I am developing a c# web application that will be hosted in Windows Azure and use Table Data Storage (TDS).
I want to architect my application such that I can also (as an option) deploy the application to a traditional IIS server with some other NoSql back-end. Basically, I want to give my customers the option to either pay me in the software as a service model, OR purchase a license of my application that they can install on a (non-azure) production server of their own.
How can I best architect my data layer and middle tier to achieve both goals?
I will likely need a Windows Azure Worker Role and an Azure Queue. How complicated is to replicate these? Can I substitue a custom Windows Service and some other queuing technology?
How I can the entities in my data model be written such that I can deploy to Azure TDS or some other storage when not deploying to Azure? Would MongoDB or similar be useful for this?
Surely there is a way to architect for Azure without being married to it.
I will likely need a Windows Azure Worker Role and an Azure Queue. How complicated is to replicate these? Can I substitue a custom Windows Service and some other queuing technology?
Yes - a Windows service with some other queuing technology would fit this reasonably well - and worker roles have a main/Run loop which is easy to use within a Windows Service.
How I can the entities in my data model be written such that I can deploy to Azure TDS or some other storage when not deploying to Azure? Would MongoDB or similar be useful for this?
NoSql is a general term encapsulating lots of different technologies. I think Azure TDS currently belongs to the Key-Value store family of NoSql, while MongoDB is more of a document database offering much richer functionality than TDS - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NoSQL_(concept). For mimmicking Azure TDS I think maybe a variant of something like Redis might work (although I believe Redis itself has wider functionality then TDS currently)
In general, it depends on the shape of your data, but I suspect if you can fit it in Azure TDS, then you'll be able to fit it into your choice of other storage too.
Surely there is a way to architect for Azure without being married to it.
Yes - as you've suggested in your question, you can architect your app so it can work on other technologies instead. In fact, this is quite a similar challenge to the traditional SQL data abstraction methods. However, I think there are a few places where you'll find TDS pushing you in certain
directions which won't fit well with other stores - e.g. Azure pushes you much more towards data replication; has very specific rules on keys; offers high performance using very specific mechanisms; and offers limited transaction integrity in very specific situations. These factors may mean that you do have to indeed change some middle tier layers as well as some data layers in order to get the most out of your app in both its Azure and non-Azure variations.
One other thought - It might be easier to offer your clients a multitenant SaaS version on Azure, and a singletenant version hosted on Azure - but this does depend on the clients!
I found a viable solution. I found that I can use EF Code First with SQL Server or SQL CE if I design my entities with the same PartitionKey & RowKey compound key structure that Azure Table Storage requires.
With a little help from Lokad Cloud (http://code.google.com/p/lokad-cloud/) to perform the interaction with Azure Table Storage, I was able to craft a common DataContext that provides crud operations against either EF's DbContext OR Lokad's TableStorageProvider.
I even found a nice way to manage relationships between entities and lazy-load them properly.
The solution is a bit complex and needs more testing. I will blog about it and post the link here when ready.
Related
Ok first of all I love Azure and table storage.
We're starting a new greenfield project which will be hosted as a SaaS model in the cloud. Azure Table storage is ideal for what we need but one thing stopping us from taking this route is the possibility of someone having to have the application deployed to their local web server rather than a cloud deployment.
This is something i'd rather avoid personally but unfortunately some people insist the their local setup is more secure than any data centre out there.
What i'd really like to know is if someone has created a local implementation of Azure Table Storage. I know microsoft have the emulator which in theory could be used (it stores the data in SQL which may be slow)
Anyone used the emulator for an internal deployment?
I'm happy to look at creating a wrapper for Azure Table Storage using their rest apis but didn't want to do something that's already been done.
Alternately can anyone recommend an alternate? I know there's RavenDB and MongoDB which also look good too but i've not had an exposure to how well they handle under load or when to scale them out.
The emulator is designed to simplify testing - it is definitely not intended to be used as part of a production deployment.
Is it possible to embrace both a cloud only (Azure Web role and Storage) and a hybrid design whereby your application can be hosted within your web server yet still use Azure Storage?
Jason
We would like to use OrientDB Graph in an Azure environment. Does anybody has experience using it? We also would like to know if high availability from OrientDB is required under Azure cloud? Azure already offers high availability for Azure storage, Azure Drive and SQL. I understand that they have replications and load balancing built in.
This is super important because we prefer not to get into the business of replications and infrastructure management.
Thanks
So you can spin up 2 or more machines and install OrientDB on them, then configure them together as a distributed cluster. However I haven't been able to find any way that is simpler, easier to do. I am interested in this topic too.
Azure does have features such as geo-replication, which is protects your data against a major data-center incident but doesn't provide any performance benefit and will not make it highly available.
