StackOverflow Azure Contributions: April 28-May 4

Happy Monday! Here are my StackOverflow answers for Windows Azure questions, covering April 28 through May 4. If you see some that you agree with (or disagree with, though I hope that's not the case!), please vote on the answer. This helps others when visiting these questions and answers in the future.

• Maintaining Node.js sessions between multiple instances on Azure . This question is about the feasibility of using Azure Queues for session state (and I cover the issues around this in my answer).
• What are the Azure thresholds for the 10 free sites account, is this for life? While Web Sites are in Preview today, there is information around pricing and free site availability, which I call attention to.
• Tomcat compression in Windows Azure. This is more of a tomcat-related question, but I point out what you'd need to do when pushing up Tomcat configs in Azure.
• Getting broken images from blob storage in Azure websites. This is about the use of Shared Access Signatures, and what happens when there's clock drift.
• Azure- static repository needs reloading.This is about caching content in multiple instances.
• Azure network communication between instances of the same role. This question's about inter-role communication.
• Will Azure ever run 2 instances of my worker role? What happens when you have a single-instance role running, and there's an update? Is a second instance brought online? Could there ever be multiple instances running simultaneously?
• When does a CloudQueueClient update? This is around message-processing in Azure Storage Queues.

Speaking at MongoDB NYC June 21st!

I'm excited to announce my upcoming talk at MongoDB NYC: Building Hybrid MongoDB Apps on Windows Azure! I'll be co-presenting with Brian Benz from MS Open Tech.


Full session abstract:

Between IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, Windows Azure has a veritable cornucopia of services and features to help architect hybrid apps. In this session, we'll show a multi-tier twitter-tracking node.js app pushing MongoDB data to Azure Web Sites using WebSockets, with PHP and ASP.NET clients for the Web and the desktop. You'll see how this can be easily done with Virtual Machines, Virtual Networks, stateless Cloud Services, and Web Sites.

This is a fun talk with a cool demo app!

The registration link is on the main event page - just scroll down a bit and register through Eventbrite. See you there!

StackOverflow Azure Contributions: April 14 - April 27

This week's post combines two weeks of StackOverflow answers. Last week was a bit hectic, as I flew DC-->Seattle (team meetings) -->San Francisco (customer visits) -->Louisville (CodePaLOUsa conference) -->DC in 5 days, then scrambled to Northern Virginia to help out with the Global Windows Azure Bootcamp. That, along with painful airport delays due to the Air Traffic Control furloughs, kept my blogging to a minimum (read: zero).

Whining and rambling aside: here are my StackOverflow contributions from April 14-27. Strangely, three of these have been closed by the Community at Large (2 of which I disagree with their closures).

• Determining how many messages are on a Service Bus queue (link). This talks about the Queue Description API. Note: This is different from Storage Queues, which have a simple ApproximateMessageCount property on a queue.
• Windows Azure Security? (link). This talks about connecting to an Azure-hosted VM with a database server, but limiting access. This question was closed due to being better suited for a discussion rather than a programming question (since there really is no direct programming question). However, I do believe you can upvote the question or my answer, since I feel the content is relevant and useful.
• Azure endpoint monitoring: memory usage (link). This answer goes over options to monitor an Azure application, with both Microsoft solutions (e.g. MetricsHub) and 3rd-party solutions (e.g. NewRelic).
• Optimize Windows Azure Table Storage? (link). This provides some insight into table storage scalability.
• Windows Azure: What is the use of Internal IP addresses? (link). This discusses external IP (assigned to an entire deployment) vs. internal communication between virtual machines in the same deployment or talking over a virtual network.
• DTC is disabled on SQL Azure; how to enable it? (link). This is about Windows Azure SQL-as-a-Service, vs. full SQL Server. Puzzling that this question is closed, as it relates to a programming feature of SQL...
• How hard is it to upgrade an Azure Virtual Machine? (link). This answer shows how to change VM size via PowerShell. I don't quite understand why the question was closed (aside from it not being a programming question), as it does involve API calls (via PowerShell), and I do consider that peripherally programming-related (and I call this out in the comments under the original question). I do believe you're still able to upvote the question or one of the answers.

Headed to CodePaLOUsa 2013!

If you're in Louisville, and you're a software developer, you're in for a treat, as CodePaLOUsa kicks off tomorrow, April 25. What is CodePaLOUsa, you ask? Well... it's Software Development Madness! And Thursday morning, I'll be boarding a flight directly into this madness.

