Microsoft Windows Azure Development Cookbook

422 Pages·2014·3.121 MB·English

by  Roberto Freato, Neil Mackenzie

Microsoft Azure
Development
Cookbook
Second Edition
Over 70 advanced recipes for developing scalable
services with the Microsoft Azure platform
Roberto Freato
Neil Mackenzie
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Microsoft Azure Development Cookbook
Second Edition
Copyright © 2014 Packt Publishing
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First published: August 2011
Second edition: September 2014
Production reference: 1180914
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
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Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-78217-032-7
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Cover image by Duraid Fatouhi ([email protected])
Credits
Authors Project Coordinator
Roberto Freato Kinjal Bari
Neil Mackenzie
Proofreaders
Reviewers Ting Baker
Michael S. Collier Simran Bhogal
Peter Kirchner Maria Gould
Sarang Kulkarni Sandra Hopper
Sachin Prakash Sancheti
Aaron Whittaker Indexers
Hemangini Bari
Commissioning Editor Monica Ajmera Mehta
Joanne Fitzpatrick Tejal Soni
Acquisition Editor
Production Coordinators
Kevin Colaco
Saiprasad Kadam
Conidon Miranda
Content Development Editor
Alwin Roy
Rikshith Shetty
Cover Work
Technical Editors
Conidon Miranda
Indrajit A. Das
Dennis John
Copy Editors
Roshni Banerjee
Karuna Narayanan
About the Authors
Roberto Freato has been an independent IT consultant since he started working. He
worked for several small software firms while he was studying. After completing his MSc
in Computer Science and Engineering, where he worked on a thesis on Consumer Cloud
Computing, he specialized in cloud and Azure. Today, he works as a freelance consultant
for important companies in Italy, helping clients design and kick-off their distributed
software solutions. He trains for the developer community in his free time, addressing
many conferences. He is a Microsoft MVP since 2010.
Thanks to Simona, Mom, and Dad.
Neil Mackenzie has worked with computers for nearly 3 decades. He started his computer
career doing large-scale numerical simulations for scientific research and business planning.
Since then, he has primarily been involved in healthcare software and developing electronic
medical record systems. He has been using Microsoft Azure since PDC 2008 and has used
nearly all parts of the Microsoft Azure platform, including those parts that no longer exist.
Neil is very active in the online Microsoft Azure community, contributing to the MSDN
Microsoft Azure forums in particular. He is a Microsoft MVP for Microsoft Azure.
I would like to thank all the people from whom I've learned Microsoft Azure.
I would also like to thank the staff at Packt Publishing for nursing the
project along and Brent Stineman for first suggesting my name to them.
I have found the comments from the technical reviewers invaluable, which
immeasurably improved the book. Last but not least, I would like to thank
my wife, Claire, and my children for suffering through all the late nights
and lost weekends that went into the writing of the book.
About the Reviewers
Michael S. Collier serves as a principal cloud architect for Aditi Technologies, a Microsoft
NSI partner that focuses on cloud computing. He is a four-time Azure MVP and was the
2012 Azure MVP of the Year for his extraordinary community contributions. Michael has
had a successful 12-year career at various consulting and technology firms, where he
was instrumental in leading and developing solutions for a wide range of clients. He has
many years of experience in helping companies determine the best strategy to adopt cloud
computing and providing insight and hands-on experience to ensure that they're successful.
He is also a respected technology community leader, and can often be found sharing his
Azure insights and experiences at regional and national conferences. You can follow Michael's
experiences with Azure on his blog at www.michaelscollier.com and on Twitter at
@MichaelCollier.
Peter Kirchner has been working as a technical evangelist at Microsoft, Germany,
since 2008. In this role, he addresses conferences and writes articles that focus on
cloud computing, with the goal to inspire new technologies and support developers and
administrators in developing for and using the Microsoft platform. Before working with
Microsoft, Peter gained experience working in the area of SharePoint development and
consulting. While studying, he showed interest in network technologies, security, and
distributed systems, and graduated with a Diploma in Computer Science.
Sarang Kulkarni lives in Pune, India, with his wife and daughter. He has been coding for
food for the last 14 years, and also talking and writing about it for the last 6 years. He has
mostly been around the Microsoft stack, with an occasional adventure in SAP ABAP and
Amazon AWS. Sarang has been building SaaS products and services on the Azure stack
since the "Red Dog" days. He worked with big consulting firms such as Accenture, Avanade,
and Cognizant before settling in Zevenseas, a SharePoint company, building and growing
its Azure business.
Sarang has previously worked on a collaborative book, Windows Azure Platform: Articles
from the Trenches, as a co-author.
Thanks to Packt Publishing for approaching me with this interesting
opportunity. I would also thank my family and my colleagues at Zevenseas
for being supportive of everything I keep on doing.
Sachin Prakash Sancheti hails from a small town in western India called Washim. He
has 15 years' experience, much of which was focused on Microsoft-oriented technologies. In
the last 4 years, he developed an expertise in cloud computing across both Windows Azure
and AWS. An innovative architect with solid technology acumen, Sachin is also an avid blogger
and speaker. He calls himself "a whiteboard as well as a keyboard guy." Being proud of his
modest origins, Sachin would like to bring recognition in some form to his hometown, Washim.
Currently, Sachin is working with Symphony Teleca, Pune, as a principal architect. Earlier in
his career, he was with Infosys and Microsoft, both in India. Immediately prior to Symphony
Teleca, he spent a couple of years with a startup called Cumulux, which was acquired by
Aditi Technologies for its expertise in Windows Azure.
I would like to thank Packt Publishing for this opportunity to review the
book. A special thanks to my wife, Vaidehi, who is my pillar when it comes
to clearing the clutter in my mind. Clearly, she is the secret to my ability to
focus on the task at hand.
Aaron Whittaker is a Microsoft Virtual Technology Solutions Professional (V-TSP) and
a technical account manager. He has spoken at many major technology events, including
several Microsoft TechEds. He is a guest author for Microsoft MSDN and TechNet.
He proactively learns new technologies and is currently focused on building customer
relationships to solve problems.
Aaron has received the vExpert award several times and was the host of a VMWare user
group for 5 years. He currently hosts the Brisbane Cloud User Group.
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Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: Developing Cloud Services for Microsoft Azure 7
Introduction 8
Setting up solutions and projects to work with Cloud Services 10
Debugging a Cloud Service locally with either Emulator or Emulator Express 14
Publishing a Cloud Service with options from Visual Studio 18
Debugging a Cloud Service remotely with Visual Studio 23
Configuring the service model for a Cloud Service 26
Providing a custom domain name for a Cloud Service 35
Implementing HTTPS in a web role 37
Using local storage in an instance 41
Hosting multiple websites in a web role 44
Using startup tasks in a Microsoft Azure role 48
Handling changes to the configuration and topology of a Cloud Service 52
Managing upgrades and changes to a Cloud Service 59
Configuring diagnostics in Cloud Services 62
Chapter 2: Deploying Quickly with Azure Websites 69
Introduction 69
Deploying a Website 71
Administering and monitoring a Website 77
Source versioning and continuous integration with Git and TFS 83
Logging abstraction from .NET and PHP 87
Deploying Java with Azure Websites 91
Chapter 3: Getting Storage with Blobs in Azure 95
Introduction 96
Managing the Azure Storage service 98
Connecting to the Azure Storage service 101
Connecting to the storage emulator 106