Although pretty reliable, occasionally Microsoft will reboot servers for updates, so to protect against downtime you can use affinity groups so that, of your 2 or more servers, one will always be online. This however does need to be used in conjunction with database replication and ideally load balancing.
It's also worth noting that OrientDB recommends clusters have an odd number of servers as this can prevent conflicts when synchronising data after a communication issue between the servers.
I am using it in amazon and I had to create a java project to monitor http requests inserts and queries. The queries are very fast but takes longer inserting data .
I recommend this type of graph database mode to decrease the time of the queries. Also if you have empty fields OrientDB manages very well compared to other databases .
If you need help with the java project can response to this post and I´ll help u.
I hope it helps. Good luck.
I want to use a NoSQL database on Windows Azure and the data volume will be very large. Whether a Azure Table storage or a MongoDB database running using a Worker role can offer better performance and scalability? Has anyone used MongoDB on Azure using a Worker role? Please share your thoughts on using MongoDB on Azure over the Azure table storage.
Table Storage is a core Windows Azure storage feature, designed to be scalable (100TB 200TB 500TB per account), durable (triple-replicated in the data center, optionally georeplicated to another data center), and schemaless (each row may contain any properties you want). A row is located by partition key + row key, providing very fast lookup. All Table Storage access is via a well-defined REST API usable through any language (with SDKs, built on top of the REST APIs, already in place for .NET, PHP, Java, Python & Ruby).
MongoDB is a document-oriented database. To run it in Azure, you need to install MongoDB onto a web/worker roles or Virtual Machine, point it to a cloud drive (thereby providing a drive letter) or attached disk (for Windows/Linux Virtual Machines), optionally turn on journaling (which I'd recommend), and optionally define an external endpoint for your use (or access it via virtual network). The Cloud Drive / attached disk, by the way, is actually stored in an Azure Blob, giving you the same durability and georeplication as Azure Tables.
When comparing the two, remember that Table Storage is Storage-as-a-Service: you simply access a well-known REST endpoint. With MongoDB, you're responsible for maintaining the database (e.g. whenever MongoDB Inc (formerly 10gen) pushes out a new version of MongoDB, you'll need to update your server accordingly).
Regarding MongoDB Inc's alpha version pointed to by jtoberon: If you take a close look at it, you'll see a few key things:
The setup is for a Standalone mongodb instance, without replica-sets or shards. Regarding replica-sets, you still get several benefits using the Standalone version, due to the way Blob storage works.
To provide high-availability, you can run with multiple instances. In this case, only one instance serves the database, and one is a 'warm-standby' that launches the mongod process as soon as the other instance fails (for maintenance reboot, hardware failure, etc.).
While 10gen's Windows Azure wrapper is still considered 'alpha,' mongod.exe is not. You can launch the mongod exe just like you'd launch any other Windows exe. It's just the management code around the launching, and that's what the alpa implementation is demonstrating.
EDIT 2011-12-8: This is no longer in an alpha state. You can download the latest MongoDB+Windows Azure project here, which provides replica-set support.
For performance, I think you'll need to do some benchmarking. Having said that, consider the following:
When accessing either Table Storage or MongoDB from, say, a Web Role, you're still reaching out to the Windows Azure Storage system.
MongoDB uses lots of memory for its own cache. For this reason, lots of high-scale MongoDB systems are deployed to larger instance sizes. For Table Storage access, you won't have the same memory-size consideration.
EDIT April 7, 2015
If you want to use a document-based database as-a-service, Azure now offers DocumentDB.
I have used both.
Azure Tables : dead simple, fast, really hard to write even simple queries.
Mongo : runs nicely, lots of querying capabilities, requires several instances to be reliable.
In a nutshell,
if your queries are really simple (key->value), you must run a cost comparison (mainly number of transactions against the storage versus cost of hosting Mongo on Azure). I would rather go to table storage for that one.
If you need more elaborate queries and don't want to go to SQL Azure, Mongo is likely your best bet.
I realize that this question is dated. I'd like to add the following info for those who may come upon this question in their searches.
Note that now, MongoDB is offered as a fully managed service on Azure. (officially in Beta as of Apr '15)
See:
http://www.mongodb.com/partners/cloud/microsoft
or
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-new-mongodb-instances-on-microsoft-azure/
See (including pricing):
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/partners/mongolab/mongolab/
My first choice is AzureTables because SAAS model and low cost and SLA 99.99% http://alexandrebrisebois.wordpress.com/2013/07/09/what-if-20000-windows-azure-storage-transactions-per-second-isnt-enough/
some limits..
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/jj553018.aspx
http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/?scenario=data-management
or AzureSQL for small business
DocumentDB
http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/services/documentdb/
http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/documentdb-limits/
second choice is many cloud providers including Amazon offer S3
or Google tables https://developers.google.com/bigquery/pricing
nTH choice manage the SHOW all by myself have no sleep MongoDB well I will look again the first two SAAS
My choice if I am running "CLOUD" I will go for SAAS model as much as possible "RENT-IT"...
