Understanding Cloud Computing Basics
Understanding Cloud Computing Basics
Answer
Cloud computing is internet-based computing whereby shared resources, software, and information
are provided to computers and other devices on-demand, like the electricity grid.
Components in a cloud refer to the platforms, like front end, back end, and cloud-based delivery and
the network used. All together it forms an architecture for cloud computing. With the main
components like SAAS, PAAS and IAAS there are 11 more major categories in cloud computing that
are:
Storage-as-a-Service: This is the component where we can use or request storage. It is also
called disk space on demand.
Process-as-a-Service: This component combines various resources such as data and services.
This happens either hosted within the same cloud computing resource or remote.
Platform-as-a-Service: This is the component where the app is being developed and the
database is being created, implemented, stored and tested.
Security-as-a-Service: This is the main component many customers require. There are three-
dimensional securities found in cloud platforms.
Infrastructure-as-a-Service: This is called as nearly as possible the taking of all the hardware,
software, servers and networking that is completely virtual.
Answer
This is the service model on which you will host your application(s), for example IaaS, PaaS or SaaS.
Each of these service models requires various levels of support and responsibilities once a system is
deployed to the platform. To resolve the future challenges that you might encounter you need to
understand the models carefully. Other than the service model, the second, you need to decide
whether you want a Private or On-Premise cloud, or you want your application to be deployed on a
Public Cloud.
Every service model offers you some kind of resource required to operate the most web-enabled
systems imaginable.
Question 4: What are the kind of cloud storage and why is cloud
computing is so popular?
Answer
Data is centrally stored in the cloud and available across the internet. There are various storage
options available or we can classify them broadly in the following three categories:
Public Cloud
In this model a service provider makes resources, such as application and storage, available to the
general public over the internet. Public cloud services may be free or offered on a pay-per-usage
model.
Private Cloud
A private cloud provides more control over the company's data and under the control of the
company's IT department.
Hybrid Cloud
A hybrid cloud is a combination of public cloud storage and private cloud storage, where some
critical data resides in the enterprise's private cloud and other data is stored and accessible from a
public cloud storage provider.
Benefits of a cloud:
Reduction of costs
Universal access
Software updates
Scalability
Flexibility
Answer
The Windows Azure Platform lays the foundation for running applications and keeping data on the
cloud. It contains computer services, storage services and the fabric. Windows Azure affords a wide
range of capabilities in the form of computing services to run applications, storage services and
creating a framework that supports several applications, as well as host services and manage them
centrally. This platform readily stipulates an internet infrastructure for deploying distributed
applications and services since we can develop a cloud service in Visual Studio .NET and deploy it
into the Azure cloud right from on-premise tools. The Azure platform is a group of three cloud
technologies as in the following:
Answer
Windows Azure runs and stores the data on Microsoft datacenters. There are many features that are
specified here:
1. Websites allows the developers to build the sites using ASP.NET, PHP, etc and deploy these
websites using FTP, Git etc.
2. SQL Database, formally known as Azure database creates, extends and scales the application
into the cloud using Microsoft SQL Server.
3. This is Microsoft's platform as a service that supports the Multi-tier applications and automated
deployment.
There are various types of services that are provided by Windows Azure:
Web Sites
Cloud services
Virtual Machine
Data Management
SQL Database.
Tables.
Business Analytics
SQL Reporting.
Data Marketplace.
Answer
Roles are an important concept in Windows Azure and learning them is the base for further
programming. There are mainly three roles in Windows Azure.
Web Role
Worker Role
VM Role
Web Role:
It provides a web front-end solution. This is similar to an ASP.NET application. While under hosting
Azure provides IIS and required services.
Worker Role:
It provides a background service solution. This can be thought as a windows service application. We
can use this role to run background operations like database management tasks, report generation,
etc. It can run lengthy operations.
According to MSDN, the Web Role can be considered as a Worker role loaded with IIS. Similarly the
worker role can be used to host other application platforms.
The Web Role and Worker Role are executed on virtual machines. The Virtual Machine Roles provides
the user the ability to customize the virtual machine on which the web and worker roles are running.
The VM role runs a virtual hard disk (VHD) image which can be created and uploaded by the user.
Through the VM role the customers can run scheduled tasks and other windows services.
For more details visit the following link:
Question 8: What is Windows Azure Portal and also explain the Azure
Fabric?
Answer
Windows Azure Portal:To run an application, a developer accesses the Windows Azure portal through
her Web browser, signing in with a Windows Live ID. She then chooses whether to create a hosting
account for running applications, a storage account for storing data, or both.
Once the developer has a hosting account, the developer can use a Windows Azure portal to submit
applications to Windows Azure.
