Software Development for the Public Cloud Platforms: Windows Azure vs. Google App Engine vs. Amazon Web Services (AWS) vs AppHarbor. In this talk the speaker will compare the most widely used public PaaS clouds (Azure, GAE and AWS) from the software developer’s perspective. A parallel between Azure, GAE, AWS and few other clouds (like AppHarbor, Heroku, Cloudfoundry and AppForce) will be made based on several criteria: architecture, pricing, storage services (non-relational databases, relational databases in the cloud and blob/file storage), business-tier services (like queues, notifications, email, CDN, etc.), supported languages, platforms and frameworks and front-end technologies. A live demo will be made to compare the way we build and deploy a multi-tiered application in Azure, Amazon and GAE and how to implement its back-end (using a cloud database), business tier (based on REST services) and front-end (based on HTML5). The speaker Svetlin Nakov (http://www.nakov.com) is well-known software development expert and trainer, a head of the Telerik Software Academy and a main organizer of the Cloud Development course (http://clouddevcourse.telerik.com).

1. Software Development
for the Public Cloud
Platforms: Azure vs.
App Engine vs. Amazon
Svetlin Nakov
Telerik Software Academy
http://academy.telerik.com

2. Agenda
 The Cloud from Developers‘ Perspective
 Windows Azure
 Google App Engine (GAE)
 Amazon Web Services (AWS)
 AppHarbor
2

3. The Cloud from
Developers'
Perspective

4. 4
Cloud??? WTF?!?
Computer
Located
OUtside of
Data Center

5. What is Cloud?
Cloud ≈ multiple hardware machines combine
computing power and resources
 Share them between multiple applications
 To save costs and use resources more
efficiently
Public clouds
 Provide computing resources on demand
 Publicly in Internet
 Paid or free of charge (to some limit)
 Azure, Amazon AWS, Google App Engine,
AppHarbor, Rackspace, Heroku, …
5

6. Why Cloud Matters?
Microsoft Azure Cisco Cloud Applications
IBM Cloud and Services
Apple iCloud Intel Hybrid Cloud
Oracle Public Cloud Dell Cloud Computing
Solutions
SAP NetWeaver on
Demand Adobe Creative Cloud
Google App Engine CA Cloud Solutions
Amazon Web Services Symantec.cloud services
HP Cloud Services Salesforce Force.com
Cloud Computing Platform
VMware Cloud Foundry
EMC Atmos Cloud
The Rackspace Cloud Delivery Platform
6

7. Cloud Computing Models
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
 Virtual machines in the cloud on demand
 Users install the OS and software they need
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
 Platform, services and APIs for developers
 E.g. .NET + ASP.NET + WCF + SQL Azure
 Java + JBoss + JSF + JPA + MongoDB
 JavaScript + Node.js + MongoDB + RabbitMQ
Software as a Service (SaaS)
 Hosted application on demand (e.g.
WordPress or SugarCRM) 7

8. Cloud for Developers
Moving to the cloud will require new skills
 New paradigms and APIs
 E.g. NoSQL databases and MapReduce
 New platforms and technologies
 New deployment model
The cloud still supports your existing skills
 Known technologies, e.g. ASP.NET and WCF
 Your favorite programming languages
 Like C#, Java and PHP
 Relational databases and SQL
8

9. Cloud Architecture
he typical cloud architecture is multi-tier, SOA,
highly-scalable and highly-available
Load Balancer
Computing Computing … Computing
Node Node Node
Data- Storage Back-End Other
bases Services Services Services
 At each tier different managed services, 9

10. Cloud Architecture (2)
Computing Nodes
 Host and run your applications
 Different languages and frameworks
 E.g. C# + ASP.NET MVC or PHP + Symfony
 Stateless by design
Databases and Storage
 Relational and NoSQL databases
 Blob storage, file storage, CDN
Other Services
 Queues, notifications, logging, email, … 10

11. Windows
Azure

12. Windows Azure
Microsoft Windows Azure
 Fast-growing public cloud
 Provides rich PaaS platform
 Mainly for .NET developers
 Supports all major .NET technologies
 ASP.NET MVC, WCF, ADO.NET EF, WWF, …
 Provides also Java, PHP and Node.js APIs
 No free version, only 3 months trial
 Bulgarian citizens cannot register!
12

