Windows Azure Platform: Cloud Computing for .NET Developers

Cloud computing is "the new thing" in IT industry. Microsoft launched their vision of cloud based computing and storage under the name "Azure Service Platform". Azure provides rentable computing and storage facilities and offers all these services as HTTP addressable resources. This base infrastructure allows developers to build solutions on top of highly scalable and manageable resources. Furthermore Microsoft provides a number of "higher order" services that also run on top of the Azure infrastructure. This includes SQL Azure - a fully functional SQL Server in the cloud as well as services to bridge the gap between on-premise and cloud facilities.

• Learn the basics of cloud computing and its place in the IT ecosystem
• Explore the architecture of the Windows Azure Platform
• Create your first Azure application
• Deploy Azure applications and learn to control your execution environment
• Utilize Azure storage services
• Model identity using federation and claims
• Connect your on-premise accounts to the cloud using a security token service
• Use the Access Control Service to authorize access in REST services
• Bridge the gap between the cloud and on-premise using the .NET Service Bus
• Utilize SQL Azure to handle relational data in the cloud

Day 1

Windows Azure platform Overview & Architecture

The Windows Azure platform is Microsoft's holistic cloud computing offering for developers. It is a multi-layered architecture for running applications and services in and via Microsoft-hosted data centers and leverages the power of the cloud. In this module we will look at the different pieces of the Windows Azure platform, how they are layered on top of each other and how they are supposed to work together hand in hand.

Windows Azure Compute

Windows Azure represents the family of Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) cloud computing. Based on the PaaS idea Windows Azure Compute provides an abstraction layer on top of the underlying hardware and base OS. In this module you will learn about the underlying concepts like the service model, the fabric controller and the idea of roles and instances. In addition, you will see Web Role, Worker Role and the VM role in action and learn about when to use what.

Windows Azure Storage

Running applications in a hosted infrastructure presents its own challenges. Windows Azure's approach is not to provide a dedicated machine but rather to provide services that your application consumes. This means that your application can make no assumptions about the machine on which it executes which presents an issue with where do you store state. Windows Azure storage services provide storage for blobs, structured data and queues. In this module we will look at how these work and how you use them from your applications (whether in the cloud or running on-premise).

Day 2

Windows Azure Deployment, Management & Troubleshooting

An important part of every application's life cycle is how to deploy and maintain the system's pieces. This module discusses the possibilities Windows Azure offers for application and service deployment and versioning while keeping a maximum uptime. Furthermore, you will learn what ways are available for troubleshooting and managing Azure applications once running in the cloud, far away from where you are sitting.

SQL Azure

Besides having a name-value-pair-based data storage in Windows Azure, a number of applications still want their good old relational data model, but now being hosted in the Cloud. SQL Azure is a cloud-based relational database service built on SQL Server technologies. This module covers the basic architecture of SQL Azure, how to deploy your existing databases and demonstrates how to write code to access SQL Azure.

Claims-based Identity & Federation for Windows Azure Applications

Leveraging the power of claims, you can start federating your cloud services with on-premise identity stores. This allows your customers and partners to reuse their existing accounts in the cloud as well as provide single sign-on between various cloud services and on-premise applications. Security token services play a central part in making this happen. Microsoft provides a ready to use token service for Active Directory networks called ADFS 2. Furthermore, WIF includes all the functionality needed to write your own STS. This module gives guidance when to use which approach and shows some of the security scenarios you can accomplish using federation and single sign-on in Windows Azure.

Day 3

Windows Azure AppFabric Access Control

Even with the power of claims and federation, it is still not trivial to add support for multiple federation protocols or identity providers right into the application. This is typically the task of a so called federation gateway, and the Access Control Service is such a "gateway as a service". It enables easy integration into WS-Trust, WS-Federation, OpenID and OAuth world of protocols and features a simple claims transformation engine for creating the claims and token types for your applications.

Windows Azure AppFabric Caching

Caching is known as a well understood architectural pattern to increase the overall throughput and reduce latency in distributed applications. The Windows Azure AppFabric Caching service accelerates application performance by providing a distributed, in-memory application cache requiring no installation, configuration, or management in the cloud. In this module you will learn the functionality of the Caching service and see its benefits in action.

Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus

Complex messaging scenarios require infrastructure support. The AppFabric provides a component called the Service Bus that is designed to be a cloud-based rendezvous point that supports message exchange patterns that are not supported by WCF out of the box - for example publish/subscribe. The Service Bus also allows on-premise systems to be bridged to cloud-based systems in a secure fashion that allows firewall and NAT traversal - in a cross-platform manner.

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