When the user sends a request to an application hosted on Azure (that can be passed by protocols
like HTTP, HTTPS or TCP), the request will be received from the load balancer. The Load balancer
balances the load across all the instances of the role (Web, Worker, and VM).
Azure Fabric:
The Azure fabric is the main core concept over here. It provides a service called the Azure Fabric
Controller. It is called as OS for the Azure. Because it handles/manages:
So there would be better to have two instances of roles and also no need to worry about software
updates for user.
For more details visit the following link:
Answer
Windows Azure provides platform and infrastructure by providing a scalable and cost-effective
computing, storage, and networking resources on demand.
Windows Azure has three main components in Azure: Compute, Storage and Fabric.
Windows Azure provides a hosting environment for managed code. It provides computation service
through roles. Windows azure supports 3 types of roles:
Web roles used for web application programming and supported by IIS7.
Worker roles used for background processing of web roles.
Virtual Machine (VM) roles used for migrating windows server applications to Windows azure in
an easy way.
AppFabric provides infrastructure services for developing, deploying and managing Windows azure
application. It provides 5 services:
Service bus
Access
Caching
Integration
Composite
Question 10: What are the differences between a public cloud and a
private cloud?
Answer
Private clouds are those that are built exclusively for an individual enterprise. They allow the firm to
host applications in the cloud, while addressing concerns regarding data security and control that is
often lacking in a public cloud environment. It is also known as an internal or enterprise cloud and
resides on the company's intranet or hosted data center where all of your data is protected behind a
firewall.
Public Cloud
Private Cloud
It is owned by a specific private group for their own use of employed, partners and their own
customers.
Highly controlled and not accessible by anyone other than allowed.
Security, governance and compliance is highly automated.
Similarly, the features are like a Public Cloud irrespective of security and maintenance.
The cost is very high.
Answer
A hybrid cloud is a mixture of internal and external cloud services, a combination of a private cloud
combined with the use of public cloud services. This type of cloud is most suitable when you want to
keep the confidential data at your premise (private cloud) and consume the other services from a
public cloud.
Usually the Private Cloud services will have a lesser scalability due to its security, cost and
compliance whereas the Public Cloud has a high scalability and moving non-sensitive data from
the private to the public will free up resources in the data centers in the Private Cloud and that
increases a very high scalability for a Hybrid Cloud.
Cost effective:
Similarly the Public Cloud is very cost effective rather than Private Cloud and here the Hybrid
Cloud provides cost effectiveness with the data and other sensitive operations secured.
Security:
Since there is a Private Cloud used; the data and sensitive operations are secured highly in the
Hybrid Cloud.
Flexibility:
We can easilyove out m the non-sensitive data and manage large scalability using a Public
Cloud service along with the Private Cloud. So with the availability of a large scalability using
Public Cloud and security using Private Cloud an enterprise has a vast opportunity in
developing for new needs.
Infrastructure dependency
Networking
Security compliance
Answer
Windows Azure diagnostics provides facility to store diagnostics data. Some diagnostics data is
stored in a table, while some is stored in a blob. For collecting diagnostics data, we must initialize the
Windows Azure diagnostic monitor. The Windows Azure diagnostic monitor runs in Windows Azure
and in the computer's emulator and collects diagnostic data for a role instance.
Answer
The main reason for using queues is to provide loose connectivity among various components. For
example, we have two components of an application to exchange data. Here one of them is on-
premise and one exists in the cloud. Here if we use a web service to exchange data we have the
following issues:
Both components should be online simultaneously; if one partner is down, then the
communication will not work.
It’s difficult to scale up if more work is present.
In Azure Queues you have a queue as mediator that connects the two components, so when the
receiver is down, the sender can still insert messages into the queue, once a receiver comes online it
can receive message from that queue. And for scale up we just need to add more receivers and your
queue is processed in parallel.
Deep Dive into Azure Storage Queue vs Azure Service Bus Queue
Answer
Windows Azure Queue Storage is a service for storing a large number of messages that can be
accessed from anywhere using HTTP or HTTPS. A single message can be up to 64KB in size. So, a
queue may contain millions of messages. It is basically a part of Windows Azure Storage and enabled
with a REST based architecture.
Queues provide First In, First Out (FIFO) message delivery, in other words messages are
received and processed by the receivers in the order they were added to the queue.
Answer
Queue is a one type of Azure Storage, where you can store your data as storage. Blobs are stored in
container, Entity in table and Message in Queue.
FIFO implementation
Messages are added to end of the Queue and processed from the front
Queues provides a good way of Front end and Back end decoupling
In the real world example the user can queue a job through the web role (front end) and the job can
be processed by a worker role (back end). This gives an opportunity to decouple the web role and
worker role.
