Windows Azure - No Kidding
So I continued to work on ASP.NET and Visual Studio 2012 and the things that were interesting to me. Then, some months ago Scott and some folks showed us the concepts for the new experience and the new management stuff. It clicked. I saw that Scott and his team "gets" it. I started working with it, giving feedback and filing bugs. We had weekly full-day long team app-building sessions. One particular day I sent 52 different pieces of feedback to the Portal team.
I've talked before about how sometimes development on a platform can be "death by a thousand tiny cuts." It doesn't hurt in general but the little things poke at you. That's not the case with Windows Azure and this release. I'm not embarrassed to say I work for the Azure Team now, as it is pretty darned sweet.
Check out Scott's post but I'll mention a few things that are new just to make the point for you that Azure is something you'll want to check out now.
New Administration Portal and Tools
The management portal has been completely redone with a focus on usability and speed. It works on all browsers but the best part is that it's actually using a REST-based management API so anything you can do on the portal you can do from the API.
There are command line tools to talk to the REST API so you can automate anything you like from both PowerShell on Windows or Bash on Mac and Linux. If you go to the Downloads page on the Azure site you can get .NET, node.js, PHP, Java or Python tools for Windows, Mac and Linux.
Just to make the point, I'll use my Mac and download the Mac SDK on a fresh system. You can do anything from the command line be it in PowerShell or Bash. If I'm on Linux and I have npm, I can just
sudo npm install azure -g
And there's lots of stuff to explore.
Freaked out yet? You should be. ;) The Azure SDK is also open source under Apache 2 and available on GitHub.
After the install is done I'm sent to a "what's next" page that shows me how to get node, PHP or Python running (Given that I'm on a Mac). I'll install node.js and git, then I'll make a node.js application on Azure on my Mac.
Now, my point isn't about node nor is it about Macs. It's about choice and it's about the ability to build what you want the way you want it with the tools that make you happy.
I'll make a Web Site...
Then I'll setup a git repository along with a name and password for deployment.
I'll make a folder, put an app.js in there, initialize the git repo, add "Azure" as a remote repo, and then push. The Azure management site actually notices the push and automatically refreshes without me having to do anything.
Boom, website in the cloud, easy as it should be.
Check out the YouTube video I did (embedded above also) on how to do the same thing with .NET and Visual Studio. You can use Web Deploy as I do in the video, Git, TFS or FTP. For example, I can use TFS and do Continuous Deployment if I like.
Virtual Machines
Azure has durable Virtual Machines (VMs) in the cloud now as well. You can make your own image and upload it or you can use a gallery of images that includes not only Windows but also Ubuntu, CentOS and SUSE images.
Web Sites
You can make a web site in Azure yourself in a minute. You can make up to 10 small websites for free to play and experiment and then later reserve instances and scale up.
NOTE: To start using Preview Features like Virtual Network and Web Sites, request access on the 'Preview Features' page under the 'account' tab, after you log into your Windows Azure account. Don't have an account? Sign-up for a free trial here.
Maybe go try one out and create a new Web Site from the Gallery:
Feel free to publish in a number of ways as I mentioned, using Web Deploy, TFS, Git or FTP. You can manage everything in the portal or you can automate stuff from the command line.
I like that I have real choice. Use whatever tools I like, whatever OS I like to publish whatever apps I like talking to the backend that I like. I'm personally really happy with the way things are going and I'm looking forward to building all sorts of things with all sorts of tools on Azure.
About Scott
Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.
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Thomas LaRock
Can't wait to see the live keynote....hey, it's now, have to go.
:)
After watching your video, the Open Source Push, the new site and portal. I feel that 'The Gu' has won me back again. I have a rekindled interest in Azure.
For my own blog, it is still more expensive than my current host. Of course I do not get the traffic to warrant Azure.
But I can now see a lot more opportunities.
the new version with the new features looks perfect. easy and fast deployment, not even a separate cloud project anymore in VS (as far as I can see).
Two Scotts (and their teams) FTW ! :)
Franz - Exactly.
Jeremy - Google around with Bing and you'll find lots of discussion of Ruby on Azure. The SDKs are all open so there's no reason it couldn't be done. I'll see if it's on the roadmap.
I am wondering what is the most cost-effective way to get SQL Server or SQL Server Express databases if a person were to use the Azure website model?
Should be a easy and foward way of doing this
As a background, for a few years now, Azure was one of the 'jokes' I used to tell. I'd ask if a developer had heard of it, and they'd invariably say yes. I'd follow that question up with if they could 'explain' it, and the fumbling began. The just seemed so bad that it really resulted in no one caring.
And in 5 mins you guys (Gu+) changed that!
