Windows Azure Prescriptive Guidance Larry Franks, Sidney Higa, Suren Machiraju, Christian Martinez, Valery Mizonov, Walter Myers III, Rama Ramani, Jason Roth, Mark Simms, Paolo Salvatori, Adam Skewgar, Ralph Squillace, Patrick Wickline, Trace Young Reviewers: Thiago Almeida, Jaime Alva Bravo, Monilee Atkinson, Brad Calder, Janice Choi, Brian Goldfarb, Sidney Higa, Michael Hyatt, YousefKhalidi, Christian Martinez, Paulette McKay, Shont Miller, Valery Mizonov, Sasha Nosov, James Podgorski, VladRomanenko, Ralph Squillace, Brian Swan, Tina Stewart, Michael Thomassy, Steve Wilkins, Steve Young Summary: Windows Azure Prescriptive Guidance provides you with some of the best practices and recommendations for working with the Windows Azure platform. Categories cover planning, designing, developing, and managing a variety of different types of Windows Azure applications, including mobile, enterprise, and consumer-based applications. It also provides guidance for developers using non-.NET applications, libraries, and stacks with Windows Azure. Category: Guide Applies to: Windows Azure , Windows Azure SQL Database, Windows Azure Cloud Services, and Enterprise Integration Applications Source: MSDN Library (link to source content) E-book publication date: May 2012 422 pages Copyright © 2012 by Microsoft Corporation All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher. Microsoft and the trademarks listed at http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/en/us/IntellectualProperty/Trademarks/EN-US.aspx are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. All other marks are property of their respective owners. The example companies, organizations, products, domain names, email addresses, logos, people, places, and events depicted herein are fictitious. No association with any real company, organization, product, domain name, email address, logo, person, place, or event is intended or should be inferred. This book expresses the author’s views and opinions. The information contained in this book is provided without any express, statutory, or implied warranties. Neither the authors, Microsoft Corporation, nor its resellers, or distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused either directly or indirectly by this book. Contents Welcome to the Windows Azure Prescriptive Guidance ................................................................. 2 Planning and Designing Windows Azure Applications .................................................................... 3 Is Your Application a Good Fit for Windows Azure? .................................................................... 4 Designing Multitenant Applications on Windows Azure ............................................................. 12 Packaging and Deploying an Application to Windows Azure .................................................... 30 Best Practices for Running Unmanaged Code in Windows Azure Applications ........................ 34 Other Third Party Software on Windows Azure ......................................................................... 43 Leveraging Node.js’ libuv in Windows Azure .......................................................................... 43 Business Continuity for Windows Azure .................................................................................... 49 Messaging ..................................................................................................................................... 57 Capacity Planning for Service Bus Queues and Topics ............................................................ 58 Best Practices for Handling Large Messages with Windows Azure Queues ............................. 61 Best Practices for Maximizing Scalability and Cost Effectiveness of Queue-Based Messaging Solutions on Windows Azure .................................................................................................. 98 How to Integrate a BizTalk Server Application with Service Bus Queues and Topics ............ 127 Service Bus Queues ............................................................................................................. 128 Service Bus Topics ............................................................................................................... 130 BrokeredMessage ................................................................................................................. 132 NetMessagingBinding ........................................................................................................... 135 BizTalk WCF Adapters ......................................................................................................... 139 Scenarios .............................................................................................................................. 142 Solution ................................................................................................................................. 150 Testing the Solution .............................................................................................................. 274 Implementing a Message Fan-Out Scenario ........................................................................ 276 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 277 Managing and Testing Topics, Queues and Relay Services with the Service Bus Explorer Tool .............................................................................................................................................. 278 Testing ......................................................................................................................................... 337 Using Visual Studio Load Tests in Windows Azure Roles ....................................................... 338 Visual Studio Load Test in Windows Azure Overview .......................................................... 339 Windows Azure Load Test Prerequisites and Setup ............................................................ 344 Provisioning Windows Azure For a Load Test ...................................................................... 346 Publishing the Load Test To Windows Azure ....................................................................... 352 Running Load Tests In Mixed Environments ........................................................................ 357 Guidance on Efficiently Testing Azure Solutions ..................................................................... 367 Database ..................................................................................................................................... 381 Data Migration to SQL Azure: Tools and Techniques .............................................................. 382 Using the ReportViewer ASP.NET Control in Windows Azure ................................................ 405 1 Welcome to the Windows Azure Prescriptive Guidance Windows Azure Prescriptive Guidance provides you with some of the best practices and recommendations for working with the Windows Azure platform. Categories cover planning, designing, developing, and managing a variety of different types of Windows Azure applications, including mobile, enterprise and consumer-based applications. It also provides guidance for developers using non-.NET applications, libraries, and stacks with Windows Azure. The scenarios described here are based on direct customer input to the Windows Azure Customer Advisory Team (CAT) and the developer documentation team. These teams will continue to collect new guidance over the coming weeks and months. The most current topics, including any updates to the topics in this book, are located at the Windows Azure Development Guidance. If there is a scenario or topic that you need best practices for, please contact us at [email protected]. 2 Planning and Designing Windows Azure Applications This section contains articles that provide guidance about planning and designing either Windows Azure applications themselves or their provisioning and management. 3 Is Your Application a Good Fit for Windows Azure? Author: Jason Roth Reviewers: Paulette McKay, Ralph Squillace, Sidney Higa, Brian Swan If you're considering using Windows Azure to host an application, you might wonder if your application or business requirements are best served by the platform. This topic attempts to answer this question by: Looking at the benefits Windows Azure provides to your application Applying the strengths of the platform to common scenarios Rejecting scenarios that do not leverage the strengths of the platform Examining some common architecture and development considerations The intent is to provide a framework for thinking about your application and how it relates to the capabilities of Windows Azure. In many cases, links to additional resources are provided to improve your ability to analyze your application and make a decision on how to move to the cloud. Understand the Benefits of Windows Azure Before you can determine if your application is well-suited for Windows Azure, you must first understand some of the main benefits of the platform. A complete list of benefits can be found in the Windows Azure documentation and many articles and videos about Windows Azure. One excellent paper on this subject is Cloud Optimization – Expanding Capabilities, while Aligning Computing and Business Needs. There are several benefits