Microsoft Windows Azure CTP review

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Microsoft's Community Technology Preview reveals in the Windows Azure Services Platform a thoughtfully designed cloud-computing architecture where seasoned .Net developers will feel at home.

Microsoft Windows Azure: four pillars

The Microsoft Azure Services Platform is a Windows-like cloud computing architecture with four major parts: Windows Azure, which is a Windows-based environment for running applications and storing data on servers in Microsoft datacenters; Microsoft .Net Services, which are distributed infrastructure services; Microsoft SQL Services, which are data services in the cloud based on SQL Server; and Live Services, which access data from Microsoft's Live applications and others and allow synchronising this data through Live Mesh.

A Windows Azure application currently looks a lot like an ASP.Net application, although it has some restrictions and additional features. Azure supports Web roles and Worker roles; a Web role is like an ASP.Net site, while a Worker role is a background process, like a .Net-based service. Roles may be given multiple instances, with each instance in a virtual machine under the control of the Windows Azure Fabric; a load balancer makes the cloud of web instances respond to a single HTTP URL.

Microsoft Windows Azure stores blobs, tables, and queues for Web and Worker roles in a replicated storage instance; these are addressable by a RESTful URI (uniform resource identifier).

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Azure blobs (binary large objects) are very loosely organized into containers and blocks and may have associated metadata. Azure tables are hierarchically organised entities with properties, which may be queried using LINQ syntax; they are emphatically not relational database tables. Queues are used for reliable communication between Web role instances and Worker role instances, typically to post work items for processing.

.Net Services include the .Net Access Control Service, which controls access to web resources using security tokens; the .Net Service Bus, which is a discoverable registry of web end points; and the .Net Workflow Service, which is a sequential workflow controller. SQL Services currently includes only one of the several planned components: SQL Data Services, which is basically a hierarchical store of authorities, containers, entities, and properties addressable using REST or SOAP and either a LINQ-like language or ADO.Net Data Services. SQL Data Services may be based on SQL Server, but it isn't used like SQL Server.

The Live Framework enables access to Live Services and also to Live Mesh synchronisation, using the Live Operating Environment.

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• www.microsoft.co.uk
• 0870 60 10 100
• Microsoft
• Community Technology Preview is free
• Final pricing not yet available

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