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….

Prior Service Name	New Service Name
Windows Azure Compute	Cloud Services
Windows Azure Platform - All Services	All Services
Windows Azure CDN	CDN
Windows Azure Storage	Storage
Windows Azure Traffic Manager	Traffic Manager
Windows Azure Virtual Network	Virtual Network
AppFabric Cache	Cache
AppFabric Service Bus	Service Bus
AppFabric Access Control	Access Control
SQL Azure	SQL Database
SQL Azure Reporting Service	SQL Reporting

Folks, this is Scotty's 2nd presentation this week where he shares is love, scripts and years of experience in Managing Azure Applications (Breeze started back in early 2008).

Tune into this free event and to hear & see what Scotty has on offer.

Register

LIVE Meeting: Managing Windows Azure Applications

Event ID: 1032500972

Language(s):  English.

Product(s):  Microsoft BizTalk Server and Windows Azure.

So you just made your first Windows Azure deployment. Now what? Is it healthy? How many instances do you need? What will my bill be? When do I need to scale up? Was that a DoS attack? Will auto-patching break me? Getting an application into Windows Azure is the first step, now you have to run the application for the next three years. Come to this session and see how to manage and operate your Windows Azure applications.

Register

Hi folks,

Scotty (aka Sco the Stig) Scovell is presenting this week on

Ten Must-Have Tools for Windows Azure as part of Microsoft Readiness.

We'd love to see you there - free event

LIVE Meeting: Ten Must-Have Tools for Windows Azure

Event ID: 1032500970

Language(s):  English.

Product(s):  Microsoft BizTalk Server and Windows Azure.

Any platform, by its own nature, creates an ecosystem for third-party tools and helpers. Windows Azure is no different. In this session we look at a variety of the third-party tools available in the Windows Azure ecosystem. Included are tools for both developers and IT professionals. We look at tools that will help manage storage and resources, migration, scaling, diagnostics and software components that will help you build cloud applications.

Registration

Local MS Developer pillar Andrew Coates spilled the beans on this next new language to come out of MS Research.

Db.NET or ‘D flat’ – F#, C# and the Cinderella of the 3 sisters ‘VB.NET’
(Last year I was introduced to F# over a 5 month project and absolutely loved the simplicity and freshness of it – async was simple, tasks, functions and code that would normally take 400 lines in C#, we were able to do in 100 in F#)

It promises:

- speed

- optimisation (I wonder if it’ll be smart enough to run tasks on different CPU cores?)

There is a focus on Orchestration – data Orchestration found here http://thenextlanguage.net/a-focus-on-orchestration/

Where it talks about “An example of the close collaboration between the product team and the company’s research arm is the use of Schenkerian Analysis in the compiler to maximize orchestration between sections of the code.”

Oooh I thought – let’s check out what this is Schenkerian Analysis and a quick check of Wikipedia reveals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenkerian_analysis

“Schenkerian analysis is a method of musical analysis of tonal music based on the theories of Heinrich Schenker. The goal of a Schenkerian analysis is to interpret the underlying structure of a tonal work. The theory's basic tenets can be viewed as a way of defining tonality in music. A Schenkerian analysis of a passage of music shows hierarchical relationships among its pitches, and draws conclusions about the structure of the passage from this hierarchy. The analysis is demonstrated through reductions of the music, using a specialized symbolic form of musical notation that Schenker devised to demonstrate various prolongational techniques. The concept of tonal prolongation, in which certain pitches determine the goal of other, subordinate pitches, is a cornerstone of the pitch hierarchy that Schenkerian analysis involves itself with.”

So tones, pitches and music is where this algorithm has its roots…I can see how you could take this analysis when applied to the frequency of music and apply it to the frequency of code items; data being hit etc.

I’ll crack open this VS.2011 extension and see what transpires…

Grab the TOOLS here - http://thenextlanguage.net/tools/

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

Pretty quick and Win8 is looking pretty slick.

It found all my drivers and in about 15 mins I was up and running.

Let’s see how we go over the next couple of weeks

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.

Easy but effective

<script type='text/javascript'>
var msg = "your big title goes here…";
msg = " ..... " + msg;pos = 0;
function scrollTitle() {
document.title = msg.substring(pos, msg.length) + msg.substring(0, pos); pos++;
if (pos > msg.length) pos = 0
window.setTimeout("scrollTitle()",300);
}
scrollTitle();
</script>

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

While currently setting up a BizTalk 2010 developer machine, I’ve got to do a couple of others to do also for the team.

I figured ‘we surely can copy/clone this’ – here’s a handy link for SysPrep and we use files from the BizTalk SDK to work the magic.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee358636.aspx

Looking forward to it.

Enjoy.

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

Hey guys,

 

Breeze is looking for some keen .NET Developers who have some SharePoint (2007/2010) experience and would like to accelerate their development accessing the latest technologies.

If that sounds like you please visit www.breeze.net/about/jobs.aspx, we’d love to hear from you.

Keep smiling,

Mick.

You know it’s a Friday when…who can spot the ‘yes/no/cancel’ buttons?

Hi folks, I hope 2012 has been a great start for you as well.

Currently at Breeze I’m after 2 more BizTalk/SharePoint/.NET junior Developers to join a great team.

If you love technology and want to get your hands dirty then we should chat – ideally you’ve got sound .NET development experience and exposure to SharePoint and BizTalk.

