term commitment, and enable you to pay only for the resources you use. Windows Azure is about flexibility and adaptability; whether your application can or should run 100% in the cloud, or leverage components on-premise in a hybrid cloud, Windows Azure is the most comprehensive cloud platform.The #1 question we hear, from our customers, is “How can my business benefit from Windows Azure?”.

  Come join us in Waltham, MA on Thursday, March 8, 2012 to learn the business benefits of Windows Azure and SQL Azure and hear real world customer examples of how Windows Azure improves your business Agility while directly Reducing your Costs.

  The target audience for this event includes BDMs, TDMs, 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.

• more info: See the registration page for more info
• register: RSVP here
• twitter:

—–

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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!

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!

Since this summary page is – by necessity – a point-in-time SNAPSHOT of what I see is going on, it will not necessarily be updated when event details change. So please always double-check with official event information!

I’ve attempted to list events of interest to the local Azure community – not just topics specific to the Windows Azure Cloud Platform. Know of any more cloud events of interest? Have any more information or corrections on the events listed? Please let everyone know about them by adding a comment.

Events are listed in the order in which they will occur.

November 2011 Events

1. Cloudy Mondays

• when: Mon 14-Nov-2011, 5:00 – ?:?? PM
• where: Small Business Development Center (note: NOT Venture Development Center!), 100 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston, MA
  wifi: (not sure)
• food: (not sure, though food and spirits were provided last time)
• cost: FREE
• what: Discuss Amazon’s cloud: launching projects on AWS, comparing AWS to other public clouds, etc. One speaker is Jason Haruska, Chief Architect at Backupify. Vikram Kumar, CTO and Founder of OfficeDrop.com, will also be discussing how OfficeDrop.com launched using AWS.
• more info: http://www.meetup.com/Cloudy-Mondays/events/39091772/
• register: http://www.meetup.com/Cloudy-Mondays/events/39091772/
• twitter: (not sure)

2. Cloud Roundtable – Business in the Cloud -

• when: Tue 15-Nov-2011, 3:00 - 5:30 PM (updated: start time is officially 3:00 PM)
• where: Boston College Club, 100 Federal St., Boston, MA
• wifi: (not sure)
• food: (looks like cocktails and hors d’oeuvres towards the end)
• cost: FREE
• what: From the description on the web site: “The cloud is a fundamental paradigm shift from our current or past thinking about scalable architecture and there are security tradeoffs:  less control of data, new vulnerability classes, and compliance challenges.  However, if managed properly, these risks can be mitigated. This interactive seminar will discuss the challenges of cloud computing, demonstrate how to build a secure and redundant system, and touch upon real-world examples of cloud computing gone bad.”
• more info: http://web.securityinnovation.com/boston
• register: http://web.securityinnovation.com/boston
• twitter: (not sure)

3. Boston Azure User Group meeting: Introduction to Cloud, Windows Azure, Azure Dev Tools

• when: Thu 17-Nov-2011, 6:00 – 8:30 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center, 1 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA (directions)
• wifi: Wireless Internet access will be available
• food: Pizza and drinks will be provided
• cost: FREE
• what: Get ramped up on Cloud and Windows Azure – what is this cloud thing all about? How does the Windows Azure Cloud Platform fit in? And how can you get started using Visual Studio and the Windows Azure tools? Get all these questions answered in one night!
• more info: See the Boston Azure cloud user group site for more info
• register: http://www.meetup.com/bostonazure/events/38944852/
• twitter: #bostonazure

December – 2011 Events

4. Azure is on the Road! December Road Trip…

At a variety of locations (far from Boston, but at least regional):

• Check out Jim O’Neil’s blog post on the road show: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jimoneil/archive/2011/11/04/taking-the-cloud-on-the-road.aspx

5. Testing in the Cloud with Boston Web Performance Group

• when: Tue 06-Dec-2011: 6:30-7:15 Eat pizza and meet other members, 7:15-8:15 Presentation, 8:15-9:00 Q&A, general socializing and more pizza eating
• where: Wayfair Offices – 177 Huntington Ave, 177 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA (map) Come up to the 24th floor, call 802-522-6294 with issues
• wifi: Wireless Internet access will be available
• food: Pizza and drinks will be provided
• cost: FREE
• what: Speaker: Dan Bartow on Testing in the Cloud – description from event site: “Achieving real performance on the web begins with realistic testing and an understanding of the application and it’s infrastructure.  Testing realistically and for real results across web & mobile applications means leveraging the
  cloud.  Agile development processes, complex multi-tier architectures, and the potential for massive (and sudden) load all require a different approach than
  historical apps.  Come hear from Soasta, the makers of the CloudTest platform and CloudTest Lite, about their experiences and why companies need to change their expectations about what “testing” means. Dan Bartow is Vice President and CloudTest Evangelist at SOASTA, the leader
  in performance testing from the cloud. Prior to joining SOASTA he was Senior Manager of Engineering at Intuit, where his team was responsible for the speed and stability of TurboTax Online, the #1 rated, best-selling online tax software. Over the past decade he has been responsible for the speed and
  scalability of websites for such well-known brands as American Eagle Outfitters, AT&T, Best Buy, Finish Line, J.Crew, Neiman Marcus and Sony Online
  Entertainment, among others. Dan has set multiple industry precedents including launching the worlds largest stateful JBoss cluster and using over 2000 cloud computing cores to generate load against a live web site.  Dan is a frequent industry presenter and has spoken at leading testing and cloud computing
  conferences such as Software Test & Performance (STP), O’Reilly’s Web2.0 Expo, Amazon Web Services Road Show, and SYS-CON’s Cloud Computing Expo.” Visit the event web site to view the Cloud Testing Bill of Rights.
• more info: See http://www.meetup.com/Web-Performance-Boston/events/38442872/ for more info
• register: http://www.meetup.com/Web-Performance-Boston/events/38442872/
• twitter: @JonathanKlein

6. Boston Azure User Group December

• when: Tue 13-Dec-2011, 6:00 – 8:30 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center, 1 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA (directions)
• wifi: Yes
• food: Pizza and drinks will be provided
• cost: FREE
• what: Azure-related topic(s) to be announced.
• more info: See the Boston Azure cloud user group site for more info
• register: http://www.meetup.com/bostonazure/events/38945582/
• twitter: #bostonazure

7. Cloud Architecture Patterns at North Shore .NET User Group

• when: Wed 14-Dec-2011, 6:00 – 8:30 PM
• where: EBSCO Publishing, 10 Estes Street, Ipswich, MA (map)
• wifi: (not sure)
• food: (Food is either available … or provided .. not sure)
• cost: FREE
• what: Cloud Architecture Patterns (generally), then see how the Windows Azure Platform helps you realize these patterns. Speaker is Bill Wilder, Boston Azure user group leader, Windows Azure MVP, and an Independent Azure Consultant.
• more info: http://www.meetup.com/North-Shore-NET-User-Group/events/40679722/?a=ea1.2_lnm&rv=ea1.2
• register: http://www.meetup.com/North-Shore-NET-User-Group/events/40679722/?a=ea1.2_lnm&rv=ea1.2
• twitter:

8. Using Windows Azure to Build Cloud Enabled Windows Phone Apps at Microsoft DevBoston

• when: Wed 14-Dec-2011, 6:00 – 8:30 (?) PM
• where: Microsoft Corporation 201 Jones Road, Waltham, MA Hosted at NERD Center, 1 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA (directions)
• wifi: I don’t think so (given the location)
  food: (I am guessing there will be pizza, but not 100% sure, please check with the group organizers)
• cost: FREE
• what: “Speaker: John Garland This presentation will discuss how Windows Phone applications can be enriched by leveraging the power of the Cloud that is made available by Windows Azure. The Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone will be explored to show how to quickly tap into resources in the cloud for computation, storage, identity, and communication from within a Windows Phone application.”
• more info: http://www.meetup.com/DevBoston/events/39064112/
• register: http://www.meetup.com/DevBoston/events/39064112/
• twitter: (not sure about the event, but John Garland can be found at https://twitter.com/#!/search/dotnetgator)

—–

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Image courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/thewazir/4232029536/sizes/s/in/photostream/

I believe we are the oldest Windows Azure user group in the world, still going strong. Our first meeting was held in October 2009, less than a year after Windows Azure was announced at PDC 2008, and a few months before it went RTW for real (which was, I believe, January 2010).

Now, back to our Oct meeting. Here are links to a few topics mentioned:

• The Enterprise Library Integration Pack for Windows Azure includes two new blocks: Autoscaling Application Block (“WASABi”) and Transient Fault Handling Application Block. Beta bits are available. http://entlib.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=EntLib5Azure, http://blogs.msdn.com/b/avkashchauhan/archive/2011/10/14/windows-azure-autoscaling-application-block-wasabi-beta-is-ready-for-you-to-try.aspx
• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2011/10/27/microsoft-lowers-storage-cost-for-blob-and-table-storage-in-windows-azure.aspx
• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2011/10/19/announcing-improved-in-place-updates.aspx
• http://www.cumulux.com/fall-2011-and-build-azure-related-new-features/
• http://www.davidaiken.com/2011/10/10/implementing-windows-azure-retry-logic/

Also, here is the slide deck from the main presentation – given by yours truly (that’s me, Bill Wilder) – called Big Ideas in Software Architecture (Cloud and Otherwise):

• PPTX file: boston-azure-big-ideas-in-software-architecture-cloud-and-otherwise-bill-wilder-27-oct-2011

At the meeting we also discussed some topics for future meetings. Here is that list (okay, I actually can’t find the list – may have forgotten to save it – sorry – so going from memory here) — note this list is in no particular order:

1. Introduction to Cloud, Azure, and developing for Windows Azure
2. More hands-on with the platform
3. Using languages, libraries, and software other than .NET/Microsoft – e.g., Java, Python, Node.js, NoSQL (MongoDB), …
4. Idempotency – look at a more challenging case than a simple thumbnailer
5. Security in the Cloud
6. Comparing Cloud platforms
7. Azure AppFabric topics: Service Bus, Caching, Access Control Service (can Curt come back?), …
8. More architecture patterns

WHAT ARE OTHER TOPICS YOU WOULD LIKE TO SEE? Please leave a comment, email me, or suggest via twitter (me: @codingoutloud or to the community: @bostonazure).

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:

I also attended some cool talks – Brock Allen spoke about WIF, David Padbury on node.js, and Dominic Denicola on various Async approaches like Promises. Good time as usual! No after-event celebrating – everyone is running for cover due to the Nor’easter!

If you are interested in learning more about the Windows Azure Platform, please come join us at a Boston Azure cloud user group meeting. Details at www.bostonazure.org. We meet every month to learn about Azure. Sometimes we learn through prepared talks, sometimes we hold training events, and sometimes coding/hackathons. We are the oldest such user group in the world, turning two years old this month. Hope to see you!

Our next meeting is Thursday November 17 (the Thursday before Thanksgiving), featuring a very Azurey talk by Chris Rolon of Neudesic.

Got Azure Question? I am also a Windows Azure MVP for Windows Azure and know a thing or two about the platform. I am happy to answer questions you may have. Feel free to contact me on twitter (@codingoutloud) or by email (which is my twitter handle at gmail.com).

Azure On!

For my part, I attended a number of interesting sessions (especially the frighteningly entertaining talk by Francis Brown on using Google and Bing to hack (or protect) web properties). Due to scheduling challenges, I missed Andrew Wilson‘s talk on Reversing Web Applications, which I wanted to check out.

For my part, I offered a Birds-of-a-Feather session on Securing Applications in the Cloud (with examples drawn from Windows Azure Platform). In this session, I reviewed both pros and cons of cloud deployments from a security point of view, and attempted to make the case that, ultimately, either your applications will simply be safer in the cloud, or at least if you want them to be sufficiently safe, it will be more cost-effective to let the specialists at Microsoft (or some other trusted cloud vendor) handle much of the dirty work.

This session was interesting for me to put together and then go through with an intimate crowd (due, at least in part I suppose, to (me) changing the scheduled time slot after the conference schedule went to the printer… D’oh! … that combined with the seeming invisibility of the BoF sessions generally). Anyhow, it was still fun to discuss, and here is the slide deck I used: OWASP Boston – BoF – Securely Running Applications in Cloud (examples drawn from Windows Azure Platform) – Bill Wilder – 08-Oct-2011.

Here are a few links that folks attending might have been told about, plus a couple of answers I offered to gather offline.

Where can I get the materials used in the Bootcamp?

• The materials live here: http://www.azurebootcamp.com/materials
• However, as I explained at the bootcamp, the actual materials used at our sessions were a mix of what is posted on the web and some slide decks that had been updated (mostly for the Azure SDK 1.5, but also other changes in some cases). So you can pull the materials as linked to above and you’ll be pretty close, but the updated ones are not yet publicly posted.

How can I see what’s in Windows Azure Storage?

• In addition to the tools we showed (such as Visual Studio and Cerebrata Cloud Storage Studio), there’s a useful, free storage browser on the web: https://www.myazurestorage.com/Containers, and an Explorer-like browser as Open Source on CodePlex here: http://azurestorageexplorer.codeplex.com/

How can I track changes/upgrades to Windows Azure Guest OS?

• (There might be an RSS feed, but I can’t find it if there is..) A lower-tech approach is to use a service like https://www.changedetection.com/ for monitoring the Windows Azure Guest OS page at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff729422.aspx

Does Azure use Hyper-threading?

• No

Where can I learn more about the Windows Azure Platform?

• Start coming to Boston Azure User Group meetings! Check out http://www.bostonazure.org - meetings are monthly at NERD – schedule now managed at http://www.meetup.com/bostonazure

Where can I read more?

• Insight from the big brains at Microsoft:
• http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/whitepapers/
• http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsazurestorage/

Who should I thank for this event?

• You can thank our TWO MAJOR SPONSORS: This event was provided free to you because our Gold Sponsor SNI TECHNOLOGY generously sponsored the food, and Microsoft NERD donated the space. Many thanks to these major sponsors!
• Without these sponsors this event would simply not have happened.
• You can thank our swag sponsors: O’Reilly (books), Pluralsight (training), Cerebrata (licenses), Packt Publishing (books), and Microsoft (books and licenses).
• And you can thank the Boston Azure Bootcamp team which included (in alphabetical order): Andy Novick (who led the SQL Azure segment), Arra Derderian (helped during labs), George Babey (“swag guy” – and helped during labs), Jim O’Neil (lab-time tech support, lecture-time answer-man), Joan Wortman (ran the registration), Maura Wilder (who led the Azure Table Storage segment – and helped during labs), Nazik Huq (“twitter guy” – plus made sure there was food – and helped during labs), and William Wilder (yes, that’s me; you can call me “Bill” but wanted to be listed last…). Also, many thanks to Martha O’Neil for baking us a cloudy cake.

We are planning another Boston Azure Bootcamp in 2012. Stay tuned!

Update 22-Oct-2011: Here is contact info for our Gold sponsors at SNI TECHNOLOGY:

Since this summary page is – by necessity – a point-in-time SNAPSHOT of what I see is going on, it will not necessarily be updated when event details change. So please always double-check with official event information!

updates: Added Tech Boston event + more details on Boston Azure

Know of any more cloud events of interest to the Windows Azure community? Have any more information or corrections on the events listed? Please let us know in the comments.

Events are listed in the order in which they will occur.

