Great article explaining the differences between Windows Azure Queues and the new messaging capabilities in the Windows Azure Service Bus. It contains typical scenarios, as well as general guidelines on when to use one vs. the other.
Windows Azure Queues and Windows Azure Service Bus Queues – Compared and Contrasted
January 12th, 2012Mark your calendars! Cloud Fest Denver Feb. 9th, 2012
January 6th, 2012
Cloud Fest is coming to Denver on February 9th, 2012, and you should not miss it. Take this opportunity to learn about cloud computing, and how it is affecting deployment and development models across multiple industries around the world. I will be personally presenting a session on designing software architectues for distributed environments, including real life examples of organizations using emerging patterns like CQRS. Looking forward to seeing you there!
Automated Build and Deployment with Windows Azure SDK 1.6
January 5th, 2012Tom Hollander recently posted a great article on how to use the new deployment capabilities in the Windows Azure SDK v1.6, including the use of the .publishsettings file with a build server using TFS and MSBuild. Enjoy!
Windows Azure ISV Blog Series: Digital Folio experience using different cloud storage options
December 29th, 2011The Windows Azure team published today a post about one of the ISVs that I've been working with: Digital Folio. In the article, they share their experience choosing and using the different storage options that the Microsoft cloud platform offers, specifically Windows Azure storage tables and SQL Azure databases… which, by the way, it is a common topic of conversation with other companies planning to migrate their solutions to the cloud. Special thanks to Fernando Cardenas with Digital Folio for his time and effort sharing his thoughts and lessons learned. Enjoy!
Managing and Monitoring Windows Azure applications with System Center 2012
December 5th, 2011As part of the effort of better integrating and managing on-premises and cloud resources, System Center 2012 offers different capabilities to monitor Windows Azure instances. This article from the Microsoft Server and Cloud Platform team shows how to upload, deploy and monitor applications to the cloud using the latest version of System Center.
SQL Azure Performance and Elasticity Guide
November 30th, 2011Today, my colleague Silvano Coriani pointed me to this excellent article about SQL Azure Performance and Elasticity. This is a common topic of conversation when I talk to Microsoft ISVs, and should give you a good understanding of best practices and optimization of SQL Azure databases.
Deploying the Windows Azure ASP.NET MVC 3 Web Role
November 4th, 2011In order to deploy the default ASP.Net MVC 3 web role that comes with version 1.4 (and later) of the Windows Azure SDK, it is necessary to make some changes linked to the SQL connection strings, which point by default to the local SQLEXPRESS instance. This article from Wade Wegner explains how to make them work once deployed to the cloud.
Announcing Improved In-place Updates for Windows Azure
October 21st, 2011Two days ago, significant changes and enhancements to the In-place update process were announced for the Windows Azure platform. It is now possible to apply multiple changes to virtual instances without having to redploy the whole solution, including the following: change the VM size, increase the local storage, add or remove roles, or change the number of endpoints. The full article can be found after the jump.
PowerBuilder and Windows Azure by Jim O’Neil
October 21st, 2011Great post from Jim O'Neil on running PowerBuilder applications on Azure, as well as compatibility with SQL Azure, the Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus, and Windows Azure Storage.
Windows Azure AppFabric Caching transactions and update modes
September 28th, 2011While talking to a startup company today, they asked me about the Windows Azure AppFabric Caching service, trying to replace a Redis self-managed deployment. The conversation steered specifically towards atomic transactions and update modes. I found a really good white paper from Scott Seely that talks about the two update patterns supported: optimistic and pessimistic. The main difference between the two is that the latter uses locks, the former doesn’t. In addition to this topic, the articles touches on cache security, expiration, and how to properly manage this service in the cloud. It can be found here:
Architecting Applications to use Windows Azure AppFabric Caching
For more information about the Windows Azure AppFabric Caching service, please also visit this page.
