Public clouds platforms are rapidly growing and many businesses move partially or fully their IT infrastructure to the cloud. The big players like Microsoft, Google, Oracle and Amazon operate their own public cloud platforms while the smaller players provide cloud services and PaaS platforms and on top of the larger. What about the .NET developers and the cloud? In this talk the speaker Svetlin Nakov introduces the public .NET clouds and compares the leading .NET PaaS clouds: Windows Azure, AppHarbor, Uhuru and AWS Elastic Beanstalk for .NET. The .NET public clouds are compared in terms of architecture, programming model, pricing, development stack, available services, deployment model and tools for administration and monitoring. A live demo shows how to deploy and run a typical .NET application (based on ASP.NET MVC and MS SQL Server) in AppHarbor and Uhuru. Table of contents: - Public Cloud Platforms - Typical Cloud Architecture - Public .NET Cloud Platforms - Cloud Types: IaaS vs. PaaS - Windows Azure - Amazon AWS (+ Beanstalk for .NET) - AppHarbor - Uhuru - Choosing a .NET Cloud The presentation was delivered at DevReach 2012 (www.devreach.com) by Svetlin Nakov (www.nakov.com) in Sofiа on 4 October 2012. YouTube video for this presentation: http://youtu.be/H2Jjiu8VyCk

1. Public Cloud Platforms
for .NET Developers
Svetlin Nakov | Telerik
www.devreach.com Sofia, 4-5 October 2012

2. Agenda
 Public Cloud Platforms
 Typical Cloud Architecture
 Public .NET Cloud Platforms
 Cloud Types: IaaS vs. PaaS
 Windows Azure
 Amazon AWS (+ Beanstalk for .NET)
 AppHarbor
 Uhuru
 Choosing a .NET Cloud
www.devreach.com

3. Public Cloud Platforms
Overview, IaaS, SaaS, PaaS
www.devreach.com

4. What is Cloud?
 Cloud ≈ multiple hardware machines
combine computing power and resources
 Share them between multiple applications
 To save costs and use resources efficiently
 Cloud for Developers?
 New paradigms and APIs
 E.g. NoSQL databases and MapReduce
 New platforms and technologies
 New deployment model
www.devreach.com

5. Cloud Models
 Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
 Virtual machines in the cloud on demand
 Users install the OS and software they need
 Platform as a Service (PaaS)
 Platform, services and APIs for developers
 E.g. .NET + IIS + ASP.NET + WCF + SQL Azure
 JavaScript + Node.js + MongoDB + RabbitMQ
 Software as a Service (SaaS)
 Hosted application on demand (e.g. Bugzilla,
WordPress, Sitefinity or SugarCRM)
www.devreach.com

6. Public Clouds
 Provide computing resources on demand
 Publicly in Internet, for everyone
 Paid or free of charge (to some limit)
 Could be IaaS, PaaS, SaaS or mix of them
 Examples of public clouds
 Amazon AWS, Google App Engine, Windows
Azure, Rackspace, Heroku, Engineyard,
AppForce, PHP Fog, AppHarbor, Uhuru,
OpenShift, CloudBees, CloudSwing, Oracle
Public Cloud, Salesforce, WordPress.com, …
www.devreach.com

7. Typical Cloud Architecture
 The typical cloud architecture is multi-tier,
SOA, highly-scalable and highly-available
Load Balancer
Administration
Monitoring
Computing Computing … Computing
Node Node Node
Data- Storage Back-End Other
bases Services Services Services
 At each tier different managed services,
technologies and languages can run
www.devreach.com

8. Typical Cloud Architecture (2)
 Computing Nodes
 Host and run your applications
 Different languages and frameworks
 E.g. C# + ASP.NET MVC or PHP + Symfony
 Stateless by design
 Databases and Storage
 Relational and NoSQL databases
 Blob storage, file storage, CDN
 Other Services
 Queues, notifications, logging, email, …
www.devreach.com

