Well folks I’ve been greeted with the news that Microsoft Windows Azure will be in 2 geo-replicated places here on Australian soil, coming ‘shortly’.

As an Azure MVP & from Breeze (a leading Microsoft Cloud Partner) perspective we invest heavily in cloud technologies.

What does this mean and why should I care? I hear you ask… good question and I asked the same.

As most of you know I have a passion for Integration, sticking all sorts of things together from small RFID devices, hand made hand-held devices, raspberry PIs through to high end ERP, Financials & many other types of systems. So before I get to the WHY aspect, let me briefly set the context.

There’s some great data coming out of Gartner a report which caught my eye - http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/news/2240173583/Gartner-Better-collaboration-for-new-era-of-application-integration came out with these:

• Integration Costs to rise by 33% by 2016, more than half of new system development costs will be spent on Integration
• By 2017, over two-thirds of all new integration flows will extend outside the enterprise firewall.

So Integration just took on a whole new face – successful integration is about using the right tools (in the toolbox) for the right task. Now we have a whole new drawer in our toolbox full of Azure goodies & widgets. This functionality is just too compelling to be ignored….

…and now that it’s on Australian soil I’d be thinking that just about every Data center service provider should be giving you cloud functionality.

Some quick cloud advantages:

• scale, provisioning and ease of use
  • Imagine being able to spin up a SharePoint site in the time it takes me to write this article.
    
  • Imagine being able to ask for an extra load balanced highly available Server/Service at the click of a button. Importantly – Imagine being able to give it back again at the end of the weekend/day/next hour.
    
    
• Not wait the typical 12 weeks for a new server to be provisioned, oh and dont mention filling out the right forms. Running an application on those machines and getting a firewall port opened….that’ll be another 2 weeks…and on it goes.
  
• The much beloved Enlightenment for many companies of achieving Single Sign-On – Imagine your customers being able to sign into your applications using their own Ids, Live Ids, + a bunch of other Ids without you needing to provision more services. You can house your identity accounts in Azure, locally or elsewhere – finally you don’t need a Quantum Analyst to setup Single Sign-on.
  
• My experiences in the last few weeks on client sites have been back in the world of old – classic encumbered infrastructure service providers wanting to claim everything, put the brakes on any new ideas and have meetings around such concepts of adding an extra 10gb disk space to existing servers. These guys should be ‘can do’ people – it’s all about choosing the right tool for the job.
  
• Microsoft have done a great job on the developer tooling front from the classic MS toolset through to Apple, PHP, Ruby, Phython etc. all being able to access, develop on, publish and deploy.
  
• We could even give a bunch of HDD drives to Olaf (our gun cyclist @ Breeze) to ride to the Azure Data Center and offload our data, while we wait for the NBN to never come to our area.
  
• There are some great options on the horizon coming down the track.
  

So let’s say we’re keen to explore – how hard/easy is it to get ‘my’ own environment & what does this mean.

The short answer is you get an Azure Footprint which could be running in a ‘Data Center’ in Sydney. Depending on what you’re playing with you could get:

- SQL Databases, Cloud Services, Scalable Mobile Device Services, Load balanced Websites/Services/Restful endpoints…and the list of ‘widgets’ goes on and on.

How do I interact with this environment:

Often the issue around alot of this is that because my beloved ‘servers’ are running somewhere else I’m concerned over how much control we get.

We enter into the Hybrid Integration space – where as you can imagine not *everything* is suited for the Cloud, there will be things you keep exactly as they are. So there will be many many scenarios where – we have something running locally as well as something running in Azure. Some options we have available are to make our servers ‘feel at home’:

• VPN connection – we can have several flavours of a VPN connection that connect our Azure Footprint to our local network. for e.g. local network is 10.10.x.x/16, Azure network 10.50.x.x/16. Full access to all the machines/services and other things you have running. CRON jobs, FTP, scripts, processes, linux boxes, samba shares, etc etc.. (I do realise the integration world is never as easy as we see it in the magazines)
  
• RDP Connections – standard level of service really from any Service provider.
  
• Remote PowerShell Access
  
• Azure Service Bus - Applications Level Web/WCF/Restful Services connectivity. An Application Service can run either locally or in the cloud and this feature allows your Service to be accessed through a consistent Endpoint within the cloud, but the calls are Relayed down to your Application Service. There’s a few different ways we can ‘relay’ but the public endpoint could house all the clients & their device requests, while your existing application infrastructure remains unchanged.
  
• SQL Azure Data Sync – sync data between clouds & local from your databases. So for many clients, come 8pm each day, their local database has all the Orders for the day as per normal, without the usual provisioning headaches as the business responds to new market opportunities to support smart devices.
  
• We even get pretty graphs….
  
  • But wait there’s more…..
  • These details are typical performance monitor counters + diagnostic information. We can use Azure Admin tools to import these regularly and import them into our typical tools.
  • System Center does exactly this – so our ‘dashboard’ of machines will list our local machines as well as our cloud machines. Your IT guys have visibility into what’s going on.

We’ve been using Singapore DCs or West Coast US with pretty good performance times across the infrastructure. 

What does having a local Windows Azure Data Center mean to me:

• Medical Industry – we have several medical clients allowing us to innovate around Cloud technologies using HL7 transports. Faster time to market and higher degrees of re-use.
• Cloud Lab Manager – www.cloudlabmanager.com can run locally for all training providers. Breeze has created an award winning cloud based application that will certainly benefit from this piece of great news.
• Creating a cloud based application is now feasible (this particular one was due to the sensitive nature of information it carried)
• And lastly I can house my MineCraft server – well it’s my 10 yr old sons and half the school I reckon.

So for you…

Ask yourself the question – are you getting all these features from where you currently host/run your hardware?

Lack of infrastructure and provisioning challenges shouldn’t be holding back new ideas & business movement. iPads, smartphones, anywhere, any time access should be the norm, not like we’re putting another person on the moon.

It’s all about using the right tool for the job

Enjoy folks as it’s certainly exciting times for us Aussies ahead!!

Microsoft’s Announcement

*** THIS EVENT IS CURRENTLY GOING ON WORLD WIDE even as we speak! ***

The wrap up of the day:

Saturday morning was nothing short of sensational in Sydney today, early morning sun, bright blue skies, smell of coffee and a city that felt like it was snoozing and waking for some playtime.

I walked into a room of curious minds, eager eyes and folks that were thinking of possibilities in technology. This technology was Windows Azure.

We were above capacity & for the first time I would be relieved if there were a few ‘no-shows’…but none happened. Even at 5pm we nearly had a full house.

Firstly I’ve got to thank – you the students for a great day, fantastic questions and giving your precious weekend time.

Secondly the expert speakers that have huge experience in the field.

• Mark O’Shea – Paradyne
• Olaf Loogman – author of a popular Win8 app CyclingTracker – Breeze
• Don Jayasinghe – Breeze
• Mick Badran (yours truly) – Breeze

and finally all the sponsors & people that helped enable us to bring this to you:

• Breeze – www.breeze.net
• Microsoft – www.microsoft.com
• Paradyne – www.paradyne.com.au
• Saxons – www.saxons.com.au (great training facilities)
• Sara Ward, David McGhee & Christian Longstaff – for their tireless efforts, technical expertise and event organisation.
  

What were the plans for the day:

The Agenda was set to:

Some Interesting facts:

- we had 3 MVPs in the room (that I knew of)

- we had 2 Microsoft VTSPs

- a student drove 3.5hrs one way to be here with us during the day, then back to Canberra again after class. Massive commitment.

- we all came with Azure Subscriptions ready to go.

- a student created a WebSite, Database + Worker role working in a solution together during the day.

- Olaf has his Mobile Services demo fail (even though it worked at 10pm last night) due to the recent Azure Portal update at 2am this morning. He did have a PlanB, the autogenerated code from the Portal during the Mobile Services Application creation, generates un-compilable code for now. Well done Olaf, some nice tap dancing.

(Olaf working his magic)

(looking out to the North Wing)

Thanks to Magnus a fellow Azure MVP - for setting all this up world wide and good luck to all the other countries.

If you blog about it – then be sure to use the hashtag #globalwindowsazure.

Mick out.

