CodeMash Precompiler on Azure Architecture

If you aren’t familiar with the CodeMash conference, you should really check it out!  This is a conference not dedicated to one type of stack, but one that revels in mixing people from all stacks.  You’ll find some Ruby folks discussing patterns with .NET folks or PHP developers doing katas with Java developers.  The purpose of the conference is to share knowledge across stacks, but above all, be passionate and open-minded about our industry.

This year I’m honored to be selected to give a half day precompiler session (which is a fancy name for workshop at CodeMash) on architecture for Windows Azure solutions.  Brent Stineman (fellow Windows Azure MVP … well, not anymore since he now works for Microsoft) and I will be talking about things to think about when creating solid applications in the cloud.  The abstract s below.

We will give the workshop on both Tuesday and a repeat on Wednesday, so if you have an interest you’ll have two chances to catch it!

Cloud Architecture with Windows Azure

Felix Baumgartner jumped from over 128,000 feet to break a world record for sky diving.  An image was posted to a Facebook account after his landing and in 40 minutes it had logged over 216,000 likes, 10,000 comments, and 29,000 shares.

The Pottermore website, digital home to one of the world’s greatest known Wizards, saw a billion (with a “B”) page views just two weeks after it launched and was signing up new users at a rate of 25,000 per day.

Whether you need this level of instant scalability, or you are simply wanting to be ready for it when your own idea takes off the cloud allows you to create solutions that can scale easily and have high availability, however, these do not come automatically.  You need to know how best to leverage a cloud platform to achieve these capabilities successfully. This workshop focuses on architecture patterns by looking at how the Windows Azure platform and services actually work, then using that knowledge to design solid solutions.  We will start the workshop with an overview of many of the services and features of the Windows Azure Platform to understand what we have to work with, then we will touch on topics such as distributing your solution globally and handling failures (yes, they WILL happen).  Be ready to participate in groups to put your new knowledge to the test!