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

Choosing the service model for a hosted service


Cloud services are classified typically as infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS), and software-as-a service (SaaS). In the IaaS model, the core service provided is a virtual machine (VM) with a Guest OS. The customer is responsible for everything about the Guest OS, including hardening it and adding any required software. Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) is the paradigm for IaaS. In the PaaS model, the core service provided is a VM with a hardened Guest OS and an application-hosting environment. The customer is responsible only for the service injected into that environment. In the SaaS model, a service is exposed over the Internet and the customer merely has to access it.

Windows Azure is the paradigm for PaaS. As such, Windows Azure provides a high-level, application-hosting environment modeled on services, roles, and instances. The specification of the roles in the service is referred to as the service model.

A...