View this session at: http://bit.ly/aWRwQX

When moving to the cloud a good decomposition and a rationalized approach is very important. There are issues with the cloud (data, latency, dependencies, etc.) that you need to be aware of and plan for.

4 layers when moving to the cloud

1. Secure Network Connectivity
2. Security
3. Application-layer Connectivity & Messaging
4. Data Synchronization

Secure Network Connectivity

Windows Azure Connect

Integrated with Windows Azure Service model

Remote admin of WA apps

Policy managed by me through the Windows Azure portal

Requires agent on machines (may be a blocker for some scenarios). I wonder how this works if you are on a VPN or other IPSec connection and need to set up a second IPSec connection. I haven’t had any luck at all with this so far.

Future release wlil have connectivity using existing VPN devices

Security

CS07: Identtiy & Access Control in the Cloud has a lot more details

Use WIF, ADFS2, or Access Control service

Application-layer Connectivity and Messaging

Service Bus – “Turning the crank” on this and adding new features

Connectivity and messaging

Service bus is integrated with Access Server

Data Synchronization

SQL Azure Data Sync Service

Need to be aware of compliance and storage scenarios when synching or moving data

Interesting that I didn’t catch any mention of the cost for moving data into/out of the data center when doing synch to a local server or other data center.

Microsoft believes that the cloud will evolve into a set of hybrid clouds that will need secure federation between public cloud and private/semi-private clouds. This is the start of the vision and now it can evolve as the industry starts working and thinking about these issues

You can mix and match the different technologies where they make sense.

View this PDC session at http://bit.ly/9h1jcy

Development scenario

Do a full deploy on the initial deployment ~ 10 minutes
For subsequent changes during development just web deploy your application changes
When you are done with development re-deploy the application

Setting up a VM Role

Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise edition
Add software
Sysprep the image
Use differencing disks for applying patches or updates to software
Declare the VM as a new role
Run the integration components installer for the VM in Azure
csupload to add a VM image to Azure

VM role does get some restrictions of the web/worker role.

At least 2 identical/similar insteances
Not durable on hardware failure
Only 1 public IP

VM role will be priced the same as web/worker role

Licensing of Windows Server included in CPU-hour price. Applications will have to be licensed per the terms of the application.

I can see where there are certain scenarios such as when you need to run a service (can anyone say ASP.NET Session State or SSIS) in the cloud. The VM role also allows you to have complete control over your server so if you have some software that you want to put in the cloud but that doesn’t play well with the current Azure model this might be a solution. I haven’t really thought the scenario through but I was thinking of something like video rendering where you might be able to divide up a large chunk of work and spread it across several VMs to get the job done in parallel but you maybe couldn’t use a normal worker role because you need a thick client application and not a web application to do the work. I look forward to thinking about the different things that I can do with the new VM role.

I had to leave part way through the keynote but I was impressed with what I saw.

It was a typical keynote address with Steve Balmer talking about how Microsoft is committed to the cloud. There was a lot of high level information about the technologies.

I liked the demonstration of the phone. I really wanted to try to call Brandon when he was showing his personal phone but I thought he might not think it was so funny. I really liked the ability to monitor you WP7 applications and look for bottlenecks. This will come in handy when I start writing new Silverlight code and find out I don’t know as much as I thought I did.

I got my WP7 phone at lunch time but it wasn’t charged so I will have to wait until tonight to find out how cool it is. It is a developer phone. Based on the fingerprints on the phone and the Microsoft property tag in the battery compartment I am sure this was one of the models that was passed around earlier to developers. I was told that I got a “special” phone so I am not sure if that is the case for everyone or not. I haven’t found a model number on the phone so I can’t post a link or specs on the phone but if I find them out I will edit this post.