Windows Azure allows you to write code in languages within the .NET stack, you can use Java, C++, PHP, NodeJS and others. Code is code - other than keeping things stateless, using a Web or Worker Role in Azure is not all that different from working with an on-premises system. However…. Working in a scalable, component-based stateless ...

(As with all of these types of posts, check the date of the latest update I’ve made here. Anything older than 6 months is probably out of date, given the speed with which we release new features into Windows and SQL Azure) I don’t normally like to discuss things in terms of tools. I find that whenever you start with a given tool (or ...

Developing in Windows Azure is at once not that much different from what you’re familiar with in on-premises systems, and different in significant ways. Because of these differences, developers often ask about the specific process to develop and deploy a Windows Azure application - more formally called an Application Lifecycle Management, or ALM. ...

One of the advantages of using Windows Azure to run your code is that you don’t have to constantly manage upgrades on your platform. While that’s a big advantage indeed, it immediately brings up the question - how do the upgrades happen? Microsoft upgrades the Azure platform in periodic increments, and the components that are affected are ...

Note - please pay attention to the date of this post. As much as I attempt to make the information below accurate, the nature of distributed computing means that components, units and pricing will change over time. The definitive costs for Microsoft Windows Azure and SQL Azure are located here, and are more accurate than anything you will see in ...

The Windows Azure Queue component, like all Windows Azure components (Roles, Storage, App Fabric, SQL Azure) can be used by itself or with other Windows Azure components. That’s why I refer to Windows Azure as “Distributed Computing” rather than “cloud”. Having a distributed off premise queue has a lot of use-cases. An interesting use-case is ...

As most of you know, I don’t like the term “cloud” very much. It isn’t defined, which means it can be anything. I prefer “distributed computing”, which is more technically accurate and describes what you’re doing in more concrete terms. So when you think about Windows and SQL Azure, you don’t have ...

“Git-Go” is something we say in the South that means “right at the start”. I’ve seen several applications for on-premise systems that don’t have much in the way of diagnostics - the developers rely on a debugger, the event logs on the server and client workstation, and most of all, the ability to watch the system from end-to-end. This approach ...

Current as of 08/01/2011 - Check the Resources listed below for more up-to-date information on this topic Background: Security for any computing platform involves three primary areas: Principals (users or programmatic access to an asset or other program) Securables (objects, data or programs that can be accessed) Channels (methods of ...

This is one in a series of posts on when and where to use a distributed architecture design in your organization's computing needs. You can find the main post here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2011/01/18/windows-azure-and-sql-azure-use-cases.aspx Description: On-premise data will be a part of computing for quite some time – ...