Something that you’ve always wanted at your finger tips all the public IP ranges for the Azure Data Centers.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29840

<!--Below address ranges are represented using CIDR notation-->
<!--For detail on how to interpert CIDR notation refer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIDR_notation-->
<regions>
  <region name="Europe">
    <subregion name="North Europe">
      <network>213.199.160.0/20</network>
      <network>213.199.184.0/21</network>
      <network>137.116.224.0/19</network>
      <network>157.55.230.160/27</network>
      <network>157.55.3.0/24</network>
      <network>168.61.80.0/20</network>
      <network>168.61.96.0/19</network>
      <network>168.63.32.0/19</network>
      <network>168.63.64.0/20</network>
      <network>168.63.80.0/21</network>
      <network>168.63.92.0/22</network>
      <network>65.52.224.0/22</network>
      <network>65.52.228.0/22</network>
      <network>65.52.248.0/21</network>
      <network>65.52.64.0/20</network>
      <network>94.245.104.0/21</network>
      <network>94.245.112.0/20</network>
      <network>94.245.88.0/21</network>
      <network>137.116.224.0/19</network>
      <network>157.55.230.160/27</network>
      <network>157.55.3.0/24</network>
      <network>168.61.80.0/20</network>
      <network>168.61.96.0/19</network>
      <network>168.63.32.0/19</network>
      <network>168.63.64.0/20</network>
      <network>168.63.80.0/21</network>
      <network>168.63.92.0/22</network>
      <network>65.52.224.0/22</network>
      <network>65.52.228.0/22</network>
      <network>65.52.248.0/21</network>
      <network>65.52.64.0/20</network>
      <network>94.245.104.0/21</network>
      <network>94.245.112.0/20</network>
      <network>94.245.88.0/21</network>
      <network>137.135.128.0/17</network>
    </subregion>
    <subregion name="West Europe">
      <network>157.55.10.0/27</network>
      <network>157.55.10.32/27</network>
      <network>157.55.10.64/26</network>
      <network>157.55.12.0/28</network>
      <network>157.55.9.112/28</network>
      <network>137.116.192.0/21</network>
      <network>137.116.200.0/21</network>
      <network>157.55.8.128/28</network>
      <network>157.55.8.144/28</network>
      <network>157.55.8.160/28</network>
      <network>157.55.8.64/26</network>
      <network>168.63.0.0/19</network>
      <network>168.63.96.0/19</network>
      <network>213.199.128.0/21</network>
      <network>213.199.136.0/22</network>
      <network>213.199.180.112/28</network>
      <network>213.199.180.192/26</network>
      <network>213.199.180.32/28</network>
      <network>213.199.180.96/28</network>
      <network>213.199.183.0/24</network>
      <network>65.52.128.0/19</network>
      <network>94.245.97.0/24</network>
      <network>137.117.128.0/17</network>
      <network>168.61.56.0/21</network>
    </subregion>
  </region>
  <region name="Asia">
    <subregion name="East Asia">
      <network>111.221.64.0/22</network>
      <network>111.221.69.0/25</network>
      <network>137.116.160.0/20</network>
      <network>168.63.128.0/19</network>
      <network>168.63.192.0/19</network>
      <network>207.46.67.160/27</network>
      <network>207.46.67.192/27</network>
      <network>207.46.72.0/26</network>
      <network>207.46.77.224/28</network>
      <network>207.46.87.0/24</network>
      <network>207.46.89.16/28</network>
      <network>207.46.95.32/27</network>
      <network>65.52.160.0/19</network>
    </subregion>
    <subregion name="South East Asia">
      <network>111.221.16.0/21</network>
      <network>111.221.80.0/20</network>
      <network>111.221.96.0/20</network>
      <network>137.116.128.0/19</network>
      <network>168.63.160.0/19</network>
      <network>168.63.224.0/19</network>
      <network>207.46.48.0/20</network>
    </subregion>
  </region>
  <region name="USA">
    <subregion name="South Central US">
      <network>157.55.103.32/28</network>
      <network>157.55.103.48/28</network>
      <network>157.55.153.224/28</network>
      <network>157.55.176.0/20</network>
      <network>157.55.192.0/22</network>
      <network>157.55.196.0/22</network>
      <network>157.55.200.0/22</network>
      <network>157.55.80.0/22</network>
      <network>157.55.84.0/22</network>
      <network>168.62.128.0/19</network>
      <network>65.52.32.0/21</network>
      <network>65.54.48.0/21</network>
      <network>65.55.64.0/20</network>
      <network>65.55.80.0/20</network>
      <network>70.37.160.0/21</network>
      <network>70.37.48.0/20</network>
      <network>70.37.64.0/18</network>
    </subregion>
    <subregion name="North Central US">
      <network>157.55.136.0/21</network>
      <network>157.55.151.0/28</network>
      <network>157.55.160.0/20</network>
      <network>157.55.208.0/21</network>
      <network>157.55.216.0/22</network>
      <network>157.55.220.0/22</network>
      <network>157.55.24.0/21</network>
      <network>157.55.252.0/22</network>
      <network>157.55.60.224/28</network>
      <network>157.55.60.240/28</network>
      <network>157.55.73.32/28</network>
      <network>157.56.12.0/22</network>
      <network>157.56.24.160/28</network>
      <network>157.56.24.176/28</network>
      <network>157.56.24.192/28</network>
      <network>157.56.28.0/22</network>
      <network>157.56.8.0/22</network>
      <network>168.62.224.0/20</network>
      <network>168.62.96.0/19</network>
      <network>207.46.192.0/20</network>
      <network>209.240.220.0/23</network>
      <network>65.52.0.0/19</network>
      <network>65.52.106.128/27</network>
      <network>65.52.106.16/28</network>
      <network>65.52.106.160/27</network>
      <network>65.52.106.192/27</network>
      <network>65.52.106.224/28</network>
      <network>65.52.106.240/28</network>
      <network>65.52.106.32/27</network>
      <network>65.52.106.64/27</network>
      <network>65.52.106.96/27</network>
      <network>65.52.107.0/28</network>
      <network>65.52.192.0/19</network>
      <network>65.52.232.0/22</network>
      <network>65.52.236.0/22</network>
      <network>65.52.240.0/22</network>
      <network>65.52.244.0/22</network>
      <network>65.52.48.0/20</network>
      <network>168.61.128.0/17</network>
    </subregion>
    <subregion name="East US">
      <network>137.117.32.0/19</network>
      <network>137.117.64.0/18</network>
      <network>157.56.176.0/21</network>
      <network>168.61.32.0/20</network>
      <network>168.61.48.0/21</network>
      <network>168.62.160.0/19</network>
      <network>168.62.32.0/19</network>
      <network>137.116.0.0/17</network>
    </subregion>
    <subregion name="West US">
      <network>137.117.0.0/19</network>
      <network>137.135.0.0/18</network>
      <network>157.56.160.0/21</network>
      <network>168.61.0.0/19</network>
      <network>168.61.64.0/20</network>
      <network>168.62.0.0/19</network>
      <network>168.62.192.0/19</network>
      <network>168.63.88.0/24</network>
    </subregion>
  </region>
</regions>

There’s a great Centrebet case study  

http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Windows-Azure/Centrebet/Microsoft-Windows-Azure-a-safe-bet-for-sports-bookmaker-s-website/710000000390

Recently Microsoft added Backup Services (Preview) in which you can invoke the cloud as part of your backup strategy, whether it be offsite secondaries etc.

You may have heard of Microsoft’s StorSimple which involved dropping a 2RU or 4RU Hardware device into a customer’s rack in a Datacenter somewhere which is no easy feat.

The reason why I’m liking the Azure Backup Services approach is that it’s a software based solution.

Storage costs for Backups are cheaper and this is a feasible approach for backups.

The other cool thing is that – if I need fast access to my backups in the cloud, then I can spin up a ‘configured’ VM in Azure (access to the same Backup Vault) and access the backups. No need to copy them down on premise first.

Let’s get Cracking

The elements that make this Azure Backup Services work are:

1. Azure Recovery Services Backup Services – with a Backup Vault created.

2. On Premise (or anywhere else for that matter) Server with the Backup Services Agent installed (currently Win2012, Win2008R2 are targeted platforms for the Agent).
(Currently the BackupServices APIs are only planned to be used from these Agents and not our own code….yet!)

3. A management certificate:

1. X509, Pub/Private keys installed in the local machine certificate store in the OnPrem Server.

2. Public Key (*.CER file) uploaded to Azure Backup Services (this is different to the Subscription Certificates you may already have up in Azure)

The certificate can be self signed and must have: 2048 (or greater) key length, expire within 3 years.
(if your cert fails these requirements it will either fail to upload, or fail to be recognised – we’re dealing with Preview here folks)

1. Creating the Vault

Login to the Azure Portal (activate the Backup Services Preview feature if you haven’t done so already) and select Recovery Services

- Add a new Backup Vault with your details. It’s point a click stuff here, no thinking yet.

