• Basics of the service offering
• What gaps this can fill?
• When to use this, when not.
• How we got here
• Developers?
• Tips and Tricks

Media File: http://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode7.mp3

Links:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/microsoft_press/archive/2013/07/26/free-ebook-rethinking-enterprise-storage-a-hybrid-cloud-model.aspx

3rd-party SaaS integration - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn308588.aspx

• Multi-tenant versus Dedicated.
• What are the differences?
• Are there differences from on-premise SQL Server?
• Troubleshooting 
• Scale Out vs. Scale Up
• What about "other" database platforms

Media File: http://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode6.mp3

Links:

10 tools for Windows Azure

• Data Center Tour (long): http://cdn.globalfoundationservices.com/videos/Video_Data_Center_Long_Tour_8000k.wmv
• Data Center Tour (short): http://cdn.globalfoundationservices.com/videos/Video_Data_Center_Short_Tour_2000k.wmv
• Dublin Data Center Tour: http://cdn.globalfoundationservices.com/videos/Dublin%20Data%20Center%20Tour.wmv

• What is IAAS
• Basics of why IAAS is available/what gaps do they fill
• How much does this cost?
• How are these useful (scenarios)
• Management tools
• Tips/Tricks to using VMs effectively?
• Special guest Evan Basalik - Azure Support Specialist from Microsoft!

Media file: http://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode5.mp3

Links

Hot off the press - announced today - Visual Studio Online lets you edit an Azure Website directly from any modern browser (on any platform).
1) Go to the Azure Portal.

2) Pick a Site and click on the Configure tab.

3) Open the Dashboard - you will have the Edit in Visual Studio Online option.

WAAD - http://blogs.technet.com/b/ad/archive/2013/11/08/creating-and-managing-multiple-windows-azure-active-directories.aspx

'Capturing' Windows Server VMs - http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/manage/windows/how-to-guides/capture-an-image/

We talk about some of the Storage options available in Windows Azure, specifically Blobs and Tables. We will cover Queues at a later episode when talking about the Service Bus.

• Blob Containers
• Programming
• Page/Block blobs
• Upload tools
• Local and Geo Replication
• Redundancy
• Security
• Tables - basic structure
• How to create your own table structures
• LINQ syntax for querying tables.
• REST API for storage access
• Current challenges using storage and some workarounds.

Media file: http://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode4.mp3

Updates

• Storage: Import/Export Hard Disk Drives to your Storage Accounts - securely ship hard disk drives to move data.
• VMs: New VM Gallery UI, ACL support for VIPs via portal;
• Web Sites: WebSocket and Remote Debugging Support
• Notification Hubs: Segmented customer push notification support with tag expressions
• TFS & GIT: Continuous Delivery Support for Web Sites + Cloud Services
• Developer Analytics and Monitoring: New Relic support for Web Sites + Mobile Services in partnership with New Relic with Windows Azure Management Portal making it really easy to configure.
• Service Bus: Support for partitioned queues and topics.
• Billing: New Billing Alert Service that sends emails notifications when your bill hits a threshold you define
• New Windows Azure Cache Service http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/services/cache/

Links

Windows Azure PowerShell CmdLets

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj152841.aspx 

Announcing the preview of a new Windows Azure service: Windows Azure Scheduler

http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/services/scheduler/ 

http://alexandrebrisebois.wordpress.com/2013/10/26/create-database-diagrams-of-your-windows-azure-sql-databases/

Basics of Azure Websites

Why they are important

Types of websites

What's going on under the covers

How to deploy

Media File: http://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode3.mp3

TIP: Backup and restore your Azure Tables: Use the Azure Storage Explorer tool and select the Upload/Download facility. You can download the tables in various formats on your computer and later upload them back if required. 

Windows Azure HDInsight is now generally available. This is the Microsoft Hadoop distribution made for Azure. You can spin up nodes only when required for running compute-intense jobs.

Nice MSDN article on Azure Websites for further reading : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/jj883953.aspx

Real-world Azure architecture videos from the User group in Belgium: http://azug.be (click the Videos tab)

• Basics of PAAS
• Web and Worker roles
• Storage options (blobs, tables and queues).
• Deployment, monitoring and configuration.
• Common questions asked by folks moving to PAAS.

Podcast media file:

http://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode2.mp3

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2013/10/18/windows-azure-announcing-support-for-windows-server-2012-r2-some-nice-price-cuts.aspx

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2013/10/22/windows-azure-announcing-release-of-windows-azure-sdk-2-2-with-lots-of-goodies.aspx

http://azurestorageexplorer.codeplex.com/

SCOM 2012 Management Pack for Windows Azure Now Available

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=38414

Pricing calculator

http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/

Pilot episode where Cale Teeter & Sujit D'Mello discuss the basics of the Cloud. In 10 minutes (OK, it took us about 22 minutes!), they try to answer the questions:

• What is the cloud?
• The differences between Public and Private cloud.
• The competitive landscape.
• The basics about Windows Azure.
• How do you get an account on Azure?
• What works well in the cloud (and more importantly what does not).

Podcast media file:

http://azpodcast.blob.core.windows.net/episodes/Episode1.mp3

Links:

http://www.windowsazure.com

http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/member-offers/msdn-benefits-details

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/microsoft_press/archive/2013/10/01/free-ebook-introducing-windows-azure-for-it-professionals.aspx?loc=zTS1z&prod=zWAz&tech=zOttechz&prog=zPressz&type=zBLz&media=zBKz&country=zUSz