RemyP's Blog

Storage Quotas and Core Allocation on Windows Azure

2009-12-17T22:34:52Z

This has been documented as part of other posts (cf. footnote #1), here it is presented in FAQ format, focusing on the quotas and core allocation.

What is the quota for storing data within Windows Azure storage?

For a given subscription, during the CTP, each token grants you 2 storage accounts, and each storage account can contain up to 50GB of data
For a given subscription, after the commercial launch, you will be able to create up to 5 storage accounts (cf. footnote #2), each of which can contain 100TB of data, i.e. any combination of blobs (block blobs or page blobs), containers, queues, or table data.

How is the Windows Azure storage data broken down?

Reminder: Those are the quotas after commercial launch.

Blobs:
- 200GB for block blobs (64KB min, 4MB max block size)
- 64MB is the limit for a single blob before you need to use blocks
- 1TB for page blobs
Tables:
- 252 user defined properties
- Entity <= 1MB, limited to supported types or in case of binary/string <= 64KB
Queues:
- Messages <= 8K

The overarching quota is that you have 100TB per storage account and how you choose to use that amount is up to you in any combination of the above.

Are there any limits on the amount of transactions both entering into the data center and usage of queues / blobs?

A given storage account is meant to be able to process up to a few thousand transactions per second, and a few hundred megabytes per second, the exact limit will depend upon the application and services should benchmark their application.

This applies across everything for the storage account Tables, blobs, queues.

What is the limit on the number of deployments, roles and instances?

CTP, before Dec. 10th, 2009:
- Each token grants you 1 hosted service,
- with 2 deployment slots (staging and production),
- each of which with up to 5 roles (any combination of web and worker roles),
- each of which with up to 2 role instances.
- No weighed VMs. No limit on number of cores.
CTP, after Dec. 10th, 2009:
- Same as above, plus weighed VMs and max. 8 cores for one subscription.
- Read more here.
Commercial Launch, after Jan. 4th 2010:

For a given subscription, with the default settings, you will have 20 hosted services,
with 2 deployment slots each (staging and production),
each of which with up to 5 roles (any combination of web and worker roles),
There will be no more limits on the number of role instances, but there will be a default quota of 20 cores per subscription, across all services, roles and role instances (cf. footnote #2).

Footnotes:

(1) References:

PDC’09 talk #1 [Brad Calder]. Windows Azure Blob and Drive Deep Dive
PDC’09 talk #2 [Brad Calder]. Building Scalable and Reliable Applications with Windows Azure

(2) Quota increase:

If you need more than the default quota allocation, you will need to contact Microsoft Online support to initiate a credit check in order to get more resources. The same process applies to storage accounts and hosted services. More details on the Windows Azure Support page.

New role instance allocation

2009-12-11T17:54:28Z

Since we launched the Windows Azure CTP last year up until yesterday, a regular Windows Azure token would grant you the following Windows Azure assets:

2 storage accounts
1 hosted service
- with 2 deployment slots,
- each with up to 5 roles (any combination of web or worker roles),
- each with up to 2 instances,
which meant that you had up to 20 VMs (2 * 5 * 2) to play with, and the VMs were not weighed.

As of yesterday, in preparation for the Windows Azure Commercial Launch announced at PDC'09, we are setting the default limit to 8 cores and we’ll be counting the role instances as weighted.

A regular token will now give you a limit of 8 cores, and you will be able to use those 8 cores in any combination you want for your hosted service.

The weighed core allocation per VM size is as follows:

Small VM = 1 core
Medium VM = 2 cores
Large VM = 4 cores
Extra Large = 8 cores

If your compute app is currently running with a higher number of cores than 8, you will need to decrease your app size to come into the new quota and redeploy it.

Windows Azure Storage Made Easy

2009-12-03T05:25:48Z

There are three tools that came up on my radar that allow to manipulate your Windows Azure storage quite easily and intuitively.

The first one, which I have been using for a while is called Cloud Storage Studio from Cerebrata Software, and I like it a lot.

It has a slick and intuitive UI from the login screen to uploading, managing and deleting content in your storage account. It is really easy to use, supports file and folder multiselect on upload, and is robust insofar as what I have used it for to-date.

I definitely recommend it.

The second one which I have just started using today, but definitely warrants a good try is CloudBerry Explorer for Azure Blob Storage, from CloudBerry Lab Inc. This crew has already a long and solid history of S3 storage management tools, they have recently added Windows Azure to their line-up.

First experience is good. Login is easy, it works intuitively, the feature set is comprehensive (queue pane, side-by-side view of the cloud and the local drive, many options to tweak and settings to choose from, etc.)

