What the support team should know and do about maintenance of Azure applications.

1. Windows Azue
18:15-18:30 Sosirea participanților
18:30-19:30 Scalability in Cloud In this session we will see what
Applications are the scalabilities points of a
cloud application. In the first part
Radu Vunvulea of the session we will look over the
services offered by Windows
Azure.
19:30-19:40 Pauza
19:40-20:40 Maintenance of Windows Azure After you have developed version
applications 1 of your Windows Azure solution,
Mihai Tătăran you need a strategy and strict
procedures in place for application
maintenance and support. In this
session you will learn the basics
on Windows Azure applications
operations.
20:40-21:40 Open Panel All about Windows Azure and
cloud applications.

2. Maintenance of Windows Azure
applications
Mihai Tătăran
Microsoft MVP | Windows Azure, Azure Insider
General Manager, Avaelgo
Mihai.tataran@avaelgo.ro
Twitter: mihai_tataran

3. About me
• Owner, General Manager – Avaelgo, Timişoara
– Custom software development
– Consulting / training
– Microsoft Cloud SME of the Month in Europe
– Case study about a solution on Azure - Microsoft .com
website
• Microsoft MVP on Azure; Azure Insider, Certified
Professional
• Speaker / staff at major events: ITCamp, DevReach,
TechEd
• .NET community: www.codecamp.ro
http://itcamp.ro

4. Objectives
• Understand the purpose and specific tasks of a
support team for Azure applications
• Understand how design decisions can have
impact on supporting Azure apps

5. Tags
Deployment, configuration, monitoring,
autoscaling, throttling and fault handling,
application logging
Tenants data separation, backup and recovery,
SLA and availability
Billing, optimizing financials

6. Multi-tenant Azure app
• Shared infrastructure
• Scale out when tenants # increases
• Scale out when tenants are more active
• Scale down when tenants leave
• Scale down when tenants are less active

7. Deployment
• Portal / Visual Studio / PowerShell
• Make sure:
– You have a backup of the deployment package
– You automate as much as possible

8. Monitoring
• Portal
• Azure diagnostics
• 3rd party tools
• Make sure you implement application-level
logging for specific tenants

9. Autoscaling
• Using the Autoscaling Application Block
• Monitor usage / Azure diagnostics, already
stored in Azure Storage by our application
• Create / remove instances as you need
• Automatically

10. DEMO
• Diagnostics / monitoring
• Autoscaling

11. Throttling and transient fault handling
• Azure services might throttle: Storage, SQL,
Service Bus, Caching
• Other types of transient faults: network
problems, etc
• Make sure you use Transient Fault Handling
application block (or equivalent)

12. Tenant separation
• It is mandatory to consider tenants separation
• To make the support’s team life easier
• Right level of sharing?
– Security, system management, operational cost

13. Tenant Separation – Bad Example
Sursa: AZR320 – TechEd 2012

14. Tenant Separation – Better Example
Sursa: AZR320 – TechEd 2012

15. Tenant separation
• SQL Azure:
– Shared tables / views?
– Separate tenants via schemas?
– Separate tenants via databases?
– Separate tenants via Federations?
• Think about tenant-specific backup/restore

16. Backup and recovery
• The support team should:
– Protect from unwanted updates / deletions
– Long-term archive
– Tenant-specific backup/restore
• Not done 100% by Microsoft

17. SLA
• Microsoft SLA != our SLA !!!
– We have to also support our app
• What if Azure infrastructure fails? Can it fail?
– Solution: failover data centers

18. Failover Data Centers
• Deploy to multiple
locations
• Azure Traffic Manager
– Failover
– Performance
(routed to nearest
location)
– Round Robin
• SQL Data
– Data Sync
– Backup/restore (e.g.
BACPAC)
• Blobs/Tables
– Auto geo-replication

19. Invoicing
• The subscription should be on our company's
name
• We invoice the customer:
– MS direct costs
– Our support price

20. Invoicing
• The support team has a direct impact on our
and the client’s costs !!!
• Monitor usage, enforce limits:
– Dynamic views, store analytics, application logs, IIS
logs
• Attention to limits: SQL Database, queue, etc !!!

21. Resources
• http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/windowsazure/Azur
eConf2012/B04
• Backup:
– http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/windowsazure/ff951631.aspx
– http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/windowsazure/hh335292.aspx
• Training Kit: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-
us/develop/net/other-resources/training-kit/
• Traffic Manager: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/windowsazure/hh744833.aspx
• Azure Diagnostics: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/gg433048

22. Q&A

23. Windows Azure
18:15-18:30 Sosirea participanților
18:30-19:30 Scalability in Cloud In this session we will see what
Applications are the scalabilities points of a
cloud application. In the first part
Radu Vunvulea of the session we will look over the
services offered by Windows
Azure.
19:30-19:40 Pauza
19:40-20:40 Maintenance of Windows Azure After you have developed version
applications 1 of your Windows Azure solution,
Mihai Tătăran you need a strategy and strict
procedures in place for application
maintenance and support. In this
session you will learn the basics
on Windows Azure applications
operations.
20:40-21:40 Open Panel All about Windows Azure and
cloud applications.