October Events

1. Mongo Boston

• when: Mon 03-Sep-2011, 9:00-5:00 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center
• wifi: Wireless Internet access will be available
• food: Provided
• cost: $30
• what: The main Azure-related content is a talk by Jim O’Neilon using Mongo with the Windows Azure Platform – from the published program description: “MongoDB in the Cloud, Jim O’Neil - Developer Evangelist, Microsoft: MongoDB is synonomous with scale and performance, and, hey, so is cloud computing! It’s peanut butter and chocolate all over again as we take a look at why you might consider running MongoDB in the cloud in general and also look at the alpha release of MongoDB on Azure, a collaboration from 10gen and Microsoft.”
• more info: http://www.10gen.com/events/mongo-boston-2011
• register: http://www.10gen.com/events/mongo-boston-2011
• twitter: @mongodb

2. Cloud Camp

• when: Thu 06-Oct-2011, 5:15 – 8:30 PM (then after-party)
• where: CloudCamp Boston #5 is Co-located with the OpenStack Design Summit. Intercontinental Hotel, 510 Atlantic Ave, Salon A (between Congress St & Fort Hill Wharf), Boston, MA 02210
• wifi: (not sure)
• food: (not sure, though food and beer were offered last time)
• cost:
• what: (from the event description on cloudcamp.org) “CloudCamp is an unconference where early adopters of Cloud Computing technologies exchange ideas.  With the rapid change occurring in the industry, we need a place where we can meet to share our experiences, challenges and solutions.  At CloudCamp, you are encouraged to share your thoughts in several open discussions, as we strive for the advancement of Cloud Computing.  End users, IT professionals and vendors are all encouraged to participate.”
• more info: http://www.cloudcamp.org/boston
• register: here
• twitter: (not sure)

3. Boston Tech: What Can Cloud Do for YOU?

• when: Mon 24-Oct-2011, 6:30 – 8:30 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center
• wifi: Wireless Internet access will be available
• food: Pizza and drinks will be provided
• cost: FREE
• what: “You’ve probably seen the “to the cloud” commercial and are aware of the hype
  that makes cloud computing sound like the next best thing since sliced bread,
  but do you really know what cloud computing is? And what it’s not? When does it
  make sense? And when doesn’t it? What does it mean to us as software developers,
  startup entrepreneurs, and end-users? And how do you sort through all of the
  vendors and offerings to determine whose cloud portfolio offers the most value
  to you? We’ll look at all of these questions and more as we spend the evening
  navigating through the cloudscape.” (text taken from the Meetup listing)
• more info: http://www.meetup.com/BostonTech/events/33357482/
• register: http://www.meetup.com/BostonTech/events/33357482/
• twitter:

4. Boston Azure User Group meeting: Cloud Architecture Patterns

• when: Thu 27-Oct-2011, 6:00 – 8:30 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center
• wifi: Wireless Internet access will be available
• food: Pizza and drinks will be provided
• cost: FREE
• what: Featured talk: “There are some big ideas in software architecture that are particularly relevant for cloud platforms. In this talk we will introduce a few of these big ideas – eventual consistency, scale out, and design for failure – and discuss the implications of these big ideas on cloud application architecture generally, with specific examples of useful patterns and services drawn from the Windows Azure Platform.” There will also be a shorter opening topic.
• more info: See our (new) Boston Azure Meetup.com site for more info
• register: http://www.meetup.com/bostonazure/events/35904052/
• twitter: #bostonazure

5. New England Code Camp #16

While not strictly an Azure-only event, there will be Azure content at this community-driven event. Hope to see you there!

• when: Saturday, October 29, 2011 9am–6pm
• where: Microsoft Office on Jones Road in Waltham
• wifi: (usually just for speakers)
• food: (usually pizza, sometimes donuts)
• cost: FREE
• what: It’s a Code Camp!
• more info: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/cbowen/archive/2011/08/24/new-england-code-camp-16-october-29th-save-the-date.aspx
• register (for speakers and all attendees): http://codecampboston.eventbrite.com/
• twitter:

Omissions? Corrections? Comments? Please leave a comment or reply on the Twitters!

I presented a talk in the morning called Cloud Architecture Patterns for Mere Mortals (with Examples in Windows Azure). If you are interested, my slide deck is attached: Vermont Code Camp III – Cloud Architecture Patterns for Mere Mortals – Bill Wilder – 10-Sept-2011 (also available on Slideshare)

Also, you are all invited to the (free) Boston Azure Bootcamp to be held in the Boston area (Cambridge, MA) on Friday September 30 and Saturday October 1. Sign up here, and please help spread the word. Hope to see some Vermont Code Camp friends there! Let me know if you have a strong desire to “couch surf”, especially on the middle night, and I’ll see if I can help out. Tickets won’t last forever, so I encourage you to sign up sooner than later.

Thank you to all the Vermont Code Camp III organizers, volunteers, and sponsors - like last year, this was an inspired event and I’m glad I made the trip. Find them on Twitter at @VTCodeCamp.

A handful of Vermont Code Camp photos follow… (and a couple from Sunday night on Church Street in Burlington)

A. This basic question comes up occassionally, usually when there is concern around correlating timestamps across instances, such as for log files or business events.  Over time, like mechanical clocks, computer clocks can drift, with virtual machines (especially when sharing cores) effected even more. (This is not specific to Microsoft technologies; for example, it is apparently an annoying issue on Linux VMs.)

I can’t find any official stats on how much drift happens generally (though some data is out there), but the question at hand is what to do to minimize it. Specifically, on Windows Azure Virtual Machines (VMs) – including Web Role, Worker Role, and VM Role - how is this handled?

According to this Word document - which specifies the “MICROSOFT ONLINE SERVICES USE RIGHTS SUPPLEMENTAL LICENSE TERMS, MICROSOFT WINDOWS SERVER 2008 R2 (FOR USE WITH WINDOWS AZURE)” – the answer is once a week. (Note: the title above includes “Windows Server 2008 R2″ – I don’t know for sure if the exact same policies apply to the older Windows Server 2008 SP2, but would guess that they do.)

Here is the full quote, in the context of which services you can expect will be running on your VM in Windows Azure:

Windows Time Service. This service synchronizes with time.windows.com once a week to provide your computer with the correct time. You can turn this feature off or choose your preferred time source within the Date and Time Control Panel applet. The connection uses standard NTP protocol.

So Windows Azure roles use the time service at time.windows.com to keep their local clocks up to snuff.  This service uses the venerable Network Time Protocol (NTP), described most recently in RFC 5905.

UDP Challenges

The documentation around NTP indicates it is based on User Datagram Protocol (UDP). While Windows Azure roles do not currently support you building network services that require UDP endpoints (though you can vote up the feature request here!), the opposite is not true: Windows Azure roles are able to communicate with non-Azure services using UDP, but only within the Azure Data Center. This is how some of the key internet plumbing based on UDP still works, such as the ability to do Domain Name System (DNS) lookups, and – of course – time synchronization via NTP.

This may lead to some confusion since UDP support is currently limited, while NTP being already provided.

The document cited above mentions you can “choose your preferred time source” if you don’t want to use time.windows.com. There are other sources from which you can update the time of a computing using NTP, such as free options from National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST).

Here are the current NTP Server offerings as seen in the Control Panel on a running Windows Azure Role VM (logged in using Remote Desktop Connection). The list includes time.windows.com and four options from NIST:

Interestingly, when I manually tried changing the time on my Azure role using a Remote Desktop session, any time changes I made were immediately corrected whenever I tried to make changes. Not sure if it was doing an automatic NTP correction after any time change, but my guess is something else was going on since the advertised next time it would sync via NTP did not change based on this.

When choosing a different NTP Server, it did not always succeed (sometimes timing out), but also I did see it succeed, as in the following:

The interesting part of seeing any successful sync with time.nist.gov is that it implies UDP traffic leaving and re-entering the Windows Azure data center. This, in general, is just not allowed – all UDP traffic leaving or entering the data center is blocked (unless you use a VM Role with Windows Azure Connect). To prove this for yourself another way, configure your Azure role VM to use a DNS server which is outside of the Azure data center; all subsequent DNS resolution will fail.

If “weekly” is Not Enough

If the weekly synchronization frequency is somehow inadequate, you could write a Startup Task to adjust the frequency to, say, daily. This can be done via the Windows Registry (full details here including all the registry settings and some tools, plus there is a very focused summary here giving you just the one registry entry to tweak for most cases).

How frequently is too much? Not sure about time.windows.com, but time.nist.gov warns:

All users should ensure that their software NEVER queries a server more frequently than once every 4 seconds. Systems that exceed this rate will be refused service. In extreme cases, systems that exceed this limit may be considered as attempting a denial-of-service attack.

Of further interest, check out the NIST Time Server Status descriptions:

They recommend against using any of the servers, at least at the moment I grabbed these Status values from their web site.  I find this amusing since – other than the default time.windows.com – these are the only four servers offered as alternatives in the User Interface of the Control Panel applet. As I mentioned above, sometimes these servers timed out on an on-demand NTP sync request I issued through the applet user interface; this may explain why.

It may be possible to use a commercial NTP service, but I don’t know if the Windows Server 2008 R2 configuration supports it (at least I did not see it in the user interface), and if there was a way to specify it (such as in the registry), I am not sure that the Windows Azure data center will allow the UDP traffic to that third-party host. (They may – I just don’t know. They do appear to allow UDP requests/responses to NIST servers. Not sure if this is a firewall/proxy rule, and if so, is it for NTP, or just NTP to NIST?)

And – for the (good kind of) hacker in you – if you want to play around with accessing an NTP service from code, check out this open source C# code.

Is this useful? Did I leave out something interesting or get something wrong? Please let me know in the comments! Think other people might be interested? Spread the word!

I recently did some work with Windows Services, and since it had been rather a long while since I’d done so, I had to recall a couple of tips and tricks from the depths of my memory in order to get my “edit, run, test” cycle to be efficient. The singular challenge for me was quickly getting into a debuggable state with the service. How I did this is described below.

Does Windows Azure support Windows Services?

First, a trivia question…

Trivia Question: Does Windows Azure allow you to deploy your Windows Services as part of your application or cloud-hosted service?

Short Answer: Windows Azure is more than happy to run your Windows Services! While a more native approach is to use a Worker Role, a Windows Service can surely be deployed as well, and there are some very good use cases to recommend them.

More Detailed Answer: One good use case for deploying a Windows Service: you have legacy services and want to use the same binary on-prem and on-azure. Maybe you are doing something fancy with Azure VM Roles. These are valid examples. In general – for something only targetting Azure – a Worker Role will be easier to build and debug. If you are trying to share code across a legacy Windows Service and a shiny new Windows Azure Worker Role, consider following the following good software engineering practice (something you may want to do anyway): factor out the “business logic” into its own class(es) and invoke it with just a few lines of code from either host (or a console app, a Web Service, a unit test (ahem), etc.).

Windows Services != Web Services

Most readers will already understand and realize this, but just to be clear, a Windows Service is not the same as a Web Service. This post is not about Web Services. However, Windows Azure is a full-service platform, so of course has great support for not only Windows Services but also Web Services. Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is a popular choice for implementing Web Services on Windows Azure, though other libraries work fine too – including in non-.NET languages and platforms like Java.

Now, on to the main topic at hand…

Why is Developing with Windows Services Slower?

Developing with Windows Services is slower than some other types of applications for a couple of reasons:

• It is harder to stop in the Debugger from Visual Studio. This is because a Windows Service does not want to be started by Visual Studio, but rather by the Service Control Manager (the “scm” for short – pronounced “the scum”). This is an external program.
• Before being started, Windows Services need to be installed.
• Before being installed, Windows Services need to be uninstalled (if already installed).

Tip 1: Add Services applet as a shortcut

I find myself using the Services applet frequently to see which Windows Services are running, and to start/stop and other functions. So create a shortcut to it. The name of the Microsoft Management Console snapin is services.msc and you can expect to find it in Windows/System32, such as here: C:\Windows\System32\services.msc

A good use of the Services applet is to find out the Service name of a Windows Service. This is not the same as the Windows Services’s Display name you seen shown in the Name column. For example, see the Windows Time service properties – note that W32Time is the real name of the service:

Tip 2: Use Pre-Build Event in Visual Studio

Visual Studio projects have the ability to run commands for you before and after the regular compilation steps. These are known as Build Events and there are two types: Pre-build events and Post-build events. These Build Events can be accessed from your Project’s properties page, on the Build Events side-tab. Let’s start with the Pre-build event.

Use this event to make sure there are no traces of the Windows Service installed on your computer. Depending on where you install your services from (see Tip 3), you may find that you can’t even recompile your service until you’ve at least stopped it; this smooths out that situation, and goes beyond it to make the usual steps happen faster than you can type.

One way to do this is to write a command file –  undeploy-service.cmd – and invoke it as a Pre-build event as follows:

You will need to make sure undeploy-service.cmd is in your path, of course, or else you could invoke it with the path, as in c:\tools\undeploy-service.cmd.

The contents of undeploy-service.cmd can be hard-coded to undeploy the service(s) you are building every time, or you can pass parameters to modularize it. Here, I hard-code for simplicity (and since this is the more common case).

1. Set a reusable variable to the name of my service (set ServiceName=NameOfMyService)
2. Stop it, if it is running (net stop)
3. Uninstall it (installutil.exe /u)
4. If the service is still around at this point, ask the SCM to nuke it (sc delete)
5. Return from this .cmd file with a  success status so that Visual Studio won’t think the Pre-Build event ended with an error (exit /b 0 => that’s a zero on the end)

The S3 service runs “out there” (in the cloud) and provides a scalable repository for applications to store and manage data files. The service can support files of any size, as well as any quantity. So you can put as much stuff up there as you want – and since it is a pay-as-you-go service, you pay for what you use. The S3 service is very popular. An example of a well-known customer, according to Wikipedia, is SmugMug:

Photo hosting service SmugMug has used S3 since April 2006. They experienced a number of initial outages and slowdowns, but after one year they described it as being “considerably more reliable than our own internal storage” and claimed to have saved almost $1 million in storage costs.

Good stuff.

Of course, Amazon isn’t the only cloud vendor with such an offering. Google offers Google Storage, and Microsoft offers Windows Azure Blob Storage; both offer features and capabilities very similar to those of S3. While Amazon was the first to market, all three services are now mature, and all three companies are experts at building internet-scale systems and high-volume data storage platforms.

As I mentioned above, S3 came up during a talk I attended. The speaker – CTO of a company built entirely on Amazon services – twice touted S3’s incredibly strong Service Level Agreement (SLA). He said this was both a competitive differentiator for his company, and also a competitive differentiator for Amazon versus other cloud vendors.

Pause and think for a moment – any idea? – What is the SLA for S3? How about Google Storage? How about Windows Azure Blob Storage?

Before I give away the answer, let me remind you that a Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a written policy offered by the service provider (Amazon, Google, and Microsoft in this case) that describes the level of service being offered, how it is measured, and consequences if it is not met. Usually, the “level of service” part relates to uptime and is measured in “nines” as in 99.9% (“three nines”) and so forth. More nines is better, in general – and wikipedia offers a handy chart translating the number of nines into aggregate downtime/unavailability. (More generally, an SLA also deals with other factors – like refunds to customers if expectations are not met, what speed to expect, limitations, and more. I will focus only on the “nines” here.)

So… back to the question… For S3 and equivalent services from other vendors, how many nines are in the Amazon, Google, and Microsoft SLAs? The speaker at the talk said that S3 had an uptime SLA with 11 9s. Let me say that again – eleven nines – or 99.999999999% uptime. If you attempt to look this up in the chart mentioned above, you will find this number is literally “off the chart” – the chart doesn’t go past six nines! But my back-of-the-envelope calculation says it amounts to – on average – less than 32 milliseconds of downtime per year. This is about half what “a blink of your eye” would take – yes, a mere half of an eye-blink. (Which ends with your eyes closed. )

This is an impressive number! If only it was true. It turns out the real SLA for Amazon S3 has exactly as many nines as the SLA for Windows Azure Blob Storage and the SLA for Google Storage: they are all 99.9%.

