Meet the updated Windows Azure. A small review of innovations
Good afternoon, dear colleagues. Still tired of the lack of sleep of the last days (morning Venus, MEET Windows Azure) are sleeping, a modest author sits in Tomsk and writes these lines, experiencing something like an extravaganza from what is happening now in the IT world. And we, friends, are on the verge of a final need to change the paradigm.
In this article, I will try to convey, as part of a small review, what happened today at the MEET Windows Azure event - a major release of the new platform functionality. The main report was made by a bright mind, which on Twitter was called the "Midas of our modernity" - Scott Guthrie.
')
So, to be brief, the list of innovations and changes, fixed by me, looks like this.
Let's take a closer look at what Microsoft guys offered us.
New administration portal
The new portal, written in HTML5, works quickly and naturally, supporting filtering and sorting (which simplifies the use of the portal for large deployments), functions in all browsers and provides a large number of new functions, including integrated functionality for monitoring VMs, Web sites, storage and cloud services.
The new portal was developed in Windows Azure based on the REST management API. Everything that can be done on the portal can also be done in the program code using this Web API.
As tweeted, the new portal works great on Mac, iPad and WP. Previously, it was necessary to work hard, given Silverlight, on which the portal was written.
Command line utilities
Command line utilities (using the REST management API) have become available that make scripting and automating administrative tasks even easier. Utilities are available for both Windows (Powershell) and Mac and Linux (Bash). The software codes of these utilities, as well as the software codes of other Microsoft SDKs, are available on GitHub under the Apache 2 license.
IAAS (Infrastructure as a service)
Now Windows Azure supports the ability to deploy and run long-lived virtual machines in the cloud. You can create these virtual machines using a template gallery that is transparently integrated into the portal or create, load and run your own VHD image.
Images of the following operating systems are available in the image gallery:
Virtual machines are durable (which means that everything installed on them will be saved after a reboot) and can store any operating system. Our integrated collection of images includes both a Windows Server image (including the recently introduced Windows Server 2012 RC) and Linux (Ubuntu, CentOS, SUSE). After creating a VM instance, you can easily connect to it using a terminal server or SSH and configure the virtual machine as you need (and, if necessary, take a snapshot of the image to create new copies of the virtual machine). All this provides enough flexibility to run most types of tasks in Windows Azure.
Thanks to the familiar open VHD format, virtual machines can easily migrate from the existing local infrastructure to the cloud (and vice versa).
The new Windows Azure administration portal contains a wide range of virtual machine administration capabilities, including monitoring and tracking resource consumption within virtual machines.
Durable storage in virtual machines is replicated in triplicate, and two backup copies are always available, which will be used in the event of a failure, for example, a disk.
Virtual machine support also means simply connecting multiple data disks to virtual machines (which can be mounted and formatted as disks). You can also enable geo-replication for virtual machines, which will cause the platform to constantly replicate your storage to another data center, located at least 400 miles from the original data center, to provide redundancy.
Virtual machines can be accessed from the Windows Azure management portal or using Powershell (with the new June Windows Azure SDK).
What is all this good for? Previously, the VM role was in a state of "evolving function" and only supported Windows 2008 R2 SP1. The developer needed to prepare an image and load it into VHD, which took (if we take into account the size of VHD) hours. The new Microsoft offer uses pre-configured operating system images that are ready for use immediately after creation.
To start using the virtual machine service, it is necessary to request access to the Preview version (however, access is now very limited and, as I understand it, Preview versions are currently available only to people close to the body — MVP, Windows Azure Insiders, and others. I could be wrong). In any case, in the account menu, click on 'Preview Features'. SLA, by the way, does not apply to the Preview-function. An interesting document.
Web Sites
A new functionality that will allow more seriously to fray the Microsoft cloud platform with all the usual hosters with the offer of hosting for $ 5. Web sites can be developed on ASP.NET, Node.js or PHP (or CMS - WebMatrix, Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, DotNetNuke, Umbraco, etc.) and deploy in seconds using FTP, Git or TFS. At the same time, primary use is free of charge; further, the websites are vertically scaled according to the increase in traffic. The demonstration showed how to quickly create a website in Visual Studio using .NET (ASP.NET MVC 4). All this works both in VS 2010 and VS 2012, and it works very quickly.