We’re also a training company, so we will skill you up in required areas – the thing I’m looking for is a great attitude. The rest can be learnt…

If you want to get into the Software/Systems integrations space and start solving some great puzzles then let’s hear from you.

Here’s the Job Details.

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)".

Well folks it’s now 2 days after the swim and I’m beginning to feel back to normal.
(I have 2 more swims to go, but this was the big one)

Firstly I’d like to thank all of you whom sponsored me to face the sharks in

‘Jacques Cousteau’ style.

 

There’s a great video that does a good job of covering the race and the beautiful day we had.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?hl=en&v=YXk7NXysslA&gl=US

The Race
- I got there with a bit of time to spare grabbed my PINK cap + ankle bracelet (which had to be worn on the LEFT ankle, as sharks eat only right ones )
- The race kicked off at 10am with staggered starts and as it turned out my group 40-49yr males started last!
- I got pretty nervous before the start…I’d kill for a cocktail out the back.
- As the other groups were hitting the water, there were 16yr olds that I reckon would be done before I got out past the break.
- Livesavers were on hand, helicopters overhead and I stuck to my strategy ‘keep at least one other person between you and the ocean’.
- We hit the water and had about 400m around the first marker, and the 40-49s were up for some serious competition.
Elbows, knees, goggles off and I even had someone pull my foot. Anyone would think we’re doing Olympic time trials!!! And this is in the first 200m.
- The swell was up around the point and there was a lot of ups and downs, downs and ups with some guys seeking help from nausea.
- I swam close as I could to the rocks with the pack a good 100m to my left out to sea. I did think ‘Micks' taken the wrong track here’
- What seemed like forever around that headland and surf was up there, I finally rounded the point into Whale beach. (the video has a great shot of this spot)
- Headed for the last marker that I could see way down the other end of the beach.
- Turned and headed towards the only break I could see….caught a wave in – which made it all worth while and came in at 50mins (some people were around 25mins!)
- As I emerged out of the water about to kiss the sand like the pope, my family was literally 1m away right in front!!! Amazing!

Overall
It was a great experience with even an 82yr old man doing the swim – puts me in my place.

Thanks all for the support and 2 more to go for me.

Cheers,

Mick.

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

 

Read-Through/Write-Behind	This allows a backend provider to be used on the cache servers to assist with retrieving and storing data to a backend, such as a database. Read-through enables the cache to "read-through" to a backend in the context of a Get request. Write-behind enables updates to cached data to be saved asynchronously to the backend. For more information, see Creating a Read-Through / Write-Behind Provider (AppFabric 1.1 Caching).
Graceful Shutdown	This is useful for moving data from a single cache hosts to rest of the servers in the cache cluster before shutting down the cache host for maintenance. This helps to prevent unexpected loss of cached data in a running cache cluster. This can be accomplished with the Graceful parameter of the Stop-CacheHost Windows PowerShell command.
Domain Accounts	In addition to running the AppFabric Caching Service with the NETWORK SERVICE account, you can now run the service as a domain account. For more information, see Change the Caching Service Account (AppFabric 1.1 Caching).
New ASP.NET Session State and Output Caching Provider	New ASP.NET session state and output caching providers are available. The new session state provider has support for the lazy-loading of individual session state items using AppFabric Caching as a backing store. This makes sites that have a mix of small and large session state data more efficient, because pages that don't need large session state items won't incur the cost of sending this data over the network. For more information, see Using the ASP.NET 4 Caching Providers for AppFabric 1.1.
Compression	You can now enable compression for cache clients. For more information, see Application Configuration Settings (AppFabric 1.1 Caching).
Multiple Cache Client Application Configuration Sections	A new dataCacheClients section is available that allows you to specify multiple named dataCacheClient sections in an application configuration file. You can then programmatically specify which group of cache client settings to use at runtime. For more information, see Application Configuration Settings (AppFabric 1.1 Caching).

Hi folks, welcome to Monday…so I thought.

Here I was registering a message inspector which should take 5 mins tops.

Find the right config, make sure the .NET full assembly name is cool and away we go.

I wanted to use this guy from my custom WCF Adapter within BizTalk – so I needed my new message inspector to be seen by BizTalk.

So I used:

<add name="wcfMsgPropPromoter" type="Breeze.WCF.Extensions.BreezeMessagePromoteBehaviour,Breeze.WCF.Extensions,Version=1.0.0.0,Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=c2c8c7e827e9dd6a"/>

and added this guy to the <behaviorExtensions> element in the Machine.Config for .NET 4.0 x64/.NET 4.0 (& .NET 2.0 for good measure)

As if a scene from SpongeBob,… 3 hours later….

I had triple check GACs, caches, full assembly names etc…Scotty popped his head around and said “Oh yeah I had this one ages ago you need to use this…”

<add name="wcfMsgPropPromoter" type="Breeze.WCF.Extensions.BreezeMessagePromoteBehaviour, Breeze.WCF.Extensions, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=c2c8c7e827e9dd6a"/>

Can you spot the difference?

SPACES!!!!

Interestingly enough – this work is part of a .NET plugin I wrote for IIS 7.5 and to register the plugin you use “Breeze.WCF.Extensions.BreezeMessagePromoteBehaviour,Breeze.WCF.Extensions,Version=1.0.0.0,Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=c2c8c7e827e9dd6a"

NO SPACES!

My head hurts for a Monday…

Hopefully you reclaim the hours I’ve lost here.

Mick.

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.

Well folks – the appfabric labs have come out with a real gem recently.

