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

Accessing data persisted to Windows Azure Storage


Windows Azure Diagnostics captures diagnostic information for an instance then persists it to the Windows Azure Storage Service. The persistence location depends on the data buffer.

The Directories data buffer is configured as a set of data sources each of which maps a path on the local file system with a container in the Windows Azure Blob Service. The Diagnostics Agent persists files in that path as blobs in the configured container. Note that the Diagnostics Agent inserts a record in the WADDirectoriesTable each time it persists a file to a container.

The Diagnostics Agent persists the data in the other data buffers as records in the Windows Azure Table Service. The following tables are used:

Records

Table

Diagnostic Infrastructure Logs

WADDiagnosticInfrastructureLogsTable

Performance Counters

WADPerformanceCountersTable

Windows Azure Logs

WADLogsTable

Windows Event Logs

WADWindowsEventLogsTable

The tables are partitioned by minute...