13. Azure Architecture
Azure Load Balancer
Compute Compute Compute
(Web role) (Worker role) (VM role)
VM running Windows
Windows VM
IIS7 VM
C# / .NET
ASP.NET / Custom
code / Java
PHP / other software
code
SQL
Tables Blobs Queues CDN
Azure
Other Azure / external services
13

14. Windows Azure Services
Windows Azure Compute
 Computing instances run Windows OS
and applications (CPU + RAM + HDD)
 Web role
 Internet Information Services (IIS) machine
for hosting Web applications
and WCF services
 Worker role
 Long-running computations
 VM role
 Windows VM (non-persistent)
14

15. Windows Azure Services (2)
Azure data storage services
 Azure Table Storage
 Distributed highly-scalable cloud
database (stores entities with properties)
 Azure Queue Storage
 Message queue service
 Azure Blobs / Drives
 Blob / file storage
 NTFS volumes
15

16. Windows Azure Services (3)
SQL Azure
 SQL Server in the cloud
 Highly-available and scalable relational DB
Azure Business Analytics
 Create reports with tables, charts, maps, etc.
Azure Caching
 Distributed, in-memory, application cache
Azure CDN
 Content delivery network
16

17. Azure Pricing
Computing Nodes
 Shared CPU, 768 MB RAM
 $0.02 / hour ($15 / month)
 1 Core, 1.75 GB RAM
 $0.12 / hour ($90 / month)
Storage
 $0.125 / GB + $0.01 / 10000 operations
SQL Azure Database
 100 MB – $0.0067 / hour ($5 / month)
 1 GB – $0.0133 / hour ($10 / month) 17

18. Windows Azure
Live Demo

19. Google App
Engine (GAE)

20. Google App Engine
Google App Engine (GAE)
 Leading Java and Python PaaS public cloud
 Infrastructure similar to the one driving
GMail and Google Docs operated by Google
 http://code.google.com/appengine/
App Engine has a completely free version
 Provides CPU / bandwidth / storage capable
to serve 5 000 000 page views / month
 Instant registration
 Confirmation by SMS
20

21. App Engine Architecture
Load Balancer (Google Front-End Server)
App Engine Instances Backends
Sandbox running JVM / Sandbox running
Python interpreter JVM / Python
Java code / Java Web
Java code
application / Python app
Data Cloud Blob Map Tasks
store SQL store Reduce queue
Other App Engine / external services
(Channel API, Memcache, Email, …)
21

22. App Engine Services
App Engine instances
 Computing units that host the applications
 Fully managed sandboxes (not VMs!)
 Provide CPU + RAM + storage +
language runtime
 appengine.google.com
App Engine backends
 Like the App Engine instances
 But provides higher computing resources
 Used for background processing
22

23. App Engine Services (2)
App Engine datastores
 Provide NoSQL schemaless object database
 Supports transacts and a query-engine (GQL)
 High-replication datastore (HRD)
 Master-slave datastore (faster, less-reliable)
Cloud SQL
 Managed MySQL in App Engine
Blobstore / Cloud Storage
 Store files / blobs
 Has with ACL and REST API 23

24. App Engine Services (3)
MapReduce API
 Highly-scalable parallel computing API for
heavy computing tasks (based on Hadoop)
Channel API
 Push notifications for JavaScript applications
Task Queues
 Services for execution of background work
Memcache
 Distributed in-memory data cache
24

25. App Engine Pricing
On-demand Frontend instances
 1 instance free
 $0.08 / hour ($60 / month)
High Replication Datastore (HRD)
 1 GB free
 $0.24 / GB / month ($0.00032 / GB / hour)
Each API has free quota and price per usage
 Blobstore API: 5 GB free; $0.13 / GB / month
 Datastore API: 50K free; $0.10 / 100k
write operations 25

26. Google App
Engine (GAE)
Live Demo

27. Amazon
Web Services

28. Amazon Web Services
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
 The pioneer of the public clouds
 Provides cloud platform and services from
2002
 Provides IaaS and PaaS on demand
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)
 Virtual machines on demand
 Runs Windows / Linux / other OS
 Several locations: US, EU, Japan, Brazil, …
 http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/ 28

