Hans VB's WebLog - For FREE!!! : Cloud Computing

Measure TCO and ROI of your solution on Windows Azure

Hans VB — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 08:09:30 GMT

Windows Azure is here and it reshapes the IT landscape. Even if technology will ultimately make the on-premise and cloud offerings symmetrical from a technological point of view, it will remain a challenge to calculate and compare the total cost of ownership of a solution if it would run in the cloud or on-premise.

Applications are being deployed to Windows Azure today. you can find a list of them on Pinpoint: http://pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-US/windowsazure/resources

Certainly there must be good reasons to run these applications in the cloud instead of locally and certainly price comparisons have been made. But how?

There are companies specializing in this. And they can give you deep advise. But to start you can use this online TCO calculator to give you an initial idea and understanding of the major components in such a calculation.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/tco/

The tool asks you a number of questions which give you insight in the axises along which the cost for your solution will be measured. Currently these include:

- Development Application (Exisiting or old application, .Net or other)

- Size of the application or service (small; medium, large; you are basically asked on how many machines, like webservers, this would typically run)

- SQL Database (yes, no)

- Integration (Highly –>not; basically asking about the number of messages this application or service will exchange with other services applications)

- User logins (Heavy, medium, light, no; more than a million –> no)

- Growth profile of the application (see image above)

Based on that information the calculator will measure which services your app will be using and how that will induce a cost on processor hours, storage size, bandwidth used and messages sent and will give you a price

For my personal small, new application with database, few users, low integration and steady growth, there ROI looks great but of course I urge you to make the exercise for a couple of scenarios yourself.

Installing VS2010 Beta 2, Silverlight 4 and Azure Tools (November 2009)

Hans VB — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:54:23 GMT

So I’m updating my developer tools. This is what I install today (and since I’m not a real developer anymore, I install everything directly on my machine and not in a VM):

1. Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Edition Beta 2:

http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-gb/try/default.mspx#download

2. Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9fa8afe9-cad6-4090-a7f6-7d9cdc560e2d&displaylang=en

3. Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio (November 2009)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=6967FF37-813E-47C7-B987-889124B43ABD&displaylang=en

The Cloud: Windows Server AppFabric will bring Azure to your servers

Hans VB — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:50:49 GMT

This was by far the number 1 request I got when talking about the Windows Azure Platform. Will I get a version of the Fabric that I can run on my own servers so I can very easily move applications from my datacenter to the cloud and back?

The answer is now, yes you will get that! It will be called The Windows Server AppFabric: http://msdn.microsoft.com/nl-be/windowsserver/ee695849(en-us).aspx

You can download and test the beta 1 today. I guess Windows Server is starting to get really interesting for developers now, isn’t it?

This is the AppFabric in a nutshell:

AppFabric is a set of symmetric application services that support building and managing composite applications, available whether you are running your application on-premises with Windows Server or in the cloud with Windows Azure. It includes the capabilities from projects “Dublin” and “Velocity,” as well as the Service Bus and Access Control services that were formerly under the “.NET Services” brand (today, these services are now called Windows Azure platform AppFabric Service Bus and Windows Azure platform AppFabric Access Control services). AppFabric delivers pre-integrated, higher level application services that enable developers to more easily deploy and manage composite applications and services spanning server and cloud, including:

· Out-of-box experience targeting Web and composite apps

· Management and monitoring of services and workflows

· Distributed, in-memory application cache

· Enhanced Visual Studio design and development tools

But remember, it’s a long term vision:

Initially, AppFabric will offer support for on-premise deployments with Windows Server AppFabric. In 2010, we will be offering CTPs of Windows Azure platform AppFabric to provide these capabilities into our cloud platform.

So for full symmetry between on-prem and cloud, you will need to wait just a little longer.

Downloads: Beta 1, Samples

Dynamic Datacenter Toolkit

Hans VB — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:32:42 GMT

Looks like there will be a lot of interesting content at the Worldwide Partner Conference.

For instance the session abstract about the Dynamic Datacenter Toolkit reveals some interesting information such as the expected availability.

Since many of you ISV’s are also offering hosted solutions, I thought that especially the Toolkit for Hosters would be of interest to you.

If you want to start building your Private Cloud today, you can visit the website and get an early start: http://dynamicdatacentertoolkit.com/

Session details:

CI011 Building the Foundation for a Cloud Computing Infrastructure

Presenters: Hyder Ali, Radhesh Balakrishnan, Frank Zakrajsek

Tue 7/14 | 3:30 PM-4:30 PM | 252-254

Get an overview of Microsoft's cloud computing infrastructure strategy and how it can help customers lower costs while improving agility within their datacenters. We share the architecture and demo both the Dynamic Datacenter Toolkit for Hosters (available now!) that enables hosting Partners to offer managed servers in a hosted environment, and the Dynamic Datacenter Toolkit for Enterprises (available Q4 CY 2009) that enables building the foundation for a Private cloud.

Session Type: Breakout Session

Track: Core Infrastructure

Competency Focus: Advanced Infrastructure Solutions, Networking Infrastructure Solutions, Security

Level: Intermediate

Partner Type: Hoster, Independent Software Vendor, Systems Integrator/Services, Value Added Reseller

Product: Servers: Windows Server