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• Determining Azure SQL Database requirements

  - by Gerald

  I'm looking into moving an SQL Server database project to the cloud using Azure SQL Database. I'm just wondering what metrics I can use from SQL Server to help determine what my needs will be on Azure. The size of the database is around 150GB, so I understand what my needs are in terms of storage, I'm just not sure what metrics I can use to translate my database usage to the DTU benchmark metrics that the various service tiers on Azure SQL use.

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• Sesame update du jour: SL 4, OOB, Azure, and proxy support

  - by Fabrice Marguerie

  I've just published a new version of Sesame Data Browser. Here's what's new this time: Upgraded to Silverlight 4 Can run out-of-browser (OOB), with elevated permissions. This gives you an icon on your desktop and enables new scenarios. Note: The application is unsigned for the moment. Support for Windows Azure authentication Support for SQL Azure authentication If you are behind a proxy that requires authentication, just give Sesame a new try after clicking on "If you are behind a proxy that requires authentication, please click here" An icon and a button for closing connections are now displayed on connection tabsSome less visible improvements Here is the connection view with anonymous access: If you want to access Windows Azure tables as OData, all you have to do is use your table storage endpoint as the URL, and provide your access key: A Windows Azure table storage address looks like this: http://<your account>.table.core.windows.net/ If you want to browse your SQL Azure databases with Sesame, you have to enable OData support for them at https://www.sqlazurelabs.com/ConfigOData.aspx. I won't show how it works because it's already been done in several places over the Web. Here are pointers: OData.org: Got SQL Azure? Then you've got OData OakLeaf Systems: Enabling and Using the OData Protocol with SQL Azure Patrick Verbruggen: Creating an OData feed for your Azure databases Shawn Wildermuth: SQL Azure's OData Support Jack Greenfield: How to Use OData for SQL Azure with AppFabric Access Control You can choose to enable anonymous access or not. When you don't enable anonymous access, you have to provide an Issuer name and a Secret key, and optionally an Security Token Service (STS) endpoint: Excerpt from Jack Greenfield's blog: To enable OData access to the currently selected database, check the box labeled "Enable OData". When OData access is enabled, database user mapping information is displayed at the bottom of the form.Use the drop down list labeled "Anonymous Access User" to select an anonymous access user. If an anonymous access user is selected, then all queries against the database presented without credentials will execute by impersonating that user. You can access the database as the anonymous user by clicking on the link provided at the bottom of the page. If no anonymous access user is selected, then the OData Service will not allow anonymous access to the database.Click the link labeled "Add User" to add a user for authenticated access. In the pop up panel, select the user from the drop down list. Leave the issuer name empty for simple authentication, or provide the name of a trusted Security Token Service (STS) for federated authentication. For example, to federate with another ACS based STS, provide the base URI for the STS endpoint displayed by the Windows Azure AppFabric Portal for the STS.Click the "OK" button to complete the configuration process and dismiss the pop up panel. When one or more authenticated access users are added, the OData Service will impersonate them when appropriate credentials are presented. You can designate as many authenticated access users as you like. The OData Service will decide which one to impersonate for each query by inspecting the credentials presented with the query.Next time I'll give an overview of how Sesame Data Browser is built.In the meantime, happy data browsing!

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• Generic class for performing mass-parallel queries. Feedback?

  - by Aaron

  I don't understand why, but there appears to be no mechanism in the client library for performing many queries in parallel for Windows Azure Table Storage. I've created a template class that can be used to save considerable time, and you're welcome to use it however you wish. I would appreciate however, if you could pick it apart, and provide feedback on how to improve this class. public class AsyncDataQuery<T> where T: new() { public AsyncDataQuery(bool preserve_order) { m_preserve_order = preserve_order; this.Queries = new List<CloudTableQuery<T>>(1000); } public void AddQuery(IQueryable<T> query) { var data_query = (DataServiceQuery<T>)query; var uri = data_query.RequestUri; // required this.Queries.Add(new CloudTableQuery<T>(data_query)); } /// <summary> /// Blocking but still optimized. /// </summary> public List<T> Execute() { this.BeginAsync(); return this.EndAsync(); } public void BeginAsync() { if (m_preserve_order == true) { this.Items = new List<T>(Queries.Count); for (var i = 0; i < Queries.Count; i++) { this.Items.Add(new T()); } } else { this.Items = new List<T>(Queries.Count * 2); } m_wait = new ManualResetEvent(false); for (var i = 0; i < Queries.Count; i++) { var query = Queries[i]; query.BeginExecuteSegmented(callback, i); } } public List<T> EndAsync() { m_wait.WaitOne(); return this.Items; } private List<T> Items { get; set; } private List<CloudTableQuery<T>> Queries { get; set; } private bool m_preserve_order; private ManualResetEvent m_wait; private int m_completed = 0; private void callback(IAsyncResult ar) { int i = (int)ar.AsyncState; CloudTableQuery<T> query = Queries[i]; var response = query.EndExecuteSegmented(ar); if (m_preserve_order == true) { // preserve ordering only supports one result per query this.Items[i] = response.Results.First(); } else { // add any number of items this.Items.AddRange(response.Results); } if (response.HasMoreResults == true) { // more data to pull query.BeginExecuteSegmented(response.ContinuationToken, callback, i); return; } m_completed = Interlocked.Increment(ref m_completed); if (m_completed == Queries.Count) { m_wait.Set(); } } }

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• Windows Azure Evolution - Web Sites (aka Antares) Part 1