In the case of Mac and Node.js, instead of the administration portal, you will need to use the command line and Git.
By default, websites are in the Shared Website state, that is, capacities are shared between websites, but if necessary, you can increase the number of instances and put the website into Reserved state.
Available using MySQL, provided as a service (ClearDB) and integration with Microsoft WebMatrix.
And the most delicious - you can have up to 10 websites for free . Of course, this is not without pitfalls - you still have to pay for the same SQL Server and traffic. But the proposal itself (and, in general, not so high prices for traffic and transactions) allows you to do something that was practically not available before - to place small, and even personal, projects in Windows Azure.
As for scaling and load balancing, everything is handled by Windows Azure. You can start small and go to a big project without any problems. At the same time, there are three scaling options available - increasing the processes for the site, transferring the website to a virtual machine and adding virtual machines and managing the power of the virtual machine (switching from a single-core 1.0GHz instance to an 8-core extra large instance with 14 GB RAM on board).
According to the simple analyzes that have already been carried out, some have started to compare web hosting with the Microsoft offer. According to one of the bloggers, the offer of the company, which he uses as a hoster, for 10 sites with excellent technical support is only 1/3 cheaper. This is an excellent ratio, I think, and given the possibility of transparent scaling and load balancing, Windows Azure offer can be considered to be very competitive.
People immediately had a question - what to use, websites or cloud services? In principle, you can answer quite simply - if there is no special need for control over the virtual machine and you do not care that the resources will be distributed by default between users, then use the websites. If you need control over the environment - please, Cloud Services with the usual model of Web / Worker roles is still here.
It also asks questions about configuring your own SSL certificates for websites. Judging by the answer that flashed during the broadcast, so far it is impossible to do this, but very soon the opportunity will appear.
Cloud services
It must be said that for me personally, such a powerful rebranding looks like a very correct decision - to be honest, the name Hosted Services, and the rest of the names, I did not like. Immediately everything is clear and understandable.
As I understand it, conceptually Cloud Services remains the same Hosted Services - a multi-layer application is being developed based on a web site and adding a Worker role, the service package is loaded on the portal (and now the super news is in a ZIP format!), And then the Fabric Controller looks for capacities, raises virtual machines to them and loads your application on these virtual machines and configures load balancers and DNS.
Building blocks
Additional services that make a developer’s life easier. Taking into account the new services (Hadoop, Media Services, etc), the updated set of additional services includes (I think, explaining what was unnecessary):
big data
database:
storage:
traffic:
caching:
messaging:
identity:
media:
CDN
networking:
Marketplace integration
Additional services can be used by both .NET-based applications and Node.js, Java, PHP, Python - all libraries are published on GitHub under the Apache2 license and provide a very pleasant API to use.
New SDK
New versions of the SDK have become available.
Windows Azure SDK .NET adds support for IISExpress and LocalDB in the emulator and the ability to preview the use of dedicated caching with support at the Visual Studio level. Added support for Service Bus in Visual Studio and updated other client libraries. If you look closer at the changes, you can see that in Visual Studio the project is now called the Windows Azure Cloud Service. From specific innovations:
1) The corresponding assemblies and NuGet packages are added to Azure projects: for example, CloudConfigurationManager, with which you can easily access configuration settings using a smart algorithm that first checks the cloud configuration file (.cscfg) and then goes to web / app .config if the configuration is not available.
2) New templates. New templates include MVC4 / MVC4 Web API, Worker roles with Service Bus, Worker roles with Cache.
3) For advanced development scenarios, a mechanism was added to include user files and folders in the installation when deploying a role — to do this, click Add -> Item ... or Add -> Folder on the cloud project.
Also, Visual Studio has been added features for easy management of caching. Now, in order to add caching support to the application, you need to open the role in the designer and select the Enable Caching option in the Caching tab, then determine the cache size using the slider and make other settings.
You can use the Windows Azure Caching Preview NuGet package, which, during installation, makes the necessary caching settings in the web / app.config files. Learn more about caching .
You can install all this joy either manually or using the Web Platform Installer.