1. Place a new label control on the aspx page and add the following code in the page load eve
nt.
2. protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
3. {
4. StorageCredentialsAccountAndKey accountAndKey = newStorageCredentialsAccountAndKey("ac
count", "key");
5. CloudStorageAccount account = new CloudStorageAccount(accountAndKey, true);
6. CloudQueueClient client = account.CreateCloudQueueClient();
7. CloudQueue queue = client.GetQueueReference("workitems");
8. queue.CreateIfNotExist();
9. CloudQueueMessage message = new CloudQueueMessage("Test Work Item");
10. queue.AddMessage(message);
11. // Populate the messages
12. message = queue.GetMessage();
13. if (message != null) Label1.Text = "Message in Queue: " + message.AsString;
14. }
For more details visit the following link:
Answer
Storage keys or Access Keys are used as an authentication mode for accessing the storage services
account to manipulate information based on our requirements. In Windows Azure we have an option
to provide a Primary Access Key and a Secondary Access Key, even though we will use a single access
key to authenticate our application to the storage. The main reason to provide the secondary access
key is to avoid downtime to the application. If we need to change the application access key by
regenerating the access key it takes quite some time to take effect; this provides a downtime.
To avoid this type of situation, a secondary access key is provided so that if the primary needs to be
changed or regenerated we can map the secondary temporarily to the storage and regenerate the
primary. Let us see step by step of how to get the Access Keys using Windows Azure Management
Portal.
Answer
Table is a one type of Azure Storage, where you can store your data as storage. Blobs are stored in
container and Entity in table.
Answer
The code below demonstrates how to create a QueueClient object for the "TestQueue" queue created
above using the CreateFromConnectionString API call:
1. string connectionString =
2. CloudConfigurationManager.GetSetting("Microsoft.ServiceBus.ConnectionString");
3. QueueClient Client =
4. QueueClient.CreateFromConnectionString(connectionString, "TestQueue");
5. Client.Send(new BrokeredMessage());
Messages sent to (and received from) Service Bus queues are instances of the BrokeredMessage
class.BrokeredMessage objects have a set of standard properties (such as Label and TimeToLive), a
dictionary that is used to hold custom application specific properties, and a body of arbitrary
application data. An application can set the body of the message by passing any serializable object
into the constructor of the BrokeredMessage, and the appropriate DataContractSerializer will then be
used to serialize the object. Alternatively, a System.IO.Stream can be provided.
The easiest way to receive messages from a queue is to use a QueueClient object. These objects can
work in two different modes: ReceiveAndDelete and PeekLock.
When using the ReceiveAndDelete mode, reception is a single-shot operation; that is, when the
Service Bus receives a read request for a message in a queue, it marks the message as consumed,
and returns it to the application.
The ReceiveAndDelete mode is the simplest model and works best for scenarios in which an
application can tolerate not processing a message in the event of a failure. To understand this,
consider a scenario in which the consumer issues the receive request and then crashes before
processing it. Because the Service Bus will have marked the message as being consumed, when the
application restarts and begins consuming messages again, it will have missed the message that was
consumed prior to the crash.
This example creates an infinite loop and processes messages as they arrive in the "TestQueue":
1. Client.Receive();
2. // Continuously process messages sent to the "TestQueue"
3. while (true)
4. {
5. BrokeredMessage message = Client.Receive();
6. if (message != null)
7. {
8. try
9. {
10. Console.WriteLine("Body: " + message.GetBody < string > ());
11. Console.WriteLine("MessageID: " + message.MessageId);
12. Console.WriteLine("Test Property: " + message.Properties["TestProperty"]);
13. // Remove message from queue
14. message.Complete();
15. }
16. catch (Exception)
17. {
18. // Indicate a problem, unlock message in queue
19. message.Abandon();
20. }
21. }
22. }
Answer
Windows Azure data storage enables users to store, access, analyze and protect their data while
making it available from anywhere and at any time. Windows Azure provides various services from
storing data in SQL databases in the cloud for analysis and reporting to meet the needs of your
business. Windows Azure ensures data security with high throughput of application data in the
cloud. Windows Azure typically offers the following three types of storage in the cloud atmosphere.
BLOB: BLOBs offer a mechanism for storing large amounts of text or binary data, such as
images, audio and visual files. It can scale up to 200 terabytes and can be accessed using REST
APIs. We can move BLOB data as a single volume between private and public clouds using
Windows Azure Drive.
Table: Tables represent storage locations across machines for data that reside in the form of
entities and properties on the cloud. Tables store large amounts of unstructured data that can
be accessed either using REST APIs from within a service running in Windows Azure or directly
over the Internet using HTTP/HTTPS.