  - by Shaun

  This is the 3rd post of my Windows Azure Evolution series, focus on the new features and enhancement which was alone with the Windows Azure Platform Upgrade June 2012, announced at the MEET Windows Azure event on 7th June. In the first post I introduced the new preview developer portal and how to works for the existing features such as cloud services, storages and SQL databases. In the second one I talked about the Windows Azure .NET SDK 1.7 on the latest Visual Studio 2012 RC on Windows 8. From this one I will begin to introduce some new features. Now let’s have a look on the first one of them, Windows Azure Web Sites.   Overview Windows Azure Web Sites (WAWS), as known as Antares, was a new feature still in preview stage in this upgrade. It allows people to quickly and easily deploy websites to a highly scalable cloud environment, uses the languages and open source apps of the choice then deploy such as FTP, Git and TFS. It also can be integrated with Windows Azure services like SQL Database, Caching, CDN and Storage easily. After read its introduction we may have a question: since we can deploy a website from both cloud service web role and web site, what’s the different between them? So, let’s have a quick compare.   CLOUD SERVICE WEB SITE OS Windows Server Windows Server Virtualization Windows Azure Virtual Machine Windows Azure Virtual Machine Host IIS IIS Platform ASP.NET WebForm, ASP.NET MVC, WCF ASP.NET WebForm, ASP.NET MVC, PHP Language C#, VB.NET C#, VB.NET, PHP Database SQL Database SQL Database, MySQL Architecture Multi layered, background worker, message queuing, etc.. Simple website with backend database. VS Project Windows Azure Cloud Service ASP.NET Web Form, ASP.NET MVC, etc.. Out-of-box Gallery (none) Drupal, DotNetNuke, WordPress, etc.. Deployment Package upload, Visual Studio publish FTP, Git, TFS, WebMatrix Compute Mode Dedicate VM Shared Across VMs, Dedicate VM Scale Scale up, scale out Scale up, scale out As you can see, there are many difference between the cloud service and web site, but the main point is that, the cloud service focus on those complex architecture web application. For example, if you want to build a website with frontend layer, middle business layer and data access layer, with some background worker process connected through the message queue, then you should better use cloud service, since it provides full control of your code and application. But if you just want to build a personal blog or a  business portal, then you can use the web site. Since the web site have many galleries, you can create them even without any coding and configuration. David Pallmann have an awesome figure explains the benefits between the could service, web site and virtual machine.   Create a Personal Blog in Web Site from Gallery As I mentioned above, one of the big feature in WAWS is to build a website from an existing gallery, which means we don’t need to coding and configure. What we need to do is open the windows azure developer portal and click the NEW button, select WEB SITE and FROM GALLERY. In the popping up windows there are many websites we can choose to use. For example, for personal blog there are Orchard CMS, WordPress; for CMS there are DotNetNuke, Drupal 7, mojoPortal. Let’s select WordPress and click the next button. The next step is to configure the web site. We will need to specify the DNS name and select the subscription and region. Since the WordPress uses MySQL as its backend database, we also need to create a MySQL database as well. Windows Azure Web Sites utilize ClearDB to host the MySQL databases. You cannot create a MySQL database directly from SQL Databases section. Finally, since we selected to create a new MySQL database we need to specify the database name and region in the last step. Also we need to accept the ClearDB’s terms as well. Then windows azure platform will download the WordPress codes and deploy the MySQL database and website. Then it will be ready to use. Select the website and click the BROWSE button, the WordPress administration page will be shown. After configured the WordPress here is my personal web blog on the cloud. It took me no more than 10 minutes to establish without any coding.   Monitor, Configure, Scale and Linked Resources Let’s click into the website I had just created in the portal and have a look on what we can do. In the website details page where are five sections. - Dashboard The overall information about this website, such as the basic usage status, public URL, compute mode, FTP address, subscription and links that we can specify the deployment credentials, TFS and Git publish setting, etc.. - Monitor Some status information such as the CPU usage, memory usage etc., errors, etc.. We can add more metrics by clicking the ADD METRICS button and the bottom as well. - Configure Here we can set the configurations of our website such as the .NET and PHP runtime version, diagnostics settings, application settings and the IIS default documents. - Scale This is something interesting. In WAWS there are two compute mode or called web site mode. One is “shared”, which means our website will be shared with other web sites in a group of windows azure virtual machines. Each web site have its own process (w3wp.exe) with some sandbox technology to isolate from others. When we need to scaling-out our web site in shared mode, we actually increased the working process count. Hence in shared mode we cannot specify the virtual machine size since they are shared across all web sites. This is a little bit different than the scaling mode of the cloud service (hosted service web role and worker role). The other mode called “dedicate”, which means our web site will use the whole windows azure virtual machine. This is the same hosting behavior as cloud service web role. In web role it will be deployed on the virtual machines we specified and all of them are only used by us. In web sites dedicate mode, it’s the same. In this mode when we scaling-out our web site we will use more virtual machines, and each of them will only host our own website. And we can specify the virtual machine size in this mode. In the developer portal we can select which mode we are using from the scale section. In shared mode we can only specify the instance count, but in dedicate mode we can specify the instance size as well as the instance count. - Linked Resource The MySQL database created alone with the creation of our WordPress web site is a linked resource. We can add more linked resources in this section.   Pricing For the web site itself, since this feature is in preview period if you are using shared mode, then you will get free up to 10 web sites. But if you are using dedicate mode, the price would be the virtual machines you are using. For example, if you are using dedicate and configured two middle size virtual machines then you will pay $230.40 per month. If there is SQL Database linked to your web site then they will be charged separately based on the Pay-As-You-Go price. For example a 1GB web edition database costs $9.99 per month. And the bandwidth will be charged as well. For example 10GB outbound data transfer costs $1.20 per month. For more information about the pricing please have a look at the windows azure pricing page.   Summary Windows Azure Web Sites gives us easier and quicker way to create, develop and deploy website to window azure platform. Comparing with the cloud service web role, the WAWS have many out-of-box gallery we can use directly. So if you just want to build a blog, CMS or business portal you don’t need to learn ASP.NET, you don’t need to learn how to configure DotNetNuke, you don’t need to learn how to prepare PHP and MySQL. By using WAWS gallery you can establish a website within 10 minutes without any lines of code. But in some cases we do need to code by ourselves. We may need to tweak the layout of our pages, or we may have a traditional ASP.NET or PHP web application which needed to migrated to the cloud. Besides the gallery WAWS also provides many features to download, upload code. It also provides the feature to integrate with some version control services such as TFS and Git. And it also provides the deploy approaches through FTP and Web Deploy. In the next post I will demonstrate how to use WebMatrix to download and modify the website, and how to use TFS and Git to deploy automatically one our code changes committed.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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• Now Available &ndash; Windows Azure SDK 1.6

