Windows Azure AppFabric - Announcements

Retiring the Windows Azure AppFabric Announcements Blog

AppFabric Team — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 18:43:06 GMT

In order to make it easier for our customers to follow our announcements and updates, we decided to stop using this blog and will be only using the Windows Azure AppFabric Team Blog from now on.

This blog will continue to exist but we will not be posting to it.

Please continue to follow us and provide feedback on our Windows Azure AppFabric Team Blog.

To learn more on Windows Azure AppFabric visit our Windows Azure AppFabric website or our MSDN developer website.

To propose new features and vote on existing proposal please visit our Windows Azure AppFabric Feature Voting Forum.

Windows Azure Platform Introductory Special Extended to March 31, 2011

AppFabric Team — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 17:42:00 GMT

Good news - the Windows Azure Platform Introductory Special offer (which includes the SQL Azure Free Trial) has been extended through March 31, 2011! This promotional offer enables you to try a limited amount of the Windows Azure platform at no charge. The subscription includes a base level of monthly Windows Azure compute hours, storage, data transfers, AppFabric Access Control transactions, AppFabric Service Bus connections, and a SQL Azure Database, at no charge.

Included each month at no charge:

Windows Azure
- 25 hours of a small compute instance
- 500 MB of storage
- 10,000 storage transactions
- Windows Azure AppFabric
  - 100,000 Access Control transactions
  - 2 Service Bus connections
SQL Azure
- 1GB Web Edition database (available for first 3 months only)
Data Transfers (per region)
- 500 MB in
- 500 MB out

Any monthly usage in excess of the above amounts will be charged at the standard rates. This Introductory Special offer will end on March 31, 2011 and all usage will then be charged at the standard rates.

Please visit http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/offers/ to see additional details on the Introductory Special as well as other offers currently available for the Windows Azure platform.

Introduction to Windows Azure AppFabric Caching CTP

AppFabric Team — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 18:13:00 GMT

This blog post provides a quick introduction to Windows Azure AppFabric Caching. You might also want to watch this short video introduction.

As mentioned in the previous post announcing the Windows Azure AppFabric CTP October Release, we've just introduced Windows Azure AppFabric Caching, which provides a distributed, in-memory cache, implemented as a cloud service.

Earlier this year we delivered Windows Server AppFabric Caching, which is our distributed caching solution for on-premises applications. But what do you do if you want this capability in your cloud applications? You could set up a caching technology on instances in the cloud, but you would end up installing, configuring, and managing your cache server instances yourself. That really defeats one of the main goals of the cloud - to get away from managing all those details.

So as we looked for a caching solution in Windows Azure AppFabric, we wanted to deliver the same capabilities available in Windows Server AppFabric Caching, and in fact the same developer experience and APIs for Windows Azure applications, but in a way that provides the full benefit of cloud computing. The obvious solution was to deliver Caching as a service.

To start off, let's look at how you set up a cache. First you'll need to go to the Windows Azure AppFabric LABS environment developer portal (http://portal.appfabriclabs.com/ ) to set up a Project, and under that a Service Namespace. Then you simply click the "Cache" link to configure a cache for this namespace.

With no sweat on your part you now have a distributed cache set up for your application. We take care of all the work of configuring, deploying, and maintaining the instances.

The next screen gives you the Service URL for your cache and an Authentication token you can copy and paste into your application to grant it access to the cache.

So how do you use Caching in your application?

First, the caching service comes with out-of-the-box ASP.NET providers for both session state and page output caching. This makes it extremely easy to leverage these providers to quickly speed up your existing ASP.NET applications by simply updating your web.config files. We even give you the configuration elements in the developer portal (see above) that you can cut and paste into your web.config files.

You can also programmatically interact with the cache to store and retrieve data, using the same familiar API used in Windows Server AppFabric Caching. The typical pattern used is called cache-aside, which simply means you check first if the data you need is in the cache before going to the database. If it's in the cache, you use it, speeding up your application and alleviating load on the database. If the data is not in the cache, you retrieve it from the database and store it in the cache so its available next the application needs it.

The delivery of Caching as a service can be seen as our first installment on the promise of AppFabric - to provide a consistent infrastructure for building and running applications whether they are running on-premises or in the cloud. You can expect more cross-pollination between Windows Server AppFabric and Windows Azure AppFabric in the future.

We invite you to play with the Caching CTP and give us feedback on how it works for you and what features you would like to see added. One great way to give feedback is to fill out this survey on your distributed caching usage and needs.

