TheWorkflowElement

Coordinate Startup Across Cloud Service Instances

My article has recently been published on this topic, go read it here:

How to Coordinate Startup Across Multiple Windows Azure Instances

 

 

 

Feature Comparison: Azure and Amazon from 10,000 feet

Sometimes you just need a quick comparison between cloud vendors and there features, this table attempts to do that without getting into which is better.

 

Compute	Azure	Amazon
PaaS	Cloud Services	N/A
	Websites	N/A
IaaS	Virtual Machines	EC2 Reserved Instance
	N/A	EC2 Spot Instance
CPU Cores Capacity	Shared core - 8 cores	1 core - 16 cores
Memory Capacity	788 MB - 14 GB	1.7 GB - 244 GB
GPU Support	N/A	2 GPU
Local Storage Capacity	20 GB - 2,040 GB	160 GB - 48 TB
SSD Storage Support	No	Yes
Operating System Families	Linux, Windows	Linux, Windows
PaaS Services	Azure	Amazon
Autoscaling & Monitoring	N/A (Self-Host WASABi)	CloudWatch
Health based load balancing	Yes	Yes
Public DNS	N/A	Route 53
Services for mobile devices	Mobile Services	N/A
Reports as a service	SQL Reporting	N/A
Message queue	Queue or Service Bus	Simple Queue Service
Content Distribution Network	CDN	CloudFront
Memcached compatible cache	Caching	ElasticCache
Media encoding	Media Services	Elastic Transcoder
Identity	Active Directory or Access Control Service	Identity and Access Management
VPN & Cloud Networking	Virtual Networks	Virtual Private Cloud
Dedicated network connection	N/A	Direct Connect
Hadoop	HDInsight	Elastic Map Reduce
Partner marketplace	Azure Marketplace	AWS Marketplace
Workflow as a service	N/A	Simple Workflow Service
Bulk & Transaction Email Service	SendGrid (via 3rd party)	Simple Email Service
Push notification service	N//A	Simple Notification Service
Merchant service	N/A	Flexible Payment Service
Packaged deployment	Cloud Service Package	Elastic Beanstalk or CloudFormation
Cloud deployment management	N/A	OpsWorks
Scheduled data processing	N/A	Data Pipeline
Database	Azure	Amazon
Relational DB	SQL Database	Relational Database Service (MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server)
NoSQL	Azure Table Store	DynamoDB
Petabyte level data	N/A	Redshift
Storage	Azure	Amazon
Scalable blob storage	Blob	Simple Storage Service
VM mountable volume storage	Azure Drive	Elastic Block Store
Archive storage	N/A	Glacier
Bulk loading	N/A	Import/Export
On-Premises Storage Appliance	N/A	Storage Gateway
Management	Azure	Amazon
Administration website	Azure Portal	Management Console

 

How to setup a VPN to Azure with the CISCO ASA 5505

Windows Azure Virtual Networks are a great addition to the Azure featureset, but it can be a little hard to get started if you are a developer and do not have an IT or networking background. In this blog, we will show how you can get your feet wet creating a hybrid cloud-onpremises solution by establishing a site to site virtual private network between your on-premises CISCO VPN device and an Azure Virtual Network. We will focus specifically on how to setup this communication, and leave how you might utilize it up to your imagination(or a future blog). And for those of you who have searched all over for instructions on this, yes I have tested these to work- there is a lot of misinformation out there. 

To start with the end in mind, this blog is about getting you to this:

 

VPN to Azure Virtual Network

Sample app: Elastic Scale on Azure

This is the code sample that accompanies my talk at DevConnections 2012 in Las Vegas. It provides a great starter for hosting WASABi (the Autoscaler that's a part of Enterprise Library). Feel free to download and play around, and contact me with questions. Download ScalingSamples

Sample app using Node.js, MongoDB on Azure Websites with Web Matrix 2

UPDATE: Here is the link to the related article. How to Build a Node.js REST API on Windows Azure Websites

This download is described in my forthcoming DevProConnections article. Stay tuned for a direct link to the article.

For those looking for the source in the article, here it is:

Download Ronin

WF Persistence on SQL Azure

Install the Update

Download the .NET Framework Platform Update 1 KB2495593 and install. The update replaces SQL scripts found under theWindows directory:

       

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\SQL\en

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\SQL\en

       

Specifically, it adds some conditional compilation logic to SqlWorkflowInstanceStoreSchema.sql.

