Microsoft Azure Interview Questions
Microsoft Azure Interview Questions
Microsoft Azure Interview Questions
By creating a cloud service, you can deploy a multi-tier web application in Azure, defining multiple
roles to distribute processing and allow flexible scaling of your application. A cloud service consists
of one or more web roles and/or worker roles, each with its own application files and configuration.
Azure Websites and Virtual Machines also enable web applications on Azure. The main advantage
of cloud services is the ability to support more complex multi-tier architectures
A cloud service role is comprised of application files and a configuration. A cloud service can have
two types of roles.
To show your cloud service’s dependencies on other resources, such as an Azure SQL Database
instance, you can “link” the resource to the cloud service. In the Preview Management Portal, you
can view linked resources on the Linked Resources page, view their status on the dashboard, and
scale a linked SQL Database instance along with the service roles on the Scale page. Linking a
resource in this sense does not connect the resource to the application; you must configure the
connections in the application code.
A cloud service is scaled out by increasing the number of role instances (virtual machines) deployed
for a role. A cloud service is scaled in by decreasing role instances. In the Preview Management
Portal, you can also scale a linked SQL Database instance, by changing the SQL Database edition
and the maximum database size, when you scale your service roles.
A web role provides a dedicated Internet Information Services (IIS) web-server used for hosting
front-end web applications.
Applications hosted within worker roles can run asynchronous, long-running or perpetual tasks
independent of user interaction or input.
A role instance is a virtual machine on which the application code and role configuration run. A role
can have multiple instances, defined in the service configuration file.
Q8) What is a guest operating system?
The guest operating system for a cloud service is the operating system installed on the role
instances (virtual machines) on which your application code runs.
Three components are required in order to deploy an application as a cloud service in Azure:
Azure offers two deployment environments for cloud services: a staging environment in which you
can test your deployment before you promote it to the production environment. The two
environments are distinguished only by the virtual IP addresses (VIPs) by which the cloud service is
accessed. In the staging environment, the cloud service’s globally unique identifier (GUID) identifies
it in URLs (GUID.cloudapp.net). In the production environment, the URL is based on the friendlier
DNS prefix assigned to the cloud service (for example, myservice.cloudapp.net).
To promote a deployment in the Azure staging environment to the production environment, you can
“swap” the deployments by switching the VIPs by which the two deployments are accessed. After
the deployment, the DNS name for the cloud service points to the deployment that had been in the
staging environment.
Minimal monitoring, which is configured by default for a cloud service, uses performance counters
gathered from the host operating systems for role instances (virtual machines). Verbose monitoring
gathers additional metrics based on performance data within the role instances to enable closer
analysis of issues that occur during application processing. For more information
The cloud service definition file (.csdef) defines the service model, including the number of roles.
The service package (.cspkg) contains the application code and the service definition file.
A cloud service deployment is an instance of a cloud service deployed to the Azure staging or
production environment. You can maintain deployments in both staging and production.
Azure Diagnostics is the API that enables you to collect diagnostic data from applications running in
Azure. Azure Diagnostics must be enabled for cloud service roles in order for verbose monitoring to
be turned on.
The Azure Compute SLA guarantees that, when you deploy two or more role instances for every
role, access to your cloud service will be maintained at least 99.95 percent of the time. Also,
detection and corrective action will be initiated 99.9 percent of the time when a role instance’s
process is not running.
Cloud computing is the use of computing resources (hardware and software) that are delivered
as a service over a network (typically the Internet).
Cloud computing providers offer their services according to three fundamental models: Infrastructure
as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS) where IaaS is
the most basic and each higher model abstracts from the details of the lower models.
Examples of IaaS include: Amazon CloudFormation (and underlying services such as Amazon EC2),
Rackspace Cloud, Terremark, Windows Azure Virtual Machines, Google Compute Engine. and
Joyent.
Examples of PaaS include: Amazon Elastic Beanstalk, Cloud Foundry, Heroku, Force.com,
EngineYard, Mendix, Google App Engine, Windows Azure Compute and OrangeScape.
Examples of SaaS include: Google Apps, Microsoft Office 365, and Onlive. Source from
: HTTP://EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG/WIKI/CLOUD_COMPUTING
All three roles (web, worker, VM) are essentially Windows Server 2008. Web and Worker roles are
nearly identical: With Web and Worker roles, the OS and related patches are taken care for you; you
build your app’s components without having to manage a VM
Q24) What is the difference between Windows Azure Platform and Windows Azure?
The former is Microsoft’s PaaS offering including Windows Azure, SQL Azure, and Appfabric; while
the latter is part of the offering and the Microsoft’s cloud OS.
Q25) What are the three main components of Windows Azure Platform?
1. Compute
2. Storage
3. AppFabric
Q26) What is Windows Azure compute emulator?
The compute emulator is a local emulator of Windows Azure that you can use to build and test your
application before deploying it to Windows Azure.
In the Windows Azure cloud fabric is nothing but a combination of many virtualized instances which
run the client application
Q28) How many instances of a Role should be deployed to satisfy Azure SLA (service level
agreement)? And what’s the benefit of Azure SLA?
TWO. And if we do so, the role would have external connectivity at least 99.95% of the time.
Q29) What are the options to manage session state in Windows Azure?
Windows Azure Caching
SQL Azure
Azure Table
Q30) What is cspack?
It is a command-line tool that generates a service package file (.cspkg) and prepares an application
for deployment, either to Windows Azure or to the compute emulator.
It is a command-line tool that deploys a packaged application to the Windows Azure compute
emulator and manages the running service.
It is the operating system that runs on the virtual machine that hosts an instance of a role.
Q34) What is the difference between Public Cloud and Private Cloud?
Public cloud is used as a service via Internet by the users, whereas a private cloud, as the name
conveys is deployed within certain boundaries like firewall settings and is completely managed and
monitored by the users working on it in an organization.
The Transient Fault Handling Application Block supports various standard ways of generating the
retry delay time interval, including fixed interval, incremental interval (the interval increases by a
standard amount), and exponential back-off (the interval doubles with some random variation).
static RetryPolicy policy = new RetryPolicy(5, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(2),
TimeSpan.FromSeconds(2)); policy.ExecuteAction(() => { try { string federationCmdText = @”USE
FEDERATION Customer_Federation(ShardId =” + shardId + “) WITH RESET, FILTERING=ON”;
customerEntity.Connection.Open(); customerEntity.ExecuteStoreCommand(federationCmdText); }
catch (Exception e) { customerEntity.Connection.Close(); SqlConnection.ClearAllPools(); } });
Windows Azure Diagnostics enables you to collect diagnostic data from an application running in
Windows Azure. You can use diagnostic data for debugging and troubleshooting, measuring
performance, monitoring resource usage, traffic analysis and capacity planning, and
auditing. HTTP://WWW.WINDOWSAZURE.COM/EN-US/DEVELOP/NET/COMMON-
TASKS/DIAGNOSTICS/
Block blobs are comprised of blocks, each of which is identified by a block ID.
You create or modify a block blob by uploading a set of blocks and committing them by their block
IDs.
If you are uploading a block blob that is no more than 64 MB in size, you can also upload it in its
entirety with a single Put Blob operation. -Each block can be a maximum of 4 MB in size. The
maximum size for a block blob in version 2009-09-19 is 200 GB, or up to 50,000 blocks.
Page blobs are a collection of pages. A page is a range of data that is identified by its offset from the
start of the blob. To create a page blob, you initialize the page blob by calling Put Blob and
specifying its maximum size.
