Windows Azure IaaS and PaaS Interfaces

Let’s take a look at Windows Azure IaaS and PaaS Interfaces. Windows Azure Iaas or Infrastructure as a Service is sometimes known as HaaS or Hardware as a Service. It is the lowest access point in the cloud computing pool. IaaS offers the developer a path to low-level access to storage such as a block device (hard drive), file system storage, virtual networking, load balancing configuration, and firewall protection. All of these offerings and many more are provided through resource pools provided by data centers. These data centers can in fact be local to the user which can significantly cut back on latency.

Windows Azure uses Silverlight as the handler for the Windows Azure Management Portal. Within this interface is the ability to choose a ‘VHD’ image that can be configured and used by the developer and ultimately the user. An image in its simplest form is a disk that has not been configured. Once configured the disk becomes bootable and usable. One of the images that can be configured and made available through the cloud service is Windows 2008 R2. In addition an image of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2, Service Pack 1 (64-bit) with a complete 64-bit installation of SQL Server can be deployed and used through the cloud services. The virtual machine IaaS impact is second to none when giving the developer the control necessary to build robust cloud applications.

Windows Azure PaaS or Platform as a Service is comprised of operating systems, as in environments to execute software languages like the Java VM, web server, and database environments. These platforms have the inherent ability to scale and balance themselves transparent to the developer and the user. These enable an application developer to build an application on the most robust of platforms without purchasing the environment.

Azure SQL Database is one of the backbones of the PaaS level. From a small business application to large enterprise undertakings, SQL Database is a dependable solution for all developers backend needs. Data can be shared across several platforms, both virtual and local with the use of SQL DataSync. The embedded load balancing capabilities of this service will ensure that access latency is kept to a minimum.

The flexibility of a development environment is key to building robust applications. Azure offers several languages to build and deploy applications that are familiar to many programmers. It is this flexibility that will offer ease of importing existing applications into the cloud environment. It is important to the developer to have the ability to maintain a familiar environment. It is difficult enough to write code, but fighting the learning curve with unfamiliar tools can make it a true nightmare. Azures PaaS offers developers a common atmosphere for developing cloud applications.

The world of cloud development is exciting and Windows Azure adds to the excitement. As a programmer for many years, the diverse platforms and infrastructure capabilities make development exciting again.