Tags: Developer Academy 4

Tags: Windows Azure

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

Just released – Windows Azure MMC. The  Windows Azure Management Tool was created to manage your storage accounts in Windows Azure. Developed as a managed MMC, the tool allows you to create and manage both blobs and queues. Easily create and manage containers, blobs, and permissions. Add and remove queues, inspect or add messages or empty queues as well.

Features

The Windows Azure MMC makes it easy to work with your storage accounts. Here are just some of the features:

• Manage multiple storage accounts
• Easily switch between remote and local storage services
• Manage your blobs
  • Create containers and manage permissions
  • Upload files or even entire folders
  • Read metadata or preview the blob contents
• Manage your queues
  • Create new queues
  • Monitor queues
  • Read (peek) messages
  • Post new messages to the queue
  • Purge queues

Known Issues

• The current release does not work with Windows 7 due to a bug in the RC version of PowerShell. Other OS versions should be unaffected.

Tags: Windows Azure