Going Cloudy Part 2 - Out with the old, in with the new

In my previous post, I briefly went over the current situation and the rationale for making the move to Microsoft’s Azure service.

I also promised details on the current architecture and what I have determined to be the new architecture. I will also attempt to explain how I got from old to new and why I have made the decisions I have made.

The old architecture. 

Here’s a quick diagram:

As stated in my previous post, this server is a single VM running 2GB of RAM and a couple of Ghz CPU. With those resources, for the live environment we are running:

•  ASP.Net MVC Web site.
• ASMX Web Service.
• ASP.Net MVC-based REST service.
• SQL Server database.

This is duplicated in the staging site which is located on the same server. On top of this, there is also SQL Server itself, an FTP Server running through IIS, an in-house import/export agent which processes all incoming and outgoing data.

There are also a number of support tools, there is Linqpad, SSMS,Notepad++, off-site file backup, and a number of other minor services.

What this all means is that, whenever I RDP on to change anything, this creates a notable strain on the system.

Bear in mind that the current service doesn’t have many users, say a dozen or so. This will increase by 10x this year so, clearly, the current setup just will not do.

Key requirements

The new infrastructure has a number of key requirements. Other than the obvious speed, reliability,etc, there is also the following.

Speed must be the same regardless of where the user is.

This means website and web service hosted in both EU and US. This also means two databases which need to be kept in sync.

Needs to respond to rises and falls in demand.

This is what cloud does best. We can add and remove instances easily in a matter of minutes. There is also the possibility of using the Scaling Application Block to drop instances down to having a single server when it is night time in their region, halving the service costs during those times.

The new infrastructure

The new infrastructure is distributed, fairly fault tolerant and should be easy enough to scale - all those cloudy terms that get overused. Over the next few posts, I will go over my reasoning for laying it out this way and problems I have encountered while creating the infrastructure. I hope to do that in approximately this order.

• Changes to URL scheme.
• FTP server and REST service configuration.
• Instance configuration, the Monitoring project and the Azure Traffic Manager.
• SQL Azure and using Data Sync.

Going Cloudy Part 1 - The Beginning

If you believe the hype, "Cloud" is the future and everything will end up there eventually.
It's easy to think that "Cloud" is just another term for deploying your applications and services on virtual servers hosted in someone else's data center, mainstream media make this mistake all the time.

Making full use of the cloud, in my opinion anyway, is architecting and designing your system to take advantage of the availability and scalability that the cloud gives you.

Designing for the cloud is one thing, migrating an existing application to the cloud and taking advantage of all it has to offer, is another entirely. Recently, I have been tasked with planning and carrying out a migration to the cloud.

The application in question is currently hosted on a VM running with just 2Gb of RAM. This VM runs IIS, which hosts 3 individual web-based components of this application. It also hosts the database on SQL Server and a number of other additional tools and services. The user base is currently fairly small, limited to a dozen or so users located in the UK, China, USA, and South Africa.

The customer base is expected to expand massively this year, with the number of users from the US pushing over a hundred and a number of users coming on board from other countries around the world.

Clearly, the current server won't handle this, and Cloud is the way forward for this customer.

Amazon or Azure?

Amazon has a myriad of services which fill different niches and markets, but don't seem very joined up. In my opinion, while Amazon's cloud is much more fully featured and mature than Azure, it is a big bucket of disparate services trying to be everything to everyone.
Azure on the other hand, while being newer and not as feature complete as AWS, does what it does very well. All of Azure's services are aimed at allowing developers to build scalable and highly available services, the developer experience is first class and you can get started in minutes.
Microsoft finally recognizes that enticing developers is the key to success, and they have embraced other languages in Azure, creating SDKs for Node, PHP, Java, and Python. Azure is a great platform to develop for, and not just for .net developers.

So Azure it is.

Next time, we'll study the current architecture of the application and look at how it needs to change in order to make the move and meet the customer's requirements.

Disclaimer

I'm not a cloud expert so don't take what I am doing as best practice. This series is intended to help others learn from my experiences. If something can be done better, please use the comments to impart your wisdom.

My experience of Windows 8

I think it's fair to say that Windows 8 has been the most controversial and negatively received OS since Vista. Every mention of Windows 8 invokes cries about the Metro UI and how the OS is a schizophrenic nightmare. Occasionally, amongst these voices will be a quiet statement of "it's not that bad once you get used to it".

That little voice isn't far wrong.

That's not to say that after using Windows 8 for a while that I have grown to love the Metro UI and think it's the best thing since sliced bread. No, it's just that I've learned to ignore it to the extent that I barely notice it is there.
Worth noting that, despite it allegedly only being a code name, I will be using the term Metro repeatedly in this post, it's just easier to type than Windows 8 Store app.

Start screen

It wasn't until I had used Windows 8 for a few weeks that I realized how little I used the old Start Menu. Since the ability to pin applications to the taskbar was added in Windows 7 and the addition of a fantastic little application called Bins which allows me to have 4 apps in one 'slot' of the taskbar, everything I need is in the taskbar. This relegates the Start Menu to two things - Search and shutdown.