Queue: The sole objective of a Queue is to enable communication between Web and Worker
Role instances. They aid in storing messages that may be accessed by a client. Web Role
instances can initiate user requests that need to be processed in the background. On the other
side a Worker Role observers the queue to process the request and respond back via queue to
the Web Role instance.
Answer
Federation is introduced in SQL Azure for scalability. Federation helps both administrators and
developers to scale data. It helps administrators by making repartitioning and redistributing of data
easier. It helps developers in the routing layer and sharding of data. It helps in routing without
application downtime.
Federation does basic scaling of objects in a SQL Azure Database. Federations are the partioned
data. There can be multiple Federations within a database. And each Federation represents a
different distribution scheme.
We create a Federation with a different distribution scheme and requirement. Student and Grades
tables of a School Database may have a different distribution requirement so they are put into
different Federations.
Each Federation object scales out data to many system managed nodes. A Federation object
contains:
Answer
SQL Azure database is simply a way to get connected in Cloud Services where we can store our
database into Cloud. Microsoft SQL Services and Microsoft SQL Data Services are now known as
Microsoft SQL Azure and SQL Azure Database. Microsoft Azure is the best way to use PAAS
(Platform as a Service) where we can host multiple databases on the same Account.
Microsoft SQL Azure has the same feature of SQL Server, i.e. high availability, scalability and security
in the core.
Microsoft Azure SQL Database have a feature, it automatically creates backups of every active
database. Every hour a backup is taken and geo-replicated to enable the 1 hour recovery point
objective (RPO) for Geo-Restore. Additionally, transaction log backups are taken every 5 minutes to
enable Point in Time Restore.
Answer
SQL Azure firewall rules are provided to protect the data and to prevent access restrictions to the
SQL Azure database. Firewall grants access to the originating IP's from which we are trying to access
the database. In order to configure the firewall we need to configure a range of acceptable IP
addresses upon which we try to connect to the SQL Azure server using the Management Portal or
with the SQL Server Management Studio. Let us see the step by step process of adding and deleting
rules as per our IP configurations.
By default Database created in SQL Azure is blocked by firewall for security reasons. Any attempt
from external access or access from any azure application is blocked by firewall.
For more details visit the following link:
Question 22: What is Windows Azure Traffic Manager? What are its
benefits?
Answer
Traffic Manager Name is itself self-explanatory. It allows users to control the distribution of user
traffic of deployed Azure cloud services, Azure websites or any other endpoint. In this the distribution
of traffic includes Azure cloud services, Azure web sites and other endpoints. There are 3 different
load balancing methods provided by Azure. The Traffic Manager works by applying an intelligent
routing policy engine to the Domain Name Service (DNS) queries on your domain names and maps
the DNS routes to the appropriate instances of your applications.
Increase Performance: Can increase performance of your application that includes faster page
loading and better user experience. This applies to the serving of users with the hosted service
closest to them.
High Availability: You can use the Traffic Manager to improve application availability by
enabling automatic customer traffic fail-over scenarios in the event of issues with one of your
application instances.
No Downtime Required for Upgrade / Maintenance: Once you have configured the Traffic
Manager you don't need downtime for application maintenance, patch purgation or complete
new package deployment.
Easy to configure (Quick Setup): It's very easy to configure Azure Traffic Manager on Widows
Azure portal. If you have already hosted your application on Windows Azure (a cloud service,
Azure website) you can easily configure this Traffic Manager with a simple procedure (setting
routing policy).
Answer
Sync Services is provided by Microsoft Azure where you can keep a SQL Azure database
synchronized with another database. You can take a backup of a database from one region to
another region. There is a simple procedure you need to follow to configure this service. If not a
complete database then you can at least keep selected tables or selected rows of tables
synchronized.
1. Synchronize a SQL Azure database from one SQL Azure server to another SQL Azure server.
2. Synchronize a SQL Azure Database from an Azure Server to a Local Server database.
Answer
SQL Azure also has a security management system very similar to the SQL on-premises versions. It
basically consists of the following:
Note: All of the following procedures are done using the administrative login mentioned above.
Creating Logins
Login to the master database and run the following T-SQL statement.
This statement creates a login ID in the server. This a a normal login ID that doesn't have access to
any of the databases in that server. So if you try to login to the Azure server with this account (either
from SQL Server Management Studio 2008 R2 - SSMS or from Azure Portal) you would get an error
saying this user doesn't have access to the master database. So the next step is to map this login to
the required databases, not necessarily to the master db.
Question 24: What are the different types of databases in SQL Azure?
Answer
Web Edition
Business Edition
Answer
A Build is nothing but the output of a solution. In the case of Azure projects, you generally get the
file with a .cspkg extension that means a Cloud Service Package is used for the deployment of your
cloud services.