For the Java SDK , client libraries have been added to use the table service.
For Service Node client libraries added to Node.js SDK .
For the PHP SDK , client libraries have been added to use storage services, Service Bus and Service Runtime, and Windows Azure PowerShell cmdlets.
For the Python SDK , PowerShell cmdlets and client libraries (Windows, Linux, Mac), support for Django, Windows Azure and Django in PTVS ( http://pytools.codeplex.com ) and IPython (from Windows, Linux and Mac clients) to virtual machines (linux or windows).
Pricing Updates
·
Cloud9
At the Node Summit, Microsoft announced deployment support in Windows Azure. Today it was announced that Cloud9 has full support for Windows Azure Websites - now in Cloud9 you can create websites and quickly deploy them using Git. News
Node.js developers, check out the screenshots below.
Glenn Block, best known in his circles, says that you only need to deploy your application. The system will take package.json and upload all the necessary NPM modules to the server.
Team Foundation Service and we are in Windows Azure
After creating the web site, when you go to its control panel, the Setup TFS Publishing option becomes available (in the lower right corner). Clicking starts the configuration of the TFS project connection to the application in Azure.
In the process of setting up, we are invited to indicate the existing Team Foundation Service account or create a new one, and then select the Team Project, which will contain the application sources.
After that, Windows Azure accounts and Team Foundation Service will be linked. Now you can create and deploy an application from Visual Studio by connecting to your TFS account.
Deployment results can be viewed in a TFS report, in the windows Azure portal, or in the TFS web interface.
In fact, there is little magic - OAuth is used to bind TFS and Azure, which is now closed, but they are going to open it in the future.
Instructions for setting up a local TFS Build for deployment in Windows Azure .
Summary:
What happened yesterday should change the situation of a small stagnation in cloud computing (more precisely, not stagnation, but too smooth development). Microsoft rolled out so much in one day that foreign experts have already admitted that if everything goes well, the corporation will not only be knocked out on the same level with Amazon, but also become the leader in the industry.
Before that, I published a comparison of Windows Azure and Amazon storage services - as you can see, some of the “holes” were successfully closed. In addition, Amazon was head and shoulders above Windows Azure in the context of IaaS, but now it turned out that Windows Azure grew heads and a half at once. I really hope that everything that happened will lead to the rapid development of all cloud platforms and a bright future.
Thanks for attention. Next, I will try to reveal the use of innovations in Windows Azure in more detail.
Most of the images are stolen from Scott Guthrie, Scott Hanselman, and others. I hope no one will be offended. :)
Few links
In this article, I will try to convey, as part of a small review, what happened today at the MEET Windows Azure event - a major release of the new platform functionality. The main report was made by a bright mind, which on Twitter was called the "Midas of our modernity" - Scott Guthrie.
')
So, to be brief, the list of innovations and changes, fixed by me, looks like this.
- Absolutely new portal that is in the Preview stage (attentive ones have already noticed that the new portal does not yet have the ability to administer additional services like ACS and SB - this will be later, as long as you need to use the old one).
- Command line utilities.
- IAAS
- Web Sites
- Cloud Services - former Hosted Services.
- Building Blocks - rebranding and new services.
- New SDK.
- Pleasant updates in pricing.
- Cloud9 support
- Monitoring and statistics of everything and everything.
- Team Foundation Service and Windows Azure.
- Official availability of Windows Azure in 89 countries (including Russia!)
Let's take a closer look at what Microsoft guys offered us.
New administration portal
The new portal, written in HTML5, works quickly and naturally, supporting filtering and sorting (which simplifies the use of the portal for large deployments), functions in all browsers and provides a large number of new functions, including integrated functionality for monitoring VMs, Web sites, storage and cloud services.
The new portal was developed in Windows Azure based on the REST management API. Everything that can be done on the portal can also be done in the program code using this Web API.
As tweeted, the new portal works great on Mac, iPad and WP. Previously, it was necessary to work hard, given Silverlight, on which the portal was written.
Command line utilities
Command line utilities (using the REST management API) have become available that make scripting and automating administrative tasks even easier. Utilities are available for both Windows (Powershell) and Mac and Linux (Bash). The software codes of these utilities, as well as the software codes of other Microsoft SDKs, are available on GitHub under the Apache 2 license.