Search

One thing that Microsoft have gotten right in Windows 8 is the search experience, which is superior to that of previous Windows versions. I get a big full page list of search results which covers files, settings, and applications and also the ability to search things like eBay from the same screen (not a feature I see myself using, but a nice touch anyway).

Shutdown

Shutdown/Restart is the biggest thing that has frustrated me about Windows 8. There are a couple of ways to do it:
1. When using a mouse, hover the mouse over a mystical hotspot in the bottom right hand corner, click on Settings, click on power, and then select from shutdown/restart/update. This is such a massive pain in the ass when using a mouse that it is not even really an option.
2. Same as above but the charm bar is invoked using Win+C instead of the mystical hotspot.
3. Alt + F4 when on the Desktop - the preferred option and not a problem for a keyboard/mouse user, but absolutely impossible if you were using a tablet, which is supposed to be Metro's Raison d'être.
 My wife, who is fairly technically literate, could not figure out how to turn it off. I had to Google it, expecting that there would be some ridiculously easy method that I was completely overlooking. There was not. In order to make things easy for myself, I have added a shortcut to shutdown.exe on the Metro start screen so I have the options of one-click shutdown if I'm in Metro or Alt+F4 if I'm in classic desktop. Can't see your average Joe user coming up with this solution though and this will be one of the biggest transition headaches in my opinion.

Metro applications

The other biggest issue with Windows 8 is Metro apps. I work with Windows and C# on a daily basis and I must admit that I have found it really difficult trying to work with Windows' new paradigm. Local database usage is incredibly difficult, with portable libraries not allowing you to use some of the standard data libraries. Microsoft has tried really hard with their samples, but some of them fall short, such as the settings sample which shows how to use the settings flyout but does not show how to retrieve or save settings the "Metro" way.
 The expectation is very much that Metro apps will be consuming cloud data sources and so will not need local database access. But cloud does not work for everything, such as business applications or little apps I write to make my life easier. Microsoft have limited the usefulness of Metro apps by not doing the extra leg work to make the development experience equal or superior to writings a standard Windows app. For something so radical to be picked up, they need to make the community want to use it, not try to force them to do it a certain way and remove the tools they are used to using unnecessarily.

From my perspective, I have almost completely ignored the Metro apps as the vast majority are useless to me. I suspect that, unless major improvements are made to the support for standard .net libraries in Windows apps, that Metro apps will be relegated to time-killing games and media consumption, something that the Metro UI is perfect for.

Those are the biggest issues Windows 8 has which, for your average user, are absolutely massive hurdles to overcome and is the reason many businesses will be completely skipping Windows 8 and hoping that a future service pack or Windows 9 corrects some of Windows 8's mistakes.

But of the 3 main issues described above (Start screen, shutdown, Metro apps), 2 are largely ignorable and the other is easily worked around.

But it's not all bad...

Those not withstanding, Windows 8 has some plus points.

Upgrade experience

I upgraded from Windows 98 to ME, and regretted it for weeks after until I finally bit the bullet and did a complete reinstall. The upgrade experience from Windows 7 to 8 was as smooth as it could be. The upgrade adviser told me which applications would be incompatible ahead of time and uninstalled them for me as part of the upgrade, the upgrade itself was paid for without ever leaving the upgrade application.
Post-upgrade, everything worked and the only issue I have had is Linqpad not showing up as an installed application in the search screen which was easily solved by a quick re-install.

Faster than Windows 7

 Owing largely to the removal of superfluous visual effects but I suspect there has also been some serious optimization work done under the hood. The improved Task Manager is also a nice touch.

Hyper-V built in

 I haven't made massive use of this yet owing to having an almost-1 year old in the house and generally having less time to tinker than I used to, but when I have done some work requiring a VM, it has been more than adequate. My virtual server hasn't been fired up in almost a year now.

Great upgrade offer

I haven't paid for a Microsoft OS in a very long time, apart from as part of a new machine purchase. Despite the controversy over Windows 8, the cheap upgrade price of £15 and the possibility of being able to write applications and publish them through a store that would gain my applications exposure and possibly even make me a few quid, was enough for me to bite. The ecosystem possibility seems a little less likely now, but I still think the upgrade was worth it.

EWS Post 2 of n - Finding Folders

The EWS SDK can be found here.

I suggest using Linqpad to run these code snippets as that is where they are being written.

Just add a reference to C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange\Web Services\2.0\Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.dll and a using statement for Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data and you're good to go.