The question is what my app needs is it AzureTables or DocumentDB or AzureSQL
DocumentDB documentation
http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/services/documentdb/
How Azure pricing works
http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/documentdb/
this is fun
http://www.documentdb.com/sql/demo
At Build 2016 it was announced that DocumentDB would support all MongoDB drivers. This solves some of the lack of tooling issues with DocDB and also makes it easier to migrate Mongo apps.
Above answers are all good - but the real answer depends on what your requirements are. You need to understand what size of data you are processing, what types of operations you want to perform on the data and then select the solution that meets your needs.
One thing to remember is Azure Table Storage doesn't support complex data types.It supports every property in entity to be a String or number or boolean or date etc.
One can't store an object against a key,which i feel is must for NoSql DB.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/storageservices/fileservices/understanding-the-table-service-data-model scroll to Property Types
I'm starting on some architecture work for a .Net based social networking application to be hosted on Azure cloud. we are going to be using ASP.NET MVC on the front end.
i would like to consider the options for storage. considering scalability needs and due to the inter-connected nature of the application, SQL azure has been ruled out.
what would be the main considerations in choosing a graph DB such as Sones GraphDB or neo4j which have features specific for a social networking application against using windows azure table storage to achieve the needs.
i'm mostly concerned about development time, cost, ability to leverage existing skills like .NET and reliability of the graph DB platforms and ease of setup and administration.
Graph databases are designed for applications such as social networks. For ease of development, it may be best to start with something like GraphDB. A key advantage over a key-value database is powerful query and traversal capabilities. It would be easy to, for instance, find all occurrences of friends of friends using the GraphDB query syntax.
The benefit of a key-value database service like Azure Table is low cost, minimal administrative overhead and scalability. You can store 500TB of data per Azure storage account and setup accounts in multiple regions. There is no server setup or database administration overhead and the Visual Studio SDK is easy to use. The down side is that graph like query support is not built in and you must index off the Primary Key / Row Key pair. For additional Azure Table design pattern please see https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/storage-table-design-guide/
I wanted to make a web application through which :
user(end user) can create his own
web application online.
which will be integrated with the
databases and application/web
servers
and user can also publish that
application withing that application
only...
Doing some research i come to know it goes under category of PaaS(Platform as a Service)
But i am confuse how can i do that ?
I want to build that application using Java/J2EE.
Can any one explain me from where should i start ?
Or which framework / technology is better to implement it in Java ?
Waiting for your helpful reply....
There are several options as far as choosing a PaaS - each PaaS vendor has its pros and cons, so you need to consider a range of issues:
Language support - Do you want just Java or maybe additional languages/frameworks?
Hosting - Are you going to use a cloud computing provider like Amazon Web Services? Or are you using your own hardware? Or do you want multiple options?
DB support - You mentioned using a central DB. Do you plan on installing/administering this DB yourself, or use a hosted DB service? Do you need the PaaS to support the particular DB you want? Perhaps you need multiple Databases to provide scalability and separation among clients?
There are several good comparisons of PaaS vendors out there. This might be a good place to start: Looking for PaaS providers recommendations
Full disclosure: I work for Cloudify, an Open-Source PaaS provider.
I think while choosing a PaaS you should think of the below points.
It should be easy to deploy, scale and manage
Scaling
Flexible topology
Data safety
No vendor lock in
Open software stack
I suggest you, before going to any big vendor try a new player in town Jelastic. I recently used their services and continue to do so and they are just awesome. Their web UI is best in class and has no drama of API, SDK or downloadable software. Let me know if you use them so that I can also have some feedback before I migrate all our apps to them.
Surya
As far as i understand, you are looking for a solution that Viravis is currenlty implemented.
But believe me it is not an easy task to build that kind of platform. i strongly suggest you to look at some PaaS providers to get involved and build a business relationship to achieve your goal. They are just exists for this purpose. Provide platform for people who just want to develop a single online application or some professional who want to build an SaaS business.
I think it is better to hire the platform rather than build it from scratch (ofcourse if you dont have to...)
A web application consists of language, framework, database and Web-server.
If you want to make a web application in java, you should try GRAILS framework.
Its fast and web development is very easy and you can use java code as it is, in it.
Secondly you can choose database from MySQL, PostgreSQL etc or if you want to use No-SQL dbs, you can choose from MOngoDB, CouchDB etc.
Web-Servers can be tomcat, jetty etc.
After creating you application, you would like to host your application on web, Here PaaS comes to play. It helps you to deploy and host your application on web. So what you have to do is only to focus on your application and then deploy your app on any PaaS providers.
There are many PaaS providers in market, you can choose any.