Tag: Azure
All the articles with the tag "Azure".
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Running Memcached on Windows Azure for PHP
After three conferences in two weeks with a lot of “airport time”, which typically converts into “let’s code!” time, I think I may have tackled a commonly requested Windows Azure feature for PHP developers. Some sort of distributed caching is always a great thing to have when building scalable services and applications. While Windows Azure offers a distributed caching layer under the form of the Windows Azure Caching, that components currently lacks support for non-.NET technologies. I’ve heard there’s work being done there, but that’s not very interesting if you are building your app today. This blog post will show you how to modify a Windows Azure deployment to run and use Memcached in the easiest possible manner.
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NuGet push... to Windows Azure
When looking at how people like to deploy their applications to a cloud environment, a large faction seems to prefer being able to use their source control system as a source for their production deployment. While interesting, I see a lot of problems there: your source code may not run immediately and probably has to be compiled. You don’t want to maintain compiled assemblies in source control, right? Also, maybe some QA process is in place where a deployment can only occur after approval. Why not use source control for what it’s there for: source control? And how about using a NuGet repository as the source for our deployment? Meet the Windows Azure NuGetRole.
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Why MyGet uses Windows Azure
Recently one of the Tweeps following me started fooling around and hit one of my sweet spots: Windows Azure. Basically, he mocked me for using Windows Azure for MyGet, a website with enough users but not enough to justify the “scalability” aspect he thought Windows Azure was offering. Since Windows Azure is much, much more than scalability alone, I decided to do a quick writeup about the various reasons on why we use Windows Azure for MyGet. And those are not scalability. First of all, here’s a high-level overview of our deployment, which may illustrate some of the aspects below:
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Book review: Microsoft Windows Azure Development Cookbook
Over the past few months, I’ve been doing technical reviewing for a great Windows Azure book: the Windows Azure Development Cookbook published by Packt. During this review I had no idea who the author of the book was but after publishing it seems the author is no one less than my fellow Windows Azure MVP Neil Mackenzie! If you read his blog you should know you should immediately buy this book.
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Version 4 of the Windows Azure SDK for PHP released
Only a few months after the Windows Azure SDK for PHP 3.0.0, Microsoft and RealDolmen are proud to present you the next version of the most complete SDK for Windows Azure out there (yes, that is a rant against the .NET SDK!): Windows Azure SDK for PHP. We’ve been working very hard with an expanding globally distributed team on getting this version out.
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Windows Azure Accelerator for Web Roles
One of the questions I often get around Windows Azure is: “Is Windows Azure interesting for me?”. It’s a tough one, because most of the time when someone asks that question they currently already have a server somewhere that hosts 100 websites. In the full-fledged Windows Azure model, that would mean 100 x 2 (we want the SLA) = 200 Windows Azure instances. And a stroke at the end of the month when the bill arrives. Microsoft’s DPE team have released something very interesting for those situations though: the Windows Azure Accelerator for Web Roles.
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A hidden gem in the Windows Azure SDK for PHP: command line parsing
It’s always fun to dive into frameworks: often you’ll find little hidden gems that can be of great use in your own projects. A dive into the Windows Azure SDK for PHP learned me that there’s a nifty command line parsing tool in there which makes your life easier when writing command line scripts. Usually when creating a command line script you would parse $_SERVER['argv'], validate values and check whether required switches are available or not. With the Microsoft_Console_Command class from the Windows Azure SDK for PHP, you can ease up this task. Let’s compare writing a simple “hello” command.
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A first look at Windows Azure AppFabric Applications
After the Windows Azure AppFabric team announced the availability of Windows Azure AppFabric Applications (preview), I signed up for early access immediately and got in. After installing the tools and creating a namespace through the portal, I decided to give it a try to see what it’s all about. Note that Neil Mackenzie also has an extensive post on “WAAFapps” which I recommend you to read as well.
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Officially a cloudhead now! (or: re-awarded MVP)
Woohoo! I just received the great mail I expect yearly on the first of July:
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Delegate feed privileges to other users on MyGet
One of the first features we had envisioned for MyGet and which seemed increasingly popular was the ability to provide other users a means of managing packages on another user’s feed. As of today, we’re proud to announce the following new features: Now when is Microsoft going to buy us out :-)