2. Create the Management Certificate for Backup Services

There’s a few different ways to do this, makecert.exe is the easiest way I find as follows:

(run from an elevated cmd prompt if required)

-------------------------------------

C:\>makecert
Error: Please either specify the outputCertificateFile or -ss option
Usage: MakeCert [ basic|extended options] [outputCertificateFile]
Basic Options
-sk  <keyName>      Subject's key container name; To be created if not present
-pe                 Mark generated private key as exportable
-ss  <store>        Subject's certificate store name that stores the output
                     certificate
-sr  <location>     Subject's certificate store location.
                        <CurrentUser|LocalMachine>.  Default to 'CurrentUser'
-#   <number>       Serial Number from 1 to 2^31-1.  Default to be unique
-$   <authority>    The signing authority of the certificate
                        <individual|commercial>
-n   <X509name>     Certificate subject X500 name (eg: CN=Fred Dews)
-?                  Return a list of basic options
-!                  Return a list of extended options

C:\>makecert.exe -r -pe -n CN=MicksBreezeAzureBackups -ss my -sr localmachine -eku 1.3.6.1.5.5.7.3.2  -e 12/31/2015 -len 2048 "MicksBreezeAzureBackups.cer"

--------------------------------------------------------

* you should be able to see this Cert in the MachineCertStore on the local machine as follows: *

The *.cer file will be on the local file system ready for uploading

3. Uploading the Certificate (*.CER) file to the Azure Portal

From the Azure Portal –> Recovery Services –> Upload Management Certificate

If all goes well, you’ll have success

You should be able to see your certificate details in the Backup Services – click on your newly created empty BackupVault.

Now we’re ready to get onto the Server Side

3. Configuring and Registering the OnPremise Server to the Backup Vault.

3.1 Download the Agent from Backup Services

Click on the Download Agent Link from within Backup Services and choose your selection:

Here I selected the first option – “Agent for Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012 SP1..”

Download the Agent (approx 17MB) and install.

This should go smoothly.

3.2 Registering the Server

Launch the Agent (if havent done so already) after the above installation completes.

(mine is empty)

3.2.2 Click on Register Server

(Configure a Proxy if you need to, this is for HTTP/HTTPs traffic)

Your certificate should come up in the list that you created earlier – if it doesnt ensure that both the Private + Public keys are installed AND the Cert is in the Local Machine Store. Then rerun this step.

Select the Vault details as follows in the Agent

(I’ve hidden my subscription ID here)

You’re 2 worlds are almost connected now, we have the Vault + the Server just about done.

Click Next to move onto the Encryption Settings

Select a Passphrase and bear in mind that each new Server you add which wants to restore/read the backup information from another server, will need the same Passphrase.

Click the magic button REGISTER

This is also reflected on the Backup Services Portal under Servers as follows:

4. Configuring Backing – using the Windows Azure Backup & Throttling

(this is very simple and similar to Windows Backup)

What files are we backing up – click on Schedule Backup

I’ve selected a small folder on the System for the purpose of the demo

Select a Time – Currently limited to a max of 3 times a day per Server.

The COOOOOL THING is click on Change Properties – and here we can configure Throttling.

- complete the Wizard to create your first backup schedule – well done!

You’ll now notice the Windows Azure Backup shell has a Backup Now option on the right hand side.

I selected this and ran the Backup Now ‘wizard’ in which I could also specify Throttling for this backup.

At this stage you can also go back to the Backup Services Portal and see an entry in the Protected Items there as well.

5. Powershell Commands – it goes without saying that there’s a ton of powershell commands to script alot of what we did above.

Digging into PowerShell we find that the commands fall under ‘OnlineBackup’ as follows – notice MSOnlineBackup

If I simply run a Get-OBJob command we get back some reasonable info around data transferred etc.

Happy Backuping!!!! Great new Service.

Folks – we’re into week 2 of the 6 weeks of Azure program and as I was planning these sessions out with Christian last year, I thought I’d like to bring some fun into the mix.

There’s many possibilities that you can do in Azure, but none other than building a bit of h/w, programming it & having it talk to Azure! Monitored, controlled – how good is that.

Enter the FEZ Kits – www.ghielectronics.com

(There’s also the Raspberry PI’s that run a flavour of Linux with a deployment of Mono – that let’s you run C# code straight onto a $35 computer! – I’ll save that for another post)

FEZ Kits

These are the ‘mans lego’ kit as I like to think of them as.

What makes these kits cool:

• they run a flavour of .NET – .NET Microframework. So yes you can write C# etc that runs on the device.
• you can get many many additional modules for these to plug into your masterpiece – things like temperature sensors, light sensors, colour sensors etc.
• they run off USB power, even a set of 4 AAA batteries would do it.
• you program them via USB cable from Visual Studio.
• *rich* community and developer support - http://www.ghielectronics.com/support/.net-micro-framework

FYI – my kit I’ve added to over time and I’ve also got a Raspberry PI that I play with (good NFC reader).

My FEZ KIT on the left, with the PI on the right in my beautiful Lego box

Now the best thing is that the FEZ Hydra kit (above) will be available to you (as a prize and the like) on the BOOTCAMPS as part of the 6 weeks of Azure.

Let me know how you get on and if you’ve got any questions about these guys – they’re great and good for developers.

--- from the official blurb ----
6 Weeks of Azure

Need in-person Azure Training? DevCamps are for you

Register for a DevCamp in Melbourne | Sydney | Brisbane to learn how to use the new Windows Azure features and services including Windows Azure Virtual Machines, Web Sites, and Visual Studio 2012 to build and move a variety of apps to the cloud.  You will see how to build web sites, mobile
applications, and enterprise-class applications. 

Need help with your app? Register for a Boot Camp

Register for a Boot Camp near you: Melbourne | Sydney | Brisbane. Our
Industry and Microsoft experts will be available to help complete your
Windows Azure app as part of the 6 Weeks of Windows Azure course.
There will be a FEZ Hydra Kit or two to win… not to mention some t-shirts and mice to giveaway.

6 Weeks
Forum

Scott’s team of teams have been busy and have come out with a few changes:

Some of the improvements include:

• Mobile Services: Android support, East Asia Region Support, iOS dev content
• SQL Reporting Services: Support in the management portal
• Active Directory: Support in the azure management portal, user and domain management
• Availability Monitoring for Cloud Services. Virtual Machines, Web Sites, and Mobile Services
• Service Bus: New configuration tab and metrics
• Storage: Ability to download blobs directly in management portal
• Media Services: New monitoring metrics and quickstart experience
• Cloud Services: Support for .cer certificate files upload
• Localization support for five new languages
• Windows Azure Store Support in 22 Additional Countries

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2013/03/04/windows-azure-updates-android-support-sql-reporting-services-active-directory-more.aspx

Day #1 has been officially launched for the 6 weeks of Azure Program.

Rocky & Christian at Microsoft are busy combining a great community effort with help from myself & Mahesh, Bill Chesnut and others to bring together a great 6 week program about a Journey through Azure (above and beyond technical aspects, but they are also included).

Things like:

- taking an onpremise solution and converting to Azure.

- what your solution may look like in Azure.

- what considerations you’ll need to think about when working in Azure.

- Solution landscape

- Technical azure widgets and what each one does and how it can help you in your solution

- Time for you to go away, plan, contact an instructor, see a webcast and come back to a Q&A session.

It’s got over 340 people registered on it so far and it’s never too late to jump on board.

Read the full story here - http://www.breeze.net/news/breezetalk/let-the-6-week-challenge-begin!.aspx

hi folks, while at the BizTalk 2012 Summit enjoying the great hospitality, we have been hard at work forming an alliance with other brilliant integrators.

What it means for you is better service and support from us and our alliance partners.

Cheers,

Mick.

Here's the official blurb....

----

Breeze is proud to announce a brand new alliance with two integration partners, offering you a global team of over 100 passionate integration experts at your fingertips. "Impack" is the combination of three award winning, Microsoft certified integration partners. It is the collaboration between Breeze (Australia), Codit (Europe) and Matricis (North America) enabling an elite group of Microsoft qualified Integration specialists to share knowledge, innovation and provide exceptional service for our customers.

