A beta release of Windows Azure Drive is now available. It was announced as XDrive at PDC 2009.

With Windows Azure Drive, your Windows Azure applications running in the cloud can use existing NTFS APIs to access a durable drive. The Windows Azure application can read from or write to a drive letter (e.g., D:\) that represents a durable NTFS volume for storing and accessing data. For more information, see Beta Release of Windows Azure Drive on the Windows Azure Team Blog.

More detailed information can be found in the technical white paper here and at MSDN.

Using Windows Azure drive can significantly ease the migration of existing Windows applications to the cloud, enabling a more seamless migration experience while simultaneously reducing the amount of time it takes to move the applications from your own Windows environment to a Windows Azure environment.

In order to mount a Windows Azure Drive you will need to use Feb 2010 version of the Windows Azure SDK. The SDK provides the following Windows Azure Drive APIs for your Windows Azure application to use:

• Create Drive – Creates a Page Blob formatted as a single partition NTFS volume VHD.
• Initialize Cache – Allows an application to specify the location and size of the local data cache for all Windows Azure Drives mounted for that VM instance.
• Mount Drive – Takes a formatted Page Blob and mounts it to a drive letter for the Windows Azure application to start using.
• Get Mounted Drives – Returns the list of mounted drives. It consists of a list of the drive letter and Page Blob URLs for each mounted drive.
• Unmount Drive – Unmounts the drive and frees up the drive letter.
• Snapshot Drive – Allows the client application to create a backup of the drive (Page Blob).
• Copy Drive – Provides the ability to copy a drive or snapshot to another drive (Page Blob) name to be used as a read/writable drive.

Enjoy!

Tags: Windows Azure, Windows Azure Drive

Many customers are asking about migration from SQL to SQL Azure. This post will describe the considerations you have to take and the migration process.

First of all, be familiar with SQL Azure limitations:

• Transact-SQL Reference (SQL Azure Database): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee336281.aspx
• Guidelines and Limitations (SQL Azure Database): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee336245.aspx

SQL Azure does not run in backward compatibility mode (SQL Server 2000 or SQL Server 2005). It is running compatibility mode 10 (SQL Server 2008).  Thus, all deprecated SQL Server 2000 and 2005 features will not work in SQL Azure (for the most part, there might be a few exceptions). 

If you work with SQL 2000/2005, first upgrade it to 2008 or SQL 2008 Express and get everything working there first. Then go through the migration process to SQL Azure.

Note that there are TSQL commands that are not supported by SQL Azure. There is a tool (SQLAzureMW) in codeplex (http://sqlazuremw.codeplex.com) that will analyze your database and also analyze SQL Profiler trace files (to cover your dynamic generated SQL) and tell you what is not compatible.  From there, you have a great start on figuring out what you need to do in order to get your database in SQL Azure.  Once your database is compatible, you can also use SQLAzureMW to actually migrate your database for you to SQL Azure. (SQLAzureMW requires SQL Server 2008 R2 CTP).

My recommendation is to start with SQLAzureMW and let it give you a rough idea of how much work you will need to do.  Then you can decide if you need to go through the upgrade process to SQL Server 2008 first before you go to SQL Azure.

Have fun!

Tags: SQL Azure, Windows Azure

If you running the VS 2010 Ultimate Beta 2 and you are getting a screen with an error message – THE APPLICATION CANNOT START, you can fix this problem:

Use Visual Studio Command Prompt (2010) and  run “devenv /resetuserdata”.

[C]:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE>devenv /resetuserdata

Tags: Team System 2010, Visual Studio 2010

Two days ago, at the annual conference of The World Summit of Cloud Computing (http://events.myreg.co.il/IGT2009/), organized by The Israeli Association of Grid Technologies (IGT) (http://www.grid.org.il), my college, Eliaz Tobias and myself, had the chance to co-present and speak on Microsoft’s recent announcements for the cloud.

Our presentation was part of the keynote which included a speakers from IGT, Martix, IBM & NetApp. This year, the IGT annual event focused on the business and technology aspects of Cloud Computing.

Our presentation included introduction of cloud computing, Software + Services, Windows Azure introduction, dynamic data center toolkit for private cloud (DDTK) and a real demo.

