AzureWiki

Live Services

Mike Brown — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 13:15:12 GMT

Depending on your perspective, Live Services can take on different meaning. To the end-user, Live Services are the Windows Live applications (SkyDrive, Spaces, Hotmail,etc). A relative newcomer to the Windows Live family is Live Mesh, we'll talk more on that later.

To the developer, Live Services are the APIs exposed by Microsoft for building applications that leverage and/or enhance the Windows Live applications on behalf of the user. Technically there are two sets of API for Windows Live development: the Live Services SDK, and the Live Framework SDK. The difference between the two?

.NET Services

Mike Brown — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 10:53:16 GMT

Draft

If Windows Azure is the operating system for the cloud, then .NET Services is the CLR for the cloud. .NET Services is a collection of hosted services that simplify development for the cloud.

Windows Azure

Mike Brown — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 13:16:32 GMT

This article is in progress

Windows Azure is the foundation for the [[azure:Azure Services Platform|Azure Services Platform]]. At its core, Windows Azure is Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V with additions to make it very scalable. Microsoft mentioned that some of the advances made with Windows Azure will come back into the commercial version of Windows.

One obvious example is the "Live Migration" feature announced in Windows 2008 R2 Hyper-V. This allows a system administrator to move a running Hyper-V Virtual Machine from one physical server to another without interruption. The need for this functionality was most likely driven by the needs for Microsoft to enable high availability in their cloud data centers while still being able to bring machines on and offline at will.

The Diagram above (from David Chappell's Whitepaper) shows detail of the Windows Azure landscape. As you can see the [[azure:Windows Azure Fabric|Windows Azure Fabric]] is the central abstraction here. Think of it as the HAL for the Cloud. The Fabric is responsible for making a huge cluster of physical machines operate as one large node.

Sitting on top of the Fabric are the Compute and Storage Containers (for lack of a better term). The Compute Container is where your application code will reside, both [[azure:Web Role|Web Role]] and [[azure:Worker Role|Worker Role]] (the platform is extensible and will allow other roles to be defined

Windows Azure

Mike Brown — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 02:48:04 GMT

This article is in progress

Windows Azure

Mike Brown — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 23:40:57 GMT

This article is in progress

Windows Azure

Mike Brown — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 23:37:23 GMT

This article is in progress

The Diagram above (from [View:/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Wikis.Components.Files/azure/Azure_5F00_Services_5F00_Platform.docx]) shows detail of the Windows Azure landscape. As you can see the [[azure:Windows Azure Fabric|Windows Azure Fabric]] is the central abstraction here. Think of it as the HAL for the Cloud. The Fabric is responsible for making a huge cluster of HyperV Physical Nodes act as one single node.

Windows Azure

Mike Brown — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 22:09:34 GMT

This article is in progress

The Diagram above shows detail of the Windows Azure landscape. As you can see the [[azure:Windows Azure Fabric|Windows Azure Fabric]] is the central abstraction here. Think of it as the HAL for the Cloud. The Fabric is responsible for making a huge cluster of HyperV Physical Nodes act as one single node.

Windows Azure

Mike Brown — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 15:27:52 GMT

This article is in progress

Windows Azure

Mike Brown — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 14:39:51 GMT

Windows Azure Fabric

Mike Brown — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 02:45:02 GMT

The Fabric is the foundational resource manager of Windows Azure. If Windows Azure is the Operating System for Cloud Computing, the Fabric is its HAL.

Azure Services Platform

Mike Brown — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:56:12 GMT

The Azure Services Platform is the aggregate of the Cloud Services offering from Microsoft built upon Windows Azure.

For more details see the individual Wiki pages for each component

[[azure:.NET Services|.NET Services]]

[[azure:Live Services|Live Services]]

[[azure:SQL Services|SQL Services]]

Azure Services Platform

Mike Brown — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:56:12 GMT

The Azure Services Platform is the aggregate of the Cloud Services offering from Microsoft built upon Windows Azure.

For more details see the individual Wiki pages for each component

[[azure:.NET Services|.NET Services]]

[[azure:Live Services|Live Services]]

[[azure:SQL Services|SQL Services]]

Azure Services Platform

Mike Brown — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:55:01 GMT

The Azure Services Platform is the aggregate of the Cloud Services offering from Microsoft built upon Windows Azure.

For more details see the individual Wiki pages for each component

Azure Services Platform

Mike Brown — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:52:22 GMT

The Azure Services Platform is the aggregate of the Cloud Services offering from Microsoft built upon Windows Azure.

Introducing Azure

Mike Brown — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 02:11:58 GMT

At the 2008 Professional Developers Conference, Microsoft introduced the world to [[azure:Windows Azure|Windows Azure]], the "OS for the Cloud". Just like a desktop operating system abstracts from a developer concerns such as hard drive access, networking, device i/o, and other functionality developers take for granted, Windows Azure does all of that and includes other abstractions to enable scalable applications in the Cloud.

Windows Azure forms the foundation for the [[azure:Azure Services Platform|Azure Services Platform]], which includes:

[[azure:.NET Services|.NET Services]]
[[azure:Live Services|Live Services]]
[[azure:SQL Services|SQL Services]]
and other cloud application services (Sharepoint, CRM)

The primary benefit of [[azure:Cloud Computing|Cloud Computing]] is that it enables what the industry calls [[azure:Utility Computing|Utility Computing]], where a company pays for IT on a metered basis instead of having to invest heavily in upfront infrastructure cost.

Windows Azure and the Azure Services Platform provides the added advantage of using existing knowledge of the [[azure:.NET Framework|.NET Framework]] technologies including WCF, WF, and ASP.NET to bring applications to the Cloud

Introducing Windows Azure

Mike Brown — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 08:04:39 GMT

Windows Azure forms the foundation for the [[azure:Azure Services Platform|Azure Services Platform]], which includes:

[[azure:.NET Services|.NET Services]]
[[azure:Live Services|Live Services]]
[[azure:SQL Services|SQL Services]]
and other cloud application services (Sharepoint, CRM)

Introducing Windows Azure

Mike Brown — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 07:19:26 GMT

At the 2008 Professional Developers Conference, Microsoft introduced the world to [[azure:Windows Azure|Windows Azure]], the OS for the Cloud.

Introducing Windows Azure

Mike Brown — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 07:13:20 GMT

At the 2008 Professional Developers Conference, Microsoft introduced the world to [[azure:Windows Azure|Windows Azure]], the OS for the Cloud.