Cloud Computing: 2011

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Cloud computing to create one lakh jobs in India

Bangalore, July 19 (IANS) As the next technology wave, cloud computing by enterprises has the potential to create about 100,000 new jobs in India, a study said Tuesday.
'Of the projected $4.5-billion total cloud computing market in India by 2015, private cloud will account for $3.5 billion, generate about 100,000 additional jobs and save about 50 percent of cost of IT operations for Indian enterprises,' the study 'Private Cloud Landscape in India', by Zinnov Management Consulting and global IT firm EMC Corporation, revealed.
In cloud computing, multiple servers are used as a single platform through a digital network (website) under secured environment with access to a range of applications and tools for reducing the cost of IT operations.
Cloud computing is emerging as the next big IT service for its pay-as-you-go model, which eliminates capital intensive investment by companies, especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in setting up IT infrastructure.
Spend on using cloud by information technology and back office firms, telecos, BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance), manufacturing and government organisations is set to increase to 8.2 percent over the next five years from 1.4 percent in 2010.
'There will be an increased preference of cloud adoption over the next five years in India. The total cloud market, which was about $400 million in 2010, is expected to growth by a whopping 60 percent annually with private cloud dominating the landscape,' Zinnov chief executive Pari Natrajan told reporters here.
Though vendors with partnerships are better positioned to address enterprise needs, the survey noted that many Indian firms would have to invest in competency building to take advantage of cloud computing technologies as they were under-skilled in meeting the growing requirement.
'Cloud computing will reshape the Indian IT market by generating new opportunities for vendors and driving changes in traditional IT offerings,' Natarajan pointed out.
Companies and organisations, which have not adopted IT so far or invested in data centres and server farms will have the advantage of directly moving to the low-cost cloud model.
'For cloud computing to deliver its promise, customers need human resources with cloud computing competencies, both as vendors or as internal resources. Though there are vendors such as ours (EMC) offering the solution to customers for making informed decisions, we need to build competencies to leverage cloud computing technologies,' EMC India president Manoj Chugh said on the occasion.
The findings are based on a survey of over 100 chief information officers (CIOs) and IT decision-makers in India across industry verticals conducted during January-May 2011.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Windows Azure Developer and Project Guidance Initializing and Configuring Diagnostic Data Sources

Windows Azure Developer and Project Guidance

Monitoring Options

Windows Azure is a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting and service management environment for the Windows Azure platform. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage web applications on the internet through Microsoft datacenters.

Diagnostic API (Diagnostic Data Collection)

A separate storage account will be created to store diagnostic data, ensuring that application and monitoring data is separated and can be accessed independently.

The Windows Azure Web and Worker roles must be instrumented to enable collection for the Windows Azure diagnostic data sources shown below

Data Source	Windows Azure platform setting	Details	Stored On
Windows Azure logs	Enabled	· Requires that trace listener be added to web.config or application.config: <system.diagnostics> · The ScheduledTransferPeriod is set to 1 minute. · The Windows Azure diagnostics agent filter verbosity level will be set for Warning (and higher).	WADLogsTable (table)
Windows event logs	Enabled	· Events from application and system event logs · The ScheduledTransferPeriod is set to 1 minute. · The Windows Azure diagnostics agent filter verbosity level will be set for Warning (and higher).	WADWindowsEventLogsTable (table)
IIS 7.0 Logs	Enabled	· The ScheduledTransferPeriod is set to 10 minutes.	wad-iis-logfiles (blob container)
IIS7 Failed Request logs	Enabled	· Enable tracing for all failed requests with status codes 400–599 under the system.webServer section of the role's web.config file. · The ScheduledTransferPeriod is set to 10 minutes.	wad-iis-failedreqlogfiles (blob container)
Performance counters	Enabled	· Enable logging for performance counters. · Set the SampleRate and ScheduledTransferPeriod to 5 minutes.	WADPerformanceCountersTable (table)

Azure Storage Guidance and Policies

A separate storage account is created to store diagnostic data. The diagnostic data stored in Windows Azure storage is used for monitoring as well as to create application baselines.

Data Source	Windows Azure platform setting	Retention period	Stored On
Windows Azure logs	Enabled	1 week	WADLogsTable (table)
Windows event logs	Enabled	1 month	WADWindowsEventLogsTable (table)
IIS 7.0 Logs	Enabled	1 week	wad-iis-logfiles (blob container)
IIS7 Failed Request logs	Enabled	1 week	wad-iis-failedreqlogfiles (blob container)
Performance counters	Enabled	1 month	WADPerformanceCountersTable (table)

For some data sources, the size of the data can be estimated in advance (performance counters); for other sources (Microsoft Internet Information Services [IIS} logs), it cannot.

These are the minimal retention requirements; they can be change based on business or operational requirements.

Application-specific data is not stored in the same store as the diagnostic data and is not subject to this policy.

Enable Windows Azure Diagnostics Data Sources

The Windows Azure diagnostic monitor runs in Windows Azure and collects data locally for the role instance. The DiagnosticMonitor class provides methods for working with the diagnostic monitor from code running within a role.

To initialize the diagnostic monitor, override the RoleEntryPoint.OnStart method. Within this method, call the DiagnosticMonitor.Start method to start the diagnostic monitor.