Storage SLAs for Amazon, Google, and Microsoft all have exactly the same number of nines: they are all 99.9%. That’s three nines.

I am not picking on the CTO I heard gushing about the (non-existant) eleven-nines SLA. (In fact, his or her identity is irrelevent to the overall discussion here.) The more interesting part to me is the impressive reality distortion field around Amazon and its platform’s capabilities. The CTO I heard speak got it wrong, but this is not the first time it was misinterpreted as an SLA, and it won’t be the last.

I tracked down the origin of the eleven nines. Amazon CTO Werners Vogels mentions in a blog post that the S3 service is “design[ed]” for “99.999999999% durability” – choosing his words carefully. Consistent with Vogels’ language is the following Amazon FAQ on the same topic:

Q: How durable is Amazon S3? Amazon S3 is designed to provide 99.999999999% durability of objects over a given year. This durability level corresponds to an average annual expected loss of 0.000000001% of objects. For example, if you store 10,000 objects with Amazon S3, you can on average expect to incur a loss of a single object once every 10,000,000 years. In addition, Amazon S3 is designed to sustain the concurrent loss of data in two facilities.

First of all, these mentions are a comment on a blog and an item in an FAQ page; neither is from a company SLA. And second, they both speak to durability of objects – not uptime or availability. And third, also critically, they say “designed” for all those nines – but guarantee nothing of the sort. Even still, it is a bold statement. And good marketing.

It is nice that Amazon can have so much confidence in their S3 design. I did not find a comparable statement about confidence in the design of their compute infrastructure… Reality is that [cloud] services are about more than design and architecture – also about implementation, operations, management, and more. To have any hope, architecture and design need to be solid, of course, but alone they cannot prevent a general service outage which could take your site down with it (and maybe even still lose data). Some others on the interwebs are skeptical as I am, not just of Amazon, but anyone claiming too many nines.

How about the actual 99.9% “three-nines” SLA? Be careful in your expectations. As a wise man once told me, there’s a reason they are called Service Level Agreements, rather than Service Level Guarantees. There are no guarantees here.

This isn’t to pick on Amazon – other vendors have had – and will have – interruptions in service. For most companies, the cloud will still be the most cost-effective and reliable way to host your applications; few companies can compete with the big platform cloud vendors for expertise, focus, reliability, security, economies-of-scale, and efficiency. It is only a matter of time before you are there. Today, your competitors (known and unknown) are moving there already. As a wise man once told me (citing Crossing the Chasm), the innovators and early adoptors are those companies willing to trade off risk for competitive advantage. You saw it here first: this Internet thing is going to stick around for a while. Yes, and cloud services will just make too much sense to ignore. You will be on the cloud; it is only a matter of where you’ll be on the curve.

Back to all those nines… Of course, Amazon has done nothing wrong here. I see nothing inaccurate or deceptive in their documentation. But those of us in the community need to pay closer attention to what is really being described.  So here’s a small favor I ask of this technology community I am part of: Let’s please do our homework so that when we discuss and compare the cloud platforms – on blogs, when giving talks, or chatting 1:1 - we can at least keep the discussions based on facts.

This month’s July Boston Azure User Group meeting was up for the challenge.

• In the opening act, Bill Wilder (that’s me) introduced the Windows Azure Toolkit for Social Games (see also the Cloud Cover episode 52 which also talks about the toolkit). You can find Bill on Twitter @codingoutloud.
• Mark Eisenberg of Microsoft then shared some great insights about the cloud and the Windows Azure Platform – what they really are, why they matter, and how they fit into the real world. You can find Mark on Twitter @azurebizandtech.
• Marshall Rosenstein then talked about building social games for Facebook with an Azure back-end. Marshall’s slides are on his skydrive here (the slides are here, the code download is here). You can find Marshall on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/marshall.rosensteina) and on Twitter @mrosenstein.
• We wrapped up the meeting with a short live demonstration of the Windows Azure Portal doing its thing. Then a few of us retired to the Muddy.

Hope to see you at the Boston Azure meeting in August (Windows Phone 7 + Azure), two meetings in September (one in Waltham (first time EVER), and the “usual” one at NERD), and then kicking off a two-day Boston Azure Bootcamp!

Details on ALL upcoming Boston-area events of interest to Azure folks (that I know about) can be found in this blog post about Boston-events in August and September. Those hosted by Boston Azure are also at www.bostonazure.org and the upcoming events page.

[Note - this post originally was mis-titled to say July and August instead of the correct August and September. I have not changed its URL, but did fix the title.]

Since this summary page is – by necessity – a point-in-time SNAPSHOT of what I see is going on, it will not necessarily be updated when event details change. So please always double-check with official event information!

Know of any more cloud events of interest to the Windows Azure community? Have any more information or corrections on the events listed? Please let us know in the comments.

Events are listed in the order in which they will occur.

August Events

1. Boston Azure User Group meeting: Special Guest John Garland on Windows Phone

• when: Thu 25-Aug-2011, 6:30 – 8:30 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center
• wifi: Wireless Internet access will be available
• food: Pizza and drinks will be provided
• cost: FREE
• what: Windows Phone 7 expert John Garland (a Senior Consultant at Wintellect) is the featured speaker. John’s presentation will show how the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7 can be used to quickly create Azure-enabled applications for the Windows Phone platform.  This talk will also include a discussion of some of the new features available in the Windows Phone “Mango” release due later this Fall (update), and how they can be used to further enhance the experience of working with Azure-based applications.
• more info: See the Boston Azure cloud user group site for more info, or join the (low volume) Boston Azure mailing list to keep most up to date
• register: here
• twitter: #bostonazure

September Events

2. Vermont Code Camp 2011

While not strictly a “Boston-area” event, this may be of interest still. I attended Vermont Code Camp 2010 as both an attendee (hitting lots of great sessions) and as a speaker (spoke about Azure, of course). There was a great deal of buzz and energy at the event. There was also major swag – some really good stuff. I don’t know what this year will hold, but they did set a pretty high bar last year across the board. I will be attending again this year (and have proposed a talk: Applying Architecture Patterns for Scalability and Reliability to the Windows Azure Cloud Platform). Hope to see you there!

• when: Saturday, September 10, 2011 8am–6pm
• where: Kalkin Hall on the University of Vermont campus in Burlington, VT
• wifi: (I think so)
• food: (Pretty sure)
• cost: FREE
• what: It’s a Code Camp! (from http://vtcodecamp.org/):  “Last year’s event had four rooms with sessions on .NET, PHP, Ruby, Python, and more. Two of the rooms had .NET topics and another had sessions on free/open source software. There was a fourth room where developers were introduced to various technologies that they may not use every day. Check back for details about Vermont Code Camp 2011 or follow us on Twitter.”
• more info: http://vtcodecamp.org/
• register: http://vtcodecamp.org/register/
• twitter: @VTCodeCamp

3. Cloudy Mondays

• when: Mon 19-Sep-2011, 5:00 – ?:?? PM
• where: Venture Development Center, 100 Morrissey Blvd, Boston, MA
• wifi: (not sure)
• food: (not sure, though food and beer were offered last time)
• cost: FREE
• what: (topics not posted yet, though generally cloud and cloud startup-related)
• more info: http://www.meetup.com/Cloudy-Mondays/
• register: here
• twitter: (not sure)

4. Boston Azure User Group meeting in Waltham: Special Guest Thom Robbins!

In this special event, the Boston Azure User Group is combining forces with both the Boston .NET Architecture Study Group and the New England ASP.NET Professionals Group to host this talk from Thom Robbins. Note the location is Waltham (not NERD).

• when: Wed 21-Sept-2011, 6:00 – 8:30 PM
• where: Hosted at Microsoft Office in Waltham (201 Jones Road, Waltham, MA 02451 – come to the 6th floor) – ample free parking is available
• wifi: Wireless Internet access is NOT available to attendees
• food: Pizza and drinks will be provided
• cost: FREE
• what: Special Guest speaker is Thom Robbins

Kentico CMS: A Case Study in Building for Today’s Web

Building software is a set of smart choices to meet the needs of your customers and the possibilities of technology.  Today’s Web demands that customers have a choice in how they deploy their applications. With over 7,000 websites in 84 countries, Kentico CMS for ASP.Net is delivered as a single code base for use as a cloud, hosted, or on-premise solution. With over 34 out of the box modules and everything built on a SQL Server backend – How did we do it?  What tradeoffs did we make? In this session we will answer that question and look at how to build a rich and compelling website using Windows Azure.

About Thom Robbins

Thom Robbins is the Chief Evangelist for Kentico Software. He is responsible for evangelizing Kentico CMS for ASP.NET with Web developers, Web designers and interactive agencies. Prior to joining Kentico, Thom joined Microsoft Corporation in 2000 and served in a number of executive positions.  Most recently, he led the Developer Audience Marketing group that was responsible for increasing developer satisfaction with the Microsoft platform. Thom also led the .NET Platform Product Management group responsible for customer adoption and implementation of the .NET Framework and Visual Studio. Thom was also a Principal Developer Evangelist working with developers across New England implementing .NET based solutions. A regular speaker and writer, he currently resides in Seattle with his wife and son. He can be reached at thomasr@kentico.com or on Twitter at @trobbins.

• more info: See the Boston Azure cloud user group site for more info, or join the (low volume) Boston Azure mailing list to keep most up to date.
• register: (registration will open in early September)
• twitter: #bostonazure

5. Boston Azure User Group meeting: Special Guest Brian Prince!

• when: Thu 29-Sep-2011, 6:00 – 8:30 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center
• wifi: Wireless Internet access will be available
• food: Pizza and drinks will be provided
• cost: FREE
• what: Brian Prince - from Microsoft, and co-author of the most excellent Azure in Action book – is our featured speaker.
• more info: See the Boston Azure cloud user group site for more info, or join the (low volume) Boston Azure mailing list to keep most up to date.
• register: (will open in early September)
• twitter:

6. Boston Azure Bootcamp

• when: Fri/Sat Sep 30 – Oct 1 (full days, but start/end times are tbd)
• where: Hosted at NERD Center
• wifi: Wireless Internet access will be available
• food: Expected to be provided, but details being worked out
• cost: FREE
• what:This free event is a two-day, hands-on bootcamp with the goal of learning a whole lot about the Windows Azure Platform. The primary programming environment will be Visual Studio 2010 (a free version is available). Coding will be primarily done in C#. (Other programming environments and other languages are available for Windows Azure. If you plan to program in other than Visual Studio and C#, please let us know it advance in the “Any Other Comments” section of the sign-up form.)The two days will largely consist of a sequence segments where important general topics in cloud computing will be introduced, and the Windows Azure approach will be discussed in detail. Each of these segments will include both a lecture by an Azure expert followed by a hands-on lab where you code a basic solution to get these concepts to really sink in. Azure experts will be in the room to help you with any questions or issues during labs.At the end of this two days, you will have learned key cloud and Windows Azure concepts, and have hands-on experience building, debugging, and deploying real applications. You need bring your own Azure-ready laptop – or let us know on the signup form if you would like a loaner – or would like to pair with someone for the coding part.
• more info: See the Boston Azure Bootcamp page on Eventbrite for more info
• register: Registration is LIMITED BY SPACE - register here
• twitter: #bostonazurebootcamp

Omissions? Corrections? Comments? Please leave a comment or reply on the Twitters!

The deck is attached at the bottom, after a few links of interest for folks who want to dig deeper.

Command Query Responsibility Segregation (CQRS):

• I’m a big fan of Bertrand Meyer‘s work, and I just learned that CQRS is based on his earlier CQR pattern
• Martin Fowler has a entry on CQRS (recently added, I will now read this)
• CQRS on Windows Azure  (MSDN Magazine article)
• .NET Rocks podcast: Episode 639 Udi Dahan Clarifies CQRS (That same podcast episode is also included in the Azure Top 40 feed that I curate: Azure Top 40 http://bit.ly/azuretop40)
• http://abdullin.com/cqrs/

Sharding is hard:

• Foursquare down for 11 hours from imbalanced shards: http://blog.foursquare.com/2010/10/05/so-that-was-a-bummer/ (though the High Scalability blog says it was longer)

NoSQL:

• NoSQL and the Windows Azure Platform whitepaper from Microsoft (which I found to be a very good read)

CAP Theorem:

• Wikipedia
• HA MySQL (interesting links)

PowerPoint slide deck used during my talk:

• DotNetArchStudyGroup_ArchitecturePatternsForScalabilityAndReliability_BillWilder_20July2011.pptx

A. The short answer is that while there is no built-in support for this, you can get the same effect by using a simple trick to add logic to your Startup Script to provide sufficient control. Before getting into that, let’s describe the problem in a bit more detail. Update 14-Oct-2011: Stop the presses!! This capability is now built into Windows Azure! Steve Marx has a blog post on the matter. I will leave this blog post around since the details in it may be of value for other scenarios.

Suppose you want to use ASP.NET MVC 3 in your Windows Azure Web Role. At the time of this writing, MVC 2 was installed in Azure, but not MVC 3. What to do? The short answer is, you can install MVC 3 along with your application at deployment time in the cloud. This type of prerequisite installation is most conveniently handled using a Startup Task. The idea is that I include the ASP.NET MVC 3 bits with my app, and define a Startup Task that installs these bits, and I can set things up easily so that these bits are already installed before my Web Role tries to run (via a Simple Startup Task). This is a pretty clean solution. (For more on Startup Tasks and how to configure them see How to Define Startup Tasks for a Role. For specific guidance on installing ASP.NET MVC 3 as a Startup Task, see Technique #2 in the ASP.NET MVC 3 in Windows Azure post on Steve Marx’s blog.)

Example Startup Task That ALWAYS Runs

Of course, installing ASP.NET MVC 3 is only one example. Here is another example – a Startup Task that enables support for ADSI with IIS – let’s call it enable-webmetabase.cmd. First, you would add the following entry to ServiceDefinition.csdef:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″?>
<ServiceDefinition name=”NameOfMyAzureApp” xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceDefinition“>
…
<Startup>
<Task commandLine=”enable-webmetabase.cmd” executionContext=”elevated” taskType=”simple” />
</Startup>
…

The contents of enable-webmetabase.cmd would be something like the following (first enabling PowerShell scripting, then executing a specific script):

powershell -command “Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted”
powershell .\enable-webmetabase.ps1

Though the specifics are not important for these instructions, since this script invokes a PowerShell script – let’s call it enable-webmetabase.ps1 – here is what that might look like:

Import-Module ServerManager
Add-WindowsFeature Web-Metabase

And as a final step, you would include both enable-webmetabase.cmd and enable-webmetabase.ps1 with your Visual Studio Project, and set the Copy to Output Directory property on each of these two files to be Copy always. Now, every time you deploy this Azure solution this Startup Task will be executed – and you can feel confident that you won’t have to worry about ADSI in IIS not being available (or whatever it is your Startup Tasks do for you).

Startup Tasks Run in Development Too

But what happens when I wish to deploy this solution on my development machine so I can quickly test it out while I am in the midst of development? Since the Windows Azure Platform has an outstanding local cloud simulation environment (which can be downloaded for free), “local” is the most common deployment target! It is not ideal that the Startup Tasks will run locally – I do not want to continually install ASP.NET MVC (or re-enable web metabase support, etc.) since that will just slow me down.