Build Servers
In layman's terms a build server acts as the machine where you put your deployment packages.
To use Team Foundation Build, you must have at least one build machine. This machine can be a
physical machine or a virtual machine.
Build Controllers
Build Controllers are the element in the build system that accepts the build requests from any project
inside the team project collection. Each build controller is dedicated to a single-team project
collection. So there is a one-to-one relationship between a team project collection and a build
controller.
Build Agents
Build agents are elements in the build system that does more processor-intensive work.
Build Definitions
A Build definition is nothing but the process that the build controller using to deploy your packages
to a target site. Using Team Explorer you should be able to create a new build definition where you
will need to associate the build controller and define process as well as trigger a point for the
definition.
Once the build definition is in place, you will be able to queue new builds using it.
Basics of TFS Build System and Integrating it With Azure Cloud Services
Question 26: What is the difference between IaaS and PaaS in Cloud?
Answer
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): is in effect much like building a set of services and virtual
machines and networks in a Cloud as the user would On-Premises.
Platform as a Service ( PaaS): A Platform is a cloud that gives the user various frameworks, tools
and services on the cloud and the user are building the application in the cloud leveraging these
various tools, services and components within the application.
IaaS PaaS
Granularity of The user can remote into virtual machine The PaaS provider takes care of
Control of running in the cloud using IDP. The user has the running the application. It means that
Virtual same level of control as the user would with a the user doesn't get access to registry
Machines virtual machine on-premises. This means the and neither can the user install custom
user can get into the registry, install custom software necessarily in that application
software the user want to install on that virtual or in the location where it runs.
machine.
PaaS providers provide the
infrastructure and the platforms.
The user can choose a certain number of virtual
cores, virtual CPUs, RAM, networking set up,
Control over the PaaS can be thought of as the next
how many different networks, virtual VPNs,
environment step of IaaS where the configurations is
separate subnets, extensions to on-premises
configuration also done for the user by the provider.
networks and load-balancing across multiple
VMs.
The user is responsible for the O/S, patching,
firewall management, security, data, runtime,
applications, middleware and everything that's
running inside of the VM because the user is The provider is responsible for
Maintenance responsible for that virtual machine. The only application/services on PaaS. The user
difference is the location of the VM; instead of is just managing the various services.
on-premise it is in the cloud. The user still gets
to do all the configurations but the user is
relieved of doing the physical hardware things.
Scalability is the responsibility of the
Scalability The user is responsible for scalability.
PaaS provider.
Subscription Model, but it includes the
Pricing Subscription Model. cost of hardware for the installation of
PaaS.
Both IaaS and PaaS help organizations to minimize operational costs and increase their productivity
as they get faster time to market and require no up-front investments.
Question 27: What is the Azure App Service? What are the advantages
of App Service over Mobile Service?
Answer
Azure App Service is a fully managed Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering for professional
developers that brings a rich set of capabilities to web, mobile and integration scenarios. Mobile
Apps in Azure App Service offer a highly scalable, globally available mobile application development
platform for Enterprise Developers and System Integrators that brings a rich set of capabilities to
mobile developers.
Question 28: How can you demonstrate between Azure mobile service
and Web API?
Answer:
Web API: Web API is used only for that client who uses HTTP enabled services. There is a problem
with Web API, if you want to create a Web API service, then you need knowledge of ASP.NET
solution and you need to be familiar with .Net.
There are more benefits of Web API over Node.js. Web API uses HTTP request and process them
using the HTTP verbs. Actually, Web API is fully REST service. As per my thinking Web API is better
approach to create APIs.
Azure Mobile Services: Windows Azure Mobile Service is a tool that can integrated with the
Windows Azure cloud. This tool will help you to connect a cloud backend to your Windows 8
application. The goal of the Windows Azure Mobile Service is to make Windows Azure the obvious
choice for the Windows 8 Metro style application developer. Currently we can only use the Windows
Azure Mobile Service in Metro style applications but in the near future the mobile service can also
work with iOS, Android and Windows Phone.
Mobile services can only be run on demand or you can schedule the service when it will start and
when it will stop.
To use Windows Azure Mobile Services, you need to use any Source Control where you can take the
backup.
Answer
Google Cloud Platform is a new way to use cloud computing platform in real time. It is developed
by Google and offers every developer the chance to host their Web API’s and Cloud Storage and
many more things on the same supporting infrastructure that is used by Google itself internally in
their products, such as Google Search, Google Play Store, Gmail and YouTube. Also for every product
by Google, Google Cloud Platform provides developer products to build application and a range of
programs from simple websites to complex applications. Google use Load Balancer technique that
allows distributing cloud data into multiple data centers all over the world. With the help of Google
Cloud BigQuery we can execute billions of queries per second.
