#Azure Action – Weekly Newsletter – 25th February 2011
Local Overview
Phil Goldie: Co-presenting with Janison at IDC Conference on How Platform-as-a-Service is transforming NSW DET Schools Testing
Readiness & Resources:
Reading:
- Windows Azure
Grant Holliday (Aussie) IntelliTrace for Azure without Visual Studio
- SQL Azure
Exploration of the new sharding features coming to SQL Azure databases
Watch:
Case Study
“transforming the company into one of the major cloud services providers in Australia”
Tools:
Subscribe to :
Service levels:
https://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/support/status/servicedashboard.aspx
Forums:
Follow @wapforums to stay connected with the Windows Azure Platform MSDN forums
Monitoring:
ManageAxis by Cumulux – which provides application monitoring and “auto scaling” of Azure services
Guidance:
Walkthrough:
Design
In the news:
General news:
- Building a halfway house to the cloud
- Will technology solve latency in DCs?: Fujitsu Develops High-Speed Transceiver Circuit
Microsoft
Windows Azure
- NOW AVAILABLE: CTP of the Windows Azure Starter Kit for #Java
- The Windows Azure CDN now has 24 nodes - latest is Doha (the capital city of the state of Qatar)\
- Why Choose SQL Azure over Amazon RDS - "Its NOT a server hosting model"
Events:
Local:
IDC Cloud for Business Conference on the 3rd of March where Microsoft will be a Platinum Sponsor. Venue: Shangri-La Hotel, Sydney
Cloud Computing Forum – Run by Orion VM (Sheng Yeo) First Friday in March (see website)
- Azure ISV Acceleration Labs pencilled in for 28th-30th March – more details to follow
Webinar:
Community:
Like Azure?
Become a fan: www.facebook.com/windowsazure (Azure Facebook Toolkit)
Want answers? See the forums
Edited but not yet published: CloudCast - an audio series featuring myself, Rab Thynne, Tom Hollander and Michael Rosic
Coming in March: Azure Meetups!
Questions:
Quick questions about the Service Bus
Q: Is the Windows Azure platform AppFabric and the AppFabric Controller the same?
A: No. The Fabric Controller is an internal system used by Windows Azure to provision, monitor, and manage services that run in Windows Azure.
Q: How do I access the service bus?
A: The Service bus provides a mapping from URI to services
e.g. Http[sb]://solution.servicebus.windows.net/accounts/svc
Q: Is queuing in the service bus?
A: No. Queuing is provided via Windows Azure Storage
Q: What's coming for the Service Bus?
A: Service Bus Enhancements (CTP at PDC) – enhanced to add durable messaging support, load balancing for services, and an administration protocol
Q: Is the service bus the same service bus as available through BizTalk?
A: No. There share some heritage but the implementation in this version is much simpler and more protocol oriented
Q: In a multicast scenario how many listeners can I have?
A: 20 concurrent listeners (this limitation is subject to change).
Q: How is the service bus priced?
A: It is priced different depending on customer offer, commitment and consumption but it can be explained quite easily.
Costs for the Service Bus are related to the number of simultaneous open connections (service bus end points) per day during a billing period.
This is consistent with the no-use no charge policy in the rest of Windows Azure.