Together with the help of Microsoft Redmond BizTalk & Azure teams, the Integration Alliance was launched at the BizTalk Summit, December 10th 2012.

What Impack Alliance offers:-

• You work with the pro's - when it comes to integration: with a team over 100 passionate BizTalk and Azure specialists and their accumulated experience in the Microsoft business, you can be confident you rely on the best integration professionals on the planet.
• You have worldwide expertise - at your fingertips: the alliance delivers you local talent and global reach
• We are always there - with expert 24/7 support: we support your business 24/7 with a guarantee of highly qualified BizTalk and Azure experts
• You can even get integration out of your mind - with innovative Integration as a Service: we can take full ownership of integration in your company and let you focus on your core business.

What is the main objective of this alliance?

Impack aims to deliver worldwide, high quality and cost effective integration solutions based on best practices through the use of Microsoft technologies, enabling customers to increase their efficiency and be ready anytime to enter into new competitive opportunities.

It is our endeavor to be thenumber one 'go to' partner for integration, worldwide. For customers, and as a preferred partner to Microsoft.

Please visit the Impack Alliance website for more information: http://www.impackalliance.com/

Hi guys, while planning for an Azure Based Event (ABE) coming soooon….or at least after Santa has come and gone & given me a birthday pressie, I was directed to a new site in the wings.

Coatsy and his DPE crew have been busy creating a site just for us.

One that accepts our slang and other Aussie quotes.

Register and it will notify you of all the events and other up and coming tidbits.

http://azure.msdeveloper.com.au/Default.aspx?at=blogs

+1 for the Aussie know how (Even if we speak US (English) :))

Stay tuned…and keep this on the bat-utility belt. “Holy Azure Batman….”

You may have heard about ClickFrenzy where last night they launched a site with bargains for a few hours.

Unfortunately there were far too many Error 500 – Server Too Busy errors and hence the site lost many many potential customers.

Breeze has a great article on it - http://www.breeze.net/news/breezetalk/the-sale-that-stopped-the-nation,-enter-windows-azure.aspx

Who’d have thought….

Folks with the unforeseen skill from Christian Longstaff,  we could be unveiling something great….. kicking around a few ideas and Christian’s talent for such things shone.

As with all amazing shiny new things it needed a place in the blog-sphere…

Could it be a book….a show….a movie….or something more….

Stay tuned….

Halloween’s just over and my place was overrun with Kids of all sizes seeking high-fructose corn syrup hits…to keep them going till the next house.

It seems Scott Gutherie has all sorts of pieces he wants to chat about on this next free conference.

The world of the Cloud moves just so quickly that these sorts of events are essential to get you up to date in your thinking.

Remember what the cloud story was 12 months ago & how many new features/capabilities have been added since.

Check out the blurb and register….

http://www.windowsazureconf.net/

Great news – Jurgen Willis and his team have worked hard to bring Microsoft’s first V1.0 WF Workflow Hosting Manager.

It  runs both as part of Windows Server and within Azure VMs also. It also is used by the SharePoint team in 2013, so learn it once and you’ll get great mileage out of it.
(I’m yet to put it through serious paces)

Some links to help you out…

What is it?

WF Mgr 1.0 – Code Samples

The following main areas for WF improvements in .NET 4.5: (great MSDN magazine article)

1. Workflow Designer enhancements
2. C# expressions
3. Contract-first authoring of WCF Workflow Services
4. Workflow versioning
5. Dynamic update
6. Partial trust
7. Performance enhancements

Specifically for WorkflowManager there’s integration with:

1. Windows Azure Service Bus.

So all in all a major improvement and we’ve now got somewhere serious to host our WF Services. If you’ve ever gone through the process of creating your own WF host, you’ll appreciate it’s not a trivial task especially if you want some deeper functionality such as restartability and fault tolerance.

but…. if you want to kick off a quick WF to be part of an install script, evaluate an Excel spreadsheet and set results, then hosting within the app, spreadsheet is fine.

Let’s go through installation:

Download from here

Workflow_Manager_BPA.msi = Best Practices Analyser.

WorfklowClient = Client APIs, install on machines that want to communicate to WF Manager.

WorkflowManager = the Server/Service Component.

WorkflowTools = VS2012 plugin tools – project types etc.

And we’ll grab the 4 or you can you the Web Platform Installer

The Workflow Client should install fine on it’s own (mine didn’t as I had to remove some of the beta bits that were previously installed).

Installing the Workflow Manager – create a farm, I went for a Custom Setting install below, just to show you the options.

As you scroll down on this page, you’ll notice a HTTP Port – check the check box to enable HTTP communications to the Workflow Manager.
This just makes it easier if we need to debug anything across the wire.

Select NEXT or the cool little Arrow->

On Prem Service Bus is rolled into this install now – accepting defaults.

Plugin your Service Accounts and passphrase (for Farm membership and an encryption seed).

Click Next –> to reveal….

As with the latest set of MS Products a cool cool feature is the ‘Get PowerShell Commands’ so you can see the script behind your UI choices (VMM manager, SCCM 2012 has all this right through). BTW – passwords don’t get exported in the script, you’ll need to add.

Script Sample:

# To be run in Workflow Manager PowerShell console that has both Workflow Manager and Service Bus installed.

# Create new SB Farm
$SBCertificateAutoGenerationKey = ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText  -Force  -String '***** Replace with Service Bus Certificate Auto-generation key ******' -Verbose;

New-SBFarm -SBFarmDBConnectionString 'Data Source=BTS2012DEV;Initial Catalog=SbManagementDB;Integrated Security=True;Encrypt=False' -InternalPortRangeStart 9000 -TcpPort 9354 -MessageBrokerPort 9356 -RunAsAccount 'administrator' -AdminGroup 'BUILTIN\Administrators' -GatewayDBConnectionString 'Data Source=BTS2012DEV;Initial Catalog=SbGatewayDatabase;Integrated Security=True;Encrypt=False' -CertificateAutoGenerationKey $SBCertificateAutoGenerationKey -MessageContainerDBConnectionString 'Data Source=BTS2012DEV;Initial Catalog=SBMessageContainer01;Integrated Security=True;Encrypt=False' -Verbose;

# To be run in Workflow Manager PowerShell console that has both Workflow Manager and Service Bus installed.

# Create new WF Farm
$WFCertAutoGenerationKey = ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText  -Force  -String '***** Replace with Workflow Manager Certificate Auto-generation key ******' -Verbose;

New-WFFarm -WFFarmDBConnectionString 'Data Source=BTS2012DEV;Initial Catalog=BreezeWFManagementDB;Integrated Security=True;Encrypt=False' -RunAsAccount 'administrator' -AdminGroup 'BUILTIN\Administrators' -HttpsPort 12290 -HttpPort 12291 -InstanceDBConnectionString 'Data Source=BTS2012DEV;Initial Catalog=WFInstanceManagementDB;Integrated Security=True;Encrypt=False' -ResourceDBConnectionString 'Data Source=BTS2012DEV;Initial Catalog=WFResourceManagementDB;Integrated Security=True;Encrypt=False' -CertificateAutoGenerationKey $WFCertAutoGenerationKey -Verbose;

# Add SB Host
$SBRunAsPassword = ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText  -Force  -String '***** Replace with RunAs Password for Service Bus ******' -Verbose;

Add-SBHost -SBFarmDBConnectionString 'Data Source=BTS2012DEV;Initial Catalog=SbManagementDB;Integrated Security=True;Encrypt=False' -RunAsPassword $SBRunAsPassword -EnableFirewallRules $true -CertificateAutoGenerationKey $SBCertificateAutoGenerationKey -Verbose;

Try
{
    # Create new SB Namespace
    New-SBNamespace -Name 'WorkflowDefaultNamespace' -AddressingScheme 'Path' -ManageUsers 'administrator','mickb' -Verbose;

    Start-Sleep -s 90
}
Catch [system.InvalidOperationException]
{
}

# Get SB Client Configuration
$SBClientConfiguration = Get-SBClientConfiguration -Namespaces 'WorkflowDefaultNamespace' -Verbose;

# Add WF Host
$WFRunAsPassword = ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText  -Force  -String '***** Replace with RunAs Password for Workflow Manager ******' -Verbose;

Add-WFHost -WFFarmDBConnectionString 'Data Source=BTS2012DEV;Initial Catalog=BreezeWFManagementDB;Integrated Security=True;Encrypt=False' -RunAsPassword $WFRunAsPassword -EnableFirewallRules $true -SBClientConfiguration $SBClientConfiguration -EnableHttpPort  -CertificateAutoGenerationKey $WFCertAutoGenerationKey -Verbose;

Upon completion you should see a new IIS Site…. with the ‘management ports’ of in my case HTTPS

Let’s Play

Go and grab the samples and have a play – make sure you run the samples as the user you’ve nominated as ‘Admin’ during the setup – for now.