I’ll use it for a while and decide whether it works out better than Cloud Storage Studio…

For completeness sake I will also mention the third one but cannot comment on it as I haven’t had a chance to use it yet. Feel free to comment on your own experience if you used it. It’s called Azure Storage Explorer from Neudesic. I actually re-used the screenshot provided by the contributor on the Codeplex page.

Custom Domain Names in Windows Azure

2009-12-03T04:55:16Z

This is a topic that comes up quite frequently, and I always find myself referencing Steve’s post on the matter of mapping a Hosted Service running in Windows Azure (for example http://frogs69.cloudapp.net) to a custom domain that you otherwise own. So here is a permanent reference to this most useful blog post.

http://blog.smarx.com/posts/custom-domain-names-in-windows-azure

Another (similar) topic is about Custom Storage Domain Names, i.e. how to map a custom domain name you own to a Windows Azure blob store endpoint. This has been covered comprehensively on the Windows Azure team blog here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsazure/archive/2009/11/05/accessing-windows-azure-blobs-using-custom-storage-domain-names.aspx

Finally, in this area of interest, I will also reference the Windows Azure Content Delivery Network, which allows you to deliver the contents of a Windows Azure blob store public container via a CDN, which can also be mapped to a custom domain name you own, right there from the Windows Azure dev portal:

http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsazure/archive/2009/11/05/introducing-the-windows-azure-content-delivery-network.aspx

How to redeem a Windows Azure token?

2009-12-03T04:22:41Z

Quick refresher as this still comes up a lot:

Where can I get a token for Windows Azure?

Read my previous post about this

How do I redeem a token once I have one?

Go to the Windows Azure portal on http://windows.azure.com
Sign in using the Windows Live ID with which you want to redeem the token – Be mindful that the token is single usage, it will remain mapped to this account forever
Go to the Account tab on the Windows Azure portal
Click on Manage My Tokens
Paste or type your token in the box labeled Resource Token ID
Click on the button Claim Token

Et voilà !

Where did Copy Logs go?

2009-10-07T01:00:49Z

Up until a few days ago, when you wanted to get a dump of your application logs running in Windows Azure, you could go to the hosted service configuration page, and request the log dump using the Copy Logs button.

This has changed. The Windows Azure logging infrastructure is evolving and as a result this UX has been disabled in the developer portal.

Read more about the upcoming changes to Windows Azure logging.

Windows Azure developer portal release refresh

2009-09-18T04:44:53Z

As you have undoubtedly noticed, as part of today’s release refresh, the Windows Azure developer portal got a major face lift. This is the new theme that will be adopted by all the Windows Azure Platform for PDC’09.

PDC’08 UI theme

PDC’09 UI theme

I already received a lot of feedback, good and bad, comparing the previous theme and style to the new one. This is such a subjective matter that I love how much passion it generates.

More importantly than the UI theme itself, we are also working on usability and will continue to consider all incoming feedback about the Windows Azure developer portal, so keep it coming on the dev forum.

Major new features were also made available to the public in this release refresh, check out the Windows Azure team blog for more details on those features, in particular:

Invalid token error message

2009-09-02T03:40:12Z

If you have received a Windows Azure token after registering on Microsoft Connect, tried to redeem it, but get the message “Invalid token” or “Enter a valid promotion code”, this post is for you.

Scenario 1: You try to redeem the token on the Windows Azure Portal and get the message “Invalid token”, check out the following:

Did you already redeem this token with another account?

A token can only be mapped to a single email account.

Did you copy the leading character from the invitation email?

The � that some people receive in their invitation email is not part of the token, ignore it.

Did you copy a trailing space or some other character?

The token is only accepted if you provide the 5x5 PID, i.e. the five alphanumeric groupings including the dashes.

Scenario 2: You skipped the token redemption step on the Windows Azure Portal, and/or ended up on the Billing Portal at https://azure.msolctp.com/Site/Services/Azure/Signup.aspx and get the screen below.

Go to the Windows Azure portal on http://windows.azure.com
Sign in using the Windows Live ID to which the token was sent
Go to the Account tab on the Windows Azure portal
Click on Manage My Tokens
Paste or type your token in the box labeled Resource Token ID
Click on the button Claim Token

If you still get the invalid token error message, check for the token in the list of redeemed tokens in that same page, just in case…

Then send an email to azinvite.

Windows Azure Geo Location Feature Terminology

2009-04-30T21:31:12Z

Here is some information about the terms and concepts introduced in the Dev Portal with the Windows Azure Geo Location feature.

The most important one is the notion of affinity group, which is now part of the creation wizard of the Windows Azure storage account and hosted services.

