Hello,

In this article, I will explain how to quickly create an application in the cloud using the Windows Azure platform. This article assumes that you’ve already signed up for Windows Azure account and that you’ve also installed Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 with the Windows Azure SDK.

If you haven’t signed up for a Windows Azure account, you can do so at the following link by clicking the Sign up now button:

• Microsoft Windows Azure Sign Up Page

Note: All images in this blog posting are click-able and will open up new windows showing the details in high resolution.

Creating the Application in Visual Studio 2010

In order to begin creating your application for the cloud, you’ll need to open up Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. It’s recommended to launch Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 with administrator privileges by right-clicking Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and clicking Run as administrator, however, I’ve tested the steps in this article without doing this and everything worked correctly. This is probably due to the fact that my user account for the development machine is a member of the local administrators group. Nonetheless, when you’ve got Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 open – conduct the following steps so you can brag to your friends:

• On the File menu, click New, and then click Project
• Under the Installed Templates tree on the left, select Cloud
• Select Windows Azure Project and then name your project and solution. I’ve chosen Nimbo-Hello-World as my project and solution name as shown in the image. Further, I’ve elected to keep the default location of the project which is in the Visual Studio 2010\Projects folder of My Documents

The steps above are highlighted in the image below:

• In the left section which displays the available roles, select ASP.NET Web Role
• Click the right arrow to move the selection in to the Windows Azure solution box and click OK

The steps above are highlighted in the image below:

• To modify Default.aspx, open Solution Explorer. If Solution Explorer is not visible, from the View menu, click Solution Explorer. Within Solution Explorer, expand WebRole1 and double-click Default.aspx.
• For this exercise, I have changed the header to Cloud Computing Application and also inserted some text which says This is a cloud computing application!. You can place anything you want here. For more a more advanced implementation – you could display an image which you’ve got stored in Windows Azure BLOB Storage. However, for this article we’re simply going to get a basic application going.

The steps above are highlighted in the image below:

A this point, you’re ready to compile and run the application. There’s not much (if anything) to debug here – so we’ll skip that part. The steps below show the process of how to do this.

• Click Debug in the top menu.
• Click Start Without Debugging.

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The development storage is initialized as shown in the image below (simply click OK):

As you can see, the application runs locally in the Windows Azure Compute Emulator. This is displayed in the image below:

Close Internet Explorer (or whatever browser is open and running the application) and have a look at your project in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. In the Solution Explorer there are two files displayed which are called ServiceConfiguration.cscfg and ServiceDefinition.csdef. The .csdef extension is for cloud service definition files. The .cscfg extension is for cloud service configuration files. At a high level, the ServiceDefinition.csdef file contains metadata used by Windows Azure when hosting your application, including, for example, which roles are in your application. The ServiceConfiguration.cscfg file provides configuration settings for your application as well as the number of instances to run for each role. You don’t need to do anything with these files at this time.

The details in the above paragraph are highlighted in the image below:

Deploying the Application to Windows Azure

The next step is to publish the application. There is an option to do this straight to Windows Azure, but for this article we’re going to utilize the process of publishing the application in the form of local files and then manually uploading them to the Windows Azure Development portal. In order to do this, complete the following steps:

• Right click the name of your project (for my example I will right click Nimbo-Hello-World
• Click Publish

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• Select the Create Service Package Only radio button and click OK

The step above is highlighted in the image below:

Once you’ve published the project as a Service Package, Visual Studio will create two files in the bin/Debug/Publish directory of your specified Project location when you created the New Project in the earlier steps.

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Next, you’ll need to log in to the Windows Azure Development Portal.

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Sign in with your Windows Live ID as shown in the image below:

Click the Hosted Services, Storage Accounts & CDN on the left menu, select the subscription you will use for the application in the center section, and then click New Hosted Service on the top left of the screen.

(Note: If you have not installed Silverlight you’ll need to do so to use the latest version of the Windows Azure Development portal. Your browser should notify you of this, however, if you want to manually download Silverlight you may do so at the following link: http://www.microsoft.com/getsilverlight/Get-Started/Install/Default.aspx)

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On the Create a New Hosted Service screen, complete the following steps:

• Enter a Name for your Service (for this article, I’ve entered Nimbo-Hello-World)

Enter a URL prefix for your Service (for this article, I’ve entered Nimbo-Hello-World)

• Select a region (for this article, I’ve selected North Central US
• Select the Deploy to stage environment radio button in the Deployment Options menu
• Ensure the Start after successful deployment check box is selected

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Scroll down if the full menu isn’t displayed and complete the following steps:

• Enter a name for the deployment in the Deployment Name text box (for this article, I’ve entered Nimbo-Hello-World
• Select Browse Locally in the Package location section, and browse the the location of the *.cspkg file which is located in the bin/Debug/Publish directory of your specified Project location when you created the New Project in the earlier steps (for this article, I’ve selected the Nimbo-Hello-World.cspkg file)
• Select Browse Locally in the Configuration file section, and browse the the location of the *.cfcsg file which is located in the bin/Debug/Publish directory of your specified Project location when you created the New Project in the earlier steps (for this article, I’ve selected the ServiceConfiguration.cfcsg file)
• Click OK

The steps above are highlighted in the three images below:

The next step in this process is to accept the warning message Windows Azure displays. The reason for this is that by default, the configuration of your application only has one instance of the web role defined (this setting is contained in the ServiceConfiguration.cscfg file). There’s no point in paying for additional instances at the moment because this is an application which does not require additional performance or a higher SLA.

