Cloud Computing Discussion Boards

hi Azure involves cost, is there is any free or less costly means to do azure R&D

If you have an MSDN account (Premium or Ultimate) Azure is free (with certain restrictions like CPU size). You do still need to insert credit card details but you won't get charged unless you exceed your limits.

If this isn't an option I seem to remember there be some dev utility that simulates the cloud locally on your workstation. I can't remember the name but it does sound familiar I'm sure a quick google would get you the name.

Phil

Yes, EC2 does support .NET, but not on the free tier. The cost can be very low if you only run the server for occasional tests, but is similar to a conventional hosted VM if you need it running all the time.

If you are developing it for your purpose then better test it on your Emulator.
It has no more difference than local and server hosting.
It is very good for developer testing. It works same on Azure even.

If you are developing it for your client better ask him an account.

Queries are welcomed!

Regards,
Deepak.

Hi Developers,

Let me introduce my self here, i am new to this cloud community. I am thinking to developing a small Application in cloud, which is related to Bookmarks and it is completely Freeware, can some one please let me know, where i have to start and what Libraries i have to use in C#.Net and how to get the free space in Cloud..

Being a Freelancer, just want to give some utilities as freeware as my passion. Please some one help me with the following

1. How to get free cloud space
2. Libraries for the same in C#
3. Get started with some samples and implement them with visual studio...

Thanks in Advance...

For starters

pravin_mun wrote:
1. How to get free cloud space

You can try Windows Azure Free Trial Offer . Refer
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/free-trial/[^]

pravin_mun wrote:
2. Libraries for the same in C#

Download Windows Azure SDK .Refer http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/sdk/[^]

pravin_mun wrote:
3. Get started with some samples and implement them with visual studio...

Refer this for some sample Web Apps to be deployed using VS http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/tutorials/[^]

This is purely from Windows Azure perspective, you can also try out other vendors like Amazon EC2 or GAE

Hope this helps!!

"Every morning I go through Forbes list of 40 richest people in the world. If my name is not in there, I go to work..!!!"

Hi folks,

I have been developing desktop applications in C# for two years. But, after I read some about cloud computing, I was very interested in pursuing my career so that I can develop apps on the cloud. Currently I am studying my Masters in Computer Science. I have also done two web apps(one in PHP and the other in JSF).. I don't have that much experience in web development.

Do you think it is possible for me to get a job so that I can develop on the cloud without having an experience in web development? Or do you recommend me to develop we apps(get a job in web development) for 2-3 years and then start working on the cloud? Please give me your personal opinion.

Thank you

CoderForEver wrote:
Or do you recommend me to develop we apps(get a job in web development) for 2-3 years and then start working on the cloud?

That's essentially the same thing... web apps are working on the cloud (unless its a download/ run locally type of thing).

I'd recommend you get as much experience in whatever it is you want to do before trying to find a job in that field. Most people will not want to hire someone with absolutely no experience. If you need some suggestions for projects, maybe look to the open source community and try to help where you can.

I agree - and brush up research, find reasons to code in JavaScript. Then look into libraries like jQuery and such. AND of course, HTML5 - as that will bring a lot of functionality to cloud computing.

________
John Y.
Developer

I don't really think that you need experience in web application to start working in cloud. Your 2 years experience in windows application can give you a real kick start. All you have to do is get some personal trainings and hands on experience in cloud computing.

To be honest, I dont think that is true because, I have learned web application 3 months before and now I am starting to develop apps on the cloud and if I haven't had a web knowledge, it will be very difficult to work on cloud computing. You need to have at least the basics.

Any ways, thank you for your suggestion.

Starts at 12pm EST.

Can register at:
http://www.virtualtechsummits.com/Register.aspx?eventID=12[^]

Session info:
http://www.virtualtechsummits.com/Register.aspx?eventID=12&tab=1[^]

Dear all,

This is my first message to the forum.
I'm a beginner to developing cloud computing apps. I have a small
question please. I understood that in order to develop a Cloud
Computing application, I need to develop it using PaaS (like Google
app engine, Amazon web services or Microsoft Azure) and I knew that
there are some open source frameworks like Hadoop or Eucalyptus, that
could help me develop a parallel application that would run easily on
the cloud. My question is, is what I understood correct? Is there any
other way to developing Cloud applications?
I'd be grateful if you could help me.

Thanks and best regards,

Nermine Naguib

any help please????

Four days and you still haven't tried this[^]?

d@nish[^] has the answer.

Of course Richard the first thing I've done even before sending this question was googling it! but I only could find the methods I mentioned in my message, I just wanted to make sure that I understood them correctly and that I didn't miss anything else because I'm required to make a report about all the alternative techniques of cloud applications development. I have no one to ask... I know no one with experience in cloud computing and I was waiting for a more professional reply from people with more experience in this field. Thanks anyway... although honestly I didn't like the way you replied to me.