That's for great video on Azure. It's refreshing and it's exciting, and finally --- I give a d@mn! ;-)
I too am curious if MS wil provide an official Ruby SDK, please keep us informed. Thanks.
With the new website feature, is azure a reasonable replacement for existing websites running on other hosts such as godaddy?
Azure seems to have advantages in that it will scale better as traffic grows.
..Stefan
New azure features and portal are awesome.
But they missing very important thing - where is support of ASP.NET & .Net 4.5?
We can't publish net4.5 website also as can't deploy net4.5 applications...
Is there any coming solution?
I have question about the encrypted web.config sections.
I had to go through some hoops(contact support in order to get some xml installed on the server) to get it working. Is there a easy way to do this in Azure?
Thanks,
Yogi
I like how the team is thinking more about Azure as a hosting company than an experiment by attempting to guide the process, remove complications and in general make running a web app easier.
Say thanks to the team for me.
Please follow up on http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/azuregit/threads if you have more questions about Azure git deployment.
I saw the page you indicated above about "custom-dns", but if I have 3 azure shared websites running (and I do see they all have the same IP), if I add a CNAME to my host, what will be the site that will handle the request?
Bottom line, how can I set the host header in a shared azure website? :)
In the past year I worked with Heroku on a rails side project, and I am loving its simplicity.
My first thought was, yes, this is the Heroku of .NET now.
GIT publishing, TFS publishing, REST api, command line tool, all open sourced on github...
I love what I see here!
Azure Customers Please vote for the CNAME/Hostname/binding for shared websites:
http://www.mygreatwindowsazureidea.com/forums/34192-windows-azure-feature-voting/suggestions/2916663-websites-multiple-hostname-bindings-aliases-per-s
What else? I wonder if this would work equally well with any 3-syllable last name
The new Azure improvements for the developer experience are great. I wondered if anyone at MS was looking at integrating publishing static content (JS, Css, Images) to Azure Blob Storage as part of the publish operation? Maybe it is possible already and I have just missed it
Static files should ideally be served from blob storage to make scaling easier. Also easier to update them without changing the instance deploy. I guess it would have to integrate into Visual Studio so that the files were accessible at development time in their current location (or local azure storage) and then URLs created at runtime.
Hope this is possible it would make the experience a lot better for many of our projects.
I really like the free year, but it actually makes me not register for Azure. Why? Because as soon as I register, the time starts ticking, so the best strategy is to register as late as possible in the project development cycle. But developing without deployment seems dull, so I don't even start.
Azure is Pay-As-You-Go service. So, being unable to go nowhere (have no real CPU usage/user traffic) and pay nothing looks a bit strange.
I think I've found my problem: I don't need cloud - I just need small shared hosting. But with the convenience of Azure =)
Also, as for as the psychological stuff, remember that it won't charge you unless you OK it. You can also always check your bill before you are charged...even hourly.
Graeme - Yes we're looking at just that.
Jose - We're on that.
I need to know the cost of a website so that I can communicate that to customers. I don't care if I have to start paying now.
It looks like you aren't able to point a domain to a shared instance and need to update to a reserved instance?
So is this even usable for production?
I haven't bothered to do a comparison regarding what i'm actually getting for that money verses Azure.
Azure just seems very obtuse about what the cost is. I'm used to the low end having discrete comparable pricing.
It be nice if there was some more wizards and estimates for common scenarios. WordPress under 10000 uniques a month average cost = x.
That may seem like a cop out but I can't tell you how much value a fixed cost is even if I'm paying for more than I need to get what I want. I'm willing to pay the extra to not have to think about the majority of my sites resulting in cost overruns and to not have to monitor their individual prices.
The free for year seems to pay lip service to this idea with a bait and switch at the end.
I'll have to just keep reading to figure out what is actually possible with Azure and how that lines up with actual usage numbers to create a final price. Pretty tedious at this point.
The guidance doesn't even have to be exact. Just ballpark numbers for configurations. Numbers I don't want to have to mine for myself to do the comparisons.
If I met the quota that fast, imagine the cost of 200 users banging away at it from their iPhone apps.
better than ANY cloud something stuff.
manage easier than my develope server.
I'm having an issue with Azure Websites in general. I have code that is running very light on my virtual machines hosted in GoGrid on Windows 2012 but when I post to Azure Websites and dial up the capacity, the uptime is very sketchy. I've found similar behavior when launching node.js in comparing Nodejitsu, Heroku and Azure Websites. Azure Websites is the one that seems to fall over very easily. I know its in preview but wondering if others have experienced the same. I'm a big fan of the idea of Azure Websites as the dial up and down of capacity is awesome. I'm just not experiencing the robust behavior I imagined would be there. I'm sure WebRole is a more robust approach but I really like the idea of not having to do extra things around Azure's paradigm.
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