Cloud Computing Conference 2009 – Overview of the Windows Azure and the Azure Services Platform

Luis Martins, Architect Advisor from Microsoft Portugal

Buzz Words

  • Cloud Computing
  • Cloud Services
  • IaaS – Infrastructure as a Services
  • PaaS – Platform as a Service

Microsoft’s Strategy in this case is “Software + Services” that can be more prepared here http://www.davidchappell.com/blog/2008/06/what-is-software-services.html by David Chappell and in this whitepaper paper.

Why do we need the Cloud Computing?

Increase happiness by easing the IT problems

Sample:

Think about an Expense Reporting processing system in the Cloud

Challenges Building Applications

  • How can I handle peak loads?
  • How do I provide high availability?
  • What are the upfront investment capital needed?

Platform Choices

  • On-Premises Servers
  • Hosted Servers
  • Cloud Platform
    • We need an OS for the cloud

What’s in the Cloud OS?

  • Creates a layer on top of the Cloud computing elements used
  • Increase the Utility Computing
    • 24/7 availability
    • High availability
    • Peak Loads

Windows Azure

  • Utility Computing
  • Think of several computers with Virtual Machines inside of each one (This is called Fabric)
  • Applications
    • Will be place across several machines in the fabric
  • Fabric controller is responsible for the management of the fabric and if some machine fails just calls another one
  • Defining your service
    • What are the components(roles) ?
    • How do they interact?
    • At what scale?
    • Basically:
      • LB
        • Load Balancer in order to have the availability being managed and balanced to all the available machines that support our application
      • Web Role
        • Application that will be on the cloud that will be made available
      • Worker Role
        • Asynchronous processing
  • Windows Azure is made to Scale out
  • Stateless compute + durable Storage = Scalable Application
  • Data Centers Microsoft
    • 5 known data centers
      • 4 in the US
      • 1 in Ireland
      • more to come, after the regulatory and legal problems that exist now with Cloud Computing have been solved
    • Something like 20.000 machines in there
    • All our data are placed on 3 different fault domains that will make almost impossible to lose data
    • What’s being used with this structure
      • Live ID
      • Live Messenger
      • Live Search
      • Live Meeting (in the next version)
  • Storage
    • Window Azure Storage
      • Durable Storage
        • Blob
          • Data Blocks like a file
        • Table
          • Not relational databases
        • Queue
          • Used to create asynchronous processing
      • REST API available

Promises of Azure

  • Microsoft runs your application
  • Don’t think about management costs
  • Grow the server as we need

Azure Vision

  • Windows Azure
  • SQL Services
    • Services
      • Data Services
      • Data Sync
    • Familiar SQL Server relational Database model
    • Support for existing APIs and tools
  • .NET Services
    • Services
      • Service Bus
      • Access Control
      • Workflow Services
  • Live Services
    • Services
      • Directory
      • Identity
      • Storage
      • Communications & Presence
      • Search & Geospatial
    • Live Mesh is the center of this Live Services vision
  • SharePoint Services
  • Dynamics CRM Services

Azure Services Platform Roadmap

  • Fall 2008
    • First CTP – Developer CTP for Services SDKs and Tools
  • Spring 2009
    • Updated CTPS
      • Enabled Full trust & Fast CGI
      • Geo-localization
  • Summer 2009
    • Making the business model available
  • Winter 2009
    • RTM version

How can we start?

  • Download SDKs and Tools
  • Get Invitation code
  • Review the hands-on labs and videos

http://www.azure.com

No Comments