-The maximum size for a page blob is 1 TB. A page written to a page blob may be up to 1 TB in size.
what to use block blobs for: streaming video. “The application must provide random read/write
access” which is supported by Page Blobs
Q39) What is the difference between Windows Azure Queues and Windows Azure Service
Bus Queues?
Windows Azure supports two types of queue mechanisms: Windows Azure Queues and Service Bus
Queues.
Windows Azure Queues, which are part of the Windows Azure storage infrastructure, feature a
simple REST-based Get/Put/Peek interface, providing reliable, persistent messaging within and
between services.
Service Bus Queues are part of a broader Windows Azure messaging infrastructure dead-letterrts
queuing as well as publish/subscribe, Web service remoting, and integration patterns.
HTTP://WCFPRO.WORDPRESS.COM/2010/12/06/COMMUNICATION-IN-WINDOWS-AZURE/
HTTP://MSDN.MICROSOFT.COM/EN-US/LIBRARY/WINDOWSAZURE/HH767287.ASPX
Windows Azure will handle the load balancing for all of the instances that are created. The VM sizes
are as follows:
Compute Instance Size CPU Memory Instance Storage I/O Performance
Extra Small 1.0 Ghz 768 MB 20 GB Low
Small 1.6 GHz 1.75 GB 225 GB Moderate
Medium 2 x 1.6 GHz 3.5 GB 490 GB High
Large 4 x 1.6 GHz 7 GB 1,000 GB High
Extra large 8 x 1.6 GHz 14 GB 2,040 GB High
The Windows Azure Table storage service stores large amounts of structured data.
The service is a NoSQL datastore which accepts authenticated calls from inside and outside the
Windows Azure cloud.
Windows Azure tables are ideal for storing structured, non-relational data
Table: A table is a collection of entities. Tables don’t enforce a schema on entities, which means a
single table can contain entities that have different sets of properties. An account can contain many
tables
Entity: An entity is a set of properties, similar to a database row. An entity can be up to 1MB in size.
Properties: A property is a name-value pair. Each entity can include up to 252 properties to store
data. Each entity also has 3 system properties that specify a partition key, a row key, and a
timestamp.
Entities with the same partition key can be queried more quickly, and inserted/updated in atomic
operations. An entity’s row key is its unique identifier within a partition.
HTTP://MSDN.MICROSOFT.COM/EN-US/LIBRARY/WINDOWSAZURE/HH508997.ASPX
Section 1: General Cloud Questions
1. What are the different types of services offered in the cloud?
Public Cloud: The infrastructure is owned by your cloud provider and the server that
you are using could be a multi-tenant system.
Private Cloud: The infrastructure is owned by you or your cloud provider gives you
that service exclusively. For eg: Hosting your website on your servers, or hosting your
website with the cloud provider on a dedicated server.
Hybrid Cloud: When you use both Public Cloud, Private Cloud together, it is called
Hybrid Cloud. For Example: Using your in-house servers for confidential data, and the
public cloud for hosting your company’s public facing website. This type of setup would
be a hybrid cloud.
Explanation: This type of architecture would be a hybrid cloud. Why? Because we are
using both, the public cloud, and on premises servers i.e the private cloud. To make
this hybrid architecture easy to use, wouldn’t it be better if your private and public
cloud were all on the same network (virtually). This is established by including your
public cloud servers in a virtual private cloud, and connecting virtual cloud with your on
premise servers using a VPN (Virtual Private Network).
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Explanation: As discussed above, the companies which provide the cloud service are
called the Cloud Providers. There are a lot of cloud providers out there, out of them one
is Microsoft Azure. It is used for accessing Microsoft’s infrastructure for cloud.
A. Application Insights
B. Azure Resource Manager
C. Azure Portal
D. Log Analytics
Answer: B Azure Resource Manager
A. ASP.NET
B. PHP
C. WCF
D. All of the mentioned
Explanation: Microsoft also has released SDKs for both Java and Ruby to allow
applications written in those languages to place calls to the Azure Service Platform API
to the AppFabric Service.
Explanation: Roles are nothing servers in layman terms. These servers are managed,
load balanced, Platform as a Service virtual machines that work together to achieve a
common goal.
Web Role
Worker Role
VM Role
Web Role – A web role is basically used to deploy a website, using languages
supported by the IIS platform like, PHP, .NET etc. It is configured and
customized to run web applications.
Worker Role – A worker role is more like an help to the Web role, it used to
execute background processes unlike the Web Role which is used to deploy the
website.
VM Role – The VM role is used by a user to schedule tasks and other windows
services. This role can be used to customize the machines on which the web and
worker role is running.
A. Web
B. Server
C. Worker
D. Client
Answer: A. Web
Explanation: The answer should be Web Roles, there are no roles such as Server or
Client roles. Also, Worker roles can only communicate with Azure Storage or through
direct connections to clients.
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Explanation: This is not supported. You cannot use Azure Resource Manager to deploy
a virtual machine into a virtual network that was created using classic deployment.
Explanation: Virtual machine scale sets are Azure compute resource that you can use
to deploy and manage a set of identical VMs. With all the VMs configured the same,
scale sets are designed to support true autoscale, and no pre-provisioning of VMs is
required. So it’s easier to build large-scale services that target big compute, big data,
and containerized workloads.
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Explanation: A network security group (NSG) contains a list of Access Control List
(ACL) rules that allow or deny network traffic to subnets, NICs, or both. NSGs can be
associated with either subnets or individual NICs connected to a subnet. When an NSG
is associated with a subnet, the ACL rules apply to all the VMs in that subnet. In
addition, traffic to an individual NIC can be restricted by associating an NSG directly to
a NIC.
Explanation: Yes. A scale set is an implicit availability set with 5 fault domains and 5
update domains. Scale sets of more than 100 VMs span multiple placement groups,
which are equivalent to multiple availability sets. An availability set of VMs can exist in
the same virtual network as a scale set of VMs. A common configuration is to put
control node VMs (which often require unique configuration) in an availability set and
put data nodes in the scale set.
Explanation: Technical problems are called break-fix issue, it is an industry term which
refers to “work involved in supporting a technology when it fails in the normal course of
its function, which requires intervention by a support organization to be restored to
working order”.
20. What happens when you exhaust the maximum failed attempts
for authenticating yourself via Azure AD?
Explanation: We use a more sophisticated strategy to lock accounts. This is based on
the IP address of the request and the passwords entered. The duration of the lockout
also increases based on the likelihood that it is an attack.
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22. How can I use applications with Azure AD that I’m using on-
premises?
Explanation: Azure AD gives you an easy and secure way to connect to the web
applications you choose. You can access these applications in the same way you access
your SaaS apps in Azure AD, no need for a VPN to change your network infrastructure.
Explanation: Azure Service Fabric is a distributed systems platform that makes it easy
to package, deploy, and manage scalable and reliable micro-services. Service Fabric
also addresses the significant challenges in developing and managing cloud
applications. Developers and administrators can avoid complex infrastructure problems
and focus on implementing mission-critical, demanding workloads that are scalable,
reliable, and manageable. Service Fabric represents the next-generation middleware
platform for building and managing these enterprise-class, tier-1, cloud-scale
applications.
Azure AD has a different set of admin roles to manage the directory and identity-related
features. These admins will have access to various features in the Azure portal or the
Azure classic portal. The admin’s role determines what they can do, like create or edit
users, assign administrative roles to others, reset user passwords, manage user
licenses, or manage domains.
26. Are there any scale limitations for customers using managed
disks?
Explanation: Managed Disks eliminates the limits associated with storage accounts.
