InfoQ Homepage Windows Azure Content on InfoQ
-
Windows Server AppFabric adds Read-Through and Write-Behind Support
The new Read-Through and Write-Behind support in AppFabric 1.1 allow developers to improve performance while at the same time reduce the complexity of their applications. This is done by moving the logic for reading from and writing to the database into the caching server itself. Other improvements include lazy-loading of session state information and support for ASP.NET output caching.
-
Accelerating Cloud Computing Standards with Use Cases
A set of key cloud computing use cases focused on cloud management, portability, interoperability and security has been developed by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) as an on-going contribution for the definition of open standards for cloud computing.
-
Windows Azure Plugin for Eclipse with Java, June 2011 Community Technology Preview
Microsoft has recently released a new version of the Windows Azure Plugin for Eclipse with Java. The Eclipse plugin is an open source project, released under the Apache 2.0 license, which provides Java developers with an easy way to build and deploy web applications to Windows
-
Adding Scale to ASP.NET Applications in the Cloud
Microsoft presented several options for scaling ASP.NET applications hosted on Windows Azure. There are a number of services for caching, traffic distribution, asynchronous work processing, and storage, and these options can be used in combination to scale applications up or down.
-
Windows Azure AppFabric CTP - Queues and Topics
The Azure team recently shipped a Community Preview (CTP) for AppFabric, with Service Bus Queues and Service Bus Topics, which can be leveraged in a whole new set of scenarios to build Occasionally Connected or Distributed Systems.
-
Microsoft releases Windows Azure Toolkit for iOS
Following on from the recent release of the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7, Microsoft announced on May 9, 2011 that they were making available a version for Apple’s iOS, and planning to release an Android version within the next month.
-
Boost Website Performance with the Windows Azure AppFabric Caching Service
The newly-released Windows Azure AppFabric Caching Service stores distributed data in-memory to improve performance on Windows Azure and SQL Azure. It’s highly scalable, will cache any type of data regardless of size, and is secured via the AppFabric Access Control Service.
-
Steve Marx Explores Hidden Gems in Windows Azure
Steve Marx, Tactical Strategist at Windows Azure, gave a presentation at MIX11 on “10 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do with Windows Azure”, highlighting a list of things that can be done with WA but may not be common knowledge. We got in touch with Steve to ask him more about AppFabric, Startup Tasks, Blob leasing and more -
-
Microsoft Releases Windows Azure Platform SDK 1.4
Yesterday Microsoft released the Windows Azure SDK 1.4 for Visual Studio 2010. The release fixes several significant bugs including the nasty RDP bug and adds capabilities like multiple administrator support from the enhanced Windows Azure Connect portal.
-
Released: Windows Phone 7 Developer Guide
This past weekend, the Patterns and Practices team at Microsoft released the final version of the Windows Phone 7 Developer Guide on MSDN. The guide was built in an open community fashion on Codeplex by the team this past year and has been downloaded over 5000 times.
-
NCBI BLAST for Windows Azure
Microsoft is now offering NCBI BLAST for the Windows Azure platform. NCBI BLAST was created by a group of researchers working for the National Institutes of Health, a division of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. NCBI describes BLAST as a tool that “finds regions of local similarity between sequences” of protein and DNA chains.
-
Microsoft is Planning to Allow Private Installations of Windows and SQL Azure
Along with partners HP, Dell, and Fujitsu, Microsoft is offering private installations of Windows Azure. The product will be offered in appliance format, meaning Microsoft will be selling the hardware and software as a bundle. While no pricing is set, the target audience is customers like eBay who can afford at least one thousand servers.
-
Does Azure Debugging Cost Too Much?
Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, is reasonably priced for what it offers. A basic package can be had for under $100/month. But if anything goes wrong you are going to want some debugging support. Unfortunately the only tool worth talking about is IntelliTrace, which costs 11,899 USD per developer.
-
Scenarios and Solutions for Using Windows Azure
Bill Zack, Architect Evangelist for Microsoft, has detailed in an online presentation key scenarios for using the cloud and solutions provided by Windows Azure.
-
Windows Azure Now Generally Available, Moving From Free To Pay
As of February 1st, Microsoft's public cloud offering, Windows Azure, became part of the growing cloud market as it started charging for its services. Azure is one of the first Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings to move from free, "early-adopter" to a pay-as-you-go business model. InfoQ spoke with Matt Deacon of Microsoft UK to learn more about this change and what it means for Azure users.