Posted by Alin Irimie
on July 28, 2009
One of the most useful things I found recently is the !exploitable (pronounced “bang exploitable”), a Windows debugging extension (Windbg) that provides automated crash analysis and security risk assessment. The tool first creates hashes to determine the uniqueness of a crash and then assigns an exploitability rating to the crash: Exploitable, Probably Exploitable, Probably Not Exploitable, or Unknown.
There is more detailed information about the tool in the following powerpoint presentation on the Microsoft Security Engineering Center web site. Additonally, see this blog post, or watch the video on Channel9.
This tool was created by the Microsoft Security Engineering Center (MSEC) Security Science Team. For more information on MSEC and the Security Science team, visit http://www.microsoft.com/security/msec.
Posted by Alin Irimie
on July 21, 2009
The July CTP of the Windows Azure SDK and Tools was just released. Download them here.
What’s new in the Windows Azure SDK?
- The Windows Azure SDK supports developing and deploying services containing multiple web and worker roles. A service must include at least one role, of either type, and may include zero or more web roles, and zero or more worker roles.
- The new PowershellRole sample hosts the Powershell runtime within a Windows Azure role. It demonstrates a simple remote console web role as well as a worker role whose implementation is a Powershell script. The host also includes the CloudDrive sample snap-in to provide access to Windows Azure Storage from script.
Continue reading…
Posted by Alin Irimie
on July 14, 2009
Today at World Wide Partner Conference in New Orleans, Microsoft announced Windows Azure prices and made available the service level agreements (SLA) surrounding Azure services. They also announced the release date for Windows Azure.
Windows Azure will be offered for purchase through a consumption-based pricing model and will continue to offer promotional discounts to enterprise customers. Pricing for the computing power of Windows Azure is $0.12 cents an hour and $0.15 cents / GB / Month for storage. SQL Azure will be offered at $9.99 per month (basic) and a $99.99 (business), with a database capacity of up to 10 GB.
Windows Azure is (almost) ready to go. Early adopters of the platform and WPC conference attendees will receive an invitation only CTP soon.
Update: Windows Azure Blog has more details about pricing here.
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Posted by Alin Irimie
on July 13, 2009
It was inevitable, and I just missed the release by a few months, however, Microsoft is working hard on releasing the “Private Cloud”, your own on-premises cloud computing software.
With the Microsoft cloud strategy, organizations can now move towards cloud computing models with the confidence that their existing investments in their datacenter are safe, and can be leveraged in this new paradigm. Existing applications and services will be able to move to the private cloud without the need to learn unproven technologies or introduce unnecessary complexity.
Update: lots of people asked me about whether this is true or not, well, if is on the internet, it must be true:) …
The Microsoft Private Cloud enables:
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Posted by Alin Irimie
on July 13, 2009
Microsoft announced the rebranding of SQL Services to SQL Azure. SQL Server is the data platform of Windows Server so it made sense to align the name of the relational database platform of Windows Azure, SQL Azure. SQL Azure is built on the SQL Server technology foundation which delivers relational database capabilities in the cloud. The next CTP of now SQL Azure will be in August. You can, however, get started today with SQL Express. Over the next days there will be more details about SQL Azure, including posting the first round of SQL Azure Database documentation to MSDN. Also the SQL Azure prices will be announced on Monday.