  - by Shaun

  Microsoft has just announced the Windows Azure SDK 1.6 and the Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio 1.6. Now people can download the latest product through the WebPI. After you downloaded and installed the SDK you will find that The SDK 1.6 can be stayed side by side with the SDK 1.5, which means you can still using the 1.5 assemblies. But the Visual Studio Tools would be upgraded to 1.6. Different from the previous SDK, in this version it includes 4 components: Windows Azure Authoring Tools, Windows Azure Emulators, Windows Azure Libraries for .NET 1.6 and the Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. There are some significant upgrades in this version, which are Publishing Enhancement: More easily connect to the Windows Azure when publish your application by retrieving a publish setting file. It will let you configure some settings of the deployment, without getting back to the developer portal. Multi-profiles: The publish settings, cloud configuration files, etc. will be stored in one or more MSBuild files. It will be much easier to switch the settings between vary build environments. MSBuild Command-line Build Support. In-Place Upgrade Support.   Publishing Enhancement So let’s have a look about the new features of the publishing. Just create a new Windows Azure project in Visual Studio 2010 with a MVC 3 Web Role, and right-click the Windows Azure project node in the solution explorer, then select Publish, we will find the new publish dialog. In this version the first thing we need to do is to connect to our Windows Azure subscription. Click the “Sign in to download credentials” link, we will be navigated to the login page to provide the Live ID. The Windows Azure Tool will generate a certificate file and uploaded to the subscriptions those belong to us. Then we will download a PUBLISHSETTINGS file, which contains the credentials and subscriptions information. The Visual Studio Tool will generate a certificate and deployed to the subscriptions you have as the Management Certificate. The VS Tool will use this certificate to connect to the subscription in the next step. In the next step, I would back to the Visual Studio (the publish dialog should be stilling opened) and click the Import button, select the PUBLISHSETTINGS file I had just downloaded. Then all my subscriptions will be shown in the dropdown list. Select a subscription that I want the application to be published and press the Next button, then we can select the hosted service, environment, build configuration and service configuration shown in the dialog. In this version we can create a new hosted service directly here rather than go back to the developer portal. Just select the <Create New …> item in the hosted service. What we need to do is to provide the hosted service name and the location. Once clicked the OK, after several seconds the hosted service will be established. If we went to the developer portal we will find the new hosted service in my subscription. a) Currently we cannot select the Affinity Group when create a new hosted service through the Visual Studio Publish dialog. b) Although we can specify the hosted service name and DNS prefixing through the developer portal, we cannot do so from the VS Tool, which means the DNS prefixing would be the same as what we specified for the hosted service name. For example, we specified our hosted service name as “Sdk16Demo”, so the public URL would be http://sdk16demo.cloudapp.net/. After created a new hosted service we can select the cloud environment (production or staging), the build configuration (release or debug), and the service configuration (cloud or local). And we can set the Remote Desktop by check the related checkbox as well. One thing should be note is that, in this version when we set the Remote Desktop settings we don’t need to specify a certificate by default. This is because the Visual Studio will generate a new certificate for us by default. But we can still specify an existing certificate for RDC, by clicking the “More Options” button. Visual Studio Tool will create another certificate for the Remote Desktop connection. It will NOT use the certificate that managing the subscription. We also can select the “Advanced Settings” page to specify the deployment label, storage account, IntelliTrace and .NET profiling information, etc.. Press Next button, the dialog will display all settings I had just specified and it will save them as a new profile. The last step is to click the Publish button. Since we enabled the Remote Desktop feature, the first step of publishing was uploading the certificate. And then it will verify the storage account we specified and upload the package, then finally created the website in Windows Azure.   Multi-Profiles After published, if we back to the Visual Studio we can find a AZUREPUBXML file under the Profiles folder in the Azure project. It includes all settings we specified before. If we publish this project again, we can just use the current settings (hosted service, environment, RDC, etc.) from this profile without input them again. And this is very useful when we have more than one deployment settings. For example it would be able to have one AZUREPUBXML profile for deploying to testing environment (debug building, less roles with RDC and IntelliTrace) and one for production (release building, more roles but without IntelliTrace).   In-Place Upgrade Support Let’s change some codes in the MVC pages and click the Publish menu from the azure project node. No need to specify any settings,  here we can use the pervious settings by loading the azure profile file (AZUREPUBXML). After clicked the Publish button the VS Tool brought a dialog to us to indicate that there’s a deployment available in the hosted service environment, and prompt to REPLACE it or not. Notice that in this version, the dialog tool said “replace” rather than “delete”, which means by default the VS Tool will use In-Place Upgrade when we deploy to a hosted service that has a deployment already exist. After click Yes the VS Tool will upload the package and perform the In-Place Upgrade. If we back to the developer portal we can find that the status of the hosted service was turned to “Updating…”. But in the previous SDK, it will try to delete the whole deployment and publish a new one.   Summary When the Microsoft announced the features that allows the changing VM size via In-Place Upgrade, they also mentioned that in the next few versions the user experience of publishing the azure application would be improved. The target was trying to accomplish the whole publish experience in Visual Studio, which means no need to touch developer portal any more. In the SDK 1.6 we can see from the new publish dialog, as a developer we can do the whole process, includes creating hosted service, specifying the environment, configuration, remote desktop, etc. values without going back the the developer portal.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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• Neo4J and Azure and VS2012 and Windows 8

