Tag: General
All the articles with the tag "General".
-
Use NuGet Package Restore to avoid pushing assemblies to Windows Azure Websites
Windows Azure Websites allows you to publish a web site in ASP.NET, PHP, Node, … to Windows Azure by simply pushing your source code to a TFS or Git repository. But how does Windows Azure Websites manage dependencies? Do you have to check-in your assemblies and NuGet packages into source control? How about no… NuGet 1.6 shipped with a great feature called NuGet Package Restore. This feature lets you use NuGet packages without adding them to your source code repository. When your solution is built by Visual Studio (or MSBuild, which is used in Windows Azure Websites), a build target calls nuget.exe to make sure any missing packages are automatically fetched and installed before the code is compiled. This helps you keep your source repo small by keeping large packages out of version control.
-
GitHub for Windows Azure Websites
With the new release of Windows Azure and Windows Azure Websites, a lot of new scenarios with Windows Azure just became possible. One I like a lot, especially since Appharbor and Heroku have similar offers too, is the possibility to push source code (ASP.NET or PHP) to Windows Azure instead of binaries using Windows Azure Websites. Not everyone out there is a command-line here though: if you want to use Git as a mechanism of pushing sources to Windows Azure Websites chances are you may go crazy if you are unfamiliar with command-line git commands. Luckily, a couple of weeks ago, GitHub released GitHub for Windows. It features an easy-to-use GUI on top of GitHub repositories. And with a small trick also on top of Windows Azure Websites.
-
AZUG Windows Azure Saturday overview
As one of the board members of the Windows Azure User Group in Belgium, I wanted to write a post on an event we organized last weekend. We do more events (one each month), however this one was way out of our comfort zone. Typically, we have an evening event in which a speaker delivers one session to around 40 attendees. Last Saturday, we organized our first Windows Azure Saturday, a hackaton followed by a barbecue. Here’s what I will remember about our event… The idea for a “hackaton plus barbecue” emerged a couple of months ago. The idea was simple: get a group of Windows Azure enthusiasts together, code for a couple of hours and have a fun barbecue afterwards.
-
Ready for a Windows Azure roadtrip?
A while ago, Michelangelo van Dam (a hardcore PHP guy), François Hertay (a hardcore Java guru) and myself (a .NET guy) were asked if we wanted to write about some of our experiences with the Windows Azure platform. Starting next week, you’ll find about 3 blog posts per week and/or videos on Windows Azure (both a getting started level as well as some fun advanced posts) on a freshly released website: www.azure-roadtrip.be. I have the honour of kicking off a series of blog posts on .NET, starting with a level 100 one: the what & why of Windows Azure for .NET developers.
-
Social meet up on Twitter for MEET Windows Azure on June 7th
Here’s a perhaps rather redundant event for you but it should be kind of fun: MEET Windows Azure on Twitter (+ Beer). The idea is to list people who have a twitter account and intend to follow the MEET Windows Azure event via live streaming on June 7th (1pm PDT). So see you online for the event on the 7th! My Twitter handle is @maartenballiauw MEET Windows Azure Blog Relay: + Beer? Since you are watching the event from your coucnh (or the totilet, or your bed, or actually, from wherever you want), feel free to open up a beer. Call to action: Link to this blog post on your blog and I will update this post to link to you!
-
The world is changing: the future of IT
I’ve had my say on cloud and the new world of IT already in an earlier post, Predictions for the future. Today, I’m seeing signs the world is in fact starting to change. Sites like Instagram started small and grew big in no time. Were the founders IT wonders? No. And you don’t have to be. Not so long ago, it would have taken you a lot of time and resources to get your idea up and running on the Internet. Especially if it required multiple datacenters and scalability. You would have to deploy a bunch of servers and make sure you had an agile IT environment in place in order to get things running and keep things flexible, a key requirement for many startups but also for large organizations.
-
Using the Windows Azure Content Delivery Network
As you know, Windows Azure is a very rich platform. Next to compute and storage, it offers a series of building blocks that simplify your life as a cloud developer. One of these building blocks is the content delivery network (CDN), which can be used for offloading content to a globally distributed network of servers, ensuring faster throughput to your end users. I’ve been asked to write an article on this matter, which I did, and which is live at ACloudyPlace.com since today. As a small teaser, here’s the first section of it:
-
Protecting Windows Azure Web and Worker roles from malware
Most IT administrators will install some sort of virus scanner on your precious servers. Since the cloud, from a technical perspective, is just a server, why not follow that security best practice on Windows Azure too? It has gone by almost unnoticed, but last week Microsoft released the Microsoft Endpoint Protection for Windows Azure Customer Technology Preview. For the sake of bandwidth, I’ll be referring to it as EP. EP offers real-time protection, scheduled scanning, malware remediation (a fancy word for quarantining), active protection and automatic signature updates. Sounds a lot like Microsoft Endpoint Protection or Windows Security Essentials? That’s no coincidence: EP is a Windows Azurified version of it.
-
Pro NuGet is finally there!
Short version: Install-Package ProNuget or http://amzn.to/pronuget It’s been a while since I wrote my first book. After I’ve been telling that writing a book is horrendous (try writing a chapter per week after your office hours…) and that I would never write on again, my partner-in-crime Xavier Decoster and I had the same idea at the same time: what about a book on NuGet? So here it is: Pro NuGet is fresh off the presses (or on Kindle). Special thanks go out to Scott Hanselman and Phil Haack for writing our foreword. Also big kudos to all who’ve helped us out now and then and did some small reviews. Yes Rob, Paul, David, Phil, Hadi: that’s you guys.
-
I’m an ASP Insider
Cool! I’ve just learned that I’m invited to join the ASPInsiders. I’m really excited and honored to be part of this group of great ASP.NET experts. Very much looking forward to learning the secret handshake and being able to provide feedback that helps the ASP.NET team forward. If don’t know who the ASP Insiders are, here’s their elevator pitch: “The ASPInsiders is a select group of international professionals who have demonstrated expertise in ASP.NET technologies and who provide valuable, early feedback on related developing technologies and publications to their peers, the Microsoft ASP.NET team and others.” Some more info is available in the Who are the ASPInsiders? post by one of the insiders.