Posted by Alin Irimie
on January 09, 2009
Feeling the pressure from Microsoft’s Windows Azure, Amazon works hard on releasing GUI tools for managing their services. Until now, the only GUI way for managing services were a couple of Firefox plugins - Elasticfox for managing EC2 and S3fFox for organizing S3 and CloudFront. However, Amazon just released, in BETA of course, its brand new AWS Management Console, (using Yahoo’s YUI framework, using JSP in the backend).
The initial release of the AWS Management Console provides a graphical user interface for Amazon EC2, with additional Amazon infrastructure services scheduled to be added to the console in the coming months. You can create Elastic Block Store volumes and assign Elastic IP’s to your instances.
The features planned for the future releases look promising: Continue reading…
Posted by Alin Irimie
on December 02, 2008
Everybody these days is talking about the cloud, more and more companies are looking into the cloud promises to extend and improve their business or maybe just looking to save some money. So who do you trust with your data? Who’s “the best” in the cloud? What’s behind the cloud?
There’s an interesting article by Bill Snyder “Why Microsoft won’t dominate the cloud” where he’s laying down arguments on why Microsoft might not be the best company to drive this new movement. However, in my opinion, it is too soon o make any meaningful arguments about the future of the cloud. There’s a not-so-invisible war between Google, Amazon and Microsoft, all of them investing huge amounts of money in new datacenters, software development and marketing.
We’re trying to find more about the people, the hardware and the software behind the cloud. Today we’ll take a look at Microsoft. Introducing Debra Chrapaty, corporate vice president of Global Foundation Services(GFS), responsible for strategy and delivery of the foundational platform for Microsoft Live and Online Services worldwide including security, operational management, networking, globalization and datacenters. Her organization supports MSN and Windows Live branded services, Microsoft communication and collaboration services as well as 150 additional Microsoft services and web portals, including Windows Azure services. She’s the commander in chief with one mission: build the cloud. Continue reading…
Posted by Alin Irimie
on November 17, 2008
There are so many similarities between the Amazon S3 and Azure Data Storage REST APIs, I believe that soon somebody will write a cross-cloud Data Storage Library. If anybody knows about such library, please let me know! The table below shows only a few similarities between S3 and Azure Data Storage APIs. Continue reading…
Posted by Marcio Castilho
on October 29, 2008
The Microsoft CCR and DSS Toolkit 2008 delivers a set of .NET- and Compact Framework-class libraries and tools that enable developers to better deal with the inherent complexities of creating looselycoupled concurrent and distributed applications. The Toolkit is designed to help developers take advantage of the Concurrency and Coordination Runtime (CCR) and Decentralized Software Services (DSS) originally released as part of Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio. Microsoft CCR and DSS Toolkit 2008 provide early adopters with access to select technologies today; transitioning to Microsoft’s .NET Framework in the future.
To learn more about Microsoft CCR and DSS Toolkit 2008 visit http://www.microsoft.com/ccrdss
Posted by Marcio Castilho
on October 27, 2008
“Huron” provides synchronization capabilities within SQL Data Services to enable occasionally connected applications to easily and efficiently enable content flow through the data hub. It consists of:
- A database in the cloud (SQL Server Data Services) that is used as main hub to store the data that comes and goes through the various endpoints.
- A synchronization service layer that sits in the cloud and implements all the logic required to efficiently enable synchronizing with the various endpoints (local databases systems and databases) through the cloud.
- A database provider on the client that interacts with the local database or database system and the remote service to apply remote changes and send local changes back to the cloud.
The idea behind the project is to synchronize all endpoints (local copies of a database) with a database in the cloud. The database in the cloud acts as a hub and holds the full set of data that is exchanged between the endpoints. This hub also enables users to make changes to the database in the cloud which then are sent to the various endpoints. The current implementation of the service layer uses SQL Data Services as the cloud database.
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