Simple 7 steps to run your first Azure Blob Program

Simple 7 steps to run your first Azure Blob
Program

Introduction


Step 1:- Ensure you have
things at place

Step 2:-
What will we do?

Step 3:-
Create a web role


Step 4:- Set the blob
connection string



Step 5:- Create the blob
on webrole onstart



Step 6:- Code your ASP.NET UI


Step 7:- Run the project and enjoy

Introduction

In this section we will create our first program using Azure blobs. This article
creates a simple web page where we upload image files which are stored in azure
blobs. We have also created a simple search text box which will help us to
search the image blobs with the image file name.

In case you are a complete newbie to azure you can download my two azure basic
videos which explain what azure is all about Azure Faq Part 1 :-
Video1 , Azuer Faq Part 2 :-
Video2.

Please feel free to download my free 500 question and answer eBook which covers
.NET , ASP.NET , SQL Server , WCF , WPF , WWF@
http://www.questpond.com/ .

Step 1:- Ensure you have
things at place

In case you are a complete fresher to Azure,
please ensure you have all the pre-requisite at place. You can read the below
article to get the basic prerequisite

http://computerauthor.blogspot.com/2010/01/simple-5-steps-to-run-your-first-azure.html .

Step 2:-
What will we do?

Azure Blobs help to store large items like
files, in other words its file storage system. In this article we will create a
simple program to upload image files in Azure blob system.

Step 3:-
Create a web role

The first step is to a create a web role
project. In case you are fresher in Azure, you can go through

http://computerauthor.blogspot.com/2010/01/simple-5-steps-to-run-your-first-azure.html to understand
how to create a web role project.
So let’s create a simple project with name ‘BlobStorage’. Once you have created
the project it creates two projects one is the cloud service project and the
other is the web role project. Cloud service project has all the necessary
configuration needed for your cloud service project while the web role project
is your asp.net project.

Step 4:- Set the blob
connection string

Now the next step is to define a blob
connection string in the service configuration file. So expand the ‘BlobStorage’
project, right click on roles and select properties.







Once you select properties, go to settings tab and add the blob connection
string as shown in the below figure. In the below figure we have added blob
connection string name as ‘BlobConnectionString’.





Click on the right hand eclipse and select ‘Use
development storage’. All the changes done using the setting UI will be
reflected in the ‘ServiceConfiguration’ file as shown above.

Step 5:- Create the blob
on webrole onstart

Now it’s time to start coding. Open the web
role project and open ‘WebRole.cs’ file.





Now let’s write a code on the ‘onstart’ event
to create the blob container.

public override bool OnStart()

{





}

Use the ‘CloudStorageAccount’ static class to
set the configuration environment.

public override bool OnStart()

{

// Set the configuration file

DiagnosticMonitor.Start("DiagnosticsConnectionString");

CloudStorageAccount.SetConfigurationSettingPublisher((configName, configSetter) =>

{

configSetter(RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue(configName));

});

....

....

....

....

}

The next step is to get a reference of the
cloudstorageaccount object using the blob connection string which was provided
when you setup your web role project.

// get the blob connection string

CloudStorageAccount objStorage = CloudStorageAccount.FromConfigurationSetting("BlobConnectionString");

Once we have access to the storage account
object, use the blob end point to create the blob client.

// get the client reference

CloudBlobClient objClient = new CloudBlobClient(objStorage.BlobEndpoint, objStorage.Credentials);

Give a nice name to the container and create
the container object using the client object which you have just created using
the blob end point. Call the ‘CreateIfnotExist’ method of the container to
ensure that you create the blob container only if it does not exist to avoid any
errors.

// Get the reference to container

CloudBlobContainer objContainer = objClient.GetContainerReference("mycontainer");



// Create the container if it does not exist

objContainer.CreateIfNotExist();

Step
6:- Code your ASP.NET UI

The final step is to create the ASPX page which
will help us upload image files in the blob container which we just created in
the ‘WebRole.cs’ file. You can see in t he below figure we have create a browse
button which help us upload image files and a search text box which will help us
search blob files.

So create the below defined ASPX UI.





In the above ASPX CS UI first get the reference
to the below specified name spaces.

using Microsoft.WindowsAzure;

using Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient;

In the file upload button we need to insert the
below code snippet to upload the file. So get access to the container object
‘MyContainer’ and call the ‘GetBlobReference’ function to get access to the
cloud blob object.