Hi folks,

What a great time we're in at the moment. Cloud(s) are knocking a the door, local devices, windows 8 etc.

No complaints from me that this world is getting more and more connected.

To maintain those connections and handle new ones - Microsoft BizTalk Server serves as your on-premise middleware platform.

We're running a course shortly on Design, Build and Manage your solutions within BizTalk Server.

We have a wealth of knowledge around Integration and Cloud technologies. As you and I know, integration is all about the systems you're integrating with.

Here's the details - and hope to see you there. Mick (you're new Azure Integration MVP)

Come along to our office for a week of BizTalk 2010 Bootcamp Training!

Agenda

We will take care of you with delicious catering, friendly staff and provide our state of the art BizTalk trainer. There are a limited amount of seats, so book now!

Click here to register

Start: Monday, November 12, 2012

End: Friday, November 16 2012

What is BizTalk?

For your business, BizTalk provides the "glue" to giving you a very good integration foundation for both internal applications as well as the outside world and giving you consistency across those interfaces as well.

BizTalk is a platform that is durable, reliable and fault tolerant right across your services, from email, FTP services, web services, database calls and much more, you will have something that retries all of those for you.

Why BizTalk?

BizTalk provides a level of maturity to customer operations as well as consistency. It is harder for customers to build themselves, the capabilities that BizTalk can offer out of the box. Our experience is that customers often start out building smaller applications here and there with eventually having over 100 applications talking to each other in a very specific way, all in a very ad-hoc approach and all very speciailised. Over time to maintain those systems becomes a big challenge for the client with increased complexity along the way.

Whereas by introducing a uniform, a best practice way of doing something, "business rules" such as within BizTalk, it eases that integration with the company to make it a lot simpler and easier to manage and everyone gets visibility in to the activity of those calls within the applications.

What our customers are doing with BizTalk today

BizTalk being a middleware product is being used in many different scenarios, from simple file transfers right across to complex business process automation.

Customers in one instance are getting real time notifications around FTP, where certain files appear, then systems have to react or respond immediately instead of within a polling interval that may occur at any time during the day. So being able to build out that infrastructure and apply or update databases, all of that happens right across the BizTalk layer, then exposed out via web services.

In-short BizTalk forms another tool in the client toolkit, using the MS integration stack, so on top of not only BizTalk and all of its' capabilities and adapters, we have WCF (Windows Communication Foundation), messaging, MSMQ and many others in the integration stack, not to mention Azure and cloud hybrid solutions we can deploy and employ today. So with clients it's not just about providing BizTalk to solve a problem, it's about using the tools in the toolkit to meet their requirements, whatever the tools may be, to solve their immediate challenge.

In the wee early hours of the morning I recently got an email saying I had been awarded a MVP for another year.

This time I got awarded as an Azure MVP coming from BizTalk MVP. My love has been BizTalk for the last 12 years (and even Site Server before that for those that remember back that far…no they didn’t have punch cards ).

As always I don’t feel this is personally my award, but more of an award to you, the community with your hunger and thirst for knowledge to make a difference in your day to day.

And of course thank you to Microsoft for your belief in the MVP program and individuals such as myself.

……

The formal bits out of the way….I’m back for 2012/13!!! Should be a great year…great tour…and huge developments. Stay tuned.

My focus will be How to Integration and how-to integrate to/from Windows Azure.

Hi folks, BizTalk has some great new features on the horizon and this CTP is jam packed of new and improved features. I believe the CTP is non-public atm, with MVPs etc. able to get access (or if you’re on the TAP program)

I’ve got a VM up and running with the setup and config working a treat – I’m not sure how much I can say, but I’d like to say I’m very pleased with what I’m seeing!

The official feature set blurb goes something like this…

Enjoy.

Details…

Improved productivity with new Microsoft Platform support

Customers can now leverage the latest and greatest platforms, such as Windows Server 2012 RC, SQL Server 2012, Visual Studio 2012 RC. All new BizTalk projects will target .Net Framework 4.5 RC by default. The CTP also provides support for latest LOB versions enabling customers to use BizTalk for integrating their applications with the latest versions of SAP, Oracle and SQL Server. The new adapters provide a seamless experience to enable hybrid connectivity, all done via configuration. The CTP provides native support for ACS authentication and is extensible for other authentication mechanisms.

·          Platform support

o    Windows Server 2012 RC, Windows Server 2008 R2

o    SQL Server 2012, SQL Server 2008 R2

o    Visual Studio 2012 RC

o    Office 2010

o    Support for latest LOB versions

§   Support for SQL Server 2012

§   Support for SAP 7.2

§   Support for Oracle DB 11.2

§   Support for Oracle EBS 12.1 …

·          Adapters

o    WCF-WebHttp adapter, to consume REST service or expose REST service

o    SB-Messaging, for sending/pulling data from Service Bus Queues/Topics

o    WCF-NetTCPRelay, for hosting relays or sending data to NetTCPRelay end points

o    WCF-BasicHttpRelay, for hosting relays or sending data to BasicHttpRelay end points

Better B2B with schema updates

EDI standards evolve and one of the key investments made in this new BizTalk CTP is to ensure that we support the latest B2B standards natively. This enables you to transact messages based on the latest versions of EDI protocol.

·          B2B enhancements to support latest standards natively

o    Support for X12 5040, 5050, 6020, 6030

o    Support for EDIFACT D06A, D06B, D07A, D07B, D08A, D08B, D09A, D09B, D10A, D10B

o    HL7 2.5.1

We are working on further schema updates such as HL7 2.6, these will be enabled in the BizTalk 2010 R2 Beta.

Improved Performance

The CTP provides performance improvement for certain key scenarios. In case of two way MLLP adapter scenarios where ordered delivery is set, the tests have revealed up-to 5X performance improvement so far in our environments. We have also made enhancements in our engine to improve the performance in ordered send port scenarios.

Building hybrid applications

Today, there is an increase in the adoption of hybrid application scenarios where some components of an application run in the cloud and some other components/LOB applications remain on-premise. It then becomes important to integrate between these components and leverage the richness of both worlds. In this CTP release, we enable hybrid connectivity by providing first class support for integrating with Azure Service Bus Queues/Topics/Relays. We are introducing the following adapters

·          SB-Messaging, for sending/pulling data from Service Bus Queues/Topics

·          WCF-NetTCPRelay, for hosting relays or sending data to NetTCPRelay end points

·          WCF-BasicHttpRelay, for hosting relays or sending data to BasicHttpRelay end points

Integrating with Azure Service Bus entities is now just a few configurations away!

Integration with RESTful services

One of the other prevalent trends in the market today is the proliferation of RESTful services. Almost all new services, as well a lot of services created previously, have a REST interface exposed. For example, all services in Windows Azure, data market place, Salesforce, etc. have support for REST services. With this CTP release, we are making it really easy for you to integrate RESTful services with BizTalk Server using the new WCF-WebHttp adapter. All the REST operations like GET, PUT, POST and DELETE are now supported natively. It gets better. We received community feedback during and post TechEd conference that there should be a way to expose REST services as well from BizTalk. We listened to your feedback. Along with consuming REST services we are also really excited to announce that you now have an early preview to exposing REST services from BizTalk Server as well in this CTP.

BizTalk Server in Azure Virtual Machine role

All the above enhancements are available right away for you to preview with BizTalk Server in Azure Virtual Machine role. Setting up a new BizTalk Server environment usually involves long lead time to procure hardware, get the dependencies in place, set up the server, etc. This means long lead times before you can get started with your new BizTalk Server environment. We are now leveraging the power of the cloud and the richness of Windows Azure to provide an experience where you can get up and running with your BizTalk Server environment in matter of minutes and move your existing applications to the cloud without making any changes. Furthermore, the CTP provide improvements to the BizTalk multi machine configuration and now you can do this using some basic configuration settings with the click of a button in a single machine, without having to go and configure BizTalk Server Group in each of the individual nodes.

I am still in shock over this award and are very humbled in receiving it – over 3500+ entries and our story won. Thank you Microsoft, thank you Breeze team and thank you to our great customers in which all of this would not have been possible without you.