IAAS (Infrastructure as a service)
Now Windows Azure supports the ability to deploy and run long-lived virtual machines in the cloud. You can create these virtual machines using a template gallery that is transparently integrated into the portal or create, load and run your own VHD image.
Images of the following operating systems are available in the image gallery:
- Windows server
- Windows Server 2008 R2
- Windows Server 2008 R2 with SQL Server 2012 Eval
- Windows Server 2012 RC
- Linux:
- OpenSUSE 12.1
- CentOS 6.2
- Ubuntu 12.04
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP2
Virtual machines are durable (which means that everything installed on them will be saved after a reboot) and can store any operating system. Our integrated collection of images includes both a Windows Server image (including the recently introduced Windows Server 2012 RC) and Linux (Ubuntu, CentOS, SUSE). After creating a VM instance, you can easily connect to it using a terminal server or SSH and configure the virtual machine as you need (and, if necessary, take a snapshot of the image to create new copies of the virtual machine). All this provides enough flexibility to run most types of tasks in Windows Azure.
Thanks to the familiar open VHD format, virtual machines can easily migrate from the existing local infrastructure to the cloud (and vice versa).
The new Windows Azure administration portal contains a wide range of virtual machine administration capabilities, including monitoring and tracking resource consumption within virtual machines.
Durable storage in virtual machines is replicated in triplicate, and two backup copies are always available, which will be used in the event of a failure, for example, a disk.
Virtual machine support also means simply connecting multiple data disks to virtual machines (which can be mounted and formatted as disks). You can also enable geo-replication for virtual machines, which will cause the platform to constantly replicate your storage to another data center, located at least 400 miles from the original data center, to provide redundancy.
Virtual machines can be accessed from the Windows Azure management portal or using Powershell (with the new June Windows Azure SDK).
What is all this good for? Previously, the VM role was in a state of "evolving function" and only supported Windows 2008 R2 SP1. The developer needed to prepare an image and load it into VHD, which took (if we take into account the size of VHD) hours. The new Microsoft offer uses pre-configured operating system images that are ready for use immediately after creation.
To start using the virtual machine service, it is necessary to request access to the Preview version (however, access is now very limited and, as I understand it, Preview versions are currently available only to people close to the body — MVP, Windows Azure Insiders, and others. I could be wrong). In any case, in the account menu, click on 'Preview Features'. SLA, by the way, does not apply to the Preview-function. An interesting document.
Web Sites
A new functionality that will allow more seriously to fray the Microsoft cloud platform with all the usual hosters with the offer of hosting for $ 5. Web sites can be developed on ASP.NET, Node.js or PHP (or CMS - WebMatrix, Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, DotNetNuke, Umbraco, etc.) and deploy in seconds using FTP, Git or TFS. At the same time, primary use is free of charge; further, the websites are vertically scaled according to the increase in traffic. The demonstration showed how to quickly create a website in Visual Studio using .NET (ASP.NET MVC 4). All this works both in VS 2010 and VS 2012, and it works very quickly.
In the case of Mac and Node.js, instead of the administration portal, you will need to use the command line and Git.
By default, websites are in the Shared Website state, that is, capacities are shared between websites, but if necessary, you can increase the number of instances and put the website into Reserved state.
Available using MySQL, provided as a service (ClearDB) and integration with Microsoft WebMatrix.
And the most delicious - you can have up to 10 websites for free . Of course, this is not without pitfalls - you still have to pay for the same SQL Server and traffic. But the proposal itself (and, in general, not so high prices for traffic and transactions) allows you to do something that was practically not available before - to place small, and even personal, projects in Windows Azure.
As for scaling and load balancing, everything is handled by Windows Azure. You can start small and go to a big project without any problems. At the same time, there are three scaling options available - increasing the processes for the site, transferring the website to a virtual machine and adding virtual machines and managing the power of the virtual machine (switching from a single-core 1.0GHz instance to an 8-core extra large instance with 14 GB RAM on board).