However, the number of managed disks per subscription is limited to 2000 by default.
27. What is the difference between Service Bus Queues and Storage
Queues?
Explanation: The Azure Storage Queue is simple and the developer experience is quite
good. It uses the local Azure Storage Emulator and debugging is made quite easy. The
tooling for Azure Storage Queues allows you to easily peek at the top 32 messages and
if the messages are in XML or Json, you’re able to visualize their contents directly from
Visual Studio Furthermore, these queues can be purged of their contents, which is
especially useful during development and QA efforts.
The Azure Service Bus Queues are evolved and surrounded by many useful mechanisms
that make it enterprise worthy! They are built into the Service Bus and are able to
forward messages to other Queues and Topics. They have a built-in dead-letter queue
and messages have a time to live that you control, hence messages don’t automatically
disappear after 7 days.
Furthermore, Azure Service Bus Queues have the ability of deleting themselves after a
configurable amount of idle time. This feature is very practical when you create Queues
for each user, because if a user hasn’t interacted with a Queue for the past month, it
automatically gets clean it up. Its also a great way to drive costs down. You shouldn’t
have to pay for storage that you don’t need. These Queues are limited to a maximum of
80gb. Once you’ve reached this limit your application will start receiving exceptions.
Redis is an open source (BSD licensed), in-memory data structure store, used as a
database, cache and message broker. Azure Redis Cache is based on the popular
open-source Redis cache. It gives you access to a secure, dedicated Redis cache,
managed by Microsoft, and accessible from any application within Azure. It supports
data structures such as strings, hashes, lists, sets, sorted sets with range queries,
bitmaps,hyperloglogs and geospatial indexes with radius queries.
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29. Why doesn’t Azure Redis Cache have an MSDN class library
reference like some of the other Azure services?
Explanation: Microsoft Azure Redis Cache is based on the popular open source Redis
Cache and can be accessed by a wide variety of Redis clients for many programming
languages. Each client has its own API that makes calls to the Redis cache instance
using Redis commands.
Because each client is different, there is not one centralized class reference on MSDN,
and each client maintains its own reference documentation. In addition to the reference
documentation, there are several tutorials showing how to get started with Azure Redis
Cache using different languages and cache clients. To access these tutorials, see How
to use Azure Redis Cache and click the desired language from the language switcher at
the top of the article.
Explanation: Redis Databases are just a logical separation of data within the same
Redis instance. The cache memory is shared between all the databases and actual
memory consumption of a given database depends on the keys/values stored in that
database. For example, a C6 cache has 53 GB of memory. You can choose to put all 53
GB into one database or you can split it up between multiple databases.
Explanation: No. If you want your VM to be part of an availability set, you need to
create the VM within the set. There currently no way to add a VM to an availability set
after it has been created.
Explanation: Passwords must be 12 – 123 characters in length and meet 3 out of the
following 4 complexity requirements:
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Explanation: Each data disk can be up to 1 TB. The number of data disks which you
can use depends on the size of the virtual machine.
Azure Managed Disks are the new and recommended disk storage offerings for use with
Azure Virtual Machines for persistent storage of data. You can use multiple Managed
Disks with each Virtual Machine. Managed Disks offer two types of durable storage
options: Premium and Standard Managed Disks.
Azure storage accounts can also provide storage for the operating system disk and any
data disks. Each disk is a .vhd file stored as a page blob.
37. How to create a new storage account and container using Power
Shell?
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Get-AzureRmVM `
-ResourceGroupName myResourceGroup `
-Name myVM `
-Status | Select @{n="Status"; e={$_.Statuses[1].Code}}
Explanation: The following are some common reason for a cache disconnect.
Client-side causes
o The client application was redeployed.
o The client application performed a scaling operation.
o In the case of Cloud Services or Web Apps, this may be due to auto-
scaling.
o The networking layer on the client side changed.
o Transient errors occurred in the client or in the network nodes between
the client and the server.
o The bandwidth threshold limits were reached.
o CPU bound operations took too long to complete.
Server-side causes
o On the standard cache offering, the Azure Redis Cache service initiated a
fail-over from the primary node to the secondary node.
o Azure was patching the instance where the cache was deployed
o This can be for Redis server updates or general VM maintenance.
44. My web app still uses an old Docker container image after I’ve
updated the image on Docker Hub. Does Azure support continuous
integration/deployment of custom containers?
Explanation: Yes, it does. For private registries, you can update the container by
stopping and then re-starting your web app. Alternatively, you can also change or add a
dummy application setting to force an update of your container.
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45. What are the expected values for the Startup File section when I
configure the runtime stack?
Explanation: For Node.Js, you specify the PM2 configuration file or your script file. For
.NET Core, specify your compiled DLL name. For Ruby, you can specify the Ruby script
that you want to initialize your app with.
Explanation:
Pricing will vary based on product types. ISV software charges and Azure infrastructure
costs are charged separately through your Azure subscription. Pricing models include:
BYOL Model: Bring-your-own-license. You obtain outside of the Azure Marketplace, the
right to access or use the offering and are not charged Azure Marketplace fees for use
of the offering in the Azure Marketplace.
Free: Free SKU. Customers are not charged Azure Marketplace fees for use of the
offering.
Free Software Trial: Full-featured version of the offer that is promotionally free for a
limited period of time. You will not be charged Azure Marketplace fees for use of the
offering during a trial period. Upon expiration of the trial period, customers will
automatically be charged based on standard rates for use of the offering.
Usage-Based: You are charged or billed based on the extent of your use of the
offering. For Virtual Machines Images, you are charged an hourly Azure Marketplace
fee. For Data Services, Developer services, and APIs, you are charged per unit of
measurement as defined by the offering.
Monthly Fee: You are charged or billed a fixed monthly fee for a subscription to the
offering (from the date of subscription start for that particular plan). The monthly fee is
not prorated for mid-month cancellations or unused services.
Explanation: “Price” refers to the cost of the Azure Virtual Machine to run the
software. “Software price” refers to the cost of the publisher software running on an
Azure Virtual Machine. “Total price” refers to the combined total cost of the Azure
Virtual Machine and the publisher software running on an Azure Virtual Machine.
48. What are stateful and stateless microservices for Service Fabric?
Explanation: The application partitions are a part of the Active Directory system and
having said so, they are directory partitions which are replicated to domain controllers.
Usually, domain controllers that are included in the process of directory partitions hold
a replica of that directory partition. The attributes and values of application partitions is
that you can replicated them to any specific domain controller in a forest, meaning that
it could lessen replication traffic. While the domain directory partitions transfer all their
data to all of the domains, the application partitions can focus on only one in the
domain area. This makes application partitions redundant and more available.
Explanation: Azure has some special regions that you may wish to use when
buildingyour applications for compliance or legal purposes. These special regions
include:
Cloud computing is internet-based computing whereby shared resources, software, and information are
provided to computers and other devices on-demand, like the electricity grid.
Cloud computing is a culmination of numerous attempts at large-scale computing with seamless access to
virtually limitless resources.
Components in a cloud refer to the platforms, like front end, back end, and cloud-based delivery and the
network used. All together it forms an architecture for cloud computing. With the main components like
SAAS, PAAS and IAAS there are 11 more major categories in cloud computing that are:
Storage-as-a-Service: This is the component where we can use or request storage. It is also called
disk space on demand.
Process-as-a-Service: This component combines various resources such as data and services. This
happens either hosted within the same cloud computing resource or remote.
Platform-as-a-Service: This is the component where the app is being developed and the database is
being created, implemented, stored and tested.
