Tomorrow (Thursday, 3/15/2012) at noon ET or 9am PT, we have our first screencast in the @home series:  an introduction to the @home distributed computing project ! This is the first in a series where we’ll dive into various aspects of Windows Azure – in this first webcast, we’ll keep it 100 level, discussing the platform, how to get started, and what the project is about.  From the abstract page: In this 100-level webcast, we introduce Windows Azure. We look at signing up a new account, evaluate the...

Two years ago, Jim O’neil and I developed a quick Azure training program called “@home with Windows Azure” – a way to learn Windows Azure and have some fun contributing to a well known distributed computing effort, Folding@home .  A few months later, Peter Laudati joined the cloud team and we developed the game RockPaperAzure .   RockPaperAzure was a lot of fun and is still active, but we decided to re-launch the @home with Windows Azure project because of all of the changes in the cloud since...

SQL Azure just got some better pricing!  Here are the details: 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 Great than 50 GB to 150 GB $125.874 for first 50 GB, $0.999 for each additional GB Notice the new 0 to 100 MB tier – finally, a good option for small databases, utility databases...

Windows Azure has been capable of running multiple websites in a single web role for some time now, but I found myself recently in a situation with 2 separate Azure solutions and was looking to combine them to create a single deployment.   Just like in IIS, this is most often done via host headers, so requests coming in can be forwarded to the correct site. The Goal The fine folks at infragistics created a really cool Silverlight-based reporting dashboard for Worldmaps .  Until now, each was running...

Credit to a colleague for this slide, but for those who follow Microsoft’s cloud platform might get this reference:

Week #3 of the Rock Paper Azure Challenge ended at 6pm EST on 12/9/2011. That means another five contestants just won $50 Best Buy gift cards! Congratulations to the following players for having the Top 5 bots for Week #3: AmpaT choi Protist RockMeister porterhouse Just a reminder to folks in the contest, be sure to catch Scott Guthrie, Dave Campbell, and Mark Russinovich live online next Tuesday, 12/13/2011, for the Learn Windows Azure event ! Does your bot have what it takes to win? There is one more week...

I love Windows Home Server.   I’ve been using Windows Home Server for years, and just purchased a Windows Home Server 2011 (WHS) box from Newegg (great deal on a HP Proliant micro server).  Many have asked me why I like WHS so much – it’s NAS, it’s a media server, it’s backup.   It’s a step up from a simple NAS device (although, admittedly, not as plug and play), offers more flexibility and is more cost effective than a Drobo.  A small backup agent can take snapshots of your PC...

Jim , Peter , and I are gearing up for another road trip to spread the goodness that is Windows Azure! The Windows Azure DevCamp series launched recently with a two-day event in Silicon Valley, and we’re jumping on the bandwagon for the East Region. We have five stops planned in December, and we’re doing things a bit differently this go-round. Most of the events will begin at 2 p.m. and end at 9 p.m. – with dinner in between of course. The first part will be a traditional presentation format and then we’re bringing...

Rock, Paper, Azure (RPA) is back!   For those of you who have played before, be sure to get back in the game !  If you haven’t heard of RPA, check out my past posts on the subject .   In short, RPA is a game that we built in Windows Azure.  You build a bot that plays a modified version of rock, paper, scissors on your behalf, and you try to outsmart the competition.  Over the summer, we ran a Grand Tournament where the first place prize was $5,000!   This time, we...

One of the great new features of the Windows Azure platform is the Azure Traffic Manager, a geo load balancer and durability solution for your cloud solutions.  For any large website, managing traffic globally is critical to the architecture for both disaster recovery and load balancing. When you deploy a typical web role in Azure, each instance is automatically load balanced at the datacenter level.   The Azure Fabric Controller manages upgrades and maintenance of those instances to ensure uptime...

Chris Williams just let me know about an event happening in Atlanta this Saturday, Oct 8 … and it’s free!  Free is good.   Check it out here: http://codemastery.eventbrite.com/ Sessions: 1. CSLA .NET intro - Rocky Lhotka Topic will give attendees a high level overview of CSLA as an application framework. Key moving parts of CSLA will be covered, along with answering the most important question: Why use CSLA? Roles of business objects, data portal, rules, authentication and authorization will be...

The most common response to running stuff in the cloud (Azure, Amazon in particular) is the that it’s too expensive for the little guy.   And generally, hosting VMs when a small shared site of something similar will suffice is a tough argument. There are aspects to Azure, though, that are very cost effective as they do “micro-scale” very well.  A good example of this is the Azure CDN, or more simply, Azure Blob Storage.   It’s effective to exchange files, it’s effective at fast delivery...

We had an excellent time presenting today’s Windows Phone Camp in Charlotte. Thank you to everyone who attended. Here are some resources and major points of today’s “To the cloud…” session. First, here is the slide deck for the presentation.  To The Cloud... Next, download the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone . This contains both the sending notifications sample, and the Babelcam application. Note that there are quite a few setup steps – using the Web Platform Installer is a great way to make all...

Once or twice a year, I try to take on a project around the house and bring it to a full 80% completion before abandoning for a few years.  In this case, I decided to install some sound around the home.  It was frustrating me to not be able to listen to my favorite music around the home (without dragging around gear), particularly when experiencing nice whole-home audio solutions at some friends’ homes.  The big problem is that there are very few good audio systems for retrofit installations. ...

From MSDN events, to roadshows, to firestarters … Now on to Camps … and just got word about the upcoming Windows Phone camps… What’s a Windows Phone Camp? For those who went to our "Windows Phone Garage" series last year, its one of those. For those new to the scene, its a free, full day event chocked full of everything you need to know to develop a Windows Phone application. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or just getting started with phone app development this full-day event is for you. Interested...

We had a GREAT time running the RockPaperAzure Grand Tournament Wednesday.  We had a total of 302 players from around the world, and the top players in the finals were: We saw some amazing strategies, and learned a lot along the way.  We intend to keep the site running with more contests along the way – if you have any interest in running a competition for a user group, conference, or other activity, we’d be happy to create a round for you on the site.  Contact us for info. Server Load Nothing...

Just a quick tip for those in the Grand Tournament.  There are 2 very common reasons we’re seeing bots get rejected – we’ll call it the red text of death that appears when you submit a bot, but it fails code analysis.  If all you see is “ Bot Successfully Uploaded,” then move along, nothing to see here. The most common are coders adding debugging statements into their code.  We do block the Diagnostics namespace (among a few others), so it’s quite likely any debugging code will trigger a failure...