Microsoft Azure

[Andrew Badera]

So, what's the GAE take on the MS Azure announcement at PDC today?

Is it going to be competitive, or not even in the same ballpark?

Will it force the GAE team to spend extra effort on a .NET implementation for GAE?


Thanks-
- Andy Badera
- and...@badera.us
- (518) 641-1280

- http://higherefficiency.net/
- http://changeroundup.com/

- http://flipbitsnotburgers.blogspot.com/
- http://andrew.badera.us/

- Google me: http://www.google.com/search?q=andrew+badera

[Calvin Spealman]

I don't see .Net as a priority for GAE, or even very likely. To think it is assumes there is more value in adding .Net than not. This is not a cheap shot at the .Net crowd, which I have a lot of respect for. The truth is that AppEngines greatest value to Google (from my standpoint) is creating competition. So, inspiring Microsoft to compete with it like this only adds to the value return Google gets.

--
Read my blog! I depend on your acceptance of my opinion! I am interesting!
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[Andrew Badera]

Don't forget SSDS, which gives you the same horizontal EAV setup of BigTable ... I can't imagine that won't become part of MS' official cloud offering.

On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 3:03 PM, jeremy <jerem...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm only skimming the description but i think the more familiar
relational sql storage will appeal to many people.

On Oct 27, 11:16 am, "Andrew Badera" <and...@badera.us> wrote:
> So, what's the GAE take on the MS Azure announcement at PDC today?
>
> Is it going to be competitive, or not even in the same ballpark?
>
> Will it force the GAE team to spend extra effort on a .NET implementation
> for GAE?
>
> Thanks-
> - Andy Badera

> - and...@badera.us

> - (518) 641-1280
>
> -http://higherefficiency.net/
> -http://changeroundup.com/
>
> -http://flipbitsnotburgers.blogspot.com/

> -http://andrew.badera.us/

[Andrew Badera]

Or, if you're talking about SSDS (SQL Server Data Services) already, be aware, they're a BigTable clone ...

On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 3:03 PM, jeremy <jerem...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm only skimming the description but i think the more familiar
relational sql storage will appeal to many people.

On Oct 27, 11:16 am, "Andrew Badera" <and...@badera.us> wrote:

> So, what's the GAE take on the MS Azure announcement at PDC today?
>
> Is it going to be competitive, or not even in the same ballpark?
>
> Will it force the GAE team to spend extra effort on a .NET implementation
> for GAE?
>
> Thanks-
> - Andy Badera

> - and...@badera.us

> - (518) 641-1280
>

> -http://higherefficiency.net/
> -http://changeroundup.com/
>
> -http://flipbitsnotburgers.blogspot.com/

> -http://andrew.badera.us/

[Bill]

I like Azure's blobs/tables/queue, like AWS, to handle different sized
data.

It looks like you can access different datastores from an app.

When you get a data service timeout, you get partially completed data
and a token to resume the operation. I think that's a good idea.

No pricing or free version mentioned in low end for now.

On Oct 27, 12:03 pm, jeremy <jeremy.a...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm only skimming the description but i think the more familiar
> relational sql storage will appeal to many people.
>
> On Oct 27, 11:16 am, "Andrew Badera" <and...@badera.us> wrote:
>

> > So, what's the GAE take on the MS Azure announcement at PDC today?
>
> > Is it going to be competitive, or not even in the same ballpark?
>
> > Will it force the GAE team to spend extra effort on a .NET implementation
> > for GAE?
>
> > Thanks-
> > - Andy Badera
> > - and...@badera.us
> > - (518) 641-1280
>

> > -http://higherefficiency.net/
> > -http://changeroundup.com/
>
> > -http://flipbitsnotburgers.blogspot.com/

> > -http://andrew.badera.us/

[bFlood]

as Andrew mentioned, Azure Storage and SSDS are very BigTable like.
SSDS seems to have more querying capabilities but I guess we'll have
to test the performance. Both can also store blobs up to 50GB in size.