Security-as-a-Service: This is the main component many customers require. There are three-
dimensional securities found in cloud platforms.
Management-as-a-service: This is a component that is mainly useful for management of the clouds,
like resource utilization, virtualization and server up and down time management.
Testing-as-a-Service: Testing-as-a-Service refers to the testing of the applications that are hosted
remotely.
Infrastructure-as-a-Service: This is called as nearly as possible the taking of all the hardware,
software, servers and networking that is completely virtual.
This is the service model on which you will host your application(s), for example IaaS, PaaS or SaaS. Each
of these service models requires various levels of support and responsibilities once a system is deployed to the
platform. To resolve the future challenges that you might encounter you need to understand the models
carefully. Other than the service model, the second, you need to decide whether you want a Private or On-
Premise cloud, or you want your application to be deployed on a Public Cloud.
Every service model offers you some kind of resource required to operate the most web-enabled systems
imaginable.
For more details visit the following link:
Question 4: What are the kind of cloud storage and why is cloud computing is
so popular?
Answer
Data is centrally stored in the cloud and available across the internet. There are various storage options
available or we can classify them broadly in the following three categories:
Public Cloud
In this model a service provider makes resources, such as application and storage, available to the general
public over the internet. Public cloud services may be free or offered on a pay-per-usage model.
Private Cloud
A private cloud provides more control over the company's data and under the control of the company's IT
department.
Hybrid Cloud
A hybrid cloud is a combination of public cloud storage and private cloud storage, where some critical data
resides in the enterprise's private cloud and other data is stored and accessible from a public cloud storage
provider.
Benefits of a cloud:
Reduction of costs
Universal access
Software updates
Scalability
Flexibility
The Windows Azure Platform lays the foundation for running applications and keeping data on the cloud. It
contains computer services, storage services and the fabric. Windows Azure affords a wide range of
capabilities in the form of computing services to run applications, storage services and creating a framework
that supports several applications, as well as host services and manage them centrally. This platform readily
stipulates an internet infrastructure for deploying distributed applications and services since we can develop a
cloud service in Visual Studio .NET and deploy it into the Azure cloud right from on-premise tools. The Azure
platform is a group of three cloud technologies as in the following:
For more details visit the following link:
Windows Azure is created by Microsoft, it is a cloud computing infrastructure and platform. It is designed for
working on the global network of Microsoft. It is for building, managing and deploying services and
applications. Windows Azure supports various programming languages, tools, and frameworks. It can be
included in both Microsoft specific and third party systems and software. It provides an infrastructure of
services and platforms as services. It is also an open and flexible cloud platform that makes it easy to work on
the global network. It helps us to quickly create, manage and deploy applications on the global network.
Windows Azure runs and stores the data on Microsoft datacenters. There are many features that are specified
here:
1. Websites allows the developers to build the sites using ASP.NET, PHP, etc and deploy these websites
using FTP, Git etc.
2. SQL Database, formally known as Azure database creates, extends and scales the application into the
cloud using Microsoft SQL Server.
3. This is Microsoft's platform as a service that supports the Multi-tier applications and automated
deployment.
There are various types of services that are provided by Windows Azure:
Web Sites
Cloud services
Virtual Machine
Data Management
SQL Database.
Tables.
Business Analytics
SQL Reporting.
Data Marketplace.
Roles are an important concept in Windows Azure and learning them is the base for further programming.
There are mainly three roles in Windows Azure.
Web Role
Worker Role
VM Role
Web Role:
It provides a web front-end solution. This is similar to an ASP.NET application. While under hosting Azure
provides IIS and required services.
Worker Role:
It provides a background service solution. This can be thought as a windows service application. We can use
this role to run background operations like database management tasks, report generation, etc. It can run
lengthy operations.
According to MSDN, the Web Role can be considered as a Worker role loaded with IIS. Similarly the worker
role can be used to host other application platforms.
Question 8: What is Windows Azure Portal and also explain the Azure
Fabric?
Answer
Windows Azure Portal:To run an application, a developer accesses the Windows Azure portal through her
Web browser, signing in with a Windows Live ID. She then chooses whether to create a hosting account for
running applications, a storage account for storing data, or both.
Once the developer has a hosting account, the developer can use a Windows Azure portal to submit
applications to Windows Azure.
When the user sends a request to an application hosted on Azure (that can be passed by protocols like HTTP,
HTTPS or TCP), the request will be received from the load balancer. The Load balancer balances the load
across all the instances of the role (Web, Worker, and VM).
Azure Fabric:
The Azure fabric is the main core concept over here. It provides a service called the Azure Fabric Controller. It
is called as OS for the Azure. Because it handles/manages:
So there would be better to have two instances of roles and also no need to worry about software updates for
user.
Windows Azure provides platform and infrastructure by providing a scalable and cost-effective computing,
storage, and networking resources on demand.
Windows Azure has three main components in Azure: Compute, Storage and Fabric.
1. Windows Azure Compute
Windows Azure provides a hosting environment for managed code. It provides computation service through
roles. Windows azure supports 3 types of roles:
Web roles used for web application programming and supported by IIS7.
Worker roles used for background processing of web roles.
Virtual Machine (VM) roles used for migrating windows server applications to Windows azure in an
easy way.
AppFabric provides infrastructure services for developing, deploying and managing Windows azure
application. It provides 5 services:
Service bus
Access
Caching
Integration
Composite
Question 10: What are the differences between a public cloud and a private
cloud?
Answer
Private clouds are those that are built exclusively for an individual enterprise. They allow the firm to host
applications in the cloud, while addressing concerns regarding data security and control that is often lacking in
a public cloud environment. It is also known as an internal or enterprise cloud and resides on the company's
intranet or hosted data center where all of your data is protected behind a firewall.
Public Cloud
Private Cloud
It is owned by a specific private group for their own use of employed, partners and their own
customers.
Highly controlled and not accessible by anyone other than allowed.
Security, governance and compliance is highly automated.
Similarly, the features are like a Public Cloud irrespective of security and maintenance.
The cost is very high.
A hybrid cloud is a mixture of internal and external cloud services, a combination of a private cloud combined
with the use of public cloud services. This type of cloud is most suitable when you want to keep the
confidential data at your premise (private cloud) and consume the other services from a public cloud.
Pros of Hybrid Cloud
Scalability:
Usually the Private Cloud services will have a lesser scalability due to its security, cost and
compliance whereas the Public Cloud has a high scalability and moving non-sensitive data from the
private to the public will free up resources in the data centers in the Private Cloud and that increases a
very high scalability for a Hybrid Cloud.
Cost effective:
Similarly the Public Cloud is very cost effective rather than Private Cloud and here the Hybrid Cloud
provides cost effectiveness with the data and other sensitive operations secured.
Security:
Since there is a Private Cloud used; the data and sensitive operations are secured highly in the Hybrid
Cloud.
Flexibility:
We can easilyove out m the non-sensitive data and manage large scalability using a Public Cloud
service along with the Private Cloud. So with the availability of a large scalability using Public Cloud
and security using Private Cloud an enterprise has a vast opportunity in developing for new needs.
Infrastructure dependency
Networking
Security compliance
Windows Azure diagnostics provides facility to store diagnostics data. Some diagnostics data is stored in a
table, while some is stored in a blob. For collecting diagnostics data, we must initialize the Windows Azure
diagnostic monitor. The Windows Azure diagnostic monitor runs in Windows Azure and in the computer's
emulator and collects diagnostic data for a role instance.