// Get the storage account reference

CloudStorageAccount objStorage = CloudStorageAccount.FromConfigurationSetting("BlobConnectionString");

// get the Client reference using storage blobend point

CloudBlobClient objClient = new CloudBlobClient(objStorage.BlobEndpoint, objStorage.Credentials);

// Get Container reference

CloudBlobContainer objContainer = objClient.GetContainerReference("mycontainer");

// Get blob reference

CloudBlob obj =objContainer.GetBlobReference(FileUpload1.FileName.ToString());

Set the meta data of the cloud object and open
a blob stream object to write the file. Do not forget to close the blob steam
object once you are done.

// Set meta values

obj.Metadata["MetaName"] = "meta";

// Open a stream using the cloud object

BlobStream blobstream = obj.OpenWrite();

// Write the stream to the blob database

blobstream.Write(FileUpload1.FileBytes, 0, FileUpload1.FileBytes.Count());

blobstream.Close();

Once we upload the file, we will browse through
the blob list to get the list of blobs present in the container.

// Browse through blob list from the container

IEnumerable<IListBlobItem> objBlobList = objContainer.ListBlobs();

foreach (IListBlobItem objItem in objBlobList)

{

Response.Write(objItem.Uri + "<br>");

}

In the same UI we have provided a search object
to search a blob. To search a blob first get access to the container object and
call the ‘GetBlobReference’ function with the blob name to get reference to the
cloud object.

// Get the blob reference using the blob name provided in the search

CloudBlob obj = objContainer.GetBlobReference(txtSearch.Text);

BlobStream blobstream = obj.OpenRead();

Read the blob stream using the blob steam
object and finally attach this stream with the Image object to display the same
in the HTTP response.

// Create the image object and display the same on the browser response

System.Drawing.Image objimg=null;

objimg = System.Drawing.Image.FromStream(blobstream,true);

Response.Clear();

Response.ContentType = "image/gif";

objimg.Save(Response.OutputStream,System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageFormat.Jpeg);

Step 7:- Run the project and enjoy

Finally enjoy your first blob program. You can
see in the below figure we have uploaded some image files in the blob.





We can also search the blob using the search
blob text box and you should be able to get the below image display from the
blob database.

9 simple steps to run your first Azure Table Program

9 simple steps to run your first Azure Table Program

Introduction

Azure has provided 4 kinds of data storages blobs, tables, queues and SQL azure.
In this section we will see how to insert a simple customer record with code and
name property in Azure tables.

In case you are complete fresher and like me you can download my two azure basic
videos which explain what azure is all about Azure FAQ Part 1 :-
Video1 Azure FAQ Part 2 :-
Video2.

Please feel free to download my free 500 question and answer eBook which covers
.NET , ASP.NET , SQL Server , WCF , WPF , WWF , Silver light , Azure @ http://tinyurl.com/4nvp9t .

Whatwill we do in this article?

We will create a simple customer entity with
customer code and customer name and add the same to Azure tables and display the
same on a web role application.

Step 1:- Ensure you havethings at place

In case you are a complete fresher to Azure,
please ensure you have all the pre-requisite at place. You can read the below
article to get the basic prerequisite

http://computerauthor.blogspot.com/2010/01/simple-5-steps-to-run-your-first-azure.html
.

Step 2:- Create a web role project

The next step is to select the cloud service
template, add the web role project and create your solution.

Step 3:- Specify the connection
string

The 3rd step is to specify the connection
string where your table source is currently. So expand the roles folder , right
click on webroletable and select properties as shown in the below figure.





You will be then popped up with a setting tab.
Select the settings section, add a new setting, give a name to your connection
string and select type as ‘connectionstring’.




We also need to specify where the storage
location is , so select the value and select ‘Use development storage’ as shown
in the below figure. Development storage means your local PC currently where you
Azure fabric is installed.




If you open the ‘ServiceConfiguration.cscfg’
file you can see the setting added to the file.

Step 4:- Reference
namespaces and create classes

In order to do Azure storage operation we need
to add reference to ‘System.Data.Services.Client’ dll.





Once the dlls are referred, let’s refer the
namespaces in our code as shown below. Currently we will store a customer record
with customer code and customer name in tables. So for that we need to define a
simple customer class with ‘clsCustomer’. This class needs to inherit from
‘TableServiceEntity’ class as shown in the below figure.



