Windows Azure VM Development: Part 1 (Bryan Bolling) - Great post about how to get started working with VM in Azure. First post of a promising series.
YouTrack — Agile Issue & Project Tracker - Great tutorial that explains a steps from A to Z how install YouTrack in an Azure VM to enjoy Agile project tracking.
Announcing Amazon Elastic Transcoder - Amazon is replying to the Windows Azure Media Services that was releasing last week by announcing a service of the same kind.
Maarten Balliauw {blog} (Maarten Balliauw) - Get tutorial for continuous development. I'm looking forward to see more tools/framework from .Net that will be supported.
SQL Server Backup and Restore to Cloud Simplified (Craig Kitterman) - This post explain how to backup our on-premise database in Azure. This way you have easily a backup offsite. Even more, since this backup can be restore on premise or directly in the cloud!
(An updated version of this post is available in both English and français)
First of all, why would you want to copy Virtual Hard Drive (VHD) or a blob from a Windows Azure subscription to another? It could be for: doing backups, because your Windows Azure trial is ending, to get a copy of a client’s VM to investigate a problem. So, when one of my client asked me if it was possible to do it, my answer was: “Yes it is, using command line tools”. But since he was looking for a simple solution, I wrote him a little script that I will share here so everyone can enjoy it.
Get Started
To do the copy, you only need to do one PowerShell command. But, in order to execute this command, you need to have Windows Azure command-line tool already installed. At the end of this post, the script to install the Windows Azure command-line tool will be provided.
The command
Having installed the required tool, you can execute this one line of code from the Windows Azure command-line:
azure vm disk upload <source-path> <target-blob-url> <target-storage-account-key>
Get the source
In this command, you must replace <source-path> by the url of the VHD or blob that you want to copy from.
You can get this url through the Windows Azure Portal, using your account where you want to copy from.
On the left side of the screen click on the Storage icon.
Then click on the storage name.
From the top of the screen click on Containers
And when the container list appears click on the name of the container to get the details view.
Get the destination
Now that the "from" as been identified, we need to specify the “to”. We must replace the <target-blob-url> by the url of the Windows Azure Storage container in the destination Azure subscription. If the Blob container already exists, just connect to this account and follow the previous steps. Otherwise, you need to create a new one by using the “+” imbutton on the bottom left of the screen.
The easiest way is to set the container with a public access at the time of the transfer. You can set this option when creating or editing the container using the button at the bottom of the screen.
Then specify the access propriety to Public Container.
Get the key
Last part but not the less important we must specify the storage account key and replace the <target-storage-account-key> with it. You can find it by accessing the Manage Keys button from the dashboard of the Storage. You can use either the primary or the secondary access key.
Install the Windows Azure command-line tool
Here is a little script that you should put in a “.cmd” or “.bat” file. It will install the Windows Azure command-line tool with Node.js and Chocolatey. After running the script, a console window that looks like this should be open.
@powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy unrestricted -Command "iex ((new-object net.webclient).DownloadString('http://bit.ly/psChocInstall'))" && SET PATH=%PATH%;%systemdrive%\chocolatey\bin
@powershell "cinst nodejs.install" && SET PATH=%PATH%;%ProgramFiles(x86)%\nodejs
@powershell -ExecutionPolicy unrestricted "npm install azure -g" && SET PATH=%PATH%;%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\npm\
@powershell azure
pause
The Missing Windows 8 Instructional Video (Scott Hanselman) - Finally! Someone did it. Great video that helps to get started with Windows 8. Bookmark, share and re-share.
WordPress Database Error on Azure (Schwammy) - Nice catch. These tips will save a lot of time to anyone having a Wordpress blog hosted on windows Azure.
Manage your subscriptions with the Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio - This post explains the features of the new available tools Studio to manage our Azure. Since Vs is the principal tool for all the .Net developers and that this add-on is very powerful, I highly recommend to read this post.
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Backing Up WordPress? Don’t Make These 9 Mistakes - If you are a developer, you probably backup your machine and your code. That's good. Do you do the same for your blog? You should, here is how to do it the good way.
iPad, Surface, Ultrabook: Are we there yet? (Scott Hanselman) - The comparison we were all waiting for. A MUST READ post. I’m a little sad that no Android device has been included. I think the Asus transformer could be confederates. a bit sad that any Android device was included. I think the Asus Transformer could be ferly confederated.
Table Storage 2.0 (Tyler Doerksen) - Nice post that explains the new structure of the namespace in the library and gives some samples of code how to use it.
Azure Remote PowerShell (Dustin Metzgar) - This post explains how the author managed to get more information from an instance running in Azure. The code sample is also available.
Why All The Lambdas? - This post explains very clearly how the lambdas are so useful by using a well use sample of code in Asp. Net MVC @Html.TextBoxFor(Model.Rating).