As we move towards commercial launch, we'll look to add many of the features that make Windows Server AppFabric Caching extremely popular, such as High Availability, the ability to emit notifications to clients when they need to refresh their local cache, and more.

Windows Azure AppFabric SDK October Release available for download

AppFabric Team — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 01:12:00 GMT

A new version of the Windows Azure AppFabric SDK V1.0 is available for download starting 10/27. The new version introduces a fix to an issue which causes the SDK to rollback on 64 bit Windows Server machines with BizTalk Server installed.

The fix is included in the updated SDK download. If you are not experiencing this issue, there is no need to download the new version of the SDK.

The Windows Azure AppFabric Team

Windows Azure AppFabric CTP October Release

AppFabric Team — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 23:14:00 GMT

Windows Azure AppFabric CTP October Release

Today we are announcing the Windows Azure AppFabric CTP October Release, available in our LABS environment: http://portal.appfabriclabs.com.

This release introduces an exciting new service called Windows Azure AppFabric Caching, some important new features for Service Bus, and some bug fixes for Access Control. The Caching service is the first of several new services planned for AppFabric, several of which are being announced at PDC today.

Taken together these new services take Windows Azure AppFabric beyond the scope of providing cloud connectivity and start to fulfill the vision of a comprehensive cloud middleware platform for developing, deploying and managing applications on the Windows Azure Platform. You can learn more about Windows Azure AppFabric, including the new services announced today at PDC, on our new website - www.microsoft.com/appfabric/azure.

Here are the highlights of the release:

Caching: Windows Azure AppFabric Caching is a distributed, in-memory cache for applications running in Windows Azure.

It can significantly speed up access to data for your Windows Azure applications.
It is delivered as a cloud service, so it's simple and requires no administration on your part to setup or maintain.
It is based off of Windows Server AppFabric Caching capabilities, which means it is proven and uses a familiar programming model.

Service Bus: In this release we are introducing some new enhancements to the Service Bus:

Durable Messaging - This gives larger storage capacity, larger message size, and durable persistence to Message Buffers.
Load balancing - We now allow multiple listeners on the same connection point, which provides for load balancing solutions with no single point of failure.
Improved Management- All management operations (for both Message Buffers and Connection Points) are now explicit, the management store is persistent and management data can be accessed through Atom Publishing Protocol / REST.

Note: this release of Service Bus is focused on getting feedback in these new features and does not support the full set of features available in production today. We will be adding all of the production features back together with the new features in a future CTP release in LABS before releasing the full updated Service Bus to production.

Access Control: This release contains only bug fixes for Access Control; no new functionality added since the LABS September Release.

Keep in mind that in the LABS environment there is no SLA, but accounts and usage of the services are free. As always, we encourage you to check it out and let us know what you think of the new features.

The Windows Azure AppFabric Team

Windows Azure AppFabric Labs October release – announcement and scheduled maintenance

AppFabric Team — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 04:35:00 GMT

The next update to the Windows Azure AppFabric LABS environment is scheduled for October 26, 2010 (Tuesday). Users will have NO access to the AppFabric LABS portal and services during the scheduled maintenance down time.

When:

START: October 26, 2010, 8 am PST

END: October 28, 2010, 11 am PST

Impact Alert:

The AppFabric LABS environment (Service Bus, Access Control and portal) will be unavailable during this period. Additional impacts are described below.

Action Required:

Existing accounts and Service Namespaces will be available after the services are deployed.

You will have an additional -mgmt entry as follows:

Your ns.sb.AppFabricLabs.com will remain ns.sb.AppFabricLabs.com and an additional entry and corresponding relying party will be created as ns-mgmt.sb.AppFabricLabs.com

However, ACS Identity Providers, Rule Groups, Relying Parties, Service Keys, and Service Identities will NOT be persisted and restored after the maintenance. As the service will not support the bulk upload of rules from the previous version, the user will be responsible for both backing up and restoring any rules they care to reuse after the Windows Azure AppFabric LABS October Release.

Thank you for working in LABS and giving us valuable feedback. Once the update becomes available, we'll post the details via this blog.

Stay tuned for the upcoming LABS release!

The Windows Azure AppFabric Team

Windows Azure AppFabric SDK September Release available for download

AppFabric Team — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 04:14:00 GMT

As part of the Windows Azure AppFabric September Release we are now providing both 32- and 64-bit versions of the Windows Azure AppFabric SDK.

