Arun's Blog

What is Cloud computing? – Public Cloud v Private Cloud

Arun Rakwal — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 17:09:00 GMT

This blog is part of series on Windows Azure - Step by Step guide for Designing, Developing, Deploying and Administrating a Windows Azure Applications . So if you are new to Azure and interested in exploring Windows Azure you may like to check this blog...(read more)

Windows Azure - Step by Step guide for Designing, Developing , Deploying and Administrating a Windows Azure Applications

Arun Rakwal — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 17:37:00 GMT

Cloud computing has a bright future and my strong belief is next decade will be of Cloud computing. Cloud Computing will bring lots of saving for organizations and is going to change the way how organization maintains there internal IT. They can not only...(read more)

Windows Azure - Building and Deploying Azure Web Application in 5 easy Steps

Arun Rakwal — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 07:46:00 GMT

Hello,

In this session I will share how to Building and Deploying Azure Web Application in 5 easy Steps. Follow this video, in next few days i will share details steps in document formats.

(Please visit the site to view this video)

Feel free to get back to me for your valuable feedback.

Azure Scale Application - Increase Or Decrease the number of role Instance

Arun Rakwal — Thu, 10 May 2012 17:10:00 GMT

Undoubtedly one of the best feature of Windows Azure is to allow you scale your hosted service based on demand by increasing and decreasing number of role instances part of your hosted service. This not only helps business with increases customer satisfaction but also save cost.

Behind the Scene

This is achieved by defining the Value of role instance count in the Instances element within the service configuration file. Now as and when needed you can update service configuration file.

How to Increase Or Decrease the number of Role Instance

Scaling of application can be done in multiple ways

Using Windows Azure Portal , I found this article really useful to perform this task

by modifying existing service configuration file
by uploading new updated service configuration file

Using Rest API - The Windows Azure Service Management REST API also exposes operations allowing the service configuration to be replaced with a new version containing different instance counts for the roles.
Using Set-RoleInstanceCount Windows Azure Platform PowerShell cmdlets, which allow various Service Management REST API operations to be invoked directly from PowerShell.

For one of my recent project i created following is powershell code

Increase the number of role Instance

cls
Add-PSsnapin AzureManagementToolsSnapin
Add-PsSnapin WAPPSCmdlets
#Subscription-Id of my Subscription
$subscriptionId = '8a27c306-9434-4d59-971a-c3dc82dcwerew'
#Thumbprint of certificated used to manage Subscriptin. This certificated should be already added to subscription
$Certificate = Get-Item cert:\LocalMachine\My\22598061DFB6543663E2D1A4C70045F528234
$hostedServiceName ='hostedservicename'
$slot="Production"
$rolename="RoleName"
$rolecount=(Get-RoleInstanceCount -SubscriptionId $subscriptionId -Certificate $Certificate -DeploymentSlot $slot -RoleName $rolename -ServiceName $hostedServiceName).instancecount
$rolecount=$rolecount + 1
Set-RoleInstanceCount -SubscriptionId $subscriptionId -Certificate $Certificate -DeploymentSlot $slot -RoleName $rolename -ServiceName $hostedServiceName -Count $rolecount | Get-OperationStatus -WaitToComplete
Remove-PSsnapin AzureManagementToolsSnapin
Remove-PSsnapin WAPPSCmdlets

Decrease the number of Role Instance

cls
Add-PSsnapin AzureManagementToolsSnapin
Add-PsSnapin WAPPSCmdlets
#Subscription-Id of my Subscription
$subscriptionId = '8a27c306-9434-4d59-971a-c3dc82dcwerew'
#Thumbprint of certificated used to manage Subscriptin. This certificated should be already added to subscription
$Certificate = Get-Item cert:\LocalMachine\My\22598061DFB6543663E2D1A4C70045F528234
$hostedServiceName ='hostedservicename'
$slot="Production"
$rolename="RoleName"
$rolecount=(Get-RoleInstanceCount -SubscriptionId $subscriptionId -Certificate $Certificate -DeploymentSlot $slot -RoleName $rolename -ServiceName $hostedServiceName).instancecount
$rolecount
if ($rolecount -gt 1)
{
  $rolecount=$rolecount - 1
  $rolecount
  Set-RoleInstanceCount -SubscriptionId $subscriptionId -Certificate $Certificate -DeploymentSlot $slot -RoleName $rolename -ServiceName $hostedServiceName -Count $rolecount | Get-OperationStatus -WaitToComplete
}
Remove-PSsnapin AzureManagementToolsSnapin
Remove-PSsnapin WAPPSCmdlets

I am sure you will find this article helpful. Please rate this article and share your comments. For more details please feel free to contact me at arunrakwal@yahoo.com and I will be happy working with you.