The second class which we need to create is the data context class. The data
context class will take the entity class and enter the same in tables. You can
see in the below figure we have created one more class ‘clsCustomerDataContext’.

Step 5:- Define partition and
row key

The next step is to define the properties of
the customer class. In the below figure we have defined two properties in the
customer class customer code and customer name.



Every row in the table needs to be defined with a partition key and a unique row
key. In the constructor we have initialized the partition key with a text
“Customers” and the unique key is set to the current date time tick count.

Step 6:- Create your
‘datacontext’ class

The next step is to create your data context
class which will insert the customer entity in to azure table storage. Below is
the code snippet of the data context class.



The first noticeable thing is the constructor which takes in location of the
credentials. The second is the ‘Iqueryable’ interface which is used by the cloud
service to create tables in azure cloud service.





In the same data context we have created an
‘AddCustomer’ method which takes in the customer entity object and call’s the
‘AddObject’ method of the data context to insert the customer entity data in to
Azure tables.

Step 7:- Create the table structure on the
‘onstart’

The next step is to create the table on the
‘onstart’ of the web role.





So open ‘webrole.cs’ file and put the below
code on the ‘onstart’ event. The last code enclosed in curly brackets gets the
configuration and creates table’s structure.

Step 8:-
Code your client

The final thing is to code the client. So below
is the UI / ASPX file which we have created to insert the table entity values.





On the button click we need to consume the data
context and the entity class.



So the first step is to get the configuration setting of the data connection.

// Gets the connection string
var customer = CloudStorageAccount.FromConfigurationSetting("DataConnectionString");

The next step is to pass these credentials to
the data context class and create a object of the same.

// Create the customer datacontext object
var customerContext = new clsCustomerDataContext(customer.TableEndpoint.ToString(), customer.Credentials);

Flourish the entity object with data and pass
it to the data context class to add the same in to tables.

// Create the entity object
clsCustomer objCustomer = new clsCustomer();
objCustomer.CustomerCode = txtCustomerCode.Text;
objCustomer.CustomerName = txtCustomerName.Text;
// Pass the entity object to the datacontext
customerContext.AddCustomer(objCustomer);

Finally we loop through the context customer
entity collection to see if the customer is added in to the table.

//Loop through the records to see if the customer entity is inserted in the tabless
foreach (clsCustomer obj in customerContext.Customers)
{
Response.Write(obj.CustomerCode + " " + obj.CustomerName + "<br>");
}

Step
9:- Run your application

It’s time to enjoy your hard work, so run the
application and enjoy your success.

Source code

You can get the source code of the above sample
from
here

Simple 6 steps to run your first Azure Worker Role Program

Simple 6 steps to run your first Azure Worker Role Program

Introduction

In our previous article http://computerauthor.blogspot.com/2010/01/in-case-you-do-not-want-to-read.html .we have seen 5 simple steps to create web role application. Web role projects in Azure are like web applications. Azure has one more type of project i.e. worker role. Worker role applications are back ground processing application like windows process which runs on the back ground. In this article we will try to understand 6 basic steps to create worker role project and as we run through the article we will try to understand the various fundamental methods which are
executed in worker role projects.
If you are really lazy like me you can download my two azure basic videos which explain what azure is all about Azure Faq Part 1 :- Video1 Azure Faq Part 2 :- Video2.
Please feel free to download my free 500 question and answer eBook which covers .NET , ASP.NET , SQL Server , WCF , WPF , WWF@ http://www.questpond.com .

Step 1:- Ensure you have things at place
In case you are a complete fresher to Azure, please ensure you have all the pre-requisite at place. You can read the below article to get the basic prerequisite http://computerauthor.blogspot.com/2010/01/simple-5-steps-to-run-your-first-azure.html

Step 2:-
What will we do?