The pre-conference workshops are Thursday (which sadly I'll miss, since planes do not yet travel at light-speed). Then Friday morning, keynote speaker Richard Campbell (of .NET Rocks fame) kicks things off, followed by two days of awe-inspiring sessions!

I'll be presenting a look at the non-.net language stack landscape on Windows Azure: Node, Java, PHP and Python to be exact. This is a demo-heavy session, showing how consistent (and extensive) the various SDKs are (and available on github in case you want to tweak them). (hint: This is the session to attend, right after the keynote. I promise to make at least one stupid pun you can chastise me about...).

Of course, there's always the chance (however small) that you actually want to see other speakers present stuff. In that case, peruse the illustrious speaker directory and see what a great line-up you have to choose from!

While online registration is now closed, you can still register onsite. So... you have no excuse. Be there!

Windows Azure Global Bootcamp, April 27 in Reston, VA: Sign up, hang out, learn Azure!

This Saturday, April 27, Windows Azure MVPs and community activists are organizing Windows Azure Bootcamps worldwide, with around 100 locations (see Scott Guthrie's full writeup, here).

If you're in the Northern Virginia area, the bootcamp will be held at Microsoft's Reston, VA office, organized by Bruce Troutman and Robin Mattern. I'll be joining Bruce and Robin for this fun day of Windows Azure trianing!

More information and registration link is here.

To make your lives easier, please consider installing the Training Kit, registering for a free Azure trial account, and installing Visual Studio (the express version is free), along with the Windows Azure .NET SDK for Visual Studio. Note: All of this information is also on the registration page.

I hope to see a packed room Saturday!

StackOverflow Azure Contributions: April 7 - April 13

Good Azure questions last week on StackOverflow. Here are the questions I contributed answers to:

• WCF or Service Bus? (link)
• Deploying Azure solution from dev to test server (link) - this is about whether an app can be deployed to a standalone Azure test server
• Does Azure SQL Database support encryption? (link) - this is about the SQL Database service, not to be confused with SQL Azure installed on a Virtual Machine
• Secure communication between internal roles in Azure (link) - this is about internal endpoints and communication between various role instances, as well as communication over a Virtual Network
• Need further explanation regarding edge case (link) - this one is all about scaling, billing, and clock-hours
• Issue with scale option in Windows Azure Web Sites (link) - this one covers the shift to Reserved Instances and how this is handled with multiple web sites
• Azure Shared Cache: Unable to spin up in US East / US West (link) - this is about the shared cache service, not the new co-located in-memory cache option
• Table Storage, more than 100 hits per second (link)

I also earned a Good Answer silver badge (25 upvotes) for my answer to Azure Table vs. MongoDB.

Windows Azure: Where to sign up for preview features

Windows Azure features are occasionally rolled out as a Preview feature that requires opt-in signup. Such is the case with the new HDInsight Hadoop-based Big Data service, as well as the Windows Azure Backup service and Hyper-V Recovery Manager service.

So... where are these features hiding, and how can you sign up???

First, head on over to the management portal. On the bottom, you'll see a button to add services:

 

Once you click new, select Data Services on the left. You'll now see both HDInsight and Recovery Services, and they'll initially appear grayed out. Here's what I see when selecting Recovery Services (which shows you Hyper-V Recovery Manager Vault and Backup Vault:

Note the link I pointed to on the right. Clicking this takes you to the preview program signup page:

At this point, just click try it now for whichever service you're interested in. You'll be asked to select a subscription and, if you received one (which I did not), the option of specifying a signup token:

And... that's it! You might see a status of "You are queued" which just means you'll have to wait a bit to get activated. Some services will activate immediately, showing active status:

One last thing: You may have noticed, in the signup box, the message that charges may be included. Simply put: Preview does not necessarily equate to free. You'll be consuming real cloud resources, so there's sometimes a charge for this (just look at Windows Azure Web Sites, which has a charge for shared and reserved instances, or Virtual Machines, which had discounted VM pricing when they were still in Preview, with discounted rates in effect through May 31, 2013). Preview services that do have charges are discounted due to their non-production status.

In this case:

• Backup service is free for first 5GB, $0.50 / GB / month over 5GB, and discounted 50% during preview. More details here.
• Hyper-V Recovery Manager is currently free during preview, with pricing to be announced later. More details here.
• HDInsight is discounted 50% during preview, with Head Node at $0.32 / hour and Compute Nodes at $0.16 / hour. More details here.