In addition to addressing several deployment scenarios for 64-bit computers, Windows Azure AppFabric now enables integration of WCF services that use AppFabic Service Bus endpoints in IIS 7.5, with Windows® Server AppFabric. You can leverage Windows® Server AppFabric functionality to configure and monitor method invocations for the Service Bus endpoints.

Note that the name of the installer has changed:

· Old Name:

WindowsAzureAppFabricSDK.msi

· New names:

WindowsAzureAppFabricSDK-x64.msi

WindowsAzureAppFabricSDK-x86.msi

Any automated deployment scripts you might have built that use the previous name will need to be updated to use the new naming. No other installer option has changed.

The Windows Azure AppFabric SDK September Release is available here for download.

The Windows Azure AppFabric Team

Windows Azure AppFabric LABS September release now available

AppFabric Team — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 17:04:00 GMT

Today we deployed an incremental update to the Access Control Service in the Labs environment. It’s available here: http://portal.appfabriclabs.com. Keep in mind that there is no SLA around this release, but accounts and usage of the service are free while it is in the labs environment.

This release builds on the prior August release of the Access Control Service, and adds the following features:

· Support for OAuth 2.0 Web Server and assertion profiles (http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-oauth-v2-10)

· Additional support for X.509 certificate authentication via WS-Trust and Service Identities

· The ability to map Identity Providers to Relying Parties

· Several updates to the Management Web Portal:

o Upload a WS-Fed Metadata file through the portal

o Additional fields uploading encrypting and decrypting certificates

o Expanded support for machine keys (password, symmetric key, and X.509) and creation of valid usage dates

We’ve also added some more documentation and updated samples on our CodePlex project: http://acs.codeplex.com.

For more information about the Access Control Service, see the Channel 9 video at http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Identity/Introducing-the-new-features-of-the-August-Labs-release-of-the-Access-Control-Service.

Like always, I encourage you to check it out and let the team know what you think.

The Windows Azure AppFabric Team

Windows Azure AppFabric Labs September release – announcement and scheduled maintenance

AppFabric Team — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 19:43:00 GMT

The next update to the Windows Azure AppFabric LABS environment is scheduled for September 16, 2010 (Thursday). Users will have NO access to the AppFabric LABS portal and services during the scheduled maintenance down time.

When:

START: September 16, 2010, 10am PST

END: September 16, 2010, 6pm PST

Impact Alert:

The AppFabric LABS environment (Service Bus, Access Control and portal) will be unavailable during this period. Additional impacts are described below.

Action Required:

Existing accounts and Service Namespaces will be available after the services are deployed.

However, ACS Identity Providers, Rule Groups, Relying Parties, Service Keys, and Service Identities will NOT be persisted and restored after the maintenance. Users will need independently back up their data if they wish to restore them after the Windows Azure AppFabric LABS September Release.

Thanks for working in LABS and giving us valuable feedback. Once the update becomes available, we’ll post the details via this blog.

Stay tuned for the upcoming LABS release!

The Windows Azure AppFabric Team

New version of the Windows Azure AppFabric SDK available for download

AppFabric Team — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 17:49:00 GMT

A new version of the Windows Azure AppFabric SDK is available for download starting 8/12. The new version introduces a fix in the Windows Azure AppFabric SDK for the following Service Bus bug:

Adding a Ws2007HttpRelayBinding endpoint that uses TransportWithMessageCredential security mode to a ServiceHost that also exposes a local MEX endpoint (not visible through the Service Bus) using the mexHttpsBinding, causes the local MEX endpoint to stop working. Invoking the MEX endpoint results in an InvalidOperationException.

The fix is included in the updated SDK download. If you are not experiencing this bug, there is no need to download the new version of the SDK.

The Windows Azure AppFabric Team

New Access Control service in Labs Delivers Radically Expanded Feature Set

AppFabric Team — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 04:57:34 GMT

The Windows Azure AppFabric LABS August Release is live as of August 5th, 2010. This release is a major update to Access Control. It’s available in our LABS environment: http://portal.appfabriclabs.com.

For more details please see Justin Smith's Blog entry

The Windows Azure AppFabric Team

-Updated on 7/30/2010- Windows Azure AppFabric LABS August Release, Breaking Changes Announcement and Scheduled Maintenance

AppFabric Team — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:58:00 GMT

The Windows Azure AppFabric LABS August release is scheduled for August 5, 2010 (Thursday). Users will have NO access to the AppFabric LABS portal and services during the scheduled maintenance down time.

