The PK blog by "Cloud Boy"
Windows Azure
Windows Azure – Upgrade your Service without disruption (VIP Swap)
Performing an in-place upgrade on Windows Azure to change your service definition file it’s not possible unless you stop the service, upgrade and then start it again. Otherwise you can do a VIP Swap. VIP stands for Virtual IP and VIP swaps can be either done by the Developer portal or using the Service Management … Continue reading
Windows Azure–Custom persistence service for WF 4 saving information on Windows Azure Blob
Recently, I’ve been looking a way to persist the status of an idling Workflow on WF4. There is a way to use SQL Azure to achieve this, after modifying the scripts because they contain unsupported T-SQL commands, but it’s totally an overkill to use it just to persist WF information, if you’re not using the … Continue reading
My great experience with Windows Azure customer support
Once again, Microsoft proved that it values its customers, either big enterprise or small startups. We’re a small private-held business and I personally have a major role in it as I’m one of the founders. Recently, I’ve been giving some pretty nice presentations and a bunch of sessions for Microsoft Hellas about Windows Azure and … Continue reading
Cloud computing – Most common concerns and my thoughts
Every single time something new emerges in the IT market, there are three distinct categories of people: Early adopters, Late majority, Skeptics. Each one of them has its own reasons and its own concerns about when, why and if they are going to adapt to this new technology, either completely or in a hybrid mode. … Continue reading
Windows Azure Table Storage – Is backup necessary?
Yes, it is. Table storage has multiple replicas and guarantees uptime and availability, but for business continuity reasons you have to be protected from possible failures on your application. Business logic errors can harm the integrity of your data and all Windows Azure Storage replicas will be harmed too. You have to be protected from … Continue reading
Windows Azure Training Kit – December update is out
Windows Azure training kit it the best starting point if you want to get involved in Azure development. It helps you understand the basics of Windows Azure, its components and the whereabouts of the service. December’s release includes some updates and samples from PDC 09 so don’t miss it. You can download the kit from … Continue reading
Windows Azure – Dynamically scaling your application
When you have your service running on Windows Azure, the least thing you want is monitoring every now and then and decide if there is a necessity for specific actions based on your monitoring data. You want the service to be, in some degree, self-manageable and decide on its own what the necessary actions should … Continue reading
Patterns: Windows Azure – In-Place upgrades
In a previous post I’ve described what a VIP Swap is and how you can use it as an updating method to avoid service disruption. This particular method doesn’t apply to all possible scenarios and if not always, most of the times, during protocol updates or schema changes you’ll need to upgrade your service when … Continue reading
Windows Azure – What is an upgrade domain?
Windows Azure automatically divides your role instances into some “logical” domains called upgrade domains. During upgrade, Azure is updating these domains one by one. This is a by design behavior to avoid nasty situations. Some of the last feature additions and enhancements on the platform was the ability to notify your role instances in case … Continue reading
Windows Azure Table Storage and concurrency
Today, during my presentation at Microsoft DevDays “Make Web not War” I had a pretty nice question about concurrency and I left the question somehow blurry and without a straight answer. Sorry, but we were changing subjects so fast that I missed it and I only realized it on my way back. The answer is … Continue reading
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