Google Cloud Platform is specially designed for enterprise solutions from Google for Work and
provides a set of modular cloud-based services with a host of development tools, test, and deploy
applications on Google's highly-scalable and reliable infrastructure for your web, mobile and
backend solutions. For example:
o App Engine.
o Compute Engine.
Cloud storage
o Cloud Storage.
o Cloud Store.
o Cloud SQL
BigData
o BigQuery
Services
o Cloud Endpoints.
o Translate API.
o Prediction API.
Answer
VM Role: VM role is a kind of role in the Azure platform which helps to maintain service packs,
patches, updates and applications already installed, to Windows Azure automatically.
VM (IaaS): These are literally VMs as we understood then from the On-Premise running in the Azure
Microsoft Data Center.
1. VM is durable.
2. IaaS VMs is that you can take just about any on-premises application, whether it makes
changes to the local file system or not (even if the OS is one of the supported Linux
distributions) and deploy it to the cloud for a few cents per hour.
Disadvantages:
Answer
Google Cloud Platform Compute Engine is Google's Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), which is used
to run large-scale workloads on virtual machines hosted on Google's infrastructure. It is used by
Google itself for their end user products, such as Google search, YouTube and for all products of
Google. Allows you to choose a VM with a specific requirement of hardware configurations with a list
of server operating systems and now it also allow Windows Server.
Azure Virtual Machines could be your choice if you want frequent modifications and changes in your
web server environment. It provides you rich set of features; however, correctly configuring, securing
and maintaining VMs require much more time and more IT expertise compared to Azure Cloud
Services and Azure Websites. You will need to make more effort on frequent maintenance and
update patches to manage the VM environment.
Answer
Step 4: Select the Operating System that you would like to install on the VM. In this scenario we will
install a Ubuntu server 13.04 because then it will be easy for me to continue with the later posts on
creating a PHP app on our new VM.
Step 5: The next window will ask you about user details, VM RAM and number of cores and a name
for the VM. Fill them in as you wish. I will use a password instead of a SSH key.
Step 6: Next window ask you about cloud configuration (DNS Setting) and Storage account and
Region. Except for region leave the rest as it is unless you know what you are doing.
Step 7: Now we will need to create end points for us to access the VM. For now let's keep SSH
access only.
Step 8: Then the VM will be created and will be running after a few minutes. You can see it in your
Azure portal.
OR
Answer
Autoscaling Application Blocks can automatically scale the Windows Azure application based on the
rules defined specifically for the application.
1. Instance Autoscaling, where the block changes the number of role instances based on
constraint and reactive rules.
2. Throttling, where the application modifies its own behavior to change its resource utilization
based on a set of reactive rules. For example switching off non-essential features, or gracefully
degrading its UI.
1. Constraint rules: Constraint rules set the upper and lower bounds on the number of instances.
For example, in the evening between 6:00 and 8:00, you need a minimum of 3 instances and a
maximum of 7 instances, then use the constraint rule.
2. Reactive rules: Reactive rules enable the number of role instances to change in response to
unpredictable changes in demand. For example, if the workload increases then increase the
number of role instances by 1. The reactive rules can use a variety of techniques like
performance counters, or the Windows Azure queue length to monitor and control the
application's workload. A reactive rule makes changes to the number of role instances only if a
constraint rule applies at the same time. It is easy to create a default constraint rule that always
applies.
Answer
AWS Cloud Formation is a cloud builder service that helps you model and set up your Amazon Web
Services resources so that you can spend less time managing those resources and more time
focusing on your applications that run in AWS. For this you need to create a template that describes
all the AWS resources that you want, like Amazon EC2 instances that you want, Amazon VPC and
subnet details and so on. AWS CloudFormation takes care of provisioning and configuring those
resources for you. You don't need to individually create and configure AWS resources and figure out
what's dependent on what, AWS CloudFormation handles all of that.
AWS CloudFormation is available at no additional charge. You will be billed only the normal rates for
the AWS resources like EC2, RDS, LB and so on that AWS CloudFormation creates and your
application and resources use.
For more details visit the following link:
Answer
Visual Studio provides us various tools to do it by gathering the performance data from the
application that also helps in the troubleshooting issues.
Once the profiling wizard is run, it establishes the performance session and collects the sampling
data, then generates report files that can be opened and analyzed in Visual Studio.
Answer
If you click on website you will be taken in dashboard where different operations are available,
Linked Resources:
This will show how the resources are attached. You will see the cleardb database if you click on it will
redirect you to cleardb website and you will be automatically logged into account created by azure
for you. You can view performance and other configurations of your database.