Worker roles are nothing but back ground process which runs on windows azure platform. We will create a simple background process which will run for X number of times and every time it runs, it will wait for 10000 MS.
Step 3:- Select the worker role template
So create a new project using the worker role template as shown below.
Step 4:- Import namespaces
We need to import two namespaces one is ‘Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Diagnostics’ and ‘Microsoft.WindowsAzure.ServiceRuntime’. Diagnostic will help us to display message using trace on the azure profiler while ServiceRuntime provides functions for azure services.
Step 5:- Create class and override run and onstart method
The next step is to add a class and override the ‘OnStart’ method and ‘Run’ method. In the below code snippet we have created a simple ‘WorkerRole’ class which inherits from ‘RoleEntryPoint’.
We have also defined as simple loop count variable called as ‘intLoops’ which is initialized to value 5. This is value is initialized in the ‘OnStart’ method. ‘OnStart’ method is executed the first time your worker role is executed.
Now override the run method with a simple loop which decrements the loop count and has a thread which sleeps for 10000 MS as every loop is executed.

Step 6:- Run the project and watch the Azure console
Now run the worker role and see your azure console you should see that one worker role instance is running.

We had displayed trace information at various places in start and run method. You can see in the Azure prompt the number of loops executed in Azure diagnostic.

Event=Information,Level=Info,ThreadId=4148,=This is loop number 5
Event=Information,Level=Info,ThreadId=4148,=This is loop number 4
Event=Information,Level=Info,ThreadId=4148,=This is loop number 3
Event=Information,Level=Info,ThreadId=4148,=This is loop number 2
Event=Information,Level=Info,ThreadId=4148,=This is loop number 1

In case you do not want to read the complete article , here are two videos which we have recorded for the same.Azure Faq Part :- Video1 and Azure Faq Part 2:- Video2.

Windows Azure FAQ Part 1

Introduction and Goal

Different people have different obsessions and I have this stupid obsession of writing articles in FAQ formats :-) . The more I try to write articles in normal format I end up with a FAQ. My only thought process of writing articles in FAQ format is that we end up talking to the point rather than talking about trees and rivers , many may disagree.
Carrying my obsession one more step ahead Windows Azure FAQ part I.
Here’s my small gift for all my .NET friends , a complete 400 pages FAQ Ebook which covers various .NET technologies like Azure , WCF , WWF , Silverlight , WPF , SharePoint and lot more http://www.questpond.com/

Thanks , Thanks and Thanks

I am really blessed to be part of Lionbridge SaaS team, the knowledge they brought within me about SaaS is incredible. I would not be writing this article if I was not the part of the team. Here’s nice article from the same team on SaaS http://www.lionbridge.com/lionbridge/en-US/kc/product-engineering/configurability-in-saas.htm .

The article by Modesty zhang really inspired me to write this article, here’s a reference http://www.codeproject.com/KB/silverlight/Azurelight.aspx , thanks for bringing the Azure interest in me.

This does not look like a technical article?

At the initial stages of FAQ we will get acquainted to general vocabularies of Azure and then we will start with all programming stuff.

Quote: - Windows Azure is not a technological change, it’s a business change: - Shivprasad koirala (taking some space to glorify myself J )

If you really ask me Azure is 20% technological driven and 80 % business driven. So if you or your organization is thinking of migrating to Azure, the decision will be management driven rather than technology driven. So the initial stage of the article will talk about cost and need to use azure which will be a bit boring. As this FAQ series moves ahead you will see lot of samples codes, architecture thought process and all the technical blah blah.
I am sure as technological person you need to be aware of how to convince the management when you want to implement a new technology.

What problem does Windows Azure solve?

The best way to define Azure is by understanding what problem it solves. So let’s take a typical organization that has a separate IT department maintaining an online web application. Now let’s try to analyze which different cost factors are involved in maintaining a web application online.

We can divide IT department cost in to four broader sections:-
• Hardware cost: - If you want to host your web application you would need servers, routers etc to run your application.

• Software licensing cost: - When you make your application you will need to purchase server OS license like windows 2003 server, visual studio licenses, SQL server licenses etc.

• Hosting cost: - You also need to deploy your web application on internet. For that you will need to host your web application on some hosting service. One of the biggest costs in hosting service is bandwidth. So we need to budget for the same.

• IT personnel salary: - Nothing can be run without humans. So we also need IT personnel’s to do development and maintenance of code and infrastructure.

In other words there is a considerable cost attached to run an IT department. Many of these costs need to be paid up front.


