Case study: Diary.ru and Windows Azure

Among all schools using any learning management systems or electronic document management systems, “ Diary. ru ”occupies more than 80% of the market. In the world of competitors “Diary. ru ”are projects Moodle, Blackboard, Schoology, Edmodo. In total, the project is served by 35 servers and two cloud platforms - Windows Azure and Amazon Web Services. Average site traffic “Diary. ru ”- 265,000 people per day. The number of connected schools is 22,922, the total number of users exceeds 4.4 million: more than 2.8 million students, about 400 thousand teachers and more than 1.28 million parents.

Development of the educational network “Diary. ru started in 2007, in 2009 the first school was connected to the project. Implementation of the project “Diary. py ”includes three modules. The distance learning module allows you to use various training formats - from educational games to online testing and holding competitions for admission to universities. Pupils and teachers get access to resources not only of their school, but also to all the accumulated achievements of the region. Integration with mobile devices, tablets, phones allows you to use the resources “Diary. Ru ”anytime and anywhere.
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The school management module provides an electronic format for all business processes in the school. Electronic journals, diaries, homework assignments, timetables, report designer, enrollment in an educational institution, student tracking, and other tools help an educational institution save time and money on organizing the process and focus on improving the quality of education.

The social network module serves to create a single information space both within the educational institution and across the region and makes the educational process more interactive. Personal profiles, groups, events, networks, e-mail, a single calendar, a school website help teachers and students, and parents to exchange information efficiently and quickly. Education authorities receive a direct communication channel with all educational institutions in the region.

Microsoft technologies and Windows Azure platform

To develop the project “Diary. ru ”from the very beginning used Microsoft web technologies due to their ease of use, popularity and full support. Web service written in ASP. NET using technologies such as Cassandra, IIS 7.0 with Web Gardens (Web Farm), Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0, Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0, Microsoft WCF, Remoting, Microsoft Entity Framework, Microsoft Sync Framework, Microsoft AppFabric, Live @ EDU etc. The solution supports tight integration and writing of specialized applications for tablets, mobile phones and readers.

Initially in “Diary. ru ”another cloud service was used to store custom media content. After the release of Windows Azure in the company “Diary. ru ”not only used the Windows Azure cloud storage, but also decided to create a cloud automatically scalable media content converter.

Currently, the solution uses a number of Windows Azure services, including Windows Azure Web Role, Windows Azure Worker Role and Windows Azure CDN, as well as several geographically distributed Windows Azure Blob Storage. The service is automatically scaled according to the current load. Typical scenarios for applying the solution: publishing user files and converting video files.

“We started working with Azure from the very dawn of this technology, and it’s very pleasant to see how many of our wishes come true”, - Mikhail Danilovsky, Director of Research and Development, “Diary. RU".

In 2010, the company “Diary. ru ”applied for participation in the Microsoft BizSpark program for startups and became a member of the Microsoft Startup Accelerator program in Russia. Cooperation with Microsoft in the field of education opens up new perspectives. Currently in the "Diary. ru ”an official representation of Microsoft was created, companies regularly hold joint competitions and computer literacy training for teachers.

Using the cloud platform

The transition to the Windows Azure platform allowed the company to provide high scalability of the service while at the same time significantly saving costs. The use of cloud storage Windows Azure helps "Diary. py ”reduce costs by paying only real and used data. Significant savings also provides automatic scaling of media content converter. If the load on the service increases, for example, if 1000 users simultaneously start downloading videos from the last call, the service launches the necessary number of converters for the operational processing of the workload, and payment is made for the “in fact” CPU time.

Thanks to the use of Windows Azure content is placed on nearby servers to the client. At the same time, the speed of content delivery has increased by 3-4 times, which increases the efficiency of users with the system.

The transition to Windows Azure helped “Diary. py ”optimize the cost of purchasing servers and paying for Internet traffic. Thanks to Windows Azure, exactly as many resources are used as needed by the project at this particular point in time, with the possibility of instantly increasing the number of available resources if necessary.

“I think that cloud services have a future. In 2008 there were not so many cloud services, and if we are talking about the school and its IT infrastructure, then one of the main tasks is “Diary. py “is trying to decide - is to make this infrastructure more efficient and cheaper. The cloud service saves colossal funds on servers, computers, processing capacity, which in any other solution should be provided either by the school or by the region. We have the project, all this work takes on ", - Gabriel Levy, CEO," Diary. RU".

April 27, 2012 Unified educational network “Diary. ru ”won an award at the World Summit Award, held with the support of the UN and UNESCO, for achievements in the field of e-learning and education.

Company “Diary. RU ”plans to expand the use of geographically distributed data centers to reduce content delivery time to end users. It is also planned to transfer part of servers for regression and load testing to Windows Azure.

about the project

Project Diary. The company was established in 2007 under the auspices of the priority national project “Education” and is supported by the Plenipotentiary of the President of the Russian Federation in the North-West Federal District, regional administrations, ministries, committees and departments of education. The main concept of the project is to build a unified digital information and educational space, allowing to solve many problems in the field of education, such as electronic support and support of the educational process, distance education; control, analysis and storage of data on the educational process, provision of educational content, implementation of network educational projects.

“Internet project“ Diary. “This is, first of all, a qualitatively new approach to learning, not just a tribute to fashion, but a resource that can be confidently called a successful state project with a human face. It responds to the basic request that has recently been placed on the modern education system - ensuring the openness and transparency of all the processes taking place in it. Along the way, the problem of computer competence of parents, students and teachers is being solved. And this is also important, ”said V. Gutman, Minister of Education and Science of the Astrakhan Region.

In conditions of limited budget of educational institutions and diverse tasks facing teachers in the educational process, the use of a single information and communication educational environment allows you to increase the flexibility and efficiency of the educational process, make the school more accessible and realize the operational interaction of the school with teachers, students, their parents, as well as education authorities. The unified educational network simplifies the task of informing all participants in the educational process about current issues, helps students prepare for lessons using resources hosted on the educational network, and is also a useful tool for interaction when organizing various school events.