My Week in the Cloud (7)
Sharing some bits that I found interesting during the last week while reading about cloud computing.
Windows Azure Platform
.NET 4 is coming to Windows Azure within 90 days of the RTM of .NET 4. In fact, you can read here that .NET 4.0 is already in the current Windows Azure OS but that it cannot not be used just yet for running your own applications. Exciting development nonetheless.
Windows Azure gives you high availability. When you deploy your application to 2 instances or more, your application will be deployed over 2 or more fault domains and upgrade domains. A very clear explanation about how this works can be found here: https://blog.toddysm.com/2010/04/upgrade-domains-and-fault-domains-in-windows-azure.html
Deploying applications to Azure is very specific and limited process. So how does this impact your development process? Read this article by Eugenio Pace for some insights.
CSC Offers Legal Solution Suite as SAAS on Azure. A very cool case. If you are an ISV, you need think SAAS first and then Cloud.
- CSC believes that moving to Windows Azure will give it a significant competitive advantage with its Legal Solutions Services product.
- Local applications now behave more like job schedulers, handing off compute-intensive tasks to cloud-based worker services hosted on the virtual machines in the Windows Azure platform and brought online and offline as needed.
Tools and utilities:
- Check out the AppFabric LABS
- Patterns and Practices Windows Azure Guidance is available here: https://wag.codeplex.com/. It also points to the reference application below:
- https://wag.codeplex.com/releases/view/42450
- and it explains how to use EnterpriseLibrary 5.0 beta on Azure: here. Development is getting serious :-)
- The Extreme Computing Group at Microsoft Research is sharing best practices and guidance: https://azurescope.cloudapp.net/
Sorry, but you won’t be first on Azure anymore: plenty of cases can be found here: https://www.microsoft.com/WindowsAzure/evidence/
Also, don’t forget to vote on the features you would like to see in the Windows Azure Platform: https://www.mygreatwindowsazureidea.com/forums/34192-windows-azure-feature-voting
Other Cloud Related news:
Loads of books on Cloud Computing from a biz perspective already.: https://www.cloudbook.net/books
The future of Cloud Computing: Opportunities for European Cloud Computing Beyond 2010: The Future of Cloud Computing- Opportunities for European Cloud Computing Beyond 2010 Interesting for Europeans but there are better overviews elsewhere.
Security Risks of multi tenancy: https://blogs.zdnet.com/SAAS/?p=1007&tag=col1;post-1007 It’s a matter of doing it right…
Cheers,
Hans