Azure contains 5 main pieces:

1. Windows Azure Application Platform
2. SQL Azure
3. Windows Azure platform AppFabric
4. Azure “Dallas”
5. Pinpoint marketplace? (I came in late and only saw the screen for a second so I am guessing this was the 5th element)

Different roles on architecture slide:
Web Role
Dynamic Worker
Distributed Cache Worker
Partitioned Worker

Fundamentals:
Security
Performance and reliability
High availability
Scale out
Multi-tenancy

Service healing is available because the data is copied to multiple servers and if one goes down that can be detected, that instance shut down, a new instance spun up, and a message sent to the load balancer to start sending load to the new server.

New will be drives so you can map to Azure storage and use standard APIs to manage the data.

Coming soon:
1. Programming model – administrator privileges in the VM
2. Storage – user-selectable geo-locations for replicas
3. Service management – remote terminal server access to VMs

Note: These are my raw notes from some of the sessions I attend. Items in italics are my comments. Others are notes from the slides (or at least what I heard).

I have been working with a lot of really good people at Microsoft and we have come up with a poster that lists the important namespaces and classes in .NET Framework 4.

 

You can download the PDF version of the poster from http://download.microsoft.com/download/E/6/A/E6A8A715-7695-493C-8CFA-8E0C23A4BE1D/098-115952-NETFX4-Poster.pdf

If you have a plotter or a printer that can handle 24” x 36” paper you will have a good looking poster. If not you can print it and do the cut and tape the printed pages together. If you are attending PDC we are planning on having copies of the poster available there.

I am following up on an earlier post. I ran Office Diagnostics again today. This time I was notified that it found 1 problem and fixed it. When I looked at the details it showed fixing something in the setup but didn’t tell me what. The funny thing is that I haven’t had a crash since I ran diagnostics last time so I had thought the problem was fixed already.

Yesterday and today InfoPath and occasionally Word was crashing. Out of nowhere after one crash I got a message saying I should run office diagnostics.

It ran and did not find any issues.

When I clicked on the continue button I was taken to http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/diagnostichelp.aspx?ShowHelp=30,15,23,25,11,10&Responses= where I followed the following instructions.

 

Access, Excel, PowerPoint, or Word

1. Click the Office Button, and then click Access Options, Excel Options, PowerPoint Options, or Word Options.
2. Click Trust Center, click Trust Center Settings, and then click Privacy Options.
3. Select the Download a file periodically that helps determine system problems check box.
4. Wait about a week to allow the file to be downloaded, and then run Microsoft Office Diagnostics again.

I will wait the week and run Office Diagnostics again to see if it can figure out what the problem is.

In my last post on my experiences with Windows 7 I wrote how it helped me to find a driver and fix a problem I didn’t know I had. Today I have a slightly different take. I have been installing the important driver updates whenever they show up on Microsoft update. Along with the important updates I have been picking an optional update to install as well. Today I worked my way down the list to one that appears to be for my smart card reader but I wasn’t sure. I decided to click on the “More information” link on the Windows Update screen. It took me to the following web page.

So while it seems that Windows 7 itself isn’t showing any problems there might be things with the extended ecosystem around Windows 7 that need to be finished before the general availability later this year. Having the driver information “Coming Soon” is not a big deal right now as my solution is to skip this driver for now and install a different optional driver. Sooner or later I will come back to the driver and by then I hope it will have some information.

I spent the weekend backing up Vista and doing a clean install of Windows 7. When I went to bed Sunday night I thought I had everything set up and ready to go but yesterday I kept finding things like printers that I had neglected.

I haven’t installed Office 2010 yet because I downloaded the 64 bit version (I am running Windows 7 64 bit) but I have installed a 32 bit version of Office 2007 and the beta tells me they can’t be installed side by side. I can live with that in a beta and expect that it will be fixed before the final release.

Windows 7 certainly seems a lot faster. For one thing it doesn’t take me 30 minutes to get from power on to the hard drive to stop spinning. I am not going to do a complete comparison because I don’t have SQL server and a few other services installed yet. After I do that I will publish the results of the differences in boot time.

One thing I am really loving is that Windows 7 is proactive in finding updates for me. The screenshot below is from the “Solve PC Issues” flag in the jump bar. I clicked on the message that said there is an issue with my memory card/memory card reader.

Clicking on the link allows me to download the patch and fix the issue. I hadn’t tried to use the memory card reader so I probably would have found out about the problem while I was on vacation away from any Internet connection and needed to download a lot of pictures off of a digital camera.

It is little usability features like this that make the difference between something that I have to use and something that is a pleasure to use.

Yesterday the release version of Windows 7 became available to MSDN subscribers. I got on and started downloading it about 20 minutes after it was available. The expected download time jumped around between 33 and 21 hours depending on the current download speed. I left the download running overnight and was expecting to burn a DVD this morning. When I checked I found that I have only downloaded 63% and that the message says it is trying to connect. Bummer. At least I was able to get in and download some of it. I remember other releases where the servers were overwhelmed and you couldn’t even connect.

I need to fix my machine in a bad way. Start up times have been going up and this morning the wired network connection refused to connect to the external world (it appeared to not get a DHCP address) even though it worked fine last night and hardware wise it seems to be working. I have been holding out for Windows 7 to do the format/install because I didn’t want to lose two weekends.

I have loved testing Windows 7 and am looking forward to having the better performance (even if it is only perceived) and learning more about the interface as I use Windows 7 as my primary OS. I have been testing in a VPC until now so I haven’t tested the XP emulation. I have some software, most notably for a digital camcorder, that only runs under XP and when I upgraded my last machine to Vista I was unable to get the video off of tape and onto DVD. I hope this fixes the problem. I may find I am going to have to go back and build out a XP virtual machine and boot into it just to transfer video. I hope I don’t have to go all the way back to installing on metal to get the XP support that I need.

I am also looking forward to learning more about programming for Windows 7. I think a lot of the negative press about Vista came from early applications that “didn’t work the Vista way”. Which means they didn’t necessarily take advantage of the Aero UI or didn’t work well under UAC. With the excitement around Windows 7 I hope more applications will be updated to run better under Windows 7.

My general plan for upgrading my machine is

1. Back up the files using at least 2 different methods. I will do a Windows backup and use Acronis TrueImage to snap an image of the hard drive that I could restore back to if everything fails.
2. Install Windows 7 as a clean install.
3. Set up VPN connectivity and rejoin the domain.
4. Set up my domain user and make sure that my remote connectivity VPN, RAS, etc. works for that user.
5. Create another backup with Acronis TrueImage so I can get back to this point easily.
6. Install KeePass, Office 2010 beta (I got an invite last week) and Visual Studio 2008.

At that point I should have most of what I need to work on Monday morning. Other programs that I need to install would include things like Camtasia, Firefox, SQL Server, and Zune. I will blog again on Monday about how my “lost weekend” went.

I just saw an email that said that Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 have been sent off to manufacturing.

I know it has taken a long time and a lot of effort to get to this point and I am sure there are a lot of people in Redmond who are very relieved and probably celebrating with adult beverages.

I know I have been enjoying testing the betas and release candidates. Now I just have to wait for them to make those 1’s and 0’s so I can download the release version and start working with it on my production machine with the blessing of our IT department.