9. Public .NET Clouds
Develop and Run .NET Apps in the Cloud
www.devreach.com

10. Public .NET Clouds
 I am .NET developer
 I want to use a .NET cloud for my apps
 What I can do?
 IaaS vs. PaaS approach
 IaaS: VPS or cloud hosting
 Rackspace / Tier3 / any hosting provider
 PaaS: write your app for certain platform
 Azure, AWS, AppHarbor, Uhuru, other?
www.devreach.com

11. IaaS for .NET Developers
 IaaS / VPS / cloud hosting
 Could work well for .NET applications
 Offered by hundreds of hosting providers
 Full control over the production servers
 Limited support:
 E.g. DB server failure fix it yourself!
 Difficulties to configure high-availability +
load balancing
www.devreach.com

12. PaaS for .NET Developers
 Two types of .NET PaaS clouds:
 Microsoft Azure
 Write your app against the Azure APIs
 E.g. use SQL Azure, not SQL Server
 Vendor lock-in
 AWS, AppHarbor, Uhuru
 Write your app purely in .NET
 Use IIS, SQL Server, ASP.NET, WCF, …
www.devreach.com

13. Windows Azure
Hosting .NET Projects in Azure
www.devreach.com

14. Windows Azure
 Microsoft Windows Azure
 Fast-growing public cloud from MS
 Provides rich PaaS platform
 Supports all major .NET technologies
 ASP.NET MVC, WCF, ADO.NET EF, …
 .NET applications need adoption to run
 Supports also Java, PHP and Node.js
 3 months trial + free shared instance
 Mobile phone + credit card required
www.devreach.com

15. Windows Azure – Architecture
Azure Load Balancer
Visual Studio + Azure Tools
Management Portal
Compute Compute Compute
Windows Azure
(Web role) (Worker role) (VM role)
VM running IIS7 Windows VM Windows VM
ASP.NET / PHP / C# / .NET code / Custom
other Java code software
SQL
Tables Blobs Queues CDN
Azure
Other Azure / external services
www.devreach.com

16. Windows Azure Services
 Windows Azure Compute
 Computing instances run Windows OS
and applications (CPU + RAM + HDD)
 Web / Worker / VM / Persistent VM role
 Storage Services
 Azure Blobs / Drives
 Blob / file storage / NTFS volumes
 Azure Table Storage – NoSQL cloud DB
 Azure Queue Storage – message queue
www.devreach.com

17. Windows Azure Services (2)
 SQL Database (SQL Azure)
 SQL Server-like in the cloud
 Highly-available and scalable relational DB
 Azure Business Analytics
 Create reports with tables, charts, maps, etc.
 Azure Caching
 Distributed, in-memory, application cache
 Azure CDN
 Content delivery network
www.devreach.com

18. Azure Pricing (Rough)
 Computing Instances
 Shared CPU, 768 MB RAM
 $0.02 / hour ($15 / month)
 1 Core, 1.75 GB RAM, 225 GB HDD
 $0.12 / hour ($90 / month)
 Storage:
 $0.125 / GB + $0.01 / 100 000 operations
 SQL Database (not real SQL Server!)
 100 MB – $0.0067 / hour ($5 / month)
 1 GB – $0.0133 / hour ($10 / month)
www.devreach.com

19. Azure Free Web Site Instance
 Windows Azure Web Sites
 Host ASP.NET / PHP / Node.js web sites
 Web Sites Free Shared Instance
 10 sites on the azurewebsites.net domain
 165 MB of outbound data per day,
unlimited inbound data
 1 GB storage (shared by all sites)
 20 MB of a third-party MySQL database
www.devreach.com

20. Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Hosting .NET Projects in AWS Beanstalk .NET
www.devreach.com

