Windows Azure – 2 – What is it really?

In the previous article in this blog series on Windows Azure, I showed how you can download the tools that Microsoft provides to develop your own Windows Azure application and we developed our very first “Hello Cloud” application.

So far – so good.  But what is Windows Azure and why should we care?

Lets first look at what Microsoft says on its Windows Azure site.

The Windows Azure platform offers a flexible, familiar environment for developers to create cloud applications and services. With Windows Azure, you can shorten your time to market and adapt as demand for your service grows.

There are a number of key words and phrases in this marketing statement.

• Platform – Windows Azure is a platform – as a platform it will provide a number of key services.
• Cloud Applications and Services – Windows Azure allows developers to create cloud applications and services.  ie it is not for writing desktop applications or even simple web sites
• Shorten … Time to Market – As Windows Azure is based on technologies that we already know it can reduce the time it takes developers to create Azure applications
• Adapt as Demand .. Grows – Windows Azure provides easy configurable scalability which allows you to scale your application to meet demand.  This can be scaling up to meet increasing demand AND equally scaling back to meet reduced demand.

There are four major components that make up the Windows Azure Platform.

• Windows Azure – the windows Azure Operating System
• SQL Azure – A cloud service based on the familiar SQL Server.
• AppFabric – Services which allow you t “connect” cloud services with “on-premise” applications
• Codenamed “Dallas” – A standards based information marketplace

This is summarized in Figure 1 (from www.windowsAzure.com)

Figure 1: The Windows Azure Platform

Windows Azure

Windows Azure is the backbone of the Windows Azure Platform.  windows Azure runs on machines in Microsoft Data Centres.  Rather than an Operating System that can be installed on an individual PC, Windows Azure is a service that runs in the cloud.  While ii is not strictly an Operating System (OS), users can install applications that run on Windows Azure, so in many respects it looks like an OS.

Figure 2: Windows Azure runs in Microsoft Data Centres

There are three main components to Windows Azure.

• Compute – The Compute service runs Windows Azure applications
• Storage – The Storage service stores data in Blobs, Tables and Queues
• Fabric – The Fabric service provides a common way to manage and monitor applications

Figure 3: The three main components of Windows Azure

This has been a very brief overview of what Windows Azure is.  In the next, article I will look more deeply at the Compute Service and how windows Azure scales out.