It was a great pleasure to present in such interesting and important conference. From the feedbacks we’ve got, people were very impressed from our roadmap and offerings for Public Cloud Windows Azure Platform, our Private Cloud with Dynamic Data Center Toolkit and services running on the cloud including Business Productivity Online Services (BPOS).

You can download the presentation from the “Presentations” page: http://blog.maordavid.com/presentations/

here are some pictures from the conference:

Eliaz during the presentation

I’m demonstrating Windows Azure

Tags: Events, Windows Azure

Steven Sinofsky, Scott Guthrie and Kurt DelBene were the top speakers announced for day 2 keynote.

If you would like to watch the keynotes on-demand, you can do so at www.microsoftpdc.com site.

Silverlight 4

Scott Guthrie announces the public beta of Silverlight 4. The beta can be downloaded at http://www.silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight-4-beta.

New features:

• Extended out-of-browser capabilities to enable deeper desktop experiences without additional code or runtimes
• Powerful enhancements for enterprise application developers, including full support for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, providing access to Microsoft Office and Microsoft SharePoint Server, and improved printing,  networking, reporting and charting capabilities
• Richer Web experiences, including new webcam and microphone capabilities, native multicast support for wide-scale media content delivery, and more than 60 customizable controls to build compelling, interactive applications

If you want training, go to Channel 9 to Silverlight 4 training: http://channel9.msdn.com/learn/courses/Silverlight4/

Office 2010 Beta and SharePoint 2010 Beta

The are public betas of Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Microsoft Visio 2010, Microsoft Project 2010, Microsoft Office Mobile 2010 and Office Web Apps for business customers. The 2010 release is designed to give people the best productivity experience across PCs, phones and browsers. The betas can be downloaded at http://www.microsoft.com/2010. Also announced: PowerPivot for Excel 2010 – CTP version is available – http://www.powerpivot.com/

Tags: Office 2010, PDC09, SharePoint 2010, Silverlight, Silverlight 4

Here are the headlines from yesterday’s announcements at Professional Developers Conference (PDC09).

Windows Identity Foundation, ASP.NET MVC Beta 2 Supported on Windows Azure

Windows Server virtual machine support on Windows Azure, RTM of Windows Identity Foundation, and ASP.NET MVC beta 2, a free, fully-supported framework that enables developers to rapidly build standards-based Web applications.

Windows Azure

Windows Azure release schedule was announced, the services are free to evaluate through January 2010. We will begin charging customers on February 1st, 2010.

Learn more, download the tools: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/

Commercial, Reference Data Service Offered in Cloud

Dallas” the commoditization of data.Microsoft introduces an information and brokerage service, codenamed “Dallas” that enables access to commercial and reference data from partners including Associated Press, Citysearch, ESRI, DATA.gov, NASA, National Geographic, RiskMetrics Group, the United Nations, WaveMarket, Weather Central, and more. Check it out and request your trial token: http://blogs.msdn.com/dallas/archive/2009/11/17/a-quick-overview-of-dallas-for-developers.aspx

AppFabric Supports Moving Your Web Application from Windows Server to Windows Azure

Microsoft releases Windows Server AppFabric Beta 1, a set of integrated application services that enable developers to more easily deploy and manage applications spanning both server and cloud. Available for download today at http://msdn.microsoft.com/AppFabric with availability in 2010. Windows Server AppFabric and Windows Azure platform AppFabric include the capabilities from projects “Dublin” and “Velocity,” as well as the Service Bus and Access Control services that were formerly under the “.NET Services” brand (today, these services are now called Windows Azure platform AppFabric Service Bus and Windows Azure platform AppFabric Access Control services).

• For Web applications, AppFabric provides caching capabilities to provide high-speed access, scale, and high availability to application data. This feature was previously codenamed "Velocity".
• For composite applications, AppFabric makes it easier to build and manage services built using Windows Workflow Foundation and Windows Communication Foundation. This feature was previously codenamed "Dublin."

Tags: AppFabric, ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, Dallas, PDC09, Windows Azure, Windows Identity

Its here!

msdn subscribers can download now, general availability is 21st October. Visit the Visual Studio 2010 / .NET Fx 4 Beta site for more information, downloads, forums and to submit feedback.

You’ll also notice that MSDN website has undergone a redesign and MSDN subscribers will also see new benefits such as Azure compute hours, Team Foundation Server and e-learning options.