Windows Azure - Planning Architecture Compute, Database and Storage

Arun Rakwal — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 18:26:00 GMT

Windows Azure has created lot of interest and folks are looking forward to move to Azure. I belong to Operation Engineer community and this community has lots of excitement over Azure because kind of scalability, fault tolerance and business continuity it provides is amazing. Top of that Azure made life easier as no more waiting for months to procure HW and then after maintaining long server inventory.

One of the first and most common questions I hear from PM / Business and Operation team is how to plan Infrastructure for Azure. In this article I would try to answer some of the basic concept of Azure on compute and infrastructure Planning, costing and SLA.

What is Windows Azure?

Windows Azure is an open and flexible cloud platform that enables you to quickly build, deploy and manage applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. You can build applications using any language, tool or framework.
And you can integrate your public cloud applications with your existing IT environment.Windows Azure delivers a 99.95% monthly SLA and enables you to build and run highly available applications without focusing on the infrastructure. It provides automatic OS and service patching, built in network load balancing and resiliency to hardware failure.

The core services needed for an Azure Application deployment are following. We will discuss about each of them in detail.

Windows Azure Compute
SQL Azure
Storage

This is how a typical Windows Azure Service Architecture looks like

Windows Azure Compute

Each Compute instance is a virtual machine that isolates you from other customers. Once Compute resources are assigned to your application, Windows Azure automatically handles network load balancing and failover to provide continuous
availability. Windows Azure provides a 99.95% monthly SLA. for Compute services.

Applications in Windows Azure utilize Compute resources through one or more Compute containers called “roles”. Roles come in three different types: Web, Worker and Virtual Machine (VM). Some common uses or application patterns for these
roles include:

Web Roles in Windows Azure are special purpose, and provide a dedicated Internet Information Services (IIS) web-server used for hosting front-end web applications. You can quickly and easily deploy web applications to Web Roles and then scale your Compute capabilities up or down to meet demand.
Worker Roles, Applications hosted within Worker roles can run asynchronous, long-running or perpetual tasks independent of user interaction or input. It's more like backend processing or business logic.
Virtual Machine (VM) roles, now in Beta, enable you to deploy a custom Windows Server 2008 R2 (Enterprise or Standard) image to Windows Azure. You can use the VM role when your application requires a large number of server OS customizations and cannot be automated. The VM Role gives you full control over your application environment and lets you migrate existing applications to the cloud. Click here for more information about the VM role.

To conclude this is place where your FE and MT will go. You may have one Web Role performing role of FE and MT. Or you may like to keep your FE on web role and MT on worker role.

Pricing and Metering for Compute:

Virtual Machine Size	CPU Cores	Memory	Disk Space for Local Storage Resources in Web and Worker Roles	Disk Space for Local Storage Resources in a VM Role	Allocated Bandwidth (Mbps)	Cost Per Hour
ExtraSmall	Shared	768 MB	19 GB (6 GB reserved for system files)	20 GB	5	$0.02
Small	1	1.75 GB	224 GB (6 GB reserved for system files)	165 GB	100	$0.12
Medium	2	3.5 GB	489 GB (6 GB reserved for system files)	340 GB	200	$0.24
Large	4	7 GB	999 GB (6 GB reserved for system files)	850 GB	400	$0.48
ExtraLarge	8	14 GB	1.9 TB (6 GB reserved for system files)	1890 GB	800	$0.96

Compute hours are charged only when your application is deployed. Compute hours are billed based on the number of clock hours your service was deployed multiplied by the number of compute instances. hAll compute hours are converted into small instance hours when presented on your bill.

SQL Azure

SQL Azure is a highly available and scalable cloud database service built on SQL Server technologies. With SQL Azure, developers do not have to install, setup or manage any database. High availability and fault tolerance is built-in and no physical administration is required. SQL Azure is a managed service that is operated by Microsoft and has a 99.9% monthly SLA.

Pricing and Metering for SQL Azure Database

SQL Azure supports a flexible subscription-based pricing model and supports both a pay-as-you-go and 6 month commitment offer. SQL Azure can be purchased independently or with other Windows Azure platform products. You can provision multiple SQL Azure databases for your application(s) and can use either the Web or Business Edition offering. The Web Edition supports up to a 5 GB maximum T-SQL based relational database. The Business Edition supports up to a 150 GB maximum size T-SQL-based relational database.

