SQL Azure Federations TechEd session

Previously I blogged about the topic of sharding in SQL Azure (Federations).

Cihan Biyikoglu presented a session on this at last week’s TechEd.  Catch it here.

-Krip

Team Foundation Server is running on Azure

According to Brian Harry’s post, Team Foundation Server (TFS) is up and running on Azure.  A Microsoft internal instance was deployed about a month ago and runs 100 accounts and 200 users.  At the moment of course it’s limited to a very small group of TAP customers but will be opened up over time.

What a great use of Azure.  TFS is a full enterprise scale application that utilizes front end, middle tier, and back-end (SQL Server) infrastructure and can be deployed in a variety of ways.  It requires IT to manage, backup, monitor, etc.  So getting all the benefits of a fully managed elastic compute environment is ideal.

I’m sure many more companies will be able to adopt TFS when it’s commercially available in the cloud.

-Krip

Watch TechEd next week from Atlanta live

Microsoft is giving us a taste of TechEd by broadcasting the Keynote and other selected sessions live.  You can register for this webcast here.

The Keynote kicks off at 9am EST on Monday May 16th and will be presented by Corporate Vice President, Server and Tools Marketing, Robert Wahbe and Corporate Vice President, Visual Studio, Jason Zander.

A total of 18 other sessions are being streamed from Monday through Thursday on topics like Azure, Windows Phone 7, and Silverlight.

-Krip

Last night to Rock, Paper, Azure!

My first blog post on my new corporate blog!  The website isn’t up yet but the blog is!  I’ve run several personal blogs and participated in a company blog.  Time to start up a new one, focused on all things tech.  I’ve used both Blogger and WordPress and think WordPress has a much better user interface, particularly on the admin side – lots of stats to view.  In fact, Blogger says they’re down for maintenance right now!

Today I received a courtesy email that the final round of Rock, Paper, Azure will run tomorrow (week 6).  The competition is a great way to get your feet wet with Azure development.  You get to study the code behind the system, build your own little bot that plays the game against all other opponents in the round, and upload it to Azure.  A good little teaser into Azure development while flexing your algorithmic muscle on what I thought was a simple childhood game!

I spent several days building out my bot in early April and even made it to first place in the week leading up to the competition.  But alas it’s a full-time job to keep up with all the clever cookies playing the match!

Anyway it’s a bit of fun, and you get a free t-shirt (mine arrived today).

-Krip