The upfront cost can be solved if we can get a provider who can host a shared service which provides shared server hardware, shared software license cost and can provide pay per use bandwidth. The provider can maintain a team of IT personnel’s who can maintain the infrastructure. If the provider services not one but many organization using this shared service it can bring down the cost considerably.
So in other words the model changes something as shown below. So the provider moves all the hardware and software on a centralized location and the applications of the respective organization are hosted in this shared environment. Using this model organizations do not need to pay upfront for the hardware, software and IT personnel costs.

In one line to define Windows Azure, Microsoft is the provider and windows azure is the shared hosting service.
Microsoft has provided his own datacenters where they have hosted software's like SQL services,.NET services,Sharepoint services,Microsoft dynamic services and live services. Microsoft azure provides a cloud environment for running your web application and storing data. Its like visualizing windows services available on cloud.


Courtesy: - The above image is taken from the white paper
An Introduction to Microsoft® .NET Services for Developers: - The .NET framework for the cloud by Aaron Skonnard, Pluralsight. You can read the white paper from http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=150833 .

Isn’t it friends, sharing cuts down cost J

How is billing and costing done in Windows Azure services?

As discussed above there are two types of cost one is the fixed cost (server hardware, employee salary etc) and other is the variable cost (bandwidth usage, hosting storage space etc).

Windows Azure services are billed using pay and use model. Microsoft terms this as consumption based model. In other words the customer does not need to pay anything upfront, everything is paid as per consumption.The pay and use model is defined by four characteristics:-
• Compute / Hour: - Depending on how much computing power your application uses you will be charged. When I wrote this article it was $0.12 / hour.

• Storage in GB / month: - Storage is measured in units of average daily amount of data stored (in GB) over a monthly period. The storage cost currently is 0.15$ / GB stored for the whole month. Let’s try to understand the above statement. If you store 30 GB for a day then the average comes to 1 GB per month. If you stored 30 GB for 30 days then average come to 30 GB per month. Below are the calculation details :-



Figure :- Storage calculation details
• Bandwidth: - One more factor which is used to measure cost is bandwidth, in other words how much data goes in and out from the data centre. We will discuss on the bandwidth cost in more detail later because this has lot of variations depending on the services provided by Azure. Please note bandwidth used within data centre is free.
• Storage Transactions: - Any kind of add, update and delete on the storage data is also tracked. Currently it’s billed at $0.01 for 10,000 (10k) transaction requests.

The charges mentioned in this article can be obsolete as time passes by, for recent rate card please visit http://www.microsoft.com/azure/pricing.mspx

We are still not clear with the payment model it looks a bit confusing?

There are three parts to the Azure payment model:-
Metering: - This defines the unit of measurement. For example compute per hour, storage per GB, bandwidth per GB and transactions per 10k.
Billing: - This defines the dollar amount for the unit.
Services: - Both metering and billing needs to be associated with a service like .NET service, SQL Service, Live services etc.

The charges mentioned in this article can be obsolete as time passes by, for recent rate card please visit http://www.microsoft.com/azure/pricing.mspx

A note of SQL Server cost
Web Edition - Up to 1 GB relational database = $9.99 / month
Business Edition
- Up to 10 GB relational database = $99.99 / month

What is Fabric?

Before we start to answer this question, let’s thanks Steven Nagy for helping us understand this terminology http://azure.snagy.name/blog/?p=84.
As said before Microsoft has his own datacenter’s where they will have number of server’s running windows 2008 servers.
Note: - While I was writing this article what I understand is that currently they have one data centre in US west coast which hosts Windows Azure application.
The whole concept of Azure is to give decent hosting rates to the end user. So Microsoft has to somehow share his hardware across multiple applications.
In order to share the physical hardware across multiple applications, Microsoft used ‘Hypervisor’. Hypervisor is a modified version of Hyper-V. So hypervisor can help you to create virtual machines from those physical hardware servers. You basically end up with a cluster of nodes which can have virtual machine or hardware’s.
If you really expand these rectangle nodes you end up in to a Fabric like structure.

Figure: - Fabric
So now let’s define fabric. It’s nothing but a cluster of nodes. These nodes can have physical machines or virtual machines.

Where does our application run?

Our application run on the fabric nodes and each application gets its own virtual space resource. We will discuss about the same in more detail as we move ahead in the FAQ.

What is a fabric controller?

