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Discover more resources for these services: Websites /enus/documentation/services/websites/

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Discover more resources: .NET /enus/develop/net/

Introducing Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure is Microsoft's application platform for the public cloud. The goal of this article is to give you a foundation for understanding the
fundamentals of Azure, even if you don't know anything about cloud computing.
How to read this article
Azure is growing all the time so it's easy to get overloaded. The basic services are listed earlier in the paper. Start with just those, then go through the
additional services. That doesn't mean you can't use just the additional services by themselves, but the basic services make up the core of an application
running in Azure.
Give feedback
Your feedback is important. This article should give you an effective overview of Azure. If it does not, tell us in the comments section at the bottom of the
page. Give some detail on what you expected to see and how to improve the article.

Table of Contents
Basic Services The Components of Azure Management Portal Compute Data Management Networking Developer Services
Additional Services Identity and Access Mobile Backup Messaging and Integration Compute Assistance Performance Big Compute and Data
Media Commerce
Getting Started

The Components of Azure

Azure groups services into categories in the Management Portal and on various visual aids like the What Is Windows Azure Infographic
http://azure.microsoft.com/enus/documentation/infographics/azure/. The Management Portal is what you use to manage most but not all services in
Azure.
This paper will use a different organization to talk about services based on similar function, and to call out important subservices that are part of larger
ones.

Figure: Azure provides Internetaccessible application services running in Azure datacenters.

Management Portal
Azure has a web interface called the Management Portal http://manage.windowsazure.com that allows administrators to access and administer most, but
not all Azure features. Microsoft typically releases the newer UI portal in beta before retiring an older one. The newer one is called the "Azure Preview
Portal" https://portal.azure.com/.

There is typically a long overlap when both portals are active. While core services will appear in both portals, not all functionality may be available in both.
Newer services may show up in the newer portal first and older services and functionality may only exist in the older one. The message here is that if you
don't find something in the older portal, check the newer one and viceversa.

Compute
One of the most basic things a cloud platform does is execute applications. Azure provides these options:
1. Virtual Machines gives you control over your own virtual machine, including the operating system.
2. Websites offers a range of applications, frameworks, and templates for you to build large, scalable web applications and presence websites quickly, and
then efficiently manage development, test, and operations.
3. Cloud Services is a platformasaservice PaaS option tuned to create highly scalable and fault resistant applications, but with more flexibility than
Websites.
Each of the Azure execution models has its own role to play.
You can use these technologies separately or combine them as needed to create the right foundation for your application. The approach you choose
depends on what problems you're trying to solve.

Azure Virtual Machines

Figure: Azure Virtual Machines gives you full control over virtual machine instances in the cloud.

The ability to create a virtual machine on demand, whether from a standard image or from one you supply, can be very useful. This approach, commonly
known as Infrastructure as a Service IaaS, is what Azure Virtual Machines provides. Figure 2 shows a combination of how an Virtual Machine VM runs and
how to create one from a VHD.
To create a VM, you specify which VHD to use and the VM's size. You then pay for the time that the VM is running. You pay by the minute and only while
it's running, though there is a minimal storage charge for keeping the VHD available. Azure offers a gallery of stock VHDs called "images" that contain a
bootable operating system to start from. These include Microsoft and partner options, such as Windows Server and Linux, SQL Server, Oracle and many
more. You're free to create VHDs and images, and then upload them yourself. You can even upload VHDs that contain only data and then access them
from your running VMs.
Wherever the VHD comes from, you can persistently store any changes made while a VM is running. The next time you create a VM from that VHD, things
pick up where you left off. The VHDs that back the Virtual Machines are stored in Azure Storage blobs, which we talk about later. That means you get
redundancy to ensure your VMs wont disappear due to hardware and disk failures. It's also possible to copy the changed VHD out of Azure, then run it
locally.
Your application runs within one or more Virtual Machines, depending on how you created it before or decide to create it from scratch now.
This quite general approach to cloud computing can be used to address many different problems.
Virtual Machine Scenarios
1. Dev/Test You might use them to create an inexpensive development and test platform that you can shut down when you've finished using it. You
might also create and run applications that use whatever languages and libraries you like. Those applications can use any of the data management
options that Azure provides, and you can also choose to use SQL Server or another DBMS running in one or more virtual machines.
2. Move Applications to Azure Liftandshift "Liftandshift" refers to moving you application much like you'd use a forklift to move a large object.
You "lift" the VHD from your local datacenter, and "shift" it to Azure and run it there. You will typically have to do some work to remove dependencies
on other systems. If there are too many, you may choose option 3 instead.
3. Extend your Datacenter Use Azure VMs as an extension of your onpremises datacenter, running SharePoint or other applications. To support this,
it's possible to create Windows domains in the cloud by running Active Directory in Azure VMs. You can use Azure Virtual Network mentioned later to
tie you local network and your network in Azure together.

Websites

SALES 08000229265

MY ACCOUNT /ENUS/ACCOUNT/

PORTAL HTTPS://MANAGE.WINDOWSAZURE.COM

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FREE TRIAL

Features

Pricing /enus/pricing/

Marketplace /enus/marketplace/

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Blog /blog/

Community

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trial/

Figure: Azure Websites runs a website application in the cloud without having to manage the underlying web server.
One of the most common things that people do in the cloud is run websites and web applications. Azure Virtual Machines allows this, but it still leaves you
with the responsibility of administering one or more VMs and the underlying operating systems. Cloud services web roles can do this, but deploying and
maintaining them still takes administrative work. What if you just want a website where somebody else takes care of the administrative work for you?
This is exactly what Azure Websites provides. This compute model offers a managed web environment using the Azure Management portal as well as APIs.
You can move an existing website application into Azure Websites unchanged, or you can create a new one directly in the cloud. Once a website is running,
you can add or remove instances dynamically, relying on Azure Websites to load balance requests across them. Azure Websites offers both a shared option,
where your website runs in a virtual machine with other sites, and a standard option that allows a site to run in its own VM. The standard option also lets
you increase the size computing power of your instances if needed.
For development, Websites supports .NET, PHP, Node.js, Java and Python along with SQL Database and MySQL from ClearDB, a Microsoft partner for
relational storage. It also provides builtin support for several popular applications, including WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. The goal is to provide a low
cost, scalable, and broadly useful platform for creating websites and web applications in the public cloud.
WebSite Scenarios
Websites is intended to be useful for corporations, developers, and web design agencies. For corporations, it's an easytomanage, scalable, highly secure,
and highly available solution for running presence websites. When you need to set up a Website, its best to start with Azure Websites and proceed to
Cloud Services once you need a feature thats not available in Websites. See the end of the "Compute" section for more links that can help you to choose
between the options.