You can read Soma’s blogpost announcing Visual Studio 2010 / .NET Fx 4.

Tags: .NET 4, Team System 2010, TFS

The Windows Azure Service Management API has been released to help you manage your deployments, hosted services and storage accounts. This is a REST-based API that uses X509 client certificates for authentication. Users can code against in their toolset of choice to manage their services. Users can upload any valid X509 certificate in .cer format to the Windows Azure developer portal and then use it as a client certificate when making API requests.

Supported operations:

• Deployments – Viewing, creating, deleting, swapping, modifying configuration settings, changing instance counts, and updating the deployment.
• Listing and viewing properties for hosted services, storage accounts and affinity groups.

A tool called csmanage.exe have already uploaded to help you interact with this API and manage your deployments. For an overview of the Management APIs, see Introducing the Windows Azure Service Management API blog posting from the Windows Azure team.

Tags: Windows Azure

common question is how a multi-tenant architecture works with Windows Azure Platform. You can find an answer at Project Riviera that has been released on MSDN and includes source code.

From the project page:

Project Riviera is a comprehensive code sample to demostrate how to develop multi-tenant highly-scalable line-of-business application on  Windows Azure Platform. This sample is developed by Global Partner Architecture Team in Developer & Platform Evangelism group at Microsoft in collaboration with Cumulux - our Cloud ISV partner. Riviera uses Customer Loyalty Management scenario for illustration purpose but many building blocks are applicable to range of line-of-business applications.
Click here to view a screncast of Riviera, Architecture details and other related information.
Key features of Riviera

• Multi-tenant data store based on Azure Table Storage as well as SQL Azure.
• Per tenant customization of data model
• Per tenant customization of business logic (using Windows Workflow in Windows Azure)
• Per tenant customization of user interface using Silverlight 3.0. Customization can be multi-level – custom theme, custom XAML, and custom XAP.
• Automated tenant provisioning
• Windows Azure web role->Azure Queue->worker role pattern for high volume transaction processing that can scale on demand
• Claims aware web service and web application using Geneva Framework
• Active and Passive Federation using Geneva Framework, Geneva Server and .NET Access Control Service (ACS)
• Windows Live ID authentication for consumer facing web site
• Use of Patterns & Practices Enterprise Library Caching and Logging application blocks in Windows Azure

Notes

• Project Riviera is not a product or solution from Microsoft. It is a comprehensive sample code developed for evangelism purpose.
• Riviera includes implementation of Security Token Service (STS) using Geneva Framework in Windows Azure. We would like to emphasize that this scenario is currently not supported (at the time of July 2009 CTP). This is primarily because of lack of certificate store support in Windows Azure at this time. So although the implementation works in Windows Azure, we advise not to do so for production environment untill such scenario can be supported on Windows Azure and product group provides guidance to do so.

Tags: Windows Azure

Just published on CodePlex  -WCF Load Test tool.

Project Description from the project home page on CodePlex:

This tool takes a WCF trace file and a WCF client proxy, or a WCF interface contract, and generates a unit test that replays the same sequence of calls found in the trace file. The code generated is easily modifiable so that data variation can be introduced for the purpose of doing performance testing.
The tool generates code for both Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008. It also installs a wizard into both editions of Visual Studio for creating the trace and processing it from inside Visual Studio. If both editions are present the tool is installed into both editions. The source code is a Visual Studio 2005 project.

Latest Release June 2009

A new beta was released in June 2009 adding support for ASMX web services. Download it from here.

Features

The tool has the following main features:

• Replay of captured scenario in a unit test that can be included in a load test.
• Support for the DataContractSerializer.
• Support for message contracts.
• ASMX support (beta)
• Support for proxies generated using svcutil.
• Support for clients that create proxies at run time from contract interfaces.
• Supports calls to multiple services in a single scenario.
• Supports multiple calls to the same service operation.
• Filtering by SOAP action of which messages in the trace to replay.
• Readable and modifiable code is generated.
• Automatic association of trace message with proxy method (requires all operations to have a unique SOAP action).
• Support for client and server side traces.
• A command line tool for processing traces and generating code.
• Visual Studio 2005/2008 integration (Team Developer, Team Test, Team Suite and for 2008 also Professional)) that can be used instead of the command line tool.

Tags: .NET, load test, Tools, Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio Team System, WCF