The Simple Workaround

I know of no built-in support that makes it easy for a Startup Task to “know” whether it is running in the cloud or in your local development environment. But it is simple to roll your own. Here’s what I do:

• Create an Environment Variable called AZURE_CLOUD_SIMULATION_ENVIRONMENT. While the exact value of this variable does not matter, for the sake of someone else who may see it and be puzzled, I set mine to be “set manually per http://bit.ly/rs5SRN” where the bit.ly link points back to this blog post.  It also doesn’t matter if the Environment Variable is user-specific or System-wide. If it is a shared development machine, I would make it System-wide (for all users).
• It is common practice when defining Startup Tasks to create command script using a .cmd file and have that be the Startup Task. Within the Startup Task .cmd file, use the defined keyword (supported in the command shells of recent versions of Windows, such as those you will be using for Azure development and deployment) to add a little logic so that you run only those commands you wish to execute in the current environment.

To set up the AZURE_CLOUD_SIMULATION_ENVIRONMENT environment variable:

1. Run SystemPropertiesAdvanced.exe to bring up the System Properties dialog box:
   
2. Click the Environment Variables button to bring up the Environment Variables dialog box:
   
3. Click the New… button at the bottom to bring up the New System Variable dialog box:
   
4. Type AZURE_CLOUD_SIMULATION_ENVIRONMENT into the Variable name field, and set manually per http://bit.ly/rs5SRN into the Variable value field:
   
5. Hit a few OK buttons and you’ll be done.

Revised “Smart” Startup Task

Of course the trick is that the AZURE_CLOUD_SIMULATION_ENVIRONMENT variable will only be set on development machines, so it will NOT be set in the real cloud, getting you the desired results. Here is the same enable-webmetabase.cmd Startup Task script from above, except rewritten so that when you run it locally it will not do anything to your development machine.

if defined AZURE_CLOUD_SIMULATION_ENVIRONMENT goto SKIP

powershell -command “Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted”
powershell .\enable-webmetabase.ps1

:SKIP

The line “if defined AZURE_CLOUD_SIMULATION_ENVIRONMENT goto SKIP” simply checks whether AZURE_CLOUD_SIMULATION_ENVIRONMENT exists in the environment, and if it does exist, the script jumps over the two powershell lines. This is pretty handy!

Again, in summary, if you follow the very simple approach in this post, the AZURE_CLOUD_SIMULATION_ENVIRONMENT will exist only on development machines – in the simulated cloud – and not out in the “real” cloud.

Not to be Confused with RoleEnvironment.IsAvailable

There is another technique – that is built into Azure – which you can use in code that needs to behave one way when running under Windows Azure, and another way when not running under Windows Azure: RoleEnvironment.IsAvailable. This is good for code that might be deployed both in, say, an Azure Web Role and in a non-Azure ASP.NET web site. For Azure applications, RoleEnvironment.IsAvailable will be true for both the local development machine and when deployed into the public cloud.

While RoleEnvironment.IsAvailable and AZURE_CLOUD_SIMULATION_ENVIRONMENT serve different purposes, they are complementary and can be used together.

For more information on RoleEnvironment.IsAvailable, there is documentation and a good description of its use.

Other Uses for the Technique

Maybe you want to do certain things ONLY in your development environment. For example, perhaps you wish to launch Fiddler. Or maybe uninstall a Windows Service (via InstallUtil /u <service exe name>). Whatever your needs – you can use the same simple technique to make this easy. The following syntax is also supported – each bullet being a single line (though some of them may appear on more than one line in this blog post):

• if defined AZURE_CLOUD_SIMULATION_ENVIRONMENT (echo AZURE_CLOUD_SIMULATION_ENVIRONMENT equals %AZURE_CLOUD_SIMULATION_ENVIRONMENT%) else (echo AZURE_CLOUD_SIMULATION_ENVIRONMENT is NOT defined)
• if defined AZURE_CLOUD_SIMULATION_ENVIRONMENT echo DOING SOMETHING
• if NOT defined AZURE_CLOUD_SIMULATION_ENVIRONMENT echo DOING SOMETHING ELSE

Is this useful? Did I leave out something interesting or get something wrong? Please let me know in the comments! Think other people might be interested? Spread the word!

As I was working through the Interesting Finds: June 23, 2011 posts on Cloud Computing I drilled into one from the Official Google Enterprise Blog titled Businesses innovate and scale faster on Google App Engine. It is a very well crafted post which includes some great customer quotes and a couple of videos. I must say, it does a great job of promoting the value in the Google App Engine (GAE) platform, essentially as mini-case studies. Well done!

What struck me as particulary interesting about this post, however, is the types of benefits the GAE customers say they value:

• The first embedded video features Dan Murray, founder and managing director of a cloud-based SEC-filings company called WebFilings. Mr. Murray mentions they needed a platform that would be secure and would support rapid growth. He goes on (at 1:50 into the video): “Google App Engine provides a platform that takes the infrastructure management off of our hands, we don’t have to worry about it, so it’s easy for us to build and deploy apps. For us right now it’s about execution and making sure that we’re scaling our business, while App Engine provides the ability to scale the technology and platform.”
• The second embedded video features Jessica Stanton from the famous Evite event invitation site. Ms. Stanton mentions (at 0:52 into the video) “the things that App Engine especially desirable for us are the autoscaling and … monitoring systems” that Google provides. Near the end (at 1:12 into the video) she emphasises: “the opportunity that App Engine has afforded to us is more time to do what we need to do. To just get things done and to get new features out and not have to worry so much about load and things going down because we take on 16-18 million unique users a month.  It’s really nice to see instances spin up and come down and we never had to touch anything.”
• Quote from Gary Koelling of Best Buy: “… we don’t have to spend any time doing system administration or setting up servers, which allows us to focus on the development and testing new ideas.”

The funny thing is, the benefits touted are really the benefits of Platform as a Service (PaaS). These services could just as easily have been built on the Windows Azure Platform!

• Mr. Murray from WebFilings mentioned the need for a a platform based on a great security infrastructure. Both Microsoft and Google have some of the industry’s best and brightest working for them in their state-of-the art, world-class data centers. Here are some good resources relating to security in the Windows Azure data centers. If you want a secure data center and secure platform, I don’t think you can go wrong with either Microsoft or Google. (Frankly, I expect you are more likely to have problems – including with cost and security – if you roll your own data center. Your company will not have the top experts in the world on your payroll.)
• Both Ms. Stanton from Evite and Mr. Koelling of Best Buy emphasize that they benefit from being able to focus on building software – and not being distracted by needing to worry about infrastructure. This is what Platform as a Service (PaaS) is all about. Both Microsoft and Google offer PaaS. GAE supports apps which run on the JVM (e.g., Java) and apps written in Python. Windows Azure supports programming in any .NET language (e.g., C#), plus a plethora of other platforms that run on Windows – PHP, Java, Python, Ruby, C++, and so many more. GAE has database support with a query language they call GQL, and Azure has SQL Azure which supports the regular SQL you know and love. Each platform has other features as well, making it a place where you can focus on your app – not your infrastructure.
• Ms. Stanton mentions that they have a team of 5 developers. I wonder how large the Evite team would need to be if they were not running on PaaS?

Mr. Murray from WebFilings mentions that they began using GAE back 2008 – and the Windows Azure Platform was not announced until late in 2008 (at Microsoft PDC in November 2008), so that was not an option yet for them. It is not mentioned when the other companies began to use GAE. If they were starting today, I wonder how many would choose Azure?

While hybrid cloud models will surely be around for many companies for a long time – we won’t all move to the cloud over night – the economics of moving to the cloud are too compelling to ignore. Many newer companies are heading directly into the cloud – never owning any infrastructure.

One of the the costs in managing a hybrid cloud model – where some data is on-prem, some data is in the cloud – is the raw data transfer when you copy bits to or from the cloud. This can cost you real money: for example, in the USA and Europe, both the Windows Azure Platform and the Amazon S3 services charge $0.10 per GB to move the data into the datacenter. If you have a huge amount of data, that cost can add up.

Announced today on the Windows Azure blog, as of July 1, 2011 the Windows Azure datacenters will no longer have a data transfer charge for inbound data. What are the implications?

Here are a few I can think of:

1. Overall cost savings can only help general overall cloud adoption
2. Backing up data from on-prem into the cloud just got more interesting (good point I stole from maura )
3. HPC applications which may have a lot of data to move into the cloud for processing – but may never need that data to come out of the cloud (other than in much smaller digested form) just became more appealing
4. Use of Windows Azure as a collection for disparate data sources from around the internet – for management, aggregation, or analysis – just became more attractive
5. While experimentation on the cloud has always been cheaper than buying boxes, it now makes it even simpler and cheaper to try out something big in the cloud because you are now an even smaller blip on the corporate cost radar – go ahead, upload that Big Data and run your experiment – you can always delete it when you are done
6. There are cloud storage vendors who sit on top of big cloud storage vendor platforms, such as on Azure and Amazon – if I was one of these vendors, I would be delighted – business just got a little easier

Points 2, 3, 4, and 5 above all deal with an asymmetric use of bandwidth where the amount of data moving into the cloud is far less than the amount of data leaving the cloud. With backups – your hope is to NEVER need to pull that data – but it is there in the event you need it. With HPC – in many cases you just want answers or insights – you may not care about all the raw data. With data aggregation – you probably just want some reports. With one-off experiments, when you are finished you just delete all the storage containers – so simple!

This is a big and interesting step towards accelerating cloud computing adoption generally, and Windows Azure specifically. This friction-reducing move brings us closer to a world where we don’t ask “should we be in the cloud?” but rather “why aren’t we in the cloud?”

[Update 23-June-2011: Joel Bennett posted his slide deck from the talk.] 
[Update 05-July-2011: Added another handy link to post from Patrick Butler called Developing and Debugging Azure Management API CmdLets.]

Some of the pointers:

• Go get the PowerShell Community Extensions (from codeplex)
• You can use the PS command line to CD into folders/directories, look at files, etc. — but you can also look at the Registry or your Certificate Store as if they were directories!
• There are no plural nouns in PS (e.g., get-provider, not get-providers)
• Learn these commands first: Get-Command, Get-Help, Get-Member, Select-Object, Where-Object, Format-Table, … others you can learn later
• Somebody needs to write a PowerShell Provider for Azure Storage
• Joel created an open-shell WPF-ish PowerShell shell called POSH

Try some commands:

• dir | get-objec
• dir | fl *  –formats as lis
• get-verb | fw -col
• get-verb | fw -col 6 -groupby Group
• Get-ExecutionPolicy
• dir | where { $_.PSIsContainer } – where $_ is “the thing over there (directory)”
• dir | select CreationTime, Name | gm
• dir | select * –will look different than command above
• $global:foo = “some value”
• cd c:\windows\system32\windowspowershell\v1.0… see Help.format.ps1xml controls the default output formatting properties for object types not already known by PowerShell – can have property names, even script blocks in it – very powerful
• # is single-line comment char; <# … #> for multi-line comments
• You can create aliases for scripts
• Powershell is an interpreted scripting language
• Can access WinForms, WPF, lots of stuff.. though not Threading

Three ways to manage Azure from PowerShell

1. Remoting
2. WASM (Windows Azure Services Management commandlets) – superceded by http://wappowershell.codeplex.com/ – developed by Development Evangelist group (e.g., Vittorio)
3. Cerebrata (3rd party, commercial)

Remoting:

• Need to get some goodness in a Startup Script, along with crecentials
• Set OS Family = 2 (so you get Windows Server 2008 R2)
• Need a certificate – can be self-signed

WAP PowerShell:

• 36 Cmdlets
• “the 80% library”
• very good example

Cerebrata Cmdlets

• Requires .NET 4.0 (which is different than baseline support for PS, which is .NET CLR 2.0
• $70
• 114 Cmdlets
• Cerebrata
• gcm –mo cerebrata | gr0up Noun | sort

Snap-ins need to be in the GAC – so put WAP PowerShell stuff where you want to keep them, since that’s where they’ll be built — or build the file in Visual Studio

• Add-Module is for SNAPINS
• IPMO is for ImportModule for Modules
• ipmo AzurePlatform
• gcm –mo AzurePlatform

PowerShell has something called “splatting”

• Starting with a hashtable… put in the parms you’ll need
• variables start with $
• retrieving (splatting) starts with @

Both cerebrata and WAP are snap-ins

WHAT FOLLOWS… are somewhat random notes I captured…

Get-Certificate $azure | Get-HostedCertificateStore

Your personal profile for PowerShell lives in c:\Users\YOURNAME\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\AzurePlatform as Startup.ps1 (?)

Two kinds of errors in PowerShell: 1. Terminating Errors (exceptions, can be “trapped” or use try/catch as of PS2) and 2. Non-Terminating Errors which are harder to deal with

$? ==> did the last command succeed

dir doesnotexist –ev er –ea “”

$er[0].categoryinfo

“Don’t Produce Snap-ins!” Here’s why: to figure out what is in there (get-command –Module

Get-Module –ListAvailable

- run the above on AZure and see “NetworkLoadBalancingCl…” – is this Azure relate

OTHER INTERESTING POWERSHELL/AZURE LINKS

• http://poshcode.org/
• http://pscx.codeplex.com
• http://wappowershell.codeplex.com/workitem/list/basic
• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/patrick_butler_monterde/archive/2011/06/30/developing-and-debugging-azure-management-api-cmdlets.aspx

To specificy your intent to use a Local Storage location, you add an entry to ServiceDefinition.csdef under the specific role from which you plan to access it. For example:

<LocalStorage name="LocalTempFolder" sizeInMB="11"
      cleanOnRoleRecycle="true" />

You can read more about the details over in Neil Mackenzie’s post, but the main thing you need to do is call a method to access the full path to the read/write folder associated with the name you provided (e.g., “LocalTempFolder” in the config snippet above). The method call looks like this:

LocalResource localResource =
      RoleEnvironment.GetLocalResource("LocalTempFolder");
var pathToReadWriteFolder = localResource.RootPath;
var pathToFileName = pathToReadWriteFolder + "foo.txt";

Now you can use ”the usual” classes to write and read these files. But calling RoleEnvironment.GetLocalResource only works from within the safe confines of a your Role code – as in a Worker Role or Web Role – you know, the process that inherits from (and completes) the RoleEntryPoint abstract class. What happens if I am inside of a Windows Service?

Your Windows Service Has Super Powers

Well… your Windows Service does not exactly have Super Powers, but it does have powers and abilities far above those of ordinary Roles. This is due to the differences in their security contexts. Your Windows Service runs as the very powerful LocalSystem account, while your Roles run as a lower priviledge user. Due to this, your Windows Service can do things your Role can’t, such as write to the file system generally, access Active Directory commands, and more.

[Your Startup Tasks might also have more powers than your Roles, if you configure them to run with elevated privileges using executionContext="elevated" as in:
<Task commandLine="startuptask.cmd" executionContext="elevated" />
See also David Aiken's post on running a startup task as a specific user.]

However, there are some things your Windows Service can’t do, but that your Role can: access RoleEnvironment!

Problem Querying Local Storage from a Windows Service

Inside of a Windows Service (which is outside of the Role environment), the RoleEnvironment object is not populated. So, for example, you cannot call

RoleEnvironment.GetLocalResource("LocalTempFolder")

and expect to get a useful result back. Rather, an exception will be raised.