Cloud Services

Figure: Azure Cloud Services provides a place to run highly scalable custom code on a Platform as a Service PaaS environment
Suppose you want to build a cloud application that can support lots of simultaneous users, doesn't require much administration, and never goes down. You
might be an established software vendor, for example, that's decided to embrace Software as a Service SaaS by building a version of one of your
applications in the cloud. Or you might be a startup creating a consumer application that you expect will grow fast. If you're building on Azure, which
execution model should you use?
Azure Websites allows creating this kind of web application, but there are some constraints. You don't have administrative access, for example, which
means that you can't install arbitrary software. Azure Virtual Machines gives you lots of flexibility, including administrative access, and you certainly can use
it to build a very scalable application, but you'll have to handle many aspects of reliability and administration yourself. What you'd like is an option that
gives you the control you need but also handles most of the work required for reliability and administration.
This is exactly what's provided by Azure Cloud Services. This technology is designed expressly to support scalable, reliable, and lowadmin applications, and
it's an example of what's commonly called Platform as a Service PaaS. To use it, you create an application using the technology you choose, such as C#,
Java, PHP, Python, Node.js, or something else. Your code then executes in virtual machines referred to as instances running a version of Windows Server.
But these VMs are distinct from the ones you create with Azure Virtual Machines. For one thing, Azure itself manages them, doing things like installing
operating system patches and automatically rolling out new patched images. This implies that your application shouldn't maintain state in web or worker
role instances; it should instead be kept in one of the Azure data management options described in the next section. Azure also monitors these VMs,
restarting any that fail. You can set cloud services to automatically create more or fewer instances in response to demand. This allows you to handle
increased usage, and then scale back so you arent paying as much when there is less usage.
You have two roles to choose from when you create an instance, both based on Windows Server. The main difference between the two is that an instance
of a web role runs IIS, while an instance of a worker role does not. Both are managed in the same way, however, and it's common for an application to use
both. For example, a web role instance might accept requests from users, then pass them to a worker role instance for processing. To scale your application
up or down, you can request that Azure create more instances of either role or shut down existing instances. And similar to Azure Virtual Machines, you're
charged only for the time that each web or worker role instance is running.
Cloud Services Scenarios
Cloud Services are ideal to support massive scale out when you need more control over the platform than provided by Azure Websites but dont need
control over the underlying operating system.

Choosing a Compute Model

The page Azure Websites, Cloud Services and Virtual Machines comparison http://azure.microsoft.com/enus/documentation/articles/choosewebsite
cloudservicevm/ provides more detailed information on how to choose a Compute model.

Data Management
Applications need data, and different kinds of applications need different kinds of data. Because of this, Azure provides several different ways to store and
manage data. Azure provides many storage options, but all are designed for very durable storage. With any of these options, there are always 3 copies of
your data kept in sync across and Azure datacenter 6 if you allow Azure to use georedundancy to back up to another datacenter at least 300 miles away.

In Virtual Machines
The ability to run SQL Server or another DBMS in a VM created with Azure Virtual Machines has already been mentioned. Realize that this option isn't
limited to relational systems; you're also free to run NoSQL technologies such as MongoDB and Cassandra. Running your own database system is
straightforwardit replicates what we're used to in our own datacentersbut it also requires handling the administration of that DBMS. In other options,
Azure handles more or all of the administration for you.
Again, the state of the Virtual Machine and any additional data disk you create or upload are backed by blob storage which we talk about later.

Azure SQL Database

Figure: Azure SQL Database provides a managed relational database service in the cloud.
For relational storage, Azure provides the feature SQL Database. Don't let the naming fool you. This is different than an typical SQL Database provided by
SQL Server running on top of Windows Server.
Formerly called SQL Azure, Azure SQL Database provides all of the key features of a relational database management system, including atomic transactions,
concurrent data access by multiple users with data integrity, ANSI SQL queries, and a familiar programming model. Like SQL Server, SQL Database can be
accessed using Entity Framework, ADO.NET, JDBC, and other familiar data access technologies. It also supports most of the TSQL language, along with SQL
Server tools such as SQL Server Management Studio. For anybody familiar with SQL Server or another relational database, using SQL Database is
straightforward.
But SQL Database isn't just a DBMS in the cloudit's a PaaS service. You still control your data and who can access it, but SQL Database takes care of the
administrative grunt work, such as managing the hardware infrastructure and automatically keeping the database and operating system software up to
date. SQL Database also provides high availability, automatic backups, pointintime restore capabilities, and can replicate copies across geographical
regions.
There is also a Premium option that you can pay a little more for so you can have your own dedicated server underneath. With the Standard option, the
database runs on shared hardware, which can throttle your database queries if you happen to be on a particularly busy server.
Scenarios for SQL Database
If you're creating an Azure application using any of the compute models that needs relational storage, SQL Database can be a good option. Applications
running outside the cloud can also use this service, though, so there are plenty of other scenarios. For instance, data stored in SQL Database can be
accessed from different client systems, including desktops, laptops, tablets, and phones. And because it provides builtin high availability through
replication, using SQL Database can help minimize downtime.

Tables

Figure: Azure Tables provides a flat NoSQL way to store data.

This feature is sometimes called different terms as it's part of a larger feature called "Azure Storage". If you see "tables", "Azure tables" or "storage tables",
it's all the same thing.
And don't be confused by the name: this technology doesn't provide relational storage. In fact, it's an example of a NoSQL approach called a key/value
store. Azure Tables let an application store properties of various types, such as strings, integers, and dates. An application can then retrieve a group of
properties by providing a unique key for that group. While complex operations like joins aren't supported, tables offer fast access to typed data. They're
also very scalable, with a single table able to hold as much as a terabyte of data. And matching their simplicity, tables are usually less expensive to use than
SQL Database's relational storage.
Scenarios for Tables
Suppose you want to create an Azure application that needs fast access to typed data, maybe lots of it, but doesn't need to perform complex SQL queries
on this data. For example, imagine you're creating a consumer application that needs to store customer profile information for each user. Your app is going
to be very popular, so you need to allow for lots of data, but you won't do much with this data beyond storing it, then retrieving it in simple ways. This is
exactly the kind of scenario where Azure Tables makes sense.

Blobs

Figure: Azure Blobs provides unstructured binary data.

Azure Blobs again "Blob Storage" and just "Storage Blobs" are the same thing is designed to store unstructured binary data. Like Tables, Blobs provides
inexpensive storage, and a single blob can be as large as 1TB one terabyte. Azure applications can also use Azure drives, which let blobs provide persistent
storage for a Windows file system mounted in an Azure instance. The application sees ordinary Windows files, but the contents are actually stored in a blob.
Blob storage is used by many other Azure features including Virtual Machines, so it can certainly handle your workloads too.
Scenarios for Blobs
An application that stores video, massive files, or other binary information can use blobs for simple, cheap storage. Blobs are also commonly used in
conjunction with other services like Content Delivery Network, which we will talk about later.

Import / Export

Figure: Azure Import / Export provides the ability to ship a physical hard drive to or from Azure for faster and cheaper bulk data import or export.
Sometimes you want to move a lot of data into Azure. That would take a long time, perhaps days, and use a lot of bandwidth. In these cases you can use
Azure Import/Export, which allows you to ship Bitlockerencrypted 3.5" SATA hard drives directly to Azure data centers, where Microsoft will transfer the
data into blob storage for you. After the upload is completed, Microsoft ships the drives back to you. You can also request that large amounts of data from
Blob Storage be exported onto hard drives and sent back to you via mail.
Scenarios for Import / Export
Large Data Migration Anytime you have large amounts of data Terabytes that you want to upload to Azure, the Import/Export service is often much
faster and perhaps cheaper than transferring it over the internet. Once the data is in blobs, you can process it into other forms such as Table storage or
an SQL Database.
Archived Data Recovery You can use Import/Export to have Microsoft transfer large amounts of data stored in Azure Blob Storage to a storage device
that you send and then have that device delivered back to a location you desire. Because this will take some time, it's not a good option for disaster
recovery. It's best for archived data that you don't need quick access to.

