Windows Azure Account and SQL Azure Configration Settings

Windows Azure is great platform for cloud computing. Microsoft providing great technologies in this

growing IT world. In this article, I am going to show little bit working in Windows Azure account.

Creating service account, creating SQL Azure Server and various operation in Database Server e.g.

Creating, Configuring Database, Tables etc.

To work with Windows Azure you have get an Azure account, which cost you something according to

Microsoft. After purchasing you this service they will provide you service through your live or Hotmail

account. For Starting with this go to http://windows.azure.com/ and login with your email id and

password.

After Login it will show you the main screen of the control panel. Figure 1

Figure 1 Control Panel Main Window

 

From Control Panel you can do various task for  setting up your development environment and

resources.

*User Management

*SQL Azure Management

*Virtual Network Management

*Service Bus, Access Control & Caching

User Management

To Manage Users select User Management from the lift menu. Here you can create sub users to login

and work. In Figure 2, here is only one user but you can add new sub user if you are admin.

Figure 2 User Management

SQL Azure Database Management

In case of database, First of all you have to create database server then you can create any database or

tables etc. It will take little time and done in few steps.

First of all click on Database at left side. then  click on create at upper toolbar menu as shown in Figure 3

Figure 3 Creating Database Server

After clicking this a new window will appear front of you to create a new server. Select your region and

click on next as in Figure 4

Figure 4 Region Selection

 Now specify administrator name and password for login in the server as in Figure 5. after specifying

these information if will redirect you to home page control panel there it will show you the details of

your sql azure e.g. server name and full url for the sql server to use with the SQL Server Management
Studio shown in Figure 6.

Figure 5 Login Details for SQL Azure

Figure 6 SQL Azure Control Panel

To Connect with this Azure SQL server you have also to specify the firewall rule. just click the highlighted

check box in the properties windows of the server.

Figure 7 Firewall Rules Setting

Creating Database:

To create a new database in SQL Azure click on the Server at left side and then select create button

on top toolbar shown in Figure 7. when you click on Crate Button then create database window

appear front of you. Specify your database name as you want shown in Figure 8

Figure 8 Creating New Database

The Next Task is to manage the database, Creating tables, views etc. to manage the database click on

the Manage at upper side after selecting the database as shown in Figure 9. after this it will redirect

you on another SQL Azure server there it will ask for some agreement as in Figure 10. Accept this and

mover further.

 

Figure 9 Manage Database

Figure 10 Agreement window

After Clicking ok it will ask you for the username and password for connecting with the Database Server. as shown in Figure 11.

Figure 11 SQL Azure Login Window

If you Login successfully then it will show the details of your database in the home of Database

control panel as shown in Figure 12.

To Create a new table, query, view or store procedure click on the toolbar. we going to create a new

table so click on New Table icon and it will show you a new window as shown in Figure 13

Figure 12

Specify your table and create columns as you simply create in Oracle Enterprise Manger or SQL Server Table Designer.

Figure 13 Table Desginer

If you want to do all this stuff of DML and DDL of database then you can use the SQL Server Management

Studio. just remember your sql server remote address and the password.

this is all about SQL Azure.

In Azure Platform Control Panel various thing to manage like AppFibric and Virtual Network.

You can manage them over there depending on your requirement.

Have some look in further figures to know about the view of the control panel of Azure Platform.

Windows Azure AppFabric

Figure 14 Azure AppFabric Window

Virtual Networks

Figure 15 Virtual Network Configuration Window

the other common task that you have to do in control panel can be managed here.Figure 16

Figure 16

This is all about the Windows Azure Platform Control Panel. May be it is good for the beginner.

Happy Learning.

SQL Azure - An Introdution

Architecture

*Shared infrastructure at SQL database and below

->Request routing, security and isolation

*Scalable HA technology provides the glue

->Automatic replication and failover

*Provisioning, metering and billing infrastructure

*SQL Azure Connectivity and working Process Model

SQL Azure Development

SQL Azure's relational database service supports the T-SQL (Transact-SQL) over TDS (Tabular Data Stream)
protocol. The relational data model in the cloud can therefore be used together with current T-SQL developments.
The new distributed functionality of the SQL Azure Database in the cloud should provide development cost-savings,
as existing applications, tools and expertise can be incorporated. The ability to use the traditional RDBMS data
model in the cloud implies that developers should be able to use current interfaces to build new applications, and
previous investments in development, training and tools should hold their value.

Current SOAP and REST based ACE programming models are no longer supported in SQL Azure, but building
custom services with ADO.NET Data Services does provide a relatively simple solution for those requiring REST
access to their SQL Azure data. For REST based programming model users, who simply require non-relational
structured data storage, Windows Azure storage should prove to be an adequate solution.