Fabric controller is the heart of the Azure fabric system. It manages complete life cycle of Azure services. Below are some important roles which Fabric controller plays:-
• Manages provisioning for the application. As per application needs fabric allocates CPU , memory and bandwidth limits.
• Deploy the services.
• Monitor system status and health. See that it satisfies the SLA’s defined.
• If there are failures recover from the same.

What are roles, web role and worker role?

Roles are nothing but applications or components. To define the same in other words they are actually the application code. Windows Azure categorizes application in two categories one is the web application and the other is the worker application.
Web role / Web application: - A web role is a Web application which can be accessed via HTTP. A web role can be hosted as a subset of ASP.NET and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) technologies.
Worker role / Worker process: - A worker role is a background processing application somewhat similar to a windows process. A worker role does not communicate directly with external the world. In other words it does not accept requests directly from the external world.

So is it that worker role cannot connect to external systems outside Azure?

Yes, worker role cannot connect take inbound calls from internet but it can make outbound calls. A worker role is background processing process so it does not have incoming internet requests. Worker role also has access to queue services. So that can be one more communication point where external systems can post data and worker role can read from the same.

Figure: - Worker and Web roleIs it that every web and worker role is hosted in their own virtual machines?
Yes, every web role and worker role are hosted in their own virtual space or we can say in their own virtual machine. Fabric does not allocate IIS for worker role virtual machine.

You can see from the above figure how fabric controller uses the data centre hardware and creates new VM. Our application runs in those virtual machines. So if it’s a web role fabric controller will create a new VM instance with IIS and your web role instance. If it’s a worker role then it will create work role instance only. It will not provide IIS instance for worker role as its not supposed to take inbound calls from external world.

How do the web role instance and worker role instance communicate with fabric?

Every virtual machine has an agent. This agent facilitates communication between web and worker role instance with the fabric.

What are blobs, tables and Queues?

Till now we have only discussed about application code. With application you also need to save data. Windows Azure has three kinds of data blobs, tables and queues.
Blobs: - They are used to store large objects like images, audio, video etc.
Tables: - They are used to store durable and scalable data structure. Tables consist of entities and entities have properties.
Figure: - Table structure
Queues: - Queues are used enable asynchronous communication. They are enabled to store transient data in form of messages. Azure uses queues to communicate between different entities. For instance of a worker role and web roles wants to communicate they use queues.
We will be discussing the above 3 things in more detail in the coming FAQ series. We will be dedicating each one of them a complete FA series. Till then hold your breath.

So is SQL is the standard way to query blobs, tables and queues?

No we cannot use standard SQL to query the above azure storages. They are accessed through REST (Representational state transfer). REST is a style of software architecture distributed systems. So if you want to read a data from a table you need to specify the below URL.
http://%3c%3cwebsitewheretableishosted%3e%3e/%3CTableName%3E?$filter=<Query >
The first is the website on which the table is hosted , second is the table name and then your query.

Why was not SQL preferred?

REST relies completely on HTTP protocols which enables other languages like PHP.JAVA to communicate with Azure storages. In other words you can build your application using any language like CGI, PHP and have your data stored in Azure storage.

Why one more data storage when we already have SQL Server?

Windows azure will be using a common hosting platform so that cost of hosting is less for customers. In other words the storage should be highly scalable. In order to support these kinds of requirements we need to scale out and not scale up. Windows azure storage is built on scale out architecture.
Due to this SQL Server service is costly than azure storages. Let us try to understand why the cost increases because of Scale out architecture.
Scale up means when your database needs more processing power you just replace it with a more powerful processor. In other words you just buy more powerful processor with better RAM and put your application on the same. Because the numbers of processor do not change you are not charge with extra SQL Server licenses.

Figure :- Scale up
In scale out you add multiple servers as and when you need more processing power. Because news servers are added you also need to buy SQL Server licenses for each hardware. Azure is a scale out model. As per more processor needs Microsoft will add more hardware to his data centres. Due to more licenses the cost of SQL Server service will be higher as compared to windows azure storage.

Figure: - Scale out
So use Azure storage:-

• If your application is having a massive scale.


• You are not looking for rich relational data functionality like SQL, structured relational tables etc.
• You are looking for a less cost.
  You need to use SQL Azure service
• Scalability is not the important factor.
• You are looking for rich database functionalities like SQL, structured relational tables etc.
• Cost is not a big matter.

How do web role and work role communicate with each other?

Coming soon.....

What is a fault domain?

