Category Archives: Azure

Related to Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform

Architecture Patterns for Building Cloud-Native Applications at NYC Code Camp 7

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I am speaking today at NYC Code Camp 7. My talk is Architecture Patterns for Building Cloud-Native Applications here is the abstract:

Just because we get software to run on cloud infrastructure does not make it a good idea. To truly take advantage of the cloud we need to build cloud-native applications. The architecture of a cloud-native application is different than the architecture of a traditional application, an idea we will explore since it can impact costs, availability, and scalability. We will examine several key architecture patterns that help unlock cloud-native benefits, spanning computation, database, and resource-focused patterns. By the end of the talk you should appreciate how cloud architecture is more demanding than you might be accustomed to, but with high payoff such as handling failure without downtime, scaling arbitrarily, and allowing aggressive cost-optimization.

The slide deck is here:

Architecture Patterns for Building Cloud-Native Applications — NYC Code Camp 7 — 15-Sept-2012 — Bill Wilder (blog.codingoutloud.com)

Get ready to “Meet #WindowsAzure” in a live streamed event June 7 at 4:00 PM Boston time

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You new to Windows Azure?
Experienced with Windows Azure?
Wondering what all  the buzz is about…

You can Meet #WindowsAzure in a live stream featuring keynote speaker Scott Guthrie (@ScottGu) along with other Azure/cloud experts. Event is June 7 at 4:00 PM Boston time (UTC-7 hours).

I will be watching and you can find discussions on the Twitters…. I am @codingoutloud, the event hashtag is #MeetAzure, and be sure to check out the Lanyard page that Magnus set up.

Also if you are an Azure fan in the Boston area, please check out the Boston Azure cloud user group (www.bostonazure.org). The group meets monthly, with occasional special events, such as the 2-day bootcamp later this month. The group events are usually at NERD in Cambridge, MA.

References:

  1. www.meetwindowsazure.com
  2. Registration page: http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9809415
  3. Live Stream page: http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9809426
  4. Boston Azure cloud user group: www.bostonazure.org

MEET Windows Azure Blog Relay:

Abstracting MapReduce with HIVE and Pig (notes from March 2012 Boston Azure Meeting)

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A few notes from the March 29, 2012 Boston Azure cloud user group meeting…

Jason Haley was the featured speaker and provided a fantastic overview of the Windows Azure SDK and related platform features.

My talk was the opening act. I extended on my Hadoop on Azure talk from February and climbed up the stack to talk about HIVE and Pig which generate MapReduce under the hood. I only used a few slides in the talk, but they have some useful references, and are available here: Hadoop-BostonAzure-29-Mar-2012.

These items were also mentioned at the meeting:

  • Boston Azure is on Twitter as @bostonazure
  • New England Give Camp 2012 (A handful of Boston Azure members are signed up – including (off the top of my head) me, Jason, Maura, Joan, and Gladys): http://newenglandgivecamp.org/
  • UX and Cloud studies were discussed and the vast majority of the attendees indicated they would prefer offers/opportunities be sent to/shared with the Boston Azure community – I will post on the Meetup.com distribution

Upcoming Boston Azure events include:

  • Tuesday April 24 – Michael Cummings from Magenic on building mobile games with a Windows Azure back-end (signup here)
  • Wednesday May 30 – SDK again – but this time will be hands-on – BYO laptop! (Tables and power strips will be provided.) (signup here)
  • Fri-Sat June 22-23 – TWO FULL DAYS of Bootcamp! (signup here (Fri) and here (Sat))
  • Thu June 28 – (Awesome topic TBD) – Michael Collier from Neudesic (signup here)
  • Thu July 26 – maybe CQRS? (signup here)

There was interest in incorporating some topics into future Boston Azure meetings:

  • Tools – what tools are useful in building/managing/monitoring cloud applications, especially Azure ones (PowerShell, cspack, Cerebrata, Storage Explorer from CodePlex, CloudBerry Explorer for Azure Blob Storage, monitoring tools, IntelliTrace from Visual Studio Ultimate, other Visual Studio tips/tricks, …)
  • Comparisons of Azure with other clouds, e.g., OpenStack, AWS, Eucalyptus (note: AWS and Eucalptus are now partners), Rackspace, others…
  • More big data via Hadoop on Azure (maybe a whole dedicated meeting is in order)

Cloud-Native Architecture Patterns for Azure Florida Association

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I just finished speaking to the Azure Florida Association about Cloud-Native Architecture Patterns…  The talk was 7:00-8:30 PM, so I hope too many people weren’t watching from bed… :-) (It is extra tough speaking to attendees you can’t see or hear.)

The slide deck from the talk is here:

florida–cloud-architecture-patterns-three-big-ideas–bill-wilder–28-march-2012.

