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Azure F.A.Q.
Why use Azure?
Q: How reliable Azure is?
A: Windows Azure is designed with reliability in mind. When your Azure application crashes, it gets automatically restarted. All the data is replicated at least three times on three different locations. Azure load balancing platform runs on new high-quality hardware, which is not expected to fail often. But if it will fail, Azure Cloud will do the best to keep end-user unaware if it – he will be seamlessly switched to another copy of your Azure application on some other server in a cloud.
Q: Is Azure really that scalable, or it is just marketing pitch?
A: It is definitely more scalable than any other existing application hosting model. Plus, you will not have to guess how much hardware you will need in 3, 6 and 12 month. Without Azure, you can order too much and under-use it, or order too few and lose important visitors you put so much efforts to attract.
Q: Is it mostly for Web applications?
A: It is perfect for Web applications, but can be efficiently used for some heavy scientific calculations or huge video files Web hosting.
Q: When does it start?
A: On January 2010. Microsoft promised not to charge anything for the first month and start billing from February 2010.
Q: Will I save on pay per use?
A: Likely, unless you have very simple web site with few visitors, and do not expect to expand any soon.
Q: Do I need regular Azure or Azure CDN (Content Delivery Network)?
A: Short answer is – you need CDN only if you have huge static files. Content Delivery Network is only suitable for big files - video is a good candidate. Essentially, CDN is just 18 (as of Nov. 2009) storages all over the globe you can set up to store you Azure media files. All it does is faster download for your customers.
Q: How about testing software development environment? Previously we had to dedicate part of our hardware resources for software development and quality assurance. How it works with Azure?
A: RobinLab has its own Azure account and will use it for software development and testing process. We can use either RobinLab or Customer's Azure account for quality assurance.
Q: Will it be possible to troubleshoot the software when you have no idea on which computer it actually runs?
A: Yes it is. Azure platform provides extensive diagnostics and simulation tools. Besides, Windows Azure has pretty good logging support. Properly implemented application with Azure Load Balancing in mind will log all the critical events and decisions made by the software, together with all the errors and warnings. Of course, logging would not help much unless application is designed with reliability and maintainability in mind.
Q: Why would I need a company like RobinLab to help me with Azure?
A: Our engineers should be able to migrate pour systems to Azure when needed. Well, of course, but unless they invested some time in Azure software development, it might take longer than you expect, and might not be done right from the first attempt. A better solution could be making RobinLab do the software migration or new software development for you, then train your engineers to be able to maintain and enhance it.
Q: I have more questions. Where do I look?
A: Check out Microsoft Azure F.A.Q. at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/faq
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