Azure in Action

490 Pages·2010·13.52 MB·English

by  Chris Hay

IN ACTION
Chris Hay
Brian H. Prince
M A N N I N G
Azure in Action

Azure in Action
CHRIS HAY
BRIAN H. PRINCE
MANNING
Greenwich
(74° w. long.)
iv
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ISBN: 9781935182481
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 – MAL – 16 15 14 13 12 11 10
brief contents
PART 1 WELCOME TO THE CLOUD ............................................ 1
1 ■ Getting to know Windows Azure 3
2 ■ Your first steps with a web role 27
PART 2 UNDERSTANDING THE AZURE SERVICE MODEL............. 49
3 ■ How Windows Azure works 51
4 ■ It’s time to run with the service 78
5 ■ Configuring your service 94
PART 3 RUNNING YOUR SITE WITH WEB ROLES...................... 111
6 ■ Scaling web roles 113
7 ■ Running full-trust, native, and other code 139
PART 4 WORKING WITH BLOB STORAGE ...............................153
8 ■ The basics of BLOBs 155
9 ■ Uploading and downloading BLOBs 181
10 ■ When the BLOB stands alone 209
v
vi BRIEF CONTENTS
PART 5 WORKING WITH STRUCTURED DATA .......................... 237
11 ■ The Table service, a whole different entity 239
12 ■ Working with the Table service REST API 265
13 ■ SQL Azure and relational data 296
14 ■ Working with different types of data 315
PART 6 DOING WORK WITH MESSAGES................................... 333
15 ■ Processing with worker roles 335
16 ■ Messaging with the queue 357
17 ■ Connecting in the cloud with AppFabric 379
18 ■ Running a healthy service in the cloud 404
contents
preface xix
acknowledgments xxi
about this book xxiv
author online xxvi
about the authors xxvii
about the cover illustration xxix
PART 1 WELCOME TO THE CLOUD................................. 1
1 Getting to know Windows Azure 3
1.1 What’s the Windows Azure platform? 4
Windows is in the title, so it must be an operating system 5
Hosting and running applications the Azure way 6
1.2 Building your first Windows Azure web application 9
Setting up your environment 9 ■ Creating a new project 10
Modifying the web page 12 ■ Running the web page 12
1.3 Putting all the Azure pieces together 13
How the load balancer works 13 ■ Creating worker roles 14
How the fabric and the Fabric Controller work 14
vii
viii CONTENTS
1.4 Storing data in the cloud with Azure 15
Understanding Azure’s shared storage mechanism 16 ■ Storing
and accessing BLOB data 16 ■ Messaging via queues 17
Storing data in tables 18
1.5 Why run in the cloud? 18
Treating computing power as a utility service 19 ■ Simplified
data-center management 21
1.6 Inside the Windows Azure platform 23
SQL Server capability in the cloud 23 ■ Enterprise services
in the cloud 25
1.7 Summary 26
2 Your first steps with a web role 27
2.1 Getting around the Azure SDK 28
Exploring the SDK folders 29 ■ Using the Cloud Service project
templates 29 ■ Running the cloud locally 31 ■ How the local
and cloud environments differ 32
2.2 Taking Hello World to the next level 33
Creating the project 33 ■ Laying down some markup with
XHTML and a CSS 34 ■ Binding your data in the code-
behind 36 ■ Just another place to run your code 37
Configuring the Azure service model 37 ■ Running the website in
the local development fabric 38
2.3 Deploying with the Azure portal 39
Signing up for Azure 39 ■ The Azure portal 40 ■ Setting up
your service online 41 ■ Putting on your logging boots 43
Setting up your storage environment 43 ■ Packaging and
deploying your application 45 ■ Moving to production 47
2.4 Summary 47
PART 2 UNDERSTANDING THE AZURE SERVICE MODEL 49
3 How Windows Azure works 51
3.1 The big shift 51
The data centers of yore 52 ■ The latest Azure data centers 53
How many administrators do you need? 54 ■ Data center: the next
generation 55
3.2 Windows Azure, an operating system for the cloud 56
CONTENTS ix
3.3 The Fabric Controller 57
How the FC works: the driver model 58 ■ Resource allocation 58
Instance management 59
3.4 The service model and you 59
Defining configuration 59 ■ Adding a custom configuration
element 60 ■ Centralizing file-reading code 61 ■ The many
sizes of roles 62
3.5 It’s not my fault 63
Fault domains 63 ■ Update domains 63 ■ A service model
example 64
3.6 Rolling out new code 64
Static upgrades 65 ■ Rolling upgrades 66
3.7 The bare metal 68
Free parking 68 ■ A special blend of spices 69 ■ Creating
instances on the fly 69 ■ Image is everything 71
3.8 The innards of the web role VM 72
Exploring the VM details 72 ■ The process list 74 ■ The
hosting process of your website (WaWebHost) 75 ■ The health of
your web role (RDAgent) 76
3.9 Summary 76
4 It’s time to run with the service 78
4.1 Using the Windows Azure Service Management API 78
Adding the ServiceRuntime assembly to your application 79
Is your application running in Windows Azure? 80
4.2 Defining your service 81
The format of the service definition file 81 ■ Configuring the
endpoint of your web role 82 ■ Configuring trust level, instances,
and startup action 86 ■ Configuring local storage 87
4.3 Setting up certificates in Windows Azure 90
Generating a certificate 90 ■ Adding certificates 91
Configuring your HTTPS endpoint to use the certificate 92
4.4 Summary 93
5 Configuring your service 94
5.1 Working with the service configuration file 94
The format of the service configuration file 95 ■ Configuring
standard settings 96 ■ Configuring runtime settings 98