Book Image

Windows Azure programming patterns for Start-ups

By : Riccardo Becker
Book Image

Windows Azure programming patterns for Start-ups

By: Riccardo Becker

Overview of this book

Leverage different Windows Azure components together with your existing Microsoft .NET skills to fully take advantage of the power of Windows Azure. Use this book to start small and end big by creating and using storage, cloud services, sql databases, networking, caching and other innovative technology to realize your first top-class Windows Azure service! "Windows Azure for Start-ups" is an incremental guide that will take you from the essentials of the Windows Azure platform up to the realization of your own cloud services running on the platform. You will learn how to apply different technologies of the Windows Azure platform with the help of examples all focusing on one single fictitious start-up scenario. This book is centred around a fictitious company called Geotopia that wants to build a brand new social network by using the Windows Azure platform. It will take the reader from the theory and rationale behind Windows Azure right to building services and coding C#. The books starts by outlining the concepts of Windows Azure. It then demonstrates how to set up a development environment and how to build your application by using different storage mechanisms, applying different features from the Windows Azure platform and ending with the newest features explained from the latest release. Windows Azure for Startups will help you take full advantage of the Windows Azure platform and bring your new service online as quickly as possible.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Windows Azure Programming Patterns for Start-ups
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Windows Azure Caching


Windows Azure offers caching capabilities out of the box. Caching is fast, because it is built as an in-memory (fast), distributed (running on different servers) technology.

Windows Azure Caching offers two types of cache:

  • Caching deployed on a role

  • Shared caching

When you decide to host caching on your Windows Azure roles, you need to pick from two deployment alternatives. The first is dedicated caching, where a worker role is fully dedicated to run as a caching store and its memory is used for caching. The second option is to create a co-located topology, meaning that a certain percentage of available memory in your roles is assigned and reserved to be used for in-memory caching purposes. Keep in mind that the second option is the most cost-effective one, as you don't have a role running just for its memory.

Shared caching is the central caching repository managed by the platform which is accessible for your hosted services. You need to register the shared caching mechanism...