Yesterday I found out that Microsoft focusses on “the Cloud”. I want to know more about it. Especially how a private cloud could be created and if it would be of benefit for our customers.
The public cloud is especially usefull in case where a solution must be very scalable, like the website of an event (i.e. Tech ED). This is due to Microsoft’s pricing strategy.
Private Cloud Reference Architectures with Hyper-V and System Center
Speaker: Arno Mihm/Bryon Surace/Scott Rosenbloom
Link: http://www.msteched.com/2010/Europe/VIR201
Timeslot: 09:00-10:00
Notes:
- Software as a Service
- Platform as a Service
- Infrastructure as a Service (Today)
- Private cloud hosted by a third party is possible also with a Hyper-V Cloud Service Providers
- 6 different Service Partners (i.e. HP, Dell, etc.)
- Private Cloud Management stack hardware should be redundant
WCF and Windows Server AppFabric - Services Made Easy
Speaker: Jon Flanders
Link:
http://www.msteched.com/2010/Europe/ASI304 Timeslot: 10:30-11:30
Windows Server AppFabric is a set of integrated technologies that make it easier to build, scale and manage Web and composite applications that run on IIS.
More info on the two Microsoft products named AppFabric: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppFabric
Building Windows Phone Games with Microsoft XNA and Visual Studio 2010
Speaker: Rob Miles (
www.robmiles.com/)
Link:
http://www.msteched.com/2010/Europe/WPH307 Timeslot: 12:00-13:00
One of the most interesting sessions IMHO. Worthily to watch the presentation.
- Silverlight 3D is 2.5D
- Appeared with SL 3.0
- Now with GPU acceleration
- Source code of all demo’s is available trough Rob’s own site
Windows Azure Boot Camp, Part 2
Speaker: Brian Prince
Link: n.a.
Timeslot: 14:30-15:30
Microsoft RemoteFX – What is it?
Speaker: Max Hermann/Rob Williams
Link: n.a.
Timeslot: 16:00-17:00
RemoteFX is a technology for making rich media applications capable to run realtime from a MS Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1/Microsoft Hyper-V 2008 R2 SP1. Basically it will sent compressed bitmaps of changed rectangles on the screen.
In order to do this, one needs a special ATI/nVidia graphics card that has a RemoteFX logo. This physical GPU will split it’s GPU into virtual GPU slices. Virtual GPU’s will use such slices. These specifications of those slices can be configured, so that a specific user can get more/less FPS and/or bandwidth.
One advantage from this technique is that very thin clients are now possible, needing nothing more than a monitor, keyboard and mouse attached. Vendors already have devices no larger than a couple of inches that can be mounted on the back of a LCD monitor. The size depends on the needed connecters (DVI, USB, etc).
A great deal of effort has been put in support for USB devices. It’s now possible to connect (at least one) USB device (i.e. phone or multifunctional printer). The thin client does not need to have a driver for this device. A generic USB driver at the thin client routes this device to the (virtual) RemoteFX OS.
Unfortunatly this technique will not be available between clients for remote support scenario’s
Architecting Applications for High Scalability – Leveraging the Windows Azure Platform
Speaker: Eugenio Pace
Link:
http://www.msteched.com/2010/Europe/ARC309 Timeslot: 17:30-18:30
Notes:
- Tailspin is a Software as a Service provider creating Surveys as a Service.
- Command Query Responsibility Seperation (CQRS) pattern
- Used many times in highly scalable systems
- Create many tasks/roles and put them in a single workerrole. This is because you pay per workerrole.
- http://msdn.microsoft.com/practices
