Microsoft Azure

Windows Azure (short: Azure) is one of several cloud services as part of Microsoft's "Windows Azure " platform. Azure is Microsoft's cloud computing platform with the Windows Azure cloud operating system and other services such as SQL Azure AppFabric or, which is aimed primarily at software developers. She is officially available since February 1, 2010.

Concept and realization

Provider of cloud computing provide applications and databases available that can be used network -based. Also, the user's own files are no longer on your own computer, but on the servers of the provider. Microsoft wants to be much more focus on Internet-based services and hopes to cheaper so the buyer trend and to meet performance computers such as netbooks. One interesting for the manufacturer side effect would be that the problem of piracy would be greatly reduced, as no software needs to be marketed more to the end user. The offer should mark a significant price change at Microsoft. It competes against rivals like Google App Engine or Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud.

Windows Azure represents the major part of a new platform, the Windows Azure platform, dar. This platform provides users with new services, such as a database, and a new version of. NET framework. In addition, also provide services to synchronize data, based on the Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services system, are offered.

For the expected load, Microsoft plans to create 20 new data centers up to 2500, summarized in containers, servers, each for 1 billion dollars.

Construction

Windows Azure is divided into Compute, Storage, AppFabric, Virtual Network, CDN and Market Place. Compute provides three so-called roles: Web Role as a container for Web applications, worker role for, among other concurrent or computationally intensive tasks and the VM Role ( beta) host which "user -provided Windows Server 2008 R2 image [ s] " in the cloud. Storage allows you to store data in BLOBs, tables or queues and AppFabric provides infrastructure services such as a Service Bus, Access Control, Caching, Integration and Composite App for distributed applications.

The operation of a small Web application costs around $ 40 per month.

Due to the VM Role allows Microsoft to make its own Windows server images in their data centers and thus previous on-premise solutions run in the cloud. However, it is defined here on this one operating system. The Web Role allows applications in a variety of programming languages ​​(. NET (C # and Visual Basic), C , PHP, Ruby, Python, Java) provide. Matched the Windows Azure Platform, however on the. NET Framework and Visual Studio. While there is an Eclipse integration, but only for Windows.

Microsoft also offers its infrastructure as an appliance to build a private Windows Azure cloud in your own data center.

Compared with the Google App Engine and Amazon's Elastic Beanstalk Microsoft supports most programming languages ​​and has a striking role system. However, to deploy a Java web application, you can not simply upload a WAR file, but you have to pack and deploy your application, including Java runtime environment and Tomcat application server in a Worker Role.

Development

Ray Ozzie announced at the Professional Developers Conference 2008 in Los Angeles for the first time Windows Azure to open and took the conference participants access to a Community Technology Preview available. Previously, it was announced by Steve Ballmer as Windows Cloud.

The platform is available since February 1, 2010 officially available. Other software manufacturers are now able to offer their software on the platform as a SaaS service.

The functionality of the Windows Azure platform was extended in stages from Microsoft since its first introduction in autumn 2008. The following table provides information on significant enhancements to the platform as well as important notices about Windows Azure.

  • Announcement of the Windows Azure platform
  • First test versions publicly available from Azure.
  • Release of SQL Azure ( relational database system as a cloud service )
  • Update the Azure trial
  • Full Trust, PHP support, Java support, test version of Content Delivery Networks (CDN )
  • Announcement of VM hosting ( VM Role )
  • Publication of the pricing model
  • Update the Azure Trial: FullTrust, PHP support, Java support
  • Trial of Content Delivery Networks (CDN )
  • Announcement of VM hosting ( VM Role )
  • Publication of the pricing model
  • Support for. NET Framework 4
  • Versioning of guest operating systems
  • Availability of content delivery networks (CDN )
  • Extensions to SQL Azure
  • VM Hosting
  • Startup Tasks and plugins for VM instances
  • Full - IIS
  • Windows Azure Connect (formerly " Project Sydney " )
  • Remote Desktop

Reliability

According to Microsoft, the data can be stored on different servers redundant. An availability of 99.9 % ( this equates to an availability class 3 -year default time of 8:46 hours) to compute the range of Windows Azure is guaranteed if at least two instances of each role running in different fault and upgrade areas simultaneously, to in case of failure of an instance to have a second instance as a fallback option. Also for the storage area of Windows Azure an availability of 99.9 % is warranted if it is correctly formulated requests to add, edit, read or delete the data.

On July 26, 2012, arrived in Western Europe at a two and a half hours of downtime of Microsoft's Azure cloud service.

Cloud-Computing Host (network) Binary Large Object Enterprise Service Bus Access Control List Cache (computing) On-premises software Software deployment .NET Framework Computer appliance Apache Tomcat Integrated Authority File
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