In CTP we have:

• EDI + EAI processing
• AS2 http/s endpoints
• ‘Bridges’
• Transforms

and of course the latest version of

• ServcieBus, Queues and Topics.

To get the real benefit from this ‘sneak peek’ there’s a bit of setup required. To those familiar with BizTalk there’s a few EDI screens declaring parties/partners and agreements you’ll have seen before.

To get cracking:

1. Update your local bits with the latest and greatest - Installing the Windows Azure Service Bus EAI and EDI Labs - December 2011
   Part of this install is to install the Service Bus Connect component, which installs the BizTalk 2010 LOB Adapter pack.
   
   
   So this is really quite interesting. As the WCF LOB Adapter SDK provides a framework for developers to build out ‘adapters’ to connect systems/endpoints through a sync/async messaging pattern.
   
   The BizTalk Adapter Pack 2010 is the BizTalk Team set of adapters built on top of the WCF Adapter Framework. The BizTalk Adapter pack includes:
   - SQL Server Adapter. Hi performance sql work, notifications, async reads, writes etc.
   - SAP Adapter – uses the SAP Client APIs (under the hood) to talk directly to SAP. Very powerful
   - SIEBEL Adapter
   - Oracle DB Adapter
   - Oracle ES Adapter
   
   These adapters are exposed as ‘WCF Bindings’ with BizTalk or a small amount of code, allows you to expose these adapters as callable WCF Services.
   
   What does this mean in our case here?
   If you think about your on-premise Oracle system, we now have a local means of accessing Oracle and we can then push the message processing (e.g. a new order arrived) into our ‘cloud’ bridge where we have the immediate benefit of HA + Scale. Do some work there, and spit the result out any which way you want. Maybe back down to on-premise, or in a Queue or to Azure Storage.
   
   
2. Sign up to AppFabricLabs – http://portal.appfabriclabs.com and provision your ‘servicebus’ service.
   This provides your EDI/EAI relay endpoints and also provides a way for you to listen/send requests to/from the cloud.
   
3. Here I have used mickservices as my ServiceBus namespace.
   
   (I created a Queue and a couple of Topics for later use – not really needed here)
   Note: grab your HIDDEN KEY details from here – owner + <key#>
   
4. From within the Portal Create a Queue called samples/gettingstarted/queueorders
   
   
   
5. Register at the EDI Portal – http://edi.appfabriclabs.com
   Even though this says ‘EDI’ think of it as your sandpit. It’s where all your ‘widgets’ live that are to run in Azure Integration Services.
   
   The registration form had me stumped for a little bit. Here’s the details that work.
   
   
   
   Notice my servicebus namespace – just the first word. I previously had the whole thing, then variations of it.
   Issuer Name: owner
   Issuer secret: <the hidden key from above>
   
   Click save/register and you should be good here.
   
6. Once this is done – click on Settings –> AS2 and Enable AS2 message processing (which is EDI/HTTP – you might be lucky enough to get the msgs as XML, but most times no). This will create some endpoints for you b2bgateway… style endpoints.
   
   
   
7. At this stage, have a look under Resources and you’ll notice that it’s empty. But…they have Schemas, Transforms and Certificates. We’ll come back to that later.
   
8. Let’s head to Visual Studio 2010 with the updates installed and open up the Sample Order Processing project.
   
   I installed my samples under c:\samples
   
   
   If all opens well you should see:
   
   
   Note: there’s a couple of new items here: (expand out artifacts)
   *.bcs – Bridge. There’s a MSDN Article describing these – I was like ‘what???’. Basically these are a ‘processing pipe’ of which various operations can be performed on a message in stages. These stages are ‘atomic’ and they also have ‘conditions’ as to whether they *need* to be applied to the said message. So a bridge could take a message, convert it to XML and broadcast the message out to a Topic.
   
   Opening up the designer – it gets pretty cool I must say!!!
   
   
   Note the ‘operations’ on the LHS. I must have a play with these guys  
   Another thought – how extensible is this? I’d bet we could write our own widgets to throw on the design surface as well.
   
   By double clicking on the BridgeOrders component, you can see the designer surface come up with the ‘stage processing’.
   
   
   
   Here you can see the ‘bridge’ (I wonder if that term will last till the release) will accept only 2 types of message schemas – PO1 + PO2. Maps them out to a more generic PO format.
   The map – XMLTransform from my initial testing only applies one map, the first one that matches the source schema (this is the same as BizTalk).
   
   Close the bridge view down and leave the BridgeConfiguration open.
   
9. Click anywhere on the white surface of the BridgeConfiguration and set your Service Namespace property from the Properties window (this guy was hard to find!!)
   Put <your service namespace> you created originally.
   
   
10. Save and click Deploy and a Deployment window comes up – put your details in from above.
    
    
    After deployment completes, keep an eye on the Output window as this has all the URLs you’ll need for the next step. In particular the BridgeOrders.
    
    Feel free to go back to your Azure Portal –> Resources and see your deployed bits in there, Schemas, Transforms etc.
    
    
11. Running what you’ve built – sending a message to the ‘bridge’ (here I’ve borrowed info from the ‘Readme.html’ in the sample project folder)
    We don’t need to setup the whole EDI Trading partner piece. – just send messages to a restful endpoint – aka the bridge.
    
1. From the samples folder locate the Tools\MessageSender project. (you may have to build it in VS.NET first)
2. from a command prompt run messagesender.exe
   
   
   In my case it looks like this:
   
   
   
   Took me a little to get this originally, make sure all your VS.NET stuff is deployed properly.
   