Part 2 of n in my EWS series, this time covering finding folders. This is a two liner, barely worthy of it's own blog post, but it's late and, for something so simple, there seem to be alarmingly few straight forward examples of this on the interwebs, so enjoy.

var service = new ExchangeService(ExchangeVersion.Exchange2010);
service.Credentials = new WebCredentials("myusername","mypassword");
service.Url = new Uri("https://mymailserver/ews/exchange.asmx");


var f = new FolderView(100);
var res = service.FindFolders(WellKnownFolderName.PublicFoldersRoot,f);

EWS Post 1 of n - Sending an email

I've been digging in to the basics of using Exchange Web Services recently and thought it worthy of a few blog posts. These won't be the perfectly crafted literary masterpieces of the Hanselmans of the world, but rather brain farts and code dumps to play with.

The EWS SDK can be found here.

I suggest using Linqpad to run these code snippets as that is where they are being written.

Just add a reference to C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange\Web Services\2.0\Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.dll and a using statement for Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data and you're good to go.

Sending an email using EWS is astonishingly simple and consists of just 8 lines of code:

var service = new ExchangeService(ExchangeVersion.Exchange2010);
service.Credentials = new WebCredentials("myusername","mypassword");
service.Url = new Uri("https://mymailserver/ews/exchange.asmx");

EmailMessage message = new EmailMessage(service);
message.Subject = "Interesting";
message.Body = "The proposition has been considered.";
message.ToRecipients.Add("pointhairedboss@thecompany.com");
message.SendAndSaveCopy();

Speeding up Azure debugging your MVC application

When debugging an application that is intended for an Azure Web Role, you debug using the Compute and Storage emulators in order to give you a realistic Azure experience. These tools used to take a long time to initialize on Build, meaning debugging your app could take significantly longer than normal. Even though the tools have become a lot quicker, there is still an additional delay when debugging using them.

If, like me, you have just migrated a bog-standard web application to Azure and are not yet using any of the specific Azure features, essentially treating Azure as a web server and nothing else, there is something you can do to speed things up.

In your solution, simply change the start up project from the Azure Web Role to the actual MVC project that is going to be deployed in the Azure Web Role. This way you can debug in the normal way and then deploy to Azure when ready.

Note however, that if you start using any of the Azure features such as Blob, Table or Queue storage, then you just need to change the Start Up Project back to the Azure Web Role project

Server 8, Win 8 and VS 11 - first impressions

It's been a busy week for Microsoft, releasing the first Beta of Windows Server 8, the Consumer Preview of Windows 8, and the beta of Visual Studio 11. But have the changes they've made been positive ones? These are my first impressions.

Server 8
After experiencing a hiccup with Virtualbox involving only having one CPU assigned to the VM, the install of the Core configuration took less than 15 minutes which I was very impressed by.
The performance is surprisingly good, far exceeding previous experiences with Server 2008 VMs, even Server Core installations. Running a fresh installation running as a domain controller with only 2Gb of RAM results in boot times of less than 15 seconds and really responsive performance from the minimal UI.
I have only one minor gripe from my initial few hours of testing. Despite Microsoft's big push to get admins using Powershell for all their server tasks, therefore eliminating the need for a UI and increasing the server's efficiency, the default shell for server core is still a standard command prompt. I was fully expecting a Powershell Window here. Also, would it kill to make it full screen so I can make full use of my monitor? I know the emphasis is on remoting, but would it kill to support someone logging onto the machine and wanting a full screen command line?

Windows 8
As much as I hate to say it, I expect Windows 8 to be a flop on the desktop, much as Vista was. The reason for this is that it has a serious split personality disorder. As a tablet OS, I like Metro and am even considering a WinPho for my next upgrade. As a desktop OS, I'm pissed about the disappearance of the Start button but think the changes they have made to Windows Explorer are long overdue and a definite improvement.
The problem here is that Microsoft have tried to make an OS that works on the Tablet AND the desktop, and I think that is a massive mistake. As long as you only need to use either Metro or Classic, it will be a fine OS. If you need to transition between the two, the cracks between Windows 8's dual personalities start to show and things start to look awfully shoddy.
I can only hope that Microsoft resolve this before release or we could see the same story of enterprise holding on to Windows 7 far beyond it's life in exactly the same way as they did with XP.

Visual Studio 11.
It seems as if the Visual Studio team have spent a great deal of time since 2010 was released fiddling with icons and trying to make VS11 as retro as possible. The key differences between 2010 and 11 are simple, toolbar headers filled with colons that look straight out of the early 90s. I'm sure I saw them in an old OS but just can't put my finger on which one! There is also the case of the ALL CAPS WINDOW TITLES WHICH ARE REALLY ANNOYING AND EXTREMELY DISTRACTING. Other than this and changing the icon set, I haven't seen any real differences as yet. I can only hope that VS11 grows on me as I use it more.
Friendly warning, if you are using the built in Windows Setup projects, do not install VS11. My boss hasn't been able to build an installer since he installed this, not even after uninstalling it and uninstalling/reinstalling VS2010 and multiple other components.

Verdicts
Bit of a mixed bag from Microsoft here. Hopefully the issues with Win8 and VS11 will be resolved by RTM, and Server 8 is looking like a very promising release. Now they just need to make them all play a little nicer with Virtual Machines!