Worker Roles are nice, long running processes that are fed by a queue.
Web Roles (like GAE request handlers) can feed the queue for off line
or async processing. this mixed model of execution is missing from GAE
(and was not on the roadmap either)

.Net Services - Access Control and Workflow are nice features as well


some questions:
performance - really can't comment until I test it but how fast the
datastore works is really my biggest concern

indexing - how will they handle the same "exploding index" problem
that GAE has. Is it automatic (seems to be)? SSDS looks like it can
query using inequality/group/sort operators, hopefully on multiple
entity properties

VM caching/startup - WebRoles/WorkerRoles have dedicated physical
cores associated with them but it is unclear how Azure will auto-scale
your instances. (the CTP will not have this, its controlled via config
file). Cold startups of GAE instances are becoming an issue for me as
more modules need to be loaded (lazy loading as much as possible too).
How will Azure handle this? Will your .Net apps be pre-jitted/
optimized before upload? How often will they be swapped out of the
fabric? If you can maintain a minimum number of instances, how would
we be charged for idle time? In GAE, it would be nice if we could keep
several instances active

pricing - the whitepaper says per CPU/Storage/Bandwidth, so very GAE
like. I would assume the pricing between the two will eventually be
the same

another interesting though is that Azure runs any .Net runtime
language so in theory, you should be able to port the GAE stack to
IronPython and have it run on Azure. this would likely take a large
effort to build the abstraction layer but having a secondary cloud
infrastructure to run apps on would be nice

MS seems ot have been working on this for awhile (a couple years) so
it might actually be workable at V1.

cheers
brian

On Oct 27, 3:12 pm, "Andrew Badera" <and...@badera.us> wrote:
> Or, if you're talking about SSDS (SQL Server Data Services) already, be
> aware, they're a BigTable clone ...
>

[Jon McAlister]

Andrew and bFlood, I was wondering if either of you could talk more
about how SSDS is like bigtable, or point me to some design docs. I
would like to read more about this.

[Andrew Badera]

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc512402.aspx

--ab

[Andrew Badera]

The queuing is sweet -- something GAE definitely lacks, hasn't even roadmapped I don't believe. Long-running or scheduled tasks anyone?

--ab

[bowman...@gmail.com]

Well.. a hack to handle scheduled tasks is coming from my gaeutilities
project. If issue 809 is something that can be done sooner than Google
coming up with a built in way to manage scheduled tasks, starring it
would help. This would allow the full available request timeout length
for a task to run.

http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=809&can=4&colspec=ID%20Type%20Status%20Priority%20Stars%20Owner%20Summary%20Log%20Component

I "think" I'm just about to wrap up the hard part of configuring
scheduled tasks, I've rewritten cron string handling to determine a
date in python. I'll have to configure an interface to set up tasks
in. This will be in the gaeutilities 1.1 release. All depends on how
much time I can find to work on it for when it will be released.

On Oct 28, 5:04 am, "Andrew Badera" <and...@badera.us> wrote:
> The queuing is sweet -- something GAE definitely lacks, hasn't even
> roadmapped I don't believe. Long-running or scheduled tasks anyone?
>
> --ab
>

[Andy Freeman]

The lack of XP support for the SDK makes Azure a non-starter. (I'm
not going to set up/buy a vista system just to try it.)

On Oct 27, 11:16 am, "Andrew Badera" <and...@badera.us> wrote:

> So, what's the GAE take on the MS Azure announcement at PDC today?
>
> Is it going to be competitive, or not even in the same ballpark?
>
> Will it force the GAE team to spend extra effort on a .NET implementation
> for GAE?
>
> Thanks-
> - Andy Badera
> - and...@badera.us
> - (518) 641-1280
>

> -http://higherefficiency.net/
> -http://changeroundup.com/
>
> -http://flipbitsnotburgers.blogspot.com/

> -http://andrew.badera.us/

[Andrew Badera]

What are you talking about, lack of XP support? The SDK is part of the Visual Studio/.NET platform, I've neither seen nor heard nor read anything about the SDKs being XP-only. That would make very little sense.

Thanks-
- Andy Badera
- and...@badera.us
- (518) 641-1280

[iceanfire]

I tried to download it and got the same error. It isn't compatible
with xp.

[Ross Ridge]

Andrew Badera wrote:
> Is it going to be competitive, or not even in the same ballpark?

It seemed to be aimed at different group of people. Azure's main
target looks to be enterprise applications that would've previously
been hosted on private intranet servers. More an alternative to
running an application on Windows Server than alternative to
traditonal WWW hosting services.

> Will it force the GAE team to spend extra effort on a .NET
> implementation for GAE?