The main reason for using queues is to provide loose connectivity among various components. For example,
we have two components of an application to exchange data. Here one of them is on-premise and one exists in
the cloud. Here if we use a web service to exchange data we have the following issues:
Both components should be online simultaneously; if one partner is down, then the communication
will not work.
It’s difficult to scale up if more work is present.
In Azure Queues you have a queue as mediator that connects the two components, so when the receiver is
down, the sender can still insert messages into the queue, once a receiver comes online it can receive message
from that queue. And for scale up we just need to add more receivers and your queue is processed in parallel.
Deep Dive into Azure Storage Queue vs Azure Service Bus Queue
Question 13: What is the difference between Windows Azure Queues and
Windows Azure Service Bus Queues?
Answer
Windows Azure Queue Storage is a service for storing a large number of messages that can be accessed from
anywhere using HTTP or HTTPS. A single message can be up to 64KB in size. So, a queue may contain
millions of messages. It is basically a part of Windows Azure Storage and enabled with a REST based
architecture.
Queues provide First In, First Out (FIFO) message delivery, in other words messages are received and
processed by the receivers in the order they were added to the queue.
Queue is a one type of Azure Storage, where you can store your data as storage. Blobs are stored in container,
Entity in table and Message in Queue.
In the real world example the user can queue a job through the web role (front end) and the job can be
processed by a worker role (back end). This gives an opportunity to decouple the web role and worker role.
1. Place a new label control on the aspx page and add the following code in the page load
event.
2. protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
3. {
4. StorageCredentialsAccountAndKey accountAndKey = newStorageCredentialsAccountAndKey(
"account", "key");
5. CloudStorageAccount account = new CloudStorageAccount(accountAndKey, true);
6. CloudQueueClient client = account.CreateCloudQueueClient();
7. CloudQueue queue = client.GetQueueReference("workitems");
8. queue.CreateIfNotExist();
9. CloudQueueMessage message = new CloudQueueMessage("Test Work Item");
10. queue.AddMessage(message);
11. // Populate the messages
12. message = queue.GetMessage();
13. if (message != null) Label1.Text = "Message in Queue: " + message.AsString;
14. }
To avoid this type of situation, a secondary access key is provided so that if the primary needs to be changed or
regenerated we can map the secondary temporarily to the storage and regenerate the primary. Let us see step
by step of how to get the Access Keys using Windows Azure Management Portal.
Table is a one type of Azure Storage, where you can store your data as storage. Blobs are stored in container
and Entity in table.
Question 17: How to send messages to a Queue and how to receive messages
from a Queue?
Answer
The code below demonstrates how to create a QueueClient object for the "TestQueue" queue created above
using the CreateFromConnectionString API call:
1. string connectionString =
2. CloudConfigurationManager.GetSetting("Microsoft.ServiceBus.ConnectionString");
3. QueueClient Client =
4. QueueClient.CreateFromConnectionString(connectionString, "TestQueue");
5. Client.Send(new BrokeredMessage());
Messages sent to (and received from) Service Bus queues are instances of the BrokeredMessage
class.BrokeredMessage objects have a set of standard properties (such as Label and TimeToLive), a dictionary
that is used to hold custom application specific properties, and a body of arbitrary application data. An
application can set the body of the message by passing any serializable object into the constructor of the
BrokeredMessage, and the appropriate DataContractSerializer will then be used to serialize the object.
Alternatively, a System.IO.Stream can be provided.
The easiest way to receive messages from a queue is to use a QueueClient object. These objects can work in
two different modes: ReceiveAndDelete and PeekLock.
When using the ReceiveAndDelete mode, reception is a single-shot operation; that is, when the Service Bus
receives a read request for a message in a queue, it marks the message as consumed, and returns it to the
application.
The ReceiveAndDelete mode is the simplest model and works best for scenarios in which an application can
tolerate not processing a message in the event of a failure. To understand this, consider a scenario in which the
consumer issues the receive request and then crashes before processing it. Because the Service Bus will have
marked the message as being consumed, when the application restarts and begins consuming messages again,
it will have missed the message that was consumed prior to the crash.
This example creates an infinite loop and processes messages as they arrive in the "TestQueue":
1. Client.Receive();
2. // Continuously process messages sent to the "TestQueue"
3. while (true)
4. {
5. BrokeredMessage message = Client.Receive();
6. if (message != null)
7. {
8. try
9. {
10. Console.WriteLine("Body: " + message.GetBody < string > ());
11. Console.WriteLine("MessageID: " + message.MessageId);
12. Console.WriteLine("Test Property: " + message.Properties["TestProperty"]);
BLOB: BLOBs offer a mechanism for storing large amounts of text or binary data, such as images,
audio and visual files. It can scale up to 200 terabytes and can be accessed using REST APIs. We can
move BLOB data as a single volume between private and public clouds using Windows Azure Drive.
Table: Tables represent storage locations across machines for data that reside in the form of entities
and properties on the cloud. Tables store large amounts of unstructured data that can be accessed
either using REST APIs from within a service running in Windows Azure or directly over the Internet
using HTTP/HTTPS.
Queue: The sole objective of a Queue is to enable communication between Web and Worker Role
instances. They aid in storing messages that may be accessed by a client. Web Role instances can
initiate user requests that need to be processed in the background. On the other side a Worker Role
observers the queue to process the request and respond back via queue to the Web Role instance.
Federation is introduced in SQL Azure for scalability. Federation helps both administrators and developers to
scale data. It helps administrators by making repartitioning and redistributing of data easier. It helps developers
in the routing layer and sharding of data. It helps in routing without application downtime.
Federation does basic scaling of objects in a SQL Azure Database. Federations are the partioned data. There
can be multiple Federations within a database. And each Federation represents a different distribution scheme.
We create a Federation with a different distribution scheme and requirement. Student and Grades tables of a
School Database may have a different distribution requirement so they are put into different Federations.
Each Federation object scales out data to many system managed nodes. A Federation object contains:
For more details visit the following link:
SQL Azure database is simply a way to get connected in Cloud Services where we can store our database into
Cloud. Microsoft SQL Services and Microsoft SQL Data Services are now known as Microsoft SQL Azure
and SQL Azure Database. Microsoft Azure is the best way to use PAAS (Platform as a Service) where we
can host multiple databases on the same Account.
Microsoft SQL Azure has the same feature of SQL Server, i.e. high availability, scalability and security in the
core.
Microsoft Azure SQL Database have a feature, it automatically creates backups of every active database.
Every hour a backup is taken and geo-replicated to enable the 1 hour recovery point objective (RPO) for Geo-
Restore. Additionally, transaction log backups are taken every 5 minutes to enable Point in Time Restore.
SQL Azure firewall rules are provided to protect the data and to prevent access restrictions to the SQL Azure
database. Firewall grants access to the originating IP's from which we are trying to access the database. In
order to configure the firewall we need to configure a range of acceptable IP addresses upon which we try to
connect to the SQL Azure server using the Management Portal or with the SQL Server Management Studio.
Let us see the step by step process of adding and deleting rules as per our IP configurations.
By default Database created in SQL Azure is blocked by firewall for security reasons. Any attempt from
external access or access from any azure application is blocked by firewall.
Question 22: What is Windows Azure Traffic Manager? What are its
benefits?
Answer
Traffic Manager Name is itself self-explanatory. It allows users to control the distribution of user traffic of
deployed Azure cloud services, Azure websites or any other endpoint. In this the distribution of traffic includes
Azure cloud services, Azure web sites and other endpoints. There are 3 different load balancing methods
provided by Azure. The Traffic Manager works by applying an intelligent routing policy engine to the Domain
Name Service (DNS) queries on your domain names and maps the DNS routes to the appropriate instances of
your applications.