Database Size	Price Per Database Per Month
0 to 100 MB	Flat $4.995
Greater than 100 MB to 1 GB	Flat $9.99
Greater than 1 GB to 10 GB	$9.99 for first GB, $3.996 for each additional GB
Greater than 10 GB to 50 GB	$45.954 for first 10 GB, $1.998 for each additional GB
Greater than 50 GB to 150 GB	$125.874 for first 50 GB, $0.999 for each additional GB

Customers are billed based on the peak database size in a day. SQL Azure Database is charged as a monthly fee for each database, but that database fee is amortized over the month and charged on a daily basis. For databases greater than 1 GB, you will be billed in the next whole gigabyte increment.

For example, if you utilized two Business Edition databases, one that was 4.4 GB and one that was 14.4 GB for 1 day during a billing month, you would be charged for a 5 GB and 15 GB database for that day, which would total $2.643. Below are the calculations:

5 GB: ($9.99 for the first GB +
$3.996 per GB for the next 4 GB) / 31 days = $0.838
15 GB: ($45.954 for the first 10 GB +
$1.998 per GB for the next 5 GB) / 31 days = $1.805

Windows Azure Storage

Storage provides secure, scalable and easily accessible storage services that remain highly available and durable. The Storage service supports virtually all types of storage needs, from structured to unstructured data, NoSQL databases, and queues. Storage is a managed service and has a 99.9% monthly SLA. Some practical uses for the Storage include:

BLOB (Binary Large Object) storage - BLOB Storage is the simplest way to store large amounts of unstructured text or binary data such as video, audio and images.
Table storage - Table Storage is used by applications requiring storing large amounts of data storage that need additional structure. While a table stores structured data, it does not provide any way to represent relationships between the data, sometimes called a NoSQL database.
Queue - Queues are used for reliable, persistent messaging between applications. You can use Queues to transfer messages between applications or services in Windows Azure.
Windows Azure Drive - Windows Azure Drive allows applications to mount a Blob formatted as a single volume NTFS VHD. You can move your VHDs between private and public clouds using Windows Azure Drive.

Pricing and Metering for Windows Azure Storage

Standard pay-as-you-go pricing for storage

$0.125 per GB stored per month based on the daily average

$0.01 per 10,000 storage transactions

For calculating prices refer to http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/. For more details on pricing please refer http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/home/features/compute/.

I am sure you will find this article helpful. Pleaes rate this article and share your feedback. For more details please feel free to contact me at arunrakwal@yahoo.com.

Windows Azure adding multiple certificate to hosted service using powershell and C#

Arun Rakwal — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 19:12:00 GMT

This article explains how to add multiple certificates to your Azure hosted service using C# or PowerShell. It also contains sample powershell code and C# code using REST API to do so.

Before you can use a Windows Azure service certificate, you must upload it to a hosted service. The following image shows the process of adding a new certificate to a subscription's certificate store. You can upload only one certificate at a time.

Also while creating please ensure clicking on "Include all certificates in certification path if possible" option. It will ensure that the entire certificate chain will be exported along with cert. With this subsequently when you will upload this certificate to Azure all the cert in certificate chain will be uploaded to Azure certificate store.

For a hosted service needing one or two certificate requirement this is a pretty simple process. But for hosted services needing high number of certificates it's a repetitive and time taking process as you can't upload more than one cert at a time (one reason for this limit is each cert file need a password). Further this complexity multiplies when you have to repeat this process multiple times during Dev or Test cycles.

For Azure automation I found PowerShell vary promising utility , you can use following script to add cert to your hosted service.

#Final Arun Rakwal

Add-PSsnapin AzureManagementToolsSnapin

Add-PsSnapin WAPPSCmdlets

#Add Subscription ID

$sub = '8a27c306-9434-4d59-971a-c3dc8223432'

#Add subscription management cert thumbprint

$cert = Get-Item cert:\LocalMachine\My\22598061DFB6543663E2D1A4C70045F52862342

$servicename='myservice'

# Certificate Name and password

$certfilename='D:\Work\cert\SSL_Cert1.pfx'

$certpwd='123'

#Find the hosted service where you want to add cert

$hostedService=Get-HostedService -serviceName $HostedServiceName -subscriptionId $subscriptionId -certificate $cert

Write-Host "Adding Certificate to Service"

# Add the certificate to the hosted service (doesn't matter it is there already)

$hostedService | Add-Certificate -CertificateToDeploy $certfilename -Password $certpwd

Remove-PSsnapin AzureManagementToolsSnapin

Remove-PSsnapin WAPPSCmdlets

It’s useful only limitation I found with this script is the Add-Certificate cmdlet would not upload full cert chain to Azure. At this point I explored REST APIs and found the way. I created a small windows form based utility to perform this job , here is code.

private static
X509Certificate2 GetCertificateFromStore(string thumbPrint)

{

// Get the certificatestore for the current user.