  - by Chris Skardon

  Now, I know that this has been written about, but both of the main places (http://www.richard-banks.org/2011/02/running-neo4j-on-azure.html and http://blog.neo4j.org/2011/02/announcing-neo4j-on-windows-azure.html) utilise VS2010, and well, I’m on VS2012 and Windows 8. Not that I think Win 8 had anything to do with it really, anyhews! I’m going to begin from the beginning, this is my first foray into running something on Azure, so it’s been a bit of a learning curve. But luckily the Neo4J guys have got us started, so let’s download the VS2010 solution: http://neo4j.org/get?file=Neo4j.Azure.Server.zip OK, the other thing we’ll need is the VS2012 Azure SDK, so let’s get that as well: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/downloads/ (I just did the full install). Now, unzip the VS2010 solution and let’s open it in VS2012: <your location>\Neo4j.Azure.Server\Neo4j.Azure.Server.sln One-way-upgrade? Yer! Ignore the migration report – we don’t care! Let’s build that sucker… Ahhh 14 errors… WindowsAzure does not exist in the namespace ‘Microsoft’ Not a problem right? We’ve installed the SDK, just need to update the references: We can ignore the Test projects, they don’t use Azure, we’re interested in the other projects, so what we’ll do is remove the broken references, and add the correct ones, so expand the references bit of each project: hunt out those yellow exclamation marks, and delete them! You’ll need to add the right ones back in (listed below), when you go to the ‘Add Reference’ dialog make sure you have ‘Assemblies’ and ‘Framework’ selected before you seach (and search for ‘microsoft.win’ to narrow it down) So the references you need for each project are: CollectDiagnosticsData Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Diagnostics Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient Diversify.WindowsAzure.ServiceRuntime Microsoft.WindowsAzure.CloudDrive Microsoft.WindowsAzure.ServiceRuntime Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient Right, so let’s build again… Sweet! No errors.   Now we need to setup our Blobs, I’m assuming you are using the most up-to-date Java you happened to have downloaded :) in my case that’s JRE7, and that is located in: C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre7 So, zip up that folder into whatever you want to call it, I went with jre7.zip, and stuck it in a temp folder for now. In that same temp folder I also copied the neo4j zip I was using: neo4j-community-1.7.2-windows.zip OK, now, we need to get these into our Blob storage, this is where a lot of stuff becomes unstuck - I didn’t find any applications that helped me use the blob storage, one would crash (because my internet speed is so slow) and the other just didn’t work – sure it looked like it had worked, but when push came to shove it didn’t. So this is how I got my files into Blob (local first): 1. Run the ‘Storage Emulator’ (just search for that in the start menu) 2. That takes a little while to start up so fire up another instance of Visual Studio in the mean time, and create a new Console Application. 3. Manage Nuget Packages for that solution and add ‘Windows Azure Storage’ Now you’re set up to add the code: public static void Main() { CloudStorageAccount cloudStorageAccount = CloudStorageAccount.DevelopmentStorageAccount; CloudBlobClient client = cloudStorageAccount.CreateCloudBlobClient(); client.Timeout = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(30); CloudBlobContainer container = client.GetContainerReference("neo4j"); //This will create it as well   UploadBlob(container, "jre7.zip", "c:\\temp\\jre7.zip"); UploadBlob(container, "neo4j-community-1.7.2-windows.zip", "c:\\temp\\neo4j-community-1.7.2-windows.zip"); }   private static void UploadBlob(CloudBlobContainer container, string blobName, string filename) { CloudBlob blob = container.GetBlobReference(blobName);   using (FileStream fileStream = File.OpenRead(filename)) blob.UploadFromStream(fileStream); } This will upload the files to your local storage account (to switch to an Azure one, you’ll need to create a storage account, and use those credentials when you make your CloudStorageAccount above) To test you’ve got them uploaded correctly, go to: http://localhost:10000/devstoreaccount1/neo4j/jre7.zip and you will hopefully download the zip file you just uploaded. Now that those files are there, we are ready for some final configuration… Right click on the Neo4jServerHost role in the Neo4j.Azure.Server cloud project: Click on the ‘Settings’ tab and we’ll need to do some changes – by default, the 1.7.2 edition of neo4J unzips to: neo4j-community-1.7.2 So, we need to update all the ‘neo4j-1.3.M02’ directories to be ‘neo4j-community-1.7.2’, we also need to update the Java runtime location, so we start with this: and end with this: Now, I also changed the Endpoints settings, to be HTTP (from TCP) and to have a port of 7410 (mainly because that’s straight down on the numpad) The last ‘gotcha’ is some hard coded consts, which had me looking for ages, they are in the ‘ConfigSettings’ class of the ‘Neo4jServerHost’ project, and the ones we’re interested in are: Neo4jFileName JavaZipFileName Change those both to what that should be. OK Nearly there (I promise)! Run the ‘Compute Emulator’ (same deal with the Start menu), in your system tray you should have an Azure icon, when the compute emulator is up and running, right click on the icon and select ‘Show Compute Emulator UI’ The last steps! Make sure the ‘Neo4j.Azure.Server’ cloud project is set up as the start project and let’s hit F5 tension mounts, the build takes place (you need to accept the UAC warning) and VS does it’s stuff. If you look at the Compute Emulator UI you’ll see some log stuff (which you’ll need if this goes awry – but it won’t don’t worry!) In a bit, the console and a Java window will pop up: Then the console will bog off, leaving just the Java one, and if we switch back to the Compute Emulator UI and scroll up we should be able to see a line telling us the port number we’ve been assigned (in my case 7411): (If you can’t see it, don’t worry.. press CTRL+A on the emulator, then CTRL+C, copy all the text and paste it into something like Notepad, then just do a Find for ‘port’ you’ll soon see it) Go to your favourite browser, and head to: http://localhost:YOURPORT/ and you should see the WebAdmin! See you on the cloud side hopefully! Chris PS Other gotchas! OK, I’ve been caught out a couple of times: I had an instance of Neo4J running as a service on my machine, the Azure instance wanted to run the https version of the server on the same port as the Service was running on, and so Java would complain that the port was already in use.. The first time I converted the project, it didn’t update the version of the Azure library to load, in the App.Config of the Neo4jServerHost project, and VS would throw an exception saying it couldn’t find the Azure dll version 1.0.0.0.