Application Integration

Cloud Partner

So today was the day at WPC2012 to receive the award up on stage here in Toronto. Not nervous at all seeing we had a 2hr rehearsal yesterday.

What a time has this been so far at my first WPC!!! Compared to ‘techie’ conferences the dress standard is higher, different type of events and some great tech demos that are mind blowing (there was one on the keynote today where a partner had developed software around Kinect that created a 3d model of a person by moving the Kinect camera around the person, their software stitched the images together to produce a 3d model. Then the image/model was fed to a 3D printer and presto…out came the 3D person! Very cool)

So after having a photo down under the stadium we were to come out of I was ready to go….

Waiting in the tunnel:

My View from out in the middle:

Your view of the middle:

So all in all it’s been a great day, great time so far and well worth it. I was then fortunate enough to be invited to a Azure Round table discussion with Satya Nadella (President of Server and Tools) and what a lovely lovely lovely guy. He’s very switched on and a refreshing experience was had with myself and 6 others in the room.

He took away our Azure stories and feedback so let's wait and see what transpires – very inspirational stuff! Thank you Satya.

And I think I the Northern Hemisphere could be affecting me slightly…

More filming tonight and then I can relax!!

WPC Day 2.

Hi folks, you've probably heard a fair bit about the make over of Azure into 'Azure 2.0' (the SDK is still 1.7)

There's some great new tools within VS.NET to manage your environment better, even a Service Bus 'explorer' which was much needed.

I've collected a few links to start with for you guys to read up on when you've got a moment:

Azure 2.0 Details on:

• Windows Azure Powershell Extension - http://cloud.github.com/downloads/WindowsAzure/azure-sdk-tools/windowsazure-powershell.0.6.0.msi
• Command Line Tools Independent of WebPI - https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/manage/downloads/
• Virtual Machines - FAQs etc - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/jj156003
• Windows Azure Virtual Network - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/jj156007
  • Get slides from my previous presentation here - Azure Virtual Network 2.0
• Windows Azure Media Services - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/hh973629
• Create and Deploying WebSite walk through - https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/manage/services/web-sites/how-to-create-websites/
  • (like we need this one - seriously takes 3 minutes! - well done MS!)
• Azure Chalk Talk Videos - http://www.meetwindowsazure.com/DigitalChalkTalks
  • Azure Virtual Machines - Part I & Part II
  • Web Sites with ASP.NET (NB: SSL is not supported, but it will arrive when Win Server 2012)
  • Web Sites with node.js
  • Web Sites with OSS Apps & Web Matrix
  • Azure Cross Platform Command Line Tools
  • Cloud Services (aka perviously web+worker roles)
  • Apache Hadoop Based Services On Windows Azure
  • TFS Service Preview Intro
  • Azure Websites - Continuous Integration with TFS.
  • Azure SQL Databases Intro
  • Azure Storage Introduction

Hi guys, I gave an online presentation earlier this afternoon as part of Microsoft Readiness on Azure Virtual Networks.

I had the whole presentation prepared until the http://meetwindowsazure.com announcement, where I had to go to the drawing board and just share all this goodness that was pouring out in Azure V2.0.

Thanks to the healthy turnout for those online and to those who registered, then check the emails for a link shortly.

As promised here’s the slide deck guys that I used through my demos

Presentation:

Now we’re talking….

Off to do some damage…umm play.

Windows Azure SDK for .NET - June 2012 available.

http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-renames-azure-services – article talks about MS renaming services and essentially dropping the ‘Windows…’ out of it.

My experience has seen this will appeal to the non-MS types that see ‘Windows…’ as something they don’t want to go near.
I personally think it’s a good move as sure it’s Windows but the Azure Platform offers so much more…..

Here’s some of the proposed changes….

Should be an interesting month this April - http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/337290/australia_gets_azure_cloud_april/

Let’s see what the pricing will be… be great to handle alot of those data sovereignty issues.

It’s like waiting for Santa all over again

I’m finally back home after a great trip to Seattle and to see some fellow VTSPs from all over the globe. Very switched on bunch.

I was fortunate enough to be asked to present and with Scotty at the demo controls, we steered a pretty good session.

Thanks to ‘all y-all’ whom was in the session and I hope you got as much out of it as I did.

Grab the Public Version of the slide Deck – HERE.

So as promised on the advice of John Brockmeyer here’s some current limitations of the Azure ‘Integration’ Services.

Folks I’ve decided to list some useful links and tips that I’ve come across as part of our work we do. This list will grow and expand as time goes on.

• Design/Pre Work
• Azure Naming conventions for Services, Containers, Blobs, Metadata,    Naming and Registry
• Hosted Service Names are < 63 chars (previously there was a bug with service names over 24 chars and not being able to rdp, not sure if this is fixed)
• Azure Icons for use in Visio and the like - http://davidpallmann.blogspot.com.au/2011/07/windows-azure-design-patterns-part-1.html (thanks David)
• SSL Connections terminate at the webroles
  
•  Admin/Subscriptions
• Currently each Role size has a minimum of 1.6GHz CPU
• Environment variables available in Windows Azure (well done Toddy)
• Hard limit of 20 storage accounts per subscriptions max – most will show smaller e.g. 5 or 8
• Troubleshooting Best Practice for Developing Windows Azure Applications WhitePaper
• Encrypting Connection Strings - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlazure/archive/2010/09/07/10058942.aspx
  
• Roles
• Role Architecture – great explanation
• Detecting whether you’re running in STAGING or PROD – it’s all in the deployment id.
• Worker Role - WaWorkerHost.exe – is the Windows Azure Worker Process
  
• Azure Storage
• HTTP Headers to use on Blob Services - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/dd179371.aspx
• HTTP Commands on Blob Services - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/dd135731.aspx
  
• SQL Azure
• Cloud Numerics – allows analytics to be performed in Azure using extended .NET libraries - here.
• Cloud Numerics Blog
  
• Azure Service Bus
• Creating new service identities – SBAzTool in Windows Azure Service Bus v1.5 SDK
• Service Bus is implemented on top of SQL Azure.
  
• WCF
• Turn on WCF Tracing – Azure World
  
• Monitoring
• External Party - http://www.paraleap.com/AzureWatch

Folks, here’s a great page showing which Azure OS and SDK applies to what version.

One to keep handy – get prepared for a v1.7 SDK release

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ee924680.aspx

After ranting on a couple of emails today about a particular Azure issue, I’ve popped up a couple of features to vote on.

http://www.mygreatwindowsazureidea.com/forums/34192-windows-azure-feature-voting

Add yours now

With the ever changing Azure space, chances are you’ve had services working a treat and then one day just fail.

“Can’t connect…" etc.

This has happened to me twice this week – with over 14 IP Address ranges defined in the client’s firewall rules.

It appears that my service bus services were spun up or assigned another IP outside the ‘allowed range’.

It gets frustrating at times as generally the process goes as follows:

1) fill out a form to request firewall changes. Include as much detail as possible.

2) hand to the client and they delegate to their security/ops team to implement.

3) confirmation comes back.

4) start up ServiceBus service

5) could work?? may fail – due to *another* IP address allocated in Windows Azure not on the ‘allowed list of ranges’.

6) fill out another form asking for another IP Address…
…
By the 3rd iteration of this process it all is beginning to look very unprofessional. (in comparison, these guys are used to tasks such as ‘Access to SQL Server XXX – here’s the ports, there’s the machine and done’. Azure on the other hand – ‘What IP Addresses do you need? What ports?’… we need better information in this area)

Anyway – here’s the most update to date list 10/02/2011.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazureappfabricannounce/archive/2010/01/28/additional-data-centers-for-windows-azure-platform-appfabric.aspx

Scotty & myself have had this error going for over 2 weeks now, and have tried many options, settings, registry keys, reboots and so on.
(we have had this on 2 boxes now, that are *not* directly connected to the internet. They are locked down servers with only required services accessible through the firewall)

Generally you’ll encounter this error is you install Azure SDK v1.6 – there has been people that have revert back to Azure v1.5 SDK when this error has been encountered and this seems to fix most of their problems.

Here I’m using netTcpRelayBinding,BizTalk 2010 but this could just have easily have been IIS or your own app.

Finding the outbound ports and Azure datacenter address space is always the challenge. Ports 80,443,9351 and 9352 are the main ones with the remote addresses being the network segments of your Azure Datacenter.