Increase Performance: Can increase performance of your application that includes faster page
loading and better user experience. This applies to the serving of users with the hosted service closest
to them.
High Availability: You can use the Traffic Manager to improve application availability by enabling
automatic customer traffic fail-over scenarios in the event of issues with one of your application
instances.
No Downtime Required for Upgrade / Maintenance: Once you have configured the Traffic
Manager you don't need downtime for application maintenance, patch purgation or complete new
package deployment.
Easy to configure (Quick Setup): It's very easy to configure Azure Traffic Manager on Widows
Azure portal. If you have already hosted your application on Windows Azure (a cloud service, Azure
website) you can easily configure this Traffic Manager with a simple procedure (setting routing
policy).
Sync Services is provided by Microsoft Azure where you can keep a SQL Azure database synchronized with
another database. You can take a backup of a database from one region to another region. There is a simple
procedure you need to follow to configure this service. If not a complete database then you can at least keep
selected tables or selected rows of tables synchronized.
1. Synchronize a SQL Azure database from one SQL Azure server to another SQL Azure server.
2. Synchronize a SQL Azure Database from an Azure Server to a Local Server database.
SQL Azure also has a security management system very similar to the SQL on-premises versions. It basically
consists of the following:
When you create a server in SQL Azure, it asks you to create a login at the same time. That login acts as the
administrative login that has access to all the databases in that server. However, you might want to create other
logins with less privilege. As of now, the SQL Azure portal doesn't have any UI to create these extra logins. So
you'll need to resort to running T-SQL statements.
Note: All of the following procedures are done using the administrative login mentioned above.
Creating Logins
Login to the master database and run the following T-SQL statement.
This statement creates a login ID in the server. This a a normal login ID that doesn't have access to any of the
databases in that server. So if you try to login to the Azure server with this account (either from SQL Server
Management Studio 2008 R2 - SSMS or from Azure Portal) you would get an error saying this user doesn't
have access to the master database. So the next step is to map this login to the required databases, not
necessarily to the master db.
Question 24: What are the different types of databases in SQL Azure?
Answer
Web Edition
Business Edition
A Build is nothing but the output of a solution. In the case of Azure projects, you generally get the file with
a .cspkg extension that means a Cloud Service Package is used for the deployment of your cloud services.
Build Servers
In layman's terms a build server acts as the machine where you put your deployment packages.
To use Team Foundation Build, you must have at least one build machine. This machine can be a physical
machine or a virtual machine.
Build Controllers
Build Controllers are the element in the build system that accepts the build requests from any project inside the
team project collection. Each build controller is dedicated to a single-team project collection. So there is a one-
to-one relationship between a team project collection and a build controller.
Build Agents
Build agents are elements in the build system that does more processor-intensive work.
Build Definitions
A Build definition is nothing but the process that the build controller using to deploy your packages to a target
site. Using Team Explorer you should be able to create a new build definition where you will need to associate
the build controller and define process as well as trigger a point for the definition.
Once the build definition is in place, you will be able to queue new builds using it.
Basics of TFS Build System and Integrating it With Azure Cloud Services
Question 26: What is the difference between IaaS and PaaS in Cloud?
Answer
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): is in effect much like building a set of services and virtual machines and
networks in a Cloud as the user would On-Premises.
Platform as a Service ( PaaS): A Platform is a cloud that gives the user various frameworks, tools and
services on the cloud and the user are building the application in the cloud leveraging these various tools,
services and components within the application.
IaaS PaaS
The user can remote into virtual machine The PaaS provider takes care of
Granularity of running in the cloud using IDP. The user has the running the application. It means that
Control of same level of control as the user would with a the user doesn't get access to registry
Virtual virtual machine on-premises. This means the and neither can the user install custom
Machines user can get into the registry, install custom software necessarily in that application
software the user want to install on that virtual or in the location where it runs.
machine.
PaaS providers provide the
infrastructure and the platforms.
The user can choose a certain number of virtual
Control over the cores, virtual CPUs, RAM, networking set up, how PaaS can be thought of as the next step
environment many different networks, virtual VPNs, separate of IaaS where the configurations is also
configuration subnets, extensions to on-premises networks done for the user by the provider.
and load-balancing across multiple VMs.
The user is responsible for the O/S, patching,
firewall management, security, data, runtime,
applications, middleware and everything that's
running inside of the VM because the user is The provider is responsible for
Maintenance responsible for that virtual machine. The only application/services on PaaS. The user
difference is the location of the VM; instead of is just managing the various services.
on-premise it is in the cloud. The user still gets
to do all the configurations but the user is
relieved of doing the physical hardware things.
Scalability is the responsibility of the
Scalability The user is responsible for scalability.
PaaS provider.
Subscription Model, but it includes the
Pricing Subscription Model. cost of hardware for the installation of
PaaS.
Both IaaS and PaaS help organizations to minimize operational costs and increase their productivity as they get
faster time to market and require no up-front investments.
Question 27: What is the Azure App Service? What are the advantages of App
Service over Mobile Service?
Answer
Azure App Service is a fully managed Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering for professional developers that
brings a rich set of capabilities to web, mobile and integration scenarios. Mobile Apps in Azure App Service
offer a highly scalable, globally available mobile application development platform for Enterprise Developers
and System Integrators that brings a rich set of capabilities to mobile developers.
Simpler, easier and more cost effective offering for apps that include both web and mobile clients.
New host features including Web Jobs, custom CNames, better monitoring.
Turnkey integration with Office 365, Dynamics CRM, Salesforce, and other vital SaaS APIs.
Support for Java and PHP backend code, in addition to Node.js and .NET.
Turnkey integration with Traffic Manager.
Connectivity to your on-premise resources and VPNs using VNet in addition to Hybrid Connections.
Monitoring and troubleshooting for your app using NewRelic or AppInsights, as well as alerts.
Richer spectrum of the underlying compute resources, e.g. VM sizes.
Built-in auto scale, load balancing, and performance monitoring.
Built-in staging, backup, roll-back, and testing-in-production capabilities.
Question 28: How can you demonstrate between Azure mobile service and
Web API?
Answer:
Web API: Web API is used only for that client who uses HTTP enabled services. There is a problem with
Web API, if you want to create a Web API service, then you need knowledge of ASP.NET solution and you
need to be familiar with .Net.
There are more benefits of Web API over Node.js. Web API uses HTTP request and process them using the
HTTP verbs. Actually, Web API is fully REST service. As per my thinking Web API is better approach to
create APIs.
Azure Mobile Services: Windows Azure Mobile Service is a tool that can integrated with the Windows Azure
cloud. This tool will help you to connect a cloud backend to your Windows 8 application. The goal of the
Windows Azure Mobile Service is to make Windows Azure the obvious choice for the Windows 8 Metro style
application developer. Currently we can only use the Windows Azure Mobile Service in Metro style
applications but in the near future the mobile service can also work with iOS, Android and Windows Phone.
Mobile services can only be run on demand or you can schedule the service when it will start and when it will
stop.
To use Windows Azure Mobile Services, you need to use any Source Control where you can take the backup.
Google Cloud Platform is a new way to use cloud computing platform in real time. It is developed by Google
and offers every developer the chance to host their Web API’s and Cloud Storage and many more things on the
same supporting infrastructure that is used by Google itself internally in their products, such as Google Search,
Google Play Store, Gmail and YouTube. Also for every product by Google, Google Cloud Platform provides
developer products to build application and a range of programs from simple websites to complex applications.