21. Amazon Web Services (AWS)
 Amazon Web Services (AWS)
 The pioneer of the public clouds
 Provides IaaS and PaaS on demand from 2002
 Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)
 Linux / Windows VMs on demand
 US, EU, Japan, Brazil, Singapore, …
 No free version, only 1 year trial
 Credit card required, but beware:
 AWS charge for resources not being used!
www.devreach.com

22. AWS Architecture
Elastic Load Balancing (ELB)
Python + VS / Eclipse Plugins
AWS SDK for Java, C#, PHP,
AWS Management Console
EC2 Instances + Storage (EBS)
Any OS and development platform
C# / Java / PHP / Python / Ruby / …
Any development framework (.NET / Java EE /
Symfony / Zend / Django / Rails / Node.js)
RDB DynamoDB S3 EBS SQS SWF
Other AWS / external services
(ElastiCache, CloudFront CDN, SES, …)
www.devreach.com

23. AWS Services
 Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS)
 Virtual hard disk (HDD) volumes
 Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)
 Host binary data (files, images, videos, etc.)
 Amazon DynamoDB / SimpleDB
 Managed NoSQL cloud database
 Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)
 Managed MySQL and Oracle databases
www.devreach.com

24. AWS Services (2)
 Other AWS services
 Amazon SQS (message queue)
 Amazon CloudFront (CDN)
 Amazon ElastiCache (caching)
 Amazon Route 53 (cloud DNS)
 Amazon SES (email)
 Amazon FPS (payments)
 More services at the AWS Marketplace
 MongoDB, Redis, LAMP, Business Objects, ...
www.devreach.com

25. AWS Elastic Beanstalk for .NET
 Amazon Beanstalk for .NET
 Automatically allocates AWS services
 Amazon EC2 (computing instance)
 Amazon S3 (storage)
 Amazon SNS (notifications)
 Elastic Load Balancing + Auto Scaling
 Simplified deployment of .NET apps
 Through Visual Studio / AWS Console
 Automatic load balancing + auto-scaling
www.devreach.com

26. Amazon AWS Pricing (Rough)
 On-Demand EC2 Instances
 1 Core, 1.7 GB RAM,
160 GB HDD, Windows
 $0.115 / hour ($86 / month)
 Storage (EBS)
 $0.10 / GB + $0.10 per 1 million I/O requests
 SQL Server Database (Web Edition)
 1 CPU, 630 MB RAM: $0.17 / hour ($126 / mo)
 1 CPU, 1.7 GB RAM: $0.59 / hour ($439 / mo)
www.devreach.com

27. AppHarbor
Hosting .NET Projects in AppHarbor
www.devreach.com

28. AppHarbor
 AppHarbor – cloud platform for .NET apps
 Classical .NET development stack
 C#, .NET Framework, IIS, ASP.NET, WCF, SQL
Server, ADO.NET Entity Framework, …
 Deployment through Git / SVN / TFS
 Automated build process
(compilation + unit tests)
 Build-in load balancing
 Built on top of Amazon AWS
 Rich set of add-on services
www.devreach.com

29. AppHarbor Architecture
Load Balancer (Nginx)
AppHarbor Applications
Management Console
Visual Studio + Git
Web worker instances Background workers
Managed Windows
Managed IIS environment
environment
C# / ASP.NET MVC /
C# code
Web Forms / WCF
Managed SQL MongoDB, IronMQ,
Server / MySQL CouchDB RabitMQ
Other AppHarbor Add-On Services
www.devreach.com

30. AppHarbor: Add-Ons
 Airbrake (error logging)
 Blitz (performance monitoring)
 CloudAMQP (RabbitMQ)
 Cloudant (CouchDB)
 CloudMailin (incoming email)
 Dedicated SQL Server
 JustOneDB (NoSQL database)
 Logentries (log management)
 Mailgun (email send / receive)
www.devreach.com