When:

START: August 5, 2010, 10am PST

END: August 5, 2010, 6pm PST

Impact Alert:

LABS AppFabric Service Bus, Access Control and portal will be unavailable during this period. Additional impacts are described below.

Action Required:

Existing accounts and Service Namespaces will be available after the services are deployed.

However, ACS Rules, Issuers, Scopes, and Token Policies will NOT be persisted and restored after the maintenance. Users will need to back up their data if they wish to restore them after the Windows Azure AppFabric LABS August Release.

Also note that the Service Bus Multicast with Message Buffers features, which have been available in LABS since March 2010, will be temporarily removed from the LABS environment. The team is working on an alternative approaches to these features.

Thanks for working in LABS and giving us valuable feedback. Once the update becomes available, we’ll post the details via this blog.

Stay tuned for the upcoming LABS release!

The Windows Azure AppFabric Team

New Sample: Consuming ACS and Service Bus from Flash

AppFabric Team — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 22:34:00 GMT

As part of the Windows Azure AppFabric July Release, we have added support for cross-domain policy files to enable cross-domains calls to Service Bus and Access Control Service from Silverlight and Flash clients. This new sample demonstrates how to consume the AppFabric Access Control Service (ACS) and the Service Bus's Message Buffer API from a Flash application.

You will find the sample as an attachment to this post. Enjoy!

If you have any issues/questions/feedback with this sample, please address them in the Windows Azure AppFabric forums

Announcing availability of the Windows Azure AppFabric July Release

AppFabric Team — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 22:32:00 GMT

The Windows Azure AppFabric July Release is live as of July 1^st, 2010. New features include support for Rich Internet Application (RIA) clients, and support for .NET Framework 4. Read more about the newest release here.

The Windows Azure AppFabric Team

Updated IP addresses for AppFabric Data Centers

AppFabric Team — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 23:11:00 GMT

Today (6/7/2010) the Windows Azure platform AppFabric has updated the IP Ranges on which the AppFabric nodes are hosted. If your firewall restricts outbound traffic, you will need to perform the additional step of opening your outbound TCP Ports and IP Addresses for these nodes. Please see the 1/28/2010 “ Additional Data Centers for Windows Azure platform AppFabric” posted which was updated today to include the new set of IP Addresses.

Windows Azure platform AppFabric Team

Now Available: The Windows Azure platform AppFabric LABS Environment

AppFabric Team — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:22:00 GMT

Today the AppFabric team has released the AppFabric LABS environment. This is a new environment which the team will use to showcase some early bits and get feedback from the community. Usage for this environment will not be billed.

AppFabric Labs provide a way for customers to test out and play with experimental AppFabric technologies. These are upcoming capabilities that excite us, and we want to get your feedback on them as soon as possible. As a result, there is no support or SLA associated with the LABS environment, but in return you will be able to preview the future of AppFabric while helping us shape it. Though similar to a Community Technology Preview, LABS technologies may occasionally be even farther away from commercial availability.

In this release of the LABS environment, we’re shipping two features:

1. Silverlight support: we’ve added the ability for Silverlight clients to make cross-domain calls to the Service Bus and Access Control Services.

2. Multicast with Message Buffers: we’ve added the ability for Message Buffers to attach to a multicast group. A message sent to the multicast group is delivered to every Message Buffer that is attached to it.

To get started:

1. Go to https://portal.appfabriclabs.com/,

2. Sign up using your Live ID,

3. Create your LABS project, and

4. Download LABS samples from here to learn more about these new features.

We hope you enjoy working with these Labs features as much as we have enjoyed making them available to you.

Thanks,

The Windows Azure platform AppFabric Team

Announcing upcoming commercial availability of Windows Azure platform AppFabric

AppFabric Team — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:32:00 GMT

We are happy to share that starting April 9, 2010, Windows Azure platform AppFabric will be commercially available on a paid and fully SLA-supported basis.

In order to help you get familiarized with AppFabric billing, we released the AppFabric Billing Preview yesterday March 9. With this billing preview, you will be able to download a usage summary from the AppFabric Developer Portal, with information similar to that of the "daily usage summary" currently available to you for Windows Azure and SQL Azure.

If you are already using AppFabric, we will begin charging as of April 9, 2010 at 12:00 AM GMT. You can find our pricing for AppFabric here. You can also go to the pricing section of our FAQs for additional information as well as our pricing blog post. If you do not desire to be charged for AppFabric, please remove any applications that are currently utilizing these services prior to this date.

Thank you for your continued interest and business.