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• Rob Blackwell on interoperability and Azure

  - by Eric Nelson

  At QCon in March we had a sample Azure application implemented in both Java and Ruby to demonstrate that the Windows Azure Platform is not just about .NET. The following is an interesting interview with Rob Blackwell, the R&D director of the partner who implemented the application. UK Interoperability Team Interviews Rob Blackwell, R&D Director at Active Web Solutions. Is Microsoft taking interoperability seriously? Yes. In the past, I think Microsoft has, quite rightly come in for criticism, but architects and developers should look at this again. The Interoperability Bridges site (http://www.interoperabilitybridges.com/ ) shows a wide range of projects that allow interoperability from Java, Ruby and PHP for example. The Windows Azure platform has been architected with interoperable APIs in mind. It's straightforward to access the various storage facilities from just about any language or platform. Azure compute is capable of running more than just C# applications! Why is interoperability important to you? My company provides consultancy and bespoke development services. We're a Microsoft Gold Partner, but we live in the real world where companies have a mix of technologies provided by a variety of vendors. When developing an enterprise software solution, you rarely have a completely blank canvas. We often see integration scenarios where we need to exchange data with legacy systems. It's not unusual to see modern Silverlight applications being built on top of Java or Mainframe based back ends. Could you give us some examples of where interoperability has been important for your projects? We developed an innovative Sea Safety system for the RNLI Lifeboats here in the UK. Commercial Fishing is one of the most dangerous professions and we helped developed the MOB Guardian System which uses satellite technology and man overboard devices to raise the alarm when a fisherman gets into trouble. The solution is implemented in .NET running on Windows, but without interoperable standards, it would have been impossible to communicate with the satellite gateway technology. For more information, please see the case study: http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?CaseStudyID=4000005892 More recently, we were asked to build a web site to accompany the QCon 2010 conference in London to help demonstrate and promote interoperability. We built the site using Java and Restlet and hosted it in Windows Azure Compute. The site accepts feedback from visitors and all the data is stored in Windows Azure Storage. We also ported the application to Ruby on Rails for demonstration purposes. Visitors to the stand were surprised that this was even possible. Why should Java developers be interested in Windows Azure? Windows Azure Storage consists of Blobs, Queues and Tables. The storage is scalable, durable, secure and cost-effective. Using the WindowsAzure4j library, it's easy to use, and takes just a few lines of code. If you are writing an application with large data storage requirements, or you want an offsite backup, it makes a lot of sense. Running Java applications in Azure Compute is straightforward with tools like the Tomcat Solution Accelerator (http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/winazuretomcat )and AzureRunMe (http://azurerunme.codeplex.com/ ). The Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus can also be used to connect heterogeneous systems running on different networks and in different data centres. How can The Service Bus be considered an interoperability solution? I think that the Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus is one of Microsoft’s best kept secrets. Think of it as “a globally scalable application plumbing kit in the sky”. If you have used Enterprise Service Buses before, you’ll be familiar with the concept. Applications can connect to the service bus to securely exchange data – these can be point to point or multicast links. With the AppFabric Service Bus, the applications can exist anywhere that has access to the Internet and the connections can traverse firewalls. This makes it easy to extend or scale your application or reach out to other networks and technologies. For example, let’s say you have a SQL Server database running on premises and you want to expose the data to a Java application running in the cloud. You could set up a point to point Service Bus connection and use JDBC. Traditionally this would have been difficult or impossible without punching holes in firewalls and compromising security. Rob Blackwell is R&D Director at Active Web Solutions, www.aws.net , a Microsoft Gold Partner specialising in leading edge software solutions. He is an occasional writer and conference speaker and blogs at www.robblackwell.org.uk Related Links: UK Azure Online Community – join today. UK Windows Azure Site Start working with Windows Azure

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• Local Events | Azure Bootcamp

  - by Jeff Julian

  Coming to Kansas City April 8th and 9th is the Microsoft Azure Bootcamp. This event looks very promising for those developers who are looking into Azure for themselves or their companies. It covers the wide range of topics required to understand what Azure really is and is not. Space is limited so if you are considering Azure, register for this event today.Agenda:Module 1: Introduction to cloud computer and AzureHow it worksKey ScenariosThe development environment and SDKModule 2: Using Web RolesBasic ASP.NETBasic configurationModule 3: Blobs: File Storage in the cloudModule 4: Tables: Scalable hierarchical storageModule 5: Queues: Decoupling your systemsModule 6: Basic Worker RolesExecuting backend processesConsuming a queueLeveraging local storageModule 7: Advanced Worker RolesExternal EndpointsInter-role communicationModule 8: Building a business with AzureUsing Azure as an ISV or a partnerAdvantages to delivering valueBPOSPricingModule 9: SQL AzureSetting it upSQL Azure firewallRemote managementMigrating dataModule 10: AppFabricService BusAccess Control SystemIdentity in the cloudModule 11: Cloud ScenariosApp migration strategiesDisposable computingDynamic scaleShuntingPrototypingMultitenant applications (This is my second attempt at this post after MacJournal decided to crash and not save my work. Authoring tools all need auto-save features by now, that is a requirement set in stone by Microsoft Word 97) Related Tags: Azure, Microsoft, Kansas City

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• Oracle Database Machine and Exadata Storage Server

  - by jean-marc.gaudron(at)oracle.com

  Master Note for Oracle Database Machine and Exadata Storage Server (Doc ID 1187674.1)This Master Note is intended to provide an index and references to the most frequently used My Oracle Support Notes with respect to Oracle Exadata and Oracle Database Machine environments. This Master Note is subdivided into categories to allow for easy access and reference to notes that are applicable to your area of interest. This includes the following categories: • Database Machine and Exadata Storage Server Concepts and Overview• Database Machine and Exadata Storage Server Configuration and Administration• Database Machine and Exadata Storage Server Troubleshooting and Debugging• Database Machine and Exadata Storage Server Best Practices• Database Machine and Exadata Storage Server Patching• Database Machine and Exadata Storage Server Documentation and References• Database Machine and Exadata Storage Server Known Problems• ASM and RAC Documentation• Using My Oracle Support Effectively

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• Azure Storage Explorer

  - by kaleidoscope

  Azure Storage Explorer –  an another way to Deploy the services on Cloud Azure Storage Explorer is a useful GUI tool for inspecting and altering the data in your Azure cloud storage projects including the logs of your cloud-hosted applications. All three types of cloud storage can be viewed: blobs, queues, and tables. You can also create or delete blob/queue/table containers and items. Text blobs can be edited and all data types can be imported/exported between the cloud and local files. Table records can be imported/exported between the cloud and spreadsheet CSV files. Why Azure Storage Explorer Azure Storage Explorer is a licensed CodePlex project provided by Neudesic – a Microsoft partner.  It is a simple UI that requires you to input your blob storage name, access key and endpoints in the Storage Settings dialog. For more details please refer to the link: http://azurestorageexplorer.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=35189   Anish, S

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• Why is business-class storage so expensive?