I think perhaps you misunderstand what the CodeProject is about. You posted a question asking for information about tools and techniques for Cloud computing. After four days with no response you posted a follow up. The lack of response means one thing: nobody on the site has the information you are looking for so you need to go and do some research for yourself. I'm sorry you don't like the answer, but everybody who gives advice here does so in their own time and at no cost to the people who ask the questions. You could always try a professional Cloud consultant, you will get a better answer but it will not be free (or even cheap).

d@nish[^] has the answer.

I'd like to thank you for your reply and apologize for misinterpreting your first message...
I love CodeProject since I was in the first year at college and maybe that's why I was very happy to find the cloud computing forum and sent my question here in the first place Smile | :)

thanks again for trying to help!

Well not necessarily, you could code your own framework from the ground up ( Dead | X|

).

Jk, find a system that you feel comfortable with and work with it. Google's framework and Microsoft's Azure platform are good starts. I think the latest Linux based cloud frameworks are still immature for commercial use.

Actually, in all honesty, if you take away the bells and whistles you could build your own framework. The abstraction of the propagation of resources between platforms into a "cloud" is easy enough to code. I'd recommend sticking with a tried and tested system for business and work related development, but the aforementioned could be a fun code project.

helo

Iam very new to the cloud computing concepts.....may i know how it is used and why ?

Cloud Computing is an architectural concept that will drive us into 70's VT-100 terminals but with an HTTP client built-in Poke tongue | ;-P

It's the concept of software exposed as service over the internet, only that.

It's amazing that with new technology, the theme is always the same (dumb terminals vs. web browsers, client server vs web services, etc). I wonder what new technology will be for the punch card.

One hand clapping

OK, this is by no ways a very informed answer and it's not particularly my field... but during the Customer Test Program phase of Microsoft Azure coming into being I created an account and had a play. During that time I could immediately see some obvious applications, and recently when I was looking at actual enterprises that have gone with Azure some were very much along the lines of what had gone through my mind. By the way, why Azure and not some other solution would almost certainly have to do with whether ones's business was already aligned to MS technologies, such as .NET development. Writing apps for Azure is not significantly different to writing any other .NET applications.

One application for example was an event ticketing site (if that is the right term.. ticketing of sports events, concerts etc).

That specific application has certain aspects that might suggest the cloud as a very cost-effective solution. It is likely idle for much of the time, but could have extreme demands at others... thousands of people trying to snap up concert tickets in a few minutes. To maintain one's own infrastructure to support this application would not be trivial! And it's definitely not something that you plop onto a typical web-hosting site, it would break in a minute flat. But the underlying Azure platform takes care of the scaling of that workload (e.g. creating new VM instances for large volumes of workflows), and the cost is basically "pay for what you use". Your infrastructure cost is, crudely speaking, proportionate to use (and we presume that during that use you are making money).

Without getting into it, I was also intrigued by the service bus component of Azure. Again, pretty crude playing, but it seemed relatively easy to host aplications on my machine that were exposing WCF service endpoints on the worldwide web (Azure) to other networks. I could immediately think of some possibilities for "out of the box" apps communicating with other business entities.. perhaps exchanging EDI documents as an example. Of course there would be other ways of doing that, but I could see some definite uses for Azure to (I think) greatly simplify some things. Remember, I am a .NET developer so Azure made sense to me. I doubt that what they offer is really unique, it is MS particular cloud solution.

This is just one example, and I have not really defined "what is the cloud?" to which you will get a million different answers. Whether an application is suited to cloud hosting gets down to a lot of factors and would require a great deal of analysis and cost analysis.

And like you, I have really only investigated this stuff a bit... you would probably get a thousand conflicting opinions and many of them by more informed people. But I think platforms such as Azure definitely have their place.

I have my own feelings on the Cloud computing movement, but I have to earnestly research it as a fiscally pleasing alternative to a hardware purchase needed for a large database solution I am developing. Amazon's AWS is the suggested service.

After researching the pricing of the service, it appears that it may quickly become costly for a server that must remain up 24/7/365 and is constantly updated in batches of 10-100k rows per second. The kicker is that this database server is for internal use only so if we hosted it in our network, it would not increase our in/outbound bandwidth, however if hosted in the cloud, it would, and we would also get charged for this from AWS's side.

According to their site, storage costs are:
Amazon EBS Volumes
• $0.10 per GB-month of provisioned storage
• $0.10 per 1 million I/O requests

While data transfers are:
Data Transfer In US EU Regions APAC Region
All Data Transfer $0.10 per GB $0.10 per GB
Data Transfer Out US EU Regions APAC Region
First 1 GB per Month $0.00 per GB $0.00 per GB
Up to 10 TB per Month $0.15 per GB $0.19 per GB
Next 40 TB per Month $0.11 per GB $0.15 per GB
Next 100 TB per Month $0.09 per GB $0.13 per GB
Over 150 TB per Month $0.08 per GB $0.12 per GB

Also, I won't be able to accurately estimate volume usage, IO's or data transfers until the system were to go into production. However, it can't go into production until I have chosen a hardware solution. The cloud's pricing system is making it more difficult because I could end up racking up huge bills once it goes prod.

My question is: Is it possible to make the decision to go with a cloud service for a new system? Or is it only viable for systems where X, Y and Z are known? And if this is the case, why not just stay with the current physical hardware?