The Windows Azure platform AppFabric Team

Announcing availability of Billing Preview for Windows Azure platform AppFabric

AppFabric Team — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:54:00 GMT

Here's a ‘Thank You' to all our customers and partners, for creating a Windows Azure platform AppFabric commercial account. The trust you have placed in the Windows Azure platform is tremendously appreciated. As you may remember from our previous announcement, AppFabric will become fully SLA-supported in April, and your account will begin to accrue charges.

In order to help prepare you for the onset of billing, today we are releasing the AppFabric Billing Preview. To use this billing preview, at any time you may visit the AppFabric Developer Portal and download a daily AppFabric usage summary, which will have information similar to that currently available for Windows Azure and SQL Azure. The report will summarize your usage of AppFabric starting today. The Billing Preview will be available until you start seeing actual billing charges in April. We hope you find the billing preview useful in understanding how you will be charged when actual billing starts.

You can find our pricing information here. For additional detail, you can also go to the pricing section of our FAQs as well as our previous pricing blog post. If you have feedback on the billing preview or need further information, please visit our Discussion Forum.

We deeply value your continued investment and are always striving to move further towards our goal of enabling you, our customers and partners, to build and grow your businesses on the Windows Azure platform.

The Windows Azure platform AppFabric Team

Windows Azure & SQL Azure announce General Availability

AppFabric Team — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:11:00 GMT

Today, Feb 1^st 2010, Windows Azure and SQL Azure have announced general availability and have started charging customers. Windows Azure platform AppFabric continues to be free until April 2010. Details available at http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsazure/archive/2010/02/01/windows-azure-platform-now-generally-available-in-21-countries.aspx

Windows Azure platform AppFabric Team

Additional Data Centers for Windows Azure AppFabric

AppFabric Team — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 01:13:00 GMT

Window Azure platform AppFabric has now been deployed to more data centers around the world. Previously, when you provisioned a service namespace, you were asked to select a region from a list that contained only United States (South/Central). Now, when you provision a service namespace, you have three more regions from which to choose -- United States (North/Central), Europe (North) and Asia (Southeast). If your firewall configuration restricts outbound traffic, you will need to perform the addition step of opening your outbound TCP port range 9350-9353 to the IP range associated with your selected regional data center. Those IP ranges are listed at the bottom of this announcement

Note that your existing service namespaces have already been deployed to United States (South/Central) and cannot be relocated to another region. If you like, you may delete a service namespace, and when recreating it, associate it with another region. However, if you do so, data associated with your deleted namespace will be lost.

Windows Azure platform AppFabric plans to deploy to more locations in the months ahead. Further details will be posted as they become available.

IP Ranges (updated as of 6/210/2011).

United States (South/Central)
65.55.80.0/20, 65.54.48.0/21, 65.55.64.0/20, 70.37.48.0/20, 70.37.64.0/18, 65.52.32.0/21, 70.37.160.0/21, 157.55.103.48/28, 157.55.176.0/20, 157.55.103.32/28,
157.55.192.0/22, 157.55.196.0/22,157.55.200.0/22

United States (North/Central)
207.46.192.0/20, 65.52.0.0/19, 65.52.48.0/20, 65.52.192.0/19, 209.240.220.0/23, 157.55.136.0/21, 157.55.60.224/28, 157.55.160.0/20, 65.52.106.240/28,
65.52.106.16/28,65.52.107.0/28,65.52.106.224/28,65.52.106.32/27,65.52.106.64/27,65.52.106.160/27,65.52.106.192/27,65.52.106.96/27,65.52.106.128/27,
157.55.24.0/21,157.55.208.0/21,157.55.60.240/28

United States (North/West)
65.52.98.96/28,65.52.103.128/27,65.52.98.96/28,65.55.19.64/26,65.52.99.0/24,65.52.101.0/24,65.55.25.96/28

Europe (North)
213.199.128.0/20, 213.199.160.0/20, 213.199.184.0/21, 94.245.112.0/20, 94.245.88.0/21, 94.245.104.0/21, 65.52.64.0/20, 65.52.224.0/19, 157.55.3.0/24

Europe (West)
94.245.97.0/24, 65.52.128.0/19, 213.199.128.0/20,213.199.180.112/28,213.199.180.32/28,213.199.180.96/28,213.199.180.192/26,213.199.183.0/24,157.55.8.128/28,
157.55.8.144/28,157.55.8.160/28,157.55.8.64/26

Asia (Southeast)
207.46.48.0/20, 111.221.16.0/21, 111.221.80.0/20, 207.46.48.0/20, 111.221.16.0/21, 111.221.80.0/20, 111.221.96.0/20

Asia (East)
11.221.64.0/22, 65.52.160.0/19, 207.46.72.0/26, 207.46.89.16/28,207.46.95.32/27,207.46.77.224/28,207.46.87.0/24,207.46.67.160/27,207.46.67.192/27

For details on how to interpret above address ranges, click here

The AppFabric Team.