   So effectively we have sent PO1.xml to our ‘Bridge’ and it’s been accepted, validated and transformed into ‘something else’ and popped onto a Queue called Samples/gettingstarted/QueueOrders.
   
   We will now get the message Reader to Read it.
   
12. From under the Samples\Tools folder locate the MessageReceiver project and build if required.
13. From a command prompt at that location, run the following to Listen to the queue
    
    

Wrapping up -

Here is obviously a quick walk through of what’s possible, performance, scale and throughput are other measures that we haven’t got here – given it’s CTP/Labs we’re not quite ready for that conversation.

BizTalk adapter pack will expose out for e.g. your SAP system to a wider audience and imagine having restful WCF services to call that provide you customer data in the format you want…or better still…deliver it straight to you!
(currently in BTS 2010, the adapter pack is licensed separately, it’s part of BTS standard or enterprise. BTS2009 it *was* licensed separately for RRP $5K. Maybe we’ll see this as a separate component again.)
Or you could do like the SharePoint team and write a brand new WCF Adapter (‘connector’ in their terms) – ‘Duet’ and spend 18 months doing so.

Some things I’d like to see here is a Rules Processor or Engine – being a long long BizTalk fan, the rules engine is a massive strength of any loosely coupled solution. The majority of BizTalk solutions I come across don’t employ any rules engines…or better still, Windows Workflow 2,3+ (but not 4 or 4.5) has a rules ‘executor’ which is very powerful in it’s own right. Who’s heard or used the Policy shape?

Given that this is a sneak peak at what is on the horizon, this is definitely a space not to miss.

Get those trial accounts going and enjoy!

In particular I’d like to call out Rick’s Article (well done Rick!) for a great read on this space also.

Mick.

Hi folks, as you may/may not have been aware these are the core corner stone technologies of the MS Integration Stack.

The teams have been busily plugging away and coming up with the new versions – 4.5 corresponding to .NET 4.5 framework.

Here’s some links that describe what’s new from MS Santa & his elves:

1. What's New in Windows Communication Foundation 4.5
1. New Items I found of note are:
• New Service Transport Default values – keep an eye on these.
• Improvements from VS.NET 2011 – validation , better intellisence support.
• Streaming improved – true async (yay!)
• WebSocket support – through NetHttp(s)Binding
• Single WSDL file generation with ‘?singleWSDL’ (which is pretty handy)
• Self hosted + II hosted allow you to get to ServiceHost from code for dynamic configuration.
• Binary Encoder supports compression!! – this is generally gzip compression.
• My personal favourite – UDP support
  
2. What's New in Windows Workflow Foundation in .NET 4.5
1. New Items of note are:
• New Activites – NoPersistScope (possible previously but we needed to write code)
• WF Designer improvements – several here, but the ‘Outline view’ looks to be easier to work with.
• C# Expressions – where’s the F# ones ??
• Designer Annotations – add your own comments to keep control of the jungle that is built.
• WF Versioning – use WorkflowIdentity & DefinitionIdentity to define the version. WorkflowServiceHost supports multiple versions of the same WF. All pretty cool.
• WF Designers can still be rehosted – I’ve used that many a place.
• Contract First Development – ticks the boxes.
  
2. WF Rules – still didn’t make the cut. There is a sample for WF4 using a custom Activity calling back to WF 3.5 Policy4 it’s called. It uses ‘interop’ back to WF3.5 and is found here - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd797584(v=VS.100).aspx
1. Will have to check out perf in this new land on these rules.
   
3. Async CTP – while this didn’t make the ‘whats new’ list, it certainly does deserve a mention here.
   Over the last year I’ve built some pretty serious F# projects, and F# has the async support through and through the language. After over coming the challenge of learning it, the Async functionality is absolutely brilliant!!! F# does a great job in being able to turn a non-async chunk of code/method/class into an async one with by using the keyword async and a !. It’s straight forward from that aspect.
   
   It’s great to see the C# & VB.NETs being able to use the same fundamentals (albeit not as slick IMO ). – see a previous POST - http://blogs.breezetraining.com.au/mickb/2011/04/26/EasierAsyncProgrammingComingToCVBSoon.aspx
   
   As developers we sit here and say – what do I need this for? My code runs fine as it….and yes for the most part of what we do on our machine it does. This technology really comes into it’s own when you want consistent throughput from a solution with 1 person or 10000 concurrent people using it. That’s the difference.
   
   To use it:
1. Get VSNET 2011 (as it requires a new compiler)
2. Use ASYNC CTP (refresh3) with VSNET2010 SP1
   
4. Check it out from here - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/gg316360

Did this just sneak up on you too???

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/biztalk_server_team_blog/archive/2011/12/08/biztalk-server-2010-r2.aspx

Well folks it’s week 5 of a 12 week program where the great Can Too swim coaches train you and put you through a challenge.

I signed up for a ‘2.5km’ ocean swim – Palm beach to whale beach. Which for me is well off my map and out of my comfort zone – so it’s a challenge for me mentally and physically, but really only a small price to pay for the challenges that cancer sufferers.

My endeavor is raise money for cancer research – you have the chance to make a tax deductible donation through my page - http://cantoosydneyswimprogram.gofundraise.com.au/page/Mick_Badran
(my target is $1250 in total)

My pledge is that I will swim 4 times a week, rain hail or shine (just so I don’t drown in this swim) – feel free to come and join me if you’re in the area. Early week – at Wileys Baths (near Coogee), later in the week Clovelly laps.

