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Excellent keynote today by Scott Guthrie and the Windows Azure team! I don’t know if it’s because I’m seeing it on the other side for the first time or if it’s due to the amazing new capabilities introduced into Windows Azure, but I loved every second of it! Within a few minutes Scott had jumped into a demo and it was nonstop thereafter!

I’ve been waiting for almost a year to write this blog post.

Keynote with Scott Guthrie

In order to get this post out quickly I decided to share my rough notes from the keynote. Over the coming days and weeks I will certainly expand this with more information.

Scott Guthrie:

• Today’s release “elevates Windows Azure to a new level”

• Capabilities like Windows Azure Web Sites and open source libraries open the platform to many more developers

• Three pillars of Windows Azure:

  • Flexible
  • Open
  • Solid

• Windows Azure has pioneered Platform-as-a-Service

• Today we’re enabling Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)

• Support of Linux is how we’re embracing openness in a new way

• Supporting more languages, protocols, and SDKs

• Open-source libraries and SDKs on Github under the Apache 2.0 license

Demo: New Windows Azure website

• There’s a new Linux and Mac installer for Node.js

• Spent time optimizing the portal to work across platforms

• Full monitoring and statistics through the portal

• Everything done through the portal is communicating to APIs thereby allowing you to do everything through the command line

• IaaS

  • Create a new virtual machine

  • Anything installed on the machine will persist; full durable VM

  • Image gallery

    • Linux distribution built into the portal

  • We have a number of SDKs to download, including Mac

    • installs an Azure utility and wires up a BASH shell
    • including ASCII art
    • SSH’d into Ubuntu machine

• Virtual Networks

  • Not just upload VMs into the cloud
  • Integrate into your existing networks and VMs you already have
  • Shipping virtual private networking
  • A wizard to create an address space and subnet; we’ll virtualize these addresses
  • You can provide DNS servers in the cloud or on-premises

Scott Guthrie on VMs:

• Virtual machine portability

  • Between the cloud and different environments
  • All VMs are running a VHD format which is an open spec
  • Because it’s the same file format you can take a VM and move to Windows Azure or even move it back; you don’t have to export or convert the VHDs
  • This allows you to run in your data center, other service providers, or within Windows Azure: flexibility, portability, and no lock-in

• VM persistent drive

  • Mount durable drives to the virtual machines

  • Reliable and consistent

  • When you mount a drive the disk is backed with the Windows Azure storage system

    • Triple replicate the content; no interruption of service if there’s a failure
    • Continuous storage and geo-replication

Partner: RightScale

• Michael Crandell, CEO

• Mission: to build a broad cloud management platform

• Web-based environment that allows companies to manage everything from development to delivery of applications running on cloud infrastructures

• Think of us as a bridge between the apps and the infrastructures you want to run on (public, private, or hybrid)

• Partner: worked with the Windows Azure team to interact with the new IaaS APIs

• Brought to Windows Azure the full set of RightScale capabilities

• When run by RightScale the solution includes auto scale

• Why Windows Azure?

  • Microsoft knows how to run global cloud infrastructure with a high degree of operational excellence
  • IaaS + PaaS is an industry first – provides an entire environment for the development and deployment of apps that are compelling, from simple to complex
  • Openness – a clear commitment of openness at multiple levels

Scott Guthrie on Web sites:

• Benefits

  • Build with ASP.NET, Node.js, or PHP
  • Deploy in seconds with FTP, Git, or TFS
  • Start for free, scale up as your traffic grows

• Bill Staples demo

• Opposite end of the cloud spectrum

  • don’t want to focus on the platform; don’t want to install the frameworks

• Visual Studio & .NET

  • Quickly created a website

  • Downloaded a publishing profile that includes all the connection information

  • Opens up Visual Studio and ASP.NET MVC 4

  • Import the profile and publish

  • Support in both VS 20120 and VS 2012

  • Built and published into the cloud in just a few seconds

  • Updated a string and republished

    • Preview shows the deltas between local and cloud
    • Just push the change

• Mac with Node.js

  • Instead of the portal use the commandline
  • Use the azure command
  • Uses git to deploy
  • One update connects to Mongo running in a Linux VM

• Sometimes it’s nice to build an application without writing code

  • Best of Windows Azure and the power of open source
  • MySQL: worked with ClearDB to provide MySQL as a service

• Scale

  • Scale out

    • By default, website is running as a Shared Website
    • You can increase instance count

  • Scale up

    • Move from Shared to Reserved
    • Only my websites are routed

• 10 free shared websites

Scott Guthrie on Cloud Services:

• Another model for building infinitely scalable applications and services

• The traditional PaaS offering that Windows Azure has had since release

• Creates a multi-tier applications using the website Bill created and adding a worker role

• Process

  • Upload a service package (which is essentially a zip file) into the cloud
  • Fabric controller provisions the machines and deploys my bits and brings it into rotation through load balancer

Scott Guthrie on Building Blocks:

• Overall message is to enable developers to focus on applications and less about infrastructure

• Application building blocks

  • big data
  • database
  • storage
  • traffic
  • caching
  • messaging
  • identity
  • media
  • CDN
  • networking

• Delivered by MSFT and partners

• Language support for: .NET, Node.JS, Java, PHP, Python

  • Libraries you can consume natively
  • Libraries on Github under Apache2

• SQL Database

  • Relational SQL database
  • Clustered for high availability
  • Fully managed service
  • SQL Reporting support

• Blob storage

  • Features

    • Highly available, scalable and secure file system
    • Blobs can be exposed publically over http
    • Continuous geo-replication across datacenters

  • Real-time data showed in portal

  • SQLs surfaced in the portal

• Cache

  • implementing Memcached protocol support
  • Use the distributed service or run it in your own instances

• Identity

  • Integrate with enterprise identity
  • Enable single sign-on within your apps
  • Enterprise Graph REST API
  • 93% of Fortune 1000 use Active Directory

• Service Bus

  • Secure messaging and relay capabilities
  • Easily build hybrid apps
  • Enable loosely coupled solutions
  • Cross platform SDKs

• Media Service

  • Create, manage, and distribute content
  • Target any device or media format
  • Ingest, Encode, Protect, Stream

• Marketplace integration

• Azure in 89 countries and territories