But here’s a trick: it turns out that calling RoleEnvironment.GetLocalResource returns the location of the folder, but it is just the location of a folder on disk at this point – this folder can be accessed by any process that knows about it. So how about if your Web  or Worker Role could let the Windows Service know where its storage location happens to be? (As an aside, we have a good idea where they might ultimately end up on disk in practice (see last section of this post) – but of course subject to variability and change – but it is useful if you want to poke around on your local machine or through Remote Desktop to an instance in the cloud.)

The Trick: Pass the Local Storage location into your Windows Service

If you are deploying a Windows Service along with your Role, you will need to install the Windows Service and you will need to start the Windows Service. A reasonable way to install your Windows Service is to use the handy InstallUtil.exe program that is included with .NET. Here is how you might invoke it:

%windir%\microsoft.net\framework\v4.0.30319\installutil.exe
      MyWindowsService.exe

Now the Windows Service is installed, but not running; you still need to start it. Here is a reasonable way to start it:

net start MyWindowsServiceName

Typically, both the InstallUtil and net start commands would be issued (probably in a .bat or .cmd file) from a Startup Task. But there is another way to start an installed Windows Service which allows some additional control over it, such as the ability to pass it arguments. This is done with a few lines of code from within the OnStart method of your Role, such as in the following code snippet which uses the .NET ServiceController class to get the job done:

var windowsServiceController =
      new System.ServiceProcess.ServiceController
            ("MyWindowsServiceName");
System.Diagnostics.Debug.Assert(
      windowsServiceController.Status ==  
      windowsServiceControllerStatus.Stopped);
windowsServiceController.Start();

Putting together both acquiring the Local Storage location and starting the Windows Service, your code might look like the following:

string[] args = { 
      RoleEnvironment.GetLocalResource
            ("LocalTempFolder").RootPath
      }
var windowsServiceController =
      new System.ServiceProcess.ServiceController  
            ("MyWindowsServiceName");
System.Diagnostics.Debug.Assert(
      windowsServiceController.Status == 
      windowsServiceControllerStatus.Stopped);
// pass in Local Storage location
windowsServiceController.Start(args);

Within your Windows Service’s OnStart method you will need to pick up the arguments passed in, which at that point has nothing specific to Azure. Your code might look like the following:

protected override void OnStart(string[] args)
{
   var myTempFolderPath = args[0];
   // ...
}

That oughta do it! Please let me know in the comments if you find this useful.

• Development tools for Azure are available for free
• Azure provides an excellent cloud simulation environment on your desktop
• Not every application is a good fit for the cloud – for example, a small app that doesn’t need to scale and need not be highly available might fit better with a less costly hosted solution
• When comparing costs of Azure with other approaches, keep in mind that Azure is a robust, highly available, scable, flexible platform – what you get for your dollar is often of much greater value than the dollar you spend for some other types of solution
• Azure affords fantastic cost-saving opportunities through the flexible scale down model – don’t need a data or compute resource anymore? stop using it, and you’ll stop paying for it. Try that kind of “on-a-dime” manuever with a hosted solution, with hardware you purchase, or rack space you lease
• Azure services are available a la carte – though of course they are also a fantastic approach when used all together
• There are a number of ways to auto-scale, though don’t underestimate the boundary conditions and there are also some nuances

Since I did only give a taste of the Access Control Service, the plan discussed was for me to come back after the summer for a deeper dive into that fascinating topic.

Although I did not proceed linearly through it, here is the deck I used: [neasp.net-bill_wilder-intro-cloud-azure-acs-for-asp.net-devs-15-june-2011]. The Access Control Service (ACS) content did not include any slides – all talk and demo – though I gave a similar talk at Boston Azure back in February that used the following deck: [Solving the Identity Crisis-using-azure-cloud-access-control-service-(ACS)-talk-24-Feb-2011-Boston-Azure-User-Group] (Since then, the final ACS v2 has been release and changed a few things.)

A. The short answer is that, yes, you can. The longer answer involves better approaches to persisting data in Windows Azure, plus a couple of caveats in writing data to (virtual) hard disks attached to the (virtual) machines on which your application is deployed. 

Any of your code running in either (a) ASP.NET (e.g., default.aspx or default.aspx.cs) or (b) WebRole.cs/WorkerRole.cs (e.g., methods OnStartup, OnRun, and OnStop which are derived from RoleEntryPoint class) will not have permission to write to the file system. This. is. a. good. thing.®

To be clear, if you have code that currently writes to fixed locations on the file system, you will probably need to change it. For example, your ASP.NET or Role code cannot directly create/write the file c:\foo.txt – the permissions are against you, so Windows will not allow it. (To round out the picture though… You can write to the file system directly if you are running in an elevated Startup Task, but cannot write to it from a limited Startup Task. For more on Startup Tasks and how to configure them see How to Define Startup Tasks for a Role.)

The best option is usually to use one of the cloud-native solutions: use one of the Windows Azure Storage Services or use SQL Azure. These services are all built into Windows Azure for the purpose of supporting scalable, reliable, highly available storage. In practice, this means choosing among Windows Azure Blob storage, Windows Azure Table storage, or SQL Azure.

The second-best option is usually to use a Windows Azure Cloud Drive – which is an abstraction that sits on top of Blob storage (Page blobs, specifically) – and looks and acts a lot like an old-fashioned hard disk. You can access it with a drive letter (though you won’t know the drive letter until deployment time!), it can be mounted by and read from multiple of your role instances, but only one of these at a time will be able to mount it for updating. The Windows Azure Drive feature is really there for backward compatibility – to make it easier to migrate existing applications into the cloud without having to change them. Learn more from Neil Mackenzie’s detailed post on Azure Drives.

The third-best option is usually to use the local hard disk. (And this is what the original FAQ question specifically asked about.) Read on…

Writing Data to Local Drive from Windows Azure Role

So… Can I write to the hard disk? Yes. And you have a decent amount of disk at your disposal, depending on role size. Using Azure APIs to write to disk on your role is known as writing to Local Storage. You will need to configure some space in Local Storage from your ServiceDefinition.csdef by giving that space (a) a name, (b) a size, and (c) indicating whether the data there should survive basic role recycles (via cleanOnRoleRecycle). Note – cleanOnRoleRecycle does not guarantee your data will survive – it is just a hint to the Fabric Controller that, if it is available, should it leave it around or clean it up.  That limitation is fine for data that is easily recalculated or generated when the role starts up – so there are some good use cases for this data, even for cloud-native applications – think of it as a handy place for a local cache. (Up above I refer to this as the usually being the third-best option. But maybe it is the best option! In some use cases it might be. One good example might be if you were simply exploding a ZIP file that was pulled from blob storage, but there are others too. But let’s get back to Local Storage…)

Here is the snippet from ServiceDefinition.csdef:

...
<LocalResources>
   <LocalStorage name="SomeLocationForCache" 
         cleanOnRoleRecycle="false" 
         sizeInMB="10" />
   </LocalResources>
...

You can also use the Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio user interface to edit these values; double-click on the role you wish to configure from the Roles list in your Windows Azure solution. This is the easiest approach.

Once specified, the named Local Storage area can be written to and read from using code similar to the following:

// reference Microsoft.WindowsAzure.ServiceRuntime.dll from SDK
// (probably in C:\Program Files\Windows Azure SDK\v1.4\ref)
const string azureLocalResourceNameFromServiceDefinition = 
      "SomeLocationForCache";
var azureLocalResource = 
      RoleEnvironment.GetLocalResource(
            azureLocalResourceNameFromServiceDefinition);
var filepath = 
      azureLocalResource.RootPath + 
            "myCacheFile.xml"; // build full path to file
// the rest of the code is plain old reading and writing of files
// using the 'filepath' variable immediately above

Learn more from Neil Mackenzie’s blog post on Local Storage.

Writing to TEMP Folder from Windows Azure Role

How about writing temporary files? Is that supported? Yes, same as in Windows. For example, in .NET one can get a temporary scratch space and write to it using code similar to the following:

var filepath = System.IO.Path.GetTempFileName();
System.IO.File.WriteAllText(filepath, "some text");


Do Not Use Environment.SpecialFolder Locations in Azure

You may also have some existing code which writes files for the currently logged in user. Check the Environment.SpecialFolder Enumeration for the full list, but one examples is Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData. You would access this location with code such as the following:

string filepath = Environment.GetFolderPath(
   Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData,
   Environment.SpecialFolderOption.DoNotVerify);

You will find that your ASP.NET code will be able to write to this location, but that is almost certainly not what you want! By default, the user account under which you will be saving this data is one that is generated when your role is deployed – something like RD00155D328831$ – not some IPrincipal from your Windows domain.

Further, for data you care about, you don’t want to store data it in the local file system in Windows Azure. Better options should be apparent from earlier points made in this article.

And, finally, you may prefer the elegance of claims-based federated authentication using the AppFabric Access Control Service.

Writing to File System from Windows Service in Windows Azure Role

If you want to do something unusual, like write to the file system from outside of Role’s code, there are ways to write to the file system from a Windows Service or a Startup Task (though be sure to run your Startup Task with elevated permissions).

Is this useful? Did I leave out something interesting or get something wrong? Please let me know in the comments! Think other people might be interested? Spread the word!

A. The anwer, of course, depends on what you are doing. Official pricing information is available on the Windows Azure Pricing site, and to help you model pricing for your application you can check out the latest Windows Azure Pricing Calculator. Also, the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit is now in beta.

Simple cost example: Running One Instance of a Small Compute Role costs 12¢ per hour, which is around $1052 per year. A SQL Azure instance that holds up to 1 GB costs $9.99 per month. If you have Two Small Compute Instances & 1 GB of SQL Azure storage, plus throwing in some bandwidth use, a dash of Content Delivery Network (CDN) use, and your baseline cost might start at around $2,225.

Update 22-June-2011: The pricing calculators may not reflect this interesting development: data transfer into the Azure Data Centers becomes free on July 1, 2011. See: http://blog.codingoutloud.com/2011/06/22/free-data-transfer-into-azure-datacenters-is-a-big-deal/ and http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2011/06/22/announcing-free-ingress-for-all-windows-azure-customers-starting-july-1st-2011.aspx

But it is not always that simple: this is just the simplest, pay-as-you-go model! In the short term, there are many deals, offers, and trials – some free. There are Azure benefits included with MSDN. And long term there are ways to get better rates if you have an Enterprise Agreement with Microsoft, or by selecting a more predictable baseline than pay-as-you-go. See the Windows Azure Pricing site for current options.

Further, when comparing costs with other options, consider a few factors:

• The SQL Azure storage is really a SQL Azure cluster of three instances giving you storage redundancy (3 copies of every byte), high availability (with automagic failover), high performance, and other advanced capabilities.
• Similarly, every byte written to Windows Azure Storage (blobs, tables, and queues) is stored as three copies.
• Running two Small Compute instances of a role comes with a 99.9% uptime Service Level Agreement (SLA), and a 99.95% connectivity SLA. Read more about the Compute, SQL Azure, and other Windows Azure Platform SLAs here.
• Since Windows Azure is Platform as a Service (PaaS), be careful to also consider that you may have fewer hassles and lower engineering and operational costs – these are lower staff-time costs – if you are comparing to an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering.

While you are at it, consider checking out some of these related third-party offerings:

• CloudValue – A whole company dedicated to understanding and optimizing costs in moving to the cloud. I saw them at TechEd Atlanta in May 2011. They (a) presented a generally useful talk on Cost-Oriented Development (not specific to their technology, though we saw a glimpse of their Visual Studio integrated cost analyzer); and they (b) had a booth so people could check out their CloudValue Online Service Tracking (COST) service which provides ongoing analysis of your costs in the Windows Azure cloud. I am trying out the COST product now that my beta request has been approved!
• CloudTally – A service offering from Red Gate Software – currently in beta, and currently free – will keep an eye on your SQL Azure database instance and based on how much data you have in it over time, it will report your daily storage costs via email. I’ve been using this for a few months. The data isn’t very sophisticated – of the “you spent $3.21 yesterday” variety – but I think they are considering some enhancements (I even sent them some suggestions).
• Windows Azure Migration Scanner – An open source tool created by Neudesic to help you identify changes your application might require in order to make it ready for Azure. This is not specifically a cost-analysis tool, but is useful from a cost-analysis point of view since it can help you predict operational costs of the Azure-ready version of your application – for example if you will make changes to leverage the reliable queue service in Windows Azure Storage, you will know enough to model this. Read David Pallmann’s introduction to the scanner, where he also mentions some other tools.
• Greybox – While not a core tool for calculating costs, it is a interesting open source utility to help you avoid the “I-deployed-to-Azure-for-testing-purposes-but-forgot-all-about-it” memory lapse. (If deployed, you pay – whether you are using it or not. Like an apartment – you pay for it, even while you are at work – though Azure has awesome capabilities for you to “move out of your cloud apartment” during times when you don’t need it!) You may not need it, but its existance illustrates an important lesson!

Credit: I discovered the new Windows Azure Pricing Calcular from http://twitter.com/#!/dhamdhere/status/73056679599677440.

Is this useful? Did I leave out something interesting or get something wrong? Please let me know in the comments! Think other people might be interested? Spread the word!

Here’s how my day went:

1. Spoke about the cloud and Azure’s role in the cloud. Special thanks to Corinne, Sandra, and Matthew for the excellent questions and discussion. Here is the slide deck (new-hampshire-code-camp-3-concord-bill_wilder-demystifying_cloud_computing_and_azure-04-june-2011.ppt) – though I didn’t use much of it! – we freestyled a lot. Of particular interest to attendees of this talk. check out my post called “Azure FAQ: How much will it cost me to run my application on Windows Azure?” (actually posted “tomorrow” – the day after I posted this note from code camp).
2. Was torn between Phil Denoncourt‘s talk on “25 Things I’ve Learned about C# over the past 10 years” and Andy Novick‘s talk on SQL Azure. Ended up hanging out for Andy’s talk to see if there was anything new in SQL Azure and to get his take on the awesomeness that is SQL Azure Federations.
3. Lunch break
4. Spoke about Architecture Patterns for the Cloud. Here is the slide deck: New-Hampshire-Code-Camp-3-Concord-_bill_wilder_-_cloud_scalability_patterns_in_windows_azure_platform_-_04-june-2011 – we talked focused on three specific scalability patterns and how you might implement those on the Windows Azure Platform: Sharding, NoSQL Data (and eventual consistency), and CQRS.
5. Watched Udai Ramachandran talk about Windows Azure AppFabric Caching in the final session.

Thursday morning at 5:00 AM – my time, which is Eastern Time (Boston) – I will be delivering one of these sessions to the world. This is also 2:00 AM PST, and 10:00 AM UTC. But the key for me is that it is 5:00 AM in the morning in my time zone. Just sayin…

My “talk” is scalability concepts and patterns that are relevant for cloud applications, with most examples given using Windows Azure. I put “talk” in quotes since the video is pre-recorded – I will be there however answering questions – live – via Twitter. The public can join the free and easy-access broadcast, and participate via twitter using the #24HitC hashtag. (My personal Twitter handle is @codingoutloud.)

Speakers and Sessions are listed on GITCA’s site. Here is the Cloud Scalability Patterns – 24 Hours in the Cloud presentation as a PDF. I will update this post when (if?) a direct link to the video presentation becomes avaialble.

I look forward to meeting you on the Twitters in a few hours! I look forward to your candid feedback and tough questions.

A. You can run MapReduce in Windows Azure. First we give some pointers, then get into some other options that might even be more useful or powerful, depending on what you are doing.