Visual Studio can be used to create and modify applications for SQL Azure. Additionally, for developing new
applications, ASP.NET controls and tools are a useful solution. Web based management tools, to access and
manage data in the cloud, and tools and documentation supporting further programming languages, are expected
to be introduced in the near future. 
Various Models Details in working with SQL Azure:
Service Providing Model

*Each account has zero or more logical servers

Provisioned via a common portal

Establishes a billing instrument

*Each logical server has one or more databases

Contains metadata about database & usage

Unit of authentication, geo-location, billing, reporting

Generated DNS-based name

*Each database has standard SQL objects

Users, Tables, Views, Indices, etc

*Unit of consistency

 Connection Model:

*SQL Azure exposes native SQL Server TDS protocol

*Use existing client libraries

ADO.NET, ODBC, PHP

*Client libraries pre-installed in Windows Azure roles

*Support for ASP.NET controls

*Applications connect directly to a database

Cannot hop across DBs (no USE)

Connecting to SQL Azure

SQL Azure connection strings follow normal SQL syntax

*Applications connect directly to a database

"Initial Catalog = <db>" in connection string

No support for context switching (no USE <db>)

*Encryption security

Set Encrypt = True, only SSL connections are supported

TrustServerCertificate = False, avoid Man-In-The-Middle-Attack!

*Format of username for authentication:

ADO.Net:
Data Source=server.database.windows.net;
User ID=user@server;Password=password;...

*Setup your firewall rules first!

 Security Model

•Uses regular SQL security model

•Authenticate logins, map to users and roles

•Authorize users and roles to SQL objects

•Support for standard SQL Auth logins

•Username + password

this all about the sql Azure role in Cloud Computing..

What is the cloud?

An approach to computing that's about internet scale and connecting to a variety of devices and

endpoints, According to Microsoft cloud is simply an approach to computing that enables applications

to be delivered at scale for a variety of workloads and client devices.

Cloud Services

• it's important to understand how to talk about our Cloud Services offerings.

•There is a lot of confusion in the industry when it comes to the cloud.  

•It's important that you understand both what is happening in the industry and how we think about the cloud. 

•This is the most commonly used taxonomy for differentiating between types of cloud services.

•The industry has defined three categories of services:

•IaaS – a set of infrastructure level capabilities such as an operating system, network connectivity, etc. that are
delivered as pay for use services and can be used to host applications. 

•PaaS – higher level sets of functionality that are delivered as consumable services for developers who are
building applications.  PaaS is about abstracting developers from the underlying infrastructure to enable
applications to quickly be composed.

•SaaS – applications that are delivered using a service delivery model where organizations can simply consume
and use the application.  Typically an organization would pay for the use of the application or the application
could be monetized through ad revenue. 

•It is important to note that these 3 types of services may exist independently of one another or combined with one
another.

•SaaS offerings needn't be developed upon PaaS offerings although solutions built on PaaS offerings are often
delivered as SaaS.

•PaaS offerings also needn't expose IaaS and there's more to PaaS than just running platforms on IaaS.

Differences and relationship between IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS

•Packaged Software

•With packaged software a customer would be responsible for managing the entire stack – ranging from the
network connectivity to the applications. 

•IaaS

•With Infrastructure as a Service, the lower levels of the stack are managed by a vendor.  Some of these
components can be provided by traditional hosters – in fact most of them have moved to having a
virtualized offering. 

•Very few actually provide an OS

•The customer is still responsible for managing the OS through the Applications. 

•For the developer, an obvious benefit with IaaS is that it frees the developer from many concerns when
provisioning physical or virtual machines.

•This was one of the earliest and primary use cases for Amazon Web Services Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2).

•Developers were able to readily provision virtual machines (AMIs) on EC2, develop and test solutions and,
often, run the results 'in production'.

•The only requirement was a credit card to pay for the services.

•PaaS

•With Platform as a Service, everything from the network connectivity through the runtime is provided and
managed by the platform vendor. 

•The Windows Azure Platform best fits in this category today. 

•In fact because we don't provide access to the underlying virtualization or operating system today, we're
often referred to as not providing IaaS.

•PaaS offerings further reduce the developer burden by additionally supporting the platform runtime and
related application services.

•With PaaS, the developer can, almost immediately, begin creating the business logic for an application.

•Potentially, the increases in productivity are considerable and, because the hardware and operational
aspects of the cloud platform are also managed by the cloud platform provider, applications can quickly
be taken from an idea to reality very quickly.

•SaaS

•Finally, with SaaS, a vendor provides the application and abstracts you from all of the underlying components.