According to the simple analyzes that have already been carried out, some have started to compare web hosting with the Microsoft offer. According to one of the bloggers, the offer of the company, which he uses as a hoster, for 10 sites with excellent technical support is only 1/3 cheaper. This is an excellent ratio, I think, and given the possibility of transparent scaling and load balancing, Windows Azure offer can be considered to be very competitive.
People immediately had a question - what to use, websites or cloud services? In principle, you can answer quite simply - if there is no special need for control over the virtual machine and you do not care that the resources will be distributed by default between users, then use the websites. If you need control over the environment - please, Cloud Services with the usual model of Web / Worker roles is still here.
It also asks questions about configuring your own SSL certificates for websites. Judging by the answer that flashed during the broadcast, so far it is impossible to do this, but very soon the opportunity will appear.
Cloud services
It must be said that for me personally, such a powerful rebranding looks like a very correct decision - to be honest, the name Hosted Services, and the rest of the names, I did not like. Immediately everything is clear and understandable.
As I understand it, conceptually Cloud Services remains the same Hosted Services - a multi-layer application is being developed based on a web site and adding a Worker role, the service package is loaded on the portal (and now the super news is in a ZIP format!), And then the Fabric Controller looks for capacities, raises virtual machines to them and loads your application on these virtual machines and configures load balancers and DNS.
Building blocks
Additional services that make a developer’s life easier. Taking into account the new services (Hadoop, Media Services, etc), the updated set of additional services includes (I think, explaining what was unnecessary):
big data
database:
- relational database service
- clustering
- SQL Reporting. Now SQL Reporting is generally available, and even with SLA. SQL Reporting allows you to publish reports to the cloud or embed reports directly into local applications that can be used with a browser, mobile device or PC. Read more - here .
storage:
- Local redundant storage ( Locally Redundant Storage) for those who do not need geo-replication and need to reduce storage costs
- blob leasing
- copy blobs between storage accounts
- Shared Access Signature (SAS) for tables and queues (this is a really great idea!)
- more
traffic:
- as I understand it, the former Traffic Manager, which allows you to route traffic as convenient for the client
caching:
- Memcached protocol support
- distributed service or application-level usage (local caching)
- the possibility of a dedicated caching layer created for one or more applications from a variety of Worker roles, providing virtually unlimited caching and scaling volumes
- notifications
- tags
- regions
- high availability
- more
messaging:
- secure communications and relays
- the foundation of hybrid applications and loosely coupled solutions
- cross platform sdk
identity:
- integration with Active Directory and multiple identity providers
- SSO
- Enterprise Graph REST API
- Considering that 93% of Fortune 1000s use Active Directory, this is useful :)
- from the rapidly disappearing list of questions in the broadcast, I managed to see that the Identity service will soon support the JWT token format (Wow!)
media:
- creation, management and distribution of multimedia content
- wide range of formats and devices
- Ingest, Encode, Protect, Stream!
CDN
networking:
- Virtual Private Networking (VPN) instances in Windows Azure and local machines
- control over network topology - you can specify ranges of IP addresses or DNS server
- IPSEC
- using VPN devices from vendors, for example, Cisco
Marketplace integration
Additional services can be used by both .NET-based applications and Node.js, Java, PHP, Python - all libraries are published on GitHub under the Apache2 license and provide a very pleasant API to use.
New SDK
New versions of the SDK have become available.
Windows Azure SDK .NET adds support for IISExpress and LocalDB in the emulator and the ability to preview the use of dedicated caching with support at the Visual Studio level. Added support for Service Bus in Visual Studio and updated other client libraries. If you look closer at the changes, you can see that in Visual Studio the project is now called the Windows Azure Cloud Service. From specific innovations:
1) The corresponding assemblies and NuGet packages are added to Azure projects: for example, CloudConfigurationManager, with which you can easily access configuration settings using a smart algorithm that first checks the cloud configuration file (.cscfg) and then goes to web / app .config if the configuration is not available.
2) New templates. New templates include MVC4 / MVC4 Web API, Worker roles with Service Bus, Worker roles with Cache.
3) For advanced development scenarios, a mechanism was added to include user files and folders in the installation when deploying a role — to do this, click Add -> Item ... or Add -> Folder on the cloud project.