Azure File Service

Figure: Azure File Services provides SMB \\server\share paths for applications running in the cloud.
Onpremises, its common to use have large amounts of file storage accessible through the Server Message Block SMB protocol using a \\Server\share
format. Azure now has a service that allows you to use this protocol in the cloud. Applications running in Azure can use it to share files between VMs using
familiar file system APIs like ReadFile and WriteFile. In addition, the files can also be accessed at the same time via a REST interface, which allows you to
access the shares from onpremises when you also set up a virtual network. Azure Files is built on top of the blob service, so it inherits the same availability,
durability, scalability, and georedundancy built into Azure Storage.
Scenarios for Azure Files
Migrating existing apps to the cloud Its easier to migrate onpremises applications to the cloud that use file shares to share data between parts of the
application. Each VM connects to the file share and then it can read and write files just like it would against an onpremises file share.
Shared Application Settings A common pattern for distributed applications is to have configuration files in a centralized location where they can be
accessed from many different virtual machines. These configuration files can be stored in an Azure File share, and read by all application instances. The
settings can also be managed via the REST interface, which allows worldwide access to the configuration files.
Diagnostic Share You can share can save and share diagnostic files like logs, metrics, and crash dumps. Having these files available through both the
SMB and REST interface allows applications to use a variety of analysis tools for processing and analyzing the diagnostic data.
Dev/Test/Debug When developers or administrators are working on virtual machines in the cloud, they often need a set of tools or utilities. Installing
and distributing these utilities on each virtual machine is time consuming. With Azure Files, a developer or administrator can store their favorite tools on
a file share and connect to them from any virtual machine.

Networking
Azure runs today in many datacenters spread across the world. When you run an application or store data, you can select one or more of these datacenters
to use. You can also connect to these datacenters in various ways using the services below.

Virtual Network

Figure: Virtual Networks provides a private network in the cloud so different services can talk to each other, or to onpremises resources if you set up a
VPN connection.a crosspremises connection.
One useful way to use a public cloud is to treat it as an extension of your own datacenter.
Because you can create VMs on demand, then remove them and stop paying when they're no longer needed, you can have computing power only when
you want it. And since Azure Virtual Machines lets you create VMs running SharePoint, Active Directory, and other familiar onpremises software, this
approach can work with the applications you already have.
To make this really useful, though, your users ought to be able to treat these applications as if they were running in your own datacenter. This is exactly
what Azure Virtual Network allows. Using a VPN gateway device, an administrator can set up a virtual private network VPN between your local network
and your VMs that are deployed to a virtual network in Azure. Because you assign your own IP v4 addresses to the cloud VMs, they appear to be on your
own network. Users in your organization can access the applications those VMs contain as if they were running locally.
For more information about planning and creating a virtual network that works for you, see Virtual Network
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/azure/jj156007.aspx.

Express Route

Figure: ExpressRoute uses an Azure Virtual Network, but routes connections through faster dedicated lines instead of the public Internet.
If you need more bandwidth or security than an Azure Virtual Network connection can provide, you can look into ExpressRoute. In some cases,
ExpressRoute can also save you money. Youll still need a virtual network in Azure, but the link between Azure and your site uses a dedicated connection
that does not go over the public Internet. In order to use this service, youll need to have an agreement with either a network service provider, or an
exchange provider.
Setting it up an ExpressRoute connection requires more time and planning, so you might want to start with a sitetosite VPN, then migrate to an
ExpressRoute connection.
For more information about ExpressRoute, see ExpressRoute Technical Overview http://msdn.microsoft.com/enus/library/azure/dn606309.aspx.

Traffic Manager

Figure : Azure Traffic Manager allows you to route global traffic to your service based on intelligent rules.
If your Azure application is running in multiple datacenters, you can use Azure Traffic Manager to route requests from users intelligently across instances of
the application. You can also route traffic to services not running in Azure as long as they are accessible from the internet.
An Azure application with users in just a single part of the world might run in only one Azure datacenter. An application with users scattered around the
world, however, is more likely to run in multiple datacenters, maybe even all of them. In this second situation, you face a problem: How do you intelligently
direct users to application instances? Most of the time, you probably want each user to access the datacenter closest to her, since it will likely give her the
best response time. But what if that instance of the application is overloaded or unavailable? In this case, it would be nice to direct her request
automatically to another datacenter. This is exactly what's done by Azure Traffic Manager.
The owner of an application defines rules that specify how requests from users should be directed to datacenters, then relies on Traffic Manager to carry
out these rules. For example, users might normally be directed to the closest Azure datacenter, but get sent to another one when the response time from
their default datacenter exceeds the response time from other datacenters. For globally distributed applications with many users, having a builtin service
to handle problems like these is useful.
Traffic manager uses Directory Name Service DNS to route users to service endpoints, but further traffic does not go through Traffic Manager once that
connection is made. This keeps Traffic Manager from being a bottleneck that might slow down your service communications.

Developer Services
Azure offers a number of tools to help developers and IT Professional create and maintain applications in the cloud.

Azure SDK
Back in 2008, the very first prerelease version of Azure supported only .NET development. Today, however, you can create Azure applications in pretty
much any language. Microsoft currently provides languagespecific SDKs for .NET, Java, PHP, Node.js, Ruby, and Python. There's also a general Azure SDK
that provides basic support for any language, such as C++.
These SDKs help you build, deploy, and manage Azure applications. They're available either from www.microsoftazure.com http://azure.microsoft.com/en
us/downloads/ or GitHub, and they can be used with Visual Studio and Eclipse. Azure also offers command line tools that developers can use with any
editor or development environment, including tools for deploying applications to Azure from Linux and Macintosh systems.

Along with helping you build Azure applications, these SDKs also provide client libraries that help you create software that uses Azure services. For
example, you might build an application that reads and writes Azure blobs, or create a tool that deploys Azure applications through the Azure management
interface.

Visual Studio Online

Visual Studio Online is an marketing name covering a number services which help to develop applications in the Azure.
To avoid confusion It does not provide a hosted or Webbased version of Visual Studio. You still need your local running copy of Visual Studio. But it
provides many other tools which can be very helpful.
It does include a hosted source control system called Team Foundation Service, which offers version control and work item tracking. You can even use Git
for version control if you prefer that. And you can vary the source control system you use by project. You can create unlimited private team projects
accessible from anywhere in the world.
Visual Studio Online provides a load testing service. You can execute load tests created in Visual Studio on VMs in the cloud. You specify the total number
of users you want to load test with, and Visual Studio Online will automatically determine how many agents are needed, spin up the required virtual
machines and execute your load tests. If you're an MSDN subscriber, you get thousands of free userminutes of load testing each month.
Visual Studio Online also offers a service called Application Insights, which gives you an analysis of your entire application. It provides stats on performance
and how your application is being used. If you are already using System Center Operations Manager, it can also hook to it and raise alerts when issues arise.
Additionally, there is support for agile development with features like continuous integration builds, Kanban boards and virtual team rooms.
Visual Studio Online Scenarios
Visual Studio Online is a good option for companies that need to collaborate worldwide and don't already have the infrastructure in place to do so. You can
get setup in minutes, choose a source control system and start writing code and building that day. The team tools provide a place for coordination and
collaboration and the additional tools provide the analysis needed to test and tune your application quickly.
But organizations that already have an onpremises system can test new projects on Visual Studio Online to see if it's more efficient.

Automation
No one likes to waste time doing the same manual processes over and over. Azure Automation provides a way for you to create, monitor, manage, and
deploy resources in your Azure environment.
Automation uses "runbooks", which uses Windows PowerShell workflows vs. just regular PowerShell under the covers. Runbooks are meant to be
executed without user interaction. PowerShell workflows allows the state of a script to be saved at checkpoints along the way. Then if a failure occurs, you
don't have to start a script from the beginning. You can restart it at the last checkpoint. This saves you a lot of work trying to make the script handle every
possible failure.
Automation Scenarios
Azure Automation is a good choice to automate the manual, longrunning, errorprone, and frequently repeated tasks in Azure.