Affinity Group: An affinity group is a way of explicitly grouping Windows Azure hosted services and storage accounts in the same geo region. By putting them together in the same affinity group, you insure geographical proximity of the hosted services and storage accounts you place in the affinity group. Microsoft is abstracting the datacenter layer, hence the term “geo region” or “region”. The other attribute of an affinity group is its friendly name. You can change the friendly name of an affinity group at any time.

Geo Region / Region: This is the geographical area describing the location of the datacenter(s). With the first release of the Geo Location feature, there are three choices available:

USA – Southwest
USA – Northwest
USA – Anywhere

If you select “USA – Anywhere” you basically leave it to the software algorithm to pick where to deploy the hosted service or create the storage account.

It is important to note that the region cannot be changed.

Membership / Members: This is simply the list of hosted services and storage accounts –or members– within a given affinity group.

You cannot delete an affinity group if it contains any members. You first have to delete all members of an affinity group before you can delete the affinity group itself. Remember that you cannot delete a running hosted service, it has to be suspended first.

Unaffinitized: You may choose to leave a Windows Azure hosted service or storage account “unaffinitized”, which means that it is not related to other services or accounts you may have, or that it doesn’t matter whether they are in the same geo region or not.

Even if you leave a service or account unaffinitized you may still specify a geo region, depending on your needs for that service or account. Like for an affinity group, it is not possible to change the geo region of an unaffinitized service or account. It is set at creation time.

Windows Azure Geo Location Feature Walkthrough

2009-04-30T12:20:00Z

As you may have noticed if you logged in to the Azure Services Developer Portal since yesterday afternoon (4/29/2009), the Windows Azure Geo Location feature has been released and added to the existing Dev Portal functionality.

The feature was announced at MIX ‘09 with availability targeted “soon following the conference”. With Geo Location (Geo for short), developers will now be able to specify either the “USA – Northwest” or “USA – Southwest” region when they create a Windows Azure storage account or hosted services.

They may also select “USA – Anywhere” if there is no specific need to geolocate their storage account or hosted service in a specific region.

I will post a separate article on the terminology and concepts introduced along with the Geo feature, this post focuses on how to create affinity groups and use them.

The scenario covers the creation of a Windows Azure hosted service and various storage accounts, a few of which will be put together in an affinity group.

I provided every screenshot along the way on purpose to avoid any doubt along the way as to what I did, but you need not check all of them if you are already familiar with how to create storage accounts or hosted services on the Dev Portal, without the Geo feature.

As I first login to the Dev Portal, there’s only one project in my roster, called “livefx”.

1. I go to the “New Project” page by clicking on the “plus” sign in the top left, there I choose to create a Windows Azure storage account.

2.a. I see the familiar new storage account creation page.

2.b. I type a label “My C drive in the cloud”, then I click “Next”.

2.c. I type a namespace “frogs”, then check for availability.

2.d. I select that I want to create a new affinity group, I type an affinity group name “My Awesome Group” and choose a region “USA – Southwest”, then click on “Create”.

3. My storage account is now created and ready to use.

4. I go to my account page by clicking on “Account” in the top nav, and there I click on the link “Manage My Affinity Groups” at the bottom of the page.

5. I see the list of all my affinity groups, which only contains one for now, with their membership, only the newly created storage account for now.

6. I go back to the “New Project” page by clicking on the “plus” sign in the top left, there I choose to create a Windows Azure hosted service this time.

7.a. I type a label “My Red Dog app”, then I click “Next”.

7.b. I type a namespace “frogs”, then check for availability. In this case I choose the same name as I did for the storage account (cf. step #2.c.) to show that they are related to the same application. They are still globally unique as one is in blob.core.windows.net and the other is in cloudapp.net).

7.c. I select that I want to use an existing affinity group, I select the previously created affinity group called “My Awesome Group”. Notice that I cannot change the region. This is an immutable attribute of the affinity group in this first version.

8. My hosted service container is created and awaits package deployment (no details here, as this is out of context for this post).

9. I go back to my account page by clicking on “Account” in the top nav, and I click on the link “Manage My Affinity Groups” at the bottom of the page.

10. I see the list of all my affinity groups, still only one, with their membership, which is now one storage account and one hosted service.

11. I go back to the “New Project” page by clicking on the “plus” sign in the top left, there I choose to create a second storage account.

12.a. I type a label “My D drive in the sky”, then I click “Next”.

12.b. I type a namespace “frogs69”, then check for availability.

12.c. I select that I want to create a new affinity group, I type an affinity group name “My Super Group” and choose a different region “USA – Northwest”, then click on “Create”.

13. My storage account is now created and ready to use.

14. I go to my account page by clicking on “Account” in the top nav, and I click on the link “Manage My Affinity Groups” at the bottom of the page.