Also, Visual Studio has been added features for easy management of caching. Now, in order to add caching support to the application, you need to open the role in the designer and select the Enable Caching option in the Caching tab, then determine the cache size using the slider and make other settings.
You can use the Windows Azure Caching Preview NuGet package, which, during installation, makes the necessary caching settings in the web / app.config files. Learn more about caching .
You can install all this joy either manually or using the Web Platform Installer.
For the Java SDK , client libraries have been added to use the table service.
For Service Node client libraries added to Node.js SDK .
For the PHP SDK , client libraries have been added to use storage services, Service Bus and Service Runtime, and Windows Azure PowerShell cmdlets.
For the Python SDK , PowerShell cmdlets and client libraries (Windows, Linux, Mac), support for Django, Windows Azure and Django in PTVS ( http://pytools.codeplex.com ) and IPython (from Windows, Linux and Mac clients) to virtual machines (linux or windows).
Pricing Updates
- Prices for preview virtual machines . During the preview period, Windows Server and Linux virtual machines will be paid based on the cost in .013 for xSmall, .08 for Small, .16 for Medium, .32 for Large and .64 for XLarge per hour.
- Pricing for a preview of a SQL Server virtual machine. During the preview period, SQL Server 2012 Eval Edition will be free, after which, in GA, the SQL Server 2012 Web and Standard Edition images will be charged additionally.
- Prices for storage, CDN and network traffic. Customers using these services will automatically see a decrease in cost as usage increases. At the same time, nothing needs to be done additionally - if the client is Pay As You Go, he will automatically receive this advantage.
- Locally Redundant Storage . Local redundant storage will have a 33% discount compared with geo-redundant storage (Geo-Redundant Storage).
- Reduced transaction costs . The cost of storage and CDN transactions is reduced by 90% !!! (c .01 for 10,000 transactions to .01 for 100,000 transactions). Announcement of the development team .
- More about pricing
·
Cloud9
At the Node Summit, Microsoft announced deployment support in Windows Azure. Today it was announced that Cloud9 has full support for Windows Azure Websites - now in Cloud9 you can create websites and quickly deploy them using Git. News
Node.js developers, check out the screenshots below.
Glenn Block, best known in his circles, says that you only need to deploy your application. The system will take package.json and upload all the necessary NPM modules to the server.
Team Foundation Service and we are in Windows Azure
After creating the web site, when you go to its control panel, the Setup TFS Publishing option becomes available (in the lower right corner). Clicking starts the configuration of the TFS project connection to the application in Azure.
In the process of setting up, we are invited to indicate the existing Team Foundation Service account or create a new one, and then select the Team Project, which will contain the application sources.
After that, Windows Azure accounts and Team Foundation Service will be linked. Now you can create and deploy an application from Visual Studio by connecting to your TFS account.
Deployment results can be viewed in a TFS report, in the windows Azure portal, or in the TFS web interface.
In fact, there is little magic - OAuth is used to bind TFS and Azure, which is now closed, but they are going to open it in the future.
Instructions for setting up a local TFS Build for deployment in Windows Azure .
Summary:
What happened yesterday should change the situation of a small stagnation in cloud computing (more precisely, not stagnation, but too smooth development). Microsoft rolled out so much in one day that foreign experts have already admitted that if everything goes well, the corporation will not only be knocked out on the same level with Amazon, but also become the leader in the industry.
Before that, I published a comparison of Windows Azure and Amazon storage services - as you can see, some of the “holes” were successfully closed. In addition, Amazon was head and shoulders above Windows Azure in the context of IaaS, but now it turned out that Windows Azure grew heads and a half at once. I really hope that everything that happened will lead to the rapid development of all cloud platforms and a bright future.
Thanks for attention. Next, I will try to reveal the use of innovations in Windows Azure in more detail.
Most of the images are stolen from Scott Guthrie, Scott Hanselman, and others. I hope no one will be offended. :)
Few links
- Windows Azure SDK: https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/overview/
- Windows Azure Portal: http://windows.azure.com
- How to work with websites, virtual machines, etc .: http://www.meetwindowsazure.com/DigitalChalkTalks
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/145471/
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