Commercial Offer Availability and Updated AppFabric Pricing

AppFabric Team — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 21:03:00 GMT

As part of the announcement of the commercial availability of Windows Azure platform offers, we are also introducing updated pricing for the Windows Azure platform AppFabric, which helps developers connect cloud and on-premises applications. Based on discussion and feedback from hundreds of customers during the CTP process, we have made the pricing simpler and more predictable. Service Bus will now be priced at $3.99 per Connection-month, and Access Control will be $1.99 per 100,000 Transactions.

Last November at the 2009 Professional Developers’ Conference, Microsoft announced a new product offering named AppFabric. AppFabric delivers services that enable developers to build and manage composite applications more easily for both server and cloud environments. The server components, known as Windows Server AppFabric, provide caching capabilities and workflow and service management capabilities for applications that run on-premises. The cloud components, known as Windows Azure platform AppFabric (formerly called “.NET Services”), include cloud-based services that help developers connect applications and services between Windows Azure, Windows Server and a number of other platforms. Windows Azure platform AppFabric is available as a production ready service today and includes two services: Service Bus, which makes it easier to connect applications and services in the cloud or on-premises, and Access Control, which provides federated authorization as a service.

SERVICE BUS PRICING

For Service Bus, the pricing meter has changed from “Message Operations” to “Connections”. In many cases, each application instance that connects to the Service Bus will require just one Connection, which means that predicting your usage is often as simple as counting the number of application instances or devices that you need to connect. Whether your application requires two-way messaging, event distribution, protocol tunneling, or another architecture, the Connection-based model is designed to suit your business needs. Connections are charged at a rate of $3.99 per Connection per month (plus applicable data transfer charges), and will be billed on a pay-as-you-go, consumptive basis. Alternatively, for customers who are able to forecast their needs in advance, we offer the option to purchase “Packs” of Connections: a pack of 5 Connections for $9.95, a pack of 25 for $49.75, a pack of 100 for $199.00, or a pack of 500 for $995.00 per month (plus data transfer). Connection Packs represent an effective rate of $1.99 per Connection-month. Pack sizes larger than 500 may be available on request. In our FAQ, we provide more details on how Connections are defined, measured, and billed.

We expect that most customers will find this new meter to be simpler and more predictable. While the former Message Operations meter was well suited for uses such as discrete transactional messaging, it has been more complicated in other cases. For example, what happens if you want to stream a large file, tunnel a protocol persistently, or deploy a lot of devices that all "listen" idly all day? Knowing what gets counted as a message, and predicting usage from day to day, was difficult.

It turns out that our customers have all of those uses in mind, which is a good thing. Customers have asked for simpler pricing, and we are now able to deliver this for a wider range of uses, including streamed data, protocol tunneling, and transactional messaging. This new pricing structure will help make it easier for you to understand and control when and how many Connections are being used. In addition, it provides increased predictability, because under normal circumstances, your total Connection cost will stay the same whether you generate more or less “message” volume from one month to the next.

ACCESS CONTROL PRICING

For Access Control, the pricing meter has changed from “Message Operations” to “Transactions”. In practice, these meters are the same; only the name has been changed to reflect the Access Control function more accurately. As previously announced, token requests and service management operations will both be counted as Transactions, and charged at a rate of $1.99 per 100,000 Transactions.

AVAILABILITY

The Service Bus and Access Control are available today, however to give customers more time to adjust to the new pricing structure, charges will start to accrue in April, 2010. Usage until that time will be free of charge, so we encourage you to upgrade your account and sign up for an offer today. Starting today, customers can already take advantage of the same support and benefits provided across the Windows Azure platform. SLAs will take effect when charges begin to accrue in April, 2010. In order to help customers monitor and predict their usage before charges begin to accrue, Connection and Transaction usage reports will be made available soon on their developer portal at http://appfabric.azure.com.

For more information, please visit our FAQ and pricing pages.