And try to beat Microsoft at their own game? I think a Java VM
implementation would be more competive.

Ross Ridge

[Andy Freeman]

I didn't write "XP only" , I said "lack of XP support". The Azure SDK
only supports Vista and Server 2008. It does not support XP.

> > > - Google me:http://www.google.com/search?q=andrew+badera- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[max7]

> Will it force the GAE team to spend extra effort on a .NET implementation
> for GAE?

Google would not support MS .NET until MS is completely destroyed.

[Andrew Badera]

Yeah, somewhere between the beginning of that paragraph and end, I started mistyping.

I do see where that IS the case, and that's kind of crazy ... but obviously part of the MS push toward Vista/2008/7 ...

[Andrew Badera]

Doubtful. Most good businesses make rational decisions, not dogmatic ones.

[My3]

I think you never saw .aspx extension on some google product web
pages.

First google needs to change all of them, if ever it wishes that.

[Ross Ridge]

Andrew Badera wrote:
> I do see where that IS the case, and that's kind of crazy ... but
> obviously part of the MS push toward Vista/2008/7 ...

I believe it stems from that fact SDK requires IIS 7.0, which is
included in Windows Vista (and Server 2008) and isn't supported in
Windows XP. It makes sense as the Windows Azure servers will
presumably be using IIS 7.0. Though, I suppose there's no reason why
IIS 7.0 couldn't have supported XP.

Ross Ridge

[Sylvain]

I've seen .aspx on google server (don't know if it was a MS server or
just an extension)

Google Apps survey forms are made with .aspx

Sylvain

[Andrew Badera]

Per Mike Amundsen:

"Azure SDK has UI/virutal bits that require Server 2008 or Vista. however APIs are all HTTP - no SDK required."

Thanks-
- Andy Badera
- and...@badera.us
- (518) 641-1280

- http://higherefficiency.net/
- http://changeroundup.com/

- http://flipbitsnotburgers.blogspot.com/

- http://andrew.badera.us/

- Google me: http://www.google.com/search?q=andrew+badera

[Ross Ridge]

Andrew Badera wrote:
> Per Mike Amundsen:
>
> "Azure SDK has UI/virutal bits that require Server 2008 or Vista.
> however APIs are all HTTP - no SDK required."

Sure, if you don't want to do any local testing and just want to use
the Azure services in an application hosted elsewhere, you don't need
the Windows Azure SDK and so don't need Windows Vista. However, if
you want to host your own application (service) on Azure you'll at
least need to use the CSPack utility from the SDK to create a package
that you can upload to the Azure hosting environment. It might be
possible that you can extract CSPack from the SDK and run it on
Windows XP, but I haven't tried.

Ross Ridge

[Filip]

It seems to me that Windows Azure is a direct challenge for GAE. At
equal capabilities and pricing, it would be a hard sell to tell any
corporate user that they need to use a Google platform over a
Microsoft platform

Now, if you are building a customer facing application from scratch,
that doesn't matter. If you intend to be an ISV to businesses, the
mere perception makes the difference.

There is also the explicit statement from Microsoft that they will
make it easier to do aggregates over distributed databases, which is
the core of any reporting tool. They also said they aim to make
analytics possible over time. The industry might find that credible,
since Microsoft did it before with SQL Server and is "simply" running
a distribution layer over SQL Server. Not a trivial problem, but
perhaps a lesser problem than the one Google is facing. It hand has to
come up with a scheme that allows Big Table to expand to areas it was
not intended for, and in particular the ability to query data on any
set of parameter, and summing/counting the results. Maybe this
underdog position and clean slate allows Google to find new ways, more
search-based, ultimately easier to use. I truely hope so. Meanwhile,
Azure is not really yet available.

Filip.

On Oct 27, 8:16 pm, "Andrew Badera" <and...@badera.us> wrote:
> So, what's the GAE take on the MS Azure announcement at PDC today?
>
> Is it going to be competitive, or not even in the same ballpark?
>
> Will it force the GAE team to spend extra effort on a .NET implementation
> for GAE?
>
> Thanks-
> - Andy Badera
> - and...@badera.us
> - (518) 641-1280
>

> -http://higherefficiency.net/
> -http://changeroundup.com/
>
> -http://flipbitsnotburgers.blogspot.com/

> -http://andrew.badera.us/