Summary of most obvious Azure-oriented choices: (1) Apache Hadoop on Azure, (2) LINQ to HPC leveraging Azure, or (3) Daytona Map/Reduce on Azure.

The first approach is to use the open source Apache Hadoop project which implements MapReduce. Details on how to run Hadoop on Azure are available on the Distributed Development Blog. Update 14-Oct-2011: Check out this write-up by Ted Kummert about his keynote at PASS where he discussed deeper Hadoop support for Windows Azure: “Microsoft makes this possible through SQL Server 2012 and through new investments to help customers manage ‘big data’, including an Apache Hadoop-based distribution for Windows Server and Windows Azure and a strategic partnership with Hortonworks. Our announcements today highlight how we enable our customers to take advantage of the cloud to better manage the ‘currency’ of their data.” Also, Avkash Chauhan provides a nice summary of the announcement.

The MapReduce tutorial on the Apache Hadoop project site explains the goal of the project, as followed by detailed steps on how to use the software.

“Hadoop MapReduce is a software framework for easily writing applications which process vast amounts of data (multi-terabyte data-sets) in-parallel on large clusters (thousands of nodes) of commodity hardware in a reliable, fault-tolerant manner.” – from Overview section of Hadoop MapReduce tutorial

Another entrant in this Big Data Analytics space is LINQ to HPC. For more details on LINQ to HPC, check out David Chappell‘s whitepaper called Introducing LINQ to HPC: Processing Big Data on Windows. Chappell explains the value proposition, and also talks about when you might use it versus using SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse. LINQ to HPC beta 2 is availlable for download.

[Update 19-July-2011: Daytona enters the fray] “Microsoft has developed an iterative MapReduce runtime for Windows Azure, code-named Daytona.” It is available for download as of early July, though has a non-commercial-use-only license attached to it. (credit: saw it on the insideHPC blog)

[Update 19-July-2011: It is now clear that LINQ to HPC (available in beta 2!) is supplanting DryadLINQ.] You may also be interested in checking out DryadLINQ from Microsoft Research. Though not identical to MapReduce, they describe it as “a simple, powerful, and elegant programming environment for writing large-scale data parallel applications running on large PC clusters.” As of this writing it was not licensed for commercial use, but was available under an academic use license. (With the introduction of LINQ to HPC, I can’t tell whether these projects are related, or whether LINQ to HPC is the productized version of DryadLINQ.)

And, finally, I also just read an interesting post called Hadoop is the Answer! What is the Question? by Tim Negris. This brings up some good points about the maturity of Hadoop and other points – if you are thinking about MapReduce, Hadoop, DryadLINQ, or other approaches, give his article a read.

[05-June-2011 updates] Added info from David Chappell and Tim Negris.

Is this useful? Did I leave out something interesting or get something wrong? Please let me know in the comments! Think other people might be interested? Spread the word!

Since this summary page is – by necessity - a point-in-time SNAPSHOT of what I see is going on, it will not necessarily be updated when event details change. So please always double-check with official event information!

Know of any more cloud events of interest to the Windows Azure community? Have any more information or corrections on the events listed? Please let us know in the comments.

They are listed in the order in which they will occur.

[10-June-2011 - added the New England ASP.NET Professionals User Group talk on June 15; I am the featured speaker. Moved Kyle Quest's cloud hackathon to new date: June 16.]

1. 24 Hours in the Cloud – Cloud Scalability Patterns for the Windows Azure Platform

Note: GITCA’s 24 Hours in the Cloud event begins on Wed June 1 and ends on Thu June 2. This post just highlights the talk I am giving. There are MANY OTHER talks you may wish to check out. Many of the talks are IT Pro-oriented.

• when: Thurs June 2, 5:00 – 6:00 AM (yes, in the MORNING, Boston time) [changed to earlier still! I was rescheduled to begin at 5:00 AM!]
• where: Online – see below for registration
• cost: Free
• what: Talk on scalability patterns that are important for cloud applications; my session consists of a 40 minute (pre-recorded) talk, followed by 20 minutes of live Q&A. Since the talks are pre-recorded, speakers will be able to respond to questions from Twitter during the talk (then again in the live Q&A at the end) via the #24HitC hashtag. My twitter handle is @codingoutloud.
• more info & Register: http://sp.gitca.org/sites/24hours
• twitter: #24HitC

2. CloudCamp Boston

• when: Thu 02-June-2011, 5:30 - ??? PM
• where: NERD Center in Cambridge
• wifi: yes
• food: (unknown)
• cost: FREE
• what: Vendor-independent bar camp-style conference on whatever in the cloud is interesting to the audience
• more info: http://www.cloudcamp.org/boston
• register: http://cloudcamp-boston-2011.eventbrite.com/
• twitter: (not sure)

3. Beantown .NET Meeting – Architecture Patterns for Scalability and Reliability

• when: Thu 02-June-2011, 6:00 – 8:00 PM
• where: NERD Center in Cambridge
• wifi: yes
• food: (I think there will be pizza)
• cost: FREE
• what: Talk by Bill Wilder (me) on architecture patterns that will help your applications scale and be more reliable.
• more info: http://blog.benday.com/archive/2011/05/27/Beantown-NET-Meeting-on-622011-Bill-Wilder-quotArchitecture-Patterns-for.aspx
• register: See instructions to send an email here
• twitter: (not sure)

4. Hack the Cloud – Cloud Platform Bake-Off

Moved to June 16th – see below

• when: Thu 02-June-2011, 6:00 PM – ???
• where: Nokia – 5 Wayside Road Burlington, MA
• wifi: (unknown)
• food: (unknown)
• cost: FREE
• what: Hacking event on multiple cloud stacks in order that they can be compared
• more info: http://www.meetup.com/Hack-The-Cloud/
• register: http://www.meetup.com/Hack-The-Cloud/
• twitter: (not sure)

5. New Hampshire Code Camp – Concord, NH

• when: Sat 04-June-2011, 8:00 – 4:00 PM
• where: New Hampshire Technical Institute 31 College Drive Concord, NH 03301
• wifi: not sure
• food: I think they do dinner afterwards
• cost: FREE
• what: In the Code Camp spirit, come learn many things from many people!
• more info: here or at www.nhdn.com
• register: here
• twitter: (not sure)

6. The Architect Factory

• when: Thu 09-June-2011, 1:00 – 8:00 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center
• wifi: Wireless Internet access will be available
• food: (not sure of details yet)
• cost: FREE
• what: Real, Practical Guidance on becoming and Architect, or becoming a Better Architect
• more info: http://architectfactory.com/
• register: http://architectfactory-eorg.eventbrite.com/
• twitter: #architectfactory or #af3 (not sure which is “official”)

7. New England ASP.NET Professionals Group

• when: Wed 25-June-2011, 6:15 – 8:30 PM
• where: Microsoft Office on Jones Road, Waltham
• wifi: no
• food: group does to dinner afterwards
• cost: FREE
• what: A talk that introduces Cloud Computing and the Windows Azure Platform and shows how it relates to the ASP.NET developer – tools, libraries, and how to build and deploy.
• more info: http://neasp.net/
• register: see http://neasp.net/
• twitter: (not sure)

8. Hack the Cloud – Cloud Platform Bake-Off

• when: Thu 16-June-2011, 6:00 PM – ???
• where: Nokia – 5 Wayside Road Burlington, MA
• wifi: (unknown)
• food: (unknown)
• cost: FREE
• what: Hacking event on multiple cloud stacks in order that they can be compared
• more info: http://www.meetup.com/Hack-The-Cloud/
• register: http://www.meetup.com/Hack-The-Cloud/
• twitter: (not sure)

9. 4th Annual Hartford Code Camp

• when: Sat 18-June-2011, 8:00 – 5:30 PM
• where: Hosted at New Horizons Learning Center (Bloomfield CT)
• wifi: Wireless Internet access will be available
• food: Pizza and drinks will be provided
• cost: FREE
• what: In the Code Camp spirit, come learn many things from many people!
• more info: http://ctdotnet.org/
• register: see http://ctdotnet.org/ until a direct link is published
• twitter: (not sure)

10. Boston Azure User Group meeting: Rock, Paper, Azure Event!

• when: Thu 23-June-2011, 6:00 – 8:30 PM (come at 5:30 if you need help getting set up)
• where: Hosted at NERD Center
• wifi: Wireless Internet access will be available
• food: Pizza and drinks will be provided
• cost: FREE
• what: Bring your Windows Azure-ready laptop (or get a loaner, or pair up with someone) as we go head-to-head in an Azure programming contest (it is a simple game, but you will compete with others in the room). Also, there will be prizes – like an Xbox 360, Kinect, and other goodies.
• more info: See Boston Azure cloud user group site for details or see Jim O’Neil’s blog post on the event. Of special note is to request your free account (no credit card, etc. – easy), following details on Jim’s post - takes only a minute of YOUR time, but will help make sure you don’t need to wait for it on Thurs night – do it NOW!
• register: here
• twitter: #bostonazure

11. Maine Bytes: Azure State of the Union

• when: Thu 30-June-2011, 6:00 – 8:00 PM
• where: Unum’s Home Office 3 building at 2211 Congress Street in Maine
• wifi:
• food:
• cost: FREE
• what: Ben Day will give a talk: “Microsoft’s Azure platform moves fast and new features get added all the time. It can definitely be tough to keep up. In this session, Ben will give you a tour around the current features and offerings in Azure with some tips on how to use them in your applications and how to integrate Azure into your software development process.”
• more info: See http://www.mainebytes.org/ for details
• register:
• twitter:

Coming in July:

• Boston Azure User Group meeting on July 28
• And more? Please let me know in the comments if you know about an event relevant to those who care about the Windows Azure Platform

Omissions? Corrections? Comments? Please leave a comment or reply on the Twitters!

Here is the slide deck I used for the talk: Demystifying Cloud Computing and the Windows Azure Platform.

"Bird's Nest" Panel

Some of the topics discussed:

• SaaS vs. PaaS vs. IaaS, including the blurring of the lines between them
• Scale Up vs. Scale Out vs. Scale back down — elastic scale means you pay for what you use — just start (or stop) using the resources you need and the billing will reflect this usage
• Scale has many dimensions, some of which are Geographic Distribution of and Number of Users, Amount of Data, and Needed Computation Power
• Cloud applications are architected differently, often decoupling user-facing functionality from services – the front-end may communicate with the back-end using a reliable queue (such as offered by Windows Azure); see CQRS pattern
• There are many application architecture concepts that are shared across applications built for most cloud vendors – for example, the loosely coupled front-end/queue/back-end scenario mentioned above can be implemented on Windows Azure (which provides Web Roles, reliable queues, and Worker Roles) or Amazon (which allows you to build and upload a Virtual Machines for front-end and back-ends, plus offers a reliable queuing service), other cloud platforms, and even on-premise – the cloud services just make these more natural to implement
• Improving latency for cloud applications might be facilitated through a Content Delivery Network (CDN), geographic load balancing (such as through Windows Azure Traffic Manager), and other techniques

Many thanks to all who participated, including:

• Tina Stewart (Program Manager for Windows Azure Traffic Manager), Federico Zoufaly from Artinsoft, and a few other folks who offered questions or comments from the floor;
• Those who watched and contributed remotely (see Twitter stream below);
• And especially those who joined me on stage in the “Bird’s Nest” as very active contributors: Jason Milgram (Windows Azure MVP, CEO of Linxter), David Pallmann (Windows Azure MVP, GM at Neudesic for Azure practice), Aaron Drenberg (Software Architect), and Artem Kazmerchuk (Software Architect) – thank you guys!

The BOF events were very well run by the INETA team (Chris Pels and a few others).

If you want a more structured treatment of some of the same scalability concepts, feel free to check out my talk on Cloud Scalability Patterns coming on June 1/June 2 via the GITCA “24 Hours in the Cloud” event. Here is the generic event description – follow the link to find out when my talk is slotted in.

If you have more questions on the topic, feel free to put in on twitter (@codingoutloud), you can comment on this blog post, or you can email me (coding out loud at gmail). And, finally, below you can find the  Twitter stream from the live event – latest on top, earliest on bottom – (which I salvaged via research.ly). Scale on!

@techedbof20117 hrs ago
BOF12-DEV on Cloud Computing is now coming to an end. #bofdev #msteched

@techedbof20118 hrs ago
Mobile apps are a big area for growth in the cloud computing area.
#bofdev #msteched

@techedbof20118 hrs ago
Talking about moving existing apps to the cloud as we near the session conclusion.
#bofdev #msteched

@techedbof20118 hrs ago
When you scale you can select the instance size in Azure. #bofdev #msteched

@techedbof20118 hrs ago
Decoupling front end from back end processing is an important concept. #bofdev
#msteched

@techedbof20118 hrs ago
For scaling, one experience is knowing how much work to do and
how much an instance can process in an hour. #bofdev #msteched

@techedbof20118 hrs ago
Would be nice if the Azure platform would monitor and scale for you.
#bofdev #msteched

@techedbof20118 hrs ago
@itagsubbu Great to have you join us. #bofdev #msteched

@itagsubbu8 hrs ago
@techedbof2011 Thanks for asking my question. I am watching this live event.
#bofdev #msteched

@techedbof20118 hrs ago
@itagsubbu Yes you can scale either on a scheduled basis or in a programmatically
#bofdev #msteched

@itagsubbu8 hrs ago
@techedbof2011 #bofdev #msteched Can we scale up for certain period in an year?

@rileybeebs8 hrs ago
RT @jmilgram: Getting ready to attend Bill Wilder @codingoutloud Designing Scalable
Cloud Applications #bofdev session at TechEd #mstech ...

@techedbof20118 hrs ago
Gmail is an example of SaaS #bofdev #msteched

@techedbof20118 hrs ago
How do you get resources to the cloud platform? #bofdev #msteched

@techedbof20118 hrs ago
IaaS eliminates the infrastructure but you admin, for PaaS both roles are eliminated
#bofdev

@techedbof20118 hrs ago
As you scale out across geographically dispersed data centers what is the impact on
SQL Aszure costs? #bofdev

@jimoneil8 hrs ago
blurring of IaaS and PaaS is something interesting as well... becoming less of a
differentiator? #bofdev

@techedbof20119 hrs ago
Silverlight app has 50K updates/sec #bofdev

@techedbof20119 hrs ago
Silverlight app that was not designed for the cloud. What to do? #bofdev

@techedbof20119 hrs ago
Thoughts on WPF app w/ Azure backend? Are you doing that? #bofdev #msteched

@techedbof20119 hrs ago
BOF12-DEV on designing scalable cloud applications is getting started
#bofdev #msteched

@TashasEv9 hrs ago
RT @jmilgram: Getting ready to attend Bill Wilder @codingoutloud Designing Scalable
Cloud Applications #bofdev session at TechEd #mstech

@TashasEv9 hrs ago
@rileybeebs I haven't forgotten about you! just haven't been able to leave the
#BOFDEV sessions at all yet!

@TashasEv9 hrs ago
The next #MSTechEd #BOFDEV : Designing Scalable Cloud Applications lead by
@codingoutloud

@techedbof20119 hrs ago
The next #MSTechEd #BOFDEV : Designing Scalable Cloud Applications
lead by @codingoutloud

@techedbof20119 hrs ago
RT @jimoneil: RT @codingoutloud my 1:30 TechEd session on Designing Scalable
Cloud applications #msteched #bofdev << will be heckling from afar!

@jimoneil9 hrs ago
RT @codingoutloud my 1:30 TechEd session on Designing Scalable Cloud applications
#msteched #bofdev << will be heckling from afar!