The problem: “Oh it’s a chain validation thing, I’ll just go and turn off Certificate checking…” let me see the options.
(this is what we thought 2+ weeks ago)

Here I have a BizTalk shot of the transportClientEndpointBehaviour with Authentication node set to NoCheck and None (you would set these from code or a config file outside of biztalk)

We found that these currently have NO BEARING whatsoever…2 weeks we’ll never get back.

Don’t be drawn into here, it’s a long windy path and you’ll most likely end up short.

I am currently waiting to hear back from the folks on the product team to see what the answer is on this – BUT for now as a workaround we sat down with a network sniffer to see the characteristics.

Work around:

1. Add some Host Entries

2. Create a dummy site so the checker is fooled into grabbing local CRLs.

Add these Entries to your HOSTs file.

127.0.0.1    www.public-trust.com
127.0.0.1    mscrl.microsoft.com
127.0.0.1    crl.microsoft.com
127.0.0.1    corppki

Download and extract these directories to your DEFAULT WEB SITE (i.e. the one that answers to http://127.0.0.1/…..)
This is usually under C:\inetpub\wwwroot (even if you have sharepoint installed)




-------------------- The nasty error -------------------

The Messaging Engine failed to add a receive location "<receive location>" with URL "sb://<rec url>" to the adapter "WCF-Custom". Reason: "System.ServiceModel.Security.SecurityNegotiationException: The X.509 certificate CN=servicebus.windows.net chain building failed. The certificate that was used has a trust chain that cannot be verified. Replace the certificate or change the certificateValidationMode. The revocation function was unable to check revocation because the revocation server was offline.
---> System.IdentityModel.Tokens.SecurityTokenValidationException: The X.509 certificate CN=servicebus.windows.net chain building failed. The certificate that was used has a trust chain that cannot be verified. Replace the certificate or change the certificateValidationMode. The revocation function was unable to check revocation because the revocation server was offline.

   at Microsoft.ServiceBus.Channels.Security.RetriableCertificateValidator.Validate(X509Certificate2 certificate)
   at System.IdentityModel.Selectors.X509SecurityTokenAuthenticator.ValidateTokenCore(SecurityToken token)
   at System.IdentityModel.Selectors.SecurityTokenAuthenticator.ValidateToken(SecurityToken token)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.SslStreamSecurityUpgradeInitiator.ValidateRemoteCertificate(Object sender, X509Certificate certificate, X509Chain chain, SslPolicyErrors sslPolicyErrors)
   at System.Net.Security.SecureChannel.VerifyRemoteCertificate(RemoteCertValidationCallback remoteCertValidationCallback)
   at System.Net.Security.SslState.CompleteHandshake()
   at System.Net.Security.SslState.CheckCompletionBeforeNextReceive(ProtocolToken message, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
   at System.Net.Security.SslState.StartSendBlob(Byte[] incoming, Int32 count, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
   at System.Net.Security.SslState.ProcessReceivedBlob(Byte[] buffer, Int32 count, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
   at System.Net.Security.SslState.StartReceiveBlob(Byte[] buffer, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
   at System.Net.Security.SslState.StartSendBlob(Byte[] incoming, Int32 count, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
   at System.Net.Security.SslState.ProcessReceivedBlob(Byte[] buffer, Int32 count, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
   at System.Net.Security.SslState.StartReceiveBlob(Byte[] buffer, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
   at System.Net.Security.SslState.StartSendBlob(Byte[] incoming, Int32 count, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
   at System.Net.Security.SslState.ProcessReceivedBlob(Byte[] buffer, Int32 count, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
   at System.Net.Security.SslState.StartReceiveBlob(Byte[] buffer, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
   at System.Net.Security.SslState.StartSendBlob(Byte[] incoming, Int32 count, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
   at System.Net.Security.SslState.ForceAuthentication(Boolean receiveFirst, Byte[] buffer, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
   at System.Net.Security.SslState.ProcessAuthentication(LazyAsyncResult lazyResult)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.SslStreamSecurityUpgradeInitiator.OnInitiateUpgrade(Stream stream, SecurityMessageProperty& remoteSecurity)
   --- End of inner exception stack trace ---
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.SslStreamSecurityUpgradeInitiator.OnInitiateUpgrade(Stream stream, SecurityMessageProperty& remoteSecurity)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.StreamSecurityUpgradeInitiatorBase.InitiateUpgrade(Stream stream)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ConnectionUpgradeHelper.InitiateUpgrade(StreamUpgradeInitiator upgradeInitiator, IConnection& connection, ClientFramingDecoder decoder, IDefaultCommunicationTimeouts defaultTimeouts, TimeoutHelper& timeoutHelper)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ClientFramingDuplexSessionChannel.SendPreamble(IConnection connection, ArraySegment`1 preamble, TimeoutHelper& timeoutHelper)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ClientFramingDuplexSessionChannel.DuplexConnectionPoolHelper.AcceptPooledConnection(IConnection connection, TimeoutHelper& timeoutHelper)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ConnectionPoolHelper.EstablishConnection(TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ClientFramingDuplexSessionChannel.OnOpen(TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open(TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.ServiceBus.RelayedOnewayTcpClient.RelayedOnewayChannel.Open(TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.ServiceBus.RelayedOnewayTcpClient.GetChannel(Uri via, TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.ServiceBus.RelayedOnewayTcpClient.ConnectRequestReplyContext.Send(Message message, TimeSpan timeout, IDuplexChannel& channel)
   at Microsoft.ServiceBus.RelayedOnewayTcpListener.RelayedOnewayTcpListenerClient.Connect(TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.ServiceBus.RelayedOnewayTcpClient.EnsureConnected(TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.ServiceBus.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open(TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.ServiceBus.Channels.RefcountedCommunicationObject.Open(TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.ServiceBus.RelayedOnewayChannelListener.OnOpen(TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.ServiceBus.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open(TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ChannelDispatcher.OnOpen(TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open(TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostBase.OnOpen(TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open(TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.ServiceBus.SocketConnectionTransportManager.OnOpen(TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.ServiceBus.Channels.TransportManager.Open(TimeSpan timeout, TransportChannelListener channelListener)
   at Microsoft.ServiceBus.Channels.TransportManagerContainer.Open(TimeSpan timeout, SelectTransportManagersCallback selectTransportManagerCallback)
   at Microsoft.ServiceBus.SocketConnectionChannelListener`2.OnOpen(TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.ServiceBus.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open(TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ChannelDispatcher.OnOpen(TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open(TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostBase.OnOpen(TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open(TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.BizTalk.Adapter.Wcf.Runtime.WcfReceiveEndpoint.Enable()
   at Microsoft.BizTalk.Adapter.Wcf.Runtime.WcfReceiveEndpoint..ctor(BizTalkEndpointContext endpointContext, IBTTransportProxy transportProxy, ControlledTermination control)
   at Microsoft.BizTalk.Adapter.Wcf.Runtime.WcfReceiver`2.AddReceiveEndpoint(String url, IPropertyBag adapterConfig, IPropertyBag bizTalkConfig)".

Windows Azure cannot perform a VIP swap between deployments that have a different number of endpoints.

Which begs the question – what happens as part of an upgrade if you add-endpoints???

So clearly the VIP Swap operation is not a simple process.

Now off to delete some production instances so I can get the changes through…

Recently there’s been an update to the ‘on-premise’ AppFabric for Windows Server.

Grab the update here - http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27115 (runs on win7, 2008, 2008R2)

What’s new

I’m in the process of updating my components, but the majority of updates seems to be around caching and performance.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh351389.aspx

Just came across this one – Microsoft of recently released the Storage Client source code.

Could come in handy!

https://github.com/WindowsAzure/azure-sdk-for-net

Cheers,

Mick.

Hi folks, we’ve set a cracking pace into 2012 and are in need of an additional team member.

If you love technology, we love technology and I’d love to hear from you to be part of my team.

You will be stimulated, constantly thinking and challenged – azure, integration, biztlak, sql, windows phone 7 and many other technology areas you’ll be exposed to. Integration is all about the glue we use to achieve the result.

If you’re keen for a chat check out the blurb - http://www.breeze.net/about/jobs.aspx

Cheers,

Mick.

Thought I’d start off the year with a bang around Azure and what’s been happening in the land of Integration.

So I contacted a Conor Brady to see what was cooking.

The user group is meeting next Thursday 19th Jan 2012.

Here’s the blurb…..