Coming soon.....References

• SaaS configuration LionBridge whitepaper
  http://www.lionbridge.com/lionbridge/en-US/kc/product-engineering/configurability-in-saas.htm .
• The article by Modesty zhang really inspired me to write this article, here’s a reference
  http://www.codeproject.com/KB/silverlight/Azurelight.aspx
• An Introduction to Microsoft® .NET Services for Developers: - The .NET framework for the cloud by Aaron Skonnard, Pluralsight. You can read the white paper from
  http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=150833 .
• Definition of the word fabric
  http://azure.snagy.name/blog/?p=84
• Awesome presentation which depicts the inside of windows azure infrastructure details
  http://mschnlnine.vo.llnwd.net/d1/pdc08/PPTX/ES19.pptx

Simple 5 steps to run your first Azure program

Introduction
Step 1:-
Ensure that you have the proper OS and VS edition.

Step 2:- Download the Windows
Azure SDK
Step 3:- Download Windows Azure
tools
Step 4:-
Create the project

Step
5:- Run your application

Introduction

In this article we will look in to 5 basic steps which will help us to run our
first azure program. In this article we will understand how to create a simple
web role application and while doing the same we will understand some
development concepts of Azure.

If you are really lazy like me you can download my two azure basic videos which
explain what azure is all about Video1
, Video2.


Please feel free to download my free 500 question and answer eBook which covers
.NET , ASP.NET , SQL Server , WCF , WPF , WWF@
http://www.questpond.com .

So let’s start with the 5 basic steps. By the way when I wrote this article it
was 31st December, 10:30 evening, so Happy New Year and blast yourself. Do not
drink and drive , just drink , drink and sleep.

Step 1:-
Ensure that you have the proper OS and VS edition.

Windows azure works only on Windows 7, Windows
Server 2008 and Windows Vista. It does not work on XP currently. So ensure you
have one of the above mentioned operating system. Developers who are on XP do
not attempt it, I have tried heavily but there is no way currently to execute
Azure on XP. There are lot of hack which are given online, believe me none of
them work.



From visual studio aspect ensure you have VS 2008 or VS 2010.

Step 2:- Download the Windows
Azure SDK

Windows Azure SDK simulates Azure hosting
environment in your PC, so that you can develop your applications locally and
then upload the online. So the first step is to download the SDK.




http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=772990da-8926-4db0-958f-95c1da572c84&displaylang=en




Once you install Windows Azure you should see two menus one of the development
fabric and the other of the development storage.






You can also see the fabric and storage running
on your task bar.




If you click on the same you should be able to
see the fabric and storage as seen in the below figure.

Step 3:- Download Windows Azure
tools

We will need the cloud service visual studio
template to speed up development in visual. So click on the below link to
download windows azure tools which will install the template in visual studio.




http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=6967ff37-813e-47c7-b987-889124b43abd&displaylang=en




If windows azure tool is successfully installed you should get the cloud service
template as shown in the below figure.

Step 4:-
Create the project

Once you have the cloud service template in
your visual studio environment, click on it and select the ‘Web role’ as shown
in the below figure. There are two kinds of basic applications you can create on
azure ‘Web role’ and ‘Worker role’. Web role are nothing but web application
while worker roles are back ground processing applications like windows
processes.



To keep it simple we have currently selected ‘WebRole’.






Once you are done you should get two projects
as shown below. Once project is the cloud service project and the other is your
web application. Cloud service project has associations to web and worker role
projects.




The cloud service has two files
‘ServiceConfiguration.cscfg’ and ‘ServiceDefinition.csdef’.



The ‘ServiceDefinition.csdef’ file contains the metadata needed by the Windows
Azure fabric as per your application needs. It will also contain configuration
settings that apply to all instances. .



The ‘ServiceConfiguration.cscfg’ file lets you set the values for the
configuration settings and the number of instances to run for each role. So you
can define some parameter called as ‘ConnectionString’ in your definition file
and set the value in the configuration file.

Step
5:- Run your application

In order to keep this simple just run the
project as it is. Your application will run as shown in the below browser and at
the back ground fabric will create virtual instance in which your application
runs. The below figure shows the virtual instance created by fabric to run your
application.






In order to understand the power of azure
configuration, go to the service configuration file and change the instance to
2, you should see two instances of your web role running as shown below.