API Management
Creating and publishing Application Programmer Interfaces APIs on the internet is a common way to provide services to applications. If those services are
resellable for example, weather data, an organization can allow other third parties to access those same services for a fee. As you scale to more partners,
you'll usually need to optimize and control access. Some partners may even need the data in a different format.
Azure API Management makes it easy for organizations to publish APIs to partners, employees and thirdparty developers securely and at scale. It provides
a different API endpoint and acts as a proxy to call the actual endpoint whild providing services like caching, transformation, throttling, access control, and
analytics aggregation.
API Management Scenarios
Let's say your company has a set of devices that all need to call back to a central service to get data for example, a shipping company that has devices in
every truck on the road. Certainly the company will want to set up a system to track it's own trucks so it can reliably predict and update delivery times. It
can know how many trucks it has and plan appropriately. Each truck will need a device that calls back to a central location with it's positioning and speed
data, and perhaps more.

A customer of the shipping company would probably also benefit from getting this positioning data. The customer could use it to know how far products
have to travel, where they get stuck, how much they paying along certain routes if combined with what they paid to ship. If the shipping company
aggregates this data already, many customers might pay for it. But then the shipping company needs to provide a way to give customers the data. Once
they provide access to customers, they may not have control over how often the data is queried. They will have to provide rules about who can access what
data. All of these rules would have to be built into their external API. This is where API Management can help.

Identity and Access

Working with identity is part of most applications. Knowing who a user is lets an application decide how it should interact with that user. Azure provides
services to help track identity as well as integrate it with identity stores you may already be using.

Active Directory
Like most directory services, Azure Active Directory stores information about users and the organizations they belong to. It lets users log in, then supplies
them with tokens they can present to applications to prove their identity. It also allows synchronizing user information with Windows Server Active
Directory running on premises in your local network. While the mechanisms and data formats used by Azure Active Directory aren't identical with those
used in Windows Server Active Directory, the functions it performs are quite similar.
It's important to understand that Azure Active Directory is designed primarily for use by cloud applications. It can be used by applications running on
Azure, for example, or on other cloud platforms. It's also used by Microsoft's own cloud applications, such as those in Office 365. If you want to extend your
datacenter into the cloud using Azure Virtual Machines and Azure Virtual Network, however, Azure Active Directory isn't the right choice. Instead, you'll
want to run Windows Server Active Directory in Virtual Machnes.
To let applications access the information it contains, Azure Active Directory provides a RESTful API called Azure Active Directory Graph. This API lets
applications running on any platform access directory objects and the relationships among them. For example, an authorized application might use this API
to learn about a user, the groups he belongs to, and other information. Applications can also see relationships between userstheir social graphletting
them work more intelligently with the connections among people.
Another capability of this service, Azure Active Directory Access Control, makes it easier for an application to accept identity information from Facebook,
Google, Windows Live ID, and other popular identity providers. Rather than requiring the application to understand the diverse data formats and protocols
used by each of these providers, Access Control translates all of them into a single common format. It also lets an application accept logins from one or
more Active Directory domains. For example, a vendor providing a SaaS application might use Azure Active Directory Access Control to give users in each
of its customers single signon to the application.
Directory services are a core underpinning of onpremises computing. It shouldn't be surprising that they're also important in the cloud.

MultiFactor Authentication

Figure: MultiFactor Authentication provides the functionality for your application to verify more than one form of identification
Security is always important. Multifactor authentication MFA helps insure that only users themselves access their accounts. MFA also known as two
factor authentication or "2FA" requires users provide two of these three methods of identity verification for user signins and transactions.
Something you know typically a password
Something you have a trusted device that is not easily duplicated, like a phone
Something you are biometrics
So when a user signs in, you can require them to also verify their identity with a mobile app, a phone call or a text message in combination with their
password. By default, Azure Active Directory supports the use of passwords as its only authentication method for user signins. You can use MFA together
with Azure AD or with custom applications and directories by using the MFA SDK. You can also use it together with onpremises applications by using
MultiFactor Authentication Server.
MFA Scenarios
Login protection on sensitive accounts such as bank logins and source code access where unauthorized entry could have a high financial or intellectual
property cost.

Mobile
If you are creating an app for a mobile device, Azure can help store data in the cloud, authenticate users, and send push notifications without you having to
write a great deal of custom code.
While you can certainly build the backend for a mobile app using Virtual Machines, Cloud Services or Websites, you can spend much less time writing the
underlying service components by using Azure's services.

Mobile Services

Figure : Mobile Services provides functionality commonly required by applications which interface with mobile devices.

Figure : Mobile Services provides functionality commonly required by applications which interface with mobile devices.
Azure Mobile Services provides many useful functions that can save you time when building a backend for a Mobile application. It allows you to do simple
provisioning and management of data stored in a SQL Database. With serverside code you can easily use additional data storage options like blob storage
or MongoDB. Mobile Services provides support for notifications, though in certain cases you can instead use Notification Hubs as described next. The
service also has a REST API that your mobile application can call to get work done. Mobile Services also provides the ability to authenticate users through
Microsoft and Active Directory as well as other wellknown identity providers like Facebook, Twitter, and Google.
You can use other Azure Services like Service Bus and worker roles, and connect to onpremises systems. You can even consume 3rd party AddOns from
the Azure Store like SendGrid for email to provide additional functionality.
Native client libraries for Android, iOS, HTML/JavaScript, Windows Phone, and Windows Store make it easier to develop for apps on all major mobile
platforms. A REST API enables you to use Mobile Services data and authentication functionality with apps on different platforms. A single mobile service
can back multiple client apps so you can provide a consistent user experience across devices.
Because Azure supports massive scale already, you can handle the traffic as your app becomes more popular. Monitoring and logging are supported to
help troubleshoot issues and manage performance.

Notification Hubs

Figure : Notification Hubs provides functionality commonly required by applications which interface with mobile devices.
While you can write code to do notifications in Azure Mobile Services, Notification Hubs is optimized to broadcast millions of highly personalized push
notifications within minutes. You don't have to worry about details like mobile carrier or device manufacturer. You can target individual or millions of users
with a single API call.

Notification Hubs is designed to work with any backend. You can use Azure Mobile Services, a custom backend in the cloud running on any provider or an
onpremises backend.
Notification Hub Scenarios If you were writing a mobile game where players took turns, you may need to notify player 2 that player 1 finished her turn. If
that's all you need to do, you could just use Mobile Services. But if you had 100,000 users player your game and you want to send a time sensitive free offer
to everyone, Notification Hubs is the better choice.
You can send breaking news, sporting events, and product announcement notifications to millions of users with low latency. Enterprises can notify their
employees about new time sensitive communications, such as sales leads, so employees dont have to constantly check email or other applications to stay
informed. You can also send onetimepasswords required for multifactor authentication.

Backup
Every enterprise needs to backup and restore data. You can use Azure to backup and restore your application whether in the cloud or onpremises. Azure
offers different options to help depending on the type of backup.

