Wade Wegner

I had the great pleasure of co-authoring an article on application migration to Windows Azure for MSDN Magazine with my friend George Huey, creator of the SQL Azure Migration Wizard.  This article stems from our work helping dozens of customers – both small and big – migrate their existing applications to run in the cloud.

(Ours is the second down on the left.)

While this article is by no means exhaustive, we did try to explain some of the common patterns and scenarios we faced when helping customers migrate their applications into Windows Azure.  I hope you find it valuable.

Significant Access Control Service (ACS) updates released to AppFabric LABS environment today.  Take a look at the Windows Azure AppFabric team blog for the formal announcement.  I’d rather show you a quick demo.

Quick summary of new capabilities in the Access Control Service:

• Integration with Windows Identity Foundation (WIF) and tooling
• Out-of-the-box support for popular web identity providers including: Windows Live ID, OpenID, Google, Yahoo, and Facebook
• Out-of-the-box support for Active Directory Federation Server v2.0
• Support for OAuth WRAP, WS-Trust, and WS-Federation protocols
• Support for the SAML 1.1, SAML 2.0, and Simple Web Token (SWT) token formats
• Integrated and customizable Home Realm Discovery that allows end-users to choose their identity provider
• An OData-based Management Service that provides programmatic access to ACS configuration
• A Web Portal that allows administrative access to ACS configuration

Try this out yourself.  Use Visual Studio, install Windows Identity Foundation, and go to https://portal.appfabriclabs.com/.

For detailed information and a more verbose walkthrough (i.e. including explanations), listen to Justin Smith’s walkthrough and interview.

This tip isn’t new, but it’s still useful.  I found myself building a new development box this week, and I didn’t want to use SQLExpress for the Windows Azure development storage.  Instead, I wanted to use the default instance for SQL Server.

It’s pretty simple to do this – after you install the Windows Azure SDK and Tools, go to a command prompt and browse to the following folder: C:\Program Files\Windows Azure SDK\v1.2\bin\devstore (or wherever you installed the SDK).  From there, use the DSInit.exe tool:

DSInit.exe /sqlInstance:.

Remember that the . is a reference to the default instance.  If you want to target an instance name, you can use:

DSInit.exe /sqlInstance:YourInstanceName

Now you’ll see that

Note: this tip is also helpful for when you get the error message “Failed to create database ‘DevelopmentStorageDb20090919’” during the automatic configuration of Windows Azure development storage.

I definitely luck out when it comes to the first day on the job.  My first day as an Architect Evangelist was at a team offsite in Las Vegas.  This time around, as a Technical Evangelist, my team hosted a Windows Azure platform Software Design Review (SDR) for customers up in Redmond.  A SDR is an opportunity for customers to join product teams and review current and future states of the technology.  Lots of energy and great conversations.

In addition to the SDR, I was able to move into my new office and spend time meeting with folks from the Windows Azure AppFabric product team – very exciting!

I thought I might capture some thoughts and impressions from the week:

• I love riding my bicycle to the Microsoft campus.  The Sammamish River Trail and 520 Trail are wonderful for cycling.
• There’s an energy on campus.  I can feel it.  It’s intoxicating.
• SDRs are great.  It’s awesome to listen to customers that are actively building solutions on the Windows Azure platform and providing feedback to make it even better.
• I am super excited about new capabilities and features coming with the Windows Azure platform, especially the AppFabric.
• It’s great to have guys like Clemens Vasters and Justin Smith just down the street.
• I have amazing teammates, and I’m humbled to work with them: Ryan Dunn, Vittorio Bertocci, and Zack Owens.
• The Technology Evangelist role is empowering.  Lots of responsibilities and opportunities to execute.
• I’m tickled to have an office for the first time in my career.

While moving itself (including the sale of our house) isn’t the most fun, so far it’s been worth it.  So much great stuff coming, and I get to be right on the edge.  Be sure to follow all the announcements next week at the Worldwide Partner Conference!

It was an amazing TechEd NA 2010, and I admit that it took me a few days to recover.  Between the heat and humidity, great times with friends, and good food, I managed to spend a bit of time at the conference.

I had the pleasure of co-presenting with Jerome Schulist, a solutions architect at the Tribune Company.  Jerome is one of the architects that engineered the solution that has allowed the Tribune Company to store and process terabytes of data on the Windows Azure platform.  This solution involves a number of really interesting scenarios, including:

• Parallelized upload of terabytes of digital content into Windows Azure blob storage using .NET Framework 4.0
• Best practices for uploading a massive amount of content
• Scaling strategy for Windows Azure blob storage through multiple storage accounts and a “round robin” pattern
• Content reprocessing with Windows Azure worker roles
• Automatic scale-out and scale-back of worker roles through queue lengths

For detailed information on this solution, you can take a look at the Tribune Company’s Windows Azure case study or you can watch our TechEd NA 2010 presentation here:

As promised in the session, you can find the final code built during the session below.  Just remember to update the config files with your own credentials.