  - by Mark Henderson

  This is a Canonical Question about the Cost of Enterprise Storage. See also the following question: What's the best way to explain storage issues to developers and other users Regarding general questions like: Why do I have to pay 50 bucks a month per extra gigabyte of storage? Our file server is always running out of space, why doesn't our sysadmin just throw an extra 1TB drive in there? Why is SAN equipment so expensive? The Answers here will attempt to provide a better understanding of how enterprise-level storage works and what influences the price. If you can expand on the Question or provide insight as to the Answer, please post.

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• TP-Link storage server accessing from Mac OS

  - by coure2011

  I have a storage/print server by TP-Link http://www.tp-link.com/en/products/details/?categoryid=232&model=TL-PS310U I just connect usb-storage to the print server and on windows I can access that usb-device from my windows computers. But how can I access that device from Mac? I found an article that I can add usb printer to mac using that device but not able to find how to access the storage device. please help me out!

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• Windows API BackupRead failing with error 50 on Windows Storage Server 2008 R2

  - by Jason F

  We have a backup application that uses the Windows API BackupRead. It works correctly on Windows Server 2003, 2008, 2008 R2. It does not work on Storage Server 2008 R2. It always fails with error 50 - The request is not supported. The documentation for BackupRead gives no indication that it will not work with Storage Server 2008 R2. Anyone else have any experience using this API on Storage Server 2008 R2?

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• Christmas in the Clouds

  - by andrewbrust

  I have been spending the last 2 weeks immersing myself in a number of Windows Azure and SQL Azure technologies.  And in setting up a new business (I’ll speak more about that in the future), I have also become a customer of Microsoft’s BPOS (Business Productivity Online Services).  In short, it has been a fortnight of Microsoft cloud computing. On the Azure side, I’ve looked, of course, at Web Roles and Worker Roles.  But I’ve also looked at Azure Storage’s REST API (including coding to it directly), I’ve looked at Azure Drive and the new VM Role; I’ve looked quite a bit at SQL Azure (including the project “Houston” Silverlight UI) and I’ve looked at SQL Azure labs’ OData service too. I’ve also looked at DataMarket and its integration with both PowerPivot and native Excel.  Then there’s AppFabric Caching, SQL Azure Reporting (what I could learn of it) and the Visual Studio tooling for Azure, including the storage of certificate-based credentials.  And to round it out with some user stuff, on the BPOS side, I’ve been working with Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and LiveMeeting. I have to say I like a lot of what I’ve been seeing.  Azure’s not perfect, and BPOS certainly isn’t either.  But there’s good stuff in all these products, and there’s a lot of value. Azure Goes Deep Most people know that Web and Worker roles put the platform in charge of spinning virtual machines up and down, and keeping them up to date. But you can go way beyond that now.  The still-in-beta VM Role gives you the power to craft the machine (much as does Amazon’s EC2), though it takes away the platform’s self-managing attributes.  It still spins instances up and down, making drive storage non-durable, but Azure Drive gives you the ability to store VHD files as blobs and mount them as virtual hard drives that are readable and writeable.  Whether with Azure Storage or SQL Azure, Azure does data.  And OData is everywhere.  Azure Table Storage supports an OData Interface.  So does SQL Azure and so does DataMarket (the former project “Dallas”).  That means that Azure data repositories aren’t just straightforward to provision and configure…they’re also easy to program against, from just about any programming environment, in a RESTful manner.  And for more .NET-centric implementations, Azure AppFabric caching takes the technology formerly known as “Velocity” and throws it up into the cloud, speeding data access even more. Snapping in Place Once you get the hang of it, this stuff just starts to work in a way that becomes natural to understand.  I wasn’t expecting that, and I was really happy to discover it. In retrospect, I am not surprised, because I think the various Azure teams are the center of gravity for Redmond’s innovation right now.  The products belie this and so do my observations of the product teams’ motivation and high morale.  It is really good to see this; Microsoft needs to lead somewhere, and they need to be seen as the underdog while doing so.  With Azure, both requirements are in place.   BPOS: Bad Acronym, Easy Setup BPOS is about products you already know; Exchange, SharePoint, Live Meeting and Office Communications Server.  As such, it’s hard not to be underwhelmed by BPOS.  Until you realize how easy it makes it to get all that stuff set up.  I would say that from sign-up to productive use took me about 45 minutes…and that included the time necessary to wrestle with my DNS provider, set up Outlook and my SmartPhone up to talk to the Exchange account, create my SharePoint site collection, and configure the Outlook Conferencing add-in to talk to the provisioned Live Meeting account. Never before did I think setting up my own Exchange mail could come anywhere close to the simplicity of setting up an SMTP/POP account, and yet BPOS actually made it faster.   What I want from my Azure Christmas Next Year Not everything about Microsoft’s cloud is good.  I close this post with a list of things I’d like to see addressed: BPOS offerings are still based on the 2007 Wave of Microsoft server technologies.  We need to get to 2010, and fast.  Arguably, the 2010 products should have been released to the off-premises channel before the on-premise sone.  Office 365 can’t come fast enough. Azure’s Internet tooling and domain naming, is scattered and confusing.  Deployed ASP.NET applications go to cloudapp.net; SQL Azure and Azure storage work off windows.net.  The Azure portal and Project Houston are at azure.com.  Then there’s appfabriclabs.com and sqlazurelabs.com.  There is a new Silverlight portal that replaces most, but not all of the HTML ones.  And Project Houston is Silvelright-based too, though separate from the Silverlight portal tooling. Microsoft is the king off tooling.  They should not make me keep an entire OneNote notebook full of portal links, account names, access keys, assemblies and namespaces and do so much CTRL-C/CTRL-V work.  I’d like to see more project templates, have them automatically reference the appropriate assemblies, generate the right using/Imports statements and prime my config files with the right markup.  Then I want a UI that lets me log in with my Live ID and pick the appropriate project, database, namespace and key string to get set up fast. Beta programs, if they’re open, should onboard me quickly.  I know the process is difficult and everyone’s going as fast as they can.  But I don’t know why it’s so difficult or why it takes so long.  Getting developers up to speed on new features quickly helps popularize the platform.  Make this a priority. Make Azure accessible from the simplicity platforms, i.e. ASP.NET Web Pages (Razor) and LightSwitch.  Support .NET 4 now.  Make WebMatrix, IIS Express and SQL Compact work with the Azure development fabric. Have HTML helpers make Azure programming easier.  Have LightSwitch work with SQL Azure and not require SQL Express.  LightSwitch has some promising Azure integration now.  But we need more.  WebMatrix has none and that’s just silly, now that the Extra Small Instance is being introduced. The Windows Azure Platform Training Kit is great.  But I want Microsoft to make it even better and I want them to evangelize it much more aggressively.  There’s a lot of good material on Azure development out there, but it’s scattered in the same way that the platform is.   The Training Kit ties a lot of disparate stuff together nicely.  Make it known. Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot All in all, diving deep into Azure was a good way to end the year.  Diving deeper into Azure should a great way to spend next year, not just for me, but for Microsoft too.