Find out why on Monday May 16 @ TechEd in Atlanta – at the FREE After-Hours Dinner-Included Hackathon!

Windows Phone 7 Unleashed Hackathon
Monday, May 16, 2011
6:00 PM to 11:00 PM
Register: http://bit.ly/RegWP7Hackathon

Don’t miss this opportunity to get hands-on help with your Windows Phone 7 app, from the experts!

This is a “hands on” hackathon where you will learn from Windows Phone 7, XNA and Azure experts how to build, scale and publish your Windows Phone 7 app or game. If you are just a beginner, or already have apps in the Marketplace this event should not be missed.

Come hear about new developments that will help you combine the power of the Windows Phone with the Windows Azure cloud platform.

BYO Laptop! And prepare yourself for an energetic evening of fun, learning, and accomplishment!

RSVP early, as space is limited to 300 attendees: http://bit.ly/RegWP7Hackathon

Food, beverages and refreshments will be provided.

 I recently reinstalled Windows 7 on one of my computers and in rebuilding my development tool set, including for Windows Phone, and found I could not run a Windows Phone 7 project locally: Visual Studio complained I did not have the Zune software installed. Okay, not a problem; I will install Zune. But not so fast…

I encountered the following mysterious error while trying to install the Zune software to my Windows 7 desktop.

What does this Zune error message mean?

NO INSTALLATION MEDIA

Can’t find the media for installation package ‘Windows Media Format SDK’. It might be incomplete or corrupt.

Error code: 0×80070002

Searching around the internets did not help, though I saw a reference to do a few things, one of which was to install the latest Windows Media Player. Well… it turns out, I had NO version of the Windows Media Player installed, so I simply installed the latest, and the Zune installer was happy…

One more step

But Visual Studio 2010 was NOT yet willing to allow me to run the Windows Phone 7 emulator to test and debug my Windows Phone applications. I saw the following additional (but improved!) errors from Visual Studio.

First, could not deploy. Nothing new here:

But the reason provided looked more promising:

This is a better known error, easily rectified. Simply switch to the emulator if your project is referencing an attached device, done at the top of Visual Studio as shown here:

Okay… now back to Windows Phone 7 development – of course, with a Windows Azure back-end using the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7.

At my talks, I mentioned the Windows Azure Pass – a 30 day FREE pass for using Windows Azure Compute (IIS or Worker Roles), SQL Azure, Azure Blobs/Tables/Queues, etc. If you didn’t get a handout at talk, no worries! – You can still access the offer: Go here and use Promo Code BILLONAZURE. Let me know if you have any questions or if you use the promotion.

Talks I attended:

• Maura Wilder and Joan Wortman‘s talk on the Ext JS JavaScript framework (which I learned has an incredibly rich widget library and robust  programming model).
• Richard‘s talk on becoming a better developer.
• Ben Day‘s talk on 7 Lessons Learned during his first large Silverlight dev project. Find out more by reading Ben’s article on same topic, starting here.
• Steve Maier‘s talk on using Azure-hosted WCF services to serve as your mobile application’s back-end.
• Chris Bowen on HTML 5.

My presentations (including links to the PowerPoint slide decks):

• Demystifying Cloud Computing (slides: NECC15 – Bill Wilder – Demystifying Cloud Computing and the Windows Azure Platform – 07-May-2011.pptx)
• Windows Azure and Scalability Patterns for Windows Azure (slides: NECC15 – Bill_Wilder – Cloud Scalability Patterns in Windows Azure Platform – 07-May-2011)

Many thanks to Chris Pels, Chris Bowen, and especially Patrick Hynes for such a great event! Thanks also to Telerik and Wintellect for sponsoring our food!

Also enjoying hanging out afterwards at Uno’s with Maura, Joan, George Babey, John Garland, Jesse Liberty, Pat Tormey, Chris, Veronica and Shawn Robichaud, Ron, and several other folks I didn’t get to say hello to…

They are listed in the order in which they will occur.

Know of any more cloud events of interest to the Windows Azure community? Have any more information or corrections on the events listed? Please let us know in the comments.

1. New England Code Camp

• when: Sat 07-May-2011, 8:30 AM – 6:00 PM
• where: Microsoft Waltham (Jones Road)
• wifi: (unknown, but probably just for speakers)
• food: Provided (usually pizza & salad)
• cost: Free
• what: Developer-focused mini-conference on a wide range of topics
• More info & Register: http://thedevcommunity.org

2. Jeffrey Richter from Wintellect will be presenting a free, in-person Windows Azure Deep Dive

• when: Mon 16-May-2011, all day
• where: Waltham
• wifi: (unknown)
• food: (unknown)
• cost: FREE (registration required)
• what: Deep Dive on Windows Azure
• More info: See Jim O’Neil’s blog post for details
• Register: Note there are two ways to register from this page – in person, or webinar – the webinar is a link, but the in person event form is on this page directly: https://www.wintellect.com/Training/Webinar/Registration

3. NHDN – New Hampshire .NET – Concord

• when: Wed 25-May-2011, 6:00 – 8:00 PM
• where: New Hampshire Technical Institute 31 College Drive Concord, NH 03301, Grappone Hall, Room 106
• wifi: not sure
• food: I think they do dinner afterwards
• cost: FREE
• what: Demystifying the Cloud and an overview of Microsoft’s public cloud platform, Windows Azure
• More info: here
• Register: here

4. Boston Azure User Group meeting on PowerShell and how to use it with Windows Azure

• when: Thu 26-May-2011, 6:00 – 8:30 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center
• wifi: Wireless Internet access will be available
• food: Pizza and drinks will be provided
• cost: FREE (registration appreciated)
• what: What is PowerShell, why do you care, and how can you use its awesome power to help with Windows Azure. PowerShell MVP Joel Bennett is the featured speaker.
• More info: See Boston Azure cloud user group site for details
• Register: here

Coming in June:

• 24 Hours in the Cloud
• Cloud Camp Boston
• The Architect Factory
• Boston Azure
• Beantown .NET (Architecture Patterns in the cloud)
• Hartford Code Camp
• New Hampshire Code Camp
• And more? Please let me know in the comments if you know about an event relevant to those who care about the Windows Azure Platform

• What is the Cloud
• How does SQL Azure compare with SQL Server
• What are the other storage options available on the Windows Azure Platform

There were many interesting questions from the audience of 20 or so people – One asked (paraphrasing here..) “Are the Microsoft Data Centers resilient to the radiation expected from a nuke” to which I did not have a good answer. To another question, Jeff Mlakar (@JeffMlakar) offered helpfully that the SQL Azure Data Sync service is an option for SQL Azure backups to on-prem and with geo-replicating SQL Azure across data centers.

We didn’t get to the end of the material due to lots of discussion… but we did get through the most critical concepts.

They are listed in the order in which they will occur.

Know of any more cloud events of interest to the Windows Azure community? Have any more information or corrections on the events listed? Please let us know in the comments.

1. SQL Saturday #71

• when: Sat 02-Apr-2011, 8:30 AM – 6:00 PM
• where: Babson College
• wifi: (unknown)
• food: Provided
• cost: Cheap (registration required)
• what: All about SQL and related topics
• More info & Register: http://www.sqlsaturday.com/71/eventhome.aspx

2. Cloud Platform Bake-Off led by Kyle C. Quest

• when: Fri 15-Apr-2011, 10:00 AM – ??? PM
• where: Hosted at Cafe On the Common, 677 Main Street Waltham, MA (but please DOUBLE CHECK the location at Meetup.com listing)
• wifi: (unknown)
• food: (unknown)
• cost: FREE, but pre-registration appears to be required
• what: “Putting different cloud platforms head to head is one of the original ideas for Cloud Hackathon. I’m sure lots of people are curious how each platform can measure up to its competition.” This is a coding/hacking event on Windows Azure plus Amazon EC3, Google App Engine, and maybe others.
• More info: See Meetup.com for details
• Register: See Meetup.com

3. Boston Azure User Group meeting with David Makogon as featured speaker

• when: Thu 28-Apr-2011, 6:00 – 8:30 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center
• wifi: Wireless Internet access will be available
• food: Pizza and drinks will be provided
• cost: FREE
• what: Exact topics to-be-announced, but they will be awesome David Makogon from Microsoft will be featured speaker
• More info: See Boston Azure cloud user group site for details (soon)
• Register: (soon)

What is the Windows Azure “cloud” platform?

You’ve no doubt been hearing a lot about “the cloud” these days. The cloud is a big topic, with many vendors vying for attention. Not only does Microsoft have many of its own applications running in the cloud – Microsoft also offers a modern, robust platform on which developers and IT Pros can build and deploy cloud applications. This is known as the Windows Azure Platform.

What is the Boston Azure User Group?

The Boston Azure User Group is a community with a common interest: learning about cloud computing, especially focused on the Windows Azure Platform. This community has been holding regular, in-person meetings with talks, discussions, and hands-on sessions since October 2009.

Most meetings include an invited expert speaker or two and usually span multiple Azure-related topics. We also get together sometimes to develop software – what better way to learn about Windows Azure than to write code for a real solution?

What topics do we cover? Anything related to the Windows Azure Platform is fair game – from how it works (Blobs, Queues, Roles, SQL Azure, Service Bus, AppFabric, .NET, Java, PHP, … on and on) – to how real applications use it (which were some of our best talks: from a university research project needing massive scale out to run a simulation, to real businesses running on the platform today) – to announcements, demos, tools, related technologies, and business scenarios.

How do I learn more about the Boston Azure User Group?

We welcome new members – whether you are new to the cloud or new to Windows Azure, want to hear some advanced talks on specific topics, or want to join us for some coding or hackathons – anyone interested in welcome. We also try to reserve a little time at meetings for mingling and everyone is invited to meet up afterwards for a cold beverage at a nearby (walking distance) location.

If you’d like to check us out, visit the user group’s web site – which is itself a Windows Azure application (the source code is on CodePlex).

Please feel free to join our (low volume) mailing list (http://bit.ly/bostonazuremail), follow us on twitter (@bostonazure), or join us for the next meeting (details at www.bostonazure.org).

Meetings are held at the Microsoft NERD Center, in Kendall Square, Cambridge. There is a parking garage in the building, free parking nearby, and is only a short walk from the Red Line train stop.

Meetings are free. Pizza is provided. An RSVP is appreciated.

What if I can’t make it to a Boston Azure meeting?

Want to bring a Windows Azure talk to your user group members? Feel free to contact Boston Azure user group leader Bill Wilder (@codingoutloud or codingoutloud2011@gmail.com) to set up a talk for the user group you run, or a user group you think would be interested. Topics are flexible – what is different about your software architecture in the cloud, what’s new in data storage in Azure, introduction to the Cloud and Azure, or others – let’s talk.

Today at the Virtualization Boston Deep Dive Day 2011 event (put on by the Virtualization Group-Boston), I joined forces with the ITProGuru (aka Mr. Dan Stolts) to share some thoughts in a presentation on this megatrend – what’s going on, what it means for data centers, and what today’s IT Pro might expect from a Cloud-dominated future.

The slides are available here:

Cloud Computing Essentials for the IT Pro – Bill Wilder and Dan Stolts – 11-Mar-2011

The following was not a slide all by itself, but could have been – and I think I’ll use it next time for the simplest definition I can think of for understanding SaaS, PaaS, IaaS:

I also posted a twitter-sized definition of SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS.

They are listed in the order in which they will occur.

Know of any more cloud events of interest to the Windows Azure community? Have any more information or corrections on the events listed? Please let us know in the comments.

1. TechNet Events Presents: Transforming IT with Cloud Computing Firestarter

• when: Tues 22-Mar-2011, 8:30 AM – 4:00 PM
• where: Hilton Garden Inn Boston/Waltham, Presidential Ballroom, 420 Totten Pond Rd, Waltham MA 02451
• wifi: (unknown)
• food: Provided
• cost: FREE (registration required)
• what: The day includes the following sessions:
  • Session 1: Cloud Computing Essentials for IT Pros
  • Session 2: Windows Azure for IT Pros
  • Session 3: Public Cloud: What, Why, and How
  • Session 4: Private Cloud: What, Why, and How
• More info & Register: https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032473675&Culture=en-US

2. Boston Azure User Group meeting with Casual Gaming Theme

• when: Thu 31-M ar-2011, 6:00 – 8:30 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center
• wifi: Wireless Internet access will be available
• food: Pizza and drinks will be provided
• cost: FREE
• what: One of the fastest-growing cloud segments, casual gaming spans all age groups and regions of the world. Examine the architecture of one example of a casual gaming cloud app, review the common event logic used, learn how to add in-app purchasing and ways businesses can capitalize on these break-time diversions. Examples are draw from real-world development projects and use Windows Azure as the cloud platform. Jason Milgram is a Windows Azure MVP and the founder and CEO of Linxter, Inc., provider of message-oriented cloud middleware.
• More info: See Boston Azure cloud user group site for details
• Register: https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07e3h83p6o5f9da75a&oseq=

A Hackathon You Say?

Yes, a Hackathon. This is in-person event where folks show up and hack (write code). In our case, we will meet at Microsoft NERD Center in Cambridge, MA, and our hacking will be on Windows Azure-related code.

1. Rule #1: A Hackathon is fun! (Coding is fun when there is a lot of energy in the room… Plus, we’ll have give-aways – which always makes it even more fun, right?)
2. Rule #2: We learn something! (We all learn better by doing. Plus, we’ll have many book give-aways – another great way to learn!)
3. Rule #3: Aim to ship! (So don’t be overly ambitious with your idea – try to choose something that you can complete in the allotted time – then enhance it if you have extra time.)
4. Rule #4: Goto Rule #1! (Yes, recursion abuse. Extra credit at the Hackathon if you employ recursion appropriately.)

(Did you say Windows Azure? Yes, Windows Azure is Microsoft’s platform for writing applications that will run in the cloud.)

A code base that we expect will get a lot of attention is www.bostonazure.org, which is the community’s web site, but is also a real honest-to-goodness-in-production Azure application using features like Web Role, Blob Storage, Table Storage, SQL Azure (with OData), and Azure Diagnostics. (And also an open source project on CodePlex.)

We will break up into small teams based on which subprojects people want to work on and… get coding.

Here’s the approx schedule:

• 4:00-4:30 PM – Gather, get organized into teams, begin hacking! (We want this to be as efficient as possible so we maximize our time hacking. So please read the rest of this post to see how you can be prepared, such as by joining in the conversation on CodePlex in advance.)
• 4:30-8:15 PM – Hack! We will break for pizza, but otherwise will crank away.
• 8:15-9:00 PM – Show and Tell. What did you do? We will have fun seeing what everyone did, and some cool PRIZES and GIVEAWAYS. + +

Where and when?

Location: Microsoft NERD Center in Cambridge, MA. Parking available in the building (costs money), or take the T, or find on-street parking.

When: Wednesday February 16, 2011 from 4:00-9:00 PM. If you are late, that’s life, but something we can live with.

Food: Pizza will be provided.

What happens if I come late? Join a team when you get here. You will be “just in time” for something.

What do I need to do?

A few things:

1. Sign up so we know you are coming
2. Prepare your development laptop (www.bostonazure.org is running SDK 1.3)
3. Join the conversation in this thread on the CodePlex space for the Boston Azure Project (where we can discuss ideas in advance of the event so we can “hit the ground running”)
4. If you want to have access to a live, honest-to-goodness Azure-in-the-cloud instance of your own, please be sure to sign up A FEW DAYS IN ADVANCE for a Windows Azure Pass (use code: DPEA01). For very clear instructions, please check out Jim O’Neil’s screencast on signing up for Windows Azure Pass. Jim will be at the Hackathon helping out, and in case you don’t know him, Jim is definitely a friend of ours. [Note that an Azure development environment should be fine as well for most of us.]

