windows azure cloud computing - Part 1 : Introduction

Plan

• Part 1 : Introduction
• Part 2 : Sample CRUD application using Azure tables
• Part 3 : Sample web application using Azure Blobs and Queue
• Part 4 : SQL Azure database
• Part 5 : Deploying your application as PAAS

Introduction

Through this series of tutorial, we will learn about :

• cloud computing in Microsoft Azure,
• how we can work with Windows Azure SDK,
• how we can build an Azure cloud service application that include web role and worker role,
• how we can use windows azure storage services in an ASP.net web application,
• how we can create an SQL Azure Database,
• how we can migrate an on-premises SQL Server Database to SQL Azure Database,
• deployment of an on-premises ASP.net web application to Azure website.

In this chapter we will take a look at the Cloud platform of Microsoft Azure, and we will specify the prerequisite need it for good understand the next tutorials.

In what follows, i relied on documentation from the official web site of Microsoft Azure.

Using Code

Overview what's azure :

 

Windows Azure is Microsoft’s application platform for the public Cloud.
Applications can be deployed on to Azure in various models.

With Windows Azure, the focus is on the development, not the infrastructure.
Typical implementation models available in Windows  Azure are :  virtual machines, Cloud services, websites and mobile services.
the following schema  can show you services provided by Microsoft Azure platform  :

the above picture picked from the following link : http://labs.sogeti.com/tag/azure/

Prerequisite :

For good comprehension of next tutorials, you should know about :

- Windows Azure IaaS vs. PaaS vs. SaaS :

we can view the concept of cloud computing over three categories :
SAAS (Software as a Services) : software is available across the internet, and user can access to it for subscription and use of its features. example : office 365, games, Email, Drupal, WordPress etc.
PAAS (Platform as a Services) : provide for developers software , hardware and storage to develop, run and host their applications on the cloud. example : database, storage etc.
IAAS (Infrastructure as a Services) : provides visualized computing resources over the internet it includes hardware, software, networking, servers ,operating system and other required infrastructure for computing over the cloud.
The following schema can show you the intervention of user for each category :
For each stack, user manages only orange layers.

- storage :

• Azure Blob Services :

is a Binary large object used to store files such as : image, text, movie etc.  that can be accessed from anywhere in the world via HTTP protocol. You can use Blob storage to expose data to the world, or to store application data privately.
Common uses of Blob storage include:

• Serving images or documents directly to a browser
• Storing files for distributed access
• Streaming video and audio
• Performing secure backup and disaster recovery
• Storing data for analysis by an on-premises or Azure-hosted service

• Azure Table Services :

Windows Azure Tables are a non-relational, key-value-pair, storage system suitable for storing massive amounts of unstructured data.
notice : in the same table we can found entities with different properties.

• Azure Queue Services :

providing reliable, persistent messaging within and between services. is like a services bus in .Net. it feature a simple REST-based Get/Put/Peek interface

- what's Azure website :

Azure Websites is the easiest, cheapest, and fastest method of getting your application to the cloud. Websites give you the least amount of configuration control over your application, which is perfect for simple web applications that do not require more complex configurations for scaling and data processing.

- what's web role &  web worker in azure :

web role : this service used to deploy a VM that contains IIS for hosting a web application.
web worker : this service runs on background, is similar to windows process, batch job or scheduler tasks.  this service deploy a VM without IIS.
the interaction between both can be resumed  through this image :



The web role can push work to web worker for later execution, that allow to a web role to be more responsive and to fire and forget tasks to be processed later.

- what's SQL Azure :

is Microsoft cloud database service. based on SQL Server technologies and build on Microsoft cloud azure to provide possibilities to store a relational data in cloud with the possibility to quickly scale the size of databases.

A cloud-based relational database service with SQL Azure Reporting, a report generating service
For more information you can  visit the following url : https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/sql-database/

- installation of Azure SDK for visual studio :

 

download and install Azure SDK tools on your machine, you can found the download link from official Microsoft Azure web site, choose the one that match with your development platform,  in my case i took  .NET vs 2013.
theses tools let you test some services on your local machine without need to create an Azure account.

-  Create Windows Azure Account :

 

This step is useful, if you want to work with public Windows Azure Cloud Services.
You can sign up on azure portal from the following link : Create Trial Windows Azure Account

-  AngularJs and webApi :

you can learn about AngularJs framework and webApi by checking my previous articles : Create ASP.net MVC web site using AngularJS and webApi

Conclusion

Once we finished introducing windows azure. In the next chapter, we will create a sample ASP.net MVC web application that uses a Windows Azure Table storage.