Connecting FTP
If we want to view files of our WordPress in order to change configuration setting, upload content or
to make backup.
For this we have to set some deployment credentials in Microsoft Azure so that Azure verifies that
we are authorized to make changes.
For this go to Management portal select website. Dashboard of app will be opened. If not, click on
setup deployment credentials.
Answer
A cmdlet is a lightweight command that is used in the Microsoft PowerShell environment. The
Windows PowerShell runtime invokes these cmdlets within the context of automation scripts that are
provided at the command line. The Windows PowerShell runtime also invokes them
programmatically through Windows PowerShell APIs.
A cmdlet is a compiled piece of .NET code. Cmdlets handle object input and output as well as usually
playing nice and well with the (object-based) pipeline. Cmdlets have no direct representation in the
file system, as they are not programs or similar. They exist solely within PowerShell. You can use the
Get-Command Cmdlet to query all available Cmdlets, functions, etc.
Answer
Azure Explorer is a free Microsoft Azure storage tool; in this we can manage all our Microsoft Azure
blobs at a common place or one place. Azure Storage Explorer is a useful GUI tool for inspecting and
altering the data.
In Azure Explorer, we have “Azure Storage Account”, and in the Azure Storage Account, we can
manage more than one Blob Container, in Blob Container we can create page blob as well as new
folders to store our files.
Step 1: For the installation of Azure Explorer we need go to its download link, After going to above
link, you will see the following window. Click “DOWNLOAD AZURE EXPLORER”.
Answer
Azure Service Fabric is a next-generation middleware cloud platform to build scalable, reliable, and
managed enterprise applications. Microsoft is already using Service Fabric powers in many of its
products, including Azure SQL Database, Azure DocumentDB, Cortana, and Power BI.
Develop with a "datacenter on your machine" approach. The local development environment
is the same code that runs in the Azure datacenters.
Develop stateless and stateful (micro)services and make these highly reliable.
Simplify the design of your application by using stateful (micro)services in place of caches and
queues.
Deploy to Azure or to on-premises clouds running Windows Server with zero code changes.
Write once and then deploy to any Service Fabric cluster.
Deploy applications at higher density than virtual machines, deploying hundreds or thousands
of applications per machine.
Deploy different versions of the same application side by side, each independently upgradable.
Manage the lifecycle of your stateful applications without any downtime, including breaking
and nonbreaking upgrades.
Answer
Windows Azure Scheduler allow you to invoke actions – such as calling HTTP/S endpoints or posting
a message to a storage queue on any schedule. With Scheduler, you create jobs in the cloud that
reliably call services both inside and outside of Windows Azure and run those jobs on demand, on a
regularly recurring schedule, or designate them for a future date.
Scheduling is the history details of your apps in the cloud; it gives information of the particular
application, means its status, its start time and its end time.
Answer
Windows Azure Blob Storage can store hundreds of terabytes data in one account. As you know you
can create multiple blob storage accounts, so definitely you can store multiple hundreds of terabytes
data with Windows Azure Blob Storage.
We don’t require taking tension about the backup of the data which is stored on blob storage. It is
because it automatically takes the backed up data. You can increase your storage as per requirement
and you need to pay only which you have used and what you have used.
One more thing, that you don’t need to take headache about how to manage your data, your VM or
any other things; actually Windows Azure manages everything automatically.
You can use Blob Storage as REST API and can use with any language like Java, .NET, etc. Actually
technology doesn’t matter with blob storage. It means all kinds of client can be accessible to this
storage.
Answer
There are many regions that people want to go with Microsoft Windows Azure:
Flexibility: Windows Azure supports wide range of Operating System that makes it reachable
to wide range of customers. It also supports different kinds of programming language like PHP,
.NET, JAVA, etc. You can use different kinds of frameworks and tools for building your Apps. So,
basically it provides us flexibility to choose existing one which will help us to create variety of
applications with Windows Azure.
Extendable: Windows Azure easily integrates with your existing environment using largest
network with secure private connectivity. It also provides database, storage which is extendable
on demand. Windows Azure can run with your data center.
Scalable: You can scale up and down your services as per your demand. Services, storage and
performance also will be same if you scale up or down. So, small client can take benefit of
Windows Azure and their services.
Protection: Everyone is worried about their data. They need protection for their data, nobody
can rely on some vendor for their data. Windows Azure has launched Azure Government for
believing you that your data is secure with Windows Azure. It commits for securing, protecting
and privacy of your data.
Trusted: Today Windows Azure is used by top clients worldwide. They are using Windows
Azure Services for a long time and they believe in it.
Answer
Microsoft Azure Mobile Service gives you the power to create a cloud service mobile application.
This will make your work more flexible and gives your application more portability in an efficient way.