The code in the following example starts the diagnostic monitor with the default initial configuration. The default initial configuration collects the Windows Azure, Windows Azure Diagnostic Infrastructure, and IIS 7.0 logs:

Code snippet:

public override bool OnStart()

{

//Get Default Config

DiagnosticMonitorConfiguration config = DiagnosticMonitor.GetDefaultInitialConfiguration();

//Windows Performance Counters

List<string> counters = new List<string>();

counters.Add(@"\Processor(_Total)\% Processor Time");

counters.Add(@"\Memory\Available Mbytes");

counters.Add(@"\TCPv4\Connections Established");

counters.Add(@"\ASP.NET Applications(__Total__)\Requests/Sec");

counters.Add(@"\Network Interface(*)\Bytes Received/sec");

counters.Add(@"\Network Interface(*)\Bytes Sent/sec");

foreach (string counter in counters)

{

PerformanceCounterConfiguration counterConfig = new PerformanceCounterConfiguration();

counterConfig.CounterSpecifier = counter;

counterConfig.SampleRate = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(5);

config.PerformanceCounters.DataSources.Add(counterConfig);

}

config.PerformanceCounters.ScheduledTransferPeriod = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(5);

//Windows Event Logs

config.WindowsEventLog.DataSources.Add("System!*");

config.WindowsEventLog.DataSources.Add("Application!*");

config.WindowsEventLog.ScheduledTransferPeriod = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(1);

config.WindowsEventLog.ScheduledTransferLogLevelFilter = LogLevel.Warning;

//Azure Trace Logs

config.Logs.ScheduledTransferPeriod = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(1);

config.Logs.ScheduledTransferLogLevelFilter = LogLevel.Warning;

//Crash Dumps

CrashDumps.EnableCollection(true);

//IIS Logs

config.Directories.ScheduledTransferPeriod=TimeSpan.FromMinutes(10);

DiagnosticMonitor.Start("DiagnosticsConnectionString", config);

// For information on handling configuration changes

// see the MSDN topic at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=166357.

RoleEnvironment.Changing += RoleEnvironmentChanging;

return base.OnStart();

}

Using the TraceSource to Log Events

Configuration file sections (configure the Windows Azure trace listener for this specific trace source)

<system.diagnostics>

</add>

</listeners>

</source>

</sources>

</switches>

</system.diagnostics>

C# code (use the TraceSource to log events)

public static class Logging

{

private static TraceSource Ts = new TraceSource("MyTraceSource", SourceLevels.Warning);

public static void Write(TraceEventType traceType, int eventId, string message)

{

//Log event

Ts.TraceEvent(traceType, eventId, message);

}

Web.Config Setting for Failed Request Tracing

</traceAreas>

</add>

</traceFailedRequests>

</tracing>

For Details on Implementation, Refer

MSDN article on Initializing and configuring Diagnostic Monitor

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Windows Azure API Certificate Creation UI and Command Prompt

How to Create a x509 Certificate for the Windows Azure Management API

1. Load the IIS 7 management console. I’m assuming here you have IIS7 installed since its required for the Windows Azure SDK.

2. Click on your Server.

3. Double Click Server Certificates in the IIS Section in the main panel.

4. Click Create Self-Signed Certificate… in the Actions panel.

5. Give it a Friendly Name.

6. Close IIS Manager.

7. Open Certificate Manager (Start->Run->certmgr.msc)

8. Open Trusted Root Certification Authorities, then Certificates.

9. Look for your certificate (Tip: Look in the Friendly Name column).

10. Right Click your certificate, then choose All Tasks, then Export…

11. In the Wizard, choose No, do not export the private key, then choose the DER file format.

12. Give your cert a name. (remember to call it something.cer).

13. Navigate to the Windows Azure Portal – http://windows.azure.com

14. Click the Account Tab, then click Manage My API Certificates.

15. Browse to the certificate file you created earlier and upload it.

16. Done!

How to Create Windows Azure API certificates through command prompt

1. use makecert.exe (which ships with the Windows SDK) and use a command like the below:
makecert -r -pe -a sha1 -n "CN=Certificate Name" -ss My -len 2048 -sp "Microsoft Enhanced RSA and AES Cryptographic Provider" -sy 24 APICert.cer

Usage: MakeCert [ basic|extended options] [outputCertificateFile]

Basic Options

-sk <keyName> Subject's key container name; To be created if not present

-pe Mark generated private key as exportable

-ss <store> Subject's certificate store name that stores the output certificate

-sr <location> Subject's certificate store location.<CurrentUser|LocalMachine>.

Default to 'CurrentUser'

-# <number> Serial Number from 1 to 2^31-1. Default to be unique

-$ <authority> The signing authority of the certificate

<individual|commercial>

-n <X509name> Certificate subject X500 name (eg: CN=Fred Dews)

-? Return a list of basic options

-! Return a list of extended options

The next step is to upload the .cer file to the developer portal to let Windows Azure know that it should trust the certificate for API operations on your projects. The portal now has a new section called “API Certificates” under the Account tab where one can do this.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

How to Create a x509 Certificate for the Windows Azure Management API