Google use Load Balancer technique that allows distributing cloud data into multiple data centers all over the
world. With the help of Google Cloud BigQuery we can execute billions of queries per second.
Google Cloud Platform is specially designed for enterprise solutions from Google for Work and provides a
set of modular cloud-based services with a host of development tools, test, and deploy applications on Google's
highly-scalable and reliable infrastructure for your web, mobile and backend solutions. For example:
Hosting and computing
o App Engine.
o Compute Engine.
Cloud storage
o Cloud Storage.
o Cloud Store.
o Cloud SQL
BigData
o BigQuery
Services
o Cloud Endpoints.
o Translate API.
o Prediction API.
VM Role: VM role is a kind of role in the Azure platform which helps to maintain service packs, patches,
updates and applications already installed, to Windows Azure automatically.
VM (IaaS): These are literally VMs as we understood then from the On-Premise running in the Azure
Microsoft Data Center.
1. VM is durable.
2. IaaS VMs is that you can take just about any on-premises application, whether it makes changes to the
local file system or not (even if the OS is one of the supported Linux distributions) and deploy it to the
cloud for a few cents per hour.
Disadvantages:
Google Cloud Platform Compute Engine is Google's Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), which is used to run
large-scale workloads on virtual machines hosted on Google's infrastructure. It is used by Google itself for
their end user products, such as Google search, YouTube and for all products of Google. Allows you to choose
a VM with a specific requirement of hardware configurations with a list of server operating systems and now it
also allow Windows Server.
Azure Virtual Machines could be your choice if you want frequent modifications and changes in your web
server environment. It provides you rich set of features; however, correctly configuring, securing and
maintaining VMs require much more time and more IT expertise compared to Azure Cloud Services and
Azure Websites. You will need to make more effort on frequent maintenance and update patches to manage
the VM environment.
Step 4: Select the Operating System that you would like to install on the VM. In this scenario we will install a
Ubuntu server 13.04 because then it will be easy for me to continue with the later posts on creating a PHP app
on our new VM.
Step 5: The next window will ask you about user details, VM RAM and number of cores and a name for the
VM. Fill them in as you wish. I will use a password instead of a SSH key.
Step 6: Next window ask you about cloud configuration (DNS Setting) and Storage account and Region.
Except for region leave the rest as it is unless you know what you are doing.
Step 7: Now we will need to create end points for us to access the VM. For now let's keep SSH access only.
Step 8: Then the VM will be created and will be running after a few minutes. You can see it in your Azure
portal.
For more details visit the following link:
OR
Autoscaling Application Blocks can automatically scale the Windows Azure application based on the rules
defined specifically for the application.
1. Instance Autoscaling, where the block changes the number of role instances based on constraint and
reactive rules.
2. Throttling, where the application modifies its own behavior to change its resource utilization based on
a set of reactive rules. For example switching off non-essential features, or gracefully degrading its
UI.
1. Constraint rules: Constraint rules set the upper and lower bounds on the number of instances. For
example, in the evening between 6:00 and 8:00, you need a minimum of 3 instances and a maximum
of 7 instances, then use the constraint rule.
2. Reactive rules: Reactive rules enable the number of role instances to change in response to
unpredictable changes in demand. For example, if the workload increases then increase the number of
role instances by 1. The reactive rules can use a variety of techniques like performance counters, or
the Windows Azure queue length to monitor and control the application's workload. A reactive rule
makes changes to the number of role instances only if a constraint rule applies at the same time. It is
easy to create a default constraint rule that always applies.
AWS Cloud Formation is a cloud builder service that helps you model and set up your Amazon Web Services
resources so that you can spend less time managing those resources and more time focusing on your
applications that run in AWS. For this you need to create a template that describes all the AWS resources that
you want, like Amazon EC2 instances that you want, Amazon VPC and subnet details and so on. AWS
CloudFormation takes care of provisioning and configuring those resources for you. You don't need to
individually create and configure AWS resources and figure out what's dependent on what, AWS
CloudFormation handles all of that.
AWS CloudFormation is available at no additional charge. You will be billed only the normal rates for the
AWS resources like EC2, RDS, LB and so on that AWS CloudFormation creates and your application and
resources use.
Profiling is nothing but a process of measuring the performance analysis of an application. It is usually done to
ensure that the application is stable enough and can sustain heavy traffic.
Visual Studio provides us various tools to do it by gathering the performance data from the application that
also helps in the troubleshooting issues.
Once the profiling wizard is run, it establishes the performance session and collects the sampling data, then
generates report files that can be opened and analyzed in Visual Studio.
If you click on website you will be taken in dashboard where different operations are available,
Linked Resources:
This will show how the resources are attached. You will see the cleardb database if you click on it will redirect
you to cleardb website and you will be automatically logged into account created by azure for you. You can
view performance and other configurations of your database.
Connecting FTP
If we want to view files of our WordPress in order to change configuration setting, upload content or to make
backup.
For this we have to set some deployment credentials in Microsoft Azure so that Azure verifies that we are
authorized to make changes.
For this go to Management portal select website. Dashboard of app will be opened. If not, click on setup
deployment credentials.
A cmdlet is a lightweight command that is used in the Microsoft PowerShell environment. The Windows
PowerShell runtime invokes these cmdlets within the context of automation scripts that are provided at the
command line. The Windows PowerShell runtime also invokes them programmatically through Windows
PowerShell APIs.
A cmdlet is a compiled piece of .NET code. Cmdlets handle object input and output as well as usually playing
nice and well with the (object-based) pipeline. Cmdlets have no direct representation in the file system, as they
are not programs or similar. They exist solely within PowerShell. You can use the Get-Command Cmdlet to
query all available Cmdlets, functions, etc.
Azure Explorer is a free Microsoft Azure storage tool; in this we can manage all our Microsoft Azure blobs at
a common place or one place. Azure Storage Explorer is a useful GUI tool for inspecting and altering the data.
In Azure Explorer, we have “Azure Storage Account”, and in the Azure Storage Account, we can manage
more than one Blob Container, in Blob Container we can create page blob as well as new folders to store our
files.
Step 1: For the installation of Azure Explorer we need go to its download link, After going to above link, you
will see the following window. Click “DOWNLOAD AZURE EXPLORER”.
Azure Service Fabric is a next-generation middleware cloud platform to build scalable, reliable, and managed
enterprise applications. Microsoft is already using Service Fabric powers in many of its products, including
Azure SQL Database, Azure DocumentDB, Cortana, and Power BI.
Develop with a "datacenter on your machine" approach. The local development environment is the
same code that runs in the Azure datacenters.
Simplify the design of your application by using stateful (micro)services in place of caches and
queues.
Deploy to Azure or to on-premises clouds running Windows Server with zero code changes. Write
once and then deploy to any Service Fabric cluster.
Deploy applications at higher density than virtual machines, deploying hundreds or thousands of
applications per machine.
Deploy different versions of the same application side by side, each independently upgradable.
Manage the lifecycle of your stateful applications without any downtime, including breaking and
nonbreaking upgrades.
Windows Azure Scheduler allow you to invoke actions – such as calling HTTP/S endpoints or posting a
message to a storage queue on any schedule. With Scheduler, you create jobs in the cloud that reliably call
services both inside and outside of Windows Azure and run those jobs on demand, on a regularly recurring
schedule, or designate them for a future date.
Scheduling is the history details of your apps in the cloud; it gives information of the particular application,
means its status, its start time and its end time.
Windows Azure Blob Storage can store hundreds of terabytes data in one account. As you know you can create
multiple blob storage accounts, so definitely you can store multiple hundreds of terabytes data with Windows
Azure Blob Storage.
