Understanding The Azure Platform Jan

Editor's Notes

• #13: Slide objectives: Ensure that the audience understands our experience and investments in running and operating services.Speaking Points: IntroMicrosoft hasn’t been running services quite as long as we’ve been making software – but we have been in the business for a while and at huge scale. Just a few numbers from our consumer businessLive Search: 2.16B queries per month, 41 languagesMSN: 550M unique users, 10B+ page views per monthLive ID: 1B+ Authentications/dayMessenger: 8.2B messages/dayMicrosoft has rapidly expanded its data center operations since embarking on the Software + Services strategy in 2005, and willcontinue to do so for the foreseeable future. Initially the company focused on leased facilities. Now we design and build our own data centers. These will soon be the largest and most advanced such facilities in the world—the Northlake facility near Chicago, for instance, will cover more than 500,000 square feet and deliver significant gains in energy efficiency and environmental performance. Data CentersThis is a listing of just the new Microsoft-owned data centers. Designing and building these facilities ourselves allows Microsoft greater control over power efficiency and related environmental impacts. The list below is partial; Microsoft does not comment on exactly how many data centers are operating worldwide. Quincy, WA: Complete, approx 500K sq ft, 27MW, uses entirely hydro-electric powerSan Antonio, TX: Opening Fall 08, approx 475K sq ft, 27MW, uses recycled water for coolingChicago, IL: Opening Spring/Summer 09, approx 550K sq ft, up to 60MW when full, 1st floor up to 220 double-stacked containers, 2nd floor standard raised-floor data center space, will use outside air for coolingDublin, Ireland: Opening Summer 09, approx 570K sq ft, up to 27MW, will use outside air for coolingDes Moines, Iowa: Recently announced purchase of land in the Des Moines area with the intent to build a data centerInnovation:With the Chicago data center, the entire first floor will house containerstrucks will haul up to 200 containers into the building and back them into their slotsFacilities personnel will hook up Internet connections and power and cooling equipment; then each of the containers will be up and runningContainers provide: Energy efficiency, Cost, Deployment speedNotes:
• #15: The components of the Azure Services Platform can be used by local applications running on a variety of systems, including various flavors of Windows, mobile devices, and others. Those components include:  Windows Azure: Provides a Windows-based environment for running applications and storing data on servers in Microsoft data centers.  Microsoft .NET Services: Offers distributed infrastructure services to cloud-based and local applications.  Microsoft SQL Services: Provides data services in the cloud based on SQL Server.  Live Services: Through the Live Framework, provides access to data from Microsoft’s Live applications and others. The Live Framework also allows synchronizing this data across desktops and devices, finding and downloading applications, and more.
• #16: Windows Azure runs on a large number of machines, all located in Microsoft data centers and accessible via the Internet. A common Windows Azure fabric knits this plethora of processing power into a unified whole. Windows Azure compute and storage services are built on top of this fabric. The Windows Azure compute service is based, of course, on Windows. For the initial availability of this service, a Community Technology Preview (CTP) made public in the fall of 2008, Microsoft allowed Windows Azure to run only applications built on the .NET Framework. The company has announced plans to support unmanaged code as well, i.e., applications that aren’t built on the .NET Framework, on Windows Azure in 2009. In the CTP version of Windows Azure, developers can create .NET-based software such as ASP.NET applications and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) services. To do this, they can use C# and other .NET languages, along with traditional development tools such as Visual Studio 2008. And while many developers are likely to use this initial version of Windows Azure to create Web applications, the platform also supports background processes that run independently—it’s not solely a Web platform. Both Windows Azure applications and on-premises applications can access the Windows Azure storage service, and both do it in the same way: using a RESTful approach. The underlying data store is not Microsoft SQL Server, however. In fact, Windows Azure storage isn’t a relational system, and its query language isn’t SQL. Because it’s primarily designed to support applications built on Windows Azure, it provides simpler, more scalable kinds of storage. Accordingly, it allows storing binary large objects (blobs), provides queues for communication between components of Windows Azure applications, and even offers a form of tables with a straightforward query language. Running applications and storing their data in the cloud can have clear benefits. Rather than buying, installing, and operating its own systems, for example, an organization can rely on a cloud provider to do this for them. Also, customers pay just for the computing and storage they use, rather than maintaining a large set of servers only for peak loads. And if they’re written correctly, applications can scale easily, taking advantage of the enormous data centers that cloud providers offer. Yet achieving these benefits requires effective management. In Windows Azure, each application has a configuration file. By changing the information in this file manually or programmatically, an application’s owner can control various aspects of its behavior, such as setting the number of instances that Windows Azure should run. The Windows Azure fabric monitors the application to maintain this desired state. To let its customers create, configure, and monitor applications, Windows Azure provides a browser-accessible portal. A customer provides a Windows Live ID, then chooses whether to create a hosting account for running applications, a storage account for storing data, or both. An application is free to charge its customers in any way it likes: subscriptions, per-use fees, or anything else. Windows Azure is a general platform that can be used in various scenarios.