Reading Notes #53

This post is an important milestone for this blog. It completes the first year of Reading Notes, since a year as 52 weeks and it’s also the 100th post!

Thanks for being there and continue reading, a lot of good stuff is coming…

~Frank

Cloud

• Cloud Strategy Begins with Value and Balances Risk (Microsoft Enterprise Team) - Nice post that help to identify risks. The information is display in tables that helps.
• Windows Azure Performance: Best Practices (Rick Saling) - Good reference to more detail video on the topic.

[…]great video of a presentation on Federations by Cihan Biyikoglu at the 2012 US Tech Ed conference in Orlando. […]

• Windows Azure PowerShell and Ruby Cloud Services - Great post where updating is RubyRole project the author make interesting discovery. Learn more about some new functionality available in the Azure SDK 1.7.
• Deploying Windows Azure Website using Visual Studio Web Publish wizard - Nice quick tip to use Visual Studio with the new Azure website.
• Data Series: SQL Server in Windows Azure Virtual Machine vs. SQL Database - Great big post that cover every difference between those two Sql database. Perfect reading to stop being confuse.
• Windows Azure Websites, Virtual Machines, and More « Jonathan Rozenblit - Great! If you missed the conference at Toronto on June 20th this is your chance to catch-up. The full conference is available to watch by steaming or offline by downloading.
• 10 Questions to ask when Outsourcing to Azure (Surf4Fun) - Good questions.
• Data Synchronization using SQL Azure Data Sync (Félix Martínez Retama) - Nice post first of a serie. This one is illustrating few possible scenarios of synchronisation with Azure Data Sync.
• Data Series: Exploring Windows Azure Drives, Disks, and Images (BradCalder) - Amazing article that pass throut all details about Azure drive, disk, image and cache. A must to all cloud developer.
• New Article: Windows Azure Queues and Windows Azure Service Bus Queues (Valery Mizonov) - Very good article that perfectly summarises the content of the longer MSDN article about the difference between Azure queues and Azure Service Bus Queues. Simple easy to read and accurate.

[…]Following is the high-level technology selection considerations section from the full article on MSDN. […]

• Windows Azure - When do I use What? (Andrew Coates [MSFT]) - Nice quick post that demystify when it's the time to use a Azure website, webrole or a VM.

Programming

• JQuery 1.8 beta 1: See What’s Coming - Wow, a lot of things are coming with the next version of JQuery. This a good post to catch the big picture.

[…]new build system based on Ben Alman’s awesome grunt tool. […]

Miscellaneous

• Reminder, basic quick fixes for troubled gear - Nice check list for no-technical people of what they can do by them self before calling you to rescue when they computer/gadget stop working. ;)
• ScrumMaster Tales – Learning How to Estimate (Mark Levison) - Interesting post that relates the experience of an Agile team. Also refers some other post of that still.

~Frank

Reading Notes #41

Cloud

• Single-Tenant Vs Multi-Tenant SaaS Invoicing Models (David) - Describe both single and multi-tenant architecture and explain the real power of the multi-tenant in the cloud.
• Quantifying and Avoiding Risk on the Windows Azure platform (Richard S. Parker) - Great post that identifies different types of risk and help to understand each of them. It’s also explained how you should manage the risk by not being dependant of Microsoft SLA.
• HTML5, CSS and Browser Compatibility (David Pallmann) - Second of a series, this post describes the HTML structure of the main page.
• Microsoft Research and Windows Azure Partner to Influence Discovery and Sharing (Himanshu Singh) - Nice post that introduces three projects of Partners have done in Windows Azure.
• Microsoft offers free cloud backup beta for Windows Server "8" (Sean Gallagher) - Great idea. I hope this service could be used by the other windows version.
• Transactional Messaging in the Windows Azure Service Bus - Really nice post that explains how could works a resequencer, why one could be needed and how to test it.
• Windows Azure Dev Fabric (Rodrigo De Castro) - Good tips using a ip:port mapper tool to access remotely to a compute emulator.
• Protecting Your Data in SQL Azure: New Best Practices Documentation Now Available (Gregory Leake) - Well best practices are always welcome, a must.
• Cloud Tip #5-Secure your settings in Web.config with Encryption (mbenkov) - Nice quick tip! Add a little more security to your config file.
• Announcing SQL Azure Data Sync Preview Update (GregoryLeake) - This is a great news! not being able to update sync group was REALLY painful... Otherwise Azure Data Sync is a great application.
• How We're Using Amazon Web Services - Moustach.io is sharing their experience of the cloud by showing how they use the AWS. Nice true story.
• Exploring Cloud Architecture - A really nice recap of different architectures in the cloud. Putting them in context with cost efficiency.

[…]cost efficiency doesn’t equate to cheap or even free. You can determine the cost to be efficient when the equation can’t be changed to reduce cost without also reducing the services or functionality—meaning[…]

• 4 Cloud Computing Pain Points That Still Hurt - Interesting post. Contain other post references and important cloud facts.
• Why (or Why Not) to Migrate to the Cloud - Great post that hi-light the pros and cons of the cloud migration.
• Migrating an on-premise database from SQL Server to SQL Azure using SSIS (zafarx) - Really well done tutorial using SSIS instead of the other tools to migrate a database to SQL Azure. By doing it that way you have the possibility do more with your schemas before moving them.
• Getting Acquainted with NoSQL on Windows Azure (Bruce Kyle) - A real good post. It compares different noSQL databases and explains how they work. A lot of other good posts and tutorials are also referred. Definitely perfect to get started.
• Announcing SQL Azure Data Sync Preview Update (Gregory Leake) - This is a great news. Not being able to edit the sync group in my previous projects was really painful. I can’t wait to try the new version...
• Announcing New Datacenter Options for Windows Azure (Cameron Rogers) - Always good to have more and more options. Maybe, some day one will be in Canada. We have a good temperature and plenty of water...
• An Up-Close Examination of the Microsoft RDP Vulnerability (Guest Author) - Important RDP vulnerability was fixed in the March patch. Since in Azure the remote is disables by default and that some firewall rules protect some connections, if you use Azure you are now safe and probably you were never really in danger. But if you are using an image on AWS you probably should apply you Windows Updates...

Programming

• Why You Should Be Excited About Garbage Collection in Ruby 2.0 - Garbage collector is not the more glamour feature, but it's nice to go under the hood and see that some innovation are going on. Very well explain.

Miscellaneous

• I'm Sure It Will Only Take You A Few Days To Code - Interesting, I didn't think our usual or natural sensor to estimate the complexity of something cannot be use when it comes to estimate software... but it makes senses!
• What geeks need to tell our parents about shopping online safely and securely (Scott Hanselman) - Nice post. read this post than go talk to your parent, uncle, brothers and sisters all those people that call you when they did nothing but the PC doesn't works anymore... ;)

[…]HTTPS (SSL) doesn't mean "I can trust this site," it means "this conversation is private." You still might be having a private conversation with Satan. - Scott Hanselman Trust[…]