We don’t require taking tension about the backup of the data which is stored on blob storage. It is because it
automatically takes the backed up data. You can increase your storage as per requirement and you need to pay
only which you have used and what you have used.
One more thing, that you don’t need to take headache about how to manage your data, your VM or any other
things; actually Windows Azure manages everything automatically.
You can use Blob Storage as REST API and can use with any language like Java, .NET, etc. Actually
technology doesn’t matter with blob storage. It means all kinds of client can be accessible to this storage.
There are many regions that people want to go with Microsoft Windows Azure:
Flexibility: Windows Azure supports wide range of Operating System that makes it reachable to wide
range of customers. It also supports different kinds of programming language like PHP, .NET, JAVA,
etc. You can use different kinds of frameworks and tools for building your Apps. So, basically it
provides us flexibility to choose existing one which will help us to create variety of applications with
Windows Azure.
Extendable: Windows Azure easily integrates with your existing environment using largest network
with secure private connectivity. It also provides database, storage which is extendable on demand.
Windows Azure can run with your data center.
Scalable: You can scale up and down your services as per your demand. Services, storage and
performance also will be same if you scale up or down. So, small client can take benefit of Windows
Azure and their services.
Protection: Everyone is worried about their data. They need protection for their data, nobody can rely
on some vendor for their data. Windows Azure has launched Azure Government for believing you that
your data is secure with Windows Azure. It commits for securing, protecting and privacy of your data.
Trusted: Today Windows Azure is used by top clients worldwide. They are using Windows Azure
Services for a long time and they believe in it.
Microsoft Azure Mobile Service gives you the power to create a cloud service mobile application. This will
make your work more flexible and gives your application more portability in an efficient way. This is a short
introduction of Azure Mobile service. You will get to know, how to create and integrate new mobile service in
your new or existing application. So let’s get crack in Azure Mobile Service with Universal Windows
Platform.
Question 44: What is the difference between Table, Queue, and Blob storage?
Answer
To use Azure Storage, you just need to have an Azure Storage Account. Using this account you can access the
service of the Azure Storage. Actually Azure Storage provides two types of the storage account.
BLOB STORAGE: It can store any type of data; data can be a document file, media file, exe or dll, images,
text file or any other data file. So, basically it is used for storing the objects. So, as the definition says, we can
store large amount of the unstructured data into the blob storage.
TABLE STORAGE: It is like a table inside the SQL Server. So, it is used to store the structured data. Table
storage is a NoSQL key-attribute data store. It means every data stored into the table is stored with typed
property name. It is very fast when you are working with large number of data. It doesn’t use schema for
developing the table.
QUEUE STORAGE: Sometimes, it is required to transfer the data in the format of the message over the
internet between the two cloud services. In that scenario we prefer to use the queue storage. You can create
large number of the queues to process your data. Every queue contains large number of the message and every
message size may be up to 64 KB.
The migration Assistant tool will help to analyze your IIS installation and identify which sites can be migrated
to the cloud, highlighting any elements which cannot be migrated or are unsupported on the platform.
Once analyzed this tool will also create websites and databases provided under given azure subscription.
Azure Mobile Engagement is a SaaS-delivered, data-driven user engagement platform that enables real-time
fine-grain user segmentation, app user analytics, and contextually-aware smart push notifications and in-app
messaging across all connected devices.
With Azure Mobile Engagement, Application publishers and marketing professionals can create cutting edge
interactions like the following,
Azure Mobile Engagement is available across all major mobile platforms including Android, iOS and
Windows.
WordPress is Web software you can use to create a Web sites, blog, or apps. The core software is built by
hundreds of community volunteers, and when you’re ready for more, there are thousands of plugins and
themes available to transform your site into almost anything you can imagine.
We can install WordPress on our local computers to develop Web sites, blogs, or theme plugins; or we can
install it on the cloud where everyone can access our Web sites.
Installing and Running WordPress.
On clicking Gallery the model window will appear where you can find WordPress by scrolling (or navigating
to BLOGS, then WordPress).
Select the WordPress and click next. Fill the required Information.
Fill the URL, database, region and deployment setting details.
Click on Next: Fill in information about MySQL database. Azure will choose the unique name of
your database and region to place the database physically.
Azure HDInsight deploys and provisions Apache Hadoop clusters in the cloud, providing a software
framework designed to manage, analyze, and report on big data.
With the September 2015 release of HDInsight, now customers configure these clusters to run using both a
Windows Server Operating System as well as an Ubuntu based Linux Operating System.
HDInsight on Linux enables even broader support for Hadoop ecosystem users to run in HDInsight providing
you even greater choice of preferred tools and applications for running Hadoop workloads.
Both Linux and Windows clusters in HDInsight are built on the same standard Hadoop distribution and offer
the same set of rich capabilities.
To create an Azure HDInsight Cluster, open the Azure portal then click on New, Data Services, then
HDInsight.
b. HBase is an Apache open-source NoSQL database built on Hadoop that provides random access and
strong consistency for large amounts of unstructured data.
c. Storm is a distributed, fault-tolerant, open-source computation system that allows you to process data
in real time.
The next step is to add a cluster name, select the cluster size, add a password, select a storage and click on
create HDInsight cluster.
Once the cluster has been created, its jobs and contents can be viewed by remote connection. To enable remote
connection to the cluster, use the following procedure:
1. Click HDINSIGHT on the left pane. You will see a list of deployed HDInsight clusters.
2. Click the HDInsight cluster that you want to connect to.
3. From the top of the page, click CONFIGURATION.
4. From the bottom of the page, click ENABLE REMOTE.
In the Configure Remote Desktop wizard, enter a user name and password for the remote desktop. Note that
the user name must be different from the one used to create the cluster (admin by default with the Quick Create
option). Enter an expiration date in the EXPIRES ON box.
Text Analytics API is a suite of text analytics web services built with Azure Machine Learning. The API can
be used to analyze unstructured text for tasks such as sentiment analysis and key phrase extraction.
The API returns a numeric score between 0 & 1. Scores close to 1 indicate positive sentiment, while scores
close to 0 indicate negative sentiment.
The advantage of this API is that a new model need not be designed and trained, the user only needs to bring
the data and call the service to get the sentiment results.
However, because this is only the initial release of this service only English is supported right now.
How it works:
Text Analytics API does not simply use a lexicon approach to map words such as “good or bad” to return the
results.
Instead, it uses advanced natural language processing techniques under the hood.
Thanks for reading this article and stay connected with me for more information about AZURE and other
technologies.
1. What is Azure Cloud Service?
Cloud service can convey a multiple web application in Azure, characterizing a number of parts
to disseminate handling and permit adaptable scaling of your application. A cloud service
comprises of a minimum of one web pars as well as specialist parts, each with its own particular
application documents and design.The fundamental favourable position of cloud service is the
capacity to help more complex multi-level structures.
Web Role
Worker Role
Web roles utilized for web application programming and upheld by IIS7.
Virtual Machine (VM) roles utilized for moving windows server applications to
Windows Azure in a simple way.
Windows Azure Drives (VHD) to mount a page blob. These can be transferred and
downloaded by means of blobs.
Service bus
Access
Caching
Integration
Composite
1. Websites enable the designers to assemble the sites utilizing ASP.NET, PHP, etc and
send these websites utilizing FTP, Git and etc
2. QL Database, formally known as Azure database makes, broadens and scales the
application into the cloud utilizing Microsoft SQL Server.
3. This is Microsoft’s platform as a service that supports the Multi-level applications and
automated deployment.