-----------------------------------------

'Integration using Windows Azure Application Integration Services'

Local Integration & Training guru Mick Badran CTO at Breeze Training & Consulting and veteran BizTalk Server MVP will present on 'Integration using Windows Azure Application Integration Services'

The presentation will show how to use Microsoft Windows Azure to be the cornerstone of your integration strategy, whether it’s a small piece or larger deployment. Find out what new tools you can use to extend your existing toolbox and the best way to use them.

This session will cover:

- Strategies on complementing your on-premise <-> cloud integration and what tool to use when.

- High availability solutions with a demo of fault tolerance.

- Casting an eye what’s around the corner to new features coming out of Azure Labs such as EAI, EAI Bridges, EDI – azure style and new XML over HTTP endpoints.

------------------------------------------

Here’s the link to REGISTER - http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2739308345

See you there!

Mick.

The Azure team has been busy and what a nice email for a Friday.

So that means no inbound charges (ServiceBus could be the exception) and they’ve just dropped the outbound charges.

Bewdy!

----- snip -----

Hi folks, from a previous set of posts, we’ve been running a series of Azure Training Sessions.

Here’s the online links to the recordings that many of you have asked me about. Enjoy.

The links below should take you to the landing page, from the click on the View Online button.

Hi folks we’re delivering Azure sessions on behalf of Microsoft over the next coming weeks…

Here’s the official timetable, come along they’re free for you!!
(All times are in Australian Eastern Standard Time)

A recent project my team has worked hard on has come to fruition . This was a challenging project in these key areas:

• High volume – benchmarks of 20000 concurrent requests/sec through the system.
• Low latency – time is critical as price and market changes going through.
• Scalable – different data centers, different regions in the world.

Seemed like a great challenge…. and we built some great componentry through it, utilising the best of many worlds.

Centrebet have released a press release about their Microsoft Azure Cloud, Application Integration solution. This is a tremendous success story for such a well-known Australian brand.

Centrebet deploys app integration platform

http://www.newsmaker.com.au/news/11380

Hi folks, I’m starting off a series Azure training sessions for Microsoft via Live Meeting – yesterday Scotty & I delivered a great presentation with all the main pillars on show.

This session is more about what is inside the Azure ‘Fabric’ and how is this space managed.

In the coming sessions we will delve into creating/configuring applications, deployments etc.

For now – here is the fundamental ‘what’s under the hood’

(Recording will be made available shortly)

You can download from here - http://bit.ly/qEiqLC (UPDATED LINK: Inside Windows Azure, the Cloud Operating System - Mick Badran thanks Mikael.)

We had an action packed 2 days hammering ‘Azurey’ (Azure) discovering all the concepts and most importantly I was trying to get the Why point across.

Why??

Why should we use Azure? When should we use it? Do I *need* to use it? Where can it help me for little effort… etc.. etc..

The students walked out with a trial Azure account which enabled them to continue working on their environment as and when they could.

We had some great discussions and some good fun was had by all.

I thought I would make my slides available – http://bit.ly/oQ0Zcv UPDATED - (case sensitive) – ENJOY!

What a place…the Gold Coast!!!

Any chance to get back there… and this year is looking to be a fantastic 2 day pre-conference training together.

In the training there’ll be no MS speak!! I promise “We’re all in…” …(washing mouth out with soap).

First things first – everyone you speak to will pronounce ‘Azure’ differently (I once had 3 martial arts instructors all speak their own flavour of ‘Korean’ to me).
You’ll get:
1) ‘Aaaaaazzzzre’
2) ‘Azzzz-cloud’

Now here in Australia we’re standardising (our English-Australian) to Azurey!

Azurey is our official term, which fits alongside ‘Timmy’, ‘Barbie’ and ‘Daveo’… but not Shazza.

What I want to explore with you are all the different options and components that you could utilise. Having been through several cloud based solutions and building a cloud based solution over the last 2 years.

So we can use a combination of the available technologies to alleviate some of the in-house problems (e.g. firewall settings, h/w order and provisioning, server space) while still maintaining *very* good ownership over it.

One thing is clear right now – with this new landscape the focus has returned to the Developer to be mindful of what resources they use and HOW they use them.

The price of your solution starts right now from the ground up with the Developer!
(Previously we’ve had limitless memory, disk, cpu, connections, sockets, select * from customers… – developers rarely care)

So the cost model – What do you get charged for?
(short answer – nearly everything)

If you can design a solution with:
1) no use for SQL Azure –as it currently costs a bomb to host a DB.
You could use – SQLCE locally or Azure Storage (Table, Queue, blob) which is cheap as chips.

2) limit your Service Bus Connections – both client and server count as a connection. The connections are averaged out over a day/month and are sampled every 5 mins, but you certainly don’t want to rack up 100s of connections. A cheaper alternative is to expose a WCF Endpoint (via a worker role) and have a process communicate with the Servicebus endpoint handling the requests. This counts for 2 connections (1 client, 1 server) and is well within the 5 pack.

3) Only data out is charged – not in.

4) Compute VM sizes limit bandwith – across all your compute VMs e.g. small, there is bandwidth limitations that is enforced whether you have 1 or 10 VMs. Be mindful of that.

5) We can ‘monitor’ our cloud machines and even get back perf counters on each – just to give you that feel good feeling.

Well anyway I must go tweak some F# (best thing I’ve seen in a long while…another story)

Here’s the official story @ TechEd – hope to see you there folks!

http://australia.msteched.com/preconferencetraining

Official Blurb!

How “the Cloud” can help you integrate – Microsoft for Developers

With the excitement of technology moving towards “the Cloud” come and learn exactly what this means to your business and how your development projects can leverage the Windows Azure Platform without re-architecting your environment. Should you invest in private cloud, move your application to the public cloud, choose a hybrid approach or keep the application on-premise?

This two-day development workshop led by renowned Integration Experts provides delegates with an early opportunity to gain insight and hands-on experience with the Windows Azure Platform including Windows Azure AppFabric, SQL Azure, Windows Server AppFabric and BizTalk AppFabric Connect.

This developer workshop focuses on maximising your existing integration technology investment for an on-premise solution, including architectural design considerations, real world tips and techniques and hands-on experience with using the integration tools available today.

Delivered through workshop style presentations and hands-on lab exercises, this technology focused pre conference training will assist with designing and developing your company roadmap to the Cloud.

Well as TechEd 2010 draws to a close this year in Australia, I had a great time getting away from it all and certainly experiencing a couple of firsts. For me this was one of the better TechEd’s I had been to – the sessions were a little light on, but the labs + exams made up for that big time.

So Scotty and I developed an Integration Pre Conference Training Session aimed at working out which MS Integration technology to run where – unscrambling the mess. We got a great turn out for the training in terms of numbers – we beat SharePoint 2010 dev + admin!!! :)

For all of you whom I had the pleasure of training this week – well done! I hope you enjoyed it and it was great sharing that time with you. The sun, sand, BizTalk and Azure…what could be better?? :)

As promised – here are the slides from those two days.

Keep smiling,
Mick.

Keeping the raging iCant do a thing; iCant fwd a txt msg or voice mail iPhone debate… the new Windows Phone 7 Tools are in here all its Silverlight glory.

Imagine being able to play a FLASH movie on the phone! shock horror.

So grab the next big thing and look out phone world….the way phones were meant to be ;)

Windows Phone Developer Tools

Folks I recently came across this site on codeplex - http://btsazureadapters.codeplex.com

Where a hard working Danny(not sure of further details) has created a send and receive adapter for the cloud.

The adapter surface and publish the required information into the cloud so for e.g. your endpoints show up publically in the .NET Servicebus domain – we can do this through the apis, but it’s nice to have them all wrapped up.

There’s even some great piccys as well (just over look the ‘Microsoft Confidential’ at the bottom :-| - I did ping him over this.)

The adapters are WCF based adapters, meaning they will run in or outside of BizTalk using the .NET LOB Adapter SDK Framework.

As a Plan B to this – you can always use a Custom WCF Adapter with the basicHttpRelayBinding or netTcpRelayBinding to punch through to the cloud.

I reckon this will be a very exciting area going forward…keep your eyes peeled.

Go and grab the bits and start playing… :)

Hi guys,

If you're looking to get into how to host WCF Services on Azure, showing some cool graphics, then these samples are for you.

Silverlight v3.0 (beta), and important samples showing how to take your existing WCF Services and hosting/housing them in Auze (there's a few gotchas - and these samples have work arounds :) )

Grab them here -

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/wcfazure