This is a short introduction of Azure Mobile service. You will get to know, how to create and integrate
new mobile service in your new or existing application. So let’s get crack in Azure Mobile Service with
Universal Windows Platform.
Answer
To use Azure Storage, you just need to have an Azure Storage Account. Using this account you can
access the service of the Azure Storage. Actually Azure Storage provides two types of the storage
account.
BLOB STORAGE: It can store any type of data; data can be a document file, media file, exe or dll,
images, text file or any other data file. So, basically it is used for storing the objects. So, as the
definition says, we can store large amount of the unstructured data into the blob storage.
TABLE STORAGE: It is like a table inside the SQL Server. So, it is used to store the structured data.
Table storage is a NoSQL key-attribute data store. It means every data stored into the table is stored
with typed property name. It is very fast when you are working with large number of data. It doesn’t
use schema for developing the table.
QUEUE STORAGE: Sometimes, it is required to transfer the data in the format of the message over
the internet between the two cloud services. In that scenario we prefer to use the queue storage. You
can create large number of the queues to process your data. Every queue contains large number of
the message and every message size may be up to 64 KB.
Answer
The migration Assistant tool will help to analyze your IIS installation and identify which sites can be
migrated to the cloud, highlighting any elements which cannot be migrated or are unsupported on
the platform.
Once analyzed this tool will also create websites and databases provided under given azure
subscription.
Answer
Azure Mobile Engagement is a SaaS-delivered, data-driven user engagement platform that enables
real-time fine-grain user segmentation, app user analytics, and contextually-aware smart push
notifications and in-app messaging across all connected devices.
With Azure Mobile Engagement, Application publishers and marketing professionals can create
cutting edge interactions like the following,
Azure Mobile Engagement is available across all major mobile platforms including Android, iOS and
Windows.
Answer
WordPress is Web software you can use to create a Web sites, blog, or apps. The core software is
built by hundreds of community volunteers, and when you’re ready for more, there are thousands of
plugins and themes available to transform your site into almost anything you can imagine.
We can install WordPress on our local computers to develop Web sites, blogs, or theme plugins; or
we can install it on the cloud where everyone can access our Web sites.
Installing and Running WordPress.
Login to manage.windowsazure.com to access you Azure portal.
Click on CREATE A WEB APP or +NEW button in the portal.
You can select QUICK CREATE and then upload it from your computer.
On clicking Gallery the model window will appear where you can find WordPress by scrolling (or
navigating to BLOGS, then WordPress).
Select the WordPress and click next. Fill the required Information.
Fill the URL, database, region and deployment setting details.
Click on Next: Fill in information about MySQL database. Azure will choose the unique name of
your database and region to place the database physically.
Answer
Azure HDInsight deploys and provisions Apache Hadoop clusters in the cloud, providing a software
framework designed to manage, analyze, and report on big data.
With the September 2015 release of HDInsight, now customers configure these clusters to run using
both a Windows Server Operating System as well as an Ubuntu based Linux Operating System.
HDInsight on Linux enables even broader support for Hadoop ecosystem users to run in HDInsight
providing you even greater choice of preferred tools and applications for running Hadoop
workloads.
Both Linux and Windows clusters in HDInsight are built on the same standard Hadoop distribution
and offer the same set of rich capabilities.
Answer
To create an Azure HDInsight Cluster, open the Azure portal then click on New, Data Services, then
HDInsight.
b. HBase is an Apache open-source NoSQL database built on Hadoop that provides random
access and strong consistency for large amounts of unstructured data.
The next step is to add a cluster name, select the cluster size, add a password, select a storage and
click on create HDInsight cluster.
Once the cluster has been created, its jobs and contents can be viewed by remote connection. To
enable remote connection to the cluster, use the following procedure:
1. Click HDINSIGHT on the left pane. You will see a list of deployed HDInsight clusters.
2. Click the HDInsight cluster that you want to connect to.
3. From the top of the page, click CONFIGURATION.
4. From the bottom of the page, click ENABLE REMOTE.
In the Configure Remote Desktop wizard, enter a user name and password for the remote desktop.
Note that the user name must be different from the one used to create the cluster (admin by default
with the Quick Create option). Enter an expiration date in the EXPIRES ON box.
Answer
Text Analytics API is a suite of text analytics web services built with Azure Machine Learning. The API
can be used to analyze unstructured text for tasks such as sentiment analysis and key phrase
extraction.
The API returns a numeric score between 0 & 1. Scores close to 1 indicate positive sentiment, while
scores close to 0 indicate negative sentiment.
The advantage of this API is that a new model need not be designed and trained, the user only needs
to bring the data and call the service to get the sentiment results.
However, because this is only the initial release of this service only English is supported right now.