-- Windows Azure platform AppFabric team

The Windows Azure platform AppFabric December 2009 Release is Live

AppFabric Team — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 23:42:00 GMT

The Windows Azure platform AppFabric December release is live as of December 18^th 2009. This release includes improvements in stability, scale, and performance. Please refer to the release notes for a complete list of the breaking changes in this release. You are encouraged to visit the AppFabric portal to retrieve the latest copy of the SDK.

Windows Azure platform AppFabric Breaking Changes Pre-Announcement

AppFabric Team — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 00:06:00 GMT

Windows Azure platform AppFabric Breaking Changes Pre-Announcement

In this Windows Azure platform AppFabric release, there are improvements in stability, scale and performance over the previous CTP. Some of these improvements might require user code modification. Applications built on or that communicate with AppFabric Service Bus and AppFabric Access Control might be affected and need to change accordingly.

Access Control

WRAP version updated. AppFabric Access Control has been updated to support version 0.9 of the Web Resource Authorization Protocol (WRAP). Support for version WRAP v0.8 has been removed. See the OAuth WRAP WG document for WRAPv0.9.7.2 for full details on this version of WRAP (located at http://oauth-wrap-wg.googlegroups.com/web/WRAP-v0.9.7.2.pdf?gda=dLqVw0QAAABFB7PFAFiVedPtjcqT8uuI_dtfzzpm2dFi8PLv_8ljHRidFvlYqd_ZjmG9h9kh5-pV6u9SiETdg0Q2ffAyHU-dzc4BZkLnSFWX59nr5BxGqA). In addition, the WRAP endpoint name has changed from https://servicenamespace.accesscontrol.windows.net/WRAPv0.8/ to https://servicenamespace.accesscontrol.windows.net/WRAPv0.9/. The WRAPv0.8 endpoint has been removed.

WRAP Request changes

Token type field. In WRAPv0.8, the requester specified the type of token by providing “wrap_swt=[token]” or “wrap_saml=[token]” in the request. In WRAPv0.9, the user now provides a separate parameter specifying the token type: “wrap_assertion_format=[SWT, SAML]”. See Section 5.2 of the WRAPv0.9.7.2 document referenced above for more details.

Token field. In WRAPv0.9, since the token type is a separate parameter (see above item), the token is provided using the “wrap_assertion=[token]” parameter. See Section 5.2 of the WRAPv0.9.7.2 document for details.

Scope field. In WRAPv0.9, the “applies_to” field name has been changed to “wrap_scope”. See Section 5 of the WRAPv0.9.7.2 document for more details.

WRAP Response changes

Expiration field. In the WRAPv0.9 token, the “wrap_token_expires_in” field name has been changed to “wrap_access_token_expires_in”. See section 5 of the WRAPv0.9.7.2 document.

Body field. In the body of the response from ACS upon a token request, the body was previously “wrap_token=[token body]”. The name has been changed such that the body is now “wrap_access_token=[token body]”. See Section 5 of the WRAPv0.9.7.2 document.

Issuer in the returned token. In the November 2009 CTP, the issuer in the token response was the URI of the endpoint that issued the token. For example, in the November 2009 CTP, if you requested a token from https://servicenamespace.accesscontrol.windows.net/WRAPv0.8/, the issuer in the returned token was https://servicenamespace.accesscontrol.windows.net/WRAPv0.8/. In this release, the issuer in the returned token is not tied to a specific endpoint (in preparation for future support of multiple-endpoint-issuing tokens), so the response returns https://servicenamespace.accesscontrol.windows.net/.

Authorization (auth) header. In WRAPv0.8, the auth header appeared as: Authorization: WRAPv0.8 [token]. In WRAPv0.9, the auth header format is now: Authorization: WRAP access_token=”[token]”. See section 4.2 of the WRAPv0.9.7.2 document.

Service Bus

Message Buffers

PeekLock expiration. The determination for when message buffer PeekLocks expire was incorrectly computed. In this release, the PeekLock respects the user configurable timeout value and uses the operation timeout to determine when the PeekLock should expire.

URI in Atom feed. The response to the HTTP request to create a message buffer contains an Atom feed identifying the URI for the buffer head. That URI had contained extra slashes. The response has been corrected in this release and now identifies the buffer head with the correct URI.

Allowing “/” in Delete requests. Attempts to delete a message buffer where the buffer URI was incorrectly specified used to return a 500 error. In this release, such Delete requests will return a 400 Bad Request error.

Creation Errors returned. Message buffer creation sometimes failed silently. In this release, creation errors are returned.

Status code change. Invalid message buffer operations had returned an HTTP status code 500. In this release, status codes in the 400-range (4xx) are returned.