X509Store store = new X509Store(StoreLocation.LocalMachine );

try

{
store.Open(OpenFlags.ReadOnly);

X509Certificate2Collection certCollection =store.Certificates.Find(X509FindType.FindByThumbprint,thumbPrint,false);

if(certCollection.Count == 0)

return null;

// Return the first certificate in the collection, has the right thumbPrint and is current.

return certCollection[0];

}

finally

{

store.Close();

}

private void btnAddCert_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

try

{

string applicationName= "hostedservice"; // Add your hostedservice name

X509Certificate2managementCertificate =GetCertificateFromStore("22598061DFB6543663E2D1A4C70045F528635A6F");

OpenFileDialog cerFile= new OpenFileDialog();

cerFile.Title ="Select Cert File (s).";

cerFile.Filter ="PFX Files|*.pfx";

cerFile.Multiselect =true;

if(cerFile.ShowDialog() == DialogResult.OK)

{

foreach (String pfxpath in cerFile.FileNames)

{

string password= txtCertPassword.Text;

// Constructthe request URI.

var req =(HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(string.Format("https://management.core.windows.net/{0}/services/hostedservices/{1}/certificates",txtSubsID.Text, applicationName));

// Set the request method and the content type for the request.

req.Method ="POST";

req.ContentType= "application/xml";

// Add thex-ms-version header.

req.Headers.Add("x-ms-version", "2009-10-01");

// Add the certificate.

req.ClientCertificates.Add(managementCertificate);

// Constructthe request body.

using (var writer = new StreamWriter(req.GetRequestStream()))

{
writer.Write(string.Format(@"<?xmlversion=""1.0"" encoding=""utf-8""?>

<CertificateFile xmlns=""http://schemas.microsoft.com/windowsazure"">
<Data>{0}</Data>
<CertificateFormat>pfx</CertificateFormat>
<Password>{1}</Password>
</CertificateFile>",Convert.ToBase64String(File.ReadAllBytes(pfxpath)), password));

}

// Submit therequest and return the request ID.

String certresutl= req.GetResponse().Headers["x-ms-request-id"];

MessageBox.Show("Uploaded cert "+pfxpath);

}

catch (Exception ee)

{

MessageBox.Show(ee.ToString(),"AzureTookit");

} }

I am sure you will find this article helpfull. Pleaes rate this article and share your feedback.

For more details please feel free to contact me at arunrakwal@yahoo.com.

Azure Deployment issue - hangs with Status "Preparing to upload, please wait"

Arun Rakwal — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 09:23:00 GMT

Recently we were deploying a hosted service deployment on Azure. Deployment hangs with status saying "Preparing to upload, please wait". Unfortunately there is no message or event to show if the deployment is in progress or stop.

Issue

We started with an Azure deployment and after some time (30 mnts) i realized the status of deployment is not changing. Ideally this deployment should be over in 10 mnts.I tried to kills the existing deployment using Azure portal but failed, as Azure portal won't let you remove hosted-service during deployment. I also tried to use powershell 2.2.2 "Remove-Deployment" cmdlets with no success as cmdlets also won't work unless deployment stream is closed.

I couldn't find any notification / message on Azure portal to confirm if deployment is in progress or not.

Resolution

You need to raise a ticket with Microsoft Support here. Support team will need your subscription Id and once provided they will kill your deployment session. With a fresh login you can start the deployment afresh. In my case support confirmed that issue was due to NW issue. I changed my NW connection from wireless to wired one, this triggered the issue. Though post switch the network was available all the time looks like once connection is broken Azure won't retry for deployment.

Hope you will find this information useful. Please share your feedback and rate this article.

Windows Azure, Increase Cores count

Arun Rakwal — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 19:01:00 GMT

Windows Azure Subscription comes with core limit of 20. Many times this becomes a limitation. Recently in one of our project we were looking for deploying multiple large instances of 5 hosted services we have deployed in our azure subscription. Using default quota of 20 we can not achieve this.