The abstract for the talk reads as follows:

We can run pre-cloud software on cloud infrastructure, but to truly take advantage of the cloud we need to build cloud-native applications. The architecture of a cloud-native application is different than the architecture of a traditional pre-cloud application, and in this talk we will examine several big ideas in software architecture you need to ‘grok’ if you want to truly leverage the cloud for cost savings, higher availability, and better scalability. We will examine several key architecture patterns that help unlock those cloud-native benefits, spanning computation, database, and resource-focused patterns. By the end of the talk you should appreciate how cloud architecture is more of a partnership with your hardware than it was with pre-cloud applications (fail-retry anyone?), that the cloud may be infinite (but not all at once), and how the cloud enables cost optimization (and is “green”).

Feel free to reach out to me – my email address is in the slide deck, and my twitter handle is @codingoutloud. Also – if you are in the neighborhood – check out the Boston Azure User Group and our planned Boston Azure Bootcamp in June 2012! You may want to follow the adventures of Mr. SQL Azure Federations

Quick Hadoop Overview at Feb 7 Boston Azure Meeting

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Tonight’s (07-Feb-2012) Boston Azure cloud user group meeting (that we ran jointly with Microsoft DevBoston) went very well.

In the featured talk, Michael Stiefel gave an insightful, thought-provoking talk on Architecting for Failure: Why Cloud Architecture is Different. Michael will post has posted his slides. The slides are listed under Cloud Computing Presentations called Architecting For Failure, Cloud Architecture is Different! (note this is not same as Michael’s blog).

As a warmup, I gave a short talk describing the challenges in making sense of Big Data, what (in the computer science sense) Map and Reduce are, and how the Hadoop infrastructure makes building MapReduce processes so easy. Ended with a bit of a peak at the CTP of “Hadoop as a Service” – the Microsoft Windows Azure service that is in CTP – at www.hadooponazure.com. The talk focused on Hadoop – and a simple Hadoop example at that – only mentioning that was a broader Hadoop ecosystem: the official Apache Hadoop project, some subprojects (HIVE, Pig (which has a Pig Latin language, not to be confused with this one), Mahout, ZooKeeper, HBASE, and others), some other related efforts (Cascading.org), and some commercial companies dedicated to Hadoop (Cloudera, Hortonworks, and others – they are roughly the Hadoop equivalents of Red Hat in the Linux world; Microsoft is working with Hortonworks on their Hadoop on Azure and Hadoop on Windows Server effort).

My Hadoop slides are attached here: Hadoop-BostonAzure-07-Feb-2012.

I also discussed some upcoming Azurey events of interest to the Boston Azure community. That deck is here: Upcoming Events of Interest to Boston Azure Community.

O’Reilly Radar has a concise roundup of some of these technologies here (which I noticed on a tweet here). And this excerpt from the official Apache Hadoop project lists some related technologies:

The project includes these subprojects:

Other Hadoop-related projects at Apache include:

  • Avro™: A data serialization system.
  • Cassandra™: A scalable multi-master database with no single points of failure.
  • Chukwa™: A data collection system for managing large distributed systems.
  • HBase™: A scalable, distributed database that supports structured data storage for large tables.
  • Hive™: A data warehouse infrastructure that provides data summarization and ad hoc querying.
  • Mahout™: A Scalable machine learning and data mining library.
  • Pig™: A high-level data-flow language and execution framework for parallel computation.
  • ZooKeeper™: A high-performance coordination service for distributed applications.

Windows Azure DevCamp in Farmington, CT

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Earlier this month I hung out with Jim O’Neil at the Farmington, CT offering of the Windows Azure DevCamp series. The format of the camp was a quick-ramp introduction to the Windows Azure Platform followed by some hands-on coding on the RockPaperAzure challenge.

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

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

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

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Last week on Wednesday I went to hang out with a bunch of nice folks in Ipswich, MA at the 2nd meeting of the North Shore .NET User Group. It was an especially fun group with beer served before the talk! 🙂

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

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

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

November and December Azure Cloud Events in Boston Area

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Are you interested in Cloud Computing generally, or specifically Cloud Computing using the Windows Azure Cloud Platform? Listed below are the upcoming Azure-related events in the Greater Boston area which you can attend in person and are offered usually FREE, but most that cost money are inexpensive.

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):

Registration Link Date Time
NCSU, Raleigh NC Mon, Dec. 5th, 2011 2 – 9 p.m.
Microsoft, Farmington CT Wed., Dec. 7th, 2011 2 – 9 p.m.
Microsoft, New York City Thur., Dec. 8th, 2011 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Microsoft, Malvern PA Mon., Dec. 12th, 2011 2 – 9 p.m.
Microsoft, Chevy Chase MD Wed., Dec. 14th, 2011 2 – 9 p.m.

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

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

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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October Boston Azure Cloud User Group Meeting

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First, let’s note that the October Boston Azure meeting marked our two-year anniversary!

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:

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):

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).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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