So what can I offer you as incentive – as an MVP each year I get a MSDN Subscription “Microsoft Visual Studio Ultimate with MSDN” (many thanks Microsoft).
Check out the versions - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/subscriptionschart.aspx

To whomever donates the most I will give you this! I’d also really like to put this subscription to good use.

You maybe starting out, starting up, or whatever – you will have all MS Products at your development disposal.

I challenge you for cancer research, good luck and Merry Christmas!!!

Important: You can contact me on twitter on - @mickba

So your SQL 2012 is US$6.8K/core which roughly equates to 4 cores = a SQL 2008 Ent license.

How many DB servers have 4 cores? I wonder if there’s a way now to limit the cores then that SQL 2012 will use on for e.g. an 8 or 12 core machine.

Will this change by RTM?? I wonder.

(on a side note – way back when ‘hyper threading’ originally came out, when 1 CPU looked liked ‘2’ to the O/S, MS wanted to license per visible CPU. Intel & AMD at the time said if you do that we’ll take the feature out…nowadays we call them ‘CORES’ and looks like the discussion has come full circle)

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 -----

Dear Customer,

We are pleased to announce, effective today, that we are reducing our price to you for
Windows Azure Storage from $0.15 per GB to $0.14 per GB stored per month.
You will see this price decrease on your next invoice.

Today's price reduction is part of our commitment to realize cloud efficiencies through economies of scale and
share these cost savings with our valued customers. We appreciate your continued interest in the Windows Azure platform.

Windows Azure Platform Team

Azure: How the “Cloud" can help you integrate–we’re doing another session–come along.

How the “Cloud” can help you Integrate   Microsoft Australia & Breeze are pleased to invite you to a breakfast Seminar on Cloud Integration   Sydney – November 16, 2011  8:30 - 11:00am Venue: Breeze Office, 5a/2 New McLean Street, Edgecliff, NSW 2027 (Adjacent to Edgecliff Station)   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? Hear from Microsoft about their cloud strategy and computing platform ‘Azure’ and what this provides with scalable computing power and storage, as well as a number of other online services hosted on Microsoft datacentres. Hear from Breeze how to make this happen in the real world with measurable results. Breeze Integration Specialists will share with you some of their experiences in the field with helping customers maximise their existing investments as well as future scalability by utilizing the Azure platform with their integration development projects to date.   This seminar is an opportunity to gain insight with the Windows Azure Platform including Windows Azure AppFabric, SQL Azure, Windows Server AppFabric and BizTalk AppFabric Connect as well as meet the industry experts.   This seminar is for all Integration enthusiasts from IT Professionals, Developers to Business Decision Makers. Bring along your questions!   Seats are limited. Register NOW !!!!   For more information and to register contact emmav{at}breeze{dot}net

While wrestling with SharePoint 2007 SP2 today, I got a great error message.

“SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wiza” – Wizzzzzaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!
(this sits nicely with Shazza, Mappa, Timmy, Kimmy, and on it goes…”)

Now to sort the problem out…

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)

LIVE - 2 Hour	IT Pro/Dev/ ISV	Sept 27th                                  2-4 pm	https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032489403&Culture=en-AU	Ten Must-Have Tools for Windows Azure
LIVE - 2 Hour	IT Pro	Oct 25th                                  2-4 pm	https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032489405&Culture=en-AU	An IT Pro View of Windows Azure
LIVE - 2 Hour	IT Pro/Dev/ ISV	Nov 22nd                                2-4 pm	https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032489407&Culture=en-AU	Managing Windows Azure Applications

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!

In recent days the Cumulative Update #2 has been released with several improvements and fixes.
(The team have done an amazing job addressing previous issues/fixes with currently *no* open issues!!! WELL DONE GUYS)

As you may well know by know – BizTalk is made by people who care for Integrators (us) who care. BizTalk has always been a quality product in the past and in my opinion will be in the future.

Here’s some details if CU2 that was passed onto me…

BizTalk Ta2010 CU2 Details:

 Public KB Article

 BizTalk Server 2010 CU2 List

BizTalk Adaptor Pack (BAP) 2010 CU2 Details:

 Public KB Article

 BAP 2010 CU2 List

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

Hi,

It is a pleasure to announce the release of CU2 for BizTalk Server 2010 on behalf of the BPD Sustained Engineering group.  With this CU, we have addressed all known customer issues from all branches of BizTalk (i.e. applicable to BizTalk 2010) and also available in multiple locales.

 

This CU includes few serviceability improvements along with product updates based on customer requests.  Some of the notable updates in this CU are:

 

• Transparent CU Setup: Provides info on number of fixes applicable to feature during installation
• Enhanced EPM debug Tracing: Helps the support team isolate specific failures in a large volume scenario
• BizTalk Host Instances not coming back-on-line after SQL being off-line: Allows to restart the BizTalk service automatically when SQL connectivity is restored
• BAM Archive checks & Logging before dropping tables from BAMPI: Prevents possible data loss scenarios when archiving fails unexpectedly and also allows for a user configurable setting on the rate of archiving.
• Applications stop responding or crash when System Center Operations Manager monitors BizTalk Server applications: Issue was caused by a race condition in one of our internal class and has been fixed in this release.

Fixes Per Feature Area

Now there’s hope, there’s an answer and a way out.

