Wely's Cloud Journey

As invited over here, last Tuesday, I had a presentation entitled A Deep Look on Windows Azure and Its Virtual Machine. It was actually a user group meeting for Windows Azure User Group Singapore (AzureUG.SG).

It was attended by about 15 enthusiast participants from different background.

A lot of material in my presentation was derived from Mark Russinovich’s session in TechEd, PDC, and BUILD.

Detail of the presentation and slide could be found below.

As you can seen from the invitation here, last Wednesday was our second meeting of Windows Azure User Group Singapore. The evening was attended by 18 participants.

Here’s short summary for the event.

First Session – Best practices for designing & developing applications for Azure

The first session was delivered by Rishi Agrawal, Technical Sales Specialist for Windows Azure, from Microsoft. Rishi discussed the various best practices in designing and developing Windows Azure applications. He started with basic concept of Windows Azure including the service roles (web and worker). He later explained some storage option in the cloud (SQL Azure VS Windows Azure Storage) and discussed each of the appropriate choice in various condition.

Second Session – Advanced Topics on Windows Azure Service Roles

Frankly speaking, I was under unfit condition. In fact, I was on sick leave that day (you can see I was wearing a thick sweater). However, I still need to make it no matter what, that’s commitment .

I talked about 4 sections namely Windows Azure Service Roles, Advanced Topic on those roles, setting up the remote desktop, and finally admin-mode and startup task. Plus an bonus of answering a common question: “can we install something on Windows Azure?”.

I support the presentation with a practical demo by showing a sample application called CloudUnRar. Although this is not a sophisticated application, it is used to demo the installation of WinRAR on Windows Azure using Windows Azure Start-up Task.

For those who are interested in the topic,feel free to download my presentation slide and demo here.

Hope this helps! See you on the next UG meeting.

Due to various reason, finally I’ve got a chance to write this post which is suppose to be written 3 weeks ago. Yes, as mentioned in the invitation, we’d our great first user group meeting of AzureUG.SG (Singapore Windows Azure User Group) at 26th January 2011. It was attended by 30 participants. For the first meeting, it’s considered a good result .

Welcome Note by David Tang, Microsoft Singapore

The meeting was welcomed by David Tang, Product Marketing Manager from Microsoft Singapore. In the welcome note, David mentioned about the opportunity and potential of cloud computing in Singapore ecosystem. And also the commitment from Microsoft to embrace seriously in Windows Azure. We would like to thanks to David for the support toward AzureUG.SG!

Developing, Deploying, and Managing Windows Azure Application by Wely (Windows Azure MVP)

The first session was done by me, talked about Developing, Deploying,and Managing Windows Azure Application. This talk was actually derived from what Jim’s session in PDC2010. I stared my session with explaining overview of Windows Azure and complete the rest of the session with more demo. Starting with creating an application with Visual Studio,deploying it on Windows Azure Developer portal, and finally managing the deployed application via remote desktop.

You can download my slides and sample code over here.

Exploring Windows Azure Storage – Mohammed Faizal

The second session was done by my colleague in NCS, Faizal. Faizal discussed about Windows Azure Storage in overview first, subsequently explore more on Windows Azure Table Storage. In the subsequent user group meeting, I am sure he will talk more about Blob and Queue, let’s wait and see the future user group meeting .

We would like to thanks all for the participation and support. See you on the next user group meeting!

Having completed my first day session, it’s not done yet. I’ll need to prepare on much more serious session on the bigger event, Microsoft Cloud Summit aka Journey to the cloud. The event was held at Mandarin Oriental Hotel, attended by more than 300 participants at the morning. At the afternoon, there are separated into 3 tracks namely Business Decision Maker Track, Technical Decision Maker Track, and Developer Track.

I presented on one of the Developer Track with the topic “Your Data and The Windows Azure Platform”. It was attended by around 60 participants. This is an interesting topic that discusses:

• what are the scenario of managing data on the cloud,
• available option for managing data and storage on the cloud (Windows Azure Storage and SQL Azure)
• the future of data on the cloud

Since this is a developer track, I assume attendees to have technical knowledge when I show some codes and demo.

As usual, I deliver more demos (75%) than slides.

The demos that I showed includes:

• Creating and managing Windows Azure Storage Account
• Using Blob Storage (including Shared Access Signature, Blob Snapshot)
• Using Table Storage
• Connecting to SQL Azure
• Migrating to SQL Azure

Here’re some photos of the event:

Feel free to download my slide and demos.

Thanks to my buddy, Hoong Fai (Web Strategy Lead, Microsoft Malaysia) for flying me to Kuala Lumpur for two events. Although it was very tiring, but it was a great experience.

The first event (Monday, 24 Jan 2011) is to deliver an introduction topic on Cloud Computing and Windows Azure for Malaysia’s student who are participating Imagine Cup 2011. It was attended by more than 70 peoples including students and lecturers.

Introduction to Cloud Computing by Lai Hoong Fai

Fai started the session to explain some basic concept of cloud computing that includes:

• the difference between on-premise, hosting, and cloud computing
• the scenario that is suitable for cloud,
• the benefit that we received when moving to the cloud,
• the category of cloud computing (IAAS, PAAS, and SAAS),
• some of the cloud player in the market

Windows Azure Platform Overview by me

Having completed the cloud computing by Fai which took about 45 minutes,next was my session on Windows Azure Platform.

I started my session by briefly introducing three main components in Windows Azure Platform (Windows Azure,SQL Azure, and AppFabric), and subsequently explaining more details on each component:

1. Windows Azure: Operating System on the cloud, what the Fabric Controller is, how it works, compute role (web and worker), and Windows Azure Storage

2. SQL Azure: Relational database service on the cloud, what are the differences, how to migrate SQL Server to SQL Azure

3. AppFabric: Service Bus and Access Control Service.

Since I believe that audience would have a better understanding and real experience when seeing the demo,  I delivered more demo than slides.

Some photos of the event

My Slide and Demos

For the audience, feel free to download the slide and demo.

It was a great opportunity to talk about SQL Azure to SQL User group Singapore. In a nutshell, SQL Azure is SQL database as service that is hosted on the Microsoft cloud platform.

In the talk, I started my presentation with overview idea of cloud computing, introducing Azure Service Platform, and finally deep dive on more detail on SQL Azure.

As usual, rather than showing presentation slide, I also showed the audience 4 demos including:

Connecting and administering SQL Azure	Migrating to SQL Azure
Spatial support in SQL Azure	Introducing Houston Silverlight version of SQL Azure management tools

There are a few photos taken as followings.

Finally, you can download my presentation slide here.