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Microsoft Azure Development Cookbook Second Edition
Microsoft Azure Development Cookbook Second Edition

Microsoft Azure Development Cookbook Second Edition: Over 70 advanced recipes for developing scalable services with the Microsoft Azure platform

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Microsoft Azure Development Cookbook Second Edition

Chapter 2. Deploying Quickly with Azure Websites

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

  • Deploying an Azure Website
  • Administering and monitoring a Website
  • Source versioning and continuous integration with Git and TFS
  • Logging abstraction from .NET and PHP
  • Deploying Java with Azure Websites

Introduction

Microsoft Azure is a comprehensive set of building blocks that can used as standalone or mixed services to get complex systems and services. Infrastructure-as-a-Service blocks, as virtual machines and/or virtual networks, in spite of being very common in the IT vendors' scenario, are actually great services. Today, the real value-added service in the cloud computing momentum is PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service).

The Azure Website is an advanced PaaS platform to deploy complex web applications to the cloud, without having a steep learning curve, thus leveraging the existing skill sets. Think about Websites as simple FTP-like endpoints, where we can upload our site's contents (binaries or just plain text/resources) and let them run as they are. In addition, websites offer enterprise-level services, such as scaling, backup, monitoring, logging, and more, around this simple deploy-and-go concept. Last but not least, these Websites provide the capability to deploy applications...

Deploying a Website

Creating a Website is an administrative task, which is performed in the Azure Portal in the same way we provision every other building block. The Website created is like a "deployment slot", or better, "web space", since the abstraction given to the user is exactly that.

Azure Websites does not require additional knowledge compared to an old-school hosting provider, where FTP was the standard for the deployment process. Actually, FTP is just one of the supported deployment methods in Websites, since Web Deploy is probably the best choice for several scenarios. In the Source versioning and continuous integration with Git and TFS recipe, we will learn how to implement continuous integration with Websites, but since this is not always necessary, consider FTP and Web Deploy to be the fastest lane to go live with this service.

Tip

Web Deploy is a Microsoft technology used for copying files and provisioning additional content and configuration to integrate...

Administering and monitoring a Website

In the Deploying a Website recipe, we saw how to deploy an ASP.NET application into an Azure Website. We saw that there is almost no unique knowledge required (except the skills needed to write the web application), making the deployment process straightforward. However, deploying is just the beginning of the process—leading to tasks such as advanced configuration, monitoring, domain mapping, logging, disaster recovery, and more.

Such activities are performed entirely via the Azure Portal (or through PowerShell), making it the central point of administration of the entire website's infrastructure.

After deployment, we probably focus on the fine-tuning of the runtime environment, making some optimizations to load only the required frameworks, and disabling everything that is not needed by the application. If the deployment will be a production deployment, a custom domain should be mapped to the website and, if we want to avoid confusion in...

Source versioning and continuous integration with Git and TFS

In the Deploying a Website recipe, we saw how to deploy a Website directly through FTP or Web Deploy. Those strategies are very fast and effective; however, they are not always suitable in complex scenarios because of the following reasons:

  • Developers cannot have direct access to the final endpoint or they should not even know what the final endpoint is
  • Automated builds/tests should be performed after each release and check in, centrally controlled on a specified server

These two scenarios involve new actors while deploying Websites; in addition to the Developer and the Website, now there is also the source repository. In this recipe, we see how to invert the process:

  • From:
    • Developer upgrades/updates the Website directly
  • To:
    • Developer saves his or her code somewhere
    • The Website takes that code and deploys it

This inversion of control makes the publishing process an administrative task by establishing a link between the Website and the...

Logging abstraction from .NET and PHP

Azure Websites collect diagnostic data from several sources, shipping them on a given storage account or the same virtual filesystem where they reside. We can categorize diagnostic data into the following two groups:

  • Application Diagnostics: Logs coming from the application code
  • Site Diagnostics: Logs coming from several infrastructure sources. They are as follows:
    • Web server logging: Logs for every arriving HTTP request
    • Detailed error messages: HTTP status codes that indicate failures
    • Failed request tracing: A complete IIS trace of components involved in processing requests

In this recipe, we focus on the application diagnostics group, collecting application logs in the virtual filesystem, Table Storage, and Blob Storage services.

Getting ready

This recipe assumes we have a valid Azure subscription and Visual Studio 2013 with the latest Azure SDK installed. We also use the Azure command prompt (or the developer command prompt for Visual Studio), an FTP client...

Introduction


Microsoft Azure is a comprehensive set of building blocks that can used as standalone or mixed services to get complex systems and services. Infrastructure-as-a-Service blocks, as virtual machines and/or virtual networks, in spite of being very common in the IT vendors' scenario, are actually great services. Today, the real value-added service in the cloud computing momentum is PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service).