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The next steps of the process are where Windows Azure receives the files you’ve selected for upload, processes them, and kicks off the instance. Since we’re dropping this in a staging environment – the URL (or DNS Name) Windows Azure creates for the application will be something long and not easily identifiable. When you deploy the application to production (not covered in this article – although quite easy) – you’ll be able to access the application by browsing to a more easily readable URL.

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Once the status for the application displays as Ready across the board, you can click the DNS name as shown in the above image and you’ll be able to access your Windows Azure Cloud Application. (Note: This process takes time. You may experience a wait time of 10-30 minutes before the application shows as being completely ready. This would be an excellent time to take a break and do something fun.)

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- Ira Bell

Recently Ira Bell, CIO/COO of Nimbo, was interviewed by Dr. Matt Fullerty, resident professor at George Washington University, on his experiences with Microsoft Windows Azure. Have a look at the dialog below:

Q: What types of projects have you been involved with that utilize Windows Azure?

We’ve been working in projects ranging from enterprise messaging to database migrations. The interesting and very real thing about the cloud is that it welcomes all shapes and sizes as part of its core value proposition. Some of the solutions we’ve been working on are for multi-billion dollar companies while others are for small startups.

Q: Explain your first experience/impression of Windows Azure.

I have to say that I feel like I’ve actually had loads of ‘first experiences’. It seems like a regular occurrence when someone on my team shows me something new and innovative that they’re doing in Windows Azure and it feels new and shiny all over again. Looking back, I think the thing that stuck out the most to me was the ability to deploy a Visual Studio solution straight to the cloud without worrying about creating any infrastructure. With enterprise customers it’s always been such a challenge jumping through the hoops to prepare the infrastructure for a solution. With a typical on-premise implementation you’re often buried in infrastructure architecture designs, change requests, maintenance plans, business continuity plans, and disaster recovery plans. With Windows Azure you can usually skip all of that and just focus on delivering the solution that the customer requires. The cloud is really changing the way we think about Information Technology.

Q: What is the biggest challenge you have run into with Windows Azure and how did you resolve it?

I think the biggest challenge with any new technology is to understand exactly where the strengths and limitations are. Even though I feel that Windows Azure is the best cloud platform at the moment, there are certainly special considerations we’ve needed to take when we implementing solutions. What we’ve done in situations where we’ve found limitations is to reach out directly to the Microsoft Windows Azure product team to explain our challenges. When we are able to express real world integration issues to the Windows Azure team – it genuinely helps them to shape and mold the platform to better serve customers. We’re proud to be on the front lines and also have such a wonderful relationship with Microsoft.

Q: What business need(s) have you personally seen resolved or improved using the Windows Azure Platform?

I’ve seen several, but the two that stand out the most are Return on Investment (ROI) and scalability. We’re creating solutions for some clients in Windows Azure that are essentially paying for themselves by reducing the overhead of the burden of infrastructure or removing the man in the middle. We’ve heard the phrase which states that the ‘cloud is a disruptive technology’ and I agree with that. However, I think it’s relevant to modify that a bit to that and say that the ‘cloud is disruptive to traditional business overhead’. In addition to the two pieces I just mentioned – there are so many other subjective costs we mitigate, such as integrity of data and overall risk to an organization.

Q: In your opinion, how has the product evolved since its release last year?

I feel like Windows Azure is evolving every day. The community buzz around the platform has seen tremendous improvements. This is valuable because when we see an increase in interest in a technology – the documentation always becomes better. We’ve also already seen a new administration portal released recently which greatly improved the user experience for architects and developers. Further, I’m really impressed with the way SQL Azure has been progressing. The idea of a relational database management system in the cloud is truly stunning to me.

Q: As an owner of a Cloud Integration company, how do you think Windows Azure has changed the Cloud Computing landscape?

When I look at Windows Azure, I see it as a non-discriminatory platform that provides a lot of value. The idea that Microsoft took an agnostic development language based approach to Windows Azure was such a wonderful change to the traditional way of thinking. We can speak with customers who have been running their organizations on open-source technologies or other non-Microsoft based technologies and comfortably show them that Windows Azure is a platform which provides them with an astounding amount of value.

Q: What is your greatest “Ah-ha!” moment involving Windows Azure?

I really feel like it’s such a great thing to have your business processes living in a fully secure environment which you don’t have to worry about maintaining. The idea that architects and developers can now spend 100% of their time focusing on things they are passionate about, rather than worrying about core infrastructure issues, is something that has been making me smile a lot as of late.

Q: Do you think the release of Windows Azure has affected Nimbo in any way?

Absolutely. We’re passionate about cloud computing. Windows Azure provides us with an ability to build solutions using methods which were never possible before.

Q: Are there any industries that benefit more than others from the Windows Azure Platform? Please explain.

That’s quite difficult for me to say at the moment. One tends to see the world as his own heart is. With that being said, I think that all industries stand to benefit from the cloud. If I was to be partial to what I’ve specifically seen, I would say that I’m quite impressed with the advancement in the Healthcare space with the Windows Azure Platform. We’ve been creating some solutions that are really changing the way organizations in Healthcare are conducting business.