15. I see the list of all my affinity groups, there are now two of them, with their membership, one storage account and one hosted service on one hand, and only one storage account on the other hand.

16. I go to the “New Project” page by clicking on the “plus” sign in the top left, there I choose to create a third storage account.

17.a. I see the new storage account creation page.

17.b. I type a label “My E drive in the sky”, then I click “Next”.

17.c. I type a namespace “froggy”, then check for availability.

17.d. I select that I do NOT want to create a new affinity group, however I can still pick a region and I choose “USA – Northwest”, then click on “Create”. By doing so, I make an explicit statement about this storage account being “standalone” and not related to any of my other assets in the cloud.

18. My storage account is now created and ready to use.

19. I go one last time to my account page by clicking on “Account” in the top nav, and I click on the link “Manage My Affinity Groups” at the bottom of the page.

20. I see the list of all my affinity groups, where the most recently created storage account is NOT shown, because I left it “unaffinitized” (as shown in the property page of that storage account.

Enjoy!!

Where Can I Get A Token For Windows Azure

2009-03-27T16:45:00Z

Even though this has already been widely blogged and publicized, I still get a high amount of requests asking me how to obtain a Windows Azure token. Whether you work in Microsoft or not, here is the fastest way to get one.

Go to the Windows Azure web site on Microsoft Connect and register. If you have *never* been to Microsoft Connect before, you will have to register and create your profile before getting in the Windows Azure site per se.

Once that is done, you should receive the invitation code by email within 24 hours. After that, feel free to send an email enquiring about your invitation code status to azinvite.

It is very important to note that there are different invitation codes for Windows Azure (cloud storage and hosted services) than for .NET Services and SQL Data Services. They are not interchangeable.

The invitation code for Windows Azure (a five-by-five PID) should be redeemed on http://windows.azure.com (Updated on 12/2/2009, previous URL was:http://lx.azure.microsoft.com).

The invitation code for .NET Services and SQL Data Services (a three-four-four PID) should be redeemed on http://portal.ex.azure.microsoft.com.

(Updated on 12/2/2009) The invitation code for AppFabric (https://netservices.azure.com) is no longer required, and the invitation code for SQL Azure should be redeemed on http://sql.azure.com.

Activate your Developer Account to work in the Mesh Sandbox

2009-03-26T03:54:00Z

This was an important topic on the forum after the PDC ‘08 release, so we streamlined the token redemption workflow for Live Framework CTP, and also implemented a way to bypass it altogether. This FAQ post walks you through the account creation and activation in the Mesh Sandbox step-by-step.

1. On the Azure Services Developer Portal (http://lx.azure.microsoft.com) you just need to accept the Privacy Statement in order to be set up with a Developer Account.

Make sure to specify the correct country and language.

Review the Privacy Statement, if you agree, then click on “I Agree”.

2. The account creation process is underway…

3. The account creation process is completed successfully. Click on “Continue”.

4. In this screen you may redeem your Live Mesh CTP invitation code if the throttling is turned ON, or you may redeem your Windows Azure invitation code. Paste the token you were sent by email or obtained by other means (e.g. printed card at an event conference), then click on “Next”.

Right now (since MIX ’09) the throttling is turned OFF for the Live Framework CTP, so if you are interested in Live Mesh or if you do not have a token, simply click on “Cancel”.

5. Now you can create service components for your cloud projects. If you have redeemed a Windows Azure token, the Storage Account and Hosted Services UI will be active. Otherwise it is grayed out.

The same principles applies to Live Framework CTP if the throttling is turned ON, but remember, it is turned OFF right now, so all you have to do is click on “Activate your Live Framework CTP Account”.

Note: You will notice that the UI for Live Services Existing APIs is always turned on.

6. Once you click on “Activate your Live Framework CTP Account” the Developer Account you just created on the Azure Services Developer Portal will be provisioned in the Mesh Sandbox, i.e. you will be able to use http://developer.mesh-ctp.com (vs. http://www.mesh.com which is open to all consumers).

But first of course, you must accept the Terms Of Use. Click on “Accept”.

Note: In the TOU acceptance screen…

- If you click on “Previous” it brings you back to the token redemption page

- If you click on “Cancel” it brings you back to the New Service Components page

7. The account activation is underway… I skipped a beat and it went through too fast for me to capture the account creation screen.

8. The account activation completed successfully.

At this point you may choose to navigate directly to your Live Desktop on http://developer.mesh.ctp.com, which is possible by clicking on the “Live Desktop” link. This is a direct answer to customer feedback by the way.

Or you may want to go back to the New Service Components page to create a Mesh Enabled Web Application of your own, in which case you click on “Continue”.

9. You now see the Live Framework CTP UI is now active, so you can create Mesh Enabled Web Applications.