I’ve been fried, engulfed, pea shot and corn fodder with the darkness creeping up all around me.

Whether I’m lounging by the pool, or staring into thick fog with the occasional trip to the roof….

…the answer is here….

The addicts guide to PvZ!!

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2358604/plants_vs_zombies_how_to_cope_with.html?cat=19

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.

Folks,

Finally cracked it!!! ohh how long has this been bugging me.

Basically when I connected my wp7 omnia 7 phone old Zune would complain with

CONNECTION ERROR
Can't connect to your phone. Disconnect it, restart it, then try connecting again.

I tried a whole series of options from download new wp7 drivers, changing usb ports, trying everything.

An interesting piece was that my Windows 7 PC detected the device, it was just Zune complaining.

After checking the EventLogs, I noticed crypto errors everytime I connected my phone.

The Fix:

1. Close Zune

2. Go into Certificate manager and delete the ‘Zune-tuner’ (named) certificate(s).

3. Re-Open Zune

4. Connect phone.

Finally……

See you there folks…I’m coming up from the trenches to share what’s in the real world with the class…content types, deployments etc.

Hope to see you there.

Sydney | SharePoint 2010 Bootcamp “The best course I have done in years!” “A fantastic course. Mick really has depth of knowledge and is a very engaging trainer”   REGISTER TODAY - 4 seats left! Special offer of 15% discount if book & pay before June 30th 2011.     Overview This is a 5-day bootcamp designed for both IT Professionals and Developers packed with fun and technical training to explore the features of SharePoint 2010 ‘out of the box’.  At course completion students will be able to upgrade their SharePoint V3 sites/portals to SharePoint 2010, to implement and extend Microsoft Office client side solutions, and also implement custom workflows developed in Visual Studio.  They’ll be equipped to care for their SharePoint farm, back it up and restore it, and set up and configure SharePoint 2010 infrastructure. Architecting the portal and sub-sites layouts is streamlined using best strategies and known best practices within the SharePoint space.  Students will create custom WebParts and SharePoint customisations easily, as well as site wide features, event handlers and InfoPath Forms based solutions. They will also explore Excel Services and Business Intelligence Offerings.  Be ready to roll up your sleeves and start your adventure here! Date:                     Monday 25 – Friday 29 July 2011 Instructor:           Mick Badran – MVP Location:             Breeze Office                                 Edgecliff Court,                                 Suite 5a                                 2 New McLean Street, Edgecliff NSW 2027 Time:                    8.30am – 4.30pm Duration:             5 Days Course Price:     $3,450.00 + GST Register NOW: Emmav(AT)breeze(DOT)net(NO DOT)

 

So you've got an on-premise WCF Service and you're going to expose the endpoint to the Cloud via ServiceBus.

I'm with a client excited about the prospect of Azure and using ServiceBus for connectivity for our local WCF Services.

Remember ServiceBus is touted as the firewall friend communications mechanism.

Should be pretty easy right? - just follow an article like - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee732535.aspx

If you are on a Secure Server - i.e. one that doesn't have default open slather access to the internet by default you will fall well short.
(nb: the Azure ServiceBus documentation is a little thin here also. ie no mention whatsoever)

You will get 'can't contact watchdog.servicebus.windows.net' and many others....So....

After much head banging Scotty sat down one rainy day and looked at the full conversation to establish a connection to the cloud via Service Bus

NB: XXXX is your ServiceBus endpoint name you configured in the Azure Management Portal earlier. This endpoint lives in the Azure Singapore Data Center

When ConnectionMode = TCP (Hybrid)

1.       CNAME lookup for watchdog.servicebus.windows.net > returns ns-sb-prod-sn1-001.cloudapp.net

2.       Connect to ns-sb-prod-sn1-001.cloudapp.net (port 9350)

3.       CNAME lookup for XXXX-sb.accesscontrol.windows.net returns ns-ac-prod-sin-001.cloudapp.net

4.       Connect to ns-ac-prod-sin-001.cloudapp.net (port 443)

5.       CNAME lookup for XXXX.servicebus.windows.net returns ns-sb-prod-sin-001.cloudapp.net

6.       Connect to ns-sb-prod-sin-001.cloudapp.net (port 9351)

 

When ConnectionMode = Http

1.       CNAME lookup for XXXX-sb.accesscontrol.windows.net returns ns-ac-prod-sin-001.cloudapp.net

2.       Connect to ns-ac-prod-sin-001.cloudapp.net (port 443)

3.       CNAME lookup for XXXX.servicebus.windows.net returns ns-sb-prod-sin-001.cloudapp.net

4.       Connect to ns-sb-prod-sin-001.cloudapp.net (port 80)

 

Also, when we lock this down to https endpoint step 4 above will be over 443

 

So the complete firewall rules to support both modes should be:

·         watchdog.servicebus.windows.net (9350-9353)

·         ns-sb-prod-sn1-001.cloudapp.net (9350-9353)

·         XXXX-sb.accesscontrol.windows.net (443)

·         ns-ac-prod-sin-001.cloudapp.net (443)

·         XXXX.servicebus.windows.net (80, 443, 9350-9353)

·         ns-sb-prod-sin-001.cloudapp.net (80, 443, 9350-9353)

 

Note the difference between ns-sb-prod-sn1-001.cloudapp.net and the others ns-ac-prod-sin-001.cloudapp.net, ns-sb-prod-sin-001.cloudapp.net

Hopefully you won't get caught out at a client site asking for firewall changes, one at a time as you discover them.

