Lets assume that we are doing a project that needs to update endpoint configuration (for example: add a new internal/input endpoints) and even create new worker role when the service is running. According to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd179341.aspx#Subheading2 it seems we can’t change the service definition when the service is running. So what options are there to do this?

The only option here is to make your service definition changes, delete the running service and recreate\deploy. The change of endpoints as well as adding additional roles require a schema change to the service.

Tags: Windows Azure

Windows Server AppFabric Release Candidate was announced today at Application Infrastructure  Virtual Launch Event. The final availability will follow in June.

Windows Server AppFabric provides improved speed, elastic scale and high availability for Web applications through new, distributed caching capabilities. It also provides tools to simplify the development and management of composite applications built using Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation. Windows Server AppFabric will be available to customers with licenses for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 (Standard and Enterprise editions) at no additional cost.

About Windows Server AppFabric

Windows Server AppFabric is a set of integrated technologies that make it easier to build, scale and manage Web and composite applications that run on IIS.

For Web applications, AppFabric provides caching capabilities to provide high-speed access, scale, and high availability to application data.

For composite applications, AppFabric makes it easier to build and manage services built using WindowsWorkflow Foundation and Windows Communication Foundation.

More information

More information about the launch event and related products is available:

• To visit the Application Infrastructure Virtual Launch Event
• To download or get more information, see Windows Server AppFabric
• To get started, see the links for tutorials, samples, whitepapers, and videos at Windows Server AppFabric.

Tags: Windows Server AppFabric

Visual Studio 2010 launched today. You can get the new version in your MSDN subscription.

Download from:

• MSDN Subscriber Downloads
• Volume Licensing Service Center (VLSC)
• Download test drive editions

Visual Studio is available in four versions:

• Professional
• Premium
• Ultimate
• Test Professional.

Tags: .NET 4, Team System 2010

Developer Academy 4 is here! its tomorrow! More than 1400 attendees will join us at the Avenue, Airport City, Israel. We’ll launch there .NET 4, Visual Studio 2010, Silverlight 4 & Windows Azure.

I’ll speak there about cloud computing and Windows Azure. You can download my presentation from the presentations page.

Enjoy!

Tags: Developer Academy 4, Presentations

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