Issue

Default soft limit for Windows Azure Subscription is 20 cores. So using this limit you can build maximum of 10 medium instance or 5 large instances of any hosted services. To better understand the relation between Core number and Instance Size you may refer following table (referred from How to Configure Virtual Machine Sizes)

Virtual Machine Size	CPU Cores	Memory	Disk Space for Local Storage Resources in Web and Worker Roles	Disk Space for Local Storage Resources in a VM Role	Allocated Bandwidth (Mbps)
ExtraSmall	Shared	768 MB	19,480 MB (6,144 MB is reserved for system files)	20 GB		5
Small	1	1.75 GB	229,400 MB (6,144 MB is reserved for system files)	165 GB		100
Medium	2	3.5 GB	500,760 MB (6,144 MB is reserved for system files)	340 GB		200
Large	4	7 GB	1,023,000 MB (6,144 MB is reserved for system files)	850 GB		400
ExtraLarge	8	14 GB	2,087,960 MB (6,144 MB is reserved for system files)	1890 GB		800

Resolution

As I said earlier this is a soft limit derived from average usage prospective. You can raise a quota increase ticket with Microsoft Support here. In my case support was really good and I got a call back and quota increased in couple of hours. Good point is the quota increase doesn’t impact billing and the user is charged based on usage and not number of Cores assigned.

Hope this information will be helpful. Please share your feedback and rate this article.

Create Windows Azure Subscription

Arun Rakwal — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 17:37:00 GMT

This topic explains the basics of Windows Azure subscriptions and describes how a technical staff can create and manage their Azure subscription.

Note - This topic does not explain how to sign up for a Windows Azure subscription or how an organization creates an enrollment for Windows Azure Services. For information about Windows Azure purchase options, see Purchase
Options, Free Trial, and Member Offers (for members of MSDN, Microsoft Partner Network, and BizSpark, and other Microsoft programs).

To understand difference between Azure Account and Subscription please refer Overview of Subscription Management in the Windows Azure Platform Management Portal

What is Azure Subscription

A Windows Azure subscription grants you access to Windows Azure services and to the Windows Azure Platform Management Portal.

A Windows Azure subscription has two aspects:

The Windows Azure account, through which resource usage is reported and services are billed.
The subscription itself, which governs access to and use of the Windows Azure services that are subscribed to. The subscription holder manages services (Windows Azure , SQL Azure, Storage etc) through the Windows Azure Platform
Management Portal

Let’s relate this concept with real world. When our decided to move one of the critical application to Azure following is the model we opted for Azure subscription. We created separate subscription for Dev , Test and Production environment. It helps in multiple ways :-

- I can monitor billing and usage for each of this environment separately

- To ensure security I can have different co-admin for each of this Subscription

You can also think in terms of having separate subscription for HR, Sales and Marketing.

How to Create Azure Subscription

1. Go to https://account.windowsazure.com/Subscriptions. Use your admin account Windlow Live ID for authorization.

2. You will find following screen with list of active subscriptions. To add a new subscription Click on “+ add subscription” button available at the bottom.

3. You will find "Add New Subscription" pop-up window on the screen , select a subscription offer from available options.

4. Once selected you will find a new window on the screen with details of your new subscription. New Subscription is created using a default name. Click on OK button to exit the window.

5. Once Subscription is created you should able to see following screen. In this case we got a new subscription with name of "Windows Azure Internal Consumption".

6. To Rename new subscription, choose the subscription. And in Summary windows Click on “Edit Subscription Details “ link available in right bottom pane.

Congratulation your subscription is ready. Click on Manage button to start working with subscription.

Please share your comments, you can also contact me at arunrakwal@yahoo.com.

SQL Azure - List of tables with record count

Arun Rakwal — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 08:52:00 GMT

Recently i was working in Data Sync issue and to check that we want to compare list of tables in Hub DB and Member DB. I found it intresting that many of the sp and xps commonly used till SQL 2008 is not available in SQL Azure.

Issue – How to list all the tables along with number of records in SQL Azure database ?

Resolution :-

You can run query against sys.dm_db_partition_stats dm to find SQL Azure table related information. Here is a script I created which helped me to find out list of all the user tables and number of records in each of the table on SQL Azure DB. Run this query against the SQL Azure Database.

select t.name ,s.row_count from sys.tables t

join sys.dm_db_partition_stats s

ON t.object_id = s.object_id

and t.type_desc = ‘USER_TABLE’

and t.name not like ‘%dss%’

and s.index_id = 1

Please share your comments.