Enjoy,

Mick + big thanks Scotty for the details.

While on a journey of trying to dispell some of the unknown magic surrounding the Azure/AppFabric/ServiceBus and Web/Worker Roles, I was hit with a challenge of:

"How much will my ServiceBus Connections cost me? How is Cost calculated? is it cost effective?"
Yes and No.

So - quick one on ServiceBus. It allows you to auto-create an cloud based endpoint to your on-premise application (you can also control how client requests/messages are distributed through your endpoint, direct, multicast and queued)

The costings......

Richard has a great article here and there's the updated FAQ to guide you through.

Some key points:
- a 'Connection' is defined as either your application connecting OR one of your clients.
- a maximum of 2000 concurrent connections are allowed per ServiceBus namespace.
- you are charged on the average number of connections through the day/month
     - # of connections are sampled in 5 minute intervals and must be connected longer than 10 secs (as per the current FAQ)

- DATA Charges are EXTRA to above.

(This has the distinct feeling of early mobile phone plans where there were so many moving parts and bits you paid for, that it was almost impossible to calculate your monthly spend.

Azure definately needs caps and plans rather than sting you every step of the way)

So the situation I am currently facing is potentially a high volume public facing port.

One solution to this is:
- use a webrole with it's own endpoint the clients call into.
- Webrole talks to SB Endpoint
- SB endpoint talks to onpremise

Costs: DATA In/Out + Webrole + 2 SB Connections(for starters).

There's a couple of cost calculators here:
- http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/pricing-calculator/
- http://azureroi.cloudapp.net/

Check them out,

Still unravelling the mysteries of the Cloud...

The product team have been busy folks, pick up the update after the milk and eggs….

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/biztalkcrt/archive/2011/06/01/announcing-biztalk-2010-cu1.aspx

Hi folks, I thought I’d share something that captivated me on this rainy Easter day and that was

Visual Studio Asynchronous Programming - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-au/vstudio/async
(you’ll need VS2010 + SP1 before you grab the CTP)
There’s a new improved compiler + an extended library for us.

Hands up who’s done async programming in either VB.NET or C#??? It’s a pain! Thread management, Main UI threads can only update certain objects, passing values between main + background threads, determining whether a thread has completed its tasks… and so on…

Basically all these ‘issues’ keep us from delving further into the world of asynchronous programming cause it very rapidly becomes complex just managing the two worlds – sync + async.

Today I was pleasantly surprised!!!

About a year ago I saw a great presentation on F# and I was amazed at how if they wanted to run a bit of code async it was simple an extra character as in:

set results = …..   <-sync

set results! = ….  <- run this async

(don’t quote me on the above, but it’s something like that – let’s call it pseudo code)

Why are we interested in this? – that’s always the first question to ask when investigating. Too many times we here ‘this is really cool’ and ‘check this cool software out’ etc… but the real reason of WHY do we want to go down this road is never answered.

On a ‘developers machine’ looking at 5 items, running a single test client – you’d have to say “works on my machine” and you’d have no need to async anything. True. Let’s move beyond our beloved developer box and think about UAT/PROD environments and what your code is doing.

What happens if 4 concurrent requests come along – how is your code going to perform? (As developers we’d be thinking …’it’s in the hands of IIS, not my issue’ :) )
(I recently was presented with a solution that ran across 20 odd servers, the answer to everything was get more hardware to make the app more performant, scalable etc – couldnt be the code.)

So as the requests start to build (don’t know an exact number but let’s say 100/sec), what is happening to your code? how often do we sit down with profiling tools on our code in this space? must be the disks..slow…and as always we have definitive proof works on my machine says the developer!

It’s not until we see our code running under load that we get an appreciation for where things could be improved and are causing grief for not only IIS but other systems as well.

Scalability, performance and scalability – single threaded app/service vs multi-threaded. Multi-threaded tend to win all the time.

Let me give you a couple of suggestions where this stuff is great:

1. As part of a WF/WCF/Class where you want to ‘push’ some processing into the background – critical things can be done upfront, and you can push some of the ‘other stuff’ into the background.
   
2. Take advantage of some of the great multi-core/multi-cpu Servers out there – single threaded tend to run on the same core on the same CPU (known as thread affinity)

Anyway enough jabbering from me and let’s see some of the hidden gems…

Async Programming Framework

Let me show you a couple of examples (from my set):

1. Fetching a webpage

Here I go off to twitter and search for all the BizTalk items.

Couple of things to notice
- …Async is added to the end of routines for convention, indicating that these are Async callable routines.
- not a single IAsyncResult to be seen, no StateObject and no Callback routines!
– line 104 the async keyword indicating that this routine itself can be called async if desired (more for the compiler)
- line 108 the await keyword is used in the Async framework to ‘wait for the async task to complete’  then move onto the next line.
- line 108 WebRequest.Create(…).GetResponseAsync – it’s the GetResponseAsync that is the async method, no …Begin or ..OnEnd calls! Just write it as you read it.
- line 109 We get a reference to the response stream (I should check for the existence of data etc – demo code, demo code :))
- line 112 …await stm.ReadAsync(…) – reads the response stream into a buffer on a background thread and we wait there until this completes (await keyword). By all means there’s many other ways to program this, as in we don’t need to wait, we could run this guy in the background quite happy and then check on him periodically.

That’s it! Not too tough at all, multi-threaded goodness right there. You can have blocking and non-blocking calls etc.