Relay Bindings

Port change. Customers communicating with previous versions of the AppFabric Service Bus through firewalls that restrict outbound traffic had to open ports 808 and 828 for NetOnewayRelayBinding and NetEventRelayBinding communication and 818 and 819 for the other bindings. In this release, the range is specified at 9350-9353 where 9350 and 9351 are used for NetOnewayRelayBinding and NetEventRelayBinding communication and 9352 and 9353 are used for the other bindings.

Oneway errors returned. Initiators (clients) using NetOnewayRelayBinding and NetEventRelayBinding were unable to receive error information in previous CTP releases. In this release, failed channel creation or failed message delivery will return the cause of the error, such as quota exceeded and authorization failure.

Unneeded security mode eliminated. The EndToEndWebHttpSecurityMode had an acceptable value of “TransportCredentialOnly” whose behavior was indistinguishable from the value “None”. In this release, “TransportCredentialOnly” is no longer an allowed value.

URIs and Headers

Case sensitivity introduced. Case insensitive comparisons had been made with SOAP headers, HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, etc.) and Access Control claim tokens. In this release, such comparisons are now case sensitive in order to comply with these standards.

ASCII required in URI paths. Users had been allowed to include non-ASCII characters in URI names. In this release, URI path names are restricted to the ASCII character set. The ASCII character limitation does not extent to fragments and query strings, which often represent application-domain-specific information.

Token URI validation. When granting permission to access a URI, comparison between the endpoint URI and the URI specified in the token did not distinguish URI segments. Thus, a token issued for abc/def was held to be valid for abc/def/g (which is correct) as well as abc/defg (which is unwanted behavior). In this release, tokens are valid for child segments of the URI.

Using Access Control

Secure channel required for tokens. Customers had been allowed to transmit messages that contained Access Control tokens in clear text. In this release, attempts to send messages that contain Access Control tokens over non-secure transport channels will fail with an error “Transport security is required to protect the token.”

Token tag change. The previous CTP SDK used <BinarySecret> to wrap the Access Control Simple Web Token. This tag is reserved in WS-Trust for carrying key material. In this release, the tag used to wrap SWT tokens is <BinarySecurityToken>.

Windows Azure platform AppFabric Team

A New Community Protocol and Token Format Supported by the Access Control Service

AppFabric Team — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:55:00 GMT

The November 2009 CTP release of the Access Control Service includes support for a new community protocol and token format. Their names are Web Resource Authorization Protocol (WRAP) and Simple Web Tokens (SWT). See here for specifications, community discussion, and more information.

Upcoming Important Changes to Microsoft .NET Workflow Service

AppFabric Team — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 22:58:00 GMT

The team is excitedly preparing the next milestone of the Microsoft .NET Services Community Technology Preview (CTP). Once the .NET Services CTP becomes available, we’ll post the details via this blog, including a download link.

The next release of the .NET Services CTP will be the sixth version released since the initial CTP became public last year. The rapid iterative development cycle required for cloud offerings is driving an equally interesting and rapidly iterating feedback loop with customers and partners. Keep sending us your feedback!

Incorporating community feedback is the cornerstone of each and every development milestone. Talking to current and potential CTP users, listening to the community’s needs, and responding accordingly is essential to delivering .NET Services in a way that “just works” to address your business and development needs.

An area of consistent discussion is the Microsoft .NET Workflow Service delivered via .NET Services, and how it relates to the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) in the .NET Framework. One of the comments that we’ve consistently heard about the .NET Workflow Service is that you want the Workflow Service to be built on .NET Framework 4‘s workflow engine. This is currently not the case, since we are prior to the release date of .NET Framework 4.

As the direct result of user feedback, we will hold off further releases of the Workflow Service until after .NET Framework 4 ships. Since there will be important changes to the Workflow Service before it goes to full production, we are planning to take down the existing Workflow Service as part of service improvements in the month of July. This means any solutions that currently rely on the Workflow Service will have to be modified on or before July 1 in order to continue functioning smoothly.

We understand this decision will cause disruption, yet we’ve consistently heard from customers “it is the right move” to ultimately deliver a better product and a better experience. The sixth iteration of Microsoft’s .NET Services will still include the Microsoft .NET Access Control Service and the Microsoft .NET Service Bus. The team will continue to deliver a number of requested improvements that make .NET Services more reliable, secure, and robust. Details will follow in due course.

Please be sure to check back frequently for updates and visit our forum if you have any questions.

.NET Services Team