Site Recovery
Azure Site Recovery formerly HyperV Recovery Manager can help you protect important applications by coordinating the replication and recovery of
HyperV images across sites. You can back up to your own secondary site, a hosters site, or use Azure and avoid the expense and complexity of building
and managing your own secondary location. Azure encrypts data and communications and you have the option enable encryption for data atrest too.
It monitors the health of your services continuously and helps automate the orderly recovery of services in the event of a site outage at the primary
datacenter. Virtual machines can be brought up in an orchestrated fashion to help restore service quickly, even for complex multitier workloads.
Site Recovery works with existing technologies such as HyperV Replica, System Center, and SQL Server AlwaysOn.

Azure Backup

Figure: Azure Backup backs up data from onpremises Windows Servers into the cloud.
Azure Backup backs up data from onpremises servers running Windows Server into the cloud. You can manage your backups directly from the backup
tools in Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 Essentials, or System Center 2012 Data Protection Manager. Alternatively, you can use a specialized
backup agent.
Data is safer because backups are encrypted before transmission and stored encrypted in Azure and protected by a certificate that you upload. The service
uses the same redundant and highly available data protection found in Azure Storage. You can back up files and folders on a regular schedule or
immediately, running either full or incremental backups. After data is backed up to the cloud, authorized users can easily recover backups to any server. It
also offers configurable data retention policies, data compression, and data transfer throttling so you can manage the cost to store and transfer data.
Scenarios for Azure Backup
If you already using Windows Server or System Center, Azure backup is a natural solution for backing up your servers file system, virtual machines, and SQL
Server databases. It works with encrypted, sparse and compressed files. There are some limitations, so you should check the Azure Backup prerequisites
http://technet.microsoft.com/enus/library/dn296608.aspx first.

Messaging and Integration

No matter what it's doing, code frequently needs to interact with other code. In some situations, all that's needed is basic queued messaging. In other
cases, more complex interactions are required. Azure provides a few different ways to solve these problems. Figure 5 illustrates the choices.

Queues

Figure: Queues allow loose coupling between parts of an

application and facilitate scaling.

Queuing is a simple idea: One application places a message in a queue, and that message is eventually read by another application. If your application
needs just this straightforward service, Azure Queues might be the best choice.
Because of the way the Azure grew over time, Azure Storage Queues and Service Bus Queues provide similar queuing services. The reasons why you would
want to use one over the other are covered in the fairly technical paper http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/azure/hh767287.aspx. In many scenarios, either
will work.
Queue Scenarios
One common use of queues today is to let a web role instance communicate with a worker role instance within the same Cloud Services application.
For example, suppose you create an Azure application for video sharing. The application consists of PHP code running in a web role that lets users upload
and watch videos, together with a worker role implemented in C# that translates uploaded video into various formats.
When a web role instance gets a new video from a user, it can store the video in a blob, then send a message to a worker role via a queue telling it where
to find this new video. A worker role instanceit doesn't matter which onewill then read the message from the queue and carry out the required video
translations in the background.
Structuring an application in this way allows asynchronous processing, and it also makes the application easier to scale, since the number of web role
instances and worker role instances can be varied independently. You can also use the queue size as a trigger to scale the number of worker roles up and
down. Too high, and you add more roles. When it gets lower, you can reduce the number of running roles to save money.
You can use this same pattern between many different parts of your application even if they don't use web and worker roles. It allows you to scale the parts
on either side of the queue up and down as demand and processing time requires.

Service Bus
Whether they run in the cloud, in your data center, on a mobile device, or somewhere else, applications need to interact. The goal of Azure Service Bus is to
let applications running pretty much anywhere exchange data.
In addition to the queues onetoone described earlier, Service Bus also provides to other communication methods.

Figure: Service Bus Relay allows communication between

applications on different sides of a firewall.

Service Bus allows direct communication through its relay service, providing a secure way to interact through firewalls. Service Bus relays enable
applications to communicate by exchanging messages through an endpoint hosted in the cloud, rather than locally.
Service Bus Relay Scenarios
Applications that communicate through Service Bus might be Azure applications or software running on some other cloud platform. They can also be
applications running outside the cloud, however. For example, think of an airline that implements reservation services in computers inside its own
datacenter. The airline needs to expose these services to many clients, including checkin kiosks in airports, reservation agent terminals, and maybe even
customers' phones. It might use Service Bus to do this, creating loosely coupled interactions among the various applications.

Figure: Service Bus Topics allows multiple apps to post messages and other applications to subscribe to receive messages that meet a specific criteria.

Service Bus provides a Publishandsubscribe mechanism called Topics and Subscriptions. With publishsubscribe, an application can send messages to a
topic, while other applications can create subscriptions to this topic. This allows onetomany communication among a set of applications, letting the same
message be read by multiple recipients.
Service Bus Relay Scenarios Anytime your are setting up where there are many messages that are all important, but various downstream systems only need
to listen to differing subsets of those communications, Service Bus Topic and Subscriptions are a good option.

BizTalk Services

Figure:BizTalk Services provides the ability to transform XML messages formats in the cloud.
Sometimes you need connect systems which communicate using different messaging formats. Its common for business to have different database
schemas and XML messaging formats, even when a common standard is available. Rather than write a lot of custom code, you can use BizTalk Server on
premises to integrate various systems. Azure BizTalk Services provides the same type of service, but in the cloud. You can pay for only what you use and not
worry about scale like you would have to onpremises.
BizTalk Services Scenarios BusinesstoBusiness B2B interactions commonly require this type of translation. For example, an company building airplanes
needs to order parts from it's various parts suppliers. It will have many parts suppliers. Those orders should be automated to go directly from the airplane
builders systems into the suppliers systems. Neither business wants to change their core systems and message formats, and it's very unlikely that those
formats are the same. BizTalk Services can take messages and translate between the new formats both ways. Either the airplane supplier can do the work to
translate or the various suppliers can, depending on who wants more control and the amount of translation needed.

Compute Assistance
Azure provides assistance for services that do not need to run all the time.

Scheduler

Figure: Azure Scheduler provides a way to schedule jobs at a specific time for a specific duration.
Sometimes applications only need to run at a certain time. On Azure, you can save money with this type of app instead of letting an application just keep
running 24x7 waiting for data to process. Azure Scheduler allows you to schedule when an application should run on based on in interval of time or a
calendar. Its reliable and will verify that a process runs even if there are network, machine, and data center failures. You use the Scheduler REST API to
manage these actions.
When an scheduled alarm occurs, Scheduler sends HTTP or HTTPS messages to a specific endpoint or can put a message in a Storage Queue. So you need
to have your application either have an accessible endpoint or have it monitor a storage queue. Then once it gets the message, it can perform whatever
action it's programmed to.
Scheduler Scenarios
Recurring application actions: As an example, a service may periodically get data from twitter and gather the data into a regular feed.
Daily maintenance: Log processing or pruning, performing backups and other intermittently schedule tasks.
Tasks that run at night.
Web applications tasks like daily pruning of logs, performing backups, and other maintenance tasks. An administrator may choose to backup her
database at 1AM every day for the next 9 months, for example.
The Scheduler API allows you to create, update, delete, view, and manage job collections and scheduled jobs programmatically.

Performance
Performance is always important for an application. Applications tend to access the same data over and over. One way to improve performance is to keep a
copy of that data closer to the application, minimizing the time needed to retrieve it. Azure provides different services for doing this.