2. What about a Chunk of CPU based code

NO Async Example – as per normal, doing some cpu things.

Written in Async….

Points to notice:
- line 63 async Task<int[]> … to the Async framework the async methods are wrapped within a Task class. We must ‘wrap’ anything we return from our routines within a Task<..> – here I’m returning an int[]
-line 66 … = TaskEx.Run(…something to run in a background thread…). As we’re dealing with a block of code, there’s a Task Extension class that allows us to run that bit of code Async.
-line 79 await matrix – this line ensures that our async routine has indeed completed (or errored) before we move onto the next line.

Too easy if you’ve lived in the other world.

As always remember this is CTP so I wouldn’t go rolling out into Prod just yet. The perf numbers I get are pretty much identical to rolling all of this by hand with ThreadPool.QueueWorkItem(…) and IAsyncResult etc.

Well done MS!

Enjoy and here’s my VS.NET Sample Solutions – I had great fun! Oh – this is also applicable to Silverlight + WP7 apps :)

Hi all, the BizTalk team has been busy and now the BizTalk 2010 exam has been officially released.

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exam.aspx?ID=70-595

I’m going to sit it in the next few weeks and get a taste of it.

Good luck all and what a great day this is – well done Team!

Snippet…..

Audience Profile

Candidates for this exam typically work as a BizTalk developer in an organization that has a need to integrate multiple disparate systems, applications, and data as well as the need to automate business processes by using BizTalk Server.

 

Candidates should have a solid understanding of fundamental BizTalk concepts around the core messaging engine and building business processes using orchestrations.

 

Candidates will have some exposure to larger-scale multi-server solutions and deployment/management familiarity. This core knowledge is required for BizTalk 2006 R2, 2009, and 2010. In addition, core knowledge of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is also required.

Candidates should also have at least two years’ experience developing, deploying, testing, troubleshooting, and debugging BizTalk Server 2006 and later solutions across multiple projects and have experience using the Microsoft .NET Framework, XML, Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft SQL Server, Web services, and WCF while developing BizTalk integration solutions

 

Credit Toward Certification

When you pass Exam 70-595: TS: Developing Business Process and Integration Solutions by Using Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010, you complete the requirements for the following certification(s):

Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS): Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010

Note This preparation guide is subject to change at any time without prior notice and at the sole discretion of Microsoft. Microsoft exams might include adaptive testing technology and simulation items. Microsoft does not identify the format in which exams are presented. Please use this preparation guide to prepare for the exam, regardless of its format.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=b4579045-b183-4ed4-bf61-dc2f0deabe47

The core client DLLs are now available as a separate download.

The strange thing is that when you install these on your machine it still puts them under the c:\program files\common files\….\Web Server Extensions… etc.

The main dlls are:

1: Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.dll

2: Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Runtime.dll

& the Sliverlight client dlls.

Given the directory paths, it maybe worth just grabbing the dlls you need for you solution and deploy them as part of the package.

April 4th folks…April 4th.

Quick background: The BizTalk team have been travelling the globe on a ‘Microsoft Integration Roadshow’ covering countless countries and cities.

On April 4th the bus stops in Sydney. Here’s the official blurb and I’ll be presenting – let me know if there’s anything you’d like covered in my demo and I’ll try and accommodate.

Enjoy,

Mick.

 

REGISTER TODAY >> Date Monday, 4th April, 2011 Location The Menzies Sydney 14 Carrington Street, Sydney NSW 2000 Time 8:30am-12:30pm                         Sydney  |  Monday April 4th, 2011   Microsoft Integration Road Show Worldwide events running Feb - Apr 2011 Overview Enterprises today typically work in a fairly heterogeneous environment with disparate systems. Connecting the systems and applications sitting across the diverse platforms and tying them to the business processes has become one of the top priorities for most organisations. As they continue to evolve towards a cloud strategy - to take advantage of the economic and scale benefits - the need to have a robust Integration Platform escalates. Microsoft offers a tremendous opportunity for customers to make a paradigm shift in the way they do business to maximize their benefits and profitability whilst maintaining an optimized cost structure.   Don’t miss this exciting opportunity to learn how we can help you beat the demands of today’s difficult economy, about our commitment to BizTalk Server and how we plan to continue to innovate in the integration space helping you begin your journey to the Cloud.   Agenda 8:30am – 9:00am:  Light Breakfast and Registration 9:15am – 10:00am: Keynote “Innovations in Integration – Begin your journey to the Cloud” Speaker: Paul Larsen Group Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation 10:00am – 11:00am:  Customer session Caltex is Australia's leading oil refiner and supplies products via a network of pipelines, terminals, depots and the company-owned and contracted transport fleet. Caltex made the business decision to acquire many of their independent resellers – who were spread across every state of Australia. In this session you’ll learn how Caltex COSMOS project integrated those different reseller businesses into a single operating entity now called Caltex Petroleum Services. Robin Brown, IT Project Manager, Caltex Australia 11:00am – 11:30am:  Break 11:30am – 12:30pm:  Technical Drilldown Mick Badran, CTO, Breeze This session is for those that want to delve into the technology to see the latest integration best practices and products including BizTalk Server 2010, AppFabric and Azure.   Location The Menzies Sydney 14 Carrington Street, Sydney NSW 2000 Target Audience CIO/TDM/BDM, IT Directors/Managers, Architects, IT Pro & Developers To Register Click here to register. Space is limited so register today to ensure your attendance at this event.

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