Live in a Cloudy World

Cloud Computing freak and Windows Azure geek, Windows Azure Insider very obsessed with Cloud and a true believer in Microsoft. I am Currently a Microsoft Intern, search for me online "hhaggan". http://about.me/hhaggan

[hhaggan]

Sir #Alex #ManchesterUnited #GGMU (at Manchester United Museum & Trophy Room)

[hhaggan]

#GGMU (at Manchester United Club Tour)

[hhaggan]

At #Charlotte!! Exploring the city! (at Charlotte, North Carolina)

[hhaggan]

On the way to #NewYork #NY #RoadTrip bye #Atlanta (at Interstate 85 road)

[hhaggan]

#RoadTrip starts from here!! #Atlanta #NewYork (at Marriott Marquis)

[hhaggan]

Windows Azure Platform and Infrastructure

Cloud Computing a new era for the IT infrastructure which helps the enterprises cut their IT infrastructure cost.  A new Concept that really changed the way the business is looking for its IT assets.  Now a lot of the largest enterprises run without IT assets.  They migrate all their IT infrastructure to other companies known as cloud providers.

Cloud Computing is a very general terminology, it is actually divided into several layers, where the generalized or the main layers are the following:

Software as a Service

Platform as a Service

Infrastructure as a Service

Each layer of the above mentioned layers is targeting a specific target segment, the Software as a Service known as SaaS is targeting the end users with some applications that you will have to use while being online only, like the office 365, like the online games, like the email... etc  The platform as a Service which is known as PaaS which targets the developers to build high available and scalable applications using the Cloud Computing benefits.  The last one is the Infrastructure as a Service also known with IaaS, this layer is targeting the IT pros.

Now talking about Windows Azure which was known as Microsoft Cloud Solution for the developers.  It was considered Microsoft Platform where the developers can work on it using any programming language, using the high availability and scalability it provides, using the computation power and the storage it is providing.  Actually now Windows Azure is not only considered as a platform as a service only but also considered as Infrastructure as a service where IT pros can create their own Virtual Machine with the desired Virtual Machine from a wide selection available on Windows Azure.

Not just that, previously you were about to download any kind of application on your VM created on Windows Azure to create the desired solution.  Nowadays, the Windows Azure is also providing some images for some Operating systems with pre configuration for a specific platform or software on it.  Like the SharePoint 2013 Virtual Machine image and the Visual Studio Virtual Machine Image.

[hhaggan]

Live in a Cloudy World

Live in a Cloudy World

[hhaggan]

Live in a Cloudy World

Live in a Cloudy World

[hhaggan]

Windows Azure Media Services

i just blogged about the Windows Azure Media Services.  A service that help the developer with all the media files rather than the unstructured storage.  This helps a lot with streaming and storing this media. 

Imagine the pain that you would feel when developing the unstructured storage and the time that you will waste whether for storing the media or streaming and transferring the Media.

for the storage perspective, if you are willing to store a very large file which can reach some gigabytes and you have worked with the blob storage or the unstructured data before you will certainly realize how painful, hard and time wasting to do so.

for transferring the media, this will mainly depend on the way you store your media on it.  i mean the best way to do so will be by dividing the media into block and transferring each block to the client.  if any problem occur to any of the transferred packets the server will have only to re-transfer the block that faced problem during the transfer.

The Windows Azure Media Services, mainly provides 3 things that helps the developers for the media development and maybe with the data management.

- the first thing is the upload the videos  or the different type of Media

- the second thing is to encode the videos uploaded

- the third thing is to stream or to download the Media to different type of clients.

currently Windows Azure Media Services is available for the development using the C# and Java programming language.  i dont think that it will be available in Node JS or Mobile Services, or actually it is not available for the following reason that the Node JS as it is designed to handle a very large number of concurrent users but it is not designed for heavy processing power or video transcoding.

[hhaggan]

If you want to go fast, go slow

a great quote i got from the CSI series, but actually i found it very true especially those who work on the software development to fully understand the application he is working on, study well every tinny detail before start coding.  it will helps him a lot and will not require him to redevelop the required application

[hhaggan]

Windows Azure Node JS

I am currently working on a project based on Microsoft Windows Azure Mobile Service.  i really admit and agree on whoever said that if you want to "go fast, go slow" especially in Software development.  Simply because as long as you understand more about the topic the more you discover issues that might help you understand more and build better solutions.  As much as you understand as much as you know the capabilities of the tools and the API.

after digging for some time and the new updates that were launched recently, you can understand that this tool, the Windows Azure Mobile Service is based on Windows Azure Node JS.  Before if you start developing on the Windows Azure Mobile Service you wouldnt be able to do a lot on the server side, just few static functions, the insert, retrieve, push notifications, and other few limited functions.

after the last updates released and actually that helps a lot in the different client applications, you can create you own custom API using the Node JS NPM in the development.

[hhaggan]

Service Bus Notification Hub - General availability

The Windows Azure Service Bus Notification Hub is finally released and it is generally available to be used in the development.  It supports multiple platform push notification like Google, Microsoft and apple push notification.  The Notification Hub will easily help the application to reach millions of users through their mobile or windows application by simply sending them a Notification through the Service Bus.

Here are the differences between the Windows Azure Mobile Services and the Notification Hub push notification, you can find the them on this link Announcing General Availability of Windows Azure Notification Hubs & Support for SQL Server AlwaysOn Availability Group Listeners