Nuno Filipe Godinho : Mesh

Interesting Incubation and Innovation Projects from Microsoft in the Cloud spectrum

NunoGodinho — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 17:40:54 GMT

I was looking at the Windows Azure - SQL Data Services page, and looked at some of the Incubation and Innovation projects that Microsoft is researching in this area, and found this to be very interesting and so here are the projects that I found:

Data Mining in the Cloud

This is very interesting because with this we have also SQL Server Analysis Services on the Cloud, and since Analysis Services are very important for companies to achieve the analysis of their data in order to perform better and to make better decisions, having those also on the Cloud and using the Cloud perspective of pay-as-you-go I think it will mean a that lots of more companies will start looking at their data differently, because now they can afford the costs of doing it.

Project codename “Anchorage”

Since the appearance of the Web that a lot of options appeared to share files, photos, movies and so on, but the problem is that along the way we reach a point that we have everything so separated along the web that we lose track of it. Live Mesh tried to address this problem and is being pretty interesting in his usage, but what about if I have photos in Flickr, PhotoBucket, SmugSmug, and others as well as in my laptop? How can they all be synced? This projects does absolutely this and uses Live Framework in order to achieve it in a very interesting way.

Project codename “Huron”

I read this phrase “This is a Sync-Enabled Cloud Data Hub.”, and thought, What? So I continued reading and understood the Idea, because this is something that in some cases needs to be done when we are doing Cloud Computing, that is having a Synced copy of the Database locally for the customers, and this project intends to achieve this goal since it gets the SQL Data Services and the Local Database and Synchronizes them using Microsoft Sync Framework, this way providing the ability for customers to always have their data even when having SaaS – Software as a Service solutions. This way we have best of both worlds.
Watched this great small series of videos about this project:

Reporting Services against SQL Data Services

Interesting, we have SQL Server in the Cloud, Data Mining in the Cloud and now Reporting Services on the Cloud. This seems very interesting because we can use the Cloud to take our solutions to the “Next Level” since we now have almost all necessary technologies available on the Cloud.
Try it here.

Hope this helps you see what we can expect and what level of Cloud usage we can achieve.

Cloud Computing Conference 2009 – Overview of the Windows Azure and the Azure Services Platform

NunoGodinho — Thu, 28 May 2009 10:19:22 GMT

Luis Martins, Architect Advisor from Microsoft Portugal

Buzz Words

Cloud Computing
Cloud Services
IaaS – Infrastructure as a Services
PaaS – Platform as a Service

Microsoft’s Strategy in this case is “Software + Services” that can be more prepared here http://www.davidchappell.com/blog/2008/06/what-is-software-services.html by David Chappell and in this whitepaper paper.

Why do we need the Cloud Computing?

Increase happiness by easing the IT problems

Sample:

Think about an Expense Reporting processing system in the Cloud

Challenges Building Applications

How can I handle peak loads?
How do I provide high availability?
What are the upfront investment capital needed?

Platform Choices

On-Premises Servers
Hosted Servers
Cloud Platform
- We need an OS for the cloud

What’s in the Cloud OS?

Creates a layer on top of the Cloud computing elements used
Increase the Utility Computing
- 24/7 availability
- High availability
- Peak Loads

Windows Azure

Utility Computing
Think of several computers with Virtual Machines inside of each one (This is called Fabric)
Applications
- Will be place across several machines in the fabric
Fabric controller is responsible for the management of the fabric and if some machine fails just calls another one
Defining your service
- What are the components(roles) ?
- How do they interact?
- At what scale?
- Basically:
  - LB
    - Load Balancer in order to have the availability being managed and balanced to all the available machines that support our application
  - Web Role
    - Application that will be on the cloud that will be made available
  - Worker Role
    - Asynchronous processing
Windows Azure is made to Scale out
Stateless compute + durable Storage = Scalable Application
Data Centers Microsoft
- 5 known data centers
  - 4 in the US
  - 1 in Ireland
  - more to come, after the regulatory and legal problems that exist now with Cloud Computing have been solved
- Something like 20.000 machines in there
- All our data are placed on 3 different fault domains that will make almost impossible to lose data
- What’s being used with this structure
  - Live ID
  - Live Messenger
  - Live Search
  - Live Meeting (in the next version)
Storage
- Window Azure Storage
  - Durable Storage
    - Blob
      - Data Blocks like a file
    - Table
      - Not relational databases
    - Queue
      - Used to create asynchronous processing
  - REST API available

Promises of Azure

Microsoft runs your application
Don’t think about management costs
Grow the server as we need

Azure Vision

Windows Azure
SQL Services
- Services
  - Data Services
  - Data Sync
- Familiar SQL Server relational Database model
- Support for existing APIs and tools
.NET Services
- Services
  - Service Bus
  - Access Control
  - Workflow Services
Live Services
- Services
  - Directory
  - Identity
  - Storage
  - Communications & Presence
  - Search & Geospatial
- Live Mesh is the center of this Live Services vision
SharePoint Services
Dynamics CRM Services

Azure Services Platform Roadmap

Fall 2008
- First CTP – Developer CTP for Services SDKs and Tools
Spring 2009
- Updated CTPS
  - Enabled Full trust & Fast CGI
  - Geo-localization
Summer 2009
- Making the business model available
Winter 2009
- RTM version

How can we start?

Download SDKs and Tools
Get Invitation code
Review the hands-on labs and videos

http://www.azure.com

Install Live Mesh Developer and Beta versions Side-by-Side

NunoGodinho — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 14:10:32 GMT

One of the things I was struggling with was the possibility to have both the http://www.mesh.com client version of the client working, as well as the http://developer.mesh-ctp.com client version.

Why do I need this?

I have several Folders shared with different people and so it’s normal that we all use the www.mesh.com version of the client, because this is the most stable one, but when developing Mesh-Enabled Application and interacting with the new version of Mesh, the http://developer.mesh-ctp.com the new client is also needed, and so this causes an issue, that is who will I leave behind? Will it be all my customers and friends that I share Mesh folders with, or will it be the Mesh-Enabled Apps?

In my opinion this was an issue that should have been thought right from the start by the Live Mesh team, and so I’ve been struggling with this for some while now, but now I’ve found a solution in this Microsoft Social Entry.

Maybe it was me but it was not easy to find this solution. I think it should be more of the public knowledge, and so because of that, here is this post to help all of you that are facing the same issue.