JQUERY 1.9 BETA 1 RELEASED - Nice jQuery 1.9 is coming. Learn all about the new features ex: the multiple getter. Since big structural changes are maid in this version the jQuery team is providing migration tools. Learn where to find these and how-to uses them in this post.
Recreate a VM .. over and over again (Priyo Lahiri) - Nice script that is a time saver. I would have liked to have it one month ago when I was testing deployment... Let's keep it for the future.
Surface & iPad Collision Course - Nice post that compares what could be compared between an iPad and a Surface... Nothing unexpected put still something to read.
Backing Up WordPress? Don’t Make These 9 Mistakes - If you are a developer, you probably backup your machines and your code. That good. Do you do the same for your blog? You should, here is how-to do it the good way.
Windows Azure Service Bus: Messaging Patterns Using Sessions - Great article that explains how to build a messaging application with the Azure Service Bus using Topic. A great complement to the Servise Bus Lab in the Windows Azure Training Kit (WATK).
Updating my Windows Phone App to Windows Phone 8 (Scott Hanselman) - Nice tutorial that highlight some key features that need to be addressed in order to build a nice Windows Phone 8 applications.
ASP.NET and Web Tools 2012.2 (Release Candidate) (Scott Hanselman) - Learn more about the new release of web tools that the asp.net team move to open source. And if you ever want to know why they’re doing that, this is the post to read.
Miscellaneous
Big Data - Very interesting thoughts about what should be "smart application" today since the so much information is easily accessible thru Big Data.
Try Meditation to Strengthen Your Resilience - If the resilience is good for our code, it should be good for ourselves too!? Nice post that tip-off how to improve our resilience.
How to be a Consultant, Part 5: Verbal Communication Skills (David Pallmann) - Great add-on to the serie: How to be a Consultant. This post gives good tips to improve the communication skills. This is for everyone since nobody works alone in his basement without seeing someone once in a while.
We are presenting BizTalk360 at – BizTalk Summit 2012 (Saravana Kumar) - Nice event that is coming soon. I would love to see the Biztalk360 presentation by myself, but I will need to relay on my coworkers’ story.
[…]The session is going to be 100% technical, without a single sales slide. The session structure is going to be 15 minutes slides (intro/background) and 45 minutes demos. […]
Building Beautiful, Interactive, and Fast Web Sites (Jonathan Rozenblit) - Web developer this was a great web camps! In case you missed it, stay tuned for the video on-demand that should be publish sonly.
My next PC will be an Ultrabook (Scott Hanselman) - Didn't know that ultrabook could be that powerful. This type of PC starts to be really interesting then.
Don’t let IT ground your company - Interesting article that explains the importance of planning and to have plan B... If you want to stay in business.
Windows Azure SQL Database Management (Shay Yannay) - This post explain how you could do a PowerShell script to speed up your deployment by automating the database creation and some other tasks.
Scaling cloud apps with the .NET Framework 4.5 - Really great post, that introduce some new features of the .Net framework 4.5 (now available in Azure web site) and how to use them in a scaling perspective using async.
Windows Server 2012 Now Available on AWS - A new series called Windows Wednesdays just kicked off with this nice post about the new availability of Windows Server 2012 on AWS.
AppFabric - Frequently Asked Development Questions (Ed Price - MSFT Ed Price - MSFT Microsoft MSFT 122,146 Points 25 20 17 Recent Achievements Proposed Answerer III Gallery Contributor II Wiki Ninja View Profile) - Good questions... with their answers.
Programming
Changes in ADFS 2.1 from ADFS 2.0 - Important things to know when migrating in addition to remember where you saved the artifacts creation scripts.
Backup SQL Database Federation (Herve Roggero)- Introduction to a very useful tool call Enzo Cloud Backup that gives you the ability to backup and restore Azure Federation Database. These options are available through a graphic interface and API. You can even setup a schedule.
Embrace the Cloud: Your Customers Are! (Clayton M) - 4 out of 10 of your customer are using the cloud. If you don't move, they will continue without you. This is the main premise of this post.
Free online Windows AzureConf this Wednesday (Scott Gu) - Nice conference with some amazing presentations that you should really watch. When this post will be publish the video should be available on Channel9.
Microsoft Acquires StorSimple (Michael_Park) - News from the acquisition of StorSimple, the great product to extend really easily your local storage.
Upgrading to Azure SDK 1.8 (Tyler Doerksen) - Great post the pass through some migration issue that you can have when a VS2010 Azure project is open the first time in VS2012.
Tagging Comes to Readability (David Sleight) - Great add-on to a great tools. I'm a big fan of Readability and looking forward to upgrade my script using the API.
5 Ways to Use Images to Make Your Posts Irresistible (Darren Rowse) - Maybe it's my photographic background but I found that post to be absolutely true. The web is graphic so you must use image for all type of posts or articles.
Suggestion of the week