Azure Caching

Figure: An Azure application can cache data in memory and even split it up across many worker roles
Accessing data stored in any of Azure's data management servicesSQL Database, Tables, or Blobsis quite fast. Yet accessing data stored in memory is
even faster. Because of this, keeping an inmemory copy of frequently accessed data can improve application performance. You can use Azure's inmemory
Caching to do this.
A Cloud Services application can store data in this cache, then retrieve it directly without needing to access persistent storage. The cache can be maintained
inside your application's VMs or be provided by VMs dedicated solely to caching. In either case, the cache can be distributed, with the data it contains
spread across multiple VMs in an Azure datacenter.
Azure has a number of different cache technologies that have shifted over time. In the order they were introduced, there is a shared, inrole, managed and
Redis cache. The shared caching is an older technology and you shouldnt create new implementations with it. The Managed Cache has the same features
of the InRole cache, but as managed service outside of the Azure Management Portal. The Redis Cache is in preview. The Redis implementation has the
largest number of features and is recommended when you write new caching code.
Azure Cache Scenarios
An application that repeatedly reads a product catalog might benefit from using this kind of caching, for example, since the data it needs will be available
more quickly. The technology also supports locking, letting it be used with read/write as well as readonly data. And ASP.NET applications can use the
service to store session data with just a configuration change.

CDN

Figure:Copies of a blob can be cached at sites around the world.

Suppose you need to store blob data that will be accessed by users around the world. Maybe it's a video of the latest World Cup match, for instance, or
driver updates, or a popular ebook. Storing a copy of the data in multiple Azure datacenters will help, but if there are lots of users, it's probably not
enough. For even better performance, you can use the Azure CDN.
The CDN has dozens of sites around the world, each capable of storing copies of Azure blobs. The first time a user in some part of the world accesses a
particular blob, the information it contains is copied from an Azure datacenter into local CDN storage in that geography. After this, accesses from that part
of the world will use the blob copy cached in the CDNthey won't need to go all the way to the nearest Azure datacenter. The result is faster access to
frequently accessed data by users anywhere in the world.
CDN Scenarios
It's common to use CDN with Media Services to deliver video worldwide. Video is usually large and requires a lot of bandwidth. Media Services is talked
about elsewhere on this page.

Big Data and Big Compute

HDInsight Hadoop

Figure: HDInsight helps with the bulk processing of huge amounts of data
For many years, the bulk of data analysis has been done on relational data stored in a data warehouse built with a relational DBMS. This kind of business
analytics is still important, and it will be for a long time to come. But what if the data you want to analyze is so big that relational databases just can't
handle it? And suppose the data isn't relational? It might be server logs in a datacenter, for example, or historical event data from sensors, or something
else. In cases like this, you have what's known as a big data problem. You need another approach.
The dominant technology today for analyzing big data is Hadoop. An Apache open source project, this technology stores data using the Hadoop
Distributed File System HDFS, then lets developers create MapReduce jobs to analyze that data. HDFS spreads data across multiple servers, then runs
chunks of the MapReduce job on each one, letting the big data be processed in parallel.
HDInsight is the name of the Azure's Apache Hadoopbased service. HDInsight lets HDFS store data on the cluster and distribute it across multiple VMs. It
also spreads the logic of a MapReduce job across those VMs. Just as with onpremises Hadoop, data is processed locallythe logic and the data it works on
are in the same VMand in parallel for better performance. HDInsight can also store data in Azure Storage Vault ASV, which uses blobs. Using ASV allows
you to save money because you can delete your HDInsight cluster when not in use, but still keep your data in the cloud.
HDinsight supports other components of the Hadoop ecosystem as well, including Hive and Pig. Microsoft has also created components that make it easier
to work with data produced by HDInsight using traditional BI tools, such as the HiveODBC adapter and Data Explorer that work with Excel.

HighPerformance Computing Big Compute

One of the most attractive ways to use a cloud platform is to run high performance computing HPC and other "Big Compute" applications. Examples
include specialized engineering applications built to use the industrystandard Message Passing Interface MPI as well as socalled embarrassingly parallel
applications, such financial risk models.
The essence of Big Compute is executing code on many machines at the same time. On Azure, this means running many virtual machines simultaneously,
all working in parallel to solve some problem. Doing this requires some way to resources and to schedule applications, i.e., to distribute their work across
these instances. Microsofts free HPC Pack and other compute cluster solutions can perform well in Azure, taking advantage of Azure compute and
infrastructure services to add capacity ondemand to an onpremises compute cluster or run Big Compute applications entirely in the cloud.
Azure provides a range of VM instance sizes with different configurations of CPU cores, memory, disk capacity, and other characteristics to meet the
requirements of different applications. The recently introduced A8 and A9 instances work well for many compute intensive workloads, and parallel MPI
applications in particular, because they have high speed, multicore CPUs and large amounts of memory. In certain configurations the instances take
advantage of a lowlatency and highthroughput application network in the cloud that includes remote direct memory access RDMA technology for
maximum efficiency of parallel MPI applications.

Azure also offers Big Compute application developers and partners a full set of compute capabilities, services, architecture choices, and development tools.
Azure supports custom Big Compute workflows involving specialized data workflows and job and task scheduling patterns that can scale to thousands of
compute cores.

Media

Figure: Media Services is a platform for applications that provide video and other media to clients around the world.
Video makes up a large part of Internet traffic today, and that percentage will be even larger tomorrow. Yet providing video on the web isn't simple. There
are lots of variables, such as the encoding algorithm and the display resolution of the user's screen. Video also tends to have bursts in demand, like a
Saturday night spike when lots of people decide they'd like to watch an online movie.
Given its popularity, it's a safe bet that many new applications will be created that use video. Yet all of them will need to solve some of the same problems,
and making each one solve those problems on its own makes no sense. A better approach is to create a platform that provides common solutions for many
applications to use. And building this platform in the cloud has some clear advantages. It can be broadly available on a payasyougo basis, and it can also
handle the variability in demand that video applications often face.
Azure Media Services addresses this problem. It provides a set of cloud components that make life easier for people creating and running applications
using video and other media.
As the figure shows, Media Services provides a set of components for applications that work with video and other media. For example, it includes a media
ingest component to upload video into Media Services where it's stored in Azure Blobs, an encoding component that supports various video and audio
formats, a content protection component that provides digital rights management, a component for inserting ads into a video stream, components for

streaming, and more. Microsoft partners can also provide components for the platform, then have Microsoft distribute those components and bill on their
behalf.
Applications that use this platform can run on Azure or elsewhere. For example, a desktop application for a video production house might let its users
upload video to Media Services, then process it in various ways. Alternatively, a cloudbased content management service running on Azure might rely on
Media Services to process and distribute video. Wherever it runs and whatever it does, each application chooses which components it needs to use,
accessing them through RESTful interfaces.
To distribute what it produces, an application can use the Azure CDN, another CDN, or just send bits directly to users. However it gets there, video created
using Media Services can be consumed by various client systems, including Windows, Macintosh, HTML 5, iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Flash, and
Silverlight. The goal is to make it easier to create modern media applications.
References
For a more visual view of how Media Services works, download the Azure Media Services Poster http://azure.microsoft.com/en
us/documentation/infographics/mediaservices/.

Commerce
The rise of Software as a Service is transforming how we create applications. It's also transforming how we sell applications. Since a SaaS application lives in
the cloud, it makes sense that its potential customers should look for solutions online. And this change applies to data as well as to applications. Why
shouldn't people look to the cloud for commercially available datasets? Microsoft addresses both of these concerns with Azure Marketplace
http://datamarket.azure.com/ and Azure Store /enus/store/overview/.