IF YOU DO NOT HAVE YOUR OWN AZURE-CAPABLE DEV LAPTOP, then plan to pair up with someone who does…

What will we work on?

Here’s the rule: You can hack on anything you want that is either related to Windows Azure or related to the Boston Azure Community. The discussion thread mentioned above has some ideas. Add your ideas too.

This will break into three broad areas:

1. Ehancing or adding Azure capabilities to www.bostonazure.org (generally speaking, this is what the group calls the Boston Azure Project). This does not need to be limited to .NET or ASP.NET MVC. Post your ideas to CodePlex.
2. Writing Azure code unrelated to www.bostonazure.org (maybe a file upload utility, for example)
3. Enhancing the Boston Azure community in ways unrelated to using Azure itself. For example, if you want to build a WP7 app for the Boston Azure community, go for it (though that could have an Azure-enabled back end). If you want to add features to www.bostonazure.org in jQuery or make it HTML5-capable, go for it. If you want to create a favicon or a privacy policy for the site, go for it.

Use your imagination.

Wait – I am not an Azure expert – is that okay?

Yes, that’s okay. We will have some folks in the room who do understand Azure, so we will help you. However, of course, it is better if you get warmed up in advance. Install the Azure dev environment. Learn a bit about Azure in advance. Download the code from bostonazure.codeplex.com to see the code for the site.

Do you have a hashtag for Twitter?

Yes: #bostonazurehack.

The Boston Azure User Group has a twitter handle: @bostonazure. My personal twitter handle is @codingoutloud.

Who do we have to thank for all this awesomeness?

Microsoft NERD Center provides the space and the food (thanks Leah!).

Microsoft people help make it happen (thanks Jim O’Neil and Mark Eisenberg – each is a friend of ours!).

And the following sponsors are providing software and books for prizes:

+ +

The event is organized by folks from the Boston Azure User Group.

Here are the ones I know about, in the order in which they will occur.

Know of any more cloud events of interest to the Windows Azure community? Please let me know in the comments.

1. Maximizing Your Monthly Recurring Revenue

• when: Wed 02-Feb-2011, 11:30 – 2:00 PM
• where: Towne Stove & Spirits, 900 Boylston Street, Boston, MA, (near the T)
• food: Lunch will be served
• cost: FREE
• what: This is a business-focused lunch demonstration of how to incorporate the Zuora SaaS billing system into your cloud offering, including (of course) if the platform for your application or service is Windows Azure. Zuora has the Zuora Toolkit for Windows Azure.
• More info & Register: http://info.zuora.com/FY12Q1-BostonZ-TourRegistrationPage.html?mkt_tok=

2. Azure Hackathon hosted by Boston Azure User Group

• when: Wed 16-Feb-2011, 4:00 – 9:00 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center
• food: Food (pizza + maybe salad) and drinks will be provided
• cost: FREE
• what: This is an Azure-focused Hackathon – writing code for Windows Azure
• More info: Summary here, plus join the conversation on the Boston Azure Project’s CodePlex Discussion forum
• Register: http://events.constantcontact.com/register/event?llr=v6qmy8dab&oeidk=a07e3aphcm081cb0d51

3. Azure Hackathon hosted by Cloud Hackathon Meetup Group

• when: Thu 17-Feb-2011, 6:30 – 9:30 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center
• food: (not sure)
• cost: FREE
• what: This is an Azure-focused Hackathon – writing code for Windows Azure
• More info: (tbd)
• Register: http://www.meetup.com/Hack-The-Cloud

4. Boston Azure User Group meeting with Cloud Security Theme

• when: Thu 24-Feb-2011, 6:00 – 8:30 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center
• food: Food (pizza + maybe salad) and drinks will be provided
• cost: FREE
• what: This is an Azure-focused event which will focus this month on Cloud Security with an emphasis on two areas: Data Security and Identity Management.In the main talk, Walt Lapinsky, VP Cloud Security at Purposeful Clouds, will dig into Data Security concerns for the cloud – generally, and as applied to Windows Azure. Walt has diverse background in this area, with over 40 years of proven expertise in supporting bet-your-business IT environments, including in the military and intelligence communities.In the opening talk, Bill Wilder will introduce how to create a Single Sign On (SSO) experience in the cloud using capabilities such as Windows Identity Foundation (WIF) and Azure’s Access Control Service (ACS), including how to easily outsource your authentication to Facebook, Gmail, LiveId, or other existing providers – with Azure’s ACS and .NET’s WIF doing the heavy lifting.
• NOTE: If you are brand new to the Cloud and need to get oriented before jumping in deeper, check out the Boston WebsiteSpark item below which will happen on the same night and at the same location as the Boston Azure event.
• More info: See Boston Azure cloud user group site for details
• Register: http://events.constantcontact.com/register/event?llr=v6qmy8dab&oeidk=a07e3cxgt9k20c9c5bf

5. Introduction to Cloud Computing and Windows Azure

• when: Thu 24-Feb-2011, 6:00 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center
• food: (not sure)
• cost: FREE
• what: Mark Eisenberg  will tell us why cloud computing came to be and how it is defined and used.  As well as an overview of the development and deployment workflow. This is a great cloud computing 101 and how you can take advantage of cloud computing.
• More info: See Boston WebsiteSpark Group page for details
• Register: http://www.meetup.com/Boston-WebsiteSpark-Group/events/16409922/

Know of any more cloud events of interest to the Windows Azure cloud crowd? Please let me know in the comments.

Thanks Microsoft!

Jim set up the platform, then in my half I focused on storage, then scaling and robustness architecture and design patterns for the cloud and how they are enabled by the Azure platform. My slides are here: bill-wilder-azure-services-and-patterns-for-cloud-native-apps-harvard-19-nov-2010.

The class was feisty – in a really good way - with lots of smart questions and spirited discussion. Due to all the questions and discussion, we went at least an hour over the scheduled class time, but nobody disengaged. A really good session.

Here are the four I know about, in the order they will happen.

1. Windows Azure Firestarter

• Tuesday 30-Nov-2010
• 8:00-4:30 PM
• at Microsoft Waltham
• More info: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jimoneil/archive/2010/10/07/azure-firestarter-events.aspx
• Register: https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032463590&Culture=en-US

2. Boston Azure User Group 

• Monday 13-Dec-2010
• 6:00-8:30 PM
• at NERD in Cambridge
• More info: www.bostonazure.org 
• Register: https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07e35km93ff6271cc6&oseq=

 3. Boston .NET Architecture Study Group

Group meeting focusing this month on Azure

• Wednesday 15-Dec-2010
• 6:00-8:00 PM
• at Microsoft Waltham
• More info: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/boston_dotnetarchitecture/

 4. Cloud Camp Boston

• Thursday 16-Dec-2010
• 3:00-8:00 PM 
• at Foley Hoag in Waltham
• More info: http://www.cloudcamp.org/boston 
• Register: http://cloudcamp-boston-2010v3.eventbrite.com/

I may see you at all of them!

1. The featured talk led by Chander Khanna and Nazik Huq asked the provocative question Why choose the Azure cloud?  and (not surprisingly!) spirited discussion ensued. The slides are available (see link at the bottom of the page), and there is a blog post titled “Microsoft in the Clouds with Windows Azure Platform?” from Chander which considers some of the same material.

2. An Azure 101 talk was led by Mark Eisenberg. This is a challenging topic to cover, since the cloud has so many interesting concepts, and the audience at any given Boston Azure meeting always includes new faces. More Azure 101 to come at next meeting, Dec 13, 2010.

3. Several members discussed the Boston Azure Project. The most recent build includes some instrumentation changes made by Arra Derderian (part of which reused some code from Jason Haley).

4. After the meeting around 10 of us went down to the Muddy Charles Pub for a beer!

Follow me on twitter (@codingoutloud), follow the Boston Azure User Group on twitter (@bostonazure), join the low volume Boston Azure User Group email list, and come join us at an upcoming Boston Azure meeting such as our SPECIAL NIGHT FOR DECEMBER as we meet on Monday December 13, 2010 for a night of Azure-packed goodness!

As always, to see what’s COMING UP in Boston Azure meetings, check out our Azure-hosted web site at www.bostonazure.org - meetings beyond what is on the home page (if known) are listed on the Upcoming Events page.

The story of ”an HTTP header that’s mandatory for this request is not specified”

First of all, my call to get a queue reference had completed without incident:

queue = queueStorage.GetQueueReference(“myqueue”);

Next I executed this line of seemingly innocuous code:

queue.CreateIfNotExist();

An Exception was raised – a “Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient.StorageClientException” to be exact – with the following message:

Exception Message: “An HTTP header that’s mandatory for this request is not specified” 

“An HTTP header that’s mandatory for this request is not specified.”

That didn’t help, so I then checked the Inner Exception:

Inner Exception Message: “The remote server returned an error: (400) Bad Request.”

That didn’t help either. So I fired up Fiddler and looked at the http Request and Response (Raw views shown here):

If you look carefully in the Response, you will see there are two references to Blobs:

Blobs? Yes, blobs.

Blobs… That was my problem. This was supposed to be code to create a queue. A quick check back to my code immediately revealed a cut and paste error on my part. Two actually, as I tried this both against Development Storage and against live Cloud Storage with the same error.

This was the problem – the culpret – the issue – the bug:

    var clientStorageAccount = CloudStorageAccount.DevelopmentStorageAccount;
    CloudQueueClient queueStorage = new CloudQueueClient(clientStorageAccount.BlobEndpoint.AbsoluteUri,clientStorageAccount.Credentials);

As was this:

    CloudQueueClient queueStorage = new CloudQueueClient(String.Format(“http://{0}.blob.core.windows.net”, accountName), creds);

Replacing “Blob” with “Queue” did the trick for both snippets.

Pay the Fiddler

The error message was tricky, requiring that I fire up Fiddler to see the error of my ways. So..  Be careful out there when you Cut & Paste. Or don’t hack at 9:30 in the night. Or check out a Fiddler http trace, which may have additional information. Or all three..

Checking the Fiddler trace is really the interesting lesson from this post. If you are perplexed over some error condition, look at the raw http traffic for additional details – there may be a new clue in there.

Did This Post Help You?

Please leave me a comment if this blog post helped you or if you encountered the same exact error.

But it isn’t there!

You already know you can’t use the .NET Managed Libraries for Windows Azure in a Silverlight app, but you just know it is okay in a desktop application.

You double-check that you have installed Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 1.2 (June 2010) (or at least Windows Azure SDK 1.2 (last refreshed from June in Sept 2010 with a couple of bug-fixes)).

You sort the list by Component Name, then leveraging your absolute mastery of the alphabet, you find the spot in the list where the assemblies ought to be, but they are not there. You see the one before in the alphabet, the one after it in the alphabet, but no Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient assembly in sight. What gives?

Look familiar? Where is the Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient assembly?

Azure Managed Libraries Not Included in .NET Framework 4 Client Profile

If your eyes move a little higher in the Add Reference dialog box, you will see the problem. You are using the .NET Framework 4 Client Profile. Nothing wrong with the Client Profile – it can be a friend if you want a lighter-weight version of the .NET framework for deployment to desktops where you can’t be sure your .NET platform bits are already there – but Windows Azure Managed Libraries are not included with the Client Profile.

Bottom line: Windows Azure Managed Libraries are simply not support in the .NET Framework 4 Client Profile

How Did This Happen?

It turns out that in Visual Studio 2010, the default behavior for many common project types is to use the .NET Framework 4 Client Profile. There are some good reasons behind this, but it is something you need to know about. It is very easy to create a project that uses the Client Profile because it is neither visible – and with not apparent option for adjustment – on the Add Project dialog box – all you see is .NET Framework 4.0:

The “Work-around” is Simple: Do Not Use .NET Framework 4 Client Profile

While you are not completely out of luck, you just can’t use the Client Profile in this case. And, as the .NET Framework 4 Client Profile documentation states:

If you are targeting the .NET Framework 4 Client Profile, you cannot reference an assembly that is not in the .NET Framework 4 Client Profile. Instead you must target the .NET Framework 4.

So let’s use the (full) .NET Framework 4.

Changing from .NET Client Profile to Full .NET Framework

To move your project from Client Profile to Full Framework, right-click on your project in Solution Explorer (my project here is called “SnippetUploader”):

From the bottom of the pop-up list, choose Properties.

This will bring up the Properties window for your application. It will look something like this:

Of course, by now you probably see the culprit in the screen shot: change the “Target framework:” from “.NET Framework 4 Client Profile” to “.NET Framework 4” (or an earlier version) and you have one final step:

Now you should be good to go, provided you have Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 1.2 (June 2010) installed. Note, incidentally, that the Windows Azure tools for VS mention support for

…targeting either the .NET 3.5 or .NET 4 framework.

with no mention of support the .NET Client Profile. So stop expecting it to be there!

As you may know, Silverlight assembly format is a bit different than straight-up .NET, and attempting to use Add Reference from a Silverlight project to a plain-old-.NET assembly just won’t work. Instead, you’ll see something like this:

If you pick a class from the StorageClient assembly – let’s say, CloudBlobClient – and check the documentation, it will tell you where this class is supported:

Okay – so maybe it doesn’t exactly – the Target Platforms list is empty – presumably an error of omission. But going by the Development Platforms list, you wouldn’t expect it to work in Silverlight.

There’s Always REST

As mentioned, you are always free to directly do battle with the Azure REST APIs for Storage or Management. This is a workable approach. Or, even better, expose the operations of interest as Azure services – abstracting them as higher level activities. You have heard of SOA, haven’t you?

1. Maura Wilder on JavaScript Debugging (@squdgy)
2. Jason Haley on Comparing the Azure and Amazon Cloud Platforms (@haleyjason)
3. Jim O’Neil on Dissecting the Azure @Home Application (@jimoneil)
4. Abby Fichtner on Lean Startups (@hackerchick)
5. MC’d by Abby, various folks talking about their experiences at startups — 4 talks jam-packed into a fast-paced one-hour session:
   1. Vishal Kumar of savinz.com (“mint.com for shopping”)
   2. Allison Friedman (@rateitgreen) of Rate It Green (“yelp for the green building industry”)
   3. Sean Creely (@screeley) of Embedly (“make friendly embedded links”) – a Y Combinator company providing a service for turning tweets containing media links into something more user friendly (e.g., embed inline YouTube video rather than a link taking you to YouTube)
   4. Marc Held (@getzazu) of getzazu.com (“alarm clock 2.0″)

At Uno’s afterwards, I enjoyed chatting with many folks, including Veronica and Shawn Robichaud (all the way from Maine!), John from BUGC and Blue Fin, Slava Kokaev, entrepreneurs Marc, Billy, Brian, Vishal, and Dan Colon, dev evangelists Jim O’Neil and Chris Bowen, Yilmaz Rona from Trilogy, and of course Maura.

At the Code Camp, I presented twice on Azure-focused topics:

1. Cloud Computing 101: Azure Style! – an introduction to cloud computing, and an overview of the services that Microsoft’s cloud stack offers
2. Building Cloud-Native Applications with Azure – a mind-blowing tour of some of the changes that await the technology community as we move our world into the cloud

The Boston Azure User Group is one year old! You can follow the group on twitter @bostonazure. You can also follow me on twitter @codingoutloud. And I hope to see you at the next Boston Azure meeting on Thurs October 21 from 6:00-8:30 PM at NERD (registration and more info).