When talking to long time .NET developers about application domains ( AppDomains ) they often understand the high level concepts but not necessarily how or why they would use them. My goal of this article is to help clarify some of the scenarios where AppDomains offer value and describe how to go about...

In the previous post “ Windows Azure Startup Tasks Part 1 ” we learned about the basics of start-up tasks and how they can enable you to realize solutions that may otherwise have been outside of the scope of PaaS. This powerful feature offers some additional functionality that we will cover...

I find myself several times a week having conversations with people around the ability to install and configure additional software on Windows Azure™ Web and Worker roles. This key piece of functionality provides a mechanism for you to setup the environment the way you require and still gain the...

As you can probably agree, very few applications, short of “Hello World”, do not have some form of storage. The use of storage can range from core repositories to scratch disks, but regardless of the use it typically plays a critical part in the overall architecture of the application. With...

Overview In order to ensure the benefits of this post are maximized I will level set by defining what roles and instances are as well as how they relate to each other. A role in Windows Azure is really a blueprint that describes what an individual virtual machine will look like. The blueprint includes...

As a developer first looking at diving into Windows Azure Development it is important that you are familiar with a few concepts. Windows Azure is for Everyone When adopting Windows Azure as a development platform people are often concerned about having to learn a new development environment and...

When we start looking at Windows Azure there are several key workloads that come to mind, the ones that are pretty much slam dunks for being a fit. Workload 1 - On and Off On and Off typically represents applications or web sites that are needed for a short period of time and later shut off. An...

It has been several months since I started my ramp on the Windows Azure Platform and am now ready to write about it. While I worked through the material and guidance it was evolving and growing which often changed my mindset on techniques to handle various scenarios. In an effort to allow others to...