The Azure Website is an advanced PaaS platform to deploy complex web applications to the cloud, without having a steep learning curve, thus leveraging the existing skill sets. Think about Websites as simple FTP-like endpoints, where we can upload our site's contents (binaries or just plain text/resources) and let them run as they are. In addition, websites offer enterprise-level services, such as scaling, backup, monitoring, logging, and more, around this simple deploy-and-go concept. Last but not least, these Websites provide the capability to deploy applications in several...

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Description

If you are an architect, this book will help you make the correct decisions about which Azure building blocks to use. If you are a developer, this book will help you understand how to use them appropriately, and if you are a .NET developer, this book is a pure delight.

What you will learn

  • Deploy a web application and worker processes to a scalable infrastructure
  • Accelerate the life cycle of a web application without lockin
  • Implement scalable solutions for storage data with Blobs
  • Develop a solution with a relational backend with SQL Database
  • Evaluate NoSQL alternatives with Azure Table Service
  • Implement messaging solutions with Queues, scaling, and decoupling systems
  • Automate management operations by developing components for the Azure Management API
  • Power up the existing infrastructure with inmemory storage with Azure Cache

Product Details

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Publication date, Length, Edition, Language, ISBN-13
Publication date : Sep 25, 2014
Length: 422 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781782170334
Vendor :
Microsoft
Category :
Concepts :
Tools :

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Product Details

Publication date : Sep 25, 2014
Length: 422 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781782170334
Vendor :
Microsoft
Category :
Concepts :
Tools :

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Table of Contents

9 Chapters
1. Developing Cloud Services for Microsoft Azure Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
2. Deploying Quickly with Azure Websites Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
3. Getting Storage with Blobs in Azure Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
4. Going Relational with the Azure SQL Database Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
5. Going NoSQL with Azure Tables Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
6. Messaging and Queues with the Storage and Service Bus Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
7. Managing Azure Resources with the Azure Management Libraries Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
8. Going In-memory with Azure Cache Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Index Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon Empty star icon 3.7
(3 Ratings)
5 star 33.3%
4 star 33.3%
3 star 0%
2 star 33.3%
1 star 0%
Michael O. Fasere Jul 22, 2017
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Nice book
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Ricardo Peres Dec 12, 2014
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4
I recently had the opportunity to review Microsoft Azure Development Cookbook Second Edition, by Packt Publishing (@packtpub). I’m relatively new to development with Azure, and because it’s such a hot topic, I wanted to learn more. I follow some blogs and magazines about Azure and I know for sure that it is a vast subject.I think that authors have done a good job on the book. As its title states, it is a book of recipes, and they are organized into 8 chapters:Chapter 1: Developing Cloud Services for Microsoft Azure is an introduction to using Visual Studio to implement Azure solutions. It covers what we would expect from such a chapter, from regular Visual Studio and Azure Emulator configuration, to setting up SSL certificates and using roles.Chapter 2: Deploying Quickly with Azure Websites is about websites, deploying contents with Git and TFS and using other technologies (Java, PHP).Chapter 3: Getting Storage with Blobs in Azure talks about the Blob Storage service, how to control access to it, set properties, manage contents and replicate them with Azure Content Delivery Network.Chapter 4: Going Relational with the Azure SQL Database is about Azure’s relational database. It starts from creating databases and configuring accesses to it (authentication, firewalls), then goes into development with .NET technologies (ADO.NET and Entity Framework) as well as PHP and Java, proceeds to backup and restore and ends with monitoring.Chapter 5: Going NoSQL with Azure Tables presents a number of recipes for dealing with Azure’s schemaless pre-DocumentDB service. It first explains how to create tables, moves to transactions, paging, segmented queries and continuation tokens and then talks about events and optimizing results by using projections.Chapter 6: Messaging and Queues with the Storage and Service Bus presents asynchronous messaging using Azure queues and Service Bus. An example of how to put Java and .NET talking together is put together.Chapter 7: Managing Azure Resources with the Azure Management Libraries is about programmatic configuration of Azure. The chapter discusses how we can do common management tasks using the Azure API. It covers mostly .NET APIs, PowerShell is mentioned only briefly, which is a bit of a shame.Chapter 8: Going In-memory with Azure Cache presents the Azure Cache facilities, including Redis. It starts from configuring cache options and notifications, goes on to explaining how we can troubleshoot some problems and optimize its performance and ends with more advanced features and the Redis cache.ConclusionThis is a book for .NET developers with minimum knowledge of Azure, although experienced users may find something for them as well. It was a nice read, with good coverage of some of the most important features of Azure. Unfortunately, because Azure is moving so fast, the book does not cover some of the latest features, such as DocumentDB or WebJobs. Also, I think PowerShell should have deserved more coverage, because it has become somewhat of an ubiquitous language for managing Microsoft environments, but overall I think it is a welcome addition to the Azure bookshelf.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
L/C R Jan 21, 2015
Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 2
I just started reading the book, but the Kindle version does not have a table of contents and the example code is provided in snippets and not complete Visual Studio solutions.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
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