       

Create a new Azure Database or use existing one

Run using your choice, I used SQL Server Management Studio.

       

Run the Scripts on SQL Azure

You need to use SqlWorkflowInstanceStoreSchema.sql and SqlWorkflowInstanceStoreLogic.sql to create your persistence database in SQL Azure. Run the schema one first.

       

Voila!

Take a look at the tables, for example, you should see:      

Trying it Out

After this, you can simply change the connection string from your local SQL DB to point to your SQL Azure instance, for example, if running under Windows Server AppFabric. While you won't be able to view persisted instances from within the feature in IIS Manager, the persistence will work. You can examine status by querying the System.Activities.DurableInstancing.Instances view in the database directly.

Increasing Retries

Per the documentation here you should increase the number of retries from the 3 typically used with on-premise SQL Server installations to 15. To do this, update the sqlWorkflowInstanceStore element in your config to add the new maxConnectionRetries attribute and set it to 15.

<sqlWorkflowInstanceStore maxConnectionRetries="15" instanceCompletionAction="DeleteNothing" instanceEncodingOption="None" instanceLockedExceptionAction="NoRetry" connectionStringName="ApplicationServerAzureWorkflowInstanceStoreConnectionString" hostLockRenewalPeriod="00:00:30" runnableInstancesDetectionPeriod="00:00:05"/>

Persistence for Workflow Services Hosted in Azure

If you follow the process described here for hosting your XAMLX workflows in a Windows Azure Web Role, you can use this approach to provide the persistent storage…with a small catch. As of this writing, the Azure instances do not have .NET Framework Platform Update 1 installed, so you will get a configuration error if you use the maxConnectionRetries attribute. To get around this, remove the attribute (you are then committed to the 3 retries default setting).

   

     

Self-Signed SSL Certs on Azure

Under development you may create a self-signed cert to use when you deploy a web role to Azure. If this certificate is not properly created, when you deploy the web role, it will recycle constantly and you will be unable to get an error details via either Windows Azure Diagnostic traces or IntelliTrace. These steps were tested with Azure SDK 1.4.

   

When you see this, odds are you need to examine your certificate generation process. The most important parts are ensuring that the certificate is created with a subject key type of "exchange" and that it's private key is exportable. Here's a call to makecert (ships with VS) that does this:

   

makecert -a sha1 -n CN=test.cloudapp.net -pe -r -sky exchange -ss My -sr LocalMachine

   

Here are steps we use that are known to work:

1. Create the certificate as above. This is usually where problems happen.
2. Export the certificate to a pfx (using MMC).
3. Add the certificate to the Certificates folder under your hosted service (via Azure Portal).
4. Configure the role setting:
   1. Add the certificate.
   2. Add an endpoint that uses HTTPS and references the certificate.

   

Here's a script you can use, just replace the subjectName value with the name of your application. Note that it doesn't have to match (for example, in staging environments it never could)-- when it doesn't users will receive a warning in their browser but can ultimately continue to the website.

   

@echo off

   

SET subjectName="test.cloudapp.net"

SET storeName="My"

SET storeLocation="LocalMachine"

   

IF EXIST %WINDIR%\SysWow64 (

CALL "%PROGRAMFILES(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\vcvarsall.bat" > nul

) ELSE (

CALL "%PROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\vcvarsall.bat" > nul

)

   

CALL makecert -a sha1 -n CN=%subjectName% -pe -r -sky exchange -ss %storeName% -sr %storeLocation%

Using AD FS 2.0 to Secure AppFabric Hosted WF & WCF Services

There's not a lot of guidance out there on how to secure your Workflow Services using AD FS, nor that give you some cool ideas of how to leverage the two together (including how to leverage multiple attribute stores). Check out this blog on the subject for step by step guidance, along with a sample project so you can try it yourself.

Using AD FS 2.0 to Secure AppFabric Hosted Services

Latest Blog: Running WF in Azure

If you are curious as to how to run WF 4 in Azure (Web and Worker Roles and hybrid scenarios), check out this article over at the AppFabric CAT's blog, and while you're there drop some feedback:

Running .NET 4 Windows Workflows in Azure

 

Talk this Thurs: Windows Azure In the Real World

The San Diego .NET Architecture SIG will be having an awesome speaker present on Windows Azure. Come join me for an enlightening evening Thurs 1/20, 6:00-8:30 pm at the San Diego Microsoft Office. See http://www.sandiegodotnet.com for details.