Book Image

Microsoft Windows Azure Development Cookbook

By : Neil Mackenzie
Book Image

Microsoft Windows Azure Development Cookbook

By: Neil Mackenzie

Overview of this book

The Windows Azure platform is Microsoft's Platform-as-a-Service environment for hosting services and data in the cloud. It provides developers with on-demand computing, storage, and service connectivity capabilities that facilitate the hosting of highly scalable services in Windows Azure datacenters across the globe. This practical cookbook will show you advanced development techniques for building highly scalable cloud-based services using the Windows Azure platform. It contains over 80 practical, task-based, and immediately usable recipes covering a wide range of advanced development techniques for building highly scalable services to solve particular problems/scenarios when developing these services on the Windows Azure platform. Packed with reusable, real-world recipes, the book starts by explaining the various access control mechanisms used in the Windows Azure platform. Next you will see the advanced features of Windows Azure Blob storage, Windows Azure Table storage, and Windows Azure Queues. The book then dives deep into topics such as developing Windows Azure hosted services, using Windows Azure Diagnostics, managing hosted services with the Service Management API, using SQL Azure and the Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus. You will see how to use several of the latest features such as VM roles, Windows Azure Connect, startup tasks, and the Windows Azure AppFabric Caching Service.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Microsoft Windows Azure Development Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Using Windows Azure Connect


Windows Azure Connect provides a way to create a secure, IPSEC protected virtual network that connects computers inside an organization with role instances in a Windows Azure hosted service. An obvious use for Windows Azure Connect is to allow a hosted service to access a Microsoft SQL Server database resident behind a corporate firewall. This allows a service to benefit from the elasticity of a hosted service for the frontend while keeping data tightly controlled in a corporate datacenter.

Windows Azure Connect is a pluggable module that, like Windows Azure diagnostics, must be imported into a role by adding an Import element as a child to the Imports element of the service definition file, ServiceDefinition.csdef. For example:

<Imports>
   <Import moduleName="Diagnostics" />
   <Import moduleName="Connect" />
</Imports>

There are a number of Windows Azure Connect configuration settings in the service configuration file, ServiceConfiguration...