STTREND 1ST Term AY 2013-2014
STTREND Reflection Paper No: 10
Arnie Locsin
Making the Cloud Real /August 7, 2013
Summary
The speaker was introduced as an evangelist for Windows Azure.
The evangelist came with Windows installed devices such as a
Windows phone, a Razor tablet and a Ultrabook. He also seemed to
have difficulty with talking to a microphone. Later on he was able to
walk around with the microphone and speak comfortably. He was
part of a startup after graduation. After eight years he and his team
had other pursuits and he landed a job in IBM. Eventually, he got to
Microsoft.
He began with a recap of the topics tackled in a previous talk about
cloud computing. He also prepared shirts to be given away for those
who answer his questions. His questions vary from cloud computing
concepts to different development ideas. He was able to breeze
through the basic services of cloud computing and provide the
background to understand Windows Azure.
In the session he was prepared to talk about Windows Azure.
Windows Azure is Microsoft’s cloud platform that hosts applications
in Microsoft’s datacenters worldwide. The service was calmed to
have a 99.95% uptime with its Geo-distributed servers. Users can just
build virtual machines in the datacenter they choose.
He was advocating to launch cloud powered applications with it. He
also stated that Windows Azure be treated as a Platform as a service
and Infrastructure as a service. This means that developers can host
the applications it and have the platforms that no longer require
installation. The developers can have preconfigured virtual machines
with some of the necessary components for their application already
installed. Moreover, Windows Azure was said to provide solutions
for back end processing for web and mobile applications.
The speaker demonstrated on creating a website hosted in a
datacenter. The speaker went to the Azure website to show that
developers can monitor there servers online. The information was
presented in Microsoft's current design language. It was able to show
sufficient details on the servers and the plans. The scalability of
applications was visible due to the options for current usage of server
resources which can be changed with the options seen on the web
page. The speaker added that they can configure for manual or
automatic scaling. He also explained that applications can have
Windows Azure code for scalability. The demonstration detailed how
a web application can be deployed online in minutes with a web
browser, Remote desktop connection, Virtual machines from the
datacenter and Visual Studio. Moreover, there were some trouble
with Internet connection and entering a password for a remote access.
Windows Azure was said to have a trial for a few months and 3 years
with Bizspark. The trial shoulders $150 every month. Furthermore
there is no lock in unlike some utilities that have a 24 month contract
forcing customers to pay all those months. There are different
operating systems from Windows server to Ubuntu server. There are
also add-ons for visual studio and eclipse for direct launching to the
hosted server. Developers were also said to be able to use Windows
Macs and Linux machines in developing and launching the
applications. The host server can be accessed with Remote
connection and SSH keys. The speaker pointed out that the Biz spark
will help startups deploy their products on the cloud can be optimal in
payments. He said that this opportunity will help more startups grow
and maintain control of their products with minus some worries with
Nickleus Jimenez 19
growing users if they use Windows Azure as the back end for the
applications.
Insight
The session contained recaps on last week. The breeze of cloud
computing definitions was well presented. I am happy to realize that I
learned from the previous lecture and experiences. It was good that
the speaker knew that we already discussed cloud computing before.
As for the prizes, they proved to motivate participation since the
prizes were given immediately after the correct response. I was glad
to win a shirt by answering a question related to last week's lecture.
The difference of this session from the previous cloud session is that
there is a demonstration on how a cloud application can be launched.
The speaker presented scenarios of issues with scaling applications
similar to the ideas of the Think Out Cloud session. However, the
speaker was more specific in scenarios. He cited online sales, deals
and events to cause a disruption in usual resource usage of the
system. He then iterated that Azure can handle all this scalability
issues so there is no need to spend huge very high spec server which
will end up as a white elephant if there is not much demand for
computing resources. By white elephant I mean an unused
infrastructure that ends up as a liability. This makes Windows Azure
appear consistent with the cloud computing idea of pay only on what
is used on demand.
I wonder what scaling practice I should use if I launch on Windows
Azure. The speaker mentioned that there are coded examples online
automating the scaling for the application but that might surprise me
when the bill comes. Still, it seems to be the guarantee that the
service won’t lag or get offline due to demand. The manual scaling
on the other hand requires constant monitoring but full control is
there. Having the scaling configured on the website might give
unpredictable bills as well but it seems to require good calculations in
knowing how much to resources to add based on an unknown change
in demand. Nevertheless, I like how there are options in scaling
Windows Azure. It made me wonder on what else I can configure
with Windows Azure and what can I code from the Windows Azure
libraries.
Windows Azure makes me wish that I have a reliable Internet
connection and more knowledge in maximizing cloud technologies.
Upon seeing the web page that manages the Virtual machines, I
appreciate the options and configurations already available. I also
noticed the hassle due to the strict password requirements and
network related difficulties. Still I noticed less hassle in setting up an
environment for launching Asp applications and I saw configurations
for other languages like Java, PHP and more. I remembered setting
up a web server online from the command line and it was really more
troublesome than the work the speaker had to do in launching his
demo application from Windows Azure. This made me think if I
should have tried Windows Azure for the web application
documented on my thesis that is required to be deployed online.
There are other solutions that Windows Azure can implement as
stated on their website. The solutions made me think on Windows
Azure can be. It also made me curious on what its competitors like
Amazon Web services and Google App engine have in implementing
the ideas on cloud computing. As for IP converge, I think I will not
use their datacenter if use Windows Azure since Windows Azure
favors Microsoft’s datacenters.