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• Setting up Windows Azure PowerShell

  - by Sahil Malik

  SharePoint, WCF and Azure Trainings: more information Azure is in the cloud, PowerShell is on my machine, between the two lie vast oceans and dragons. What is a developer to do, to use PowerShell to work with Azure? Here is what you do, Install Windows Azure PowerShell Start WebPI, search for “Windows Azure PowerShell” – choose to add and install it. Run Windows Azure PowerShell This is easy, click on start (or whatever the hell you do in Windows 2012), and search for Windows Azure PowerShell. Connect your subscription  Read full article ....

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• Introduction to Microsoft SQL Azure: Free self-paced Microsoft class

  - by Jim Duffy

  Here is a wonderful opportunity to take advantage of some FREE Microsoft Learning content on SQL Azure. This self-paced 2 hour class is broken down into 4 segments each with a self test at the end. Class Segments 1) Understanding the SQL Azure Platform 2) Designing Applications for SQL Azure 3) Migrating Applications to SQL Azure 4) Achieving Scale with SQL Azure If you’re getting started with Windows Azure or have been working with it for a while and need to take advantage of the storage capabilities offered by SQL Azure this is going to be a great place for you to start learning. Have a day. :-|

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• FREE Windows Azure Platform Compute and Storage through the Cloud Essentials Pack for Partners

  - by Eric Nelson

  It can be difficult to find something to look forward to in January – but this year it was a little easier as a) I got lots of great Xbox 360 games and b) the Windows Azure Platform element of the Cloud Essentials Pack for Microsoft Partner Network partners went live. I have previously explained what the Cloud Essentials Pack is and how you can access – but at the time I couldn’t share the details of the Windows Azure Platform element. The Windows Azure Platform element is now available. It gives you each month, for FREE: Windows Azure: 750 hours of extra small compute instance 25 hours of small compute instance 3GB of storage and 250,000 storage transactions SQL Azure: 1 SQL Azure Web Edition database (5GB) Windows Azure AppFabric: App Fabric with 100,000 Access Control transactions and 2 Service Bus connections Plus: Data Transfer:  3GB in and 6GB out (More details of the offer) To activate this offer You need to: Sign your company up to Microsoft Platform Ready (NB: there are other routes to get this benefit – but I know about MPR) Read about Microsoft Platform Ready Visit http://www.microsoftcloudpartner.com/ and sign up.

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• When is the default storage rule not really the default storage rule?

  - by Kevin Smith

  In 11g WebCenter Content (WCC) introduced dispersion rules in the vault and weblayout directory paths to better distribute content across the directories. The dispersion rule was based on dRevClassID. The only problem with this is that dRevClassID did not remain the same when you copied content from one WCC instance to another using Archiver like in a contribution-consumption scenario. This could cause problems because the web-viewable path would not be the same between the contribution and consumption instances. In the PS5 (11.1.1.6.0) release of WCC they addressed this by configuring the File Store Provider (FSP) so that all new content would use a storage rule with a dispersion rule based on dDocName, which would stay the same when content was copied to another WCC instance. To support migration from older versions of WCC they left the default storage rule unchanged and created a new storage rule called DispByContentId and made that the default storage rule for all new content. I only stumbled upon this a while back when I was trying to change the FSP configuration so that all content used a webless storage rule. I changed the default storage rule, restarted WCC, and checked in a new content item. To my surprise the new content was not created as webless. I struggled with this for a while until I noticed there were multiple storage rules defined in the FSP configuration. When I looked at the default value for the xStorageRule field in Configuration Manager, sure enough it was no longer default, but was now DispByContentId. Once I updated the DispByContentId storage rule to webless and restarted WCC all my new content was now created using the webless storage rule, just like I wanted. I noticed when I was creating this blog post that the default storage rule is also listed on the File Store Provider Information page, but I guess I didn't see that when I originally did this.

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• Why do I need two Instances in Windows Azure?

  - by BuckWoody

  Windows Azure as a Platform as a Service (PaaS) means that there are various components you can use in it to solve a problem: Compute “Roles” - Computers running an OS and optionally IIS - you can have more than one "Instance" of a given Role Storage - Blobs, Tables and Queues for Storage Other Services - Things like the Service Bus, Azure Connection Services, SQL Azure and Caching It’s important to understand that some of these services are Stateless and others maintain State. Stateless means (at least in this case) that a system might disappear from one physical location and appear elsewhere. You can think of this as a cashier at the front of a store. If you’re in line, a cashier might take his break, and another person might replace him. As long as the order proceeds, you as the customer aren’t really affected except for the few seconds it takes to change them out. The cashier function in this example is stateless. The Compute Role Instances in Windows Azure are Stateless. To upgrade hardware, because of a fault or many other reasons, a Compute Role's Instance might stop on one physical server, and another will pick it up. This is done through the controlling fabric that Windows Azure uses to manage the systems. It’s important to note that storage in Azure does maintain State. Your data will not simply disappear - it is maintained - in fact, it’s maintained three times in a single datacenter and all those copies are replicated to another for safety. Going back to our example, storage is similar to the cash register itself. Even though a cashier leaves, the record of your payment is maintained. So if a Compute Role Instance can disappear and re-appear, the things running on that first Instance would stop working. If you wrote your code in a Stateless way, then another Role Instance simply re-starts that transaction and keeps working, just like the other cashier in the example. But if you only have one Instance of a Role, then when the Role Instance is re-started, or when you need to upgrade your own code, you can face downtime, since there’s only one. That means you should deploy at least two of each Role Instance not only for scale to handle load, but so that the first “cashier” has someone to replace them when they disappear. It’s not just a good idea - to gain the Service Level Agreement (SLA) for our uptime in Azure it’s a requirement. We point this out right in the Management Portal when you deploy the application: (Click to enlarge) When you deploy a Role Instance you can also set the “Upgrade Domain”. Placing Roles on separate Upgrade Domains means that you have a continuous service whenever you upgrade (more on upgrades in another post) - the process looks like this for two Roles. This example covers the scenario for upgrade, so you have four roles total - One Web and one Worker running the "older" code, and one of each running the new code. In all those Roles you want at least two instances, and this example shows that you're covered for High Availability and upgrade paths: The take-away is this - always plan for forward-facing Roles to have at least two copies. For Worker Roles that do background processing, there are ways to architect around this number, but it does affect the SLA if you have only one.