Figure: Azure Marketplace and Azure Store let you find and buy Azure applications and commercial datasets and use them as part of your Azure

Figure: Azure Marketplace and Azure Store let you find and buy Azure applications and commercial datasets and use them as part of your Azure
applications.
The difference between the two is that Marketplace is outside of the Azure Management Portal, but the Store can be accessed from inside the portal.
Potential customers can search to find Azure applications that meet their needs.. Customers can search for commercial datasets as well, including
demographic data, financial data, geographic data, and more. When they find something they like, they can access it either from the vendor, directly
through the Marketplace or Store web locations or in some cases from the Management Portal. Applications can also use the Bing Search API through the
Marketplace, giving them access to the results of web searches.
Commerce Scenarios
SendGrid is an application in the Azure Store that allows you to send email. It offers additional functionality like reliable delivery and statistics. You can buy
this application and related services rather then try to build such an infrastructure yourself.

Getting Started
Now that you have the bigpicture, the next step is to write your first Azure application. Choose your language, get the appropriate SDK /en
us/downloads/, and go for it. Cloud computing is the new defaultget started now.

Contribute to this article

Want to edit or suggest changes to this content? You can edit and submit changes to this article https://github.com/Azure/azure
content/blob/master/articles/fundamentalsintroductiontoazure.md using GitHub.

Need more help using this Azure service? Go to an MSDN forum https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/azure/enUS/home?
category=windowsazurewebsitespreview or StackOverflow discussion http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/azurewebsites

171Comments

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Jointhediscussion
Ameet 2monthsago

Hi,
DoesAzureofferservicesifapplicationisstartedwithRDBMSSQLandthenmoveontoNOSQLdatabaseslikeMongoDBduringthe
Applicationlifecycle

Reply Share

unizem 2monthsago

IwantusersofmyOfficeApptoberedirectedfromAzureServicestotheservicesonmyprivatecloud.WhileallowingAzuretodothe
Txlogging,licensingetc.Butdespiteseveraldaysontofindingtherightopiton(s)iamnotabletodecidewhatisthebestway?
ShallIuse
Option1:OfficeAppcalls>AzureWebsite>usesServiceRelay(willaQueuecomeintopicture?)>toEndpointonmyPrivateCloud?
or
Option2:OfficeAppcalls>someAzureCloudServices>redirectsto>toEndpointonmyPrivateCloud?
or
Option3:OfficeAppcalls>someAzureDataServices>redirectsto>toEndpointonmyPrivateCloud?

Option3:OfficeAppcalls>someAzureDataServices>redirectsto>toEndpointonmyPrivateCloud?
ThisisreallygivingmeletofpainevenifIwanttoproceedwithsomequickPOCthentheQiswhichone?
Anypointerswouldbeveryvaluable.Appreciateallhelp.

Reply Share

RusiruAdhikari 3monthsago

Comprehensivedescription......awesome,thankyouverymuch.
1

Reply Share

RobBoucherJr. 3monthsago

I'vemadeamajorrevisiontothisarticlewithnewartandservices.Feelfreetocomment.

Reply Share

srinathkumar 5monthsago

whyqueuesarenotgivenunderdatamanagement,actuallyazurequeueswillcomesunderthestoragei.edatamanagement
seethislink:
http://azure.microsoft.com/en...

Reply Share

RobBoucherJr.>srinathkumar 5monthsago

IunderstandSrinath.Wearetryingtoorganizebyfunctionalityinthispaper.Queuesaretypicallyusedforcommunications
betweenapplicationsandrarelyforanysortofdurablestorage,soweputthemunderthemessagingarea.Thatsaid,Ican
understandtheconfusion.WealsoactuallyhavetwopossiblequeueservicesbecauseofhowAzureevolved.ServiceBus
QueueandStorageQueues.

Reply Share

ChrisWong 6monthsago

Thisisagreatarticlebutitwouldbegoodtoaddmoreexamples,sopeopleknowhowtochooseinbetweenVMorCloudservice.
butIhaveaquestion,myapplicationrequiredtorunonthewindowsserverwithSQL,IISandasubprogramisnotaserviceandneed
tolaunchitontheserverdesktop(can'tlogout),andwealsoneedaredundancysolutionforapplicationandSQL,whichoneshalligo
for?AzureVMorcloud?thanks

Reply Share

RobBoucherJr. 7monthsago

HiAll.I'mnowthepersonatMicrosoftresponsibleforthispaper.I'llbemonitoringcommentsandupdatingthepaper.Feelfreeto
providecommentsandfeedbackonthepaperbelow.I'lldomybesttoaddressthem.

Reply Share

srinathkumar>RobBoucherJr. 5monthsago

HiRob,
whyqueuesarenotmentionedunder"datamanagement".therearetwotypeofqueues1)azurequeue:usedtoprovidethe
communicationbetweenwebandworkerrole2)servicebusqueue:usedtoprovidecommunicationbetweenapplications.
Onemoredoubtis
Whatexactlydifferencebetweenwebsiteandcloudservice
thirddoubtis
thereare3typesofroles:web,worker,vm
whatisthevmrolewhatitdoesexactly

Reply Share

RobBoucherJr.>srinathkumar 5monthsago

HiSrinath,
Thisarticlemayhelpansweryourquestions.

Thisarticlemayhelpansweryourquestions.
http://azure.microsoft.com/en...
Ignore"VMrole"ifyouarejuststarting.It'sadeprecatedfeatureofCloudServices.ItreleasedbeforetheIaaSVirtual
Machinesfeature.

Reply Share

albania 10monthsago

whywindowsazureisnotaccessibleinAlbaniaorKosovo

Reply Share

RobBoucherJr.>albania 7monthsago

ThelistofcountrieswhereAzureisavailablecanbefoundathttp://azure.microsoft.com/en...inthequestionIsthetrialavailable
internationally?Therearecurrently89countrieswhereit'savailableasoftoday5/15/2014.Sorrythatit'snotinAlbaniaor
Kosovoyet.Thenumberofcountriesisgrowingallthetime.

Reply Share

RobBoucherJr.>albania 7monthsago

Doyoumeanthatyoucan'taccessthemanagementportalathttps://manage.windowsazure.co...

Reply Share

HakimShabir 10monthsago

UIpurelyinSilverlightandHTMLandservercodeinc#.correctmeifiamwrong
1

Reply Share

RobBoucherJr.>HakimShabir 7monthsago

CurrentportalusesHTML5actually.Silverlightwastheolderportalabout3yearsago.I'mnotsurewhatthebackendiswritten
inbutC#isagoodbet.

Reply Share

shalik 10monthsago

Inwhatlanguagewindowsazurehasbeencreated

Reply Share

Ashish>shalik 7monthsago

.net

Reply Share

SrinivasanShankaralingam ayearago

HowwindowsAzurereduceITcost
andenhanceefficiency,forSMEandbgenterprise.
7

Reply Share

HakimShabir>SrinivasanShankaralingam 10monthsago

Letmegiveyousimpleexample.Ifyouhavewebsitewhichisserving1000usersandnextyourbusinessincreasesandyou
wantyourwebsitetoserver10,000.forthatyouhavetoagainbuyhardwaretoscaleout/scaleupyousite.Soobviouslyyou
needresourcestobuyandwillagainconsumetimeforupgradingit.Otherside,ifsamewebsiteisoncloud,youjustneedto
utilizeresourceswhicharealreadyavailabletoyouonsimplerequest.Againsuddenlyyoudecidetoscaledownyourapplication
for1000usersonly,youcanjustmakeitonbasisofrequestratherifyouhaveboughtthisinfrastructureyoucan'treturnitto
dealer..justlikeyouuseelectricityathomeyoupayforwhatyouuse.
7

Reply Share

RobBoucherJr.>HakimShabir 7monthsago

Yep.That'soneexample.ThanksforansweringHakim.
1

Reply Share

CarlosPineda ayearago

AmazonEC2says"...AWSdoesnothaveanyaccessrightstoyourinstancesortheguestOS"(http://awsmedia.s3.amazonaws.c...
can)thenAmazoncannotlogintoavirtualmachine(theycall"instance")duetheydon'thavetheprivatekeygeneratedwhenvirtual
machinewascreatedtheyonlyhavethepublickey.
CouldWindowsAzureadministrators(Microsoft)logintoavirtualmachinecreatedbyanAzureuser(WindowsorLinux)?
6

Reply Share

CarlosPineda>CarlosPineda ayearago

ThereferrerURLis:
http://awsmedia.s3.amazonaws.c...

