1. Microsoft Cloud Solution

2.  What is the cloud?  Windows Azure  What services does it offer?  How does it all work?  How to go about using it  Further Readings  Questions

3.  Cloud computing is a concept used to describe a variety of computing concepts that involve a large number of computers connected through a real-time communication network such as the Internet. [1] In science, cloud computing is a synonym fordistributed computing over a network, and means the ability to run a program or application on many connected computers at the same time. The phrase also more commonly refers to network- based services, which appear to be provided by real server hardware, and are in fact served up by virtual hardware, simulated by software running on one or more real machines. Such virtual servers do not physically exist and can therefore be moved around and scaled up (or down) on the fly without affecting the end user - arguably, rather like a cloud.computingnetworkInternet [1]distributed computing

4.  Why Cloud?  If an abstraction exist between user and hardware, user and software and user and other commonly used services, such that they are available on the internet or a globally accessible network(Internet), then the user is able to use them wherever and whenever. Secondly if such users are charged only for services they use and when they use it, it may save costs.

5.  Approaches to Cloud:  The implementation of cloud computing today exists in 3 common approaches:  Infrastructure as a service(IaaS): Leasing the Infrastructure to build solutions such as servers, load balancers, firewalls  Software as a service(SaaS): Leasing services which are then configured by the client to suit his needs.  Platform as a service(PaaS):Here platforms are leased to clients on which to deploy their applications without configuring the infrastucture and without the limitations of SaaS.

6.  Windows Azure is Microsoft’s cloud Operating System. It falls within the PaaS approach and provides a distributed Operating System where you can deploy and run applications without dealing with the classic windows interface.

7.  Windows Azure completely abstracts the physical components of the system. The customer or developer chooses features, components and service level agreements without configuring hardware or software on the assigned machines. To guarantee scalability and fault tolerance in Azure, data stored is replicated to 3 nodes and load balancers are made available to manage load.

8. In order to meet these requirements and do what it does;  Windows Azure exists on the internet.  It has 8 datacenters globally.  It had a content delivery network made up of 24 points world-wide to make sure content is next to customers.  There are local account teams for help and support.

9.  It provides 3 categories of services  App Services: Cloud services, Caching, Identity, Service bus, Media, Mobile services, Websites, Integration, Analytics  Data Services:SQL Database, HDInsight, Table, Blob storage  Infrastructure Services:VMs, Virtual Network, VPN, Traffic Manager, CDN

10.  Get a subscription from the Windows Azure website(http://www.windowsazure.com/en- us/)  Login using your credentials  Familiarise yourself to the Azure Portal by clicking on the Documentations tab on the site.

11. Windows Azure Website

12. Windows Azure Portal after login

13.  Windows Azure Step by Step http://it-ebooks.info/book/1138/  Programming Microsoft’s Clouds http://it-ebooks.info/book/1422/