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• Windows Azure : suivez le streaming du Dev Camp en direct sur Developpez.com

  Le 20 juin aura lieu la journée Dev Camp consacrée à Azure. [IMG]http://i.msdn.microsoft.com/hh868108.azure-camps(fr-fr,MSDN.10).png[/IMG] Cette journée est l'occasion de découvrir tous les services Cloud d'Azure (SQL Azure, Stockage avec Windows Azure Storage, Back-end, etc.), d'apprendre comment réaliser des projets et héberger des applications ? ou des sites webs - sur la plateforme. L'Azure Dev Camp abordera également les applications multi-tiers et la manière de « migrer, intégrer et étendre votre code et vos applications existantes grâce à Windows Azure ». Cette journée abordera aussi la construction d'APIs Web pour enrichir des applications mobiles iOS, Android et bien sûr Windows Phone. Enfin, le rendez-vous...

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• Enzo Backup for SQL Azure Beta Released!

  - by ScottKlein

  Blue Syntax is happy to announce the release of their SQL Azure database backup product! Enzo Backup for SQL Azure offers unparalleled backup and restored functionlity and flexibility of a SQL Azure database. You can download the beta release here: http://www.bluesyntax.net/backup.aspx With Enzo Backup for SQL Azure, you can: Create a backup blob, or a backup file from a SQL Azure database Restore a SQL Azure database from a backup blob, or a backup file Perform limited backup and restore of SQL Server databases (see details) Run backups entirely in the cloud using a remote agent Backup a single schema of a database Restore specific tables only Copy backup devices from on-premise to the cloud Use a command-line utility to perform backup operations Perform transactionally consistent backups for SQL Azure Please download it and provide us your feed back!

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• Shared storage solution for our sql server backups

  - by Gokhan

  We have 3 clustered sql servers. We have 5+ multi terrabyte databases and their backup files (compressed using quest litespeed) are hitting over 600gb each, We are required to keep at least a week or two weeks (if we can) of weekly full backups and then 6 days differential backups, and a week or 2 weeks worth of log backups local. We are currently limited to 2TB volumes from our san team, we can have multiple volumes but they are expensive ($200 per raw TB per month) and having to deal with many backup volumes instead of a single big volume is difficult. I think if we could have a shared network storage of 20TB+ raid 10 or so for all our servers for keeping the backups and another department will copy them to tape from the network storage and delete files according to the retention period would be good, if this box would be a build in operating system (even unix a complete file storage system) that would be good. What do you guys think, does this make sense to you, is there any manufacturer that sells a storage product like that which that work in a clustered environment? Thank you

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• Windows Azure CDN(Content Delivery Network)

  - by kaleidoscope

  Windows Azure CDN caches your Windows Azure blobs at strategically placed locations to provide maximum bandwidth for delivering your content to users. You can enable CDN delivery for any storage account via the Windows Azure Developer Portal. The CDN provides edge delivery only to blobs that are in public blob containers, which are available for anonymous access. Windows Azure CDN has 18 locations globally (United States, Europe, Asia, Australia and South America) and continues to expand. The benefit of using a CDN is better performance and user experience for users who are farther from the source of the content stored in the Windows Azure Blob service. In addition, Windows Azure CDN provides worldwide high-bandwidth access to serve content for popular events. Current CDN locations in US. For more details please refer to the link.  http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsazure/archive/2009/11/05/introducing-the-windows-azure-content-delivery-network.aspx Sarang

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• Windows Azure : J-2 avant le dev camp en direct sur Developpez.com, réservez votre mercredi

  Le 20 juin aura lieu la journée Dev Camp consacrée à Azure. [IMG]http://i.msdn.microsoft.com/hh868108.azure-camps(fr-fr,MSDN.10).png[/IMG] Cette journée est l'occasion de découvrir tous les services Cloud d'Azure (SQL Azure, Stockage avec Windows Azure Storage, Back-end, etc.), d'apprendre comment réaliser des projets et héberger des applications ? ou des sites webs - sur la plateforme. L'Azure Dev Camp abordera également les applications multi-tiers et la manière de « migrer, intégrer et étendre votre code et vos applications existantes grâce à Windows Azure ». Cette journée abordera aussi la construction d'APIs Web pour enrichir des applications mobiles iOS, Android et bien sûr Windows Phone. Enfin, le rendez-vous...

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• Server 2012 Storage Pools, Raid Controller... can the Storage Pool deal with it?

  - by TomTom

  Before trying it out - I don't find any documentation. Given that Storage Pools have serious performance problems with parity, and do not rebalance data at the moment when you add discs, my preferred way to use them would be as think provisioned space, ISCSI targets - with every "Pool" running against 1 RAID that comes from a Raid controller (who also introduces SSD read and write caching - another thing missing from Storage Pools). The main question is - how does a Storage Pool handle the change in the underlying disc that can happen? I mostly talk about OCE (Online Capacity Expansion), where a disc after an expansion suddenly reports a larger space. Standard Windows allows you to use this additional space (and expand the partitions). How does a storage pool handle it?

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