Reply Share

CarlosPineda>CarlosPineda ayearago

CouldWindowsAzureadministrators(Microsoft)logintoavirtualmachinecreatedbyanAzureuser(Windowsor
Linux)?
Theanswertothisquestionis:
"No,Wedonothavethecredentialstologintoyourservers.LinuxorWindows."
IhavebeenpostedthisquestionintotheQ&AforowhenIwasattendingthefollowingcourse:
ServerVirtualizationw/WindowsServerHyperV&SystemCenterJumpStart
MicrosoftVirtualAcademy,Nov192013
1

Reply Share

Paul ayearago

IsanencryptedCloudVPNsafefrommalwarethatconductscodeacquisitionviascreenscrapingorwallscraping?

Reply Share

NiteshSharma ayearago

Hiiallexperts,whatiithinkaboutwindowsazureis,itsacloudplatformwhichprovidestwoservicesexecutionmodelandstorage.in
executionmodelithasiaas(windowsvirtualmachine)andpass(cloudservices,mobileserviceandwindowsazurewebsite).andit
storageithasthree,relational(sqlazure),Nosql(table),blob(blob).
6

Reply Share

RobBoucherJr.>NiteshSharma 7monthsago

ActuallyNitesh,eachoftheitemslistedaboveisaservice.We'vegroupedtheservicestohelpexplainthem,buteachboxis
separateandcanbeusedwithorwithouttheothers.Ihavetoupdatethisarticlesoit'sgotallthecurrentservicesinit.For
anothergraphicalview,lookattheWhatIsAzureinfographic.http://azure.microsoft.com/en...

Reply Share

boss1111 ayearago

great

Reply Share

Thiago ayearago

Awesomeintroduction!Bytheway,I'mwritingaboutallthissubjectsinptBRinmyblog:http://thiagocustodio.azureweb...
Maybeitcouldhelpsomeone.
2

Reply Share

JayTrivedi ayearago

CaniknowhowtocreateadynamicinstanceonazureusingJava.Iamunabletofindthissolutiononazuredocs.
1

Reply Share

Thiago>JayTrivedi ayearago

Jay,Ibelievethatit'snotpossiblewithJavaSDK.Forthiskindofautomationyoushouldusepowershellscripts.

Reply Share

NitinNarang ayearago

IsthereaperformancematrixforWAMSintermsofencodingtimeforCPUcoresdeployed?
1

Reply Share

Rogerzhou724 ayearago

GoodIntroductiontoWindowsAzure!
3

Reply Share

RobBoucherJr.>Rogerzhou724 7monthsago

Gladyoulikeit.Thanks.DavidChappellwastheoriginalwriter.Hedoesagreatjobofexplaining.

Reply Share

DanielChan ayearago

windowazure,theseismyfirsttimetosignin

Reply Share

Akedijewf17 ayearago

WhyExecutionModel"Websites"arenotofferedforRuby?

Reply Share

MuralidhranDharmalingam ayearago

whetherWindowsAzureprovidesIAAS,PAASandSAASoronlyIAASandPAAS?

Reply Share

RobBoucherJr.>MuralidhranDharmalingam 7monthsago

Yes.VirtualMachinesisIAAS.CloudServicesandWebSitesarePAAS.Manyoftheotherservicesdon'treallyfallintothose
categoriesbecausetheyoftendon'thaveUIs,butSAASwouldbetheclosestequivalent.Theyprovidespecifictypesof
functionalitythatassistyouinspecificways.TrafficManagerforexample.

Reply Share

SumitraSheth>MuralidhranDharmalingam ayearago

ItprovidesallthethreeIAAS,PAASandSAAS.

Reply Share

MuhammadMugeesAsif>MuralidhranDharmalingam ayearago

Yes!

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technogeist ayearago

Someclarificationrequired,onwheredataisheldandtheimplicationsthathasforlegaljurisdictionifheldinacountrythathasmassive
resourcesintargetingemailsandnettraffic.(NSA/GCHQetal)
3

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Aliimehrpour 2yearsago

Thatisgoodaricle...

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MichaelBradley 2yearsago

P.S.IsBradaVulcan?I'msurehegetsthatalot....haha...he'scorrect.Youenhancedmorein12monthsthanusuallytakes3years.
HurrayforMS!!!!!

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MichaelBradley 2yearsago

GladtogetonAzurewithAD.3monthsagoIpassedmyMCSEonWS2012.WantedtosetupaVMonAzurewithAD(aDCfor
starters),didn'tknowexactlyhowthen.ThankstoTechEd,foundAzureADanddefinitelythisistherightdirection.
MichaelBradley,Michael.bradley@gmx.us,MCSE2012

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SandeepPote 2yearsago

Goodarticle!!!InowunderstoodwhatisWindowsAzure,whyandwheretouse..

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Bounchom 2yearsago

firsttimeirunningwindow8but,butenjointoworkingwith.

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Aaa 2yearsago

12121212121212

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ThomasJones 2yearsago

WhyistherenomentionofMSAccess?
2

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RobBoucherJr.>ThomasJones 7monthsago

MSAccessisastructuredatabase.SQLDatabaseprovidestheclosestfunctionalityequivalent.

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ThomasJones>RobBoucherJr. 7monthsago

Rob,areyousayingthatausercantmigratetoAzureiftheyhaveMSAccess?AndcanyoudefineaStructure
Databaseplease.

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RobBoucherJr.>ThomasJones 7monthsago

HiThomas,
Youcanifyouwant,butI'mnotsurewhatyourrequirementsare.GettingintothatmightbebeyondthehelpIcan
provideasI'mnotandexpertinthedatabaseareaandthisisnotasupportforum,buthere'swhatIknow.
Astructureddatabaseisthesameasa"relational"database.Itmeanstherearetableswithindexesandyoujoin
tablestogetinformationbackinqueries.
Youroptionsare
1.YoucanrunAccessinaVirtualMachineinthecloud.
2.YoucanconvertyourdatabasetoanSQLServerdatabaseandrunSQLServeronaVirtualMachine.SQL
ServerprovidesbetterperformancethanAccessasyouscale.
2.YouconvertyouraccessdatabasetoanSQLDatabaserunninginthecloud.Seethisvideoformore
information.http://www.microsoft.com/enus...
Generally,theissuewithmovingadatabasetothecloudiswhereyourclientsare.Thereisaddedlatencygoing
fromyournetworktothecloudandbacksoyoueitherwantyourclientsmovedtothecloud,youwanttocache
thedatabaseclosertothemorattheminimumyouwanttomoveacopyofthedatabasetothecloudandtest
yourapplicationperformance.

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