29. AWS Architecture
Elastic Load Balancing (ELB)
EC2 Instances + Storage (EBS)
Any OS and development platform
C# / Java / PHP / Python / Ruby / …
Any development framework (.NET / Java EE /
Symfony / Zend / Django / Rails / Node.js)
Dynamo
RDB S3 EBS SQS SWF
DB
Other AWS / external services
(ElastiCache, CloudFront CDN, SES, …)
29

30. AWS Services
Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS)
 Virtual hard disk (HDD) volumes
 Used with the EC2 to keep the OS file system
 http://aws.amazon.com/ebs/
Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)
 Host binary data (files, images, videos, etc.)
 Accessible through the Web
 With or without authentication
 http://aws.amazon.com/s3/
30

31. AWS Services (2)
Amazon DynamoDB / SimpleDB
 Managed NoSQL cloud database
 Highly scalable, fault-tolerant
 DynamoDB – newer & faster than SimpleDB
 http://aws.amazon.com/dynamodb/
Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)
 Managed MySQL and Oracle databases
 Scalability, automated backup, replication
 http://aws.amazon.com/rds/
31

32. AWS Services (3)
Other AWS services
 Amazon SQS (message queue)
 Amazon CloudFront (content delivery
network)
 Amazon ElastiCache (caching)
 Amazon Route 53 (cloud DNS)
 Amazon SES (email)
Pricing
 On-demand pricing (per hour / per GB)
 1-year free trial (credit card required) 32

33. Amazon AWS Pricing
On-Demand EC2 Instances
 1 Core, 1.7 GB RAM, Linux
 $0.08 / hour ($60 / month)
 1 Core, 1.7 GB RAM, Windows
 $0.115 / hour ($86 / month)
Storage (EBS)
 $0.10 / GB + $0.10 per 1 million requests
Oracle Database (1 Core, 1.7 GB RAM)
 DB instance: $0.155 / hour ($116 / month)
 DB storage: paid like EBS storage 33

34. AppHarbor
.NET Cloud Made Easy

35. AppHarbor
AppHarbor – cloud platform for .NET apps
 Supports a classical .NET development stack
 C#, .NET Framework, ASP.NET (Web Forms
and MVC), WCF, WWF, ADO.NET Entity
Framework, …
 Deployment through Git / SVN / TFS
 Automated build process
(compilation + unit tests)
 Build-in load balancing
 Built on top of Amazon AWS
 Rich set of add-on services 35

36. AppHarbor Architecture
Load Balancer (Nginx)
Web worker Background
instances workers
Managed IIS Managed Windows
environment environment
C# / ASP.NET MVC /
C# code
Web Forms / WCF
Managed SQL MongoDB, IronMQ,
Server / MySQL CouchDB RabitMQ
Other AppHarbor Add-On Services
36

37. AppHarbor: Add-Ons
Airbrake (error logging)
Blitz (performance monitoring)
CloudAMQP (RabbitMQ)
Cloudant (CouchDB)
CloudMailin (incoming email)
Dedicated SQL Server
JustOneDB (NoSLQ database)
Logentries (log management)
Mailgun (email send / receive)
37

38. AppHarbor: Add-Ons (2)
Memcacher (in-memory caching)
MongoHQ (managed MongoDB)
MongoLab (managed MongoDB)
MySQL (shared MySQL DB)
RavenHQ (NoSQL database)
Redis To Go (key-value store)
SendGrid (email delivery)
StillAlive (app monitoring)
Shared SQL Server (managed instance)
38

39. AppHarbor Pricing
AppHarbor free plan
 1 Web worker instance per application
 Unlimited applications
 20 MB SQL Server + 20 MB MySQL
Paid plans
 $49 month per instance (Web worker or
Background worker)
 10 GB Shared SQL Server DB – $10 / month
 10 GB Shared MySQL DB – $10 / month
 Custom domain – $10 / month
39

40. AppHarbor
Live Demo

41. More Resources
Free Cloud Development Course
 Each Wednesday, Telerik Software Academy
Python
 clouddevcourse.telerik.com
41

42. Software Development
for the Public Cloud
Platforms: Azure vs.
App Engine vs. Amazon
Questions?
http://academy.telerik.com