31. AppHarbor: Add-Ons (2)
 Memcacher (in-memory caching)
 MongoHQ (managed MongoDB)
 MongoLab (managed MongoDB)
 MySQL (shared MySQL DB)
 RavenHQ (NoSQL database)
 Redis To Go (key-value store)
 SendGrid (email delivery)
 StillAlive (app monitoring)
 Shared SQL Server (managed instance)
www.devreach.com

32. AppHarbor Pricing
 AppHarbor free plan
 1 Web worker instance per application
 20 MB SQL Server + 20 MB MySQL
 Unlimited # of apps
(@ apphb.com subdomain)
 Paid plans
 $49 month per worker instance
 10 GB Shared SQL Server DB – $10 / month
 10 GB Shared MySQL DB – $10 / month
 Custom domain – $10 / month
www.devreach.com

33. AppHarbor: Live Demo
ASP.NET MVC Project Deployment
www.devreach.com

34. Uhuru AppCloud
Hosting .NET Projects in Uhuru
www.devreach.com

35. Uhuru AppCloud
 Cloud platform based on CloudFoundry
 Supports PHP, Node.js, Ruby, Java and .NET
 Has classical .NET development stack
 C#, .NET Framework, IIS, ASP.NET, WCF, SQL
Server, ADO.NET Entity Framework, …
 Proprietary deployment model
 Build-in load balancing
 Hosted at Inernap Network ISP
 Limited set of add-on services
www.devreach.com

36. Uhuru AppCloud Architecture
Load Balancer (Nginx on Ubuntu Linux)
UhuruCloud.com Web Interface
Uhuru Cloud Manager
Linux / Windows Linux / Windows
App Servers App Servers
Managed IIS Managed Apache /
environment Tomcat environment
C# / ASP.NET MVC / Apache + PHP / Ruby /
Web Forms / WCF Node.js / Tomcat + Java
Managed SQL
MongoDB RabitMQ
Server / MySQL
Other Uhuru Add-On Services
www.devreach.com

37. Uhuru AppCloud Services
 Uhuru supports limited set of services:
 Managed SQL Server
 Managed MySQL
 Managed RabbitMQ (message queue)
 Managed Redis (key-value store)
 Managed file system storage (UhuruFS)
 Managed MongoDB (NoSQL database)
www.devreach.com

38. Uhuru Pricing
 Uhuru AppCloud Ready To Go
 Currently in Beta
 Entirely free
 For apps, databases, storage
 After the commercial launch
 Based on allocated RAM for each app
 Databases and Storage prices separately
 A free limited version will still be available
www.devreach.com

39. Uhuru: Live Demo
ASP.NET MVC Project Deployment
www.devreach.com

40. Other .NET Clouds
 Apprenda
 Develop for .NET locally in a VM, deploy the VM
into any public IaaS cloud (e.g. in AWS)
 Hosted ApprendaCloud  just became available
 AppFog
 .NET support still unavailable (as of 09/2012)
 Heroku
 Claim to support Mono apps on a Linux cloud
 Moncai
 .NET (Mono) cloud – not very active project
www.devreach.com

41. Choosing a .NET Cloud
 For large complex .NET applications
 IaaS hosting (AWS / Rackspace / other)
 Build the infrastructure yourself
 Azure – applications may need adoption
 For small applications / ASP.NET sites
 AppHarbor – recommended
 Azure Web Sites Free
 Beware of hidden charges
 Uhuru AppCloud – still in beta
www.devreach.com

42. Public Cloud Platforms
for .NET Developers
Thank you!
@svetlinnakov
nakov.com
bg.linkedin.com/in/nakov
Svetlin Nakov | Telerik
www.devreach.com

43. Free Trainings @ Telerik Academy
 “Cloud Development" course @
Telerik Software Academy
 clouddevcourse.telerik.com
 Telerik Software Academy
 academy.telerik.com
 Telerik Academy @ Facebook
 facebook.com/